About the illustrations

The illustrations are AI-generated

Every illustration on this site was produced with an image model. There is no folk art here, no museum photography and no scanned plates. Each image page says so, with the date the picture was made and its licence.

How they are made

Each illustration is generated from a written description, and each one carries a note of what that description was based on — a named tale, a collection, a documented practice. Where a detail does not come from a source, the caption says so.

What we do not illustrate

The kapre is not drawn as a figure. Its name comes from Arabic kāfir by way of Spanish cafre, the word Spanish colonisers used for the Negrito peoples of the Philippines, and its other name agtà is also a name for the Aeta. The scholarship traces the modern characterisation to racially prejudiced colonial portrayals. The illustrations show what the folklore dwells on — the cigar ember in the canopy, the fireflies, the tree — and not a body.

The tiyanak is not drawn as an infant, in either of its forms.

Licence

Illustrations are published under CC BY-NC 4.0.

Teachers and students: use them. Copy them, put them on handouts, slides and worksheets, adapt them, print them. You do not need to ask and you do not need to pay. Attribution is appreciated — oldbelief.com is enough.

Commercial use is reserved. Selling them, or including them in something sold, needs permission. Ask and we will probably say yes.

One request the licence does not cover: keep the note of what each picture was based on. An image of Baba Yaga with a fence of skulls means something different once separated from the line saying the fence belongs to one tale.

Corrections

If an illustration misrepresents a source, or a caption claims more than the sources support, tell us and we will fix it.