No mythic origin narrative is preserved in the surviving sources. Cocidius is known from Romano-British epigraphic and iconographic evidence: dedications and inscriptions (c. 25 or so) and at least nine figure/relief representations clustered along the western portion of Hadrian's Wall and in nearby Cumbria. The Roman practice of interpretatio (equating local gods with Roman counterparts) attached the functions of Mars (war, hunting) and Silvanus (forests, groves) to Cocidius, and a Ravenna Cosmography place-name Fanocodi has been derived from Fanum Cocidii (temple of Cocidius), identified with Bewcastle, indicating a localized temple site and landscape sacrality rather than a pan-British origin myth.
Representations vary but share martial and locus-specific attributes. A 2006 carving near Chesters Fort (the so-called 'little man') shows a figure with arms flung wide, legs braced, a shield in the left hand, a sword in the right, and a scabbard at the belt. A Yardhope bas-relief depicts a figure brandishing spear and shield on a vertical rock-face at the entrance to a small shrine. Around nine such figural representations are known in the Hadrian's Wall corridor, and inscriptions across the region name the deity. An etymological proposal links the name to British Celtic cocco- 'red' (Rivet and Smith), and one discovered figure from the Otterburn Training Area is colloquially known as 'the Red One'—a hypothesis that statues or figures may once have been painted red is suggested by scholarship but not directly proven by the archaeological record provided here.
No explicit mythic powers or narrated deeds are recorded in the surviving sources. Functional attributes are inferred from Roman interpretatio and dedicatory contexts: association with Mars implies martial and hunting functions (patronage sought by soldiers and hunters), while equation with Silvanus and an epithet linking him to the alder tree (Cocidius Vernostonus) imply guardianship over woods, groves, and particular landscape features. Dedicatory evidence by lower-ranked Roman soldiers and Britons indicates he served as a local protector or genius loci for communities and military personnel in frontier zones.
Arnemetia
Arnemetia is a local Romano-British goddess attested by a shrine name at Aquae Arnemetiae (modern Buxton, Derbyshire). Her name links her to a sacred grove (nemeton) and to water, suggesting a place-centered divinity associated with spring(s) and grove cults.
Clíodhna
Clíodhna is a female otherworld figure from Irish myth and Munster folk tradition, portrayed in medieval narrative as a member of the tuatha dé Danann and later as the queen of the sióga/banshees of South Munster (Desmond). She is associated with healing birds, enchanted gifts (notably three birds and an emerald cup in the Book of Lismore), place‑names in County Cork, and a range of narratives in which she aids, loves, and sometimes harms mortals.
Clṻd
Clṻd (reconstructed Brittonic: Clṻd / Clọ:tā; Latin: Clōta) is a hypothesised, place-bound river-goddess inferred for the River Clyde basin. The figure is a scholarly reconstruction from hydronymy, regional archaeology (notably a 1967 tricephalic statue near the Clyde), and the widespread Celtic pattern of female water-deities; direct evidence of cult or rites is not preserved in the cited sources.
Cnossia
Cnossia is a minor female figure in Greek mythic genealogies, identified in surviving secondary references as either a nymph or a slave associated with King Menelaus of Sparta and named as the mother of his son Xenodamus. Her name links her to the city of Cnossus (Knossos) on Crete, but no independent narratives or cultic roles are attested in the available sources.
Coatlicue
Coatlicue (Cōātlīcue) is an Aztec (Mexica) earth-and-mother deity identified in modern sources as the mother who gave birth to the moon, the stars, and Huītzilōpōchtli; she is also associated with maternal and mortuary aspects through identification with titles such as Toci and Cihuacōātl.
Coblyn (coblynau / coblynod)
A small, mine-associated Welsh spirit (plural coblynau or coblynod) that inhabits mines and quarries. Coblynau make peculiar knocking sounds used by miners to locate rich veins, imitate miners' work ineffectually while dressed in miner-like clothes, are generally considered helpful and lucky, but withdraw assistance if miners act greedily or are disrespectful.
Coblynau
Coblynau (singular coblyn) are small gnome-like mine and quarry spirits from Welsh folklore. They are reported in folkloric summaries as haunting underground workings, making knocking sounds, and—according to some miners' tales—occasionally indicating locations of ore or riches.
Cocijo
Cocijo is the Zapotec rain, thunder and lightning deity and the personified sacred force of storms and fertility in pre‑Columbian Oaxaca. The Zapotec word cocijo means "lightning" and names both the meteorological phenomenon and this primary divine figure, who is credited in Zapotec tradition with creative acts and who received ritual offerings including bloodletting and human sacrifice.
Cockatrice
A medieval and early-modern Western legendary hybrid beast, typically described as a two‑legged serpent- or dragon‑bodied creature with the head and some features of a rooster; famed in bestiary tradition and later literature for a lethal gaze/touch and for arising from an unnaturally incubated rooster's egg.
Coel Hen
Coel Hen (Old Welsh: Coil, "Coel the Old") is a legendary ancestral-king and eponymous founder in medieval Welsh and Brittonic tradition, placed by genealogies in the Hen Ogledd (the Old North) in the late Roman / early post‑Roman period. He appears at the head of multiple royal pedigrees as progenitor of the Coeling and is later conflated in twelfth‑century pseudo‑histories with a Colchester/Helena strand linking him to Roman narratives.
Coeus
Coeus (Greek: Κοῖος, Koîos) is one of the primordial Titans in Greek mythic genealogy, a child of Uranus and Gaia. He is mainly preserved as a genealogical figure — father of Leto and Asteria — and is otherwise an obscure member of the pre‑Olympian divine generation who was overthrown in the Titanomachy.
Cofgod
An Old English term attested as a gloss for the Roman penates, used to denote a household god or domestic spirit in Anglo-Saxon context. The concept is fragmentarily attested and reconstructed largely by analogy with Roman Penates and later household spirits such as kobolds, hobs, and brownies.
Community Record
- [1]Cocidius — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Cocidius' (entry as provided in research notes).wiki
- [2]Wikidata entry for Cocidius (Pauly-Wissowa reference). Wikidata Q51264203 pointing to an encyclopedic article in Pauly-Wissowa (referenced in supplied notes).other
- [3]Archive: A Collection of Occult Books (catalog entry). Archive.org listing referenced in supplied research notes (no ritual details on Cocidius extracted).other