Mythical Beasts

Mythical Beasts

Unicorns

In the ancient times of Greece unicorns were considered fact not fiction. They were still rare and exotic but could be found. While today they are often depicted as tall horse like creatures that are white the ancients described them as "white, red and black" and resembling goat and asses.

I think people often assume that because we don't have something now, we didn't have something back then. I have a couple of theories about these mythical beasts. 

Forest habitation steadily decreased and really is only now increasing again in certain places. The deer and wild goats that roamed these forests in antiquity would have been in numbers we would find hard to imagine. The likelihood of the genetic anomaly of a uni horn would have been far more common because the sheer numbers involved. 

It wasn't that they didn't experience it, it is that they thought it was it's own species. They understood it was rare. Being as uni horned creatures may have given them a short term advantage and there could have been pockets of deer population that were uni horned. Once the advantage was no longer there the genetic trait was no longer desirable so it lessened. It might have even meant that uni horned deer were removed from a group or that males could not compete for herds. 

This behaviour could have given rise to the "peaceful" gentle lone unicorn in the woods mythos we see creeping into the middle ages. Any horns that came from these creatures would have been "debunked" as regular deer horns without some deep genetic marker testing. 

Over time the deer/goat qualities in art become less and less as the genetic quirk and the amount of deer drastically reduce due to farming.

The idea of Unicorns 

While they obviously represent some kind of phallic symbolic nature as well as something "wild" and untamed a "pretty and virtuous maid" could "tame" a unicorn.

Lets break that down.

A virgin has some kind of magical power over the wild masculine and virile nature? This is the opposite of what we know to be true. "Wild" masculinity (untamed and unchecked) is not swayed by the "goodness" of a virgin. While the Roman idea of keeping women virgins to ensure paternity spread the Christian ideal of "women" as "pure and pretty maids" was not terribly close to the reality of early Christian Europe.

I wonder if women were draw to unicorns as their externalised anima. A strong "wild" masculine creature that would protect women who "had" to be gentle, sweet and vulnerable. They became whiter and whiter. They began to sparkle with a moon like quality in common myth and lore. 

A proto-erotic emblem of their external desires. 

Unicorns today

The magick associated with unicorns today is often of a mythical innocence. A joy and purity of spirit. It has a brush of the virgin Goddess, and a wand of a witch or faery. It is the power of hope, trust and joy. The unicorn is everything we hope for our young daughters. Protection, wonder and safety. 

While this might sound "twee" there is a power in wonder and wildness. There is a wish not for virginity but the sanctity of  childhood. 

Maybe my own childhood (though full of faery) would have benefited from unicorn magick. Alas something was robbed from me, maybe the unicorn could to help bring it back? It was the Pegasus I dreamt of, who carried me between worlds and places in my dreams at night.

Knowingly or not, it was unicorns I gave my own daughter. 

Symbols are a complex thing but they are important. As a childhood protector you can always count of this fourlegged friend.

Bright Blessings xxx