Leopards physically resemble jaguars although they are smaller and their spots are really spots, not rosettes. Like jaguars, there are two varieties: golden with black spots and pure black. A pure black leopard would be almost impossible to see at night without illumination, except for its burning, glowing eyes. Author Bruce Chatwin posits that it’s the leopard who lurks as the primordial human fear, the animal power who once scared us most.
Images dating from c. 5700 BCE from Anatolia show goddesses riding leopards. Leopards are integral to the myth of the Anatolian deity, Kybele, the Mountain Mother. Leopards raised her when she was an infant left exposed to die in the forest. Suckled on leopard’s milk, she grew up to be the first root-worker and witch, a queen and great goddess. Leopards flank her throne. (See DIVINE WITCH: Kybele.)
The leopard was sacred to Dionysus, Kybele’s sometime compatriot. Dionysus appears in the form of a leopard; panthers draw his chariot and appear in his entourage. As the word “panther” was also used as a synonym for Dionysus’ female followers, the Maenads—it’s tempting to wonder whether those panthers in his midst were intended to imply women transformed into huge black cats.
Leopards are associated with royalty throughout Africa. Many royal clans count leopards as their primeval ancestors. In some regions, wearing a leopard skin was reserved exclusively for royalty or for the most elite spiritual societies. Artifacts recovered from Tutankhamun’s grave show King Tut riding on the back of a panther. Leopards are also considered ancestors and spiritual sponsors of various African shamanic societies. Leopards were identified with Kenya’s Mau-Mau. Belief that the Mau-Mau could transform into leopard-men contributed to their fearsome reputation.
In Mali, the Bamana/Bambara witch-goddess Muso Koroni manifests as a black panther or as a many-breasted woman. (Some believe that the many-breasted deity from Anatolian Ephesus, commonly identified as either Artemis or Diana, is really that other leopard woman, Kybele.) Muso Koroni oversees initiations: it was believed that she stimulates menstruation by scratching girls with her leopard’s claws. A nocturnal spirit, like a leopard, she rules the boundaries between civilization and wilderness, straddling the balance between chaos and order.
See CREATIVE ARTS: Films: Cat People; DICTIONARY: Maenad; DIVINE WITCH: Dionysus; Muso Koroni.
Magpies
The magpie is large, curious, active bird with a harsh call and a swaggering walk. It originally inhabited scrublands, forests, and other areas with dense foliage but it is now adapted to other areas, including urban habitats. Omnivorous, it eats pretty much whatever it can find: insects, seeds, fruit, small mammals, or carrion. It is a very clever bird and has a reputation for stealing and hoarding shiny objects.
Magpies inhabit North America, Europe, Northwestern Africa, the Middle East, Central and East Asia. Virtually wherever they are found, they are associated with witchcraft either as familiars or, more frequently, as the form into which witches transform. One Russian nickname for witch is “soroka-veschchitsa,” “magpie-witch.”
Magpies are members of the corvid family like jackdaws, crows, and ravens, but they have their own section here for two reasons:
Magpies were understood as a different type of bird. The other three very closely resemble each other in color (solid black) and nature. Magpies are dramatically black and white, although depending upon the light their black feathers may appear blue, green or purple.
Magpies possess very different magical and mythical associations, often specifically identified with romantic and women’s magic.
Magpies are associated with female power, romantic magic, and prophesy. In Macbeth, Shakespeare notes that magpies were used as augurs. Russian folk belief suggests that magpies announce storms. People who live near magpies will notice that the birds often announce the arrival of visitors or other changes.
Scottish, Swedish, and Russian witches commonly take the form of magpies. Latvian witches allegedly adopt the form especially for Midsummer’s Eve. Siberian witches can allegedly transform into any type of bird or animal they wish to: magpies are their most common choice.
Various legends describe Russian magpiewitches. According to one, Ivan the Terrible gathered together all the witches he could find in order to burn them, but before he could, they transformed into magpies and flew away. According to another legend, there are no magpies in Moscow because church leader Metropolitan Alexei, recognizing them for what they truly were, forbade them to fly over the city. The seventeenth-century usurper of the Russian throne, known as the False Dmitrii, had an unpopular Polish wife widely believed to be a sorceress. She allegedly escaped from Moscow by flying away as a magpie. Magpies were also occasionally burned as witches in Russia, or hung onto peasant barns as a warning to witches.
Not all magpie-witches are living transformed witches. One story suggests that murdered witches reincarnate as magpies. They are true birds but their souls remain those of witches. It’s necessary to be kind and respectful to them, some even suggest saluting them, because otherwise they’ll cast a spell on you.
In Russia and elsewhere in Europe, magpies became identified with Satan. In England, they’re known as the devil’s own bird. In Russia, flocks of magpies are associated with Satan, betraying subtle identification of witches with diabolical forces.
Chinese mythology has happier associations. Magpies form the bridge that, one day a year, permits the sacred Weaving Maiden to be reunited with her beloved husband, the Cowherd. In Chinese the epithet “Heavenly Woman” is shared by celestial goddesses and magpies, which may be goddesses in disguise.
Nahual, Nahualli, Naualli, Nagual
Deriving from the Nahuatl (Aztec) language, the word “nahual” indicates different concepts in different regions of Mexico, all having to do with animal alliances. Because the same word is used to describe these linked but different concepts confusion exists. The word is also pronounced slightly differently depending upon region; attempts to transliterate the word into English have resulted in a variety of spellings. None of them is wrong.
Nahual has been translated as “shadow soul,” a human soul’s animal twin. It’s also translated as “mask” or “disguise.” The nahual is an animal ally, although the meaning is more profound than standard modern usage where animal ally may refer to a friend, companion or animal. The relationship is deeper: the nahual may be understood as one’s animal soul. It may or may not refer to a specific individual animal.
Souls and identities of humans and nahuals are bound together; they share each other’s destinies. This is a very shamanic concept, and it exists in Eastern Hemisphere magic, too, or at least once did. In Hungarian witchcraft-trials, cats, dogs, hens, and frogs are perceived as doubles or second bodies of witches.
There are various definitions of nahual.
The nahual is a person who can transform, a shape-shifting witch or sorcerer. These practices were a major concern for Colonial priests in Mexico. In 1600, Fray Juan Bautista warned of native sorcerers who transformed into chickens, dogs, jaguars, owls, and weasels. The seventeenth-century priest Ruiz de Alarcón mentions specific cases and explains the power as deriving from Satanic compact. (The Spanish Inquisition was in full swing in the Western Hemisphere.) However, the concept is of indigenous origin. Satan didn’t exist in the Western Hemisphere before priests brought him.
The Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, the divine sorcerer, was believed able to transform into a jaguar. Nahuals tend to possess specific forms; in other words not every nahual transforms into the same shapes. Not limited to animals, some nahuals may also be able to transform into natural forces, like lightning or (especially) whirlwinds. Some nahuals (this human kind) can also allegedly become invisible and thus transport themselves secretly from place to place.
Nahuals were feared and respected for their power. Although the stereotype, as filtered through the Inquisition, identifies them as malevolent independent practitioner sorcerers, they also served as protectors of their communities. During the Colonial Era, nahuals lead native resistance, which may explain some of the colonizers’ hostility toward them.
Secondly, the nahual may be the animal part of this dyad. Every human being has a nahual. You have a nahual but if you don’t know its form, then you’re only half a person, not operating at your full capacity. Under the Aztec Empire, a priest presided over a ritual on the fourth day following birth to determine a baby’s nahual and bind the relationship. This nahual serves as the person’s guide and protector, offering various psychic gifts and magical or physical powers. Each type of animal is capable of offering different gifts. Every Aztec deity had a nahual. If you share a nahual form with a deity, you share a bond with that deity, too.
If you didn’t receive your nahual as a child, it’s never too late. Another Aztec method is a do-it-yourself ritual:
1 Go into the woods alone and go to sleep.
2 Your nahual will either appear in your dreams or you will be confronted by your nahual when you awake.
3 Once the nahual is identified, you are obliged to enter into a life-long contract with it.
Furthermore, in Toltec and Mixtec traditions, the nahual is an individual’s totem or fateguardian, or perhaps the personification of one’s deepest psyche. Nahual also names the reciprocal relationship between a person and their animal double.
In Oaxaca, the traditional concept is related but subtly different. Naguals, as the word is most frequently spelled there, are a form of animal ally. Every one has one; their identity is disclosed via ritual. At its most superficial level, the nagual serves as a magical assistant, it can help you accomplish your life’s goals if you know how to work with it. However, the nagual may also be understood as a person’s other half; they mirror each other or share a soul, or perhaps the animal is the person’s second soul. Lives of human and animal are bound up together. They’re not identical, not interchangeable, one is not merely the transformed shape of the other but should one die, the other one will too.
No need for a priest here: parents usually determine a nagual’s identity shortly after a child’s birth. Identification of the nagual reveals crucial information about the child’s nature and required upbringing, not to mention taboos, which are very easy to break if you don’t know about them. There are various slightly different methods of determining a nagual. Here’s one:
1 Sprinkle ashes outside the place where a baby was born.
2 The first animal footprint captured by the ashes identifies the nagual and sometimes the baby’s name.
Owls
“Strega,” “strix,” “estrie”: these terms are synonyms for “witch,” although literally what they mean is “owl.” Owls were witches’ familiars from ancient Egypt, Rome, and Asia to modern Africa and Native America, with many stops in between. They represent divine yin: night, darkness, magic, and sacred lunar and feminine mysteries.
Owls are associated with wisdom, both conventional and secret, witchcraft, magic, sex, death, and birth. In the Eastern Hemisphere, owls were understood as emblematic of the uterus and as embodying the Great Mother’s power over life and death. Owls are sponsors of shamanism. They bestow gifts of clairvoyance and teach the arts of astral projection. They serve as guides to the realms of the spirits and the dead because, of course, owls can navigate the darkness.
There are approximately 135 living species in the order Strigiformes, varying in size from the six-inch elf owl to the three-foot long Great Gray Owl. Owls have a very distinctive shape. Only their silhouette may be required for identification. Compared to other birds, owls are fairly odd looking, resembling cats with wings. (If seated silently on a tree branch, it may be hard to immediately distinguish an owl from a cat, especially from a distance and in the dark.)
Their eyes are circular, evoking the full moon’s shape and glow. Some owls are even horned, or at least they appear to be.
Owls announce the night like crows herald the day. No bird or animal is more associated with night than owls.
Owls made a very early impression on people: in Les Trois Frères cave in France, home of the “Dancing Sorcerer,” an unmistakable outline of a pair of snowy owls together with their chicks is chipped from the rock face. Paleolithic “Eye-Goddesses” may represent stylized owls.
“Striges” was the Roman name for witch, typically understood malevolently. Owls were perceived as harbingers of doom, trouble, and death—in short bad news; however the Romans also had tremendous issues with women’s power. By the classical period, women were essentially property belonging to men: their husbands, fathers or brothers. Those women who rebelled, for instance those who joined the Bacchanalia, were punished. It was not a culture innately sympathetic to women’s sexual autonomy or to their sacred arts.
Strix came to be understood as a specific kind of witch: grotesque, sexually voracious, baby killing, female cannibals—all the negative stereotypes that still exist. This isn’t an integral part of the word’s meaning, however. Strix and its linguistic derivatives may also be understood to denote witchcraft’s positive attributes: knowledge of Earth’s powers, the ability to journey between realms, and acquisition of great wisdom, especially of crucial, secret topics.
Various sacred female spirits are profoundly identified with owls:
Owls are sacred to Athena. The small screech owl is her emblem and Homer describes Athena as “owlfaced.” It was popularly believed that Athena appeared on the battlefield as an owl during a Greek battle with the Persians.
Owls are identified with the Semitic wind spirit Lilith, whose name is cognate with “screech owl.” (There are those who deny that she appears in the Old Testament because the only clear reference to her may also be understood to literally mean “screech owl.”) Unlike most other formerly prominent Middle Eastern deities, Lilith, identified as Earth’s real first woman, survived to star in worldwide Jewish folklore, where she serves as the prototype of the witch.
Blodeuwedd, the Welsh magical woman, is formed from flowers. Since she is a magical being, she is immortal and cannot be punished by death for betraying and killing her husband Lleu; instead she is transformed into an owl, condemned to hunt alone at night for ever. The implication is that Blodeuwedd, as the embodiment of the lustful, fickle, secretive, plotting, murderous woman now displays her true form—that of a witch.
Owls fly with Tlazolteotl, Aztec witch-goddess with dominion over life, death, magic, and spiritual purification. Tlazolteotl cleans up sin like owls gobble up rats.
