A legendary creature is a mythological creature, such as a dragon or griffin, that had its origin in traditional mythology. They have been believed to be real creatures at one time. Some were based on real creatures, originating in garbled accounts of travelers’ tales, such as the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, which supposedly grew tethered to the earth but was actually a type of fern. The traditional unicorn may have come from garbled stories about the rhinoceros or narwhal.

Often mythical creatures are hybrids, a combination of two or more animals. For example, a centaur is a combination of a man and horse, a minotaur of a man and bull, and the mermaid, half woman and half fish. These were not always intended to be understood as literal juxtapositions of parts from disparate species. Lacking a common morphological vocabulary, classical and medieval scholars and travelers would attempt to describe unusual animals by comparing them with familiar ones. The giraffe, for example, was called cameleopard, and thought of as a creature half camel, and half leopard. The leopard itself was so named since it was historically believed to be a half lion (leo) and half panther (pardus). This etymology has been kept until the present day, despite its zoological inaccuracies.

Many legendary creatures appear prominently in fantasy fiction. These creatures are often claimed to have supernatural powers or knowledge or to guard some object of great value, which becomes critical to the plot of the story in which it is found. Dragons, for instance, are commonly depicted as perched on a gleaming hoard of gold which becomes the target of adventurers.

Other legendary creatures are thought to exist today. These monsters are called modern monsters and include Chupacabras, Bigfoot, Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, the Jersey Devil, Mothman, Yowie, Yeren, Pukwudgie, and even Space aliens. These are often called cryptids and are studied in modern times by cryptozoologists working from the example of legendary creatures rooted in reality like the Vegetable Lamb mentioned above. They attempt to discover what, if anything, is the real life inspiration for these animals. 

Some creatures downplayed as just storytelling, have been rediscovered and found to be real in recent books, such as the giant squid. In Africa, Natives of the Congo told European visitors of an animal that looked like a cross between a zebra and a giraffe. While the visitors assumed the stories were just folk tales, in 1901, Sir Harry Johnston brought back pelts that proved the creature, which we now call the okapi, was real.

Media monsters are monsters from books and movies. These include Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, Werewolves, Godzilla, King Kong and Mothra among others. Throughout history legendary creatures have been incorporated into heraldry and architectural decoration. Legendary creatures have also been accepted into many facets of popular culture most notably in fantasy role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons or Everquest, video games, and Hollywood movies.

A power animal, is a shamanic concept that has entered the English language from anthropology, ethnography and sociology. In the traditional world view, everything is alive and carries with it an inherent virtue, power and wisdom. 

According to shamanic understanding, we each have a number of power animals, for they are patterns of natural abilities and potentials that are inherent within us. A principal power animal is one that has prominence.

Power animals are endemic to shamanic practice. They are the helping or ministering spirits or familiars which add to the power of an individual and are essential for success in any venture undertaken. Stated another way, power animals represent our strengths, our qualities of character, and our power.

In the shamanic worldview, it is commonly held that everyone has power animals. They are animal spirits which reside with each individual adding to their power and protecting them from illness, functioning in a fashion or manner attributed within the Christian tradition to a guardian spirit. The power animal may also lend its ward or charge the wisdom or attributes of its kind. For example, a hawk power animal may provide its charge with attributes of the hawk such as enhanced vision.

Nicholas Noble Wolf provides the definition that a power animal is an aspect of self that is represented by an animal. The aspects of that animal apsect can be empowered and encouraged such that it assists you in your life. A power animal is not a separate spiritual being.

A power animal is an energy pattern, or energy system, that appears in animal form and possesses sensation and the power of voluntary movement to carry out its inherent ability to perform the specific work it characterizes. A power animal is the very energy pattern of an ability or abilities that the animal form characterizes.

Albert Einstein was a famous theoretical physicist. His brain was removed within seven hours of his death and has attracted attention because of his reputation for being one of the foremost geniuses of the 20th century. Apparent regularities or irregularities in the brain have been used to support various ideas about correlations in neuroanatomy with exceptional intelligence. Scientific studies have suggested that regions involved in speech and language are smaller, while regions involved with numerical and spatial processing are larger.

In the 1980s, University of California professor Marian Diamond persuaded Thomas Harvey to give her samples of Einstein’s brain. She compared the ratio of glial cells in Einstein’s brain with that in the preserved brains of 11 men. Glial cells provide support and nutrition in the brain, form myelin, and participate in signal transmission. Diamond and Joseph Altman had already both discovered that rats with enriched environments developed more glial cells for each neuron. Rats in impoverished environments had fewer glial cells relative for each neuron.

Dr. Diamond’s laboratory made thin sections of Einstein’s brain, each 6 micrometers thick. They then used a microscope to count the cells. Einstein’s brain had more glial cells relative to neurons in all areas studied, but only in the left inferior parietal area was the difference statistically significant. This area is part of the association cortex, regions of the brain responsible for incorporating and synthesizing information from multiple other brain regions. 

In 1999, analysis by a team at McMaster University revealed that Einstein’s parietal operculum region in the frontal lobe of the brain was vacant. One notable part of the operculum is Broca’s area, which plays a key role in conversation or speech production, reading and writing. To compensate, the inferior parietal lobe was 15 percent wider than normal. The inferior parietal region is responsible for mathematical thought, visuospatial cognition, and imagery of movement.

Also absent was part of a bordering region called the lateral sulcus. Researchers speculated that the vacancy may have enabled neurons in this part of his brain to communicate better. This unusual brain anatomy may explain why Einstein thought the way he did.

It should be noted that this study was based on photographs of Einstein’s brain made in 1955 by Dr. Harvey, and not direct examination of the brain. Einstein himself claimed that he thought through images rather than verbally. Professor Laurie Hall of Cambridge University commenting on the study, said, “So far the case isn’t proven, but magnetic resonance and other new technologies are allowing us to start to probe those very questions”.

Einstein was speculated to have Asperger’s Syndrome. The condition is characterized by qualitative impairment in social interaction, by stereotyped and restricted patterns of behavior, activities and interests, and by no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or general delay in language. Intense preoccupation with a narrow subject, one sided verbosity, restricted prosody, and physical clumsiness are typical of the condition.

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor. He is known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, and that the Logos is the fundamental order of all.

His great achievements were to have understood the nature of the infinite, which includes understanding the inherent contradictoriness and negativity of reality, and to have grasped that reality is constantly becoming or in process, and that being and nothingness are empty abstractions. Heraclitus’s obscurity comes from his being a true philosopher who grasped the ultimate philosophical truth and therefore expressed himself in a way that goes beyond the abstract and limited nature of common sense and is difficult to grasp by those who operate within common sense. 

Heraclitus considered that the being of all the universe is fire. According to him, the being is material and one, but at the same time he acknowledged that the world witnesses constant change. 

Motion of the archelement fire is discordant and unharmonious, even though harmony is the final result of the process. This change, the transformation of material from one state into another, does not happen by accident, but rather according to law within certain limits and within certain time. This law is named Logos by Heraclitus.

In addition to seeing fire as the most fundamental of the four elements and the one that is quantified and determines the state of the other three, Heraclitus presents fire as the cosmos, which was not made by any of the gods or men, but was and is ever living fire. This is the closest he comes to a substance, but it is an active one altering other things quantitatively and performing an activity he describes as the judging and convicting of all things. It is the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things.

Karen Horney (pronounced “horn-eye”) was a German psychodynamic psychologist of Norwegian and Dutch descent. Her theories questioned traditional Freudian views as well as the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis and its genetic psychology.

From roughly the age of nine Horney changed her perspective on life, becoming ambitious and somewhat rebellious. She felt that she could not become pretty and instead decided to vest her energies into her intellectual qualities. At this time she developed a crush on her older brother, who became embarrassed by her attentions. It was here Horney suffered her first of several bouts of depression that would plague her for the rest of her life.

Horney looked at neurosis in a different light from other psychoanalysts of the time. Horney believed neurosis to be a continuous process, with neuroses commonly occurring sporadically in one’s lifetime. This was in contrast to the opinions of her contemporaries who believed neurosis was a negative malfunction of the mind in response to external stimuli, such as bereavement, divorce or negative experiences during childhood and adolescence.

From her experiences as a psychiatrist, Horney named ten patterns of neurotic needs. These ten needs are based upon things which she thought all humans require to succeed in life. A neurotic person could theoretically exhibit all of these needs, though in practice much fewer than ten need be present to constitute a person having a neurosis. The ten needs, as set out by Horney, are as follows:

Moving Toward People

1. The need for affection and approval. Pleasing others and being liked by them.

2. The need for a partner. One whom they can love and who will solve all problems.

Moving Against People

3. The need for power. The ability to bend wills and achieve control over others. While most persons seek strength, the neurotic may be desperate for it.

4. The need to exploit others, to get the better of them. To become manipulative, fostering the belief that people are there simply to be used.

5. The need for social recognition, prestige and limelight.

6. The need for personal admiration, for both inner and outer qualities. To be valued.

7. The need for personal achievement. Though virtually all persons wish to make achievements, the neurotic may be desperate for achievement.

Moving Away from People

8. The need for self sufficiency and independence. While most desire some autonomy, the neurotic may simply wish to discard other individuals entirely.

9. The need for perfection. While many are driven to perfect their lives in the form of well being, the neurotic may display a fear of being slightly flawed.

10. Lastly, the need to restrict life practices to within narrow borders. To live as inconspicuous a life as possible.

As implied, while non-neurotic individuals may strive for these needs, neurotics exhibit a much deeper, more willful and concentrated desire to fulfill the said needs. Horney, together with fellow psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, formed the Neo-Freudian discipline.

Through her views on the individual psyche, Horney postulated that the self is in fact the core of one’s own being and potential. Horney believed that if one has an accurate conception of oneself, then one is free to realize one’s potential and achieve what one wishes. Thus, she believed that self-actualization is the healthy person’s aim through life, as opposed to the neurotic’s clinging to a set of key needs.

Edgar Cayce was an American psychic. He is said to have demonstrated an ability to channel answers to questions on subjects such as health or Atlantis, while in a self induced trance. Though Cayce considered himself a devout Christian and lived before the emergence of the New Age Movement, some believe he was the founder of the movement and had influence on its teachings.

Cayce became a celebrity toward the end of his life, and the publicity given to his prophecies has overshadowed what to him were usually considered the more important parts of his work, such as healing and theology. Skeptics challenge the statement that Cayce demonstrated psychic abilities, and conventional Christians also question his unorthodox answers on religious matters such as reincarnation.

Throughout his life, Cayce was drawn to church as a member of the Disciples of Christ. He read the Bible once for every year of his life, taught at Sunday school, recruited missionaries, and is said to have agonized over the issue of whether his supposed psychic abilities and the teachings which resulted were spiritually legitimate.

Cayce’s methods involved lying down and entering into what appeared to be a trance or sleep state, usually at the request of a subject who was seeking help with health or other personal problems. The subject’s questions would then be given to Cayce, and he would proceed with a reading. At first these readings dealt with the physical health of the individual. Later readings on past lives, business advice, dream interpretation, and mental or spiritual health were also given.

When out of the trance he entered to perform a reading, Cayce did not remember what he had said during the reading. The unconscious mind, according to Cayce, has access to information which the conscious mind does not. After Gladys Davis became his secretary in 1923, all readings were transcribed and his wife Gertrude Evans Cayce conducted the readings while Cayce was in a trance.

Cayce was one of the early dream interpreters who contradicted Freudian views by saying that dreams can be of many different kinds with many levels of meaning, and that lack of interest is the reason for poor dream recall. He stated that only the dreamer knows the meaning of his dream, and that a dream is correctly interpreted when it makes sense to the dreamer and moves him forward in his life.

His mature period, in which he created the several institutions which would survive him in some form, can be considered to have started in 1925. By this time he was a professional psychic with a small staff of employees and volunteers. The readings increasingly involved occultic or esoteric themes.

Cayce said that his trance statements should be taken into account only to the extent that they led to a better life for the recipient. Moreover, he invited his audience to test his suggestions rather than accept them on faith.

Popcorn was first discovered thousands of years ago by the Native Americans, who believed that the popping noise was that of an angry god who escaped the kernel. 

Each kernel of popcorn contains a certain amount of moisture and oil. Corn is able to pop because, unlike other grains, the outer hull of the kernel is both strong and impervious to moisture, and the starch inside consists almost entirely of a dense starchy filling. This allows pressure to build inside the kernel until an explosive pop results.

As the oil and the water are heated past the boiling point, they turn the moisture in the kernel into a superheated pressurized steam, contained within the moisture proof hull. Under these conditions, the starch inside the kernel gelatinizes, softening and becoming pliable. The pressure continues to increase until the breaking point of the hull is reached, a pressure of about 135 psi and a temperature of 356 °F. The hull ruptures rapidly, causing a sudden drop in pressure inside the kernel and a corresponding rapid expansion of the steam, which expands the starch and proteins of the endosperm into airy foam. As the foam rapidly cools, the starch and protein polymers set into the familiar crispy puff.

During the Great Depression, popcorn was comparatively cheap at 5 to 10 cents a bag and became popular. Thus, while other businesses failed, the popcorn business thrived and became a major source of income for some struggling farmers. During World War II, sugar rations diminished candy production causing Americans to eat three times more popcorn than they had before.

At least six localities, all in the United States, claim to be the Popcorn Capital of the World: Valparaiso, Indiana; Van Buren, Indiana; Marion, Ohio; Ridgway, Illinois; Schaller, Iowa; and North Loup, Nebraska. According to the USDA, most of the maize used for popcorn production is specifically planted for this purpose. Most is grown in Nebraska and Indiana, with increasing area in Texas. As the result of an elementary school project, popcorn became the official state snack food of Illinois. 

Popcorn, threaded onto a string, is used as a wall or Christmas tree decoration in some parts of North America, as well as on the Balkan peninsula. The world’s largest popcorn ball was unveiled in October 2006 in Lake Forest, Illinois. It weighed 3,415 pounds, measured 8 feet in diameter, and had a circumference of 24.6 feet.

The Rainbow Serpent is an important mythological being for Aboriginal people across Australia, although the creation myths associated with it are best known from northern Australia.

The Rainbow Serpent is seen as the inhabitant of permanent waterholes and is in control of life’s most precious resource, water. He is the underlying Aboriginal mythology for the famous Outback “bunyip”. He is the sometimes unpredictable Rainbow Serpent, who vies with the ever-reliable Sun, that replenishes the stores of water, forming gullies and deep channels as he slithered across the landscape, allowing for the collection and distribution of water.

Dreamtime stories tell of the great Spirits during creation, in animal and human form they molded the barren and featureless earth. The Rainbow Serpent came from beneath the ground and created huge ridges, mountains and gorges as it pushed upward. The Rainbow Serpent is known as Ngalyod by the Gunwinggu and Borlung by the Miali. He is a serpent of immense proportions which inhabits deep permanent waterholes.

Serpent stories vary according to environmental differences. Tribes of the monsoonal areas depict an epic interaction of the Sun, Serpent and wind in their Dreamtime stories, whereas tribes of the central desert experience less drastic seasonal shifts and their stories reflect this.

It is known both as a benevolent protector of its people and as a malevolent punisher of law breakers. The rainbow serpent’s mythology is closely linked to land, water, life, social relationships and fertility. There are innumerable names and stories associated with the serpent, all of which communicate the significance and power of this being within Aboriginal traditions.

The myth of the Rainbow serpent is sometimes associated with Wonambi naracoortensis, a large snake of the now extinct megafauna of Australia.