MONSTERS 6163
nity (Cambridge, 1993), argues that both trinitarian and mo- monster is therefore retrojected into cosmogony and project-
notheistic perspectives are necessary for upholding human
freedom. Elizabeth A. Johnson, in She Who Is: The Mystery
of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York, 1992),
is representative of many feminist scholars as she reinterprets
the “one living God” with metaphors and images suggesting
relationship and communion. Drawing on extensive studies
in Jewish and Islamic philosophy, Lenn E. Goodman pres-
ents philosophical investigations of monotheism with respect
to ethics and human values, notably in Monotheism: A Philo-
sophical Inquiry into the Foundations of Theology and Ethics
(Totowa, N. J., 1981); and also in God of Abraham (Oxford,
1996).
THEODORE M. LUDWIG (1987 AND 2005)
MONSTERS. Strictly speaking, a monster is a mythical
being and may be human or animal or a combination of
both; it may be huge, misshapen, or grotesque, malevolent,
savage, or terrifying. Such creatures have been a feature of
popular lore and religious cult in all parts of the world from
earliest times. The term is applied also to human “freaks,”
or “monstrous births,” that is, persons with more or less than
the normal number of limbs or organs, Siamese twins, her-
maphrodites, and even albinos.
In popular legend, monsters are commonly portrayed as
both stupid and gluttonous. What they have in brawn, they
lack in brain, and when they devour their victims, it is not
because they are innately hostile to the human race but be-
cause they possess insatiable appetites. It is often their ob-
tuseness and greed that prove their undoing.
One kind of mythical monster is the dragon, the em-
bodiment of primordial chaos, who is believed to have been
subdued in battle by a leading god before the world order
could be established. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia spoke
of such a combat between the monster Azag (“demon”) and
the god Ninurta; the Babylonians, of the defeat of the rebel-
lious Tiamat by their supreme god Marduk; the Hittites, of
the defeat of a sea serpent named Illuyankas by the combined
efforts of the goddess Inaras and a mortal hero; the Hebrews,
of Yahveh’s rout of Leviathan; the Hindus, of Indra’s subju-
gation of Vr: tra; the Iranians, of the dispatch of the serpentine
Azhi Dahaka; and the Greeks, of the triumph of Zeus over
the contumacious Typhon.
The primordial monster appears not only in myth but
also in ritual. It is a widespread custom to inaugurate a new
year or season by staging a mimetic combat between two an-
tagonists who represent respectively the old year and the
new, winter and summer, drought and rainfall, and the
like—a combat that survives, albeit in distorted form, in the
English Mummers’ Play and similar seasonal performances
elsewhere. What thus inaugurates each separate year or sea-
son is thought to have inaugurated the entire procession of
years and seasons in any given era and to be destined to hap-
pen again before a further era can begin. The defeat of the
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION
ed into eschatology: Leviathan, Vr: tra, Azhi Dahaka, and
Fenrisúlfr of Norse mythology, for instance, are said to be
imprisoned but not slain and will eventually burst their
bonds and have to be subdued again.
In several myths, the monster personifies the swollen
rivers or winter squalls that threaten to inundate the earth
unless properly channeled. In Chinese folklore, the subjuga-
tion of raging streams is called “caging the dragon.” Con-
versely, however, the monster sometimes personifies a malev-
olent power who impounds the subterranean waters that
have to be released in order to prevent drought.
Adverse natural phenomena are also personified as mon-
sters, though it is sometimes difficult to determine whether
these represent the phenomena themselves or the demonic
powers that are believed to cause them. One such monster
is the gigantic North American deity called the Thunderbird,
the flapping of whose wings is believed to cause storms. The
ancient Sumerians spoke likewise of a gigantic bird named
Heavy Wind (Im Dugud) who caused storms; the Teutons
spoke of Hraesvelgr. Analogous figures appear in the folklore
of such diverse peoples as the Chinese, the Burmese, and sev-
eral American Indian tribes.
Hurricanes are often attributed to the rampages of mon-
sters. In the Mesopotamian creation epic Enuma elish, the
rebellious Tiamat is accompanied into battle by a cohort of
gruesome monsters that includes Stormwind, Cyclone, and
the like. The Seneca Indians saw in hurricanes the activity
of a monstrous bear named Ya-o-gah. According to some
scholars, the English word for this phenomenon derives ulti-
mately from Hurucán, the name of a monstrous wind god
of the Quiché Indians of Central America.
Equally widespread is the belief that eclipses are caused
by a monster’s swallowing and then disgorging the sun or
moon. The Hindus spoke of a dragon called Svarbhanu;
analogous figures appear almost universally. In the language
of the Turkic-speaking Chuvash and of Estonian folklore, a
verbal form translated into English as “eaten” is used to de-
scribe an eclipse. Drums and gongs are beaten, bells rung,
and trumpets blown in many parts of the world to scare away
the dire adversary. A variant of this notion asserts that the
sun is pursued nightly by a voracious monster—in ancient
Egypt by the serpent Apopis and in Norse mythology by the
wolf Skoll.
Another natural phenomenon personified as a monster
is the whirlpool, which is said by some scholars to be the
original referent of the word gargoyle (from the Latin gurges).
In Arabic a waterspout is popularly termed tinnı̄n
(“dragon”); in the Old Testament the sea monster Leviathan
is sometimes referred to by the term tannin. So, too, Ed-
mund Spenser describes a whirlpool as a whale.
Not only natural phenomena but also human situations
and infirmities are personified as monsters or are attributed
to their activities. In Babylonian magical incantations, epi-
6164 MONSTERS
lepsy and palsy are represented as a demonic monster with
a bird’s head and human hands and feet, and impotence as
one with a lion’s mouth, a dragon’s teeth, and an eagle’s tal-
ons. In Jewish folklore, noontime sunstroke and dizziness are
attributed to an ogre who has the head of a calf with a revolv-
ing horn in the center, one eye in its breast, and a body cov-
ered with scales, hair, and eyes.
Sexual dreams are commonly represented in popular
lore as due to the assaults of monsters who consort with
sleeping men and women. Those that assail men are known
as succubi; however monstrous their activities, they are usu-
ally portrayed not as grotesque harridans but as voluptuous
sylphs or femmes fatales. Those that assail women are known
as incubi. Belief in such creatures was widespread especially
in the Middle Ages and was held even by such noted church-
men as Augustine. They were thought to be the demon lov-
ers of witches, and intercourse with them was said to produce
“monstrous births,” deformed persons, hermaphrodites, and
sometimes albinos. Indeed, according to many medieval
commentators the “sons of God,” who are said in the Book
of Genesis (6:1–4) to have consorted with mortal women and
thus engendered a race of giants, were in fact incubi.
Fairly universal is the belief in a monstrous beldam who
seizes and strangles newborn babes and kills their mothers
or drains the mothers’ milk. In ancient Mesopotamia, she
was known as Lamashtu and was portrayed with a lion’s
head, a woman’s body, and bird’s feet. She held serpents in
both hands and suckled a black hound and a pig at her
breasts. The Hittites knew her as Wesurya (“strangler”);
known among the Greeks as Gello, Lamia, or Strix, she could
take the form of a screech owl or bat. The Arabs saw her as
a goggle-eyed hag whose one foot was that of an ass and the
other that of an ostrich. In German folklore, she is a sharp-
nosed, scrawny harridan. Superstitious Jews identify her with
Lilith, the legendary first wife of Adam, who was expelled
childless from Eden for her rebellious behavior and who is
therefore envious of all new mothers. In many parts of the
world plaques and amulets are hung up to ward her off.
Not only diseases and human infirmities but also death
and the netherworld are portrayed as monsters. In several
passages of the Old Testament (Is. 5:14, Hb. 2:5, Prv. 1:12)
hell is depicted as a being with jaws agape, a portrayal fre-
quent in medieval art, for example, in the east window of
York Minster. Supay, the Peruvian deity of the nether re-
gions, is similarly characterized.
There are also animal monsters, creatures that combine
the parts of several different beasts or of beasts and human
beings. Not all of them are regarded as harmful; some, de-
spite their grotesque forms, represent beneficent spirits or de-
ities. Many of these monsters acquired acceptance through
descriptions of them in medieval and later bestiaries, which
in turn derive largely from a book about animals known as
the Physiologus, compiled (probably in Greek) between the
third and fifth centuries CE by an unidentified writer and
subsequently translated into many European and Oriental
languages. Under the hands of Christian redactors, symbolic
and allegorical meanings were given to the fabulous beasts,
and they were thus incorporated into heraldry (e.g., the lion
and the unicorn of British heraldry). Prominent among such
creatures are the unicorn, the phoenix, the griffin, and the
manticore.
The unicorn is first mentioned by the Greek writer Cte-
sias (third century BCE) as native to India and akin to the rhi-
noceros. It was later portrayed in art and literature as a white
horse with a single horn protruding from the middle of its
forehead. It is identified by some early translators of the Old
Testament with the re’em, a beast mentioned in several pas-
sages, and on the basis of this identification it became promi-
nent in Christian symbolism. The re’em, however, is said ex-
plicitly to have more than one horn (Dt. 33:17, Ps. 22:21)
probably it is the now extinct aurochs. Legend asserted that
the unicorn could be caught only if it leapt into the lap of
a virgin sent into the woods to entice it.
The phoenix, a red bird variously identified as an egret
or flamingo, is said to be native to Arabia. It was believed
to live for five hundred years and then to burn itself in its
nest. Out of the ashes arose a new phoenix. Modern scholars
believe that this is simply a Greek transmogrification of the
Egyptian mythical bennu bird, who represented the resurgent
sun and rose daily from a flaming tree at Heliopolis.
The griffin is a creature with a lion’s head and the wings
of an eagle who, in Greek mythology, guarded the gold in
the north. It is probably to be identified (even in name) with
the biblical cherub (Babylonian karūbu), who was not an
angel, as is commonly supposed, but a monster who guarded
the entrance of ancient Mesopotamian palaces and who is
also related to the legendary dragon who guards the pot of
gold.
The manticore is a hybrid monster described in the bes-
tiaries as possessing a lion’s face, a man’s body, and a tail with
a serpent’s head and a scorpion’s sting. It has gleaming eyes
and can leap prodigious lengths. It is said to be native to the
Far East but may in fact derive from the fabulous Indian
monster makara.
In general, harmful demons are often portrayed as mon-
strous beasts. A representative example is the Russian Zmei
Gorynych, a snake that typifies all evil and is prone to run
off with mortal girls.
One example of a beneficent animal monster is the Ira-
nian Senmurv, part dog, part bird, and sometimes part rep-
tile, who gave mankind seeds scattered from a tree in which
it lived. Another is the Chinese Qilin, a spirit of good luck
who has a deer’s body, a bushy tail, cloven hoofs, and horns.
Besides these individual theriomorphic monsters there
are also classes of such beings, for example, centaurs, Gor-
gons, and harpies. Centaurs are most commonly described
in Greek literature and portrayed in Greek art as half human
and half horse. It should be observed, however, that this is
but one variety of them, for their human parts are said to be
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

combined alternatively with those of asses and other beasts.
It has therefore been suggested by some modern scholars that
centaurs are really the mythical counterpart of the bands of
wild men who are said to rampage in animal pelts and per-
form ritual dances at certain seasons in Balkan countries and
who find their congeners in the hobbyhorse performers of
English folk custom. The Gorgons are, in Greek mythology,
three horrendous sisters whose glance petrifies the beholder.
Their hair consists of serpents, and they possess golden
wings, brazen claws, and huge teeth. One of them, Medusa,
is mortal. Harpies (“snatchers”) are filthy winged monsters,
part woman and part bird, who defile whatever they encoun-
ter and who, according to Hesiod, also carry off newborn ba-
bies. In the latter capacity, they have their counterpart in Ca-
naanite lore. Hesiod calls two of them by the names Aello
(“stormwind”) and Ocypete (“swift flier”). These names are
included to this day in the Jewish amuletic plaques men-
tioned above as a device for averting the child-stealing
beldam.
Human “monsters” or freaks are popularly attributed to
the union of mortal women (especially witches) with incubi,
or demons. Included among them are misshapen children
and adults, androgynes, and persons with extra limbs and or-
gans. An outstanding example is the Pig-faced Lady, Tanakin
Skinner, who appeared in London in the early seventeenth
century. An otherwise gracious person, she was said to have
the head of a sow and to eat from a trough. Her grotesque
form was attributed to divine vengeance on her mother, who
had refused alms to a poor woman begging for the sustenance
of her child. Another example is the Elephant Man, the sub-
ject of a well-known play by Bernard Pomerance. Albinos
too fall into this class, although the popular attitude toward
them is ambivalent. In Senegal, for instance, they are regard-
ed as ominous; in Gabon they are killed at birth, whereas in
New Guinea they are deemed holy.
Remote, “outlandish” peoples are often depicted as
monsters in traveler’s yarns, medieval romances, and the
writings of various ancient authors. Herodotus (485?–425
BCE) and Pliny the Elder (23–79 BCE), for example, mention
a legendary people of the far North named the Arimaspeans,
who have no heads but have eyes in their stomachs. Japanese
legend tells of Jon-li, a remote island inhabited by people
whose bodies are half human and half dog. Marco Polo says
that the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands are dog-headed,
and other writers similarly describe the Karen of Burma. The
Jewish traveler Binyamin of Tudela (twelfth century) reports
that men who live in the Turkish steppes have no noses, al-
though this may refer to flat-nosed Mongolians. In the same
vein, Jean Struys (1650) asserts that tailed men are to be
found on the southern side of Formosa, and a similar state-
ment is made by later writers about an allegedly cannibal race
called the Nuam-ni’aros who lived between the Gulf of
Benin and Ethiopia. Jews during the Middle Ages were also
commonly accused of cannibalism.
Some monsters are not objects of actual belief but are
deliberately invented to scare unruly children. The outstand-
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION
MONSTERS 6165
ing monster of this type is the Greek figure Mormo
(“bogey”), also called Mormolukeion (“bogeywolf”), who
survived in British nurseries as late as the nineteenth century.
Similar creatures are the beldam Bebau in central France and
the windigo of the Ojibwa Indians of North America.
The conquest of a draconic monster who ravages a
country or holds a princess or other fair maiden captive is
a standard motif in heroic legend. One is the Chimera, a fire-
breathing monster, part lion, part dragon, and part goat, who
ravaged Lycia and the neighboring lands but was slain by the
hero Bellerophon mounted on the winged horse Pegasus.
Typhon, a hundred-headed, fiery being, challenged the sov-
ereignty of Zeus but was destroyed by a thunderbolt and bur-
ied under Mount Etna. The Minotaur, half bull and half
man, was kept in a labyrinth by King Minos of Crete to de-
vour the youths and maidens demanded of Athens as period-
ic tribute. He was eventually defeated by the hero Theseus
with the aid of the princess Ariadne. (The exaction of period-
ic tribute by water spirits as the price of averting inundation
is a not uncommon theme in world folklore.) The Hydra was
a hundred-headed monster of the Peloponnese who was slain
by Herakles as one of his twelve labors. Whenever one head
was severed two grew in its place, but the hero eventually
scorched the growth with a firebrand. Geryon was a monster
with three heads or three bodies whose herds near Gades
(Cadiz) Herakles carried off as his tenth labor, slaying their
guardians, the giant Eurytion and the two-headed hound
Orthros, as well as the Geryon itself. Fenrisúlfr (Fenriswolf)
was the monstrous offspring of Loki in Norse mythology.
The gods eventually bound him with a fetter made by dwarfs
from the sound of a cat’s footfall, the breath of a fish, and
the spittle of a bird, and then imprisoned him in the depths
of the earth. He will break forth, however, at the final twi-
light of the gods (Ragnarok) and slay Óðinn (Odin), only
E
to be himself slain by Óðinn’s son Víðarr. Battles against
monstrous dragons are familiar also from the legends of Per-
seus, Beowulf, Saint George, and many other heroes.
From time to time—especially in the present century—
reports have circulated of gigantic prehistoric monsters sight-
ed in various parts of the world. These are commonly termed
“monsters,” but that designation is misleading, for a monster
is essentially abnormal, whereas these creatures are supposed-
ly surviving specimens of mammoths, mastodons, and the
like. To this class belongs especially the celebrated Loch Ness
monster of Scotland, said to have been seen sporadically
throughout the ages, but a subject of public interest only
since 1933. It is reputed to have been seen since then by no
fewer than four thousand witnesses, and several scientific ex-
peditions have attempted to photograph and identify it. A
group of sonar and photographic images obtained in 1973
by the Academy of Applied Science has, for some, lent cre-
dence to its existence. It is usually described as being dark
gray or brownish black in color, about fifteen to twenty feet
long, with a thin neck, small head, long tail, four paddles or
fins, and several humps. Another such alleged prehistoric
6166 MONTAGU, LILY
monster is the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, said to have
been sighted or to have left gigantic footprints in remote
areas of the Himalayas. He is described as resembling an ape,
standing nearly six feet tall, shaggy in appearance, with huge
teeth in a large mouth, and a head tapering to a point. How-
ever, native Sherpas declare that he is far smaller and has red
or black tufts of hair and the face of a monkey. He has no
tail and apparently walks on two legs.
Cousin to the Yeti is Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, a hypotheti-
cal species of primates said, since 1840, to have been sighted
in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. This creature is
reported to be between seven and nine feet in height and to
weigh from six hundred to nine hundred pounds. He is not
ferocious. He looks like a furry ape, walks upright, and leaves
footprints sixteen inches long and six inches wide. Sasquatch
plays a role in the folklore of the Northwest Coast Indians
and in turn has a cousin in the Mono Grande of the Andes.
It has been suggested that the Abominable Snowman,
Sasquatch, and Mono Grande may be surviving specimens
of a prehistoric ape-man known as Gigantopithecus, fossils of
which have been discovered in China and other parts of Asia.
Monsters and ogres survive also in popular lore in such
figures as Frankenstein’s monster, King Kong, and the like—
staples of horror movies, television, and comic strips. An in-
teresting development in this respect is the circulation of sto-
ries about visitors from outer space allegedly seen emerging
from flying saucers. Significantly, many of these stories come
from rapporteurs of Irish descent, and the creatures are de-
scribed as having a form closely resembling that of the lepre-
chauns of Irish folklore.
Finally, it may be observed that monsters also appear as
figures of political propaganda. An outstanding instance is
the protrayal of the Japanese in World War II as “mon-
keys”—a tendentious revival of the old practice (mentioned
above) of so characterizing remote, unfamiliar peoples. Simi-
larly, barbaric historical personages are commonly designat-
ed “monsters,” for example, Attila and, in our own day,
Adolf Hitler and Joseph Mengele. In such characterizations,
the essential nature of a monster is effectively expressed;
huge, savage, and hostile, he is the direct opposite of the di-
minutive dwarf, elf, or gremlin, who, albeit mischievous, is
essentially benevolent.
SEE ALSO Dragons; Therianthropism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For general works on the theme of monsters, see Charles Gould’s
Mythical Monsters (London, 1886) and C. J. S. Thompson’s
The Mystery and Lore of Monsters (London, 1930). On the
cosmogonic dragon, see my Thespis: Ritual, Myth, and
Drama in the Ancient Near East, 2d ed. (1961; New York,
1977), pp. 137–153. Animal monsters are the subject of
Peter Lum’s Fabulous Beasts (London, 1952) and T. H.
White’s The Book of Beasts (London, 1956); more particular-
ly, see, on the unicorn, Odell Shepard’s The Lore of the Uni-
corn (New York, 1930) and, on centaurs, John Cuthbert
Lawson’s Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion
(1910; New York, 1964), pp. 190–225. On the child-
stealing beldam, see my The Holy and the Profane (New York,
1980); on bogeys, see Elizabeth M. Wright’s Rustic Speech
and Folklore (Oxford, 1913). Sabine Baring-Gould discusses
tailed men in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1866; New
York, 1884), pp. 86–89, and Richard Andree treats albinos
in Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche (Leipzig, 1881),
pp. 278–280. John Napier discusses Sasquatch in Bigfoot
(London, 1972) and the Yeti in The Abominable Snowman
(New York, 1973).
New Sources
Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of
Nature, 1150–1750. New York, 1998.
Davidson, Hilda Ellis, and Anna Chaudhri, eds. Supernatural Ene-
mies. Durham, N.C., 2001.
Friedman, John Block. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and
Thought. Medieval Studies. Syracuse, N.Y., 2000.
Gilmore, David D. Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All
Manner of Imaginary Terrors. Philadelphia, 2003.
Jones, Timothy S., and David A. Sprunger, eds. Marvels, Monsters,
and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imag-
inations. Kalamazoo, Mich, 2002.
Platt, Peter G., ed. Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Mod-
ern Culture. Newark and London, 1999.
THEODOR H. GASTER (1987)
Revised Bibliography
MONTAGU, LILY (1873–1963), founder of the Liber-
al Jewish movement in England. Born in London on Decem-
ber 22, 1873, Lily H. Montagu was the sixth child of Ellen
Cohen Montagu and Samuel Montagu. Her father was a
wealthy banker and leading member of the Orthodox Anglo-
Jewish community. Convinced that Orthodoxy offered her,
and other women, little room for religious self-expression,
she found in the works of Claude Montefiore a vision of Ju-
daism that mirrored her own understanding of true religion
as personal in nature, universal in outlook, and best revealed
through daily conduct.
In the January 1899 issue of the Jewish Quarterly Re-
view, Montagu published “The Spiritual Possibilities of Ju-
daism Today,” an essay in which she asked all religiously
committed Jews to help her form an association aimed at
strengthening the religious life of the Anglo-Jewish commu-
nity through the propagation of Liberal Jewish teachings.
Membership would not necessarily demonstrate allegiance to
what Montefiore identified as Liberal Judaism but simply
would demonstrate the recognition of its ability to awaken
within many Jews a sense of spirituality and personal respon-
sibility to God. The Jewish Religious Union (JRU), estab-
lished by Lily Montagu in February 1902, instituted Sabbath
afternoon worship services conducted along Liberal Jewish
lines and propaganda meetings, led by Montagu, to clarify
and spread its teachings. Though Montefiore agreed to serve
as the group’s official leader, Montagu assumed responsibili-
ty for its major activities and daily affairs.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION