| Name ▲▼ | Origin ▲▼ | Description ▲▼ |
|---|---|---|
| God name "Adrammelech" | Assyria | God of the people of Sepharvaim, to whom infants were burnt in sacrifice (Kings xvii, 31). Probably the Sun. |
| Spirit name "Anjea" | Australasia | Animistic fertility spirit. Known to tribesmen on the Pennefather River, queensland, Australia and believed to place mud babies in the wombs of pregnant women. The grandmother of a newly born infant buried the afterbirth, which was collected by Anjea and kept in a hollow tree or some such sanctuary until the time came to instill it into another child in the womb.... |
"Dame du Lac" | Britain | A fay, named Vivienne, who plunged with the infant Lancelot into a lake. This lake was a kind of mirage, concealing the demesnes of the lady "en la marche de la petite Bretaigne." Britain |
| God name "Pryderi" | Celtic / Welsh | Chthonic god. The son of PWYLL and RHIANNON. According to tradition, he was abducted as an infant from his cradle by a huge talon or claw, with the implication that the abduction was instigated by an adversary from the underworld, perhaps the family of Gwawl, a rejected suitor of Rhiannon. Pryderi was found in a stable and rescued by Teirnyon, who brought the child up as his son. Eventually the true parents of Pryderi were identified and he was returned to his family. His consort is Cigfa and he succeeded Pwyll to the title Lord of Dyfed.'... |
| Goddess name "Long Mu" | Chinese | Mother of dragons was a Chinese woman who was deified as a goddess after raising five infant dragons. |
"Lilith or Lilis" | Christian | The Talmudists say that Adam had a wife before Eve, whose name was Lilis. Refusing to submit to Adam, she left Paradise for a region of the air. She still haunts the night as a spectre, and is especially hostile to new-born infants. Some superstitious Jews still put in the chamber occupied by their wife four coins, with labels on which the names of Adam and Eve are inscribed, with the words, "Avaunt thee, Lilith!" Rabbinical mythology |
| King name "Magi" | Christian | According to Christian fable, were Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthazar, three kings of the East. The first offered gold, the emblem of royalty, to the infant Jesus; the second, frankincense, in token of divinity; and the third, myrrh, in prophetic allusion to the persecution unto death which awaited the "Man of Sorrows." |
| Goddess name "Amaltheia" | Crete | The nurse of the infant Zeus after his birth in Crete. The ancients themselves appear to have been as uncertain about the etymology of the name as about the real nature of Amaltheia. Hesychius derives it from the verb to nourish or to enrich, others from firm or hard; and others again from to signify the Divine goat, or the tender goddess. The common derivation is from to milk or suck. |
| Goddess name "Hathor" | Egypt | The Beautiful Face In The Boat For Thousands Of Years. Goddess of procreation, sexuality, romance, trees, poetry, music, alcohol, childbirth, infants, death, fertility, love, marriage, beauty, joy and the sky. Egypt |
| Goddess name "Renenutet" | Egypt | Snake goddess. Also possessing fertility connotations, she guarded the pharaoh in the form of a cobra. There is some evidence that she enjoyed a cult in the Faiyum, the highly fertile region of the Nile valley. She is depicted either in human form or as a hooded cobra, in which case she bears close åśśociation with the goddess WADJET who is embodied in the uraeus. Her gaze has the power to conquer enemies. In her capacity as a fertility goddess she suckles infant rulers and provides good crops and harvests, linked in this capacity to OSIRIS and the more ancient grain god NEPER. She is also a magical power residing in the linen robe of the pharaoh and in the linen bandages with which he is swathed in death. At Edfu Renenutet takes the title lady of the robes. In the Greco-Roman period, she became adopted by the Greeks as the goddess Hermouthis and was syncretized with ISIS.... |
"Werwolf" | Europe | Werewolf. A bogie who roams about devouring infants, sometimes under the form of a man, sometimes as a wolf followed by dogs, sometimes as a white dog, sometimes as a black goat, and occasionally invisible. Its skin is bullet-proof, unless the bullet has been blessed in a chapel dedicated to St. Hubert. This superstition was once common to almost all Europe, and still lingers in Brittany, Limousin, Aurergne, Servia, Wallachia, and White Russia. In the fifteenth century a council of theologians, convoked by the Emperor Sigismund, gravely decided that the Werwolf was a reality. |
| Nymph name "Adrasteia" | Greek | A Cretan nymph, daughter of Melisseus, to whom Rhea entrusted the infant Zeus to be reared in the Dictaean grotto. |
| God name "Aega" | Greek | A daughter of Olenus, who was a descendant of Hephaestus. Aega and her sister Helice nursed the infant Zeus in Crete, and the former was afterwards changed by the god into the constellation called Capella. Greek |
| Nymph name "Aix" | Greek | A nymph and the wife of Pan. She was seduced by Zeus and bore him Aigipan. Aix is also mentioned as the nurse of the infant Zeus and may also identified with the Gorgon Aix. |
| God name "Ambrosia" | Greek | In ancient mythology, Ambrosia is sometimes the food, sometimes the drink, of the gods. The word has generally been derived from Greek a- ("not") and mbrotos ("mortal"); hence the food or drink of the immortals. Thetis anointed the infant Achilles with ambrosia and påśśed the child through the fire to make him immortal - a familiar Phoenician custom - but Peleus, appalled, stopped her. |
"Amphilochus" | Greek | A son of Amphiaraus and Eriphyle, and brother of Alcmaeon. (Apollodorus iii) When his father went against Thebes, Amphiloehus was, according to Pausanias, yet an infant, although ten years afterwards he is mentioned as one of the Epigoni, and according to some traditions åśśisted his brother in the murder of his mother. |
"Delias" | Greek | The sacred vessel made by Theseus and sent annually from Athens to Delos. This annual festival lasted 30 days, during which no Athenian could be put to death, and as Socrates was condemned during this period his death was deferred till the return of the sacred vessel. The ship had been so often repaired that not a stick of the original vessel remained at the time, yet was it the identical ship. So the body changes from infancy to old age, and though no single particle remains constant, yet the man 6 feet high is identical with his infant body a span long. Greek |
| God name "Dryops" | Greek | A son of the river-god Spercheius, by the Danaid Polydora or, according to others, a son of Lycaon (probably a mistake for Apollo) by Dia, the daughter of Lycaon, who concealed her new-born infant in a hollow oak tree. |