Hyenas are actually extremely interesting creatures, with unusual social structures and unusual genital structures, too. Females are the dominant gender within hyena society; unlike many species, females are 10 percent larger than males. Hyena females eat first; males wait to eat whatever’s left over. Of course, this was difficult to determine for a long time. Male and female hyena genitals are virtually indistinguishable from each other, at least for human observers. Female spotted hyenas have highly developed, extremely large clitorises with erectile potential. (Subservient female hyenas—not the alphas—are the only creatures who display genital erections as a sign of submission; hyenas greet each other via genital inspection.) They urinate, copulate, and give birth through these clitorises. Scientists who study sex hormones adore hyenas: females have extremely high levels of androgens, traditionally considered the male sex hormone. These androgens are converted to testosterone, of which female hyenas possess a high level, especially when pregnant. A pregnant hyena’s testosterone level may exceed that of the males. (Hyenas are used in animal research to study hormones.)
Hyenas have their own family group, the Hyaenid. Based on fossil evidence there may have once been more than 69 species. Hyenas were once found in Europe as well as African and Asia, where they exist today. However, only four species survive.
Witch hyenas tend to be striped and spotted hyenas, and most especially spotted ones, which are the species commonly known as “laughing hyenas.”
Animals strongly identified with witchcraft tend to be formerly sacred animals who’ve since lost their reputations and are now feared and despised, like witches and the magical arts. Most of these animals have former spiritual affiliations with profound life-and-death topics: sex, birth, and the after-life. Do hyenas have a similar history? It’s hard to tell; very little information is available. All these tales of night-riding come from outsiders, anthropologists, witch-hunters, missionaries, and story-tellers. There are some clues however:
This association of malevolent witchcraft with an animal species characterized by dominant females with visibly large penis-sized clitorises occurs in areas where female genital mutilation (excision of the clitoris) is a traditional practice. The very lack of discussion of hyenas when discussing mythic explanations for female genital excision is revealing. (The most commonly told myth involves removal of termite hills.)
Some African tribes traditionally dispose of their dead by putting the bodies out in the bush for hyenas to eat, something that smacks of sacrifice.
In Harar, Ethiopia, people feed hyenas and encourage scavenging. It’s become an oddity, something for tourists to see, so there’s little serious spiritual discussion of the bonds between Ethiopia’s “hyena men” and the animals they feed, at personal financial sacrifice and in the face of social ostracism.
Hyenas are traditionally believed allied to vultures, scavengers who are also now feared and disliked but who were sacred birds in Egypt and elsewhere. The word for “vulture” in ancient Egyptian was synonymous with “mother.”
Medieval Europeans believed that there was a stone within the hyena’s eye (there isn’t), which, when placed under a person’s tongue, enabled one to foretell the future.
Hyenas are associated with smiths and other artisans, respected, required members of society who are also feared and associated with sorcery, the original professional magicians. These artisans transform raw materials (ore, clay) into practical, beautiful, sometimes spiritual goods. Hyenas are believed able to transform themselves.
Legendary associations of hyenas and witches make for good stories but like the identification of cats with witches during the Burning Times, this is really no laughing matter.
Associations of hyenas with smithcraft and witchcraft are not only folkloric fantasy tales but have had a massive impact on people’s lives, contributing to tragic prejudice. Hyenas are associated with individuals but also with ethnic groups who are thus tarred by associations with malevolent witchcraft. The word “buda” (also spelled “bouda”) indicates “hyena-person.” During the day budas appear to be ordinary people but at night budas either transform into hyenas or they ride on the backs of hyenas in great packs.
Budas and hyenas are believed to possess the Evil Eye, which leaves their victims drained and debilitated. Specific ailments are also associated with the Evil Eye. There’s no obvious physical attack; there may be no contact, however fleeting, with a hyena. This is a spiritual, magical attack.
Traditionally budas are ironworkers and potters. Wherever people fear the buda, there are professional buda experts, similar to European witch-finders. They are engaged to determine the identity of the buda who cast the Evil Eye.
There are various methods of lifting the Evil Eye:a simple case may be cured via incantation, but in persistent cases an expert may be consulted to determine the identity of the buda, which is believed necessary to break the spell. Sometimes the victim is made to identify the buda, even if they claim complete ignorance. The victim, who by definition is already not feeling too well whatever the cause, is interrogated (sometimes harshly, sometimes for hours) until identification of the perpetrator is made.
The victim may be brought before the alleged buda who is forced to spit upon the victim, his saliva believed to vanquish the Evil Eye.
If the expert buda-finder is unable to determine the identity of the buda, the victim’s forehead may be stamped with a hot iron brand. This signature mark will allegedly show up on the face of the guilty buda, too, providing identification. As you can imagine, buda-finders who resort to this tactic frequently are not in high demand.
Goma smoke is another method of stopping and reversing the effects of the Evil Eye. The ability to use fire characterizes the buda (whether smith or potter). So fighting fire with fire, smoke is generated to counteract and eliminate the effects. This is not just any old smoke: goma smoke is produced by burning tires or chicken feces alongside an assortment of woods. It is not fragrant, quite the opposite. On market days when artisans pass through villages, goma is lit as protective fires before residences.
Goma is also used to identify the buda. Perceived victims of the Evil Eye are tortured by being smoked with goma, which has an oppressively foul smell, until they name the perpetrator. Once the perpetrator is named, the guilty party is summoned to face the victim, apologize and remove the Eye. There’s no such thing as inability; if they can’t, it’s perceived that they won’t. An article of the buda’s clothing may be taken (sometimes right off their body) and thrown into the goma fire. The victim inhales smoke rising from the cloth.
The victim has no choice but to identify someone; he or she is not left alone until this is accomplished (and the victim is typically a child). The accused must also participate in the ritual, no matter how absurd or insulting, or risk being killed by a mob.
Although any individuals may be buda, the term buda is most frequently used in Ethiopia to refer to its Jewish community, the Beta Israel, who are simultaneously ethnic, religious, and professional minorities.
Beta Israel men are traditionally smiths, the women potters—transformative professions viewed by the majority Christian society with ambivalence. Tools and handicrafts are vital, needed, and highly valued yet the practice is despised (working the land being perceived as the only respectable, sanctified occupation) and associated with witchcraft—as are the practitioners, to whom supernatural powers are attributed. To be an artisan is demeaning, yet magically powerful. Forbidden to own land, historically the Beta Israel have worked as tenant farmers for Christians, often in share-cropper-like circumstances.
Available information regarding traditional African witchcraft is virtually always filtered through the eyes of anthropologists or missionaries but there are a few important exceptions: Hagar Salamon’s The Hyena People (University of California Press, 1999) contains interviews with people who survived accusations of being budas. And Nega Mezlekia’s Notes from the Hyena’s Belly (St Martin’s Press, 2000), a memoir of the author’s Ethiopian youth, gives a brief but significant explanation from the victim’s perspective.
Imps
Today, should someone suggest that you have an impish smile or impish charm, it’s probably a compliment. Most likely you’re being compared to a charmingly naughty child. Of course, today, should someone call you “little devil” or “little demon” that’s probably a compliment too, not intended to be taken literally or as a threatening, hostile statement.
Perhaps because some people needed to believe that they were inherently superior to animals, many witch-hunters had a hard time fathoming that witches’ familiars, their trusted allies and companions, were really animals. If they had superior powers, they couldn’t be mere animals; they must be little demons or devils in disguise.
Imps were small demons who, commonly disguised as animals, served as witches’ familiars. Because they were supernatural creatures they could be expected to perform services that no true animal ever could, like fly through the air, invisibly cause death and destruction, or mysteriously torment victims of witchcraft. In areas where witchcraft was intensely demonized, it was believed that when a new witch was initiated at her first sabbat, Satan personally gave her an imp, not so much to serve her but to act as her control, ensuring that the witch carried out her assigned quota of nefarious deeds.
Unlike traditional familiars, which behaved like the regular animals that they were, eating and sleeping in the manner appropriate to their species, imps had special needs. Because imps were vampiric, witches were obliged to feed them using their own body fluids, milk if they were mothers, blood if not. (What type of blood imps fed upon is not entirely clear.) Witches were believed to grow an extra nipple just to feed their little imp. The search for supernumerary nipples became a common feature of later witch-trials, although it might be “found” in odd parts of the body and in odd forms.
Should the witch’s own fluids be insufficient, the imp might go and milk neighboring livestock completely dry. These imps would travel in the form of familiar animals like bats, hedgehogs, ferrets or cats leading to strange, implausible fears about certain animals being harmful to cattle. Hedgehogs are still commonly believed to steal cow’s milk, as are bats; of course the old stories never referred to real animals—thefts were caused by supernatural imps in masquerade.
The root concept of the imp may derive from small shape-shifting spirits previously understood as friendly and helpful. Pagan European households, from Italy to Lithuania, once cherished snake-spirit household helpers. Some spirits weren’t exclusively tied to one animal form: Finland’s para, for instance, are domestic spirits known to assume the forms of cats, frogs or snakes. Attached to a person or family, they magically increase supplies of butter, milk, grain, and cash. (In later folklore, para are classified as goblins.)
As the witch-trials faded from memory, the older pagan conception of animal-shaped, mischievous domestic spirits re-emerged. Imps, those little devils, became figures of fun, mischief, and humor, albeit sometimes with a nasty edge. Imps entered the lexicon of Halloween via Victorian postcards, where they are not depicted as animals but as bright red devils, an image borrowed from the Central European “devil,” Krampus, who starred in his own postcard series. This type of imp, fun, lascivious, and joyful, is drawn to perfection in Kipling West’s The Halloween Tarot.
Iynx (Wryneck)
Iynx is the name of a nymph, a bird, and an ancient Greek love charm. The famous charm consists of a miniature spinning wheel to which a wryneck bird is attached. It’s a very primitive device; it could be a child’s handmade toy, except for that poor suffering bird. The wheel is ritually spun, accompanied by incantations to draw and bind a lover. As the spellcaster murmurs and chants, she spins the toy, which makes a humming noise, similar to heavy breathing.
Iynx the nymph was a daughter of Pan and Echo. She invented the device that bears her name as an attempt to get back at Hera who had stolen Echo’s voice. Iynx used the device to force Zeus to fall for Io. Not to be outdone in this witch-war, the furious Hera promptly transformed Iynx into a wryneck.
What does the bird have to do with the charm? Why specifically a wryneck? The Greek word for the wryneck, a species of woodpecker, is iynx, named for its cry. (Allegedly the nymph announces her name so that family and friends will recognize her in her altered state.) The bird gets its English name, “wryneck,” from the characteristic movement of its head. When the wryneck is endangered or otherwise stressed, its defense mechanism is to extend its neck further than one would believe it could, twist it around and simultaneously fluff up its head feathers. With that long neck and puffed-up head, the wryneck resembles a snake—.causing its predators to think twice before attacking, and causing people to draw some other sexually-oriented comparisons.
Not surprisingly, the charm was a woman’s tool; its goal to make the man she desired behave like that wryneck—or at least the appropriate parts of him. (And if he wasn’t easily charmed, he’d be caught like that helpless bird. This isn’t a particularly nice spell—its intent is to assertively bind, rather than sweetly seduce.)
Perhaps wrynecks became scarce, perhaps the inherent cruelty became distasteful, or perhaps it was discovered that the spell worked better without the bird. Eventually the wryneck component was abandoned and the spell cast with only the wheel. Even so, it retained its name. Eventually the name came to refer to any sort of aggressive love spell, and then finally to any sort of malevolent spell, romantic or otherwise. That usage survives in English, albeit with the Latin spelling, “jinx.”
Jaguars
Jaguars are ubiquitously identified with witchcraft, sorcery, magic, and shamanism throughout Central and South America. This reflects indigenous belief, existing long before European contact. (European-styled Latin American witchcraft exists too; the most typical familiars are cats, bats, and black dogs. Of course, black panthers/jaguars may be understood as supernaturally giant black cats.)
In this region, jaguars are simultaneously the most feared and revered of animals, playing a very prominent spiritual and magical role. The jaguar is the largest feline in the Western Hemisphere and is considered the most successful predator. Jaguar imagery pervades Central and South America from the Andes Mountains to the swamps of Eastern Mexico. The animal’s range once extended from Argentina north through the southern United States. The jaguar remains the most powerful jungle predator of Central and Upper South America, although its range has been drastically curtailed because of habitat loss, and also because it has been relentlessly hunted as a competitive species, for sport and for its beautiful fur.
The jaguar embodies Earth’s untamed, primal powers. Solitary, secretive creatures, jaguars are comfortable in all possible realms: they kill monkeys in trees, tap their tails into water to attract fish, jump into water to catch caimans, and hunt all sorts of other creatures on land. Jaguars cross boundaries: they are the biggest, fiercest, smartest, most mysterious animals in the jungle. They are believed to cross boundaries of species as well: many legends tell of liaisons between male jaguars and human women.
In Amazonian mythology, the jaguar is considered the Master of All Animals. Jaguars are often portrayed as the central image in depictions, adored by other animals.
The animal manifests in two varieties. The more common, a golden cat with black spots (really rosettes) bears a very strong resemblance to the leopards of the Eastern Hemisphere. Jaguars may also have black fur. (If one looks closely in the light, the rosettes may still be observed.) Completely black jaguars and leopards are both known as black panthers.
The Mayans associated jaguars with the night sky, especially the black panther. Spotted jaguars symbolize the stars in the night sky. Their golden color represents the sun, while their glowing eyes mirror the moon.
Tezcatlipoca, “Lord of the Smoking Mirror,” Aztec Patron of Sorcerers has a jaguar as his nagual or shadow soul. Jaguars’ shining eyes are identified with mirrors and Tezcatlipoca sometimes travels in the guise of his sacred creature. Among Tezcatlipoca’s many manifestations is one as Tepeyollotli—“the Jaguar Who Lives in the Heart of the Mountain,” Earth’s core. According to Aztec belief, supernal jaguars live in caverns beneath the Earth, occasionally emerging as the need arises. A modern Lacandon Mayan prophecy warns that life as we know it will end when these jaguars emerge from their underground cavern home to devour the sun and moon.
Aztec and Mayan shamans specifically identify themselves with jaguars but the association permeates virtually all shamanic cultures throughout the continent. Shamans dress as jaguars. The Mayan word “balam” signifies both “magician-priest” and “jaguar.” The word for “jaguar” also indicates “shaman” in various unrelated indigenous languages. The jaguar protects and teaches the shaman. Many believe that the shaman actually transforms into a jaguar. Real jaguars are also believed to act as jungle shamans. In some tropical rainforest communities, snakes are believed to serve as these jaguar’s familiars.
Jaguars are also profoundly associated with various Amazonian psychoactive plants including ayahuasca. Jaguar motifs decorate paraphernalia needed for preparing brews and powders from these plants. It’s been suggested that real jaguars may chew hallucinogenic vines twined around jungle trees in the manner that domestic cats sometimes chew grass. Perhaps the jaguar literally taught shamans about these plants. (This may or may not be true but the concept isn’t absurd: reindeer have been known to eat the fungus fly agaric: see BOTANICALS: Amanita Muscaria.)
Amazonian shamans still identify with jaguars. Jaguars remain among the most popular subjects of Mexican mask makers, frequently formed with mirrored eyes.
Leopards
Leopards still roam through parts of Africa and Asia, although their range is seriously curtailed because of habitat loss and hunting. Leopards once lived in Europe as well although they are extinct there now. Large, beautiful, solitary wild cats, leopards are fierce, stealthy, nocturnal hunters who are, in theory at least, not averse to hunting a lone human.
