Lilith
The First Wife, the Night-Hag, the One Who Flew
A single word in Isaiah, a winged demon in the Talmud, and a medieval tale of Adam's first wife who refused to lie beneath him.
A Grimoire of Forgotten Origins
The Mythic Bestiary
Monsters, spirits and forbidden loves from the margins of the old books. The true legends behind fantasy's favorite monsters, with their sources.
Open the BestiaryThe Manifesto
Every dragon has a grandmother. Every vampire queen, clay guardian and fallen angel in modern fantasy was once a line of text: a word in Isaiah no one could translate, a story told in the Talmud between two legal arguments, a scroll the Dead Sea kept for two thousand years.
The Mythic Bestiary goes back to those lines. We tell the legends the way they deserve to be told, by candlelight and with the shadows left in, and we show our sources so you can follow every thread to its end.
The Bestiary
First folio: Jewish & Biblical Legends
The Nephilim & the Watchers
Sons of Heaven, Giants of the Earth
Two hundred angels descend on Mount Hermon, swear an oath, take human wives, and father giants who nearly devour the world.
The Golem
The Unfinished Man of Clay
A rabbi makes a man and sends him to a colleague. The man cannot speak. 'Return to your dust.'
The Dybbuk
The Soul That Clings
A bride stands under the wedding canopy and speaks in a dead man's voice.
Asmodeus (Ashmedai)
King of the Demons, Thief of a Throne
He killed seven bridegrooms on seven wedding nights. Then King Solomon chained him, and he stole Solomon's throne.
Michal & David
A Love Story Told Through Two Windows
A king's daughter loves the shepherd-warrior, saves his life through a window, and later watches him through another window and despises him.