Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.
The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.
Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...
My very own Imp once belonged to my Grandfather who won it in the late sixties/early seventies as a trophy for a bowls competition. Since that time this 16cm tall figure has been broken, repaired, broken, repaired; finally painted and left safely upon a high shelf. I remember my Grandmother recalling how a friend or neighbour was shocked that she should allow such a devilish thing to be brought into the house as no doubt bad luck or worse would follow!!!
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1 comment:
Has any of the commentators on these imps mentioned yet that the face has strongly Neanderthaloid features? Their representation as sort-of satyrs is traditional also, and that occurs with the Scottish Urisks as well.
I assume the one-legged stance was meant as a means of wedging the original icon into the ground, however far back that might have been. Some of the Late-Paleolithic Venus figurines seem to have had pointed feet to wedge into the ground. And incidentally. artistic representation of satyr-like beings also goes back to the Late Paleolithic.
Which looks as if some of the CroMagnons might even have venerated Neanderthals as being the spiritual link between humans and the Animal world. Just possibly.
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