The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World

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:

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.”)

Since at least the time of Aristotle, cats have been used to symbolize lasciviousness and sexual insatiability, in folklore as well as an artistic device. Cats are affiliated with sexually autonomous female deities like Bastet, Diana, Freya, Hathor, Hecate, Kybele, and Lilith.

During the Witchcraze, women were accused of being sexually insatiable. Because mortal men lacked the capacity to satisfy them, these women craved Satan’s charms, taking demonic lovers who often manifested in the form of black tom cats—or at least that’s the witch-hunter’s version. By the eighteenth century, “cat” had become slang for a prostitute, hence the “cat house.”

Cats’ associations with sex have deeper implications: cats possess lush fertility. Felis, the scientific name for cats, derives its origin from the Latin root fe, “to bear young.” Other words deriving from this source are feline, fecund and fetus. Cats, like frogs, are often considered weather harbingers, announcing the start of the fertilizing rain. Jewelry in the form of images of a mother cat surrounded by a large litter of kittens was a popular fertility charm in ancient Egypt.

The earliest indication of intimate relations between people and cats derives from a recently discovered (2004) burial in Cyprus, dating back approximately 9500 years ago. A carefully buried cat was discovered inches from a human burial, which also contained jewelry, polished stones, shells, and tools. The cat’s bones were arranged to parallel that of the human and displayed no signs of butchering. It appears to have been a beloved companion animal. Cats are not native to Cyprus and so it is believed to have been imported (although cats are notorious stowaways on ships).

General wisdom suggests that cats were first domesticated in Egypt (although Libya or Nubia are alternative suggestions), where domestic cats were bred at least four thousand years ago. (However, because of that recently discovered burial, dates are being retabulated backwards.) Ancient Egypt certainly provides the first written records of cats, the clearest evidence of domestic cats and the closest identification with deification of cats.

As Egyptian culture became increasingly agrarian, stored grain attracted mice and other vermin, who, in their turn, attracted cats, who very quickly demonstrated their usefulness to people. Cats became sacred guardians of the grain. (See ERGOT.)

The most famous sacred Egyptian cat is Bastet, whose titles included Mistress of the Oracle and Great Conjuress of the Casket. She is depicted as a cat, often bejeweled, or as a woman with a cat’s head, sometimes surrounded by kittens. Bastet has dominion over sex, fertility, marriage, magic, music, childbirth, prosperity, joy, dance, and healing—in short the pleasures of life. She provides humans with a range of protections: against infertility, the dangers of childbirth, evil spirits, illness and bodily injuries, especially those caused by venomous creatures. A tomb inscription says Bastet bestows “life, prosperity and health every day and long life and beautiful old age.”

Bastet offers special protection to women and children and serves as matron of magicians and healers. Her cult originated in the swamps of the Nile Delta. The earliest known portrait of Bastet dates to c. 3000 BCE. She was a pervasive figure in Egypt from about 2000 BCE, and by about 950 BCE, her cult was found throughout Egypt; she was the most popular female deity in the kingdom. Worship of Bastet reached its zenith during the reign of Osorkon II (874–853) when a major temple was erected at her cult city Bubastis. Devotion to Bastet officially survived until 30 BCE and the Roman conquest.

Bastet’s annual festival in Bubastis was Egypt’s most popular festival. An ancestor of today’s Mardi Gras, the festival was renowned for its parties, revelry, and drunkenness. Herodotus, the Greek traveler and historian writing in the fifth century BCE, claimed that more wine was consumed in Egypt during this festival than during the entire remainder of the year. Although many details have been lost, Bastet’s festival celebrated female sexuality and generative power. Boats sailed up the Nile headed for Bubastis. As a barge approached towns and settlements on its way to the festival, it would halt and the mainly female celebrants on board would loudly hail the local women congregating on the riverbanks. They would shout sexual obscenities to each other, dance wildly, and perform ana-suromai, the ritual act of lifting up the skirts to expose the vulva, associated with laughter, healing, and defiance of grief.

Bastet, daughter of the sun, is a solar spirit, associated with the life-giving warmth of the sun. (Her sister Sekhmet, a lioness, represents the sun’s scorching, destructive potential.) Bastet possesses lunar associations as well. She is the mother of the moon. Her son Khonsu was reputedly able to impregnate women with his moonbeams. (That belief survives in the superstition against single women sleeping exposed to moonlight.)

The Greek biographer Plutarch, writing in the first century CE, suggested that one of the reasons Egyptians worshipped cats is that cats’ nocturnal habits reveal powerful lunar affiliations. Cats’ eyes also appear to grow in size and luminosity in harmony with the moon’s waxing. The ancient Egyptian cat was not exclusively a sacred temple animal but was also a family pet or domestic animal, a bit of holiness in one’s own home. Although Egypt had many sacred animals, no others lived so intimately with so many people. (Compare and contrast other sacred creatures, like baboons or crocodiles, which by necessity were kept at a distance.) Familiarity didn’t breed contempt, however: even a house cat maintained its mysterious, sacred nature. Herodotus reports that anyone convicted of intentionally killing a sacred animal was sentenced to death, and to varying extents all cats were sacred. Four hundred years later, the Sicilian historian Diodorus Siculus (born c. 100 BCE) witnessed an incident where a Roman official accidentally killed a cat and was promptly lynched by a mob. Although the fact that he was a Roman official suggests that the cat may have been the last straw in a deadly dynamic, Diodorus suggests that the situation wasn’t uncommon and that most such deaths occurred as spontaneous lynchings by enraged mobs before the person could be legally tried and judged. When a pet cat died, it was customary for the human family with whom it lived to shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning and respect.

Wide distribution of the domestic cat occurred only after the Egyptian kingdom lost its independence to Rome. Even then, for centuries, domestic cats remained rare throughout Europe. (Ferrets were used to eliminate vermin prior to introduction of cats.) Not until the fourth century of the Common Era were domestic cats widely distributed in Italy. As domestic cats gradually dispersed, their identification with the mysteries of ancient Egypt traveled with them, leading to associations with magic, witchcraft, and women’s sexual, lunar and reproductive secrets.

Although domestic cats were rare in Europe, uncommon in the British Isles, for instance, even into the tenth century, wild forest cats were common. Although wild cats can cross-breed with domestic cats, they are larger and typically possess different natures: fierce, wary, and solitary rather than sweet and cuddly. Vestiges of wild, fierce Celtic cat goddesses may survive in the witch-hags who frequently transform into cats, as for instance, Black Annis.

Cats have potent associations with yet another powerful female deity—Freya—Norse Lady of love, romance, sex, fertility, childbirth, shamanism, enchantments, witchcraft, and death. An oracular, sexually autonomous spirit, Freya typically manifests as a breath-takingly beautiful, golden woman: her chariot is drawn by her familiars, two huge gray cats named Bee Gold (honey) and Tree Gold (amber), who embody Freya’s twin qualities of ferociousness and fecundity. Cats are Freya’s sacred animals; a traditional method of petitioning or pleasing the goddess was to offer pans of milk to cats, an old Norse country custom that survived. To be kind to a cat is to entreat Freya’s blessings and to remain in her good graces.

Eventually cats would be tortured and killed specifically because of their associations with Freya. After the introduction of Christianity, Freya’s devotees did not abandon her easily or willingly, and she became among the most demonized of spirits, coming to embody the stereotype of the seductive witch. Cats shared Freya’s demonization. (See DIVINE WITCH: Freya.)

By the Middle Ages, cats had become so identified with witchcraft that in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued a decree, understood by many scholars as the official start of the Witchcraze, denouncing cats and their owners. Any cat in the company of a woman could be assumed to be a familiar. If one can assume the cat is a familiar, what might one assume about the woman?

Pope Innocent commanded that when a witch was burned, her cats were to be burned with her. He decreed that all European cat-worshippers be burned as witches. (This was in response to a strong revival of devotion to Freya in fifteenth-century Germany.) He authorized the killing of cats even without an accompanying witch. A vicious cycle emerged: the destruction of European cats is believed to have encouraged the proliferation of rodents, which in turn encouraged the spread of deadly disease, blamed on witchcraft and heresy, which in turn led to fear, panic, and more killing of cats.

Folklorist Jacob Grimm, of the Brothers Grimm, suggests in his book Teutonic Mythology that the sinister aspect of the cat derives from Freya’s dual role, not only as a spirit of love and fertility but also as a death-spirit. As leader of the Valkyries, female warrior spirits who helped select the dead, Freya had dibs on half the fallen on a battlefield, the other half belonging to Odin.

The degradation and destruction of cats parallels that of women and their increasing loss of autonomy. Women, however, might engage in subterfuge or adjust their personalities and lifestyles in attempts to be beyond suspicion; the inherent nature and habits of cats betrayed them. Their nocturnal lives, their desire to prowl free at night, “singing” at the moon, their passionate sexuality, all now doomed them to associations with the devil and/or witchcraft. Instead of worship and respect, cats were feared and avoided at best.