TOP 10 MYTHOLOGY HORROR (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

But wait – there’s more!

As I said for my Top 10 Mythology Horror list, horror or at least feelings or forms of horror extend well beyond the fictional genre – not least to horror in mythology, given that it is easy to trace the origins of horror to mythology itself.

So there’s more than enough mythology horror for my usual twenty special mentions.

 

 

 

 

(1) PAGANISM

 

“Who are these coming to the sacrifice?”

 

Yes, we’re talking folk horror and The Wicker Man.

The horror of Frazer and Graves – the horror of the sacred sacrificial king, from the king’s perspective.

We all have to make sacrifices…

 

 

 

 

(2) SHAMANISM

 

Sometimes I think all horror is originally shamanic – the shaman as horror protagonist, keeping the dark otherworldly forces at bay beyond the tribal clearing in the wild world or fighting them there.

Or perhaps as horror antagonist, leading those same forces against interlopers.

 

 

 

 

(3) MAGIC & WITCHCRAFT

 

Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?

Obviously, horror in mythology, as in much of horror fiction, tends to be supernatural in nature, or in other words, magic.

More precisely, hostile or malevolent magic – black or blood magic – or in other words, witchcraft.

And particularly for the horror inherent in the archetypal form of witchcraft –  while witchcraft is something that seems well-nigh universal in mythologies or beliefs throughout the world, its archetype is the European witch folklore of the early modern period.

I mean, you knew this was coming from my use of depictions of the Witches’ Sabbath in art for my feature images. The only question might be why I don’t rank witchcraft higher – it’s because while modern horror fiction uses the templates, themes, or tropes of witchcraft, it tends not to directly adapt it, but for notable exceptions such as The Witch or Weapons.

The witchcraft attributed to witches in or by the hunts and trials evolved into a mythos with remarkable complexity and depth. There were the witches themselves, predominantly but not exclusively female (with men as the primary targets of accusations of witchcraft in some areas), with all the various features attributed to them or protections against them – magic and spells of course, the evil eye, flying ointment, necromancy (as with the Biblical Witch of Endor), animal familiars, imps, witch’s marks (to be distinguished from witch marks to ward off witches), witch’s teats, witch’s ladders, and witch balls or bottles (again to ward off witches).

And then there was the witchcraft ‘religion’ itself, usually styled as an anti-religion of service to the Devil in exchange for magic or supernatural power, with its ritual of the Witches Sabbath or Sabbat and all its various elements, not least the great goat himself, the Devil in caprine form, referenced as the Sabbath Goat (as in Goya’s famous paintings) or Baphomet – or Black Phillip to his friends. And of course all the lurid details that went with it.

 

 

 

 

(4) LYCANTHROPES & LYCANTHROPY

 

“Ah-hoo, werewolves of London!”

Not just London, but also Europe with the horror of werewolves in European folklore. And not just werewolves of Europe either, but werebeasts throughout the world. Technically that would be therianthropy, as the better-known term lycanthropy is specifically for werewolves (literally from the Greek for wolf and man).

A human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf, or some sort of wolf-human hybrid, either on purpose or involuntarily by some sort of curse or affliction (often spread by the bite or scratch of a werewolf), with such transformations typically (but not always) by the light of the full moon.

I’d rank them higher but they’re not too prolific in their archetypal form in modern horror fiction.

 

 

 

 

(5) LEGENDARY CREATURES & CRYPTIDS

 

“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

Except, you know, more like something else altogether – as a monstrous source of horror in mythology.

Modern horror fiction tends not to adapt creatures of legend directly – minotaurs and sphinxes and chimeras, oh my – but more the concept of them, as monstrous antagonists or forces, whether supernatural or horrific versions of mundane or natural creatures.

Obviously, I’ve already included a number of legendary creatures in my Top 10 Mythology Horror or special mentions so far – Ghosts, Vampires, and Lycanthropes but arguably also Magic (extending to creatures created or summoned by magic) and Witchcraft (as for Magic but also extending to things like familiars, imps or even the witches themselves). They’ll also feature in further special mentions to come.

You could say cryptids have been part of mythology from its prehistoric origin and resemble legendary creatures, but somewhat distinct from them. Typically, cryptids may be identified as or traced to legend, folklore, or rumor – not in any magical or supernatural sense, but as biological possibilities “in the wild”, in isolation or in hiding, yet unrecognized or regarded as implausible by more mainstream biology.

“Some may be relict survivors of species believed to be extinct or known organisms displaced into inappropriate habitats; others are unlike any known species.”

And some may be sources of horror.

 

 

 

(6) UFOS

 

Close encounters of the horrific kind.

Okay, this special mention isn’t so much for UFOs as literal alien spaceships of flying saucers, although one does horrifically feature in The Thing. It’s more for the alien or aliens in them.

Or just essentially as shorthand for SF horror.

As in Alien – which does feature a UFO, although as an unidentified object of extraterrestrial origin, where the titular xenomorph is first discovered as one of a batch of eggs.

And as I said, in The Thing – crashing down to Earth in Antarctica and being dug up there.

And in Invasion of the Body Snatchers – although it’s the pods themselves that are the unidentified flying objects, as it is also for the alien in Slither, and implicitly those in The Faculty.

 

 

 

 

(7) EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY

 

You might think this special mention is for mummies.

Sadly, the mummy as undead monstrosity does not originate in Egyptian mythology but in modern horror films (and let’s face it, not too many of them).

Still, there’s something about ancient Egypt as a desert necropolis that lends itself to horror, at least in theme. Egyptian mythology may well be the most chthonic of mythologies – albeit not so much in the name recognition of its underworld (Duat) and more in terms of the afterlife in general. As I said, ancient Egypt almost seems a desert necropolis, with its religion and ritual predominated by preparation for the afterlife – and its monumental statues or architecture as portals to it.

And chthonic means horror!

It’s not just the necropolis side of the equation that brings the horror but also the desert side – the desert that threatens to swallow up that thin line of humanity and nature clinging to the Nile. Not surprisingly, the god Set representing the desert was the recurring monstrous antagonist of Egyptian mythology and hence was also the god of storms, chaos, and violence.

Also, depending on the animal, animal-headed gods can be horrifying. Sobek, anyone?

 

 

 

 

(8) BABYLO-SUMERIAN MYTHOLOGY

 

Few might recognize the Hollywood horror hero stardom originating in Middle Eastern mythology – the demonic antagonist of The Exorcist. The film opens with a nice gunfighter-style face-off between Max von Sydow’s titular exorcist and this being’s winged statue in an archaeological dig, with a literal dogfight in the background.

Yeah, I’m not naming him – or using even the statue of him as my iconic feature image – because that’s just begging for trouble.

He represents the combination of chthonic, the demonic, and the monstrous that is the template of horror in Middle Eastern mythology – as does another entity of similar celebrity, Tiamat, the primordial goddess-dragon of chaos.

I suppose Inanna or Ishtar might be considered the final girl of Sumerian or Babylonian mythology in the horror template of her descent into the underworld.

Come to think of it, the titular evil dead or demonic Deadites in that franchise originate from Mesopotamia – in-universe within the franchise that is, but it checks out with that chthonic, demonic and monstrous template of horror from Middle Eastern mythology.

 

 

 

 

(9) HINDU MYTHOLOGY

 

Kali Ma!

The iconography of Kali, and arguably even more of her followers like the Thugs or Thuggees, naturally lends itself to horror.

Of course, the horror version of Kali (or her cult) – such as that in The Song of Kali by Dan Simmons – is very much a caricature of Kali in her role as destroyer within the cosmic cycle of creation, preservation, and destruction.

The horror version of the most notorious cult of Kali, the Thugs or Thuggees, may well go beyond caricature to lurid distortion and sensationalism – but hot damn if it doesn’t stick in your head and stay there. Looking at you, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with Mola Ram ripping the still-beating hearts from his sacrificial victims to Kali.

Ironically, the true horror within Hindu mythology is more what Kali destroys in her role as destroyer, which is to say demonic or evil forces.

 

 

 

 

(10) AZTEC MYTHOLOGY

 

As I said for my entry for Aztec mythology in my Top 10 Mythologies, I can’t resist seeing it through the lens of its lurid image in popular culture – that is to say, the closest mythology comes to a horror film or the Cthulhu mythos, both of itself and of its ritual practice of human sacrifice.

So why doesn’t it rank higher in my Top 10 Mythology Horror? Well, simply put, it would but for it not being particularly well known beyond that lurid image in popular culture.

As for Aztec mythology as horror, there’s its deities with their tongue-twisting Scrabble-winning names. The messianic plumed serpent Quetzalcoatl might be one of the few good guys and I have always have a soft spot for love goddesses like Xochiquetzal, but then you have gods like Xipe Totec, the flayed god – whose priests would flay the skin from a sacrificial victim and dance around for days wearing it. Although admittedly I’d go to church to see that.

There’s its ritual practice, infamous for human sacrifice on a grand scale – with the archetypal image of hearts being torn beating from the chests of thousands of victims on stepped pyramids slippery with blood on sacrificial days.

And finally there’s that Aztec mythology is a post-apocalyptic mythology – with the present world being the fifth such world, after the apocalyptic destruction of four previous worlds. Indeed, one might even call it a zombie apocalyptic mythology – with the gods continuously, to the point of constantly dying and returning to life, giving their blood and their hearts to power the sun (fuelled in turn by the literal blood and hearts of human sacrifice), while they literally grew humans from bones smuggled out of the underworld. Or one of many underworlds, since the Aztecs had nine levels of its underworld (and thirteen heavens).