Episode 207: Black Cats & Devils

SHOW LINKS

• TRANS LIFELINE SUPPORT, SATANIC CIRCLE
• FORMULA DRIVE, RENO SATANIC
  • From Explicit and Implicit Measures of Black Cat Bias in Cat and Dog People Greg C Elvers et al, Journal of Animals, 2024: The precise significance of a black cat depended on the circumstances: In superstitions from the 17th century on, to see it walking toward you is a good omen, but if it crosses your path it is a harbinger of evil, especially in the morning. Those in dangerous professions, such as miners and fishermen, would often refuse to go to work that day if a black cat ran in front of them. ‘This fear of a black cat crossing one’s path persists in the United States and certain other parts of the world, and in some places spitting is said to be the only way to avert the bad luck it brings. Whether lucky or unlucky, the black cat has long been seen as having special powers, and the black cat as a witch’s familiar is an image common in folklore and storybooks, often believed to be the witch herself in animal form. Folk remedies from the seventeenth century often feature a black cat: rubbing its tail into the eye was a traditional cure for a sty, and drinking its blood was believed to restore health. The idea that a cat may “die” nine times goes back at least to the sixteenth.century and, although its precise source is unclear, it probably has its origins in the belief that a witch could take on the body of a cat nine times. This fear of cats is reflected in the old tradition of entering a house with the greeting “God bless all except the cat.” When a dead family member was laid out in the house prior to the funeral, cats were kept well away to prevent them from jumping onto or over the body, or else the spirit of the dead person would be endangered or the next person to see the body would die. A cat can supposedly foretell a death and will refuse to stay indoors if a member of the family is about to die. They are also reputed to have the ability to “suck the breath” out of infants, and therefore must never be left alone with one. Records show that this belief was so widespread that, in the eighteenth century, one coroner actually ruled a cat responsible for the death of a child.
    • • While a common superstition in the United States is that black cats bring bad luck, that is not universally true across cultures and times: Until 1975, black cats were required to be onboard British ships as a good luck charm. Some of the negative superstitions associated with black cats may arise from the belief that black cats are associated with witchcraft and heresy. After looking at adoption records of over 29,000 cats, black kittens took about 4 days longer to be adopted than kittens who were not primarily black, while black adult cats took almost six days longer on average. In our studies, superstitious behaviors, belief in witchcraft, and religiosity were expected to be directly correlated with black cat bias measured both explicitly and implicitly. These relations are predicted to be stronger in dog people than in cat people. Belief in witchcraft was a predictor of explicitly measured black cat bias for dog people with a medium effect size but not for cat people. As belief in witchcraft increases in dog people, black cat bias tends to increase. Religiosity is also a predictor of black cat bias for dog people. Because self-identified cat people have, on average, more cats than dog people, cat people may have more experience with black cats that offers protection from bias. Given the correlation between religiosity and belief in witchcraft, it is not surprising that black cat bias can also be predicted from dog people’s religious point of view. Partially consistent with the predictions, the bias is more extreme around Halloween, which, in the United States, is a holiday associated with superstition and witchcraft. This finding is important because it suggests that black cat bias might be malleable—it might be changed by external factors. Future research could look at whether an intervention designed to reduce belief in witchcraft could influence black cat bias. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11640230/pdf/animals-14-03372.pdf 
    • From THE CAT IN THE MYSTERIES OF RELIGION AND MAGIC, Mary Oldfield Howey, 1956: The Luciferans worshipped god’s eldest son, who had power over wealth and worldly happiness. They are said to have adored a black cat as the symbol of Satan when celebrating their mysteries, and to have sacrificed children at their nocturnal orgies, and used the victim’s blood in making the Eucharistic bread of their Order. The Gnostic sect of the Manicheans were accused by their persecutors of many terrible and incredible crimes, and were said to worship the devil in the form of a black cat. Confessing witch Rolande de Vernois acknowledged “The Devil presents himself for the Sabbath in the form of a great black cat.” Such beliefs are still prevalent in the remoter parts of Europe. We may instance the peasants of Southern Slavonia who are firmly persuaded that the devil dwells in a black cat. They try to keep clear of such felines by night, as during the hours of darkness the Fiend has power suddenly to resume his proper form and seize and destroy the unwary traveller. To illustrate the survival of the old beliefs in our enlightened land, the well-known ghost-hunter Mr. Elliott O’Donnell assures us that “there are, at the present moment, many houses in England haunted by phantasms in the form of black cats, of so sinister and hostile an appearance, that one can only assume that unless they are the actual spirits of cats, earthbound through cruel and vicious propensities, they must be vice-elementals, i.e. spirits that have never inhabited any material body.”  In the legend of Lilith we recognise the origin of the widespread superstition that cats will suck the breath of a sleeping child, and it is also clear why black cats are banished from children’s cradles. In mediaeval times witches were thought to assume cat form to play the part of vampire, and seem to have usurped the role of Lilith. We may see the lingering remains of this belief among all classes of the population to-day, in the numerous black cats named “Satan,” and images of black cats carried by the superstitious; all so many flags of truce held out to the Lord of the World.
    • From Many Faces of Evil, Pasi Klemettinen, Studies In Folkore & Popular Thought, 2002: Literary sources for European Christian beliefs dealing with the devil and witchcraft usually identify the cat as a faithful ally of the witch. We must remember, however, to make a distinction between animals given to witches by the devil, and demonic creatures in which the devil materializes. In Scandinavian folklore, horses and dogs are more commonly associated with the devil than are cats; in Finnish folk belief, the cat is deemed an unclean animal, thus, the appearance of a black cat, an especially heinous creature, generally foretells unhappiness and warns of imminent danger.. Lencqvist refers to an incantation in which the sorcerer summons a demon cat to his aid. The animal, by causing pain, impels the thief to return stolen goods: “Mistress of Pain, demon cat, give the legs a splendid claw, pain will make him hurry.” In the minds of many, the demon dog and cat are virtually interchangeable as images associated with the kingdom of the dead. Archival materials related to folk beliefs also reveal accounts of the devil himself assuming the form of a black cat. Likewise, one of the most frequent incarnations of the devil in Russian folklore is a black dog or cat. There was a haunted house in Impilahti. At night something would rattle objects indoors and during the day it would cause a ruckus in the attic and even in the hayloft. The people of that household soon had no peace of mind and were growing more and more desperate by the day. Finally, one Sunday after church, the owner of the house went to talk to the priest. The priest went to the house with his holy water and wine and held a sermon, and then walked around the house sprinkling holy water on the walls. They then noticed a huge black cat leave the house and head for the woods. After this the house was no longer haunted, and the people believed that the devil himself – as a black cat – had abandoned the house and stopped haunting it and troubling the inhabitants.
    • From Sketches of Old Dublin, Ada Peter, 1907: The proceedings of the Hell-Fire Club, whether on the summit of Mount Pelier, or within the walls of the Eagle Tavern on Cork Hill, were whispered among the plainer folk with awe and horror. It was told how blasphemous toasts were followed by the sudden death of the speaker on more than one occasion, while the sulphurous flames and fumes which were produced at their gatherings caused any country person who happened to witness them to be convinced that they saw the infernal regions. Among the beverages consumed by the members of the Dublin HellFire Club was a mixture made by brewing whiskey and butter together, and as the making of this was an art in itself, they employed a special scaltheen maker. From this man have come many stories of the doings of his wild masters, who, as they imbibed the burning drink so carefully prepared, used, he said, to stand in impious bravado before blazing fires till they dropped down dead from the heat. Again, he related how brimstone certainly was perceptible to the senses and how the very horses showed a dislike to draw their hearses. Of a certain black cat there are several accounts: This animal belonged to the Club, and had a place at the dinner table, when it was always served first, and any insult or neglect to it was regarded as an offence to be punished by the life of the offender. A country clergyman, his curiosity aroused at seeing the cat helped first, inquired as to the reason, and received for answer that it was out of respect for age, as they believed it to be the oldest individual in the company. The clergyman replied that he believed so too, as it was not a cat but an imp of darkness, which had the effect of making the cat assume its proper form of a fiend and forthwith flew away. 
    • From Spinsters, Old Maids, & Cat Ladies, Katherine Barak, Bowling Green State University, 2014: Using Foucault’s notion of “containment strategies,” representations of the crazy cat lady, the spinster, and the old maid negatively frame independent, single women as models of failed white womanhood. These characters must be contained because they intrinsically transgress social norms, query gender roles, and challenge the limitations of mediated womanhood. The cat lady in popular culture has become a shorthand signifier for non-normative femininity. The cat lady addresses the same gender concerns as her predecessors in Spinsters and old maids. Historical context dictates the manner in which they are depicted, but the message has been resoundingly the same: women must adhere to heteronormative gender expectations. Be desirable, flirt, catch a husband, marry, have children, and you will have succeeded as a woman. Whether by choice or situation, spinster, old maid, and cat lady characters neglect their feminine duties and become cultural models for failure. The domestic cat’s nature is marked by ambivalence: They’re wild animals that enjoy the comforts of civilization. Despite claims of domestication and dependence on human intervention, the cat is still resolutely independent. Cats have come to symbolize opposing forces: domestic and wild, dependent and independent, good and evil, innocence and promiscuity, and so on. The same can be said of women – they might be depicted as benevolent or beguiling. 
      • Woman and cat, goddess and sacred animal, witch and feline familiar: the relationship has existed for centuries and the connotations range from domestic home and hearth to the supernatural. Women and cats’ ambivalent iconographies, some of which still exist today in Euro-American popular imagination, took root during the Middle Ages. Sacred animals were not adopted into the larger European religions. This is true of all Christianity, but Protestantism in particular. The cornerstone to Protestantism lay in the relationship of an individual to god. Rather than mediated by saints, sacraments, animals, or the church, the connection should be direct. Medieval European culture shied away from conceptualizing animals as anything more than their use-value in aiding labor, their exchange-value, or a food source. Animals were non sequiturs in worship. This notion was paralleled by animals’ importance within pagan religious rituals. When pagan beliefs were deemed unacceptable alongside sanctioned religious practices the animals associated with those beliefs suffered. Folklorist Katharine M. Briggs blames failed syncretism for the longstanding cultural discomfort with cats. Christianity was on the rise and female deities and their feline companions were no longer respected. In fact, women gathering or participating in rural religious rites or traditions were now indicative of nocturnal ceremonies, sorcery, and witchcraft, and cats, especially black cats, became agents of devilish acts and witches’ familiars.
    • From Witches & Poison Cats, Wu Haiyun & Wang Mingke, Sixth Tone, 2023: In the course of his fieldwork, Wang Mingke, one of the world’s foremost experts on Chinese minority groups, has explored one of the most marginalized groups within these villages: women accused of witchcraft. Known in the local language as “poisonous cats,” villagers are hostile toward these women out of a belief they can transform into animals and perform magic. It’s a near universal form of violence across humanity, one that Wang, always interested in the broader applications of his work, has linked to current hot-button issues like social media “tribalization” and anti-Asian hate. The legend of the “poisonous cat” is widespread in villages in northern Sichuan. The accused typically possess several marginal characteristics: They are female, usually elderly, and many have married into the village from elsewhere. Caught between the village’s fear of external enemies and its suspicions about internal foes, these individuals occupy a complex position: neither fully assimilated nor wholly excluded. Consequently, they become convenient scapegoats for various ills. They can be targeted at any time to alleviate intra-village tensions and unify the community. Poisonous cats may exhibit a defiant and antisocial mentality. For instance, within a traditional Chinese extended family, there may be a daughter-in-law who is treated as an outsider and unfairly blamed when problems arise. In traditional novels or dramas, this young daughter-in-law often resorts to tearful threats of self-harm, but she also might seek revenge through various means, such as spreading rumors about family scandals or inciting chaos by leaving the household. In such circumstances, she transforms into a “poisonous cat.” There are certainly similarities between European witches and poisonous cats: both are invented enemies. However, the difference lies in the fact that the phenomenon of poisonous cats is limited to the internal dynamics of a village, often appearing as idle gossip that eventually fades away. On the other hand, in the case of witches, Europe witnessed a widespread witch-hunting hysteria. Many women accused of being poisonous cats are socially ostracized, and even their daughters have difficulty finding marriage prospects. However, these poisonous cats did not endure the same level of persecution as found in the witch-hunting campaigns in European history. https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1013535 
    • From Did Mass Cat Killings Help Spread the Black Death, Jack Izzo, Snopes, 2023: According to some social media posts, during the Middle Ages, cats were considered Satanic and evil because of a 1233 papal decree, so Europeans rounded up cats across the continent and dispatched them in mass killings. But the cats had their revenge from beyond the grave — their pest control prowess would have led to fewer rats had their population not decreased, and in the next century or two, more cats and fewer rats could have saved people from the Black Death. “Vox in Rama” is a real document written as a letter in the year 1233 by Pope Gregory IX. It did indeed target heretics in that area of Germany, who, according to the decree, had formed cults worshipping the devil, and it does mention the use of cats in the rituals. “There is no evidence beyond “Vox in Rama” itself to suggest that these rituals actually took place. Did ‘Vox in Rama’ Lead to Europeans Thinking Cats Were Evil? Not really. While “Vox in Rama” did have papal authority, it wasn’t widely shared. Even if churches did preach about the evils of cats, that would be their fault for misinterpreting the decree, which again does demonize cats per se or compare them to Satan. None of the evidence suggests that mass killings of cats happened. Bubonic plague is caused by a bacteria which infects fleas. These fleas do live on rats, which are carriers of the plague. But cats are actually highly susceptible to plague themselves. According to historian Mike Dash, like many common myths found on the internet, this originated in the late 90s or early 2000s. “The story about the cats is almost certainly a modern internet-based fabrication,” Dash told Snopes via email. Snopes found a reference to the myth in Donald Engels’ book “Classical Cats: The Rise and Fall of the Sacred Cat,” published in 1999. Dash, found a book reference to the idea in “The Cathars” by Malcolm Lambert, published in 1998. The claims likely originated from these books, then spread to blogs on the internet, then beyond. https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/11/08/cats-mass-killings-plague/