The Godyssey Podcast

Rabbits are often associated with spring, even in the Americas: the Centzon Tōtōchtin, the Four-Hundred Rabbits of Mexica myth, are rabbits who, during the revival of spring, meet and have debauch drunken parties with fermented fruit drinks. #FolkloreSunday

The Iranian New Year begins at the Spring Equinox, called Nowruz. It celebrates the defeat of winter by forces of light and has been celebrated for at least 2500 years historically. #FolkloreSunday

Bees are sacred to Apollo, and honey has been offered to the gods for three thousand years, since the days of Mycenae. The Oracle at Delphi was offered honey and said to be a Bee, bringing prophecy down from Apollo; apiaries were connected to the god as well. #MythologyMonday

Lady Nak of Phra Khanong is Thailand's most famous ghost, a vengeful spirit who sought revenge on her neighbors after they revealed she was a ghost to her husband. Put in a jar and thrown in the canal, if the jar is ever opened, she will terrorize Thailand again. #PhantomsFriday

The Centurions of Brampton Road in Cumbria left safety to find out what was making that strange gurgling noise, and never returned. Two thousand years later, it's said on dark, foggy nights, you can hear the sound of Roman soldiers marching, looking for home. #PhantomsFriday

Wouldn't be a #WyrdWednesday without Necropants!

Need money? Icelandic tradition would advise (though I would not) you dig up a dead man and make from his skin Nábrók, Death Underpants. They're not stylish, but when you've got money, you set the style, right?

Scandinavian mermaids, called havfrue, sjörå, and other names, are harbingers of storms and are seen as fatal omens, sometimes even kidnapping sailors: better to avoid them at all costs, and avert ye eyes. #WyrdWednesday #LegendaryWednesday

🖼️: E. Jerichau-Baumann

Why is chocolate, a New World commodity, associated with Valentine's Day? Mesoamericans included chocolate in their marriage ceremony and believed it to be an aphrodisiac; whether Cadbury knew that when in 1868 they marketed the first heart-shaped box is unknown #FairytaleTuesday

Valentine's Day was an unremarkable saint day until the High Middle Ages, when bird-watchers remarked that bird breeding season began in mid-February, and Valentine's Day was chosen: birds remain a key motif of this day for love birds. #FairytaleTuesday

The messenger of the gods is the morepork, an owl of Aotearoa, flying spiritual highways and whose path is an act of divine messaging. Follow the path of the morepork, and you will know the will of the gods. #MythologyMonday

🖼️: J. I. Duque

La Lechuza is a white owl who is in fact a witch, appearing as a massive raptor who preys on souls at night from the Rio Grande Valley on down. Any white owl could be her: so beware. #MythologyMonday

Stolas is the boss owl, a goetic demon and Great Prince of Hell known for his crown, long skinny legs, and knowledge of precious minerals and herbs. He can teach you astronomy, and commands 26 legions of demons. Look out, Neil deGrasse Tyson. #MythologyMonday

🖼: D. Valeriani

Most witches' familiars are remnants of the holy animals of pagan deities, now applied to witches who in some cases continued pre-Christian folk magic and religion. Cats, for example, are holy to the Nordic "witch goddess" Freyja, and Egyptian Bast. #FolkloreSunday

🖼: D. Zemba

Can't get it up? Blame a witch! Around the world, witches have been blamed from everything to balms that prevent penises from rising to literally stealing the dicks right off men and putting them in trees. #FolkloreSunday

In India witches are typically told as having their feet on backwards. Yet this cannot be in the case in modern witch trials, which still occur with unfortunate regularity: in 2008, 750 women were lynched in Assam and West Bengal alone #FolkloreSunday

🖼️: N. Bandukwala

A number of similar-looking mushrooms and fungi are known by the name Witch's Butter, famous for their edibility and medicinal purposes that keep one alert and alive while a formal diagnosis can be made. Its appearance means a family has been targeted by a witch. #FolkloreSunday

They have many names: wishing trees, fairy trees, clootie trees. Across the Celtic nations from Scotland down south to Brittany and Cornwall, by May hawthorn and oak trees near holy wells and springs are covered in ribbons, wishing for fertility and health. #FolkloreSunday

Why did she throw herself onto the train tracks that day? Was it an accident or suicide? Whatever the case, her body was severed and her upper half haunts train stations of Japan looking for her lower half. Beware the Teke-Teke! #PhantomsFriday

🖼: slimyswampghost

Built on a hot spring, Hot Lake Hotel was once known as the Mayo Clinic of the West as it became the West Coast's premiere health resort. A fire in 1934 destroyed the west wing and left it abandoned: the unhealthy dead and haunted administration are said to remain #PhantomsFriday

The wampus cat is an American cryptid, a panther that has no set appearance but in recent times the six-armed form has become quite popular. Some give it an indigenous origin, others with colonists moving across Appalachia. #LegendaryWednesday

Modern historians have suggested that dragons were real to premodern populations due to the presence of fossilized dinosaur bones. Given how close modern dragons look to these bones it is entirely possible, though dragon truthers would very much disagree. #WyrdWednesday

In China, it is the tiger, not the lion, that is king: since the development of Chinese writing, the character for ruler, 王, has been noted on the head of tigers via their stripes. As such, they are regal, masculine creatures in Chinese culture. #LegendaryWednesday