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”.
