Theriocephaly

Basic Information

Theriocephaly refers to a human with the head of an animal. Many mythological creatures and characters of our oldest stories are theriocephalic, including:

• Christian Iconography:
  • St. Christopher is often depicted with the head of a dog in art affiliated with the Eastern Orthodox Church
  • Lucifer / The Devil often has the head of goat, but may also have other non-human features. See glamour failure.
• Egyptian Mythology - most of the Gods and Goddesses of the Egyptian Pantheon have animal heads
  • Amunet - head of a cobra
  • Anubis - head of a dog or jackal
  • Anuket - head of a gazelle
  • Banebdjedet - head of a ram
  • Bast - originally had head of lion but became head of a housecat as her cult developed
  • Hathor - head of a cow
  • Hedetet - head of a scorpion
  • Heqet – head of a frog
  • Heryshaf - head of a ram
  • Horus - head of a falcon, peregrine falcon, or hawk
  • Isis - usually depicted as human, but in one myth she is beheaded and her son gives her a cow head replacement
  • Kauket - head of a snake
  • Khepri - has an entire scarab beetle as a head
  • Khnum – head of a ram
  • Kuk – head of a frog
  • Maahes – head of a lion
  • Meretseger - head of a cobra
  • Montu - head of a falcon
  • Nekhbet – head of a vulture
  • Pakhet – head of a caracal or other wild cat
  • Ra - head of a falcon
  • Renenutet - head of a cobra
  • Seker - head of a falcon
  • Sekhmet – head of a lion
  • Set - head of a mysterious unknown creature that modern scholars refer to as a set animal
  • Sobek – head of a crocodile
  • Taweret – head of a hippopotamus
  • Thoth – head of an ibis
  • Unut - may have the head of a lion, a hare, or a snake
  • Wadjet – has two snake heads, side-by-side (also sometimes appears as a snake body with a human head)
  • Wepwawet – head of a wolf or jackal
• Greek Mythology has at least a couple:
  • The Minotaur has the head (and sometimes also legs or hooves) of a bull
  • Pan sometimes has the head of a goat (he is more normally depicted as a satyr).
  • Cynocephaly - an entire species of dog-headed people
• Hinduism -
  • Ganesha has the head of an Elephant
  • Hannuman is either monkey-headed or full-on monkey.
  • Vishnu has a few theriocephalic forms or avatars:
    • As Varaha he has the head of a boar
    • As Narasimha he has the head of a lion
• Native American Mythology:
  • Abenaki Mythology - Pamola is a humanoid spirit with the head of a moose and the wings and feet of an eagle
• Wicca - the Horned God has an animal head with horns or antlers

See Also:

• List of Animals
• Random Animal Hybrid
• Half Human Hybrid
• Lycanthrope
• Beastmen
• Cynocephaly
• Composite Monster
• Glamour Failure

Sources

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia on Theriocephaly

2. Wikipedia on Hybrid Beasts in Folklore

Game and Story Use

• Our Random Animal Hybrid page can generate a random Theriocephalic creature for you.
• We humans tend to be pretty good at telling other human faces apart, but many have more trouble distinguishing between two animals of the same breed. In a game with lots of mythological characters, the GM could have a lot of fun with mistaken identities.
  • Especially if the Egyptian Pantheon is in play, and you have to try to distinguish between several different cobra-headed deities, some of whom are benevolent protective spirits while others are menacing underworld figures.
    • Likewise, mistaking Set for Anubis - or vice versa - could lead to all kinds of hilarity.
  • A trickster-god would be happy to take advantage of this.
  • Could also happen in a standard fantasy setting with loads and loads of races, where you have a hard time telling the serpent men from the reptilian humanoid and the bog-standard lizard folk.
• Along the lines of The Island of Doctor Moreau, your world could have a single species of animal-headed people who individually have faces that match differing real-world animal species. (So instead of cat-men and dog-men, you'd just have a single animal-men species.) It's not particularly logical or sensible in terms of genetics, but some games and settings would work just fine with that.