Shapeshifting as Penance

[Sepka]

Anonymous (that prolific poster) said in response to Jeff's recent article about skinwalkers:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>In legends of early Christianity a period of shape shifting could be undertaken as a form of penance for serious sin. You did not gain the ability to shape shift through evil deeds. You took on the difficult life of an animal as a way to atone for mortal sin, self-administered karma.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <br><br>Does anyone have a cite for this? I've never heard of this before.<br><br>-Sepka the Space Weasel <p></p><i></i>

[ir]

the notion of reincarnating as animal or even "thing" (generally stone) as penance is common knowledge in jewish kaballah and other writings. but that's not shapeshifting . the closest there is in Jewish mysticism is the term "changing form", which is either a 'trick" to cheat the devil to not recognizing the person, OR a bad experience that causes such deep change (for the worse, usually) that it causes a real change of personality so the person is unrecognizable. There is more "invisibility" in it, than changing shape to an animal. <br>--<br>Chaging into an animal is not likely to be in the monotheistic abrahamic (urban) religions. Animals are food, sacrifice, etc, because the cultures domesticated and herded animals, did not hunt so much and had many taboos over animals (notion of "impure" or non "kosher" animals etc.). Having said that, Sufi writings on "sacrifice" of animals, go deeper and state that the animal is in fact more perfect than the human, in the sense of having a certain trait brought to prefection. thus, sacrificing is always upside down, namely, the lower is sacrificing the higher to acquire its trait. So, a lamb, for instance is the perfection of innocence (more than human), and so the lower (person) sacrifices the perfect lamb to gain its trait through giving the animal to God. Eating is the same act of sacrifice. This is the expouding of the story of Abraham and the sacrfice of Isaac/ram story. <br><br>Another animal-animated story in the Bible is the donkey of Balaam who could communicate with angels and had "human" wisdom and mind. But Balaam is considered a bad sorcerer, and so it figures he will have wise animals around him, as this was attributed to sorcery.<br><br>However, indigenous/ pagan cultures have a deeper and more friendly relations to animals. <br> <p></p><i></i>

[mother]

Catholic mysicism is rich with stories of saints who had a deep rapport with animals; St. Francis of Assisi being the most common. The first saint to have suffered the stigmata, he was followed by friendly birds and especially a wild wolf. Many other saints had fabulous experiences with animals who either assisted them in some emergency or were completely tame if otherwise dangerous. (also lots of them were vegetarians) Being turned into an animal as a result of a witch's curse in fairy tales is certainly common, that could be considered penance. <p></p><i></i>

[ir]

Appear in the bible, with Elijah the prophet, who while he was forced to flee his political enemies to the desert was fed by crows. But still, the birds appears in the traditional role of "food" (maybe he actually ate them, but that's my skepticism...). Of course there are the stories of adam and even and the garden of eden and the speaking snake and all. And the whale from Jona's story, the closest I can recall, to being "animated", although he only puked Jona, that's still pretty human.<br><br>Still , I think these stories are basically different from indigenous myth and archetype (the coyote's central role, for instance, etc.). Namely, part of the role of the religions was to accent the difference of humans from animals. I heard that Shamans get a person to envision the "animal" which represents his or her spirit. that would hardly be the case in mono religions. And in both Orthodox judaism and Islam, dogs are not allowed in the dwelling place. I think also Judaism reacted to Egyptian culture/religion where animals had sacred status (cats, bulls etc.). <br><br>One of the nice poems about shapeshifing-penance tranmutation is the griesly bride...<br><br>An empty bed still waits for him<br>As he lies in a crimson tide.<br>Beware, beware, oh trapper men,<br>Beware of a griesly bride.<br><br> <br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~swinick/folk228/griesly2.html">www.sas.upenn.edu/~swinic...esly2.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <p></p><i></i>