"Cats are a mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of. It comes no doubt from their being too familiar with warlocks and witches." ~ Sir Walter Scott, Scottish Poet and Novelist
The Black Cat Continued
The Witch: The walk of the cat is almost inaudible. If on a moonless night, one meets a black cat stealthily prowling through the engulfing darkness, it seems almost to incarnate the gloom. The dark side of the moon is personified in a witch (who may be male, but it usually female). There is an archaic myth which gives an account of her origin.
Before all creation, there existed a goddess of darkness called Diana. At the beginning, all things were one in her, as they were in the coiled serpent or cat. She later divided herself into male and female, and into darkness and light. The light half of Diana was her brother, Lucifer. The goddess of darkness loved and desired the god of light, but Lucifer did not want to be possessed by darkness. Although Diana pursued him every night, he repulsed her immodest advances. Diana eventually discovered that Lucifer had a beautiful fairycat which always slept beside him. She persuaded this cat to change places with her one night. From the union of the goddess of darkness with the god of light, there was born a daughter, Aradia. Aradia was named the first of the witches. Diana sent her to the earth to teach human beings the art of witchcraft. That was the beginning of black magic and was taught in the name of Diana, Queen of the Witches, who had changed places with a beautiful fairycat.
Gods of an earlier religion become demons in the cult that supersedes it; thus, with the rise of Christianity, priestesses of the moon goddesses came to be regarded as witches. People who had previously worshipped the fruitful Freya now banished her to the barren mountaintops. They looked upon her divine cats as the demonic steeds which bore the witches aloft. As degenerate survivors of the moon's priestesses, the witches had lunar powers within their control. The moon was believed to have power over the human body and mind, over the fertility of animals and crops, and above all, over weather conditions and the tides.
The cat has become part of sailors' lives at sea. To hear them talk, one would think they were obsessed with cats, for in several languages the word for cat has a nautical connotation.
In English, a small, single-masted boat is known as a
catboat and its rigging is the
catrig. The beam used for carrying the anchor is called the
cathead. Hanging the anchor on the cathead is known as
catting the anchor. There is also a short rope or iron cramp which is called a
catharpin.
Sailors will draw omens from the behavior of their cats. They will see how the cat jumps (meaning which way the wind blows). Mewing or frolicking cats on board are believed to presage a gale. Cat's paw is the name they give to a light breeze which ripples the water during a calm, indicating an approaching squall. In Scotland, a cat scratching table or chair legs is said to be raising wind. In Lapland, people look to their cats for the weather forecast before setting out on a journey.
It is true, of course, that cats are sensitive to changes of atmosphere and become acutely nervous and restless before a storm.
There is a Slavic belief that in thunderstorms cats' bodies are inhabited by devils. At every clap of thunder, the angels pray to God and the devils hidden in cats mock them. It is wise to clear cats out of the house during thunderstorms for, in order to drive the devils out of cats, angels throw down shafts of lightning which could easily set the house on fire.
The nautical cats had a lot to answer for. Although they were only supposed to be ordinary animals who happened to have foreknowledge of bad weather, their owners half believed that they also created it.
In Ireland, as soon as storms began to rise, all available cats were seized and placed under a metal pot, where they were held until they used their power to bring about a calm. Sailors knew that witches often took feline form and as lunar manipulators of the tides and weather, had the power to raise tempestuous seas. Shakespeare refers in The Tempest to:
A witch; and one so strong
She could control the moon - make flows and ebbs.
It was said that information about flows and ebbs could be elicited from cats' eyes, for the slits were vertical at the flood, and horizontal when the tide was ebbing.
There is a seventeenth century print by a Polish engraver which shows witches leaving a Sabbat assembly on their broomsticks, flying off, it is said to raise storms and tempests. A fifteenth century engraving shows a witch stirring up a terrible storm and making a ship founder by emptying her cauldron into the sea. Another depicts a sailor buying winds from a sorcerer. The sorcerer is standing on a rock jutting out into the sea and is carrying a knotted rope. Apparently winds are tied up in the three knots. When the navigator undoes them he may expect, from the first knot, a gentle southwesterly wind; from the second knot, a strong northerly wind; and from the third knot, a roaring tempest.
There is a Scottish legend which tells how a Spanish king sent a war vessel to Mull with instructions to avenge the murder of his daughter by a Scottish witch. The witches of Mull were furious. Taking the shape of cats, they gathered together on the shrouds of the Spanish ship, determined to sink it. The captain, however, knew something of the art of magic and was able to counteract their spells. The witches called on the power of their Highland queen. She instantly appeared on top of the mast in the form of a gigantic black cat. This put an end to the puny efforts of the captain, for the witches' queen had only just begun to chant one of her spells when the vessel sank like a stone to the bottom of the sea.
Witches would sail through or under tempestuous seas in sieves, using their brooms as oars. The sieve was used for divination. It was one of the implements of magic found in any witch's kitchen. It was often depicted on gnostic gems for, before moon worship came to be despised, it was an emblem of Isis, the white goddess of the calm seas.
A legend from the Isle of Skye tells of a married woman who disappeared from home every night. One evening her anxious husband decided to follow her. To his astonishment, he watched his wife transform herself into a sleek, black cat and in the name of the Devil, go to sea in a sieve along with seven other black cats. Horror stricken, the husband invoked the Trinity. This promptly upset the sieve and drowned all the witches.
Yet storm raising cats were not always witches. They were sometimes quite ordinary cats which were used by sorcerers as instruments of black magic. A Scottish sorcerer was seen leaping over hedges and ditches in pursuit of cats. On trial, he stated that Satan needed all the cats that his servants could bring him since he was unable, without their help, to raise storms or wreck ships.
Highland witches could raise a storm by drawing a cat through a fire, and by christening a cat and casting it into the sea. British law courts have recorded many cases where it was claimed that witches were responsible for the destruction of ships. An account of the trial of Agnes Sampson, one of the most famous of Scottish witches, includes a description of such a rite involving a cat.
Agnes was accused of trying to shipwreck King James and Queen Anne on their journey home from Denmark. This ambitious witch was brought to Haliriud-House, before the king's majestie, and sundry other of the nobilitie of Scotland, where she was straytly examined. The court was quite unable to persuade her to confess anything, for she stoode stiffely in the deniall of all that was layde to her charge. Agnes was taken off to prison and tortured until she was prepared to talk. She was then brought again before the king's court. This time she made her confession.
On All Hallows' Eve, she said, she was one of two hundred witches who went to sea in sieves which were stocked with flagons of wine. They drank and made merry, until they came to a kirk in Lowthian. There they disembarked and continued their jollifications, singing and wildly dancing around in circles.
At the time when the king was in Denmark, Agnes, with her same two hundred companions, tooke a cat and christened it, and afterwards bounde to each part of that cat the cheefest parte of a dead man and severall joyntes of his bodie; and in the night following, the saide cat was convayed into the middest of the sea by all those witches, sayling in their riddles or cives. They left the cat near the town of Leith. Then, sure enough, there did arise such a tempest in the sea as a greater hath not bene seene. This resulted in the foundering of a ship making for Leith, which was laden with jewels and riches to be presented to the new Queen of Scotland. Agnes further confessed that the said christened cat was the cause that the kinges majesties shippe, at his comming forth of Denmarke, had a contrarie winde to the rest of his shippes then being in his companie. And she admitted that the king only got home safely because his faith had been stronger than the will of the witches.
As early as the end of the seventh century, English ecclesiastical law was directed against those who, by invoking fiends, caused storms. A hundred years later Charlemagne decreed the death penalty against those who, by means of the Devil, disturbed the air and excited tempests. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII explicitly charged sorcerers with these practices.
It was not only in order to raise tempests, however, that witches turned themselves into cats. The moon is always changing her form. Shape shifting is one of the powers attributed to the devotees of her darker side.
Stories told of women in feline form were accepted in sixteenth century ecclesiastical courts as evidence of witchcraft. Aberdeen witches were accused of having assumed the likeness of cats in order to celebrate their orgies undisturbed around the Fish Cross. Witch cats apparently talked with human voices, but often in an unknown language.
A case reported of a German witch who, sentenced to be burned at the stake, defied the judge, laughed at the executioner and mocked the priest with blasphemies. The wood was set alight, her body was enveloped with smoke and the priest was kneeling in prayer when, with a wild exultant screech, a black cat leaped out of the flames. The witch, disappearing amongst the crowds, had escaped.
Members of a primitive Bengali tribe believe that some women have the power to change their souls into black cats and that any wound or mutilation inflicted on the cats will be suffered by the women. They say that such cats are easily recognized by their peculiar way of mewing.
There are many European stories of witches being identified by wounds inflicted on cats. Typical is the case of a Scottish laird. He noticed his wine was mysteriouly diminishing. Suspecting that his loss was due to witchcraft, he armed himself with a sword one night and descended to the cellars. Immediately he was surrounded by black cats. Laying about him with his sword, he soon cleared the cellar of them all, but not without mutilating one of them. Next day an old woman in the village who had the reputation of being a witch, was found in bed with one of her legs off.
A sixteenth century political writer tells how the witches of Vernon were reputed to assemble in an old ruined castle in the form of black cats. Four foolhardy men arranged to spend the night in the notorious castle. They were assailed on all sides by hundreds of witch cats, who killed one of the men and severely wounded the other three. The men left their mark on the cats and the next day a number of old women in the neighborhood were found bleeding and mutilated in their beds.
There is also the story of a laborer of Strasbourg who found himself in an embarrassing position. He was walking down the main street one night when he was suddenly attacked by three huge cats. Hitting them in self-defense, he wounded them. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested on a charge of maltreating three well-known ladies of the town. He vigorously denied the accusation, but when the ladies in question were medically examined, they were found to be suffering from the wounds he had inflicted on the cats.
Another story tells of a French woman who was cooking an omelet one day when a black cat strolled into her cottage and sat on the hearth. After watching the woman attentively for a few minutes, the cat said, It is done. Turn it over. In her indignation at being ordered about by a cat, the woman flung the half-cooked eggs at its head. Next morning she saw a deep red burn on the cheek of a malicious neighbor.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Basques claimed that witches still appeared in the shape of black cats. They tell how at midnight, a farmer chopped off an ear of a black cat which was bewitching his cattle. Next morning, he found on the ground a woman's ear which, he swore, still had an earring dangling from it.
There were means of dealing with assaulting witch cats in spite of the fact that no bolts or bars excluded them. At the trial of a witch named Isobel Grierson, who was burned at the stake in 1607, she was accused of two offenses. On one occasion, it was declared, she assumed cat form, and accompanied not only by a rabble of cats, but also by the Devil himself in the form of a black man, she broke into the house of Adam Clark. The only details given of what happened is that the black man seized the woman and dragged her down to the ground by her hair. When Isobel made a similar visit to a couple in the same town, the witch cat sprang and landed on the man's wife. This time she was recognized and when called by her name, she immediately vanished. It is also said that if the Devil hears the name of Jesus, he will run away in the form of a black cat.
At the trial of Susanna Martin for witchcraft in 1692, a man testified that, when she had previously been prosecuted in court for being a witch, he had stated that he blieved she was in fact one. She had indignantly shouted threats against him. The following night as he lay in bed, a huge cat appeared at his window, entered and flew at his throat. It lay on his chest for a considerable time, he said, and nearly killed him. When he gathered his wits, he cried out Avoid, thou she-devil, in the name of God the Father and the Holy Ghost! The cat immediately leaped to the floor and flew out the window.
There is the story of the Norwegian mill which had twice been burned to the ground on Whitsun Eve. The third year, a travelling tailor offered to keep watch overnight after hearing of the local suspicions. His method of dealing with witches was to chalk a circle on the floor with the Lord's Prayer written around it. At midnight, a troop of cats crept stealthily in carrying a great pot of pitch. They hung it in the fireplace, lighting logs beneath it. Soon the pitch bubbled and seethed. The cats swung the pot back and forth trying their utmost to overturn it. The tailor, hidden in safety, shouted at the cats. When their leader tried to pull him outside the magic circle, he cut off its paw with his knife. The cats fled, howling into the night. Next morning, the mill was still standing, but the miller's wife was ill in bed, suffering from an amputated hand.
A Scottish witch confessed that when she and others changed themselves into cats and tried to steal into farmhouses at night, they could not get in where the farms were fenced against them by prayer and charms. The power of Christianity does not seem to have been infallible when confronted with witchcraft. A woodcutter of Brittany once saw thirteen cats dancing in sacrilegious glee around a wayside cross. When a charcoal burner in the Black Forest came upon three cats sitting in the moonlight by his kiln, a cord he wore around his neck snapped. The saint's relic it held fell to the ground. When he tried to pick it up, he could not, for his arm hung helplessly by his side.
Some people believed that witches were powerless in the neighborhood of a rowan tree. If one would shake a branch of a rowan, witch cats would vanish.
Little is known of the means by which a woman is transformed into a cat. A Scottish witch on trial said that when the coven she belonged to assembled in their own forms to work evil spells, they were accompanied by the Devil, who turned them into cats by shaking his hands above their heads.
A French witch confessed that she was in the habit of rubbing over her body black ointment, which transformed her into a cat and enabled her to steal unobserved through the darkness.
There is a Greek myth told by Ovid of a woman who was transformed into a cat. This is the story of Galinthias, the loyal servant of the Princess Alcmene. Alemene was about to be delivered of Hercules, but Hera, queen of heaven, was furious because Zeus, her husband, was the father of this child. She was doing everything she could to prevent the birth. Galinthias played a trick on Hera, which allowed her mistress to give birth to the young hero. As a result, the outraged Hera changed Galinthias into a cat and banished her to the underworld where she became a priestess of Hecate, queen of the witches and the goddess of death.
At Isobel Gowdrie's trial in 1662, this queen of Scottish witches gave an explicit account of her ritual transformation by the use of magical words. The formula she used to change herself into a cat had to be repeated three times. She described how she and her coven rambled, in the form of cats, throughout the countryside eating, drinking and squandering their neighbors' goods. They returned to human form by use of another formula. According to Baldwin's book, Beware of the Cat, published in 1584, It was permitted to a witch to take on her catte's body nine times.
Members of Isobel Gowdrie's cowen could turn one another into cats. If a witch in feline form met one who was not transformed and greeted her, the second witch would immediately take the shape of a cat and they would make off together.
A Japanese legend tells of a witch who haunted Okabe, a posting station on the Tokaido road. She lived in a hut under a group of pines near the temple. Her great delight was to assume the form of a cat and lie in wait to frighten young women visiting the temple. Eventually the witch's evil turned on her, transforming her into the "cat stone" still to be seen there.
The Waternish "Cat's Cairn" in Scotland commemorates the tragic fate of a boy who accidentally came upon three old village women in the act of transforming themselves into black cats. He was sworn to secrecy by them, but his mother succeeded in persuading him to tell her what happened. It was not long before the witch cats took revenge. The cairn, which is crowned by a long, sharp stone resembling a claw, marks the spot where the boy was found clawed to death.
