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Basilisk (page 2)
There was a widespread folk belief that once in seven years the cock laid a
little, misshapen egg. In Germany it was thought necessary to throw this
anomalous egg over the roof, or tempests
would wreck the homestead; but should the egg be hatched, it would produce a
Cockatrice or Basilisk. But in Lithuania this unusual cock’s egg superstition
involved putting it within a pot, which was then placed in the oven; from it was hatched a kauks, a bird with a tail
like that of a golden pheasant, which, if properly tended, would bring its owner
great good luck.
A chronicle of Basel in Switzerland mentions that, in the month of August 1474,
a cock in that town was accused and convicted in
public court on the charge of
laying an egg during the days of the Dog Star,
and then condemned to death. He was publicly burned along with his egg, at a
place called Kablenberg, in sight of a great multitude of people.
The last recorded appearance of a Cockatrice was in 1587 in Warsaw. There, two
girls were killed by its breath, while playing in their cellar. Frightened
citizens organized a hunt for the monster, but after finding and killing a
small snake, declared the affair finished.
It seems improbable that there could be
any foundation in reality for such a weird creature as the Basilisk, and it
is possible that this fearsome creature really evolved from exaggerated
travelers’ tales of the
horned adder or the
hooded cobra, confused with such
awesome reptiles as the
Gila monster.
Yet, as documented by
British zoologist
Dr. Karl P. N. Shuker in his
Extraordinary Animals Worldwide (1991), an
animal surprisingly alike has been reported living in central Africa and the Caribbean.
Known as the crowing crested cobra, it is — according to those who claim to have seen
it — an extremely large, venomous male serpent with a cock's-comb-like crest, facial
wattles, and a cockerel's crow. Over the years various reports have been published about
this animal. In 1944, for example, a Malawi physician, Dr. J. O. Shircore, declared in the
journal African Affairs that he possessed parts of one of these creatures —
a portion of the neck and the skeleton of the comb. It is really possible that it was ancient
travelers' tales of the above mentioned
reptiles (*), or the
crowing crested cobra, that originally gave rise to the myth of the
basilisk — but it is unlikely that we shall ever discover whether this theory is true
or not.
One must mention that the name Basilisk has also been applied to
a group of iguana-like lizards (Basiliscus), found on the banks of rivers
and streams in Central America and Mexico.
See
Dragon,
Chupacabra,
Casting Black Magic Spells,
Commanding Spirits,
The Tarot Store,
The Chakra Store and
Divination & Scrying Tools and
Supplies.
Sources: (1)
Dictionary of the
Occult, Caxton
Publishing; (2)
Spence, Lewis,
An Encyclopedia of
Occultism, Carol Publishing Group;
(3)
Mysterious Creatures,
from the collection
Mysteries
of the Unknown,
Time-Life Books.
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