“Basilisk … is the king of snakes. People, seeing him, run away, saving their lives, for he is able to kill with only his scent. Even looking at a person, he kills …"
This is what was written in the medieval bestiary (a medieval book that includes information about the kingdom of real and fictional creatures) about the mysterious basilisk. The basilisk was considered a mythical, fictional creature, but, as you know, there is some truth in every fiction, I propose to plunge into the fascinating world of fairy tales and myths and find out who the basilisk is and what amazing abilities people have endowed him with.
History sends us back to ancient times to distant Africa, or rather to the Libyan desert. There lives a small but terribly venomous snake with a white mark on its head. Locals and travelers were very afraid to meet her on their way, as the snake bite was fatal, and her amazing ability to move with her head raised, leaning on her tail, also frightened her. The exact name of the snake is unknown, but the Greeks called it a basilisk, which means "king."
The rumor about the outlandish snake reached Europe and, of course, was overgrown with terrible details along the way. Here is what Pliny the Elder (Roman writer, 1st century AD) wrote about this miracle of the desert: “The Basilisk has an amazing ability: whoever sees it, dies immediately. On his head there is a white spot that resembles a diadem. Its length is no more than 30 centimeters. He turns other snakes to flight with his hiss and moves without bending his whole body, but lifting his middle part. Not only from touch, but also from the breath of a basilisk, bushes and grass dry up, and stones ignite …”The latest information reveals the history of the desert, it is the basilisk that is to blame for the death of all living things around and the appearance of sands.
So gradually an ordinary animal turned into a fabulous monster thanks to irrepressible human imagination and human fears, and then more.
The Greeks, having called the snake a king, attributed to it the role of ruler over reptiles: snakes, lizards, crocodiles. The Romans translated the name of the basilisk into Latin, and it became Regulus, which also means "king".
Basilisk was credited with the ability to kill all living things not only with breathing, but also with a look, just like Medusa the Gorgon. By the way, the Roman author Mark Annei Lucan believed that the basilisk appeared from the blood of the slain Medusa, which is quite logical, because there were snakes on the Gorgon's head instead of hair. You can't look a basilisk in the eye either, otherwise you will petrify, and you could overcome it with the help of a mirror - so that the poisonous gaze of the basilisk was turned against himself.
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There is a beast in the world that is able to defeat a basilisk - this is a weasel, a small predator from the weasel family. Weasel is completely unconcerned with all the deadly tricks of the basilisk. The basilisk is afraid of the crow of the cock, he turns to flight from him, he may even die.
The opposition of the basilisk and the rooster is interesting, because the legend of the birth of the basilisk is connected with the rooster. In the bestiary of Pierre de Bove (1218), the basilisk egg begins to form in the body of an old rooster. The rooster lays it in a secluded place on a pile of manure, where a toad incubates it. A creature with the head of a rooster, the body of a toad and a long serpentine tail hatches from the egg. According to other sources, not a basilisk is born from an egg, but a kurolisk or cockatrice, its relative. But the kurolisk is less powerful than the basilisk; snakes and other reptiles do not obey him.
There was also such a creature in Russia, sometimes he was also called the courtyard. A courtyard or courtyard - a close relative of the brownie, lived in the courtyard of the house. During the day, he looked like a snake with a cock's head and with a comb, and at night he took on the appearance of the owner of the house. The yardman was the spirit of the house and yard. But whether he made friends with snakes or not, this is not known.
During the Renaissance, many stuffed basilisks were created from parts of sea animals. The basilisk was depicted on church bas-reliefs, medallions and coats of arms. In heraldic books, the basilisk has the head and legs of a rooster, a bird's body covered with scales, and a snake's tail.
And now you can find images of a basilisk. For example, in the city of Basel (Switzerland) there is a monument to the basilisk, and the inhabitants of the city consider him their patron. (For your information: in Greek, the letter "b" (beta) later turned into the letter "c", so initially the word "basilisk" sounded like "basilevsk" - basiliskos).
Basilisk often becomes the hero of novels. In J. K. Rowling's book "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", the basilisk is represented by the classic serpent king, only large (almost 20 meters), which makes it different from the ancient basilisks, but otherwise it has all the qualities mentioned above.
And here is how Sergei Drugal, a Russian science fiction writer, describes the snake king in the story “Basilisk” (1986): “He moves his horns, his eyes are so green with a purple tint, the warty hood swells. And he himself was purple and black with a spiked tail. A triangular head with a black-pink mouth opened wide … His saliva is extremely poisonous and if it gets on living matter, then carbon will be replaced by silicon. Simply put, all living things turn to stone and die, although there is debate that petrification also goes from the gaze of the Basilisk, but those who wanted to check this did not come back …"
In the animal kingdom, even now, you can find an animal that looks like a basilisk - this is a chameleon lizard, which is called Christ's lizard. This monster lives in the jungles of Costa Rica and Venezuela. The lizard does not possess lethality, but it has one amazing ability: it can run on water. To do this, she strongly accelerates and runs through the water, bouncing like a pebble. For this ability, the lizard was named Christ's lizard.
With this, the journey in the footsteps of the basilisk came to an end. There is only one conclusion from all of the above: amazing creations of nature and human imagination are just a storehouse for the birth of myths and legends, which we never cease to amaze with to this day.
Marina Eroshkina