Black cats are hallmarks of the playfully spooky
modern celebration of Halloween. But they weren't always
associated with wholesome autumn fright. Black cats and
other creepy creatures were once seen as harbingers of
death and disaster, according to Walter Stephens, author of
Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex and the Crisis of
Belief.
Stephens, the Charles S. Singleton Professor of
Italian Studies and vice chair of the
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at
Johns Hopkins, is frequently in demand this time of year as
media scribes seek some scholarly expertise for their
annual Halloween stories. The public, it seems, is eager
for the information; due to the response to the original
edition of his book, it was published in paperback this
month by University of Chicago Press.
Black cats and other creatures were believed to be
witches' companions, Stephens says, or, worse yet, witches
who had disguised themselves as animals to inflict pain and
suffering surreptitiously. In the 15th century, he says,
witches were widely believed to be the cause of all the bad
things that happened to good people. Faced each day with a
hard life in which tragedy was the norm, people needed to
blame someone other than God. Accused witches became
popular culprits.
How did a witch, usually a woman, allegedly wreak
havoc on the unsuspecting? By masquerading as a screech
owl, black cat or werewolf, according to the writing of the
day as researched by Stephens. Today's Halloween costumes
can be seen as a benign manifestation of this centuries-old
popular belief in witches' maleficent shape shifting, he
says.
"Disguise makes a person ghostlike, and ghosts can go
where living people cannot," says Stephens, who also is
director of Villa Spelman, Johns Hopkins' Center for
Italian Studies in Florence, Italy.
In Italy, Stephens says, peasant mythology of the time
evidently held that witches transformed themselves into
cats to kill babies in their cradles. When there wasn't any
sign of injury to a deceased child, it was often theorized
that the child had been attacked by a cat — the
wounds they make are small, and demons could make them heal
instantly, it was believed. Similar tales were told of
witches who became wolves to attack older children and
adults outdoors.
The companionship of witches and cats was also a
commonplace element of English witchcraft theory. The
English witch's "familiar," the domesticated demon who
carried out her evil deeds, could be incarnated as a small
animal. The companionship between a marginal person and her
pet was often interpreted by believers in witchcraft as a
relationship between human and demonic enemies of God.
"Even today, the Halloween witch has one inseparable
companion: her black cat," Stephens says. "For North
American children conditioned by relentless commercial
culture, a hissing black cat with arched back is a primary
symbol of Halloween."