Nightbringer | The Arthurian Online Encyclopedia

Myths and Legends


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Once upon a time, the invisible world which surrounds us was very much closer than it is today. The spirits of the earth and trees all hovered on the verge of revelation, and spoke messages now inaudible to minds cluttered with the debris of technology. There could be no doubt that fairies and pixies, gnomes and goblins, lived in the flowering hedgerows; that a ramshackle cottage was the home of a witch and that bodies peeped through the knothole of a hollow tree. Everyone knew it, as certainly as he knew that hell lay beneath the graveyard and heaven above the summer skies.

And so it is in every part of the world. Forests, jungles, mountains, deserts, and prairies all have a mysterious population which lives in a dimension slightly different from that of humans and other animals. Sometimes they break through the barriers of consciousness and reveal themselves to humans, with good or evil results. They are an important influence on human affairs because they help people who please them or torment those who break their implacable rules.

I invite you to the darker places of our mystical world, where all kinds of creatures live. Read and learn about beings in the air, oceans, the deep forests… and nightmares.