I would like to start off , firstly as telling you who I am.
In case you didn't know, I'm "
Black UniGryphon"! There's only 1, and that is me!
I've been on the internet since 1994! My 1st computer was an Apple Macintosh Power PC 6200, and my very first internet connection was 56K dial-up over the phone line to E-World, and then it got shut down, and we had to use America Online (AOL).
Back then we didn't even use Yahoo! In fact, I'd never even heard of yahoo.com until 1997. There definitely was NO Google.com either! The only search engine I used in 1995 was Webcrawler, which I stopped using in favor of Yahoo in 1997.(Also, back then, amazon.com only sold BOOKS, and then CDs)
Back then, if you were to go to any search engine and type in "
unicorn" you couldn't even get a full page of search result listings. And, you would need to try multiple search engines to find anything about unicorns. Back in the mid-late 1990s, the only things you could find online about
unicorns, or
My Little Ponies was just home pages in HTML, and if they were savvy webmasters they'd use JAVA scripting, or with MIDI. Most of those pages were written by kids /teenagers. I know, because I knew nearly ALL of the webmasters at the time. Back then, people had "
Guestbooks" on their homepages, and you could sign them, and communicate with the webmasters via e-mail, IRC, or ICQ.
Anything that was in English was generally from the USA, Canada, or Scandinavia. Brits just never seemed into unicorns back then online, and I never came across them, nor Australians, nor Kiwis.
I have been publishing my fantasy artwork online since 1999, and have actively participated in many online art, fantasy, folklore, and mythology (and Furries) communities in art ever since. I have published under the aliases:
ZBlackUnicorn, but also as:
BlackUnicorn,
EbonyUnicorn
But, I have been the
fursona alias
BlackUniGryphon © TM since about 2002.
(
My resume include work on productions for HBO Family, PBS Kids, NOGIN, NICK JR., and Top Cow/Image Comics.)
In
1997 I helped moderate a Yahoo! group about Unicorns, and eventually
had my own E-Group which
ALSO got bought out by Yahoo! and merged them with Yahoo!
Back then, everyone liked me, because I was very knowledgeable, and also very friendly. It was a culture of sharing, which today, in many ways has become almost illegal in some ways. But, when it came to mythology, folklore, fantasy, I had done so much research in that.
And,
I and the other moderators, webmasters, and webrings' masters kept getting frustrated that people KEPT thinking that an "Alicorn" was somehow a unicorn with wings!
The reason was, because they had also thought that, and had learned it from the internet, like bulletin boards.
But, I did the
real research and debunked it. Then, they all checked it themselves as well. So, we all agreed.
An "alicorn" is NOT a Winged Unicorn!
Simple as THAT!
An "alicorn" is actually what the horn of a unicorn is called!
We would even write things to correct this error to inform people, but by the time websites had gone up by the end of the 1990s that allowed people to publish art, such as Elfwood (Scandinavian), DeviantArt.com, and/or many other which have come and gone, all the artists whom had learned this false meme either from the internet, or from people those whom had learned it from the internet and
told them we couldn't correct the error. people just already believed it.
And, people STILL think that "alicorn" means a winged unicorn!
IT DOES NOT!
If you believe that: YOU ARE WRONG!
If you teach people that: YOU ARE WRONG!
STOP DOING IT!
The word itself dates back to Medieval times, when people in Europe had a trade market for the tusks of
narwhal whales (sometimes carved & hollowed elephant tusks). They told people that they were
the horns of unicorns, and that they had magical, divine, medicinal powers, could heal the sick, transmute poison, detect poison, purify water, and so on. This was also taught by the Church which was controlling their entire cultures.
To this day, people still believe this EXACT idea about the magical powers of Rhinoceros horns, and elephants tusks, because of the same myth about unicorns.
The
alicorns (
which were usually either a narwhal whale tusk, or a carved elephant tusk) were also have said to have
a special stone at the base of the skull of the unicorn which was like a ruby, which also
had some type of magical power. Back then, unicorns were also seen as a symbol of Jesus Christ, and that is WHY the
alicorns were so sought after & valuable. Whole kingdoms have been purchased for just 1 or 2 of them, and were more valued than gold or silver. Unicorns were believed to be divine beings.
If you would like to read an ACTUAL BOOK with an ACTUAL BIBLIOGRAPHY that includes ACTUAL sources that you can cross reference, if you care to get your duff out of the armchair research, like net wikis, you can check a NONFICTION research book:
The Truth About Unicorns by James Cross Giblin
It was meticulously researched, by a real person whom went through ancient records. (
But, many of the Chinese parts are translated incorrectly in English. That's a whole other topic.)
There are probably MANY other similar books like this one, nonfiction, etc.
I would know, because when I was a kid, I used to do real actual research, in things called
LIBRARIES with a
Dewey Decimal System card catalog! (If u don't know what that is, I feel sad for you. Really I do.) But, they are not all in print anymore. So, your best bet is searching a library.
James Cross Giblin is a hard guy to get contact info on him, so if you would like to talk to him directly, and ask him whatever, you would need to access him through his publishers. I have found a hard time trying to find any direct e-mail address contact information on him at all.
So, where exactly did this whole idea that an Alicorn was a unicorn with wings come from?
Well, I do know that it was spread back on the internet in the 1990s, but where did it start from to get on the internet that way?
Well, some people point to novels by
Piers Anthony dating back to the 1980s. (I cannot confirm that at this time.)
In case you didn't know, Piers Anthony writes SciFi/Fantasy hybrid Pornographic novels.
Now, if he is the original source of this idea, then HE BASICALLY MADE IT UP! It does NOT come from any actual historical folklore at all. In fact, if he DID make it up, he (or his publishers) could have copyrighted or Trademarked it.
But, I wouldn't know.
As for another misconception also dating back to the 1980s, is that a horse with wings is called a "pegasus" and also in plural as "pegasuses" or "pegasi" or other variations of .
That's NOT TECHNICALLY TRUE EITHER!
Pegasus is a proper noun because it's a NAME! (with a capitol "P")
(Πήγασος, Pégasos, Latin Pegasus)
He was a PERSON! Not just any person, a god! (with a little "g" not a big "G")
But, yes, he WAS born as a white horse with wings, and his brother looked like human being, yet he himself didn't.
Pegasus' father was The Sea god, Poseidon, and his mother was The Gorgon, Medusa.
So, what is a Unicorn with wings?
It's just either a winged unicorn, or a flying unicorn. That's it!
Don't believe me?
GO LOOK IT UP! BECAUSE I DID SEVERAL TIMES IN MY LIFE SINCE I WAS A CHILD!
