There are cities that hold annual Bigfoot festivals and are proud to claim the local Sasquatch as one of their own. There are congressional areas that are pushing to legalize Bigfoot hunting to boost the local economy with licenses, fees, revenue from hunters lodging and dining and more. Then there’s Eureka, California, which has issued a statement telling the public that, despite rumors and alleged photos to the contrary, it has no Bigfoot and it would appreciate if people stay away until its new Sky Walk is competed. Unfortunately, that’s the same sky walk where the alleged Bigfoot was photographed. Who will win this war over Bigfoot in Eureka?
As long as humankind has been pushing out past our known boundaries explorers have been coming back from their journeys with wild tales of fantastic beasts and peoples. Going out over that next horizon was once akin to traveling off into space to some alien world, and the list of weird stories brought back from these adventures is long. Everything from dog-headed men to men with no heads at all, to all manner of other outlandish exotic beasts and entities populate the annals of exploration, and here we will look at some very weird tribes of people once said to exist, who display some rather odd physical properties.
Whether you believe in the phenomenon of “Shapeshifting” or not, any mention of it will inevitably provoke images of people turning into werewolves – and vice-versa. The fact is, though, there are numerous tales of shapeshifting that have
nothing to do with wolf-men. Some cases are downright weird in the extreme. And that’s the theme of today’s article: the weirder side of shapeshifting. The
Mythology website provides the following: “Shapeshifter’s are as diverse in their abilities as they are in their appearance. Even Shapeshifting, the trait which unifies them, is sometimes more of a curse than an actual magical ability. In ancient mythology, shapeshifting is just one of the endless magical abilities used by god-like characters. In trickster folklore, shapeshifting is the characters’ only magical ability, but they combines so much cunning with their shapeshifting abilities that they are still a powerful force. In romantic fairytales, shapeshifting is a burden up
Back through Japanese history one can find many tales and stories of mysterious individuals similar to wizards or sorcerers in the West, and among these the most well-known are what were called the
onymoji, which directly translates to “those who study yin and yang.” Through the use of the practice of
onmyodo, or “the path of yin and yang,” there were numerous powers and abilities attributed to such wizards, including being able to divine the future through astrology, mind reading, clairvoyance, and the ability to control spirits for various ends or to exorcise them. The onymoji were greatly respected and feared, often fixtures of the Imperial court as advisors, and one of the most powerful and famous of all was the man called
If you’re of a certain age and get stopped by the police for a minor traffic violation, you soon find out that, despite your denials, they can find out what you were using prior to the offense by inspecting the residue in your ashtray. The ancient Mayas didn’t have cars but were suspected of smoking substances other that their (and other indigenous people on the continent) contribution to lung cancer and heart disease in the rest of the world – tobacco. Lacking ashtrays, researchers had no way of identifying those substances until recently when scientists from Washington State University found 14 miniature Maya ceramic vessels used for storing tobacco. Better yet, there was residue left on the bottom which they were able to analyze, finding two types of tobacco and the Maya non-tobacco drug of choice. If you want to get high like a Maya, pull out your annual seed catalogue, turn to the flowers section and order up an envelope of …