The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World
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Perhaps because feral dogs were observed lurking in ancient cemeteries ready to devour offerings and dig up bodies, dogs achieved early identification with death and funerary rites. Dogs also lingered on battlefields where they competed with crows for their share of the dead.
Although everyone dies alone, it was once commonly believed that without a dog’s assistance one would never be able to locate the realm of the dead. This was a widespread concept although how it was interpreted and acted upon varied. In some Central American beliefs, there’s no need to do anything: when one’s soul begins that journey, a dog will be found waiting by a riverbank ready to serve as your guide. Of course, should that spirit-dog not show up for any reason, your soul would wander for ever, never achieving peace. Some cultures refused to take chances: dogs were sacrificed and buried together with a person (or placed on the pyre) so that they might start the journey together. The Aztecs evolved a happier solution: they buried their dead with terracotta dogs who, through ritual and spell-casting, were able to perform this function just as well as flesh and blood dogs.
The ancient Egyptians may not have rigidly distinguished between jackals and dogs: Anubis, Lord of Embalming, Guide to the After-Life, may be understood as either species or both. His color is black, not because it is the color of death but because for the Egyptians it represented regeneration and rebirth. Anubis rules the Dog Star in conjunction with his adopted mother Isis, the first syllable of whose Egyptian name Au Set resembles a dog’s bark: ow, ow, ow!
The Norse Queen of the After-Life, Hel (Christianity borrowed her name for the eternal realm of post-life punishment) has her own companion pack of wolves and dogs that nibble arriving corpses. (Vestiges of the ancient Indo-European custom of offering dogs a bite of the corpse may survive in this legend.) These may be the original hell-hounds who will survive to ride with the Wild Hunt.
Dogs are most profoundly identified with the Eurasian witch goddess Hecate, Queen of the Night, spirit of birth, death, magic, healing, witchcraft, travel, and victory. Hecate guards the threshold between life and death, serving as a psychopomp (one who guides the dead). Hecate also serves as the personal handmaiden of Persephone, Queen of Hades.
Hades is famously guarded by Cerberus, the monstrous three-headed hound of hell. Hecate’s sacred number is three; she is typically depicted with three heads and very frequently assumes the guise of a dog. Cerberus may be Hecate’s pet dog or he may even be Hecate in disguise. Whether Hecate transforms into a dog or is in fact a dog spirit who transforms into other shapes (old crone, seductive beauty, occasionally even a black cat!) is a little like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg. See DIVINE WITCH: Hecate.
Dogs serve as sacred companion animals to many spirits, most having to do with healing, death, war, and protection:
Hecate originated in what is now Turkey. In Sumer, another goddess was intensely linked to dogs: Bau, the daughter of Sirius the Dog Star. Sometimes depicted as dog-headed, it’s tempting to associate her name with “bow-wow.” In her later Babylonian incarnation, Gula Bau, spirit of healing, walks Earth accompanied by her pack of hounds.
Hecate is not the only deity to transform into canine form. The Middle Eastern and North African spirits known as djinn have been known to lurk in the form of dogs, usually loitering in the marketplace just before dawn. In Jewish mystical folklore, Lilith and Asmodeus, respectively Queen and King of Demons, travel incognito disguised as large black hounds.
Black hound is the key: although to some extent all dogs have associations with funeral rites, magical healing, and protection, the dog most powerfully identified with magic, witches, and witchcraft is the black dog, the bigger and blacker the better. (Large black poodles have particularly strong associations, perhaps in honor of magician Cornelius Agrippa’s beloved pet, Monsieur.)
In addition to serving as witches’ familiars, black dogs may be transformed witches or witch goddesses. Nicholas Remy, the merciless witch-trial judge from Lorraine, alleged that women transformed into rabid dogs and wolves.
In witch-crazed Europe, dogs were understood as the devil’s favored companion or maybe even his favorite disguise. According to witch-trial transcripts, Satan routinely appeared at the sabbats he hosted in the shape of a massive black dog.
Dogs are believed to venture out at night to do battle with evil spirits. This is not an untypical international belief: lone dogs at night, particularly large black ones, are understood to either be evil spirits or out battling evil spirits. British folklore is full of stories of spectral black hounds mysteriously appearing to guard, guide, and accompany lone travelers, particularly when venturing through forests. Once the journey is over or safety is reached, the dog vanishes as mysteriously as it arrived.
Donkeys
Once upon a time, as with so many witchcraft animals, the humble donkey was venerated and held sacred. It was no coincidence that Christ chose to ride a donkey on his fateful entry into Jerusalem but fulfillment of prophecy. Dionysus rode a donkey, too. The Greek goddess Hestia has a donkey for a companion (or her consort). The most famous donkey in the Old Testament belonged to the sorcerer-shaman Balaam; it spoke, protested when beaten and was able to see an angel when its master could not.
Donkeys were first domesticated in the Nile Valley in pre-dynastic Egypt. Among their early tasks was helping thresh grain, leading to their close identification with the Corn Mother. This practice would degenerate into base cruelty: donkeys were blindfolded or even blinded so they’d walk in endless circles, turning the mill wheel.
Donkeys were once synonymous with phallic energy and the phallic organ itself, particularly in ancient Egypt, where the phonetic elements for their word for donkey (“a-a”; “hee-haw”?) were represented by the ideogram for donkey and a phallus. The veneration today reserved for the stallion was once given to the donkey. Roman couples carved donkey heads on their beds in hopes of enhancing fertility. Donkeys had close associations with the summer solstice (Midsummer’s Eve), as they were believed to ritually mate at that time, just like people celebrating that fertility festival. Shakespeare’s audience would have understood the reference to the donkey’s head in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In medieval Europe, donkeys became identified with rampant, uncontrolled, sinful lust. They were prominently featured in the Feast of Fools; donkeys were understood to be among the devil’s favorite guises.
The popular festival known as The Feast of the Ass was celebrated in Northern France during the Middle Ages. Held annually on January 14th, it allegedly commemorated the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. A young girl holding a baby was seated astride a donkey and lead through the streets and into the church. It was a raucous, somewhat sacrilegious festival with many elements reminiscent of pagan, fertility, and, specifically, Dionysian rites. The donkey was actually brought into the church where it was given food and drink on a table, similar to a sacrificial offering. The festival concluded with a midnight mass, which the officiating priest ended by braying three times. This feast was suppressed by the Church in the fifteenth century, although it lingered in places for a long time afterwards.
Unlike cats or crows, the donkey’s disreputable and demonic associations pre-date Christianity. Their associations with sex, magic and dangerous, unpredictable deities already lead many to be ambivalent toward them. The donkey was among the Egyptian deity Set’s sacred animals. Despite periods of popularity, Set, Lord of Magic, especially sex magic, was an ambiguous, volatile deity, a disreputable and dangerous god.
The associations between donkeys and Set were strong and images of Set with a donkey’s head were engraved on magical talismanic gems. The Egyptians identified Set as the god of foreigners, most especially their Semitic neighbors. (The invading Hyksos kings, believed to be of Semitic origin, adored Set.) Set was also identified (by the Egyptians) with the god of the Jewish people who even then bore an ancient reputation as powerful magicians. (One of the Jewish god’s names (γah) sounds similar to io, the Coptic word for donkey.)
Dionysus, to whom donkeys are sacred, also became increasingly suspect and disregarded. As the Common Era loomed, there was little room or official sympathy for a wild shamanic god of intoxication, sex, and ecstasy, especially a god who encouraged women to dance wild, free and independent. King Midas was punished with donkey’s ears when he dared to suggest that a satyr was a finer musician than that Hellenic golden boy, Apollo. Satyrs were worshippers of Dionysus and on one level the story may be understood as a rebuke towards Dionysus.
By the dawning of the Common Era, conventional society and religion regarded donkeys poorly. No longer sacred, they were associated with foreigners, practitioners of magic, lechery and uncontrolled sex, and heretical strange religions, symbolic of lust and immorality. To accuse someone of worshipping an ass was considered the ultimate insult. That insult was frequently made:
Hidden within the intended insults, perhaps what authorities were using the donkey to symbolically express was that these varied spiritual traditions were stubbornly persistent and dangerously defiant.
These familiar accusations survived into the Christian era, although accusers and targets changed. Christians, once accused of worshipping donkeys themselves, now accused the Knights Templar of worshipping a mysterious idol named Baphomet. Among the forms suggested for Baphomet was that of a donkey’s head. Witches were accused of adoring Satan in the form of a donkey with huge, erect phallus while engaged in orgies at bacchanalia-like sabbats.
According to folklore, the donkey is the animal into which victims of witchcraft are most likely to find themselves transformed, the most famous example being Lucius Apuleius who was turned into an ass when he tried to steal a sorceress’ magic in the second-century CE book, The Golden Ass.
Familiars
Familiars are witches’ animal friends, partners, and companions. The term “familiar” implies an actual, specific, living animal—unlike the larger term “ally” which is inclusive of spirit animals. In general, familiars are what their name says: familiar. These are the animal companions people keep as pets within their homes.
Do you have a familiar? If you have had an intense emotional bond with a living creature other than a human, then one might say you have had a familiar, whether you work magic with that animal in any capacity or not. The dog who won’t leave your side, the cat who nightly sleeps on your feet, the bird who begins to sing as soon as it catches sight of you: these are all familiars, or at least potentially so. The dog who guards you with his life is as much a familiar as the cat who assists you in magic ritual. Mutual love, loyalty, and devotion define the relationship between familiars and humans. Whether that relationship is also part of a working magical partnership is up to you.
In terms of witchcraft, the familiar is the witch’s partner, assisting her in various magical working including divination and spell-casting. Although any creature could be a familiar, certain animals are considered most likely to become familiars or to be most suitable or powerful, including cats, dogs, ferrets, crows, hedgehogs, toads, snakes, and other animals found within this section of the Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft.
A very high percentage of the animal species considered most likely to be familiars have been identified with the moon, lunar deities, and fertility ever since Neolithic times including cats, frogs and toads, snakes, canines, hedgehogs, and birds.
That defines the identity of the familiar and its role in witchcraft as seen by witches, past and present. However, that definition presupposes that intense emotional and psychic bonds between humans and other living beings are possible and are something positive. That’s a fairly modern viewpoint: one way of looking at familiar-keeping witches of the Middle Ages is that they were way ahead of their time, at least in terms of animals.
Today hardly anyone blinks an eye at people who talk of how much they love their cats, dogs, lizards or other pets. The pet industry is a hugely profitable business: people buy special food and toys for their animals. They spend fortunes to heal their ailing animals. Even today, however, many consider this crazy, and they were in the majority not that long ago.
There are still people who adamantly insist that they would never keep an animal in their house. No need to wonder why. Once upon a time, intense affection and familiarity with another species could get you arrested for witchcraft. Humans were not the only ones killed en masse during the Burning Times: most familiars of convicted witches were burned alive too.
During the Witchcraze, the witches’ viewpoint was not the officially accepted definition of “familiar.” According to the inquisitors, familiars weren’t just plain old animals of whom witches were very fond. Familiars were special gifts from Satan given to witches upon their initiation at sabbats to act as messengers and servants. The familiar’s animal or bird form might only be a satanic illusion; the familiar really being an imp or demon in disguise. Some inquisitors perceived that the familiar wasn’t the witch’s servant but her boss. The familiar gave the witch her orders, which she must then obey for fear of the devil. (See below, Imp.)
According to the witch-hunters’ definition, there was no need for a familiar to be visible or physically present to exist: familiar imps and demons could transform into various shapes or make themselves invisible if they desired. This had tremendous implications. Because some witch-hunters decided that, by definition, witches possessed familiars, a demonic familiar, invisible to everyone but the witch (or the witnesses who testified against her) made it possible for someone with no contact with animals to be convicted of having a familiar. The very fact that no one but the witch’s accusers could see the familiar was offered as the very proof of witchcraft. Of course the witch denied having a demon imp, but what would you expect her to say? She’s a witch.
These various conflicting perceptions are best exemplified by the story of Dr William Harvey and the witch, as told in an anonymous seventeenth-century manuscript. Dr Harvey (1578–1657), the discoverer of the circulation of blood, visited Newmarket with his patron King Charles I. Hearing stories about a local witch, Dr Harvey decided to investigate. He paid a call on the anonymous witch at her home at the edge of Newmarket Heath. Her first instincts were to be wary and secretive but Dr Harvey worked to put her at ease. Engaging her in conversation, he managed to pass himself off as a fellow magical practitioner. Enjoying the company, the witch relaxed. When Dr Harvey asked to see her familiar, she obliged. Putting out a saucer of milk, the witch made some toad-like noises and a toad hopped out from under a chest to lap up the milk.
Dr Harvey gave the woman a shilling and sent her out to buy them some ale. In her absence, he caught and dissected her toad. Imagine someone coming into your home and secretly dissecting your pet. Having dissected the creature, Dr Harvey formed the scientific conclusion that the familiar was not an imp or a demon but was, in fact, really a toad and thus, in his understanding, not truly a familiar.
When the woman returned with the ale and learned what had happened, she was absolutely devastated, screaming and lunging at the doctor. He tried to calm her with gifts and explanations, all to no avail. Eventually he lost patience and identified himself as the king’s physician, telling her that instead of crying for her toad, she should be rejoicing that he wasn’t having her tried for witchcraft. Dr Harvey was an early scientific hero and this story is often understood as a parable recounting an early triumph of science over superstition.
Ferrets (Polecats) and Weasels
Perhaps only hyenas attract the same level of fear and revulsion as weasels. True, many people dislike cats, spiders, wolves, and snakes but that loathing tends to be mingled with grudging admiration. Even people who claim to be all-around animal lovers frequently make an exception for weasels, perceived as disgusting, blood-thirsty, evil creatures with no redeeming features. They might be surprised to know that once upon a time, in some places, weasels were admired, useful, and sacred.
The order Mustelidae encompasses weasels, ferrets, badgers, stoats, polecats, fishers, martens, minks, wolverines, otters, and the most famous member of the family, the skunk. It’s a smelly family; the order’s name derives from its members’ ability to produce must (musk) from their well-developed anal glands.
Mustelidae are a well-distributed family and the identification of weasels with witchcraft occurs throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Weasels and ferrets traditionally serve as witches’ familiars and as a form into which witches commonly change. Weasels are understood as “witch-creatures.” As with hyenas, the comparison isn’t intended to be complimentary toward witches; however, negative feelings towards weasels tend to be based on misinformation, misinterpretation, and untruths.
The Mustelidae family has a lot of members; the names used to refer to various species are frequently used carelessly and interchangeably. Popular understanding of what is a weasel or ferret may not match scientific classification.
Weasels and ferrets are closely related species but they are not identical. Ferrets are exclusively domestic animals; they were domesticated about the same time as cats and were once far more widely distributed as pets. Few people have actually seen a weasel; wild, forest animals, they’re significantly smaller than ferrets. Despite their big reputations, weasels are tiny. Fierce, energetic and truly fearless, they can and will successfully attack creatures many times their size, chickens only one example.
Weasels appear to be magical creatures for a variety of reasons:
What seems to disturb people most, and the reason why ferrets are banned as pets in places like California, is their manner of killing and eating. People perceive that weasels enjoy killing, have fun with it and are needlessly blood-thirsty, leaving devastation in their wake.
There’s a vestige of truth in this observation but it’s also misunderstood and misinterpreted.
As tiny creatures that kill larger animals, of course what they’ve killed is too much for them to eat (and weasels, unlike wolves, are solitary hunters; there’s no group feast) so, typically, a weasel takes a few bites (more likely a few sips of blood) and then moves on. People see weasels as blood-thirsty, vampiric, murderous creatures and dub them “wasteful killers.” (Of course, this is all relative. From a hyena’s perspective, humans must be incredibly wasteful: we don’t grind up bones and eat them, the way they do.)