*Navky:
Among the various sorts of ghosts that confronted travelers, few were as piteous as the Navky, haunters of Slavic lands. They were the spirits of children who had died unbaptized or at their mother's hands. Most often they appeared in the shapes of infants or young girls, rocking in tree branches and wailing and crying in the night. Some begged for baptism from passerby. Some-thirsting for revenge against the living, who had let them die nameless-lured unwitting travelers into perilous places. But they were not always human in form: In Yugoslavia, it was said, the Navky took the shapes of great black birds, which cried in a manner that chilled the soul.
*Poltergeists:
Poltergeists-the word is German for "racketing spirits"-were a mass of unknowns. Their physical disruptions of households served no discernible purpose of revenge, neither did they express the malevolence of a departed neighbor or kinsman, active even in death. Most poltergeists, in fact, could not be identified as spirits of the dead. If they did spring from the realm of death, they were anonymous envoys: They were bodiless and rarely visible, and their utterances almost never took shape as speech.
The details that recur in accounts of poltergeists hauntings only deepen the enigma. Poltergeists chose as targets the world's innocents: They had a predilection for the families of clergymen, and within those families they often singled out as the focus of their activities a young girl--a daughter or maidservant. Their---tactics---thumping, howling, the hurling of objects and creation of bad smells--seemed calculated to attract maximum attention with minimum physical harm.
That is not to say that a poltergeist infestation was a trifling inconvenience. Poltergeists had limitless stamina. Even gentle poltergeists mischief--slammed doors, upended cream pots, whiffs of sulfur--grew unendurable when the poltergeists sustained it day and night for weeks or months. And often much mild mischief was punctuated by bursts of destructive energy difficult to credit from an incorporeal and invisible spirit. Yet a few families, especially tolerant or humorous, grew inured to their spirit guests, after the inicial terror of the haunting faded. In time, a poltergeists might even come to be accepted as a slightly eccentric member of the family.
From the Book:
The Enchanted World Of Ghosts
*Fairy:
Once, at the dreaming dawn of history-before the world was categorized and regulated by mortal minds, before solid boundaries formed between the mortal world and any other-fairies roamed freely among men, and those two races knew eachother well. Yet the knowing was never straightfoward, and the adventures that mortals and fairies had together were fraught with uncertainty, for fairies and humans were alien to each other.
Humans were uneasy at this time. Small creatures on a vast, wild planet, they set out to create a reassuring orderliness-to define themselves and the creatures around them, to structure countries and kingdoms, to establish hierarchies among themselves so that each would know his place and all would know the patterns that prevented anarchy.
The fairy nature, in contrast, was essentially fluid and ambiguous, marked by caprice. Fairies existed in human form, sometimes splendid and sometimes grotesque. But if they desired, fairies could also assume the shapes of deer or falcons, flames or flowers or jewels. At times, they cloaked themselves in invisibility. Although they lived on a plane that was linked to the physical world that humans knew, their realm was endowed with additional demensions. Their kingdoms appeared and disappeared between one blink of an eye and the next, in a way that could only disturb humans: It was as if a full, complex and inexplicable life went busily on, unseen among the mortals' precariously maintained civilizations.
Fairies naturally inspired speculation. Ever curious, ever eager to name and define, mortals recorded their glimpses of them in songs and tales and poems. Naming came first, for the name of a thing was charged (as it is in some ways even now) with the essence of that thing: To know a name gave the knower some measure of control over the thing it named.
Like all else about fairies, the sources of their names were ambiguous. The words for "fairy" in Spain and in Italy were fada and fata, respectively, and these seem to have been derived from the Latin fatum, or "fate," in recognition of the skilled fairies had in predicting and even controlling human destiny. In France, however, the similar word f'ee came from the Latin fatare via the Old French f'eer, meaning "to enchant." F'eer referred to the fairies' ability to alter the world that humans saw-to cast a spell over human vision. From f'eer came not only f'ee but the English word "Fairie," which encompassed both the art of enchantment and the whole realm in which fairies had their being. "Fairy" and "fay" - other derivatives of the parent word-referred only to the individual creatures.
The other common English term for an individual fairy was "elf," and this derived not from Latin but from the Nordic and Teutonic languages, reaching England with invasions from the Continent. In Scandinavia, the word for "elves" was alfar, which-appropriately, since fairies were tied to the things of the earth-had to do with mountains and water.
Mortals used these various terms interchangeably to describe a broad range of elusive beings. Mindful of the fairies' nature, they most often referred to the race as a whole by epithets-the Gentry or Good People or the Mothers' Blessing, and the like. In those days, using a creature's true name without permission implied a threat-unwise in the case of fairies, whose reactions were unpredictable and whose powers were great.
For the purpose of classification, however, the entire race could be roughly divided into a peasantry and an aristocracy. The peasants were solitary fairies, descendants of the spirits who at the begining of time ensouled all nature. They were guardians of tree and field, of forest pool and mountain stream. Although they shared in some powers of Faerie, such as the ability to become invisible or to appear in various shapes, solitary fairies where wild creatures, and their meetings with mortals were relatively rare compared with those of their grand relatives. The presence of a solitary fairy was most often announced not by a direct sighting but by evidence of the creature's activity: the bending of grass as a fairy passed invisibly over it, soughing sounds in tree branches, glittering frost patterns etched on windowpanes.
The aristocracy of Faerie was a different matter. Known as trooping fairies, these beings were descended, it was popularly thought, from ancient, vanquished gods. They were a powerful race who dwelled in kingdoms underground or accross the deepest seas; to mortals they were objects of infinite desire and sometimes infinite fear. The alfar of Scandinavia were believed to be divided into good and bad branches: the Liosa'lfar, or Light Elves, who were air dwellers; and the Docka'lfar, or Dark Elves, whose kingdoms were beneath the ground. The Scots made the same distinction: Their fairy bands were called the Seelie-or Blessed-Court and the Unseelie Court, the latter often being thought of as the vengeful ghosts of dead mortals.
No such division was made in Whales or Ireland: There the trooping fairies were taken as a whole in all their complex manifestations. In Whales they were called the Tylwyth Teg-the Fair Family. In Ireland they were known as the Daoine Side-The Dwellers of the Fairy Mounds, for it was under those softly swelling, grassy knolls that many of their palaces were hidden.
Ireland, in fact provides the most complete accounts of the trooping fairies and their kind: Irish tales and songs trace the history of fairies back thousands of years, to a time before the boundaries between their world and the mortal one became dangerous to cross, before mortals grew to fear entrapment in the lands of the fairies, and before the love that could exist between mortal and fairy turned to hopeless yearning.
*Blue Hag:
Not often did the controllers of the sky and weather show any concern for mortals. More typical of the forbidding aspect of these spirits was the Blue Hag-known in Galic as the Cailleac Bheur, or Old Wife-who brought winter to the Scottish Highlands. At the beginning of time, when the worlds of mortals and spirits had not yet grown asunder, she was a familiar sight on the wind-swept hills. Her face, the legends say, was blue with cold, her hair as white as a frosted aspen and the plaid that wrapped her meager shoulders was the dun of wintry stubble. Each year, after Alls-hallows, she strode the moors and summits, smiting the earth with her heavy staff to beat down the grasses and harden the earth with frost.
In winter, reveling in her victory over the forces of growth, she unleashed tempests and blizzards. But in the spring, her power waned as sap rose in the vegetation. Day by day she weakened as the earth quickened anew, and on the Eve of May Day she gave up the struggle: In a final fury she flung her staff under a holly tree-where to this day no grass can grow-abd stiffened and shrank into a solitary gray stone, to wait out the summer.
After those earliest days, as villages began to dot the wilds, meetings with the Cailleac grew rare. As human beings domesticated their world with hedges and boundary markers and neat furrows, and turned their gaze away from wilderness and sky to the petty cares of everyday, the Cailleac was seen only in her effects: in ground that one day was soft and fertile, the next iron-hard with frost, in landscapes transformed by the snowfall of winter. These were evidence enough of the Cailleac's undiminished power.
Later still, when the country villages had swelled into towns, the muddy forest byways had widened into thoroughfares, and here and there in erstwhile forest or field had risen a shrieking forge or a clanging factory, the sky remained as wild as ever, and the seasons rolled on ceaselessly. By all appearances, the Cailleac and her weatherworking kin continued their rounds, pervasive but unseen. But they were exceptions: The natural world was shrinking, and with it's decline, the powers of it's spirit denizens faded.
*Fossegrim: Waterfall Spirit;
A Norwegian waterfall spirit called fossegrim-gloden-haired, fine-featured and no more than a foot high-sang so sweetly that the very trees danced and children hid on riverbanks to hear his charming melodies.
*Huldra: Forest Nymph;
In the mountains of Scandinavia, dwelled the huldra. A beguiling, white-robed forest nymph whose beauty was marred only by her tail, tassled like that of a cow, and her back, which was as hollow as a cheese mold.
A youth who allowed a huldra to lure him to her mountain fastness as her paramour might one day return to human society. But the lover of the huldra was altered forever, in body or in mind. The stigma might be no more than a beardless chin, where the huldra had licked him in a fit of passion; or he might be touched with madness. The effect was the same; to set him apart permanently from the world of mortals, to isolate him from his own kind.
*Leshiye:
Even in the days when most of the world was untamed, few regions matched the mystery of the taiga, the forest of pine, birch, spruce and aspen stretching thousands of miles across Russia. Broken only by misty peat bogs where flickering lights danced at night and by a few small villages huddled within wooden palisades, the taiga was a strange and dangerous dominion. Wolf and bear, tiger and leopard, elk and roebuck roamed freely there. And all the animals, it was whispered in the villagaes, were ruled by the forest fairies called leshiye, who were curious beings indeed.
Not many mortals glimpsed a leshy, and those who did gave conflicting reports about the creature's appearance. The fairy was as changeable as sunlight on a leaf and usually indistinguishable from it's surroundings. A leshy might be as tall as an ancient tree, green and tangled as the vines that covered it and shaggy as the bark on it's trunk. Or he might be as minute as a field mouse, able to pass unseen through the thickest underbrush. He could appear as a whirlwind of blowing leaves and dust. And, if it took his fancy to do so, a leshy could assume the shape of an owl, or a wolf or a very old man clothed in furs. It was said that the creature's true shape was man-like, with hair and beard as green as ivy and with a long narrow face, coldly gleaming eyes, curling horns and cloven hoofs of a goat.
In truth, the forest fairy was more often heard then seen. He was capable of producing all the sounds that stirred the taiga-the sighing or howling of the wind, the patter of rain, the rustling of leaves, the echoes in spaces among the tree trunks. The few hardy souls who traveled those deep woods-huntsmen, woodcutters and charcoal burners-knew better than to listen to the seemingly innocuous sounds around them as they walked: The mortal who attended the whispers and mumbles of a leshy-and none could tell when sounds came from nature and when from the fairy-might be seduced off the narrow track and into real danger.
For the leshy was full of mischief and hostile to mortals. Sometimes he curled, like a child in a cradle, in tree branches and amused himself by sighing, moaning or laughing ominously; a leshy who did this was called a zuibotschnik, from the Russian word for cradle. Sometimes he settled in the abandoned forest huts that were used by itinerants for shelter. Any mortal who entered a hut that a leshy had claimed enroached upon elfin territory: The trespasser was doomed to spend the night cowering before the howling and blowing and rattling of an enraged spirit outside the walls.
In fullness of his powers, the leshy was as capricious as a barbarian king and as complex as the forest itself. The springtime woods resounded as he battled other leshiye with screeching winds and roiling floodwaters; in the fall, before retreating underground to sleep out the winter, he was again filled with fury, and the forest beasts fled before his wrath.
In the summer, though, his temperament was sportive. By rearranging sign-posts, by taking the shape of a friendly traveler generous with advice on shortcuts, or simply by calling out in the plaintive tones of a lost child, the leshy could lure a wayfarer farther and farther from the path until he found himself in a fetid swamp or at the dizzy edge of a precipice. As likely as not, the leshy's gleeful laughter would then ring out from among the forest shadows.
There were darker tales, too, of women who followed a woeful call that led them into birch copses, where they were raped by goatish leshiye. Travelers were tickled to death by the fairy, who bedeviled their sides with twigs and teased their faces with forest grasses until they shrieked with laughter and gasped their last. Those who hoped to thrive in the forest were well advised to mollify the fairy lords with offerings: Herdsmen salaughtered cows and left the carcasses for the leshiye before driving their cattle to woodland meadows; hunters set out bread and salt-the one symbolizing life, the other, because of it's preservative properties, eternity-as hopeful tokens of lasting friendship.
The Russian leshiye counted for only a small fraction of the teeming fairy population that haunted the wilds then. As the noble Tuatha De' Danann retreated into the mists, reappearing only occasionally and in diminished form, the ancient powers of the nature fairies endured.
*Kornbocke: Type of Fairy/spirit;
In Germany, spirits called the Kornbocke not only guarded the grain but also caused it to ripen. As elusive as the polevik, they rode the breezes that rippled the wheat fields, hid stock-still among the stalks in the guise of blue cornflowers, or prowled the fields as ill-tempered goats.
*Kelpie: Water Spirit;
In the mournful northern waters of Scotland lived the malign kelpie, who sometimes took the form of a handsome gray horse that could be seen galloping along the stony banks of a loch. All such horses were not suspect, of course; a crofter, watching from a nearby hill, would breathe easier if he saw a lone gray horse he knew or docilely submit to a rider. But if the beast veered out into the lake, it's hoofs striking foam across the choppy surface of the water and clearing the ripples as if they were solid ground, the watcher would hurry off to warn his family that the feared water horse was abroad.
Like many other water spirits, the kelpie was fatally charming, and children often succumbed to his wiles. When, with eyes flashing and velvety coat rippling, he cantered up to a group of children playing at the water's edge, they rarely could resist stroking his neck and mounting his back. Once astride him, there was no escape, for their limbs stuck fast to the kelpie's flanks. With his terrified cargo, the kelpie galloped out into deep water, pawed aside the waves and slipped from sight. Somewhere in the depths, it was said, he shook the children from his back and devoured them, leaving only their entrails to wash up on shore.
*Morgan le Fay: An amorous abductress;
Famed among fairies was Morgan le Fay, beautiful, wise and passionately fond of mortal men. Many tales surround her name, but most agree that Morgan ruled an enchanted island of apples-Avalon-and most say that she took King Authur of Britain there when defeat overcame him. She took another brave knight to live with her in Avalon, too. It happened this way:
Once, a fine son was born to the King of Denmark. Six fairies-sisters all-attended the christening, and one of these was Morgan. Each gave a gift to the boy. The first wished him bravery; the second, the chance to display his valor; the third, invincibility; the fourth, the art of pleasing; the fifth, a loving nature. Morgan, the last and youngest fairy, was enamoured of the mortal child. Her gift, therefore, was herself. She said that when the time came, he would join her on her island, there to live as her paramour.
The boy grew into manhood and became a knight of France; he was known, because of his birthplace, as Ogier the Dane. He had a long life, distinguished by valor and adventure, and at last he grew old. Morgan waited no longer. He caused a ship on which he sailed to be wrecked near Avalon. Ogier survived and reached the island, where he found an orchard. Within it was Morgan, as beautiful as the dawn. She slipped a ring on the knight's finger, and the years fell from him: The bent back straightened and the old eyes cleared and he became the youth the fairy desired. With a satisfied smile she placed a crown on his head. Every memory of his mortal life fled.
Thus Ogier the Dane became a willing prisoner of the fairy's love. He lived in Avalon for centuries, the legends say. And for all that mortals know, he may live there still, caught in the timeless thrall of Faerie.
*Neck: Water Spirit;
The Scandinavian neck sometimes sat serenely on the glassy surface of a lake or river, a red cap covering his sunny ringlets, and played a golden harp. He required a human sacrifice each year, and his shriek of "Cross over!" echoed eerily on riverbanks following any drowning.
*Polevik: Type of Fairy;
In the wheat fields of Russia, dwelled a spirit called the polevik. Few ever saw him among the dense stalks, for he was extraordinarily nimble and had the ability to vary his height. During the spring, he grew with the stalks of wheat, but after the harvest he shrank to the height of the stubble. Nonetheless, shirkers who napped amid the grain knew him well, for in the afternoons he roamed the feilds on a pony that kicked the sleepers and showered them with clods.
*Puck: England's boisterous mischief-maker;
"I am the merry wanderer of the night," cried the elf Robin Goodfellow, sometimes called Puck by countryfolk. Indeed, he was the jester of Faerie, a cutup who lured travelers into swamps, pinched lazy housemaids and pulled stools from beneath inveterate gossips. It was said that humans danced to his seductive piping as trained bears to a circus drum, and that he took his pleasure in causing confusion among mortals, whos various follies he never tired of watching.
The upper-half body of a man, with the lower part as that of a goat, long ears and an elfin smile, he played his tricks and pipe all through the night.
*Rusalky:
Love's last embrace;
Graceful enchantresses of river, brook and pool, the rusalky of Russia were reputed to be murderers of men, seducing their victims to a watery demise. Some rusalky, however, loved mortals, and one even left her lake to marry a prince.
There was a condition to that union: She could stay among mortals only so long as her husband remained faithful. In time, he betrayed her, as mortals will, and the distraught fairy returned to her home. But the prince, filled with remorse, sought her out. When he called from the verge of her pool, she came at once. He knelt to embrace her. She warned him that- doomed as she now was to keep to the liquid element- she had become a danger: The embrace of a rusalka brought only death.
Yet the prince gathered her into his loving arms and kissed her- and died. Widowed by her fairy nature, the rusalka was left to mourn for all eternity.
*Vile:
In Central Europe dwelled the gloden-haired vile. These mistresses of the forest spoke the language of animals, tended herds of chamois and deer-and were enchantingly beautiful. Their bodies were as slim and pliant as the stems of young pines, their eyes flashed like a dapple of forest sunshine, and their songs rose in a golden thread of melody above the rustle of foliage. A man who glimpsed a vila was doomed. He would yearn for her so desperately that he would become a stranger to all who knew him, and in the end he would die.
*Vodianoy: Nature Fairy;
The most dangerous among the nature fairies were the spirits of streams, ponds and lakes. The vodianoy of Russia, green-haired and as bloated as drowned men, lived near water mills and afflicted nocturnal intruders with water sickness-dropsy-so that their bodies filled like sponges with liquid.
*Snow Queen:
Storm-borne Queen of a realm of ice;
Beautiful as an ice crystal, the fairy called the Snow Queen was much loved by Danish children but dangerous to those whose loved she returned. An old tale tells how this was so.
Once, on a cold winter's day in a northern city, a small boy sat in his little attic room watching the snowflakes blow against his windowpane. A particularly large and lacy flake stuck to the glass and caught his eye. It glittered and spred across the pane until it took the shape of a tall woman hovering in the winter air. Smiling radiantly, she beckoned to the boy through the glass, then disappeared. Entranced, he ran down the stairs and out into the street. There he found the Snow Queen-for it was she-awaiting him in a white sledge drawn by white horses. She gave him her hand, and he climbed into the sledge among the snowy furs that filled it. At once the sledge began to move, tearing through the winter streets and climbing into the air.
Over ditches and hedgerows they flew, with the snow driving in their faces. As they soared, the Queen put her icy lips to the boy's forehead, and he felt a chill that pierced to his heart. But the fairy only smiled and urged the horses on. At last the wild ride ended at the fairy's winter palace, set on a plain of ice in Lapland.
The boy might have remained forever as the shivering inmate of the Snow Queen's palace. But in Denmark he had a friend who loved him dearly, a little girl who all alone searched the wide world until she found him. Her adventures are the stuff of another tale: What matters is that, invincible in her fidelity, she rescued her companion and returned him to the gentling sun. As for the Snow Queen, alone in her wind-swept, frozen halls, she wept icy tears and waited for the chance to find another child.
*Snow Queen:
Storm-borne Queen of a realm of ice;
Beautiful as an ice crystal, the fairy called the Snow Queen was much loved by Danish children but dangerous to those whose loved she returned. An old tale tells how this was so.
Once, on a cold winter's day in a northern city, a small boy sat in his little attic room watching the snowflakes blow against his windowpane. A particularly large and lacy flake stuck to the glass and caught his eye. It glittered and spred across the pane until it took the shape of a tall woman hovering in the winter air. Smiling radiantly, she beckoned to the boy through the glass, then disappeared. Entranced, he ran down the stairs and out into the street. There he found the Snow Queen-for it was she-awaiting him in a white sledge drawn by white horses. She gave him her hand, and he climbed into the sledge among the snowy furs that filled it. At once the sledge began to move, tearing through the winter streets and climbing into the air.
Over ditches and hedgerows they flew, with the snow driving in their faces. As they soared, the Queen put her icy lips to the boy's forehead, and he felt a chill that pierced to his heart. But the fairy only smiled and urged the horses on. At last the wild ride ended at the fairy's winter palace, set on a plain of ice in Lapland.
The boy might have remained forever as the shivering inmate of the Snow Queen's palace. But in Denmark he had a friend who loved him dearly, a little girl who all alone searched the wide world until she found him. Her adventures are the stuff of another tale: What matters is that, invincible in her fidelity, she rescued her companion and returned him to the gentling sun. As for the Snow Queen, alone in her wind-swept, frozen halls, she wept icy tears and waited for the chance to find another child.
*Animas Benditas:
In Puerto Rico, the "Sendings" are called "Animas Benditas," or "pleading ghosts."
They are the dead who wait for judgement day, to finally be released from their wait, which is usualy in a place as Hell, or Hell itself. By a witch or sorcerer, they are used not only for good-but for evil as well. These two true stories, will explain both cases....
Good Cause...
A friend, and neighbor of mine, was going on a trip with her family, and had asked her cousin to watch her house for her. The cousin agreed without any problems, and so my friend went off on her trip. The lady accross the street had an extra key to her house for if any problem should arise, or if she needed anything from there. One day, [that same week my friend was away], she decided to go over to the house and check up on it. As she approached the house, she could hear the T.V. playing, and thinking someone may have gotten in, decided to open the door and scare whoever it was away. She placed the key in the lock--but it would not turn, she couldn't get the door, [which she had opened many times with that same key] open for any reason. She then peered in the window, to see my friends husband sitting in "his chair" watching T.V., and my friend in the kitchen doing what seemed to her as cooking, [a usual thing to see at that time of the day]. She called and knocked--but no one would answer the door. The lady gave up, at least satisfied that it wasn't a prowler, and left. When my friend got back from her trip, the lady accross the street told her what had happened, and she quickly called on her cousin to explain. The cousin told her she had used the "Animas Benditas" to do a good deed, and that way have some leverage on judgement day. She never let her cousin watch her house again.
Bad Cause...
The mother of a boyfriend of mine was pregnant and had problems with a lady who wanted her to loose the child she was carrying. One night, she had a dream that her front door burst open, and in floated a woman, hair flying in the wind, and a knife in her hand, traveling down the hallway in route to her room. When the floating woman reached her, she lunged at her with the knife, trying to strike at her belly. The blade barely had touched her belly, when she jumped into action against the spirit, and grabbed it by it's wrists. The spirit fought her for what seemed to her as an eternity, but then, just as quickly as she had appeared--she disappeared. My boyfriends mother awoke to find scratch marks on her hands and wrists, and a slight cut on her belly. Her child and her were fine, and she never had a visit by an "Anima Bendita" again.
--Nina
*The Black School:
Some brave wizards of Europe, it was said, learned forbidden knowledge in a school presumed to be in Spain-a cavern reached by winding staircases leading far into the earth and sealed from the sunlight by iron doors.
Except for their own murmurings, the scholars had a silent schooling. They saw no schoolmaster and heard no responses to their questions: The answers they asked for each night appeared in the morning as letters that glowed and faded on the pages of their books or shone from the cavern walls. No servants brought the wizard's sustenance. Instead, a shaggy hand thrust out from the walls the food and drink they required. No fee was asked save one--that the last man to leave each class give his body and soul to the schoolmaster, whose name was Satan.
*Charms:
A cache of charms:
With knots, images and charms, witches focused and heightened their powers. As a witch murmured her incantations, she could strengthen a spell by fashioning a witches ladder-nine feathers knotted into a multicolored cord to form a kind of perverted rosary. A peacock feather, with it's ocular ornament, cast the curse of the evil eye on anyone to whom it was given, dooming the recipient to a slow, wasting death. And a wax or clay image of an enemy, mutilated or burned, or a charm bag contaning coffin nails and, often, hair or nail parings from the intended victim, also could transmit a deadly spell.
But other charms-often from the store of a white witch-averted evil. For protection against malevolence, people carried a medallion bearing the mystic slogan abracadabra, or a magical stone such as amber, bloodstone or lodestone, or a bracelet of naturaly pierced pebbles culled from a streambed. These small objects had healing powers, it was thought. Amber shrank goiters; bloodstone could stanch either internal or external bleeding; and magnetic lodestone banished dull melancholy. And just as the magical word on the abracadabra charm dwindled to a single letter at each apex of the design, so the charm itself could cause a fever to abate.
Some talismans could do more than just fend off evil. A young man intent on worldly success might pin a parchment image signifying fortune to his cap, while a spurned lover might melt a wax heart in hopes of softening the unyielding heart of his beloved.
abracadabra
bracadabra
racadabra
acadabra
cadabra
adabra
dabra
abra
bra
ra
a
*Familiars:
A Soft-footed servant:
In ways both physical and behavioral, the hare was a natural ally of witches: Hares are swift and agile, able to stand on their hind legs like a person, prone to gathering in parliament-like groups, orgiastically mad in the spring, wantonly destructive of crops and possessed of a most unbeastlike cry. Some witches traveled in the shapes of hares; others had hare familiars-demonic servants in disguise.
Given the association of hares with witchcraft and magic, it is not surprising that superstition surrounded them. It was said, for example, that the sight of a hare running down a village street presaged fire and that the appearance of a white hare in a mine would be followed by a fatal accident. A hare who crossed a persons path would bring bad luck. And the very word "hare" could not be mentioned at sea, so great was the fear of the animals power.
Curiosity enough, possession of a hares-foot brought luck. This belief arose not from the hares traffic with witches but from the much more ancient associations: The hare is a notably prolific creature, and it's foot was long a sexual symbol.
A Silent Spy:
Spinner of webs, an archtrickster, and a silent and murderous trapper, the spider was tiny enough to hide in the hood of a witches cloak as a familiar and whisper instruction in her ear.
Ordinary folk said that to dream of a spider ment betrayal. To see one in the morning brought bad luck, and to kill one summoned rain. The sight of spiders terrified wedding parties because the creatures were omens of unhappy marriage. And in Switzerland it was said that the plague, with it's black sores, was spread by malevolent spiders traveling in secret from house to house.
A raucous-voiced herald:
Sooty-feathered and harsh of voice, the crow was a fit familiar to witches, prized for it's ability to fly and spy. Villagers feared this carrion eater, for it was a messenger of mortality. A fluttering crow around the window or one that flew thrice over the roof, meant Death was on it's way. Simply to see the bird flying alone could bring bad luck, and crows rising in a flock from a wood sometimes presaged famine.
A pair of sinuous helpers:
Anciently inimical to each other, the serpent and the cat were favorites of witches. The serpent seems to have played a familiar role: While it could serve as a familiar, it was chiefly valued for it's fearful aspect and it's link to Satan-useful in repelling the curious, who might interfere with a witch's business. To dream of a serpent signified that someone has a grudge against the dreamer.
The cat, on the other hand, was surrounded by speculation. It's pupils-narrow slits in the daytime and luminous black globes at night-linked it to the moon and emphasized it's power to see into the future. Cats were said to suck the breath from infants at night. And cats forecast the weather: When they scampered and cavorted, wind was on it's way; when they washed their ears; rain was coming; when they sat with their backs to the fire, they awaited frost and storms.
Except in northern England, where it was thought lucky to own a black cat, (but unlucky to meet a strange one), black cats were the most common embodiments of Satan. As for cats that served as familiars-rather than as transformations of the witches themselves-they were usually brindled.
Belled and beribboned dancers:
Ugly and venemous though it was, the toad seems to have been among the most cherished of witch familiars: The creatures were dressed in velvet by their mistresses, ornamented with bells and encouraged to dance.
Common folk both feared and valued them. Toads were burned because the horns on their foreheads marked them as agents of Satan and because witches used toad spittle to concoct ointments that conferred invisibility. On the other hand, toads were admired for their ability to hear distant thunder long before the human ear could catch it, the sight of the little creatures making their way to safe water provided a reliable indicator of approaching storms. And very elderly toads-rarely glimpsed-carried precious jewels in their heads, effective antidotes to poison.
