Mummified cats, ‘witch markings and boots in your walls: The secret hidden magic to trap evil spirits

 

Newcastle University historian Ian Evans was finding mummified cats, children’s shoes and anti-witch symbols known as hexafoils and merels, and ritually burnt marks hidden on and in the walls of homes and other buildings around Australia.

Why?

It seems the houses built before 1935 and secret marks and “ritual magic” objects were part of a secret known by early Australian settlers.

These items (mummified cats, children’s shoes and anti-witch symbols) were placed under floorboards, in walls and roofs in homes afraid of evil spirits from the underworld, which brought death and destruction.

 

 

Dr Evans believes this stems from medieval times where objects were hidden and the symbols written to fool witches and devils.

“The use of magic appears to have been an aspect of cultural practices brought from England by settlers, convicts, the military, and members of the Colonial administration,” Dr Evans said.

“The fear of attacks by escaped convicts, bushrangers and Aborigines is also thought to have played a part in the use of protective magic.”

 

Dr Evans said shoes and dead cats, which have been turning up in houses in Europe, the UK and the US for centuries, “represents colonial settlers’ belief that misfortune and evil spells could be warded off by secretly placing the objects in an inaccessible spot”.

He said shoes were used because they retained their human shape after being taken off, and cats because they were “the witch’s companion and catcher of vermin, to trap or decoy an incoming witch”.

The Carrot Clarinet

From Australia we find this brilliant demonstration...

Australians - May the Force Be With You

Atheists are asking Australians not to describe themselves as “Jedi” in the upcoming census, because doing so makes the country appear more religious than it really is.

The Atheist Foundation of Australia has requested citizens mark themselves down as having “no religion” if they do not consider themselves tied to a faith.

“If old religious men in robes do not represent you... don’t mark yourself as ‘Jedi’,” says a campaign poster featuring Yoda and two other Jedi masters.

“’Jedi’ and other joke religions are not placed in the ‘No Religion’ category but in ‘Not Defined’. This makes Australia seem more religious than it really is.”

The joke has been around for years, when an email campaign wrongly claimed that if 8,000 people put themselves down as Jedi it would have to be officially recognised as a religion.

At the 2001 Australian census, more than 70,500 people listed their faith as “Jedi knight” or something like it, which would look like the country had nearly as many believers in the “Force” as it had members of the Salvation Army.

“Whether or not people took the claim seriously, it was the start of a reporting phenomenon that gained speed internationally,” the Australian Bureau of Statistics said in 2013, adding that New Zealand, Canada, England and Wales subsequently reported large Jedi contingents.

May the force be with you...