Tarasque

“There was that time upon the river of Rhone, in a certain wood between Arles and Avignon, a great dragon, half beast and half fish, greater than an ox, longer than an horse, having teeth sharp as a sword, and horned on either side, head like a lion, tail like a serpent, and defended him with two wings on either side, and could not be beaten with cast of stones ne with other armour, and was as strong as twelve lions or bears; which dragon lay hiding and lurking in the river, and perished them that passed by and drowned ships.” This was the description given by Jacques De Voragine in ”The Golden Legend” ( about 1255 ) of the amphibious monster known as the Tarasque.

Legend has it that the creature inhabited the area of Nerluc in Provence, and devastated the landscape far and wide. The Tarasque was a sort of dragon with six short legs like a bear’s, an ox-like body covered with a turtle shell, and a scaly tail that ended in a scorpion’s sting. It had a lion’s head.

Saint Martha found the beast and charmed it with hymns and prayers, and led back the tamed Tarasque to the city. The people, terrified by the monster, attacked it when it drew nigh. The monster offered no resistance and died there. Martha then preached to the people and converted many of them to Christianity. Sorry for what they had done to the tamed monster, the newly-Christianized townspeople changed the town’s name to Tarascon.

The Book of Beasts

White’s The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts was the first and, for a time, the only English translation of a medieval bestiary. Bestiaries were second only to the Bible in their popularity and wide distribution during the Middle Ages. They were catalogs of animal stories, combining zoological information, myths, and legends. Great attention was given to bizarre, exotic, and monstrous creatures. Much of the content of bestiaries was drawn from much older sources including Aristotle, early English literature, and oral traditions. White provides an excellent appendix that explains how the creatures of the bestiary influenced the development of allegory and symbolism in art and literature.

Ouroboros

The Ouroboros is a greek word, and means “tail swallower”. The ouroboros is usually depicted in the form of a snake swallowing its tail, and is usually circular, although it is sometimes depicted in a lemniscate shape. It originated in Egypt as a symbol of the sun, and represented the travels of the sun disk. In Gnosticism, it was related to the solar God Abraxas, and signified eternity and the soul of the world.

Lucas Jennis’ engraving published on an alchemical emblem-book entitled De Lapide Philisophico (1625):

Bern Physiologus

Physiologus

The Physiologus was written in Greek, probably in Alexandria, in about the fourth century. It consisted of 48 or 49 chapters about beasts, birds and stones used as a vehicle for explaining Christian dogma. Its stories come from very ancient sources: Indian, Hebrew and Egyptian animal lore and various classical natural philosophers like Aristotle and Pliny. A moralising Christian gloss was added to these stories by a person presumably known as Physiologus.
The book was translated into Latin in about 400, and later many European and Middle-Eastern languages, and many illuminated manuscript copies such as the Bern Physiologus survive. It retained its influence over people’s minds in Europe for over a thousand years. It was a predecessor of the bestiaries (books of beasts).

A Bestiary is a collection of short descriptions about all sorts of animals, real and imaginary, birds and even rocks, accompanied by a moralising explanation. Although it deals with the natural world it was never meant to be a scientific text and should not be read as such. Some observations may be quite accurate but they are given the same weight as totally fabulous accounts. The Bestiary appeared in its present form in England in the twelfth century, as a compilation of many earlier sources, principally the Physiologus.

Bern Physiologus

The Bern Physiologus (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Codex Bongarsianus 318) is a 9th century illuminated copy of the Latin translation of the Physiologus. It was probably produced at Reims about 825-850. Some sample pages of this copy (source wikipedia):

Book of Imaginary Beings

Jorge Luis Borges wrote and edited the Book of Imaginary Beings in 1957 as the original Spanish Manual de zoologia fantastica, or Handbook of Fantastic Zoology, expanding it in 1967 and 1969 to the final El libro de los seres imaginarios. The English edition, created in collaboration with translator Norman Thomas de Giovanni, contains descriptions of 120 mythical beasts from folklore and literature. In the preface, Borges states that the book is to be read ‘as with all miscellanies…not…straight through…rather we would like the reader to dip into the pages at random, just as one plays with the shifting patterns of a kaleidoscope’; and that ‘legends of men taking the shapes of animals’ have been omitted.
Few readers will want, or be able to resist this modern bestiary. Here, you will find the familiar – Gryphons, Minotaurs and Unicorns – as well as the Monkey of the inkpot and other undeniably curious beasts. Borges’ cunning and humourous commentary is sheer delight.

Why Are There No Unicorns?

Why are there no unicorns? Perhaps horses develop in a way that cannot be easily modified to produce a unicorn, so such creatures have never arisen. Or maybe unicorn-like animals have been born in the past but because there is no advantage for a horse to have a horn, such creatures did not thrive and were weeded out by natural selection. More here.

All about unicorns, Unicorns in Medieval Bestiary, The Cryptid Zoo: Unicorns in Cryptozoology, Elasmotherium – a giant rhinoceros which stood two meters high and six meters (20 feet) long, with a single two-meter-long (7 feet) horn in the forehead, entry at Occultopedia, and Sir Thomas Browne about unicorns horns in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, and of course (?) wikipedia has an entry as well on the subject.

Gregory Colbert

Source : web site Ashes and Snow

Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow is an ongoing project that weaves together photographic works, 35mm films, art installations and a novel in letters. With profound patience and an unswerving commitment to the expressive and artistic nature of animals, he has captured extraordinary interactions between humans and animals.

His 21st-century bestiary includes more than 40 totemic species from around the world. Since he began creating his singular work of Ashes and Snow, Colbert has mounted more than 30 expeditions to locations such as India, Egypt, Burma, Tonga, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Antarctica, the Azores and Borneo.

Colbert, who calls animals “nature’s living masterpieces,” chose to film animals in their native habitats in an effort to be true to each animal’s voice. The film can be viewed as a work of art as well as a poetic field study. The film was edited by two-time Oscar winner Pietro Scalia. It is narrated by Laurence Fishburne, and the musical collaborators include Michael Brook, David Darling, Heiner Goebbels, Lisa Gerrard, Lukas Foss, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn and Djivan Gasparyan.

The Ashes and Snow exhibition includes more than 100 large-scale photographic artworks, a one-hour film and two nine-minute film haikus. None of the images have been digitally collaged or superimposed. They record what the artist himself saw through the lens of his camera. While Colbert uses both still and movie cameras, the images are not stills from the film.

These mixed media photographic works marry umber and sepia tones in a distinctive encaustic process on handmade Japanese paper. The artworks, each approximately five feet by eight feet, are mounted without explanatory text so as to encourage an open-ended interaction with the images.