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Various types of gryphons The traditional gryphon has the head (plus big furry ears), front legs, and wings of an eagle, and the rear legs and tail of a lion. They are magical creatures, artifically created. They are roughly eight times larger than a normal lion and are stronger than one hundred eagles, fighting like twice their number when cornered; thus gryphons are something even a dragon would think twice about attacking. Hey, did you know that gryphons' tails grow hotter the angrier they get? S'true. That's why they favor being near lakes and rivers, to cool their tails. According to legend, gryphons don't eat the average person. They look for the the nicest, most friendly and useful person in the town. Sadly, most people have no idea what a gryphon is, much less how to spell their name. There are no gryphon movies and precious few gryphon novels. Mercedes Lackey writes in a world that has gryphons. Her main gryphon books are The Black Gryphon, The White Gryphon, and The Silver Gryphon. She gives them nice personalities and captures how feels to be a gryphon rather well. There is the griffon in Alice in Wonderland, but that one is poorly presented. Sadly, not many gryphons grace our shelves of stuff. Even AD&D, those great mythological creature introducers, treat gryphons as merely stupid beasts. A wingtip of history Historically, gryphon legends are from the Issedonians (who lived beyond the Ural mountains). They have the reputation of guarding hidden treasure in the gold mines of India and Scythia. Gryphons have appeared in Babylonia and were depicted in Hittite, Assyrian, and Persian art. The gryphon is considered a benevolent construct because it is the combination of the lion and the eagle, two sun creatures. Gryphons supposedly drew the chariot of the Sun god Apollo across the sky each day. Gryphons are also reputed to lay eggs of pure agate in nests of gold. Like crows they seem to enjoy owning treasure and *sparklies* and are understandable irritated at humans who try to steal from their caches. The goddess Nemesis holds the gryphon sacred, for it is both vengeful and watchful. Amusingly, I've heard two sources report that the gryphon was adopted by the Christian church as a symbol of Christ, with the lion-half representing Christ's mortality and the eagle-half representing Christ's divinity. See: everyone wants to get in on gryphons!
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The
best place for gryphon info is a mythological compendium! Each book has
its own version of the gryphon, and, no doubt, each book spells the name
differently. Most describe the standard gryphon, but there are other breeds.
A snake-gryphon has the head of a snake, the body of a lion, and the legs
of a bird. A lion-gryphon looks for all the world like a lion with bird-like
hind legs. Neither of these creatures have wings, however, the hippogriff
does. Hippogriffs are the cross between a gryphon and a pegasus and quite
a rare beast. They have the tufted ears, the head, the front legs and
talons, the feather-mane, and the wings of a gryphon (which don't look
too different from the wings of a pegasus), but they are in every other
respect like a horse. Since gryphons are especially fond of eating horses,
one wonders about the mental health of such a creature.
