Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor

Phobetor’s children are the shapes of nightmares themselves, allowing him to extend his reach to all the sleeping people of the world. The Oneiroi are the pantheon of dream gods who live in Erebos, which was part of the Greek underworld. The poem Metamorphoses describes Phobetor as a shapeshifter who “forms the beasts and birds and long sliding snakes.” He is the son of Darkness, and is one of the most important figures of the Oneiroi. His name translates from Greek as “to be feared.” Every night, he emerges from the land of eternal darkness as a winged demon to infest the dreams of the living. And while Morpheus served as the dream messenger, his brother Phobetor was the bringer of nightmares. The Greeks had many different gods to portray different aspects of dreams. Morpheus was chosen as a messenger because, out of Hypnos’s thousands of children, he was the best at disguising himself as a human. Though he could take the shape of a human when he was delivering dream messages, his true shape was a demon-like figure with massive black wings that allowed him to pass quickly through the dream world. Morpheus first appeared in the epic poem Metamorphoses, which was written by the first century poet Ovid. He was the son of Hypnos, the god of sleep, and had the power to enter the dreams of mortal men to deliver messages from the gods. As with most facets of life, they had a god that personified the dream world: Morpheus. Its name changed to Mo, and the belief arose that in order for it to protect you, you had to draw a sketch of the beast before you fell asleep.įew cultures delved as deeply into the world of dreams as the Greeks. By the 17th century, the physical form of the Baku had become a chimera-it had the legs of a tiger, the head of an elephant, and the piercing eyes of a rhinoceros. From there, the description of the beast changed over time.

The story of the Baku actually began in China, but was taken to Japan in the 14th century. In the realm of dream spirits, the Baku is a benevolent spirit who protects people from the terrors of bad dreams.

It’s usually described as a tapir, sort of pig-shaped with a long snout. In Japanese legend, a Baku is a dream-eater-a spirit animal that visits homes in the middle of the night and devours the nightmares of people who are sleeping.

Dreams of Gods & Monsters by Laini Taylor