The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World
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It’s difficult to understand weasels’ habits unless you understand weasels. They may as well be poster animals for what was once labeled hyperactivity. Weasels and ferrets in action resemble the cartoon character, “the Tasmanian devil.” Smart, fun, dizzyingly fast, they never stop moving, bouncing, playing—or at least not until they pass out from exhaustion, only to jump back into action as soon as they are refreshed. Not only their bodies but their minds are constantly working. Lively, joyous, curious, not shy: they are extremely fun animals to watch and play with, but they can be dangerous pets. With very low thresholds of boredom, their minds must be constantly engaged. Unlike many cats, dogs, or even snakes and rabbits, ferrets cannot be left alone to sleep or wait for the fun to begin. Left to their own devices, they will escape from any cage and cause havoc in their wake in their desire for fun, adventure, and stimulation.
Weasels possess an extremely high metabolic rate; they need small amounts of food protein more frequently than slower, more sedate, less active creatures. For these tiny creatures, even a few bites are sufficient. Squirrels cache their nuts, leopards store their meat, but this isn’t the nature of the speedy little weasel. It doesn’t think about what’s been left behind but searches for something new. When it’s hungry, it kills again. It may lap blood from its victim’s throat for a quick burst of energy, lending it its reputation as a vampire. (This nature is common to weasels, polecats, and ferrets.)
Despite its name, the European ferret is originally native to the Middle East and North Africa and was domesticated there several thousand years ago. Ferrets are also commonly called polecats, indicating the confusion between cats and weasels. Once upon a time, the classification of species was based on observation, not genetics. Cats and ferrets were perceived as being closely related, although that’s not scientifically true. The same name, “catta,” was used to indicate both ferrets and cats. In old writings, it’s difficult to determine to which the word refers. To add to the confusion, there are wild species known as polecats that are also identified as popular witches’ familiars. These polecats dwell in woods, swamps and marshes, making dens in stream banks or under tree roots.
Ferrets originally played roles not dissimilar from pet cats. Long before cats became common in Europe, ferrets were used to keep homes and storehouses safe from mice, rats, and other vermin. Weasels were famously used as ratcatchers in ancient Rome.
In some places, ferrets are third in popularity as pets, following only dogs and cats. However, there is a reason cats, once they were well distributed geographically, drastically overtook the role once played by ferrets. Adult ferrets behave like crazed kittens. The phrase “curiosity killed the cat” probably applies to ferrets more than it does to felines. With more curiosity than common sense, ferrets get into a lot of trouble. They must be supervised: they get into holes in the walls, behind household appliances; every year ferrets are killed when they sneakily climb inside pullout sofas and are then accidentally crushed.
Weasels are associated with knowledge: they can’t get enough, even when it isn’t beneficial to them. They possess an unstoppable urge to know. This concept survives in the English language when we say someone “weaseled” or “ferreted out” information.
Mythologically speaking, weasels are associated with magic, witchcraft, prophesy, sex, reproduction, death, battle, and healing:
In the North American Pacific Northwest, the mink (a form of weasel) is the embodiment of the cultural trickster hero. He prepares Earth for human habitation. Mink differs from other trickster heroes like Coyote, Raven or Rabbit because of his suave, amorous, untiring nature; he is the lover-boy supreme!
In Apuleius’ tale The Golden Ass, a man is paid to guard a corpse from Thessalian witches. The witch ultimately approaches, stealthily and successfully, in the form of a weasel. She gets what she wants and simultaneously manages to play an enormous trick on the hero of the story, too. (See CREATIVE ARTS: Literature: The Golden Ass.)
According to Greek myth, Hera sought to prevent or at least painfully delay Hercules’ mother, Alcmene, from giving birth to him. Depending on the version told, she posted either a childbirth deity or a pack of witches before Alcmene’s birth chamber with instructions to delay her at all cost. Seven days of hard labor later, Alcmene was in agony and near death. The plot was finally foiled by Alcmene’s devoted servant, Galanthis, who stopped the jinx with a trick. In the midst of all the angst and misery, in the presence of the goddess or witches, Galanthis laughed with gusto. Her laughter broke the spell; they assumed Alcmene had given birth and ceased their spell-work. Hera punished Galanthis by transforming her into a weasel, as a rebuke for trickery and too much cleverness. Weasel-shaped Galanthis ran off to the midwife-witch goddess Hecate, who offered admiration and respect for Galanthis’ ability to provide successful, safe delivery despite formidable odds. Hecate adopted the weasel as her sacred servant.
Flies
Flies play various roles in witchcraft: as witches’ familiars; as witches’ weapons; as the vehicle for the shaman’s wandering soul. Flies were anciently associated with the mysteries of birth and death. Once upon a time, especially in the Middle East, flies were understood as souls of the dead searching for new incarnations. Souls were believed able to travel between lives in insect form. The Philistine deity Baal-Zebub, an aspect of the masculine fertility spirit Baal, is Lord of the Flies, the Shepherd of Souls. He would eventually become demonized and transformed into Beelzebub, a synonym for Satan.
Flies also represent the shaman’s journeying soul, whether literally or figuratively. Flies were envisioned as flying in and out of the entranced shaman’s open mouth. Should the fly be unable to return, the soul might be stuck in limbo, the shaman forever unable to awaken from the trance.
Flies may also be spirits in disguise and not particularly nice ones either. According to Arabic legend, King Solomon once transformed a mass of malevolent djinn into flies, imprisoning three million of them within a black glass bottle, which was then hidden inside a well near Babylon. Centuries later, local people searching for treasure came upon the bottle and broke it, releasing the flies/djinn, who were free but, unable to break Solomon’s transformation spell, were more spiteful and malevolent than ever.
Flies serve as witches’ familiars, especially in Scandinavia. Flies journey out to do the witch’s bidding (not always malevolent) and scout out information. Those imprisoned on accusations of witchcraft were often inadvertently betrayed by flies or other insects. Although they might emphatically deny the charges, even under torture, witch-hunters would claim that the presence of persistent, hovering flies was proof that the person had a familiar and was thus a witch. Of course, considering the standards of sanitation and cleanliness in a medieval prison, plus the presence of blood and pus from untreated, infected wounds incurred during torture, how could there not be flies?
Sometimes accused witches died before they could be executed, acquitted or otherwise released, whether because of suicide, miscalculated torture or deliberate murder. Because witch trials were legal proceedings, none of those scenarios was officially acceptable. The truth of the situation was often hushed up by blaming it on the flies; allegedly Beelzebub had sent emissaries in the form of flies to help the witches “escape” judgment.
Flies are often perceived negatively within traditional witchcraft.
Foxes
Foxes are intensely identified with witchcraft in East Asia, and most profoundly in Japan where they are the witchcraft animal supreme. Foxowning is a specific form of witchcraft, unique to Japan.
The fox’s role in witchcraft may derive from its ancient importance in Japanese spirituality. Inari is the ancient but still immensely popular Shinto spirit of rice, food, and nourishment. Inari brings prosperity, fertility, and abundance and has shrines in every Japanese farming village. The fox is Inari’s sacred animal, messenger and, sometimes, alter ego. Stone or wooden foxes are always found in front of Inari’s shrines. The fox and Inari merge to form one being: the question of which came first, the fox or the human shape, is irrelevant. They are parallel forms of the sacred being.
You’ll notice I haven’t used either “he” or “she” to refer to Inari; that’s because Inari’s gender(s) remains subject of debate. Today Inari is most commonly depicted as a bearded man carrying bundles of rice, however Inari also manifests as a beautiful woman or as a female fox. Inari’s female manifestation is believed to be older, predating the introduction of Buddhism into Japan. There is much debate in spiritual and academic communities as to whether Inari has always possessed both male and female manifestations or whether the original, primal spirit was female but over time, for socio-political and religious reasons, the male form became preferable and more common.
Inari in her feminine aspect is also intensely involved with sex, fertility, reproduction, and the magical arts, not only agricultural abundance. Similar but exclusively female fox spirits possessing strong ties to magic and witchcraft exist in China, India, and Tibet.
Once upon a time, Japanese fox spirits were protectors, teachers, and sponsors of witchcraft. Even now some fox spirits are saintly and helpful. (And the foxes that serve as Inari’s messengers are miracle workers, understood as sacred and godly.) However, as centuries passed, attitudes towards witchcraft became more ambivalent, and fox spirits became feared. Why?
Fox spirits are held responsible for illness and misfortune. They possess victims, similar to possession by demons, dybbuks or zar spirits. (This isn’t ritual possession or channeling; it’s involuntary and unpleasant—see MAGICAL ARTS: Ritual Possession.) Sometimes full possession (spiritual takeover) results; sometimes only individual symptoms of possession. Symptoms of fox possession include hearing voices, insatiable and indiscriminate appetite, nocturnal feelings of suffocation plus increasing facial resemblance to a fox: The person begins to develop a visible “snout.”
Eventually the fox may push the true individual out, taking over body, soul, and personality, either full-time or just intermittently. The fox spirit speaks through the person’s mouth, often indulging in obscenities, frequently sexual, which the person would normally never use. (See CREATIVE ARTS: Dance: Tarantella.)
Specific individuals and families are believed to control fox spirits. The solitary fox-owner is most frequently believed to be a corrupt and degenerate sorcerer or exorcist, the proverbial shaman-gone-bad. Although fox familiars are disproportionately female, those humans who put them to evil use are usually male.
Although most fox spirits are perceived as greedy or power-hungry, spiritual motivation may exist as well; what the fox spirit may really desire is a shrine and daily offerings. The only way for them to make their desire known is through a human mouth, similar to African zar spirits.
Solitary sorcerers dispatch foxes to carry out nefarious deeds. The old extortion racket may be at play: what seems like a perfectly respectable exorcist who specializes in ridding people of fox-spirit possession may actually be the source of that possession, the one who sent the fox. No wonder he can exorcise the spirit: the fox is his familiar who always does his bidding. Fox spirits may also be rented out to others for a fee, to perform their secret, dirty work as well. (Fox spirits tend to run in packs. As opposed to the concept of one familiar per person, the fox-owner may have a large number of fox spirits to work with. Seventy-five is a typical number, although there may be less. Foxes in the wild do not run in packs incidentally, being relatively solitary creatures.)
Fox spirits are fed daily; in return the familiar performs various magical services on the person’s behalf. It is a mutually beneficial relationship although neighbors may see the fox-owner as threatening and possessing unfair advantages.
Fox spirits run in families. Families who are hereditary owners of foxes typically transmit this hereditary power through the female line. For centuries tremendous fear and social stigma have been attached to families rumored to be fox-owners. Not only is it hereditary, fox-owning may be contagious too. One becomes contaminated (at least by the social stigma) by living in a house formerly occupied by a fox-owner or by possessing his or her property. Contamination may be avoided by avoiding the fox family: don’t visit them, don’t socialize with them, don’t engage in any financial transactions with them, don’t be friends with them (but don’t offend them either; you don’t want them coming after you), and don’t marry into their family—most especially don’t marry their women.
Japan has never had European-style witch-hunts; few witches have been killed. Instead their punishment is intense social ostracism. Occasionally ostracism has evolved into violence: houses burned down as retribution and/or entire families banished.
This isn’t ancient history: in 1952 a young couple committed suicide together because the woman came from a family with a reputation for fox-owning and the man’s family forbade their marriage. Because fox power is transmitted through the female line, they feared its impact (perhaps magically but certainly socially) on their family.
Just like real foxes are believed to surreptitiously raid chicken coops, fox spirits are believed to rob the neighbors. (Fox-owners are believed to gain wealth at the expense of others. To become suddenly, mysteriously wealthy is to leave oneself open to accusations of malevolent witchcraft—particularly if anyone else in the area is simultaneously suffering misfortune.)
In China, fox spirits retain their positive identity. Among their primary roles is the protection of archivists and librarians. Should a document be lost, missing or otherwise unable to be located, offerings are made to the fox spirit. After the offering is made, the archivist leaves the room for a little while to give the spirit space and opportunity to work its magic. Upon his return, the document, book or scroll should stick out or somehow draw attention to itself.
Despite the ostracism, you’d like a fox familiar. If you’re not from a family associated with them, where do you begin?
How does one obtain a fox familiar? A late seventeenth-century work contains an account of the Izuna Rite, the magical ritual by which people gain power over fox familiars:
1 Find a pregnant fox.
2 Feed her, care for her, form an alliance with her during her pregnancy but especially afterwards when she’s needy and vulnerable.
3 YOU CANNOT TAKE A CUB, NO MATTER WHAT. This isn’t “fluffybunny” magic; I’m not making this up. This is what the seventeenth-century text instructs. If you are meant to have a fox familiar, when the cubs are sufficiently grown, the mother will bring you one and tell you to name it.
4 Name the fox but keep the name secret. Henceforth, if you call the name, the fox will come to you in invisible form. No one else will be able to see the fox spirit, only you. Nothing is ever entirely hidden, however, so be prepared for others to attribute supernatural powers to you.
Frogs and Toads
Frogs and their land counterparts, toads, are probably the most ancient and universal fertility symbols. The toad represented the uterus for the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Scandinavians. It is a fertility symbol throughout the Semitic world. Some theorize that this association was made because of the appearance of frogs prior to the flooding of rivers, an important herald of fruitfulness in desert lands.
Frogs seemed to call the rain or maybe to announce it. Frogs herald the start of the rainy season in Puerto Rico, too. Here on the other side of the world, years before Columbus, they became the ancient Taino emblem of fertility. Frogs represented fertility to the Aztecs and Mayans and to various indigenous cultures of North and South America. The Aymara of Bolivia and Peru traditionally placed small frog images on hill tops to magically call down rain when it was needed.
Frogs are related to human reproductive issues throughout East Asia. In China, frogs exemplify maximum yin, the ultimate feminine force. There’s no man in the moon, according to Chinese folklore; only a woman, a rabbit, and a frog—each one symbolic of intense yin forces as is the moon herself.
Frogs and toads are amphibians: they begin their lives as water creatures (tadpoles) but eventually shape-shift into land dwellers. According to estimates there are at least 4,360 species of frogs (including toads) worldwide. Frogs are found on every continent except Antarctica.
Maybe people perceived the link between frogs and fertility because, although they need to await proper conditions, when the frog finally does give birth, the tadpoles are so numerous. The tadpole is the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the number 100,000. Frogs appeared in great numbers during the annual Nile floods; they were harbingers of abundance and prosperity.
Maybe the shape of the tadpole and its watery environment were reminiscent of the human embryo. Modern people see a resemblance between the form of a tadpole and the shape of a sperm. Rationales are fascinating but ultimately tell us more about people than about frogs. What is significant is that very early in the development of human cultures and thought, the frog and the toad became symbols of birth and the entire regenerative process.
Eventually, the frog became a Halloween animal—a representation of the witch. This is for a reason: in Europe, frogs represented midwives. In the way that a barber’s pole advises you that haircuts are available, the frog was the midwife’s advertisement: “I can help you have a safe and easy birth.” When midwives became denigrated as witches, the frog was condemned as her familiar, her telltale sign.
Frogs represented the force that initiates life to the Egyptians, symbolic of the sacred powers of fertility, regeneration, and rebirth. In one Egyptian creation story, the world is formed from primordial chaos by the collective efforts of four frogs and four snakes. Heket may be the most ancient of Egypt’s many deities. Controller of human fecundity, the consort of the spirit of the Nile, she was revered as the “Giver of Life, Goddess of Primordial Waters” and as “the great magician.” Her hieroglyphic symbol was the frog. Heket could manifest purely in frog shape as well as a woman with a frog’s head. (Whether Egyptian Heket is or isn’t identical to Anatolian Hecate remains subject to fierce debate.)
Not all frogs are female: ancient Celts called frogs “Lords of the Earth,” identifying them with healing waters and sacred wells. Vestiges of these royal frogs linger in European fairy tales, like “The Frog Prince,” where enchanted frogs lurk in magical wells awaiting transformation into fabulous princes by true love’s kiss. Because toad venom may be hallucinogenic, frogs and toads are also associated with shamanism and divination.
Although most ancient associations with frogs and toads were positive, it wasn’t always the case: Zoroaster declared that all toads should be exterminated because of their venomous, malevolent nature. This exception to the rule eventually became the general perception in post-Christian Europe. Toads and frogs were perceived variously as slimy or warty, disguised demons or witches’ familiars.
Toads’ associations with magic, fertility, and women’s wisdom never disappeared but they were certainly reinterpreted. From Northern Italy upwards through Germany, Poland, and the Ukraine, toads are named by words that also indicate “fairies,” “witches,” and “sorcerers.” In parts of Italy, for instance, frogs are called “fada” or fairy. “Rospo,” the Italian word for toad, may derive from the Latin “haruspex,” the word used for Etruscan diviners.
By the Middle Ages frogs and toads were considered among witches’ most prevalent familiars. According to Reginald Scot, author of The Discoverie of Witchcraft published in 1584, toads were considered second in popularity only to the cat as a witch’s familiar.
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when the witches say “Paddock calls” they refer to a familiar toad, “paddock” being a diminutive of the Anglo-Saxon word for toad “pad.”
According to testimony given during Basque witch trials (on the French side of the Pyrenees) toads were favored familiars. Great companies of witches allegedly traveled to cemeteries for the purpose of “baptizing” their toads, which were dressed to celebrate in black and red velvet with bells at their neck and feet. One young woman claimed to have seen a noble lady dancing at the Sabbat with four toads: one belled and costumed in velvet riding on her right shoulder, three more naked toads riding on her left shoulder and wrists.
Frogs and toads were perceived as diabolical, disgusting and grotesque. A Swiss woodcut from approximately 1500 depicts a dead witch lying on a table following her dissection. A large toad is shown where her heart should be: this was intended to demonstrate her depraved, inhuman, demonic nature.
Old memories die hard, however; even in post-Christian, post-witchcraze Europe, there was resistance towards abandoning this most potent and ancient of fertility symbols. According to Central European tradition frogs carried dead children’s souls, thus it was unlucky to kill them. A once popular Central European tradition involves offering frog-shaped ex-votos at the Virgin Mary’s shrines as part of a petition for fertility and women’s gynecological health.