Skip to main content

To Kill Basilisks by a Mirror

In the book of Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke,  the silver dragon hid in the basilisk cavern, he was nearly killed by the basilisk, but the professor Barnabas Greenbloom saved him.

Acording to the legend, Basilisk was the most terrible monster, the mere sound of their voices or one glance from their terrible eyes is usually enough to kill. But a basilisk can't survive the sight of its own reflection, so Professor Greenbloom killed it by a mirror.

The ancient Egyptians knew about those monsters, they thought the basilisk hatched from a poisoned ibis egg. However, another theory claims that a basilisk is born when a five-year-old cockerel lays an egg, which fortunately doesn't happen every often.

In Chinese traditional culture, there was a type of magic mirror called Monster-reveal Mirror, that shows a monster for what it really is.  

Chinese people may fit a mirror on the middle of the front wall of a new house to keep monsters away from their house.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="Monster Reveal Mirror"]Monster Reveal Mirror[/caption]

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nightsoil men

In Victorian time, building were often put up before water and sewage pipes were laid down so a single tap or pump might have to serve hundreds of people. Toilet waste was carried away by 'nightsoil men'.  Some seeped into the water supply and rivers became polluted by factory and human waste. In 1858, the Thames in London became so smelly that the year was known as 'the year of the Great Stink'!

The Indian Mutiny

British rulers were shaken to the core by the Indian Mutiny of 1857. The spark which lit the fuse of the rebellion was when cartridges were given to Indian troops which were coated in grease, made from cow or pig fat. These cartridges had to be prepared for firing by being bitten at one end. The cow is a sacred animal to the Hindus and the pig is regarded as unclean by Muslims, so no one was happy. Indian troops refused to bite the cartridges. Their British officers hanged a few. The troops rioted. They killed their officers, ransacked Delhi, and massacred British men, women and children. For a long time it looked as if the British might be defeated. The rebellion was about more than just biting cartridges. It was a revolt against taxation and the laws of the East India Company, which ruled India for Britain. After the mutiny, the British were a lot more careful about how they governed India. When the news of the mutiny reached England, crowds bayed for blood and Victoria was hor...

Bidmas, Bedmas, Bodmas, Pedmas And Christmas

This BBC GCSE Bitesize post says, BODMAS stands for 'brackets', 'other', 'division', 'multiplication', 'addition' and 'subtraction'. It's the order in which we carry out a calculation. But another article says, the order of operations in Maths called BIDMAS. BIDMAS stands for Brackets, Indices, Division and Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction. The difference is that the second substitute 'o' with 'i', and we can understand that teacher normally chooses easy way to explain whose pupils can understand, exponent or power or indices are out of reach of foundation students, so teachers uses 'other' instead. And in this article , 'o' actually stands for 'order', as far as my memory can go, my English teacher never teach me 'order' actually means 'Powers and Square Roots, etc.' In United States, the mnemonic fo Order of Operation is PEMDAS, because brackets are called pa...