Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
The Man With the Legs of a Cat
Feline Faun
Two centuries before witches were first accused of worshiping the Animal Man with an anal kiss, the same accusation was leveled against the Cathars of southern France: Cathars being thus, in effect, proto-witches.
According to medieval French cleric Alain de Lille, the Devil appeared to them in the form of a huge black cat or, interestingly, of a man with the fur-covered legs of a cat.
In witch-trial documents of later centuries, the Devil is said not infrequently to take the form of a black cat, usually with tail raised: all the better to kiss you with, my dear.
(In 1682, Devonshire witches Mary Trembles and Susanna Edwards told the judges that he appeared to them as a lion.)
To the best of my knowledge, though, the man with cat legs—think feline faun—was unique to the Cathar vision.
Though the Animal God of the witches generally shows himself forth as one of the prey species by which we humans live, and have always lived—hence horned—neither is it unknown for him to take the form of a predator: each new form a revelation. Carved in mammoth ivory, the Lion Man is one of Europe's oldest images.
He is indeed a roaring lion, our god, our ancestors' god, stalking and roaring up and down the world.
As once again in our age and day he raises up a people to himself, let no one be surprised to behold him, once again, on feline paws.
As a cat stalks a mouse, as a lion its prey, so too do you stalk us, O Love ever new.
In love do you stalk us, O lord.
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