INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world.
These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.
I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.
DESCRIPTION:
This week we’re looking at the infamous Basilisk from Greek and Roman mythology and yes, I know we’re in Greece again - but I promise this is the last Grecian monster for a little while, in fact, it’s the last European one for a while too! However, sometimes this is considered a European monster rather than specifically Grecian - but we’ll run with the word’s origin, which is in Greece.
The Basilisk is a legendary reptile, who is known as the serpent king. It’s described as a snake that can kill you with a glance, or blind you - very literally looks can kill. Now it’s called the Serpent King because it has a little crown pattern on its head, not because of its size, they actually come up to about 30 centimetres long so they’re only diddy little things. Let’s note now that there is very little myth to back up their ability to turn things into stone with their gaze, that is something that has been kind of lost - nice how that links back to Medusa and the Gorgons though, considering she has snakes for hair/a snakey body. Hysterically though, it can actually kill itself by looking at its own reflection, so it's just a big silly snake.
The Basilisk is sometimes confused with the Cockatrice, which is a legendary cockerel and dragon hybrid, which we’ll cover another time. This is because the basilisk is born from an egg that is looked after and hatched by a cockerel, not sure of the logistics of that relationship but everyone likes a bit of cock-rel. As I said before my goof of the century, the Cockatrice, in contrast, is a cockerel's egg which is then incubated by a snake, or even sometimes a toad. So you can see why these two are mixed up in mythology.
Now I bet you’re wondering, well Erin, I only know Basilisks to be giant snakes - nothing to do with chickens, I didn’t know this about them. Well I’m about to blow your mind - they actually DID have feathers. In Medieval Europe, the description of the basilisk began to develop features of cockerels. It is said to have a venomous attack - and they’re also said to have a beak, feathery wings and even be able to breathe fire. Again though, you can see where this almost goes into Cockatrice territory, and we’re going to leave the Cocatrice for another day.
The basilisk's only noted weaknesses are the crowing from a cockerel, linking back to it’s incubation and the odor of a weasel. Random, I know - but it's because of the real life link to cobras and their natural enemy, the mongoose! Which technically is a type of weasel, but basically the enemy is mongeese - but Google keeps correcting me to use mongoose as plural and I don’t want to - it’s mongeese from now on people.
ORIGIN:
It’s my FAVOURITE part of the podcast, it’s time for the etymology of Basilisk. The word originates from the Greek word basilískos, which means "little king,", "little prince," "chieftain," or "young ruler”. Which makes sense with the little crown and all together mother of snakes which this monster definitely is.
The myths around Basilisks started in the Naturalis Historia which was written by Pliny the Elder in 79AD, where he gives a very long description of the Basilisk, before he died at the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii - here’s an extract;
“It is produced in the province of Cyrene, being not more than twelve fingers in length. It has a white spot on the head, strongly resembling a sort of a diadem. When it hisses, all the other serpents fly from it: and it does not advance its body, like the others, by a succession of folds, but moves along upright and erect upon the middle.
It destroys all shrubs, not only by its contact, but those even that it has breathed upon; it burns up all the grass too, and breaks the stones, so tremendous is its noxious influence. It was formerly a general belief that if a man on horseback killed one of these animals with a spear, the poison would run up the weapon and kill, not only the rider, but the horse as well.”
There are some really cool other accounts of the Basilisk too actually - in the ninth century, a basilisk reportedly hid itself under the temple of Lucia in Rome. It smelt so bad that it caused a devastating plague, but the Pope went out and killed it with prayers. As the Pope does, ya know.
In 1202, in Vienna, there was an outbreak of fainting spells which was traced back to a basilisk that had hidden in a well. However, when they found it, it was already dead - which is kind of sad, but they did make a statue for it. But it was made out of sandstone, so it no longer exists - however, there is a lovely mosaic that sits in its place now, which I’ll talk about later.
In 1474, an old cockerel in Switzerland was found apparently laying an egg - so the bird was captured, tried, convicted of an unnatural act, and burned alive before a crowd of several thousand people - yes this did actually happen. Now just before it’s execution, the mob begged the executioner to cut the rooster open, and they found three more eggs and they were all in different stages of their embryonic development!
There was a report of a Basilisk at the royal castle in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1651, a servant was sent to collect eggs from the hen coops and he saw a cockerel laying an egg. The Danish King, Frederick III, asked for its egg and he watched it for days, waiting for a basilisk to emerge; it never did. But it did end up in the royal Cabinet of Curiosities, so that’s kinda cool.
Lastly though the coolest report was that of the Warsaw Basilisk in Poland in 1587, a bunch of people, including children went missing and they found all their bodies in an old cellar that had air so thick no one could venture down there. They pulled the bodies out with long hooks, and the town physician Benedictus said; They presented a horrid appearance, being swollen like drums and with much-discoloured skin; the eyes “protruded from the sockets like the halves of hen’s eggs.” To get rid of the Basilisk, he suggested that a man go down wearing a dress made of leather, covered with mirrors, facing in all directions and armed with a rake - they sent a convicted criminal because two birds, one stone. Apparently, he was cheered on by two thousand people, trapped the Basilisk in a wall and pulled it out with the rake, as Benedictus believed that sunlight would depreciate it’s poison. Then the account stops, there are no reports of what happened to it afterwards - so unsure whether it died or if it killed anyone else! This is considered the most eligible account of the Basilisk!
Now some people have speculated that early accounts of cobras might have egged on the legend of the basilisk. Cobras, if you didn’t know, are one of the few snakes that can sit in an upright posture, and even though it sounds really stupid, can be killed by mongeese. Also there are a few species of cobras that can spit their venom, and this is usually into their victims eyes - which could link back to the blindness thing. Also, cobras were revered as kings in places like ancient Egypt - and are predominantly found here too.
Also, the Titanoboa is an extinct snake that lived 66 million to 56 million years ago, and is considered to be the largest known serpent of all time. Now if you’re thinking wow, Anacondas are really big Erin, well this snake man, this snake is like 4 times the size of Anacondas. The fossils found are huge, mostly of vertebrae from their huge spines, which if you look this up - they’re like dinner plates, you can only imagine that there were hundreds of these and the snake’s body is a little wider than this too. Luckily, we think they’re extinct, so I think we’re okay. But it’s an interesting perspective on if something like this could exist and actually survive.
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
Now in art, we’ll talk statues and architecture first, with Schönlaterngasse 7, in Vienna which we discussed earlier, which is a beautiful mosaic that displays the old man finding the basilisk in the well. Also, you can see an amazing metal sculpture of the Warsaw Basilisk at Bazyliszek Restaurant in Warsaw's Old Town Market Square, and actually there are a whole load of Basilisk statues and models all over the city.
For other art, I would suggest having a look at independent artists for this - however, you can see a classic drawing of a Basilisk from 1640 by artist Ulisse Aldrovandi.
A weird one, but we can talk about actual Basilisks, which are little lizards! I love reptiles so I can talk about them forever, but they’re mostly known as Jesus Christ Lizards - as they can walk on water because they’re little and fast.
For movies, let’s quickly talk about others from the obvious - we’ve got the 2006 film, Basilisk: The Serpent King, which got a solid 3.5 out of 10 on IMBD’s rating system so I’m not sure it’s worth the watch.
Now we’ve got to talk about the inevitable, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, where the main antagonist is a Basilisk - but in this, it petrifies students who are considered ‘mudbloods’ which are magical people who come from non-magical families. This Basilisk uses the pipes to get around the school and is only defeated in the end by the Sword of Gryffindor going through it’s noggin. The Basilisk fang is then used to destroy one of Voldemort’s soul pieces, called Horcruxes - and actually when the Sword goes through the beast's head that becomes covered in Basilisk venom too, and then can be used to destroy other Horcruxes. They also go back and get the other fang from the Basilisk skeleton in the final book and I can’t remember if it’s in the film - the last few movies are so bad that I can’t stand to watch them anymore.
In games, Basilisks feature in Terraria, the Borderlands 2 DLC: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, Dungeons and Dragons and God of War.
My book recommendation of the week would be NOT HARRY POTTER or Fantastic Beasts because we hate JK Rowling and don’t want to give her anymore attention or. You have the Manga - Basilisk, in which the main characters can kill people just by looking at them. If you’re into more lighthearted fiction, there are the Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist books - the second is based all around Basilisks, especially good if you’ve got kids!
DO I THINK THEY EXISTED?
Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?
Hmm, to be fair - kind of like the Kraken, the Basilisk has a lot of references to real life serpents, and I can see that someone spotting a king cobra or an anaconda could be mistaken as a Basilisk, but at the end of the day it’s probably exact that, a mistake.
It might have existed in dino times too, and if you think about the size of a sea serpent or even a modern day Komodo Dragon, they’re massive - and it makes sense that maybe there was something around that might have been that big.
Then you’ve got to look at the existence of Titanoboa, which we know did exist in Jurassic times, and we know they were about 50 foot long, which works with the depiction of a Basilisk that we all imagine now. So it might have been derived from early discoveries of these skeletons, maybe that encouraged people to come up with the Basilisk myth.
Also lol at the idea of them being related to chickens - just lol, that’s enough to make anyone doubt their existence.
Now I love snakes, so I’m not massively fussed by the existence of the Basilisk - I think it’s very cool. However, I know Indiana Jones would not be into it, maybe I should be the new Indiana Jones ya know - I think I would be better at it, and definitely more inconspicuous with my luminous orange hair, at least I have the same knowledge in ancient history I suppose.
OUTRO:
I’m sorry that turned into a lot of Harry Potter drivel - as I said we do not support JK Rowling on this podcast. But the Basilisk is a good monster, who exists outside of this mythos and we can pretend that Chamber of Secrets never happened.
Next week we’re heading over to China to look at the awesome mythical dragon Nian, who still has a huge impact on Chinese culture to this day! Swoop into the podcast next week to find out more about it!
For now thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - the shiny new website!
So come join the fun and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.
But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.