Unicornicopia: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection

Missing the Point

The centuries-old conversation on the nature of unicorns, where they might be found, and whether or not they exist at all is similar to a common discussion about a much broader subject—that of magic itself. Sorcerous scholar Donald Tyson once likened discussions of magic to the well-known parable of the three blind beggars who meet an elephant. Based on the evidence gathered by their limited senses, each man describes the elephant in a different way. To one of the beggars, the elephant was round and sturdy like a tree—he had felt only the elephant's leg. The second, after placing his palms on the elephant's broad side, described the beast as a mountain. The third man felt only the elephant's trunk and maintained that he was touching a giant serpent. Each of them equally confident in his own deduction—and upset over the ignorance of the other two—they then wandered away from the elephant and kept up with their arguing so vehemently that, forgetting to use what senses they had remaining, fell off the edge of a cliff and died.

It seems fitting that this collection of unicorn lore kicks off with a similar parable. We flightless bipeds—the most improbable and fearsome of all Earth's creatures—are in such a hurry to pin down all the particular whats, wheres, whys, and hows of the unicorn that we don't remember to stop and appreciate it for the few qualities about it we know for certain. Still the frustration felt by the unicorn hunters of history is real. All they want to know is whether or not the creature exists. Is it too much to ask, after all it has put them through?

First of all, the unicorn has caused men to waste limitless resources, leading explorers and even great armies far off course on what feels, eventually, like a fool's errand. The unicorn is never to be found where the last native tribesman told them to look, no matter how far one has traveled, but always a bit farther. The Mongols in Tsaidam…deny entirely the existence there of a one-horned antelope, though admitting that it might be found in South-western Thibet, despairs the otherwise tireless explorer Nicholas Prejevalsky. Had we gone farther we should probably have heard that it was only to be found in India, and so on till we arrived at the one-horned rhinoceros.

Furthermore, the creature is shameless enough to use its potent magic to elude the greatest of scholars in their own libraries. It seems, in fact, that the greater the researcher's access to information about the unicorn, the swifter it runs away, deftly hiding behind a witless rhinoceros or blending in with a gamboling herd of oryx. This chameleon-like ability frustrates scholars to no end, and the conflicting rumors and reports concerning the unicorn have led to argument and strife between even the most learned of men.

Finally, on those exceedingly rare occasions that a unicorn—a whole unicorn, mind you, not just its horn or a few hairs from its mane—is brought into captivity, the otherwise miraculous animal has the impertinence to die so quickly that by the time any devoted scholars can be notified and summoned it is too late.

Of course, you are wiser than all of the academics and adventurers of the past, cleverer than the ancients who traveled across strange continents, who toiled in their studies, who tried as best they could to catch a glimpse of real magic in living flesh. Or at least you have the opportunity to be wiser than them all. For here is a collection of tales—of rumors, conjectures, certainties, and opinions—regarding the unicorn far richer than those possessed by Marco Polo or Physiologus. And in seeing these great explorers’ missteps you just might be able to avoid repeating them.

If I—a scholar who makes no claim to wisdom greater than that of the aforementioned giants—might give you advice on how to begin your pursuit of the unicorn, I would say this: chase the unicorn armed not with a spear or a net or even a camera. Instead equip your mind with wonder, your heart with hope, and your spirit with a sense of awe and humble appreciation of nature, knowing that not everything has yet been caught, cataloged, and kept under glass in the dusty and limited libraries and museums of mankind. Whether or not you find your unicorn, you will never return from such an expedition empty-handed.

CLINT MARSH

BERKELEY, CA, 2012

Note: Clint Marsh is a dear friend and fellow lover of magical creatures. He is also an avid collector of ephemera, lost literature, and devilish delights. You can find him at www.wonderella.org.

VARLA VENTURA

SAN FRANCISCO, 2012

The Hunter and the Unicorn

A.L. Shelton

An old Lama without religion and a heart without happiness hurt very much.

TIBETAN PROVERB

ONCE, long ago when men's hearts were evil and they forgot to be grateful for kindness, a hunter was walking along the road and fell over a cliff, almost killing himself. As he was wondering how he could get to the road again, a unicorn came along, stopped and looked over at him. The man began to beg and plead, saying, You are such a nice unicorn. I have never harmed any animal, except when I was hunting and hungry, and I never would hurt you. He begged and coaxed until the unicorn came down and helped him up on the road again. When he was safely out he said, Now I know the road out of here, so I have no more use for you. He grabbed his gun and shot the unicorn dead. Sure enough, it was a bad road and he wandered around and around, but could find no end, no way out, and wished he had asked the unicorn the right road before he had killed him. Finally growing tired and weak and hungry, and no one coming to help him, he fell down the cliff again and died.

Moral: Don't be sure you know more than you do.

RUMOURS

Odell Shepard

THE first point that research into a doubtful matter should try to determine, as Andrea Bacci wisely observes, is whether the thing in question really exists; and if we were concerned in this book with the unicorn itself rather than with unicorn lore there could be no excuse for having postponed for so long the question concerning the animal's actuality. That question cannot be entirely ignored because the doubts that have been expressed and the affirmations made in reply are themselves an important part of unicorn lore.

To anyone not instructed in comparative anatomy the unicorn is so credible a beast that it is difficult to understand why anyone should ever have doubted him. Compared with him the giraffe is highly improbable, the armadillo and the ant-eater are unbelievable, and the hippopotamus is a nightmare. The shortest excursion into palaeontology brings back a dozen animals that strain our powers of belief far more than he does. What may be called the normality of the unicorn is just as evident when we set him beside the creatures of fancy. Compared with him the griffin is precisely what Sir Thomas Browne calls it, a mixed and dubious animal.

Yet it is well known that the unicorn has been doubted, and that not by natural infidels like Pare and Marini and Cuvier alone, but by natural believers living far back in the Ages of Faith. Saint Ambrose, for example, disbelieved in the animal for the strange reason that it was not to be found, or so he thought, in nature--non inveniatur. One might have made sad havoc in the theological creed of Ambrose or any other early Christian by applying that brutal test, and we can imagine the flood of invective he would have poured forth upon the pagan who dared to write non inveniatur against the Apostolic miracles. However, I wish to devote this chapter to affirmations, recording the testimony of those who have kept the good faith and of the many others who, having fallen away into agnosticism or free-thinking or positive infidelity, have been brought back into the fold. The list of these affirmations will necessarily involve some writers that I have mentioned elsewhere.

One of the earliest of these, aside from the Ctesian and the Physiologus traditions, was that of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a Greek of Alexandria who spent his young manhood travelling as a merchant in Ethiopia, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. In his Christian Topography, written about A.D. 5 50, Cosmas writes: Although I have not seen the unicorn, I have seen four brazen figures of him in the four-towered palace of the King of Ethiopia, and from these figures I have been able to draw a picture of him as you see. People say that he is a terrible beast and quite invincible, and that all his strength lies in his horn. When he finds himself pursued by many hunters and about to be taken he springs to the top of some precipice and throws himself over it, and in the descent he turns a somersault so that the horn sustains all the shock of the fall and he escapes unhurt.

Cosmas's ingenuous admission that he has not seen the living animal inclines one to believe that he did see the brazen images. These must have been figures in the round rather than bas-reliefs, so that their single horns could not well have been due to the wellknown convention of ancient art which often led to the representation of one horn where two were to be understood; we may be fairly confident, therefore, that there existed in Ethiopia during the sixth century of our era an active belief in a one-horned animal. The drawing of this animal which accompanies the text in the Vatican manuscript of Cosmas is more interesting than the description. It shows a beast of the antelope kind, apparently not large, very spirited in bearing, with a horn almost as tall as itself jutting perpendicularly from between its brows. The moment one sees this drawing the unicorn of Physiologus comes to mind. One remembers that the feat of absorbing the shock of a fall by an elastic or