Basilisk and cockatrice

The “little king” of serpents, which ancient and medieval writers said could kill with its breath or its look, and the cockatrice, its medieval double, a two-legged dragon with a cock’s head.

Mythical creatures of Greece and Europe. Also called basilisk, basilisk meaning, basilisk mythology, cockatrice, regulus.

Meaning

The basilisk began as a small snake. Pliny describes it as no more than twelve fingers long, from the province of Cyrene, with a white mark on its head like a diadem; its name is Greek for “little king”, and Dictionary.com says it was named for that crown-like spot. Its breath withered plants and split stones, and the medieval Aberdeen Bestiary adds that it “will even kill a man just by looking at him”. In the Middle Ages the basilisk merged with the cockatrice, a monster hatched from a cock’s egg, and heraldry drew the cockatrice as the Wyvern with a cock’s head, comb and wattles, as in our drawing.

Origin and history

For Pliny the basilisk’s power was its poison: other snakes fled from its hiss, and its touch and breath killed grass and shrubs. It had one enemy, the weasel, whose smell killed it, and Pliny says the weasel was thrown into the basilisk’s hole. The Aberdeen Bestiary, made in England about 1200, keeps the weasel, “For the Creator has made nothing without a remedy”, and gives the basilisk the killing look.

The cockatrice brought the cock into it. John Vinycomb gives its origin as an egg of a cock hatched by a serpent; A. C. Fox-Davies repeats the version of “ancient writers”, an egg laid by a nine-year-old cock and hatched by a toad on a dunghill, and suspects it was only a way of expressing loathing. The English Bible that Vinycomb quotes has the cockatrice too: “The weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den” (Isaiah 11:8). Vinycomb adds the later belief that a basilisk shown its own reflection would burst with horror.

Cockatrice and basilisk in heraldry

The two heraldry writers disagree. Fox-Davies says the cockatrice is sometimes called a basilisk, and that the heraldic basilisk is supposed to have a dragon’s head at the end of its tail, but “In English heraldry, at any rate, I know of no such example.” Vinycomb, three years earlier, describes the basilisk or amphysian cockatrice with that second head and gives arms that bear it, those of Langley of Rathorpe Hall in Yorkshire. Both agree that the cockatrice is a Wyvern with a cock’s head.

Sources

Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.33 (tr. Bostock and Riley), Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, translated by John Bostock and H. T. Riley (1855), book VIII, chapter 33, Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Book VIII, chapter 33
Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 66r (University of Aberdeen), Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24, England, c. 1200), folio 66r, “Dragon, cont. The Basilisk”, transcription and translation, University of Aberdeen, Of the basilisk
Aberdeen Bestiary, folio 66v (University of Aberdeen), Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library MS 24, England, c. 1200), folio 66v, “Basilisk, cont.”, transcription and translation, University of Aberdeen, Basilisk, continued
A Complete Guide to Heraldry (A. C. Fox-Davies, 1909), Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, A Complete Guide to Heraldry (London: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1909), Project Gutenberg, chapter XIV, The Cockatrice, pp. 226–227
Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art (John Vinycomb, 1906), John Vinycomb, Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art, with Special Reference to Their Use in British Heraldry (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906), Project Gutenberg, The Cockatrice; Basilisk, or Amphysian Cockatrice, pp. 104–108
Basilisk (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com, “Basilisk” (Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary), Dictionary.com, entry and origin

The same shape elsewhere

Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

Added October 10, 2026.

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