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A natural death
Bats figure prominently in African folklore. In East Africa, bats are witches’ mounts. In the Ivory Coast, bats represent souls of the departed, while in Madagascar, bats aren’t just any old souls but those of criminals, sorcerers, and the unburied dead.
Bats have powerful associations with death and ghosts. A hoodoo charm to stop ghostly harassment displays African magical roots: Should you feel that ghost’s unwanted presence, toss one single black cat hair, obtained without harming the cat, over your left shoulder saying, “Skit, scat! Become a bat!”
Rather than inspiring avoidance, associations of bats with witches and magic inspired the use of whole bat corpses and various anatomical parts (hearts, wings, blood) to be featured prominently in magic spells.
References to bat’s wings in magic spells may refer to holly leaves, which may always be substituted
Bat nuts (dried ling nuts), which if held from one angle resemble bats, may be substituted for bats in any spell
Similar to bat’s wings as code for holly leaves, “bat’s blood” may have been a euphemism for another magical ingredient, perhaps a resin. At some point, people did use real bat’s blood as ink. However, since the 1920s commercially marketed Bat’s Blood Ink is scented red ink.
Perhaps because bats were understood to be transformed witches they have also been used to protect from malevolent witchcraft. A particularly unpleasant English custom involved nailing a live bat above the doorway to ward off witches, perhaps akin to the American rancher’s practice of posting dead coyotes or wolves to warn others away.
Negative associations have taken a deadly toll: many species of bats are extremely endangered due to loss of their habitat and because people have perceived them as vermin fit for extermination. This terribly upsets the balance of nature: bats are genuine fertility figures, responsible for the pollination of many plant species, particularly in the desert. Without the bat, these botanical species cannot multiply. Bats are also responsible for insect-control: one bat can gobble up as many as 600 mosquitoes in one hour.
Modern witchcraft practices suggest that maintaining a bat house (similar to a bird house) on your property will bring joy and good luck.
Bears
Bears are conspicuous in witchcraft lore by their very absence. They are the creatures so sacred that many fear to mention their name.
This is no exaggeration. Bears are the animals of shamanism par excellence. Throughout Northern lands, whether North America, Europe or Asia, bears are the original sacred animal, sponsors and symbols of shamanic healing societies. They are the teachers and perhaps originators of shamanism. Because bears dig in the Earth, they are also understood as the original root-workers and possess profound connections with healing, herbalism, and root magic. Bears are simultaneously sacred and dangerous creatures, benevolent and frightening, possessing powers too strong for the uninitiated to withstand.
Shamanic religion is often synonymous with bear religion. In traditional shamanic cultures, bears were worshipped and venerated. These bear cultures (some survive; there once were many, ranging across the entire far Northern hemisphere) typically never utter the name “bear”: that would be like taking the Lord’s name in vain or maybe like not calling the devil so that he won’t come. Euphemisms are substituted: “Big Brother,” “Old Honey Thief,” and the like. (In a similar manner, ancient Greeks never mentioned the name of the Lord of the Dead; Hades, which names his realm and Pluto, meaning “The Rich One,” are both euphemisms.)
Bear religion is among Earth’s original religions. Fairly soon after people began worshipping mothers, they began worshipping bears, too. Sometimes both were worshipped simultaneously. Paleolithic goddess statuettes depict huge mother bears nursing petite human infants.
Bears possess a great resemblance to humans. They stand upright and eat a similar diet. In a Native American story, a boy abandoned in the woods far from other people discovers that out of all the forest animals, the only animal that he as a human can live with comfortably is the bear.
Ursus spelaeus, the cave bear, appeared on Earth approximately 300,000 years ago and was physically very similar to the modern brown (grizzly) bear. Other than slight anatomical differences, the major distinction was size: cave bears were huge, weighing up to one ton. They were perhaps 30 percent taller than brown bears.
Cave bears hibernated, unsurprisingly, in caves, where they also gave birth and frequently died, leaving their skeletons behind. Remains have been found throughout the European mountain chains (Alps, Ardennes, Carpathians and Urals). The bones of at least 30,000 cave bears formed a deep layer of bone in the Dragon Cave near Mixnitz, Austria.
Not all bones were left as they fell. Among the very first indications of human spiritual traditions are ancient cave bear shrines. In Alpine grottoes dating to c.100,000 BCE, cave bear skulls are marked with red ochre and then carefully arranged alongside ritual hearths. Bear skulls were also arranged on stone slabs and placed in wall niches. The caves contain altars, flagstone flooring, benches, and tables. This is literally Neanderthal religion; Neanderthal people built these shrines.
Bear religion didn’t end with the Neanderthals; similar traditions still exist amongst some tribal peoples. Nor were these caves restricted to the Alps. In one bear cave discovered in south-western France, one crawls on hands and knees through a long, dark, narrow passage leading to a cul-de-sac where a bear’s skeleton awaits.
Vestiges of the sacred nature of bears survive in place names, like Berne, Switzerland, city of the bears. Europe is now largely devoid of bears. They have lost virtually all of their former territory in North America as well. There is a mistaken belief that no bears ever existed in Africa. This is true south of the Sahara, however Atlas bears once ranged from Morocco to Libya; the last Atlas bear is believed to have been shot in 1840 in the Tetuan Mountains. Bears of one type or another are indigenous to all continents except Australia and Antarctica. (Koala bears are not true bears.) A healthy adult bear has no enemies other than people. Wherever bears survive, they are endangered because of loss of habitat and because they have been exterminated as a competitive species and for sport and museum collections. Because various parts of bears’ bodies are valued in East Asian medicine, poachers place a high price on bears even though this hunting is largely illegal.
The ancient Norse associated bears with the shaman god Odin. Warriors who fought under his protection were known as “berserkers” (berserk means bear shirt). They fought naked but for bear skins, ritually channeling bear power—temporarily incorporating the bear’s spirit—in order to become fierce, formidable, and virtually unbeatable, striking terror into their opponents as they went berserk. (In a sense, they become temporary were-bears; their comrades, also under Odin’s protection, were wolf warriors.)
Bear-centered spirituality survives wherever traditional Northern shamanism survives, particularly among Native Americans. Native American bear doctors and bear societies still exist. Among the few explicit linkages of bears to witchcraft occurs in the Ojibwa tradition of bear-walking, a form of shape-shifting sorcery.
Bears were sacred in warmer climates, too. The Greek goddess Artemis’s name may derive from her affiliation with bears, which were among her most sacred animals and sometime her alter-ego. Her young temple priestesses were known as “bears.”
The few references to bears in European fairy tales usually tell of men doomed to wear the bear’s form because of unhappy encounters with witches, as in Snow White and Rose Red and some versions of East of the Sun, West of the Moon. These stories read negatively if one assumes that transformation into a bear’s shape is negative; reading between the lines, if one understands wearing the bear’s skin as a secret reference to shamanism, different conclusions can be drawn.
See DIVINE WITCH: Artemis; Odin.
Caprimulgids: Nightjars, Nighthawks, and Frogmouths
The nocturnal birds known as nighthawks are neither hawks nor owls; instead they are caprimulgids or “goatsuckers.” The Caprimulgiformes are an avian order numbering 91 species including nightjars, nighthawks, frogmouths, goatsuckers, and whippoorwills. They live in Africa, Australia, the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Alongside the better-known owls and corvids, these are the birds most intensely identified with witchcraft.
Owls are their nearest relatives and it’s believed that owls and nightjars, the lay term most frequently used to encompass this avian family, share descent from a common ancestor, perhaps not more than 100 million years ago.
Long-winged, long-tailed birds with relatively big eyes, they are characterized by some unique features:
They possess enormous mouths fringed with bristles that prevent the escape of insects, their main food.
They have proportionately short legs and weak feet, unsuitable for walking, unlike corvids which spend a lot of time hopping on the ground. Nightjars are adapted for a life spent mainly in the air.
They have loud, distinctive voices.
Nightjars roost motionless in trees or on the ground during day. As their plumage is dull brown or gray, they are easily camouflaged; thus their loud cry can come as a sudden surprise. They are rarely observed during the day but are more readily seen at twilight or night. Shadowy and mysterious, they have long been associated with witchcraft and magic. Nightjar blood is an ingredient in ancient Egyptian magic spells. Nightjars and their relatives are also associated with prophecy, death, and the devil.
Their gaping fringed mouths are unique for birds and lead to comparisons with the female genitalia, sometimes even with the dread vagina dentata. Whether these associations are perceived as affirmations of fertility power or as diabolical embarrassments depend upon the eye of the beholder.
Nightjar is an English word; in German they’re known as hexe (witch). Considering that caprimulgids are harmless, insect-eating birds, they possess a fearsome reputation as vampires and are the subject of various superstitions. This vampiric reputation dates back at least to Aristotle. Nightjars are believed to suck blood or milk from animals—hence their family name, “goatsuckers.” (They don’t.) One theory suggests that because they forage for insects, nightjars often linger around livestock, especially goats. If for any reason an animal was bleeding, or a nanny goat’s milk was dripping and a largemouthed, eerie-voiced nightjar was discovered nearby, conclusions might be drawn and the nightjar blamed.
During the witch-hunt era, goats were identified as emblems of Satan who allegedly gave witches imps that they suckled on their own milk. With a name like “goatsucker,” the inference is clear; how could these birds not be associated with witchcraft and the devil? As example of their reputation, a species of nightjar from Sulawesi is actually named the diabolical nightjar (Eurostopodus diabolicus).
Yoruba witches fly around at night in the form of nightjars, sucking victims’ blood, while the Tukana Indians of South America believe that dead souls transform into nightjars and suck blood and vitality vampirically from the living.
Cats
Traditional depictions of the Roman goddess of Liberty show her holding a cup in one hand, a broken scepter in the other and with a cat lying at her feet. The cat, that animal which famously does not come when called, has long been an emblem of independence—and of free, independent, autonomous women.
Historically, attitudes toward cats parallel those toward women: when women have been respected and honored, their psychic gifts cherished, cats are beloved, sometimes deified; when women are perceived as dangerous and perverse, cats have been degraded and demonized. When women’s knowledge is particularly respected, cats are venerated; when women’s knowledge is particularly feared, cats are tortured and killed.
As we begin the twenty-first century, no other animal in the Western world is as identified with witchcraft as the domestic cat, particularly black cats. Black cats are sometimes used as short-hand to represent witches: a common Halloween image depicts a black kitten emerging from a cauldron or peaked hat. It’s not even necessary to see the witch; the kitty’s presence is sufficient for witchcraft to be evoked.
Cats are beautiful, intelligent creatures that cannot be ruled. It is not that they are intentionally disobedient (well, not usually; although as most cat owners will acknowledge, there is the occasional knowing spiteful act), but that the entire concept of obedience is foreign to their nature. Cats perform various services for humans, not least gracing us with their beauty, but only on their own terms; they can only be enticed, not commanded.
Cats epitomize the pleasure principle: sensuous creatures, they crave warmth, fine foods, soft fabrics, the choice seat in the house. Nocturnal, independent and mysterious, cats come and go as they please. Don’t be fooled: although domestic creatures, cats are never entirely tame.
They have profound associations with sex. It’s no coincidence that “pussy,” the common nickname for cats, is also a common nickname for the female genitalia. (The word “puss” may actually originally derive from “lepus” or rabbit, another animal profoundly associated with sex and witchcraft.)
Both male and female cats have reputations as lusty, prodigiously sexual creatures. Female cats will take one lover after another, as will the males. (To accuse a man of “tom-catting around” suggests he may not be a prime candidate for “til death do us part.”)
