Picture of the month

 

This romantic couple walk through the snow and celebrate their love. Then the alpha male gives his girlfriend a BIG whopping kiss. 

"Get off!" yelped the she-wolf. "You're ruining my hair!"

OMG what a picture!

She Wolf Night

 

Crocotta

Pliny the Elder (23/24 CE to 79 CE) was a Roman author. He wrote about wildlife but some of the animals he described were weird! 

One animal that he mentioned in his "Natural History" was the crocotta, also called a leucrocuta, a hybrid creature born from a lioness and hyena. It was a similar size to a donkey, "with the legs of a stag" including cloven hooves. Then he wrote that the crocotta had the "neck, tail and breast of a lion" and also "the head of a badger". The beast was said to have a very wide stretching mouth" and it had a bone just inside its mouth instead of teeth. Did Pliny ever see one of these animals? Maybe not.

According to Greek philosopher Strabo (64/63 BCE to 24 CE), the crocotta is a wolf-dog hybrid. However, Ctesias the Greek historian (5th century BCE), wrote that the crocotta are from Ethiopia and they speak with human voices and call names of people to lure victims outside at night. He also said this is how people get eaten by the crocotta. He wrote that the crocotta "cannot be overcome by any weapon of steel." Many other writings of the crocotta can be found. 

She Wolf Night 

Happy Lupercalia

Today is the Feast of Lupercalia. The Roman celebration happens on the 13th, 14th and 15th February, the old Feast of the Wolf with celebrations. Food and merriment, music and dancing. The priests were called lupercali, who sacrificed animals and then smeared themselves in the blood. They might've got into a frenzy about it and resorted to being beastly and wolfish, taking to the streets across Roman cities to frighten women. Much more infamy goes on. Men pull the names of women out of a jar, and pursued them for sex, and if things went well, they might've fallen in love. Marriages happened as a result of Lupercalia. Sometimes things didn't go well, and many women were traumatised. The feral nature of the Luperci priests on the celebration were actually in charge of the event, and acted as leaders. Lupercalia was possibly a festival of the wolf goddess Lupa that nursed the children called Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. Yet the celebration is also for Faunus, a nature god of fertility. It's known that goats and dogs were sacrificed at every Lupercalia. And it was believed a whack from a luperci priest made women more fertile. Pope Galasius I of the year 494 CE condemned the annual Lupercalia celebration. He incorporated it into a Christian holiday on 14th February of St. Valentine's Day. 

She Wolf Night

Werewolf books

For reading books for the werewolves, fans of werewolf stories and legend I felt like posting some titles of books on the subject that I have on my bookshelf and wishlist. These are about lycanthropes, shapeshifters and werewolves, with more monsters.

"The Essential Guide of Werewolf Literature" by Brian J. Frost.

"The Werewolf Handbook" by Robert Curran.

"The Book of Werewolves" by Sabine Baring-Gould.

"The Werewolf Book The Encyclopedia of Shapeshifting Beings" by Brad Steiger.

"The Legend of the Werewolf" by Thomas Kingsley Troupe.

"Werewolves: The Horrific Truth Behind the Legend" by Zachary Graves.

"The Mammoth Book of Werewolves" by Stephen Jones.

"Mythical Monsters: The Scariest Creatures from Legends, Books and Movies" by Chris McNab. 

Enjoy your browsing and reading!

She Wolf Night

Yuki-onna

 One of the many spirits of winter is a Yuki-onna. A snow girl spirit or an ice demon girl. She's a yokai, the name of all the variety of entities in Japenese folklore. Described as beautiful with a pale transparent complexion, sometimes with blue lips and dressed in a light kimono, layered in frost. Her hair is glittering in white snow. Her nails are long and sharp as icicles. She looks young and pure, but she's undead. It's believed that touching Yuki-onna will cause a horrible sense of cold. 

Almost vampire in nature, she has drawn life energy by either draining from her victims or giving a kiss of death. She can give frost bite to those who will encounter her. She hunts humans in the cold mountains, often at night, lingering beside roads. Also stranger still this being can fall in love and even marry. It's also believed the Yuki-onna is the ghost of a woman who died out in the snow during a storm. Others believe Yuki-onna to be a moon princess who is trapped on the Earth. Academics and authors such as Yamaoka Genrin of the Edo period believe that Yuki-onna was born from snow.    

She Wolf Night