In the magical community necromancy usually gets a bum rap. I'm not talking about spells to conjure up the spirits of those who have passed on and converse with them, but rather the sort of necromancy that involves casting spells with dead things. Like weasels, as in this story from Hoquiam, Washington.Police say a man was carrying a dead weasel when he burst into a Hoquiam apartment and assaulted a man.
The victim asked, "Why are you carrying a weasel?" Police said the attacker said, "It's not a weasel, it's a marten," then punched him in the nose and fled.
The attacker was apparently looking for his girlfriend and had gone to her former boyfriend's apartment Monday night where the victim was a guest.
KXRO reports he left the carcass behind.
Police later found the suspect arguing with his girlfriend at another location and arrested the 33-year-old Hoquiam man after a fight.
He said he had found the marten dead near Hoquiam, but police don't know why he carried it with him.
A marten is a member of the weasel family.
I realize that police reports can be incomplete, but I figure there can't be too many spells that make use of a deceased marten. It's a dead giveaway, so to speak. And the punching might be a ritual gesture or it might be superfluous. I'm thinking that this could be of the same family as the dreaded mutilated raccoon spell, which was unleashed at least once during the Salem witch wars of 2007. If you happen to know what this spell might be or what the caster was trying to accomplish go ahead and leave it in the comments.
And no, "prove to the world what a dumbass he is" doesn't provide me with any new insights. I already thought of that one.
The most likely spell, assuming the corpse was recently dead, would be trapping the animals spirit to its body so it could be made to serve the practitioner as a familiar spirit. It'd sort of be like a poor man's imp, and would most likely be used in this situation for spying, such as allowing the practitioner to know if his girlfriend came to the house.
ReplyDeleteIt also could have been an offering to a spirit. Your better spirits usually want their offering alive or killed during the offering, or cooked. There are a few things though that will take scavenged roadkill. Primals for instance would be fairly common in magical work, and some of them will take rotting carcasses as offerings.
Or it could be a type of limited possession where the spirit doesn't take control but instead causes the practitioner to change, usually for some beneficial effect. If he wasn't able to handle something like that (which can be hard) it could explain his insane behavior, as he was no longer able to tell what was or wasn't acceptable.
Reading the story though, how do we know this was a spell? The man could've just been an amateur taxidermist who saw a good body on the road and picked it up. Later, when he got into the fight, in dropped the body and fled in the heat of the moment.
Interesting theories. I'll keep those in mind.
ReplyDeleteI know that it's probably not really a spell. But I figured some sort of attempt at magick might be one possible explanation for this bizarre behavior and was curious if it sounded like a magical ritual that somebody out there was familiar with.
The guy's most likely just a dumbass, though.
I'm vaguely reminded of a spell from the Greek Magical Papyri in which the practitioner basically evokes the cat-goddess, drowns a cat, blames the drowning on an enemy, and watches the sparks fly.
ReplyDeletePerhaps weasel-rage is just as bad? Who knows.
Who is the weasel-goddess, anyway? I don't think I've ever come across that one in my studies.
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