Metamorphosis

The ability of witches, sorcerers and other magically empowered persons to
transform themselves and other humans at will into animals,
birds and insects. In witchcraft trials, people testified
that the accused witches had appeared before them
or tormented them in some nonhuman shape. For example,
in 1663 Jane Milburne of Newcastle, England, did
not invite Dorothy Strangers to her wedding supper.
Consequently, Milburne alleged, Strangers transformed
herself into a cat and appeared with several other mysterious
cats to plague Milburne.

In another English witchcraft case in 1649, John Palmer
of St. Albans confessed that he had metamorphosed
into a toad in order to torment a young man with whom
he had had a quarrel. As a toad, Palmer waited for the man
in a road. The man kicked the toad. After he returned to
the shape of a man, Palmer then complained about a sore
shin and bewitched his victim. In areas where witchcraft
fears ran high, the sight of nearly any hare or stray dog
caused great concern.

Witches were said to transform themselves as they rose
up their chimneys on poles and broomsticks to fly off to
sabbats. The most common forms were hegoat, wolf, cat,
dog, cow, hare, owl and bat. Some witches believed that
they had done this, perhaps as the result of the hallucinogenic
ingredients in some of the ointments they rubbed
on themselves. In 1562 alchemist Giovanni Batista Porta,
in his book, Natural Magick, told of how hallucinogenic
potions caused two men to believe they had metamorphosed
into a fish and a goose, respectively:

. . . the man would seem sometimes to be changed into
a fish; and flinging out his arms, would swim on the
Ground; sometimes he would seem to skip up, and then
dive down again. Another would believe himself turned
into a Goose, and would eat Grass, and beat the Ground
with his Teeth, like a Goose: now and then sing, and
endeavor to clap his Wings.

Isobel Gowdie, a Scottish woman who voluntarily
confessed to witchcraft in 1662, said she and her sister
witches used incantations to transform themselves into
hares, cats, crows and other animals. Sometimes they
were bitten by hunting dogs.

Witches were said to use metamorphosis to gain easy
entry into a household, in order to cast an evil spell
upon an unsuspecting person. An insect crawling on the
floor, or a mouse skittering through the door, might be
suspect.

Witches also allegedly transformed themselves in order
to escape captors. According to one story, a husband
tried to prevent his witch wife from attending a sabbat
and tied her to the bed with ropes. She changed into a bat
and flew off. Another story tells of a witch brought before
inquisitors in Navarre in 1547, who was able to smuggle
along her magic ointment. She rubbed herself down and
turned into a screech owl, escaping certain death.
To torment or punish other humans, witches and sorcerers
turned them into beasts. In Greek myth, the sorceress
Circe turned Ulysses’ men into swine. In folktales,
wicked sorcerers and witches turned people into frogs or
other creatures, who had to wait for the right person to
come along and break the evil spell.

One of the most feared metamorphoses was that of
wolf. Man-eating wolves who terrorized villages were
sometimes said to be witches. The man-wolf condition
known as lycanthropy, however, is not the same as
metamorphosis, since it is involuntary. According to one
17th-century French tale, a hunter was attacked in the
woods by an enormous wolf and was able to cut off one of
its paws. Howling, the wolf fled. The hunter took the paw
to show to a friend. When he took it from his pocket, he
was astonished to see that it had changed into a woman’s
hand with a ring on one finger, which he recognized as
belonging to his wife. He sent for his wife, who was missing
one hand. She confessed to being a witch and transforming
herself into a wolf in order to attend a sabbat. She
was burned at the stake. Another version of the same tale
has the wife admitting to lycanthropy.

In 1573 Gilles Garnier, an accused wizard of Lyons,
France, was condemned to be burned alive for turning
himself into a wolf and attacking and killing children,
whom he devoured.

Some demonologists such as Jean Bodin and Joseph
Glanvil accepted metamorphosis as fact, but others denounced
it as fallacy. The Malleus Maleficarum (1486),
the leading inquisitor’s guide, upheld the latter view, citing
saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas as saying that
metamorphoses were illusions created by the Devil and
demons. Such illusions, said authors Heinrich Kramer
and James Sprenger, were the result of God punishing
some nation for sin. They pointed to verses from the
Bible: Leviticus 26, “If ye do not my commandments, I
will send the beasts of the field against you, who shall
consume you and your flocks,” and Deuteronomy 32, “I
will also send the teeth of the beasts upon them.” As to
man-eating wolves, Kramer and Sprenger said they were
true wolves possessed by demons. If a person believed
himself to have turned into a wolf, it was the result of a
witch’s illusory spell

Increase Mather called metamorphosis “fabulous”
and wondered in awe at the stories that were believed. In
An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684),
Mather says:
But it is beyond the power of all the Devils in Hell to
cause such a transformation; they can no more do it than
they can be Authors of a true Miracle. . . . Though I deny
not but that the Devil may so impose upon the imagination
of Witches so as to make them believe that they are
transmuted into Beasts.
Mather recounts a story of a woman who was imprisoned
on suspicion of witchcraft and claimed to be able to
transform herself into a wolf. The magistrate promised
not to have her executed, in case she would turn into a
wolf before him. The witch rubbed her head, neck and
armpits with an ointment and fell into a deep sleep for
three hours. She could not be roused by “noises or blows.”
When she awakened, she claimed that she had turned
into a wolf, gone a few miles away and killed a sheep and
a cow. The magistrate investigated and discovered that a
sheep and cow in the location described by the witch had
indeed been killed. It was evident that the Devil “did that
mischief” and that the witch had merely experienced the
dreams and delusions created by Satan.

In shamanism, shamans metamorphose (shape-shift)
into their guardian animal spirits or power animals (animals
from whom they derive their chief power). The shapeshifting
is done in an altered state of consciousness.