About the "Three-Horned ravine Goat", or I should say Camahueto
A tale from Chiloé, a magical island of secrets and sorcery
Hello people!
What do you think of the last entry, the three-horned ravine goat? This creature is a retelling of a myth from Chiloé (a beautiful island at the south of Chile). Originally the creature is called Camahueto, here is a translated passage from a text that talks about it.
“It is an animal that emerges from the bottom of the ravines, from swampy lands, where a machi (chaman/healer/priestess of the Mapuches → indigenous habitats of Chile and Argentina) has sowed the scrap of the horn of another Camahueto. After a couple of decades, this animal - gifted with enormous strength - leaves the ravine to go to the sea, causing great destruction in its path.
On the beach awaits its owner, who will subdue it with a fragile sargassum (seaweed) rope, the only rope capable of resisting its enormous energy.
Once restrained, the horn - philosopher's stone of popular medicine - is extracted. With this horn, of magical properties, the body is rubbed or its scrapings are ingested.
The animal or the person, to whom it is administered to give him/her energy and strength, can become aggressive or go mad if the dose has been excessive. In this case, we speak of "encamahuetados".
To take out a horn of camahueto from a province, with all its latent powers, it is necessary to transport it in toasted flour.”
As you can read, this is better than my retelling, but to be honest I knew the tale of the Camahueto by ear and I forgot its details, but I prefer it like that, to write what I remember of it with the blanks filled with my imagination.
Although this one and other tales of Chiloé are mostly oral legends and myths, the text of the Camahueto comes from an amazing compilation of these tales, “El libro de la mitologia: historias, leyendas y creencias mágicas obtenidas de la tradición oral” by Renato Cárdenas Alvarez, a beautiful source of creatures, myths and magic that could be used in any low fantasy game.
So I want to recommend all of you, if you can read spanish, to read this book → https://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-8161.html
(by the way memoria chilena is an amazing resource if you can read spanish and are interested in the history and culture of Chile)
But if you don't read spanish, and if these tales are something of your taste, I can bring some of these tales to you, because I would love to let them live a little more on my mind and yours, and because I really think that the tales and myths from Chile, and especially Chiloé, are inspiring and can bring a different kind of wonder to our tables.
So, do you want me to bring more of these wonders to you?, do you want to know of other creatures that roamed these lands? let me know in the comments.