The villainous bottom part of Raphael’s 1506 painting St George and the Dragon, featuring the dragon of course – boo!
TOP 10 VILLAINS OF MYTHOLOGY (SPECIAL MENTION)
Few things are as fundamental to mythology as heroes, but what often distinguishes mythic heroes is the depravity and destructive power of their antagonists, the villains of mythology.
I’ve counted down my Top 10 Villains of Mythology but there’s more than enough mythic villains and villainy for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten, given all the various villains of all the various mythologies.
Just a reminder of my criteria of villainy from my Top 10 Villains of Mythology – firstly, there’s the scale of how villainous they are in their moral character or ethos, and secondly, there’s the scale of how powerful they are, ranging up to villains capable of damning or destroying the world.
Finally, iconic status – and above all my idiosyncratic preference – tends to trump all, although of course iconic status is usually gained from other criteria in the first place, with the most evil and destructive villains being most iconic in popular culture or imagination. However, iconic status is qualified by my greater familiarity with European or Western mythologies, which might overshadow iconic status within non-Western mythologies.
The classic chthonic god Hades depicted as villain in Disney’s 1997 Hercules film – character profile image in the Disney fan wiki
(1) CHTHONIC DEITIES
Chthonic deities are underworld deities – “gods or spirits who inhabited the underworld or existed in or under the earth, and were typically associated with death or fertility” (usually more the former than the latter). I mean, they were going to get special mention just based on the word chthonic alone, one of my favorite words.
It is somewhat unfair to rank chthonic deities as villains in mythology – and as my top special mention at that.
For one thing, while some gods are clearly more chthonic than others, “virtually any god could be considered chthonic to emphasize different aspects of the god” – Demeter and Hermes are classic examples, but even Zeus was referenced with the epithet at times.
For another, with those gods that were clearly more chthonic such as Hades, just because they were associated with death or the underworld did not make them evil or villainous as such. They could equally be neutral or even benevolent.
However, even when such deities are neutral or benevolent, there is just too powerful a tendency to default to depictions of them as adversarial or antagonistic – as with Hades himself, all too often cast as Olympian villain in popular culture. That’s just how the bones roll when your iconic association is with death or the underworld.
And for all the chthonic or underworld deities that are neutral or even benevolent, there’s others that are indeed chaotic, destructive or outright evil. After all, the Devil himself is a chthonic deity…
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Detail of a 16th-century painting The Last Judgement by Jacob de Backer in the National Museum in Warsaw in WIkipedia “Devil” (public domain image)
(2) DEMONS & DEVILS
Demons and devils – even archdemons, daemons, fallen angels or legions of hell, fiends, imps, incubi or succubi.
Demons and devils came very close to their own special mention entry for my Top 10 Mythologies, given how pervasive demons or demonic beings are in myth and folklore. Ultimately however I deferred that special mention entry to here as I was not prepared to tempt fate from the forces of hell if I ranked them anywhere else. Also, demons and devils in popular culture or imagination have largely been assimilated into those of Biblical mythology, albeit that in turn took many of its cues from Middle Eastern mythology.
Demons or devils tend to be depicted as chthonic beings but also as more villainous than the other chthonic or underworld beings of mythology in general, albeit with substantial overlap between them. While chthonic deities can be depicted as neutral or even benevolent, there is usually no such ambiguity for demons or devils – chaotic, destructive or evil to the core. Bad to the bone as it were, although there is occasionally sympathy for the devil.
Indeed, they tend to be the benchmark for evil beings, such that demonic is an adjective for evil, literally or metaphorically (or metaphysically). The wider or “most generic definition” of demon would be “any evil or injurious spirit or supernatural being” – which could be very wide indeed, including things such as vampires or even dragons.
A good or noble demon is something of an oxymoron – even relying on one to not lie or cheat on a deal is fraught with peril. At best, a demon might be depicted as capable of redemption, in which case it becomes something else or is no longer a demon, but almost universally they are depicted as irredeemably evil in nature. Even when they purport to do something good, it turns out to be for the greater evil.
The archetypes of demons or devils – essentially synonymous, albeit occasionally distinguished in such things as Dungeons and Dragons where demons are chaotic evil and devils are lawful evil – are those from the Bible or Biblical mythology. The latter can get convoluted, on occasion distinguishing demons native to Hell or other eldritch beings as opposed to damned souls or fallen angels from Heaven, although they all tend to be conflated under the label of demon or devil. Also, as noted before, the demons and devils of the Bible or Biblical mythology in turn are influence by those of Middle Eastern mythologies, notably Mesopotamian and Persian.
However, there are similar beings or eldritch abominations in other mythologies that are translated as demons or devils – Buddhist and Shinto mythology are particularly notable in this respect. The televised version of Su Wukong or Monkey is forever etched into my mind with his declaration of demonic opponents – “Ah, DE-MON!”.
One reason that they are so pervasive in mythology or folklore is that they often stand in for the chaotic or destructive forces of nature – or humanity. There is a large overlap between demons or devils and other supernatural beings – with witches, fairies, dragons, ghosts and vampires perhaps as foremost for similar elements, tropes or types.
Devils are perhaps at their worst doing their deals (or Faustian pacts) for souls, while demons are at their worst corrupting or possessing good or innocent beings – demonic possession is arguably the most villainous weapon in their arsenal and comes in various forms, such that it could be the subject of its own top ten, particularly as it extends to animals or objects other than humans, ending up much like fairies or ghosts with various demon or demonic animals or objects.
For that matter, demons or devils in myth or folklore could well be the subject of their own top ten list, whether for named individuals or broader classifications, including their various elements, tropes and types – not to mention the elements, tropes and types of those most important human interaction with them, demon-slayers or exorcists.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Collage of Death (left) and The Devil (right) from the most iconic modern Tarot deck, the Rider-Waite Tarot deck designed by A.E. Waite and Illustrated by Pamela Colman-Smith (first published by William Rider & Son in 1909, hence the name) – public domain image
(3) TAROT – DEATH & THE DEVIL
The Tarot may have its mystique and even its mythos, but does it have villains?
O yes – hence this special mention, drawn from the archetypal characters of individual cards, particularly those of the more iconic Major Arcana or “trumps” of the Tarot.
But are there enough ‘villainous’ cards of the Tarot for their own top ten?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, in that all or almost all cards of the Tarot have their dark inversions or negative connotations and are therefore capable of being villainous cards in that respect. Setting that aside, twelve cards of the Major Arcana – from the Hermit as ninth card through to Judgement as the twentieth card – are ‘underworld’ cards, depicting figures of the mythic narrative of the Fool’s descent into the underworld or hero’s journey, and are hence potentially ‘villainous’ cards.
And no, because when you come down to it, there are only three unequivocally ‘villainous’ cards that are also the infamous trinity of cards one flinches at in readings as ‘bad’ – Death, the Devil, and the Tower Struck by Lightning.
Unequivocally ‘villainous’ that is, in the sense that they are not also at the same time among my heroes or girls of the Tarot – only as ‘villains’, even if they can have positive interpretations. Aptly enough for a card midway through the Tarot, the Death card has interpretations of a new beginning after an end, rebirth or transformation – famously in that episode of The Simpsons with Lisa’s future foretold by a Tarot reading, although it added its own ominous card of The Happy Squirrel.
Of this trinity, I rank Death and the Devil in this special mention, given that the Tower Struck by Lightning does not feature a distinctive figure as such but instead evokes an impersonal force of destruction. Death of course features the personification of death, while the Devil is the literal personification of evil. The visual design of the latter card in the Rider Waite Tarot deck sees the latter and raises it even higher in evil stakes, as a dark inversion of the card of The Lovers, including the two figures of the Lovers themselves, now demonic figures chained to the Devil’s altar – and of the backdrop of Hell now substituted for the Garden of Eden.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Aww – they’re adorable! Behemoth and Leviathan, watercolor by William Blake from his Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826)
(4) LEVIATHAN & BEHEMOTH
And now it’s time for a series of special mention entries consisting of matched pairs of mythological villains, commencing with the most primeval Biblical beasts of all, the ur-beasts, arguably greater than even the most apocalyptic beasts – Behemoth and Leviathan.
They appear in most detail in the Book of Job, effectively as a matching set. The central plot of the Book of Job essentially has God and Satan playing cosmic poker, using Job and his family as chips. Behemoth and Leviathan appear almost as a tangent, when God is telling off Job for questioning God’s questionable poker game. As usual, God appeals to His own greatness, which He demonstrates by stating that even primal chaos monsters such as Behemoth and Leviathan are basically just His pets.
God expounds on Behemoth in Chapter 40 in the Book of Job as some primal beast of the land – “Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox. Its strength is in its loins and its power is in the muscles of its belly”. Although Behemoth has typically been identified as an extremely large or powerful mythic beast, it has also been associated with more mundane animals – usually a hippopotamus, but also an elephant, rhinoceros or buffalo (while creationists have seen it and Leviathan as dinosaurs).
However, poor Behemoth has been overshadowed by his aquatic and serpentine counterpart, Leviathan, the primal beast of the sea or water. Leviathan’s most distinctive appearance is in the chapter following that for Behemoth, Chapter 41 of the Book of Job, in which God goes fishing. Unlike Behemoth, Leviathan is also mentioned elsewhere in the Bible, typically as a poetic image or reference, and is identified in the Book of Isaiah as a serpent or dragon of the sea. Accordingly, Leviathan has typically been identified as an aquatic beast, following in the Near East mythic traditions of sea serpents or monsters, with the Babylonian Tiamat coming to mind (or the Nordic Midgard Serpent for that matter). Or maybe it was just a crocodile. After all, those things are scary enough…
Both have entered popular parlance but again Leviathan has overshadowed Behemoth – while both have been adapted as words signifying “something overwhelmingly huge, powerful, or monstrous”, leviathan tends to have the more common usage, boosted among other things by its use by Hobbes for the title of his book on political philosophy (essentially signifying the state’s monopoly on violence).
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Collage of “Offering to Molech” in “Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us” by Charles Foster in 1897 (left) and the 1909 painting “The Worship of Mammon” by Evelyn De Morgan (right) – in fairness, of the two here, Mammon looks the better deal as he’s giving something to his worshipper rather than the other way round – and a child at that – for Moloch
(5) MOLOCH & MAMMON
Yes – it’s another matched pair of villains from Biblical mythology but I just can’t resist them as an alliterative matching pair, one each from Old Testament and New Testament.
With variant spellings, Moloch “is a word that appears in the Old Testament several times, primarily in the Book of Leviticus”, usually to connote and condemn practices “which are heavily implied to include child sacrifice”.
Traditionally, Moloch has been understood to mean a Canaanite god to whom such sacrifices were made, although it has been argued to mean the sacrifice itself.
Whatever the case, “since the medieval period, Moloch has often been portrayed as a bull-headed idol with outstretched hands over a fire; this depiction takes the brief mentions of Moloch in the Bible and combines them with various sources, including ancient accounts of Carthaginian child sacrifice and the legend of the Minotaur”.
That’s for his visual iconography but Moloch has an enduring resonance as a metaphor for a monstrous force feeding on sacrifice for its own sake, particularly of children or innocents – imagining the future as a boot stamping on a child’s face forever, as it were.
Where Moloch has enduring resonance as a metaphor for sacrificial violence, his alliterative New Testament counterpart Mammon does so as metaphor for money or greed. The word is used by Jesus in two Gospels (Matthew and Luke) where he said “you cannot serve both God and Mammon”.
While Mammon has generally been understood to originate from a term for money, that term has been proposed to originate from “a Syrian deity, god of riches”, although no trace of such a Syrian deity exists. In any event, Mammon was soon personified as a demon of greed and he’s had quite the career in literary or popular culture ever since – most memorably for me in Milton’s Paradise Lost, where even as an angel in heaven before his fall, he was more interested in heaven’s pavements of gold.
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Collage of Yorkshire pigs at a wallow in mud at the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary in Poolesville, Maryland (evoking the Gadarene swine in the story of Legion) as photographed by Mark Peters and licensed for Wikipedia “Pig” under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en and Artemisia herb-alba (a plant believed to be the original wormwood as source for the bitter Biblical metaphor) photographed by Floratrek and licensed for Wikipedia “Wormwood (Bible)” under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
(6) LEGION & WORMWOOD
Yes – it’s my third matched pair of villains from Biblical mythology but in this case, they are both from the New Testament, as Behemoth and Leviathan are both from the Old Testament.
Legion and Wormwood stand out among the demonic beings referenced in the New Testament because of their sheer evocative resonance.
Legion is the more chilling of the two, from the declaration of their identity “I am Legion, for we are many” – connoting “a large collection of demons that share a single mind and will” in the gospel incident (in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke) variously described as the Exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac or the Miracle of the Gadarene Swine. That is, where Jesus exorcises a demonic horde from a man into a herd of swine, which then run down a hill to a lake and drown themselves.
One can’t help but feel the original story may not have been so much literal but a parable against the Romans controlling Judaea, given the demonic self-description evoking a Roman legion and that they are driven into pigs, the archetypal unclean animal of Jewish ritual – and also evocative of the boar emblem of the Tenth Legion that was centrally involved in the first Roman-Jewish War.
Wormwood – or more precisely Star Wormwood – on the other hand has his, her or its singular appearance in the Book of Apocalypse, as a prophesied star or angel that falls from heaven and makes a third of fresh water “bitter” or deadly to people.
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Beelzebub’s appearance from the Dictionnaire Infernal in 1818 and Baphomet as depicted by Eliphas Levi in 1856, both public domain images
(7) BEELZEBUB & BAPHOMET
Yes – it’s my fourth matched pair of villains from Biblical mythology and second alliterative one (after Moloch and Mammon).
Or maybe not, since while Beelzebub is canonical to the Bible (in both Testaments), Baphomet is not – although ironically Baphomet has a stronger influence on the visual iconography of the Christian Devil as goat or so-called Sabbath goat.
Similarly to Moloch, Beelzebub is derived from a Canaanite (or Philistine) god – Baal, although that name is an honorific title meaning “lord” and hence was somewhat generic for gods, clarified by epithets hence the latter part of Beelzebub’s name, apparently from Ba’al Zabub or something similar. I say something similar because again like Moloch, there are variant names or titles – with the most famous as Lord of the Flies, the titular metaphor for human savagery in the novel by William Golding. My love of that novel is a major reason for his inclusion as special mention, although that in turn reflects that sheer evocative resonance which underlies other special mention entries.
Beelzebub pops up as Baal in the Old Testament but is even more notably name-dropped in the New Testament by none other than Jesus himself – which has seen him placed high in Hell’s hierarchy by Christian folklore, even as high as second in command as in Paradise Lost.
Baphomet has no such Biblical pedigree and the first reference to him by name only emerges as the demonic idol of which the Knights Templar were accused of worshipping in their fourteenth century trials for heresy. His subsequent infamy belies such an obscure or esoteric origin, which might otherwise have been relegated to a historical footnote but for him being reimagined by nineteenth century occultists – it is that infamy that sees him ranked with Beelzebub in this special mention, apart from my usual predilection for alliteration.
“The modern popular image of Baphomet was established by Eliphas Levi in…1856” – that of the “Sabbatic Goat” as an unsavory winged human-goat hybrid that has been the iconic image of the Devil in popular culture ever since.
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Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybis, painting by Henry Fuseli, 1794-1796. Pretty sure that’s Scylla top right and Charybdis top left
(8) SCYLLA & CHARYBDIS
Yes – it’s another matched pair of villains, but from classical mythology and a pair that was canonically matched in their mythology.
Scylla and Charybdis were two sea monsters that Odysseus had to sail between in Homer’s Odyssey.
“Greek mythology sited them on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria, on the Italian mainland…They were regarded as maritime hazards located close enough to each other that they posed an inescapable threat to passing sailors; avoiding Charybdis meant passing too close to Scylla and vice versa.”
However, they weren’t equal hazards. Of the two, Charybdis was far more dangerous. Whereas Scylla would snatch up six sailors – one for each of her six ravenous heads – Charybdis would suck the whole ship down to the depths. Accordingly, you’d err on the side of Scylla.
And yes – you read that right when I said her. Scylla and Charybdis were female sea monsters. In the usual style of classical mythology, they were nymphs or demi-goddesses transformed into monsters by the gods. In some later versions, Scylla was adapted as a beautiful nymph transformed into her monstrous form. The reasons varied – as did the form, although it consistently involved six man-eating heads, which she would feed by snatching sailors from passing ships. In one version, the heads were those of dogs. Charybdis was somewhat more ambiguous in her origin and form, but the latter consistently involved her sucking or swallowing down water like a whirlpool or maelstrom.
Indeed, Charybdis was rationalized as an explanation for a coastal whirlpool, while Scylla was rationalized as a rock shoal, presumably with waves that could sweep sailors from a ship.
Between Scylla and Charybdis became a proverbial expression similar in meaning to between the devil and the deep blue sea, or similar expressions for a dilemma or choosing between evils. Indeed, I used to believe that the latter originated from the former, with Scylla as the man-eating devil and Charybdis swallowing you down into the deep blue sea. Sadly, the origin of the latter phrase is not clear but probably does not originate from the Odyssey.
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There’s a shortage of visual representations of Ahriman so I went with the next best thing – Chaos Space Marine Ahriman from 40K, depicted as character feature image in the fan wiki (left). And on the right, Asmodeus as depicted as the supreme devil in Dungeons and Dragons 1st edition Monster Manual. Looking suave…
(9) AHRIMAN & ASMODEUS
Yes – it’s another alliterative pairing of mythological villains.
Ahriman is drawn from the Persian mythology and religion of Zoroastrianism – “also known as Angra Mainyu…the deity of evil, darkness, and destruction in Zoroastrianism, acting as the primary adversary of the creator god, Ahura Mazda”, although ironically the latter seems more phonetically the origin of the name Ahriman.
Ahriman is essentially the devil of Zoroastrianism, although an entity that was more evenly matched with God in that dualistic religion. His resemblance to the devil is not coincidental – “representing chaos and falsehood, Ahriman is believed to have inspired later concepts of the devil and plays a central role in cosmic dualism”.
Asmodeus on the other hand is a demon originating in Biblical mythology, indeed in the Bible itself – albeit the apocryphal Book of Tobit. He rises to prominence above his apocryphal origin due to embodying the sin of lust in folklore and I’m always here for anyone embodying the sin of lust. That gave him a prominence and name recognition in popular culture, not least in Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder – indeed as the supreme ruler of Hell (or the Nine Hells) or effectively the Devil of Dungeons and Dragons in game lore.
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Collage of the first edition D & D Monster Manual art for Orcus (left) and Demogorgon (right), the latter the model for the figurine in Stranger Things. In my opinion, Demogorgon definitely won out between them in art – but both benefited from the more refined art throughout subsequent editions
(10) ORCUS & DEMOGORGON
Yes – it’s another of my matched pair of villains, originating in classical mythology or literature (kind of) but raised in profile and matched as a pair by their adaptation as demon lords in Dungeons and Dragons.
Demogorgon has achieved particular pop culture status through adaptation as an extra-dimensional antagonist in the Stranger Things TV series, especially in the first season when it was a singular antagonist, the Demogorgon – although people forget that within the narrative of the first season, the characters called it the Demogorgon based on its visual resemblance to a figurine of the Dungeons and Dragons demon lord.
“Orcus was a god of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths in Etruscan and Roman mythology. As with Hades, the name of the god was also used for the underworld itself”. Ultimately, he was conflated with the primary god of the underworld (Hades or Pluto).
TV Tropes has a trope for Orcus on his throne, where an antagonist is powerful to the point of potential victory or “the potential to wipe out the forces of good” but seemingly sits around doing nothing. It’s a surprisingly prolific trope.
Ironically for his higher profile, Demogorgon is less clear in origin as a deity or demon associated with the underworld. “Although often ascribed to Greek mythology, the name probably arises from an unknown copyist’s misreading of a commentary by a fourth-century scholar…The concept itself can be traced back to the original misread term demiurge”.
Interestingly, John Milton paired Orcus with Demogorgon in Paradise Lost (among Demogorgon’s other surprisingly prolific references in literature or poetry) but it’s their pairing as demon lords in Dungeons and Dragons that earns them their entry here as a matched pair – particularly that they were famously antagonistic to each other in the game lore.
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Chaos Monster and Sun God – a drawing of a Mesopotamian bas-relief, often associated with the battle of Marduk and Tiamat (but variously interpreted) – ‘Monuments of Nineveh, Second Series’ plate 5, London, J. Murray, 1853, ditor Austen Henry Layard , drawing by L. Gruner
(11) TIAMAT
Like my special mention for Orcus and Demogorgon, Tiamat is a mythological villain raised in profile by her adaptation in Dungeons and Dragons.
In fairness, Tiamat started with a higher – and more defined – profile in mythology than Orcus or Demogorgon. She was the primordial sea in Mesopotamian mythology – essentially that recurring mythic archetype of chaos monster.
And yes, I said she – Tiamat was very much a female figure, indeed a maternal one, as mother of monsters as well as the first deities and creation itself, albeit that last was not by giving birth but by her bodily dismemberment by the god Marduk.
“It was once thought that the myth of Tiamat was one of the earliest recorded versions of a Chaoskampf, a mythological motif that generally involves the battle between a culture hero and a chthonic or aquatic monster, serpent, or dragon.”
Tiamat was reborn as an arch-villain of Dungeons and Dragons – distinctively as a multi-headed dragon.
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Set as he appears in his standard design from the Smite 2 video game
(12) SET
And ass-headed Set brayed in the desert…
Set often strikes me as similar to Loki, except more loyal when in balance or harmony with the rest of the Egyptian pantheon, until he was transformed into their antagonist. For example, he had a positive role where he accompanied Ra on the solar barque to repel Apep or Apophis, the serpent of chaos who would otherwise be the foremost villain of Egyptian mythology but for Set’s infamy.
However, with a divine brief as the god of the desert – lord of the Red Land as opposed to Horus as Lord of the Black Land or fertile land of the Nile – it was perhaps inevitable that Set would assume an antagonistic role, again as opposed to Horus, infamously by killing the father of Horus and husband of Isis, Osiris.
That ass-headed reference might not be accurate – “in art, Set is usually depicted as an enigmatic creature referred to by Egyptologists as the Set animal, a beast not identified with any known animal, although it could be seen as resembling a Saluki, an aardvark, an African wild dog, a donkey, a jackal, a hyena, a pig, an antelope, a giraffe or a fennec fox”. Of course, I prefer the ass version.
Interestingly, it may not have been so much his role as god of the desert that cast him as villainous but his role as god of foreigners, with the foreign conquests of Egypt – “Set’s negative aspects were emphasized during this period. Set was the killer of Osiris, having hacked Osiris’ body into pieces and dispersed it so that he could not be resurrected. The Greeks would later associate Set with Typhon and Yahweh”(!) – “a monstrous and evil force of raging nature (being the three of them depicted as donkey-like creatures).”
“I’m going into town after Set
I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra
Look out Set, here I come Set
To get Set, to sunset Set
To unseat Set, to set down Set”
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Relief fragment of Mara in Gandhara style, found in Swat Valley – phorograph by Under the Bo in Wikipedia “Mara” under license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
(13) MARA
Although Mara has origins in Hindu mythology – “He is Yama’s fearsome persona and all beings associated with him, darkness and death, become forces of Mara – he takes his true shape as a “malicious force” in the Buddhist counterpart of the Temptation of Christ.
Indeed, I prefer the Buddhist version of the Temptation under the Bo Tree. The Temptation of Christ worked best in the more effective brief version of it in the Gospel of Mark but otherwise can come across as a dry rabbinical debate. In the Temptation of Buddha, Mara cuts to the chase with the more elemental forces of s€x and violence – something echoed in the version of the Temptation of Christ in the the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis.
“In the story of the Awakening of Prince Siddhartha, Mara appears as a powerful deva trying to seduce him with his celestial army and a vision of beautiful maidens…who, in various legends, are often said to be Mara’s daughters”.
His daughters are hot, though.
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An illustration of Grendel by John Skelton from the 1908 “Stories of Beowulf”. Not sure why he has a handbag though – perhaps it belongs to his mother
(14) GRENDEL
Beowulf’s famous monstrous antagonist.
Yes, he’s one of the three epic antagonists for Beowulf, but let’s face it – Grendel is his first antagonist, not only in narrative sequence but in significance. Grendel’s mother doesn’t even have a name, being literally identified through Grendel as her son, and the dragon is similarly not named. It’s hard to think of a more iconic duo of a hero and their antagonist than Beowulf and Grendel.
Also, let’s face it – it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Grendel, even that he had some justice on his side. I mean, who hasn’t felt like this about their noisy neighbors at one time or another? It’s not like there was any residential zoning laws or that Grendel could make a noise complaint to the king.
The latter was particularly so as it was the king – King Hrothgar – who was the noisy neighbor, throwing wild drunken parties in his mead hall, Heorot. Of course, Grendel took his noise complaints too far, attacking the hall every night for years and killing its occupants, hence making it unusable.
As for Grendel’s monstrous nature, it remains a matter of argument as to what exactly he was. He is described as a descendant of the Biblical Cain, who like Lilith seems to have spent his time spawning monsters – with Grendel described as “a creature of darkness, exiled from happiness and accursed of God, the destroyer and devourer of our human kind” and a “shadow walker”. He is also referred to in the poem by words evoking the beings of Germanic mythology – that is, as a monster and giant, albeit his status as such is undermined by the absence of any clear description, apart from him being seemingly linked to water like other supernatural monsters.
Some even conjecture him to be a berserker or fierce warrior. Whatever the case, he met his match – and his death – with Beowulf.
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Arthur and the Questing Beast by Henry Justice Ford (1904) and Wodan’s Wild Hunt by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine (1885)
(15) QUESTING BEAST & WILD HUNT
I just can’t resist their evocative names, despite it being arguable whether they were actually villains. The Wild Hunt in particular seems more of a chaotic force.
Sadly, the questing beast is not so named because it was the subject of a quest but for the French word glatisant – hence its alternative name of the Beast Glatisant – related to or signifying barking or yelping, the noise the Beast made.
The Beast itself was a hybrid beast like a chimera – that is a single beast seemingly composed of different animal parts – albeit one often interpreted as a giraffe, from their medieval description as half camel and half leopard.
The Beast doesn’t feature in the main part of Arthurian legendary canon but pops up as cameo as it were, with the hunt for it as the subject of quests “futilely undertaken by King Pellinore and his family and finally achieved by Sir Palamedes and his companions”.
Of course, I also can’t resist matching the innuendo of questing beast with the adventurous bed. On that note, questing beast overlaps nicely with the innuendo of wild hunt.
“The Wild Hunt is a folklore motif occurring across various northern, western and eastern European societies, appearing in the religions of the Germans, Celts, and Slaves” – typically involving “a chase led by a mythological figure escorted by a ghostly or supernatural group of hunters engaged in pursuit. The leader of the hunt is often a named figure associated with Odin in Germanic legends but may variously be a historical or legendary figure like Theodoric the Great, the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag, the dragon slayer Sigurd, the psychopomp of Welsh mythology Gwyn ap Nudd, Biblical figures such as Herod, Cain, Gabriel, or the Devil, or an unidentified lost soul. The hunters are generally the souls of the dead or ghostly dogs, sometimes fairies, Valkyries or elves”.
That list of Wild Hunt leaders is not exhaustive either – indeed, it could be the subject of its own top ten.
“Seeing the Wild Hunt was thought to forebode some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. People encountering the Hunt might also be abducted to the underworld or the fairy kingdom…According to scholar Susan Greenwood, the Wild Hunt “primarily concerns an initiation into the wild, untamed forces of nature in its dark and chthonic aspects.””
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Balor (left) and “the bloody maggot” Crom Cruach (right) as depicted by Simon “The Biz” Bisley in Pat Mills’ Slaine: The Horned God – which won them this special mention (fair use)
(16) BALOR & CROM CRUACH
Balor…of the evil eye!
Balor represents the Fomorians in my special mentions – “a group of malevolent supernatural beings”, essentially the equivalent of demons in Irish mythology. Balor was their leader and “considered the most formidable” of them – “a giant with a large eye that wreaks destruction when opened”.
He’s killed in battle by the god (or demi-god or divine hero) Lugh of the Tuatha De Danaan – and “has been interpreted as a personification of the scorching sun”.
Interestingly, Dungeons and Dragons adapted his name for their in-game demon version of the Balrog to avoid copyright.
Crom Cruach “was a pagan god of pre-Christian legend” – “he was propitiated with human sacrifice and his worship was ended by Saint Patrick”.
Apart from the adaption of Crom’s name as that of Conan’s deity, they earn special mention for their adaptation as eldritch abominations by Pat Mills as the antagonists of the titular hero in his Slaine comic.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Baron Samedi as depicted in his standard design in the Smite video game from the fan wiki
(17) XIPE TOTEC & BARON SAMEDI
“It’s going to be a beautiful day, heh heh heh, yes sir, a b-e-a-u-tiful day” – Baron Samedi in the James Bond film “Live and Let Die”.
Just as I felt that these pantheons needed some representation in the special mentions for my top mythological heroes, so too I felt they needed representation among the special mentions for my top mythological villains.
Ironically, that was as strange as nominating heroes from the pantheons. Sure, the whole Aztec and voodoo pantheons might seem villainous to those not familiar with them, although it might be more accurate to describe them as anti-heroic or alien in their morality.
Still, these two deities seemed to me the best nominations as mythological villains for their respective pantheons.
I mean, who else among the Aztec pantheon than Xipe Totec, whose name means Our Lord the Flayed One?
Sure, he earned this special mention on the back (or is that skin?) of his adaptation in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles – one whose modus operandi seemed to be wearing the skin of his victim’s faces on his own – but there’s his portfolio as a deity.
“In Aztec mythology, Xipe Totec…was a life-death-rebirth deity, god of agriculture, vegetation, the east, spring, goldsmiths, silversmiths, liberation, deadly warfare, the seasons, and the earth”.
All but the deadly warfare seems benevolent – except that he connected agricultural renewal with warfare and indeed was believed to be the god that invented war. He also had a strong association with disease – so potentially he had the means to be all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse wrapped up as one.
Baron Samedi – which translates in English as Baron Saturday – is probably the most famous voodoo loa or deity. It’s a little unfair to rank him as villain rather than the antihero or trickster that he more accurately is.
Apart from his fame and his role as a god of death, what earns him villainous special mention is more by way of adaptation – the first is as the model for the cult of personality by Haitian dictator Papa Doc, and the second is his role as villainous henchman for James Bond in the film Live and Let Die, strikingly played by Geoffrey Holder and perhaps the only genuinely supernatural antagonist for Bond, if his post-credits appearance is anything to go by.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Antlered skull image for the Wendigo from the trailer for the 2022 film – reflecting the contemporary trend towards depicting the Wendigo with a deer skull for a head
(18) WENDIGO
“The Wendigo, the Wendigo
I saw it just a friend ago
Last night it lurked in Canada
Tonight on your veranada!”
A malevolent supernatural being “in the mythologies of several Algonquian and Athabaskan peoples”, with its definitive characteristic as its monstrously voracious hunger, for eating you – or perhaps even worse, possessing you. While its definitive characteristic is its hunger for human flesh, whether literally as predation or metaphorically as possession, its more disturbing feature is its human origin – that the Wendigo is a human transformed into a cannibal monster.
The nature of that transformation varies – “you can become one just by coming across a Wendigo, being possessed by the spirit of a Wendigo or even dreaming of a Wendigo”. Of course, that suggests that somewhere down the chain, there must be an original Wendigo, which is where other causes of transformation might kick in, such as cannibalism or whatever.
The appearance of the Wendigo also varies – “its most common description is a dreadfully skinny giant of ice devoid of lips and toes”, although recently that’s been overtaken by having antlers or even a deer’s skull with antlers for a head due to recent media adaptations or depictions.
What also varies is the way it can be killed, if indeed it can be. “The more it devours, the larger and more powerful it grows, and thus it can never find enough food to satisfy its hunger”.
Although it varies, the Wendigo is consistently a “malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural being” – “they were strongly associated with the north, winter, cold, famine, starvation”. As such, it has been widely adapted throughout popular culture, particularly in the horror genre.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Promotional poster art for the 2023 film The Boogeyman, adapted from the Stephen King short story of that name
(19) BOOGEYMAN
“I don’t want to alarm you but there may be a boogeyman – or boogeymen – in the house!”
“The bogeyman also spelled or known as bogyman, bog, or bogey, and boogeyman in the United States and Canada is a mythical creature typically used to frighten children into good behavior. Bogeymen have no specific appearances, and conceptions vary drastically by household and culture, but they are most commonly depicted as…monsters that punish children for misbehavior.”
“The bogeyman, and conceptually similar monsters, can be found in many cultures around the world. Bogeymen may target a specific act or general misbehavior, depending on the purpose of invoking the figure, often on the basis of a warning from an authority figure to a child. The term is sometimes used as a non-specific personification or metonym for terror – and sometimes the Devil”.
There’s nothing really to add to that description, except for my fondness for the term bugbear which I understand to originate from the same etymology (and was adapted as a goblin-like creature in Dungeons and Dragons) – and that the Stephen King short story The Boogeyman remains one of my favorites.
“It is often described as a dark, formless creature with shapeshifting abilities. The bogeyman is known to satiate its appetite by snatching and consuming children. Descriptions of the bogeyman vary across cultures, yet there are often commonalities between them including claws/talons, or sharp teeth”.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Pointing mirror guy meme
(20) DOPPELGANGER (FETCH & WEIRD)
“And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you”
That’s right – it’s you. You are your own worst mythic enemy, my final special mention for villains of mythology.
Well, okay – not exactly you, but another version of you. At least equally matched but possibly better than you – harder, better, faster, stronger – because they are supernatural and do you better than you do.
“A doppelgänger (also doppelgaenger and doppelganger) is a supernatural double of a living person, especially one who haunts the doubled person.” Usually ominous, as in literally an omen or “harbinger of bad luck”.
Essentially the same concept as the archaic usage of fetch or weird for a similar entity.
And yes – it’s also an exception to my rule of reserving my final twentieth special mention for a kinky or kinkier entry, unless of course that’s your kink or you want to take narcissism literally.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER – OR LITERALLY WEIRD TIER!)
