Cock
The cock has been connected with magic practice in various
parts of the world throughout the ages. It is the herald of the
dawn, and examples abound of assemblies of demons and sorcerers
where its shrill cry, announcing daybreak, has put the infernal
Sabbat to rout. It is said that to avert such a contingency,
sorcerers used to smear the head and breast of the cock with
olive oil or place around his neck a collar of vine-branches.
In many cases the future was divined through this bird. It
was also believed that in its stomach was found a stone, called
lappilus alectorius, from the Greek name of the bird, that gave
strength and courage and is said to have inspired the gigantic
might of Milo of Crotona in the sixth century B.C.E.
Originally a native of India, the cock arrived in Europe in
early times via Persia, where it is alluded to in the Zoroastrian
books as the beadle (messenger) of the sun and terror of demons.
Among the Arabs, it was said that it crowed when it became
aware of the presence of jinns. The Jews received their
concept of the cock as a scarer of evil spirits from the Persians,
as did the Armenians, who said that it greets the guardian angels
with its clarion call, who descend to earth with the day, and
that it gives the keynote to the angelic choirs of heaven to commence
their daily round of song.
In India, too, and among the pagan Slavs, it was supposed
to scare away demons from dwelling places and was the first living
creature introduced into a newly built house. The Jews,
however, believed that it was possible for the cock to become
the victim of demons and that it should be killed if it upsets a
dish.
The cock was used directly in magic practice. In Scotland,
it was buried under the patients bed in cases of epilepsy. The
Germans believed that if a sorcerer threw a black cock into the
air, thunder and lightning would follow, and among the Chams
of Cambodia, a woman who wished to become a sorceress sacrificed
a live cock on a termites nest, cutting the bird in two from
the head to the tail and placing it on an altar, in front of which
she danced and sang in the nude until the two halves of the bird
came together again and it came to life and crowed. The name
of the cock was pronounced by the ancient Greeks as a cure for
the diseases of animals, and it was said by the Romans that
locked doors could be opened with its tail feathers. The bird
was pictured on amulets in early times and also figured as the
symbol of Abraxas, the principal deity of a Gnostic sect.
The cock was regarded as the guide of souls to the underworld,
and in this respect was associated by the Greeks with Persephone
and Hermes. The Slavs of pagan times sacrificed cocks
to the dead and to the household serpents, in which they believed
their ancestors to be reincarnated. Conversely, the cock
was pictured as having an infernal connection, especially if its
color was black. Indeed, it was employed in black magic, perhaps
the earliest instance of this being in the Atharva Veda, an
ancient Hindu scripture. A black cock was offered up to propitiate
the Devil in Hungary, and a black hen was used for the same
purpose in Germany. The Greek sirens, the Shedim of the Talmud,
and the Izpuzteque, whom the dead Aztec encounters on
the road to Mictlán, the Place of the Dead, all have cocks feet.
Cocks are also sacrificed in the Voudou and Santeria ceremonies
of the West Indian islands.
There is a widespread folk belief that once in seven years the
cock lays a little egg. In Germany it is necessary to throw this
over the roof, or tempests will wreck the homestead; but should
the egg be hatched, it will produce a cockatrice or basilisk. In
Lithuania the cocks egg should be put in a pot and placed in
the oven. From this egg is hatched a kauks, a bird with a tail like
that of a golden pheasant, which, if properly tended, will bring
its owner great good luck. A chronicle of Basel in Switzerland
mentions that in the month of August 1474 a cock in that town
Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology 5th Ed. Cock
305
was accused and convicted of laying an egg and was condemned
to death. He was publicly burned along with his egg,
at a place called Kablenberg, in sight of a great multitude of
people.
In Oldenburg, Germany, a black cock was used to divine
witches. The heart, lungs, and liver were pierced with needles
and placed in a sealed vessel over a fire, while everyone present
kept strict silence. When the heart boiled or became ashes, the
witch would be evident, since she would feel a burning pain in
her body and beg to be released.
The cock was also regarded as having a connection with
light and with the sun, probably because of the redness of his
comb and the fiery sheen of his plumage, or perhaps because
he heralds the day. It is the cock who daily wakens the heroes
in the Scandinavian Asgard. (See alectromancy)
