Book of Shadows (MYTHICAL CREATURES A-Z)

Basilisk

Basilisk is the"king of serpents" as a reptilian creature with sometimes rooster-like qualities. They are known to be famous for its ability to kill with a single glance. Like its bird-lizard cousin, the Cockatrice, basilisks are said to be born from a union of serpents and roosters.

Pliny the Elder describes the basilisk in his work "Natural History" from 79 A.D. He describes a "serpent called the basilisk" of which "all who behold its eyes, fall dead upon the spot".

[The basilisk] is produced in the province of Cyrene, being not more than twelve fingers in length. It has a white spot on the head, strongly resembling a sort of a diadem. When it hisses, all the other serpents fly from it: and it does not advance its body, like the others, by a succession of folds, but moves along upright and erect upon the middle. It destroys all shrubs, not only by its contact, but those even that it has breathed upon; it burns up all the grass too, and breaks the stones, so tremendous is its noxious influence. It was formerly a general belief that if a man on horseback killed one of these animals with a spear, the poison would run up the weapon and kill, not only the rider, but the horse as well. To this dreadful monster the effluvium of the weasel is fatal, a thing that has been tried with success, for kings have often desired to see its body when killed; so true is it that it has pleased Nature that there should be nothing without its antidote. The animal is thrown into the hole of the basilisk, which is easily known from the soil around it being infected. The weasel destroys the basilisk by its odour, but dies itself in this struggle of nature against its own self.

According to the Cantabrian mythology tradition, the Basilisk or Basiliscu (as they called it) has disappeared in most of the Earth but still lives in, although it is rare to see it. 

The basilisk is born from an egg laid by an old cock just before his death on a clear night and full moon exactly at midnight. Within a few days, the egg shell, which is not hard, but rather soft and leathery, is opened by the strange creature that already has all the features of an adult: legs, beak, cockscomb, and reptilian body. The basilisk has an intense and penetrating fire in its eyes that at the animal that or person who gazes directly upon it would die. The weasel is the only known animal that can face and even attack it. It can only be killed with the crowing of a rooster, so, until very recent times, travelers were carrying a rooster when they ventured into areas where it was said that the basilisks lived. They are also said to be killed by their own reflection in the mirror.