The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World. Judika Illes
and other artisans, respected, required members of society who are also feared and associated with sorcery, the original professional magicians. These artisans transform raw materials (ore, clay) into practical, beautiful, sometimes spiritual goods. Hyenas are believed able to transform themselves.
Legendary associations of hyenas and witches make for good stories but like the identification of cats with witches during the Burning Times, this is really no laughing matter.
Associations of hyenas with smithcraft and witchcraft are not only folkloric fantasy tales but have had a massive impact on people’s lives, contributing to tragic prejudice. Hyenas are associated with individuals but also with ethnic groups who are thus tarred by associations with malevolent witchcraft. The word “buda” (also spelled “bouda”) indicates “hyena-person.” During the day budas appear to be ordinary people but at night budas either transform into hyenas or they ride on the backs of hyenas in great packs.
Budas and hyenas are believed to possess the Evil Eye, which leaves their victims drained and debilitated. Specific ailments are also associated with the Evil Eye. There’s no obvious physical attack; there may be no contact, however fleeting, with a hyena. This is a spiritual, magical attack.
Traditionally budas are ironworkers and potters. Wherever people fear the buda, there are professional buda experts, similar to European witch-finders. They are engaged to determine the identity of the buda who cast the Evil Eye.
There are various methods of lifting the Evil Eye:a simple case may be cured via incantation, but in persistent cases an expert may be consulted to determine the identity of the buda, which is believed necessary to break the spell. Sometimes the victim is made to identify the buda, even if they claim complete ignorance. The victim, who by definition is already not feeling too well whatever the cause, is interrogated (sometimes harshly, sometimes for hours) until identification of the perpetrator is made.
The victim has no choice but to identify someone; he or she is not left alone until this is accomplished (and the victim is typically a child). The accused must also participate in the ritual, no matter how absurd or insulting, or risk being killed by a mob.
Although any individuals may be buda, the term buda is most frequently used in Ethiopia to refer to its Jewish community, the Beta Israel, who are simultaneously ethnic, religious, and professional minorities.
Beta Israel men are traditionally smiths, the women potters—transformative professions viewed by the majority Christian society with ambivalence. Tools and handicrafts are vital, needed, and highly valued yet the practice is despised (working the land being perceived as the only respectable, sanctified occupation) and associated with witchcraft—as are the practitioners, to whom supernatural powers are attributed. To be an artisan is demeaning, yet magically powerful. Forbidden to own land, historically the Beta Israel have worked as tenant farmers for Christians, often in share-cropper-like circumstances.
Available information regarding traditional African witchcraft is virtually always filtered through the eyes of anthropologists or missionaries but there are a few important exceptions: Hagar Salamon’s The Hyena People (University of California Press, 1999) contains interviews with people who survived accusations of being budas. And Nega Mezlekia’s Notes from the Hyena’s Belly (St Martin’s Press, 2000), a memoir of the author’s Ethiopian youth, gives a brief but significant explanation from the victim’s perspective.
Imps
Today, should someone suggest that you have an impish smile or impish charm, it’s probably a compliment. Most likely you’re being compared to a charmingly naughty child. Of course, today, should someone call you “little devil” or “little demon” that’s probably a compliment too, not intended to be taken literally or as a threatening, hostile statement.
Perhaps because some people needed to believe that they were inherently superior to animals, many witch-hunters had a hard time fathoming that witches’ familiars, their trusted allies and companions, were really animals. If they had superior powers, they couldn’t be mere animals; they must be little demons or devils in disguise.
Imps were small demons who, commonly disguised as animals, served as witches’ familiars. Because they were supernatural creatures they could be expected to perform services that no true animal ever could, like fly through the air, invisibly cause death and destruction, or mysteriously torment victims of witchcraft. In areas where witchcraft was intensely demonized, it was believed that when a new witch was initiated at her first sabbat, Satan personally gave her an imp, not so much to serve her but to act as her control, ensuring that the witch carried out her assigned quota of nefarious deeds.
Unlike traditional familiars, which behaved like the regular animals that they were, eating and sleeping in the manner appropriate to their species, imps had special needs. Because imps were vampiric, witches were obliged to feed them using their own body fluids, milk if they were mothers, blood if not. (What type of blood imps fed upon is not entirely clear.) Witches were believed to grow an extra nipple just to feed their little imp. The search for supernumerary nipples became a common feature of later witch-trials, although it might be “found” in odd parts of the body and in odd forms.
Should the witch’s own fluids be insufficient, the imp might go and milk neighboring livestock completely dry. These imps would travel in the form of familiar animals like bats, hedgehogs, ferrets or cats leading to strange, implausible fears about certain animals being harmful to cattle. Hedgehogs are still commonly believed to steal cow’s milk, as are bats; of course the old stories never referred to real animals—thefts were caused by supernatural imps in masquerade.
The root concept of the imp may derive from small shape-shifting spirits previously understood as friendly and helpful. Pagan European households, from Italy to Lithuania, once cherished snake-spirit household helpers. Some spirits weren’t exclusively tied to one animal form: Finland’s para, for instance, are domestic spirits known to assume the forms of cats, frogs or snakes. Attached to a person or family, they magically increase supplies of butter, milk, grain, and cash. (In later folklore, para are classified as goblins.)
As the witch-trials