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

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Goats are credited with leading people to coffee, once a sacred beverage. (For many, it still is.) An Ethiopian shepherd noticed that his goats were particularly perky; he watched as they chewed coffee berries and tried some himself, thus initiating the cult of caffeine.

      

Goats brought various fragrant resins to people, most especially rock roses, among Aphrodite’s holy flowers. The aromatic essence was discovered clinging to goats’ beards.

      

Some of the most ancient existing evidence of magical/spiritual ritual involves the unearthed funeral rites of a Neanderthal child discovered in Teshik-Tash, modern Uzbekistan. The child’s partial skeleton was encircled by ibex horns, a type of wild goat, arranged vertically in pairs, the pointed ends stuck into the ground, reminiscent of later European funerary spells that involve driving spindles into the ground, usually intended to quiet the restless dead.

      

Goats are responsible for the discovery of the Oracle of Delphi. Before there was ever a shrine, Delphi was a playground for goats, which thrived on the rocky terrain. Humans followed them up the slopes and domesticated them c. 1400 BCE. As legend tells it, a massive earthquake created a chasm or fissure at Delphi through which some sort of vapor emanated. (Modern science has been unable to detect or explain these vapors.) Goats exposed to the vapors were observed to act strangely, suffering spasms and bleating in odd voices. Their keepers began to have similar experiences except that their odd voices were discovered to be prophetic. Delphi eventually became an organized oracular shrine, originally dedicated to Gaia, the Earth and then to Apollo. Goats remained the ritual sacrifice at Delphi.

      Goats are associated with love, knowledge, fertility, prophesy, expiation, regeneration, and rebirth. They are intensely associated with sex, sexual energy, and the procreative urge and power. Goats serve as Aphrodite’s mount and as companions of various Middle Eastern fertility spirits, including Inanna-Ishtar and Lady Asherah. Perceptions change: once upon a time, comparing a man to a goat implied admiration. Today’s “old goat” is a pathetic, foolish lecher, kind of like those dumb-ass donkeys.

       According to a Germanic magic spell, goat tallow rubbed onto the penis serves as a babe magnet, irresistibly attracting women.

      Goats were profoundly involved with a multitude of ancient spiritual traditions including Celtic, Greek, Jewish, Norse, Roman, and Sumerian. Goats are sacred to Aphrodite, Azazel, Dionysus, Freya, Hera, Hermes, Pan, Thor, Zeus: sexy deities, one and all.

      Goats were respected, sacred, and beloved in ancient religion. Goats were people’s teachers, companions and in many places, primary food animal, supplying meat, milk, dairy products, and material for clothing and tents.

      Goats were not generally considered to be witches’ familiars, nor do witches transform into goats. Goats do frequently serve as witches’ mounts however, and many medieval woodblock prints depicting witchcraft show witches riding on goats’ backs, just like Aphrodite, although this may have been intended to euphemistically suggest that witches copulate with the devil. No animal is more associated with the Christian devil than the goat. Artistic renditions of the sabbat from the Middle Ages to Goya’s masterpieces depict Satan presiding over the witches’ sabbat in the form of a tall man-sized upright goat. Satan is also depicted as a composite creature, frequently with bat’s wings and a snake’s forked tongue, but with goat’s eyes, horns and hooves.

      More in-depth discussion of goats’ ancient spiritual roles and the part they were given to play during the Witchcraze are found in HORNED ONE.

       Hyenas

      The stereotypical African witch doesn’t have a pointy hat or broomstick but she’s still a night rider journeying to secret assignations with other witches. These female witches ride naked atop galloping hyenas, with one foot dragging on the ground, the other on the hyena. (Allegedly this enables the hyena to attain extraordinary speed.) The witch carries a flaming torch, fueled with hyena butter, keeping an extra supply in a gourd slung over her shoulder so there’s no danger of running out.

      It’s the hyenas that reveal her identity. Hyenas are believed to be the telltale sign that causes someone, usually but not exclusively women, to be branded a witch in Africa. Any evidence, regardless how flimsy or tangential, linking someone with hyenas may be considered proof of sorcery in African witchcraft trials.

      Witches ride hyenas. Witches keep hyena familiars. Witches are hyenas. Witches shape-shift into hyenas. Zambian sorcerers enter trances and send their souls into the bodies of real hyenas. In other areas, there’s no such thing as “real” hyenas: all are magical creatures, witches in disguise or witches’ familiars. There’s no such thing as a hyena that is not somehow affiliated with witchcraft.

      Hyenas who are witches take spiritual possession of people, creating a kind of soul-hyena: the victimized person doesn’t physically transform, but inside, where a human soul should be, lurks this hyena. If your best friend doesn’t act like herself, maybe it’s because she isn’t herself: a hyena has supplanted her soul and taken over her body.

      People who are witches transform hyenas into human likenesses. They can selectively choose the likeness, too. If your best friend begins to act strangely, maybe it really wasn’t him at all but a hyena in disguise. In other words, there are two of them walking around: the real one and the disguised hyena—something like a Swan Lake scenario but with hyenas instead of swans. Witches are also believed able to create hyenas: their bodies are molded from porridge and brought to life via rituals and herbs.

      Witches are believed able to cast sleeping spells on hyenas, transforming them into their own likeness, putting them to bed beside their own husbands so that the witches can secretly slip out with no fear that the husband will ever wake up and discover their disappearance. (During European witch trials, witches allegedly used brooms, branches, and sticks in identical manner for the same purpose. Because this was generally believed, husbands testifying that their wives couldn’t possibly have attended sabbats as they had been home in bed together were thus unable to provide alibis for their wives.)

      According to Bantu tradition, real hyenas are perfectly capable of transforming into human form without any help from a witch. The transformation may, however, only be accomplished during the day. Some hyenas shape-shift in order to visit, harass or terrorize humans, but some do it just for the joy of shape-shifting. Whole communities of shape-shifting hyenas are said to exist; although to an outsider they may look exactly like ordinary people. Don’t try to stay in their village, though, no matter how friendly the locals seem; they may look like people but they still eat like hyenas. In order to shape-shift like this, hyenas must obtain a human soul. How this is done varies but hyenas that eat human corpses, as hyenas are known to do, may have the inside track.

      Throughout Africa, hyenas allegedly live and bear their young in the houses of witches who milk them daily.

      In some areas, although not many, hyenas gain some level of protection from their associations with witchcraft: it’s believed dangerous to kill a hyena because her witch will magically retaliate.

      In parts of East Africa, every witch is believed to own at least one hyena, which is branded with her special witch-mark, СКАЧАТЬ