Bat, Power Animal, Symbol of Rebirth
By Ina Woolcott
Bat's wisdom includes shamanic death and rebirth, initiation, viewing past lives, pollination of new ideas, transition, understanding grief, the use of vibrational sound, camouflage, invisibility, ability to observe unseen, secrets.
Shaman initiates go through a ritual death, sometimes with the aid of teacher plants and/or fasting. Here they confront their fears and are reborn without their old identities. Bats help us to release fear and patterns which no longer fits within our pattern of growth.
Bat flying into your life signifies that transformation of the ego self is about to occur, the end of a way of life and the start of another. This transition can be very frightening for many, even just to think about. But you will not grow spiritually until you let go these old parts of you that are NOT NEEDED. Facing the darkness before you will help you find the light in rebirth. The bat gives you the wisdom required to make the appropriate changes for the birthing of your new identity.
Bats have needle like teeth and can sometimes be rabies carriers, an infectious disease of the blood. It can cause a person to go mad. Fears that are permitted to spread, unchecked will in the end saturate our system, and can create a kind of madness within our lives. Bats reflect the need to face up to our fears. (Has anyone ever seen Batman Begins with Christian Bale? An amazing movie AND an amazing actor!)
There are various species of bat, with widely diverse traits. There are small and large bats. With a couple of exceptions, large bats live on fruit and get around visually. Smaller bats mainly feed on insects, catching them on the wing using echolocation. This is where an animal makes sounds and listens for the echoes reflected from surfaces and objects in the environment. With their amazing auditory perception bats are able to navigate through the dark with great ease. They have built in sonar’s, which give them the ability to know what lies beneath the surface. Generally those with this power animal have uncanny abilities to discern hidden messages both from people and the environment. When one has mastered this medicine, intuitive and clairaudient abilities are accurate.
Studies have bee carried out on bats such as being put in a fridge. When this happens they immediately go into a hibernation mode. When taken back out and warmed up they are totally unharmed, unique for a warm blooded mammal. This shows that the bats life force is strong, and it regenerates it when needed.
If this is your power animal, you would benefit from all types of yogic practices, especially those to do with awakening the kundalini.
Bat are extremely adaptable. All that has to do with them from their senses, feeding, flight and mating to size is perfectly matched to their particular environment. The message for you here may be to assess your surroundings to see what bounty is there for you for the taking, and then adapting/changing patterns so you can receive it.
Unbalanced bats will get ‘scrambled’ and perplexed, flying into things. Are you coming up against obstacles as you try and get what you need and want in life? If so the message for you here may be for you to take a step back to re-gain your bearings and decide the importance of what you are seeking.
Bats are sociable animals which can indicate a need for more sociability or increased opportunity with greater numbers of people.
Bats in Magic, Potions, and Medicinal Preparations
by Gary F. McCracken
Linking bats to witchcraft and magic has given rise to many of the fears people have about bats. Today in the United States, we see this association in Halloween decorations, horror movies, and scary novels, but it reaches back into antiquity and is found in many parts of the world. Throughout history, bats have often been considered the familiars or even the alter egos of witches.
In 1332, Lady Jacaume of Bayonne in France was publicly burned because "crowds of bats" were seen about her house and garden. Shakespeare invoked bats and witches in several of his plays. The "wool of bat" in the brew of Macbeth's three witches is a prominent example of the association, as is Caliban's curse on Prospero in The Tempest: "All the charms of Sycorax, toads, beetles and bats, light on you."
The use of bats in witchcraft survives even in modern times. As recently as 1957, a California taxidermist sold bat blood, presumably for witchcraft. Other contemporary references include a report from Ohio claiming that bat blood can call evil spirits, and another from Illinois asserting that it gives witches "the power to do anything." There are also reports of bats used for witchcraft in Mexico's Yucatan, and bat wings are often in the conjure bags of African-Americans in Georgia.
But not all myths bring to mind frightening acts; some ascribe wondrous magical properties to bats and associate good luck with them. Unfortunately for the bat, most of them require its demise. An ancient belief found both in the American Midwest and the Caribbean is that bathing your eyes in bat blood will allow you to see in the dark. Many other beliefs suggest that bats have the power to make people invisible. While collecting small samples of bat blood in Trinidad, West Indies (for use in genetics research, I might add), a Trinidadian told me that if I drank the blood I would become invisible. Tyrolean gypsies have a similar belief, claiming that carrying the left eye of a bat will accomplish the feat. In Oklahoma carrying the right eye of a bat pierced with a brass pin will have the same effect, while in Brazil a person carrying the hearts of a bat, a frog, and a black hen will become invisible.
Bat magic can also be an antidote to sleepiness. In both ancient Greece and Rome, it was believed that you could prevent sleep either if you placed the engraved figure of a bat under your pillow, or if you tied the head of a bat in a black bag and laid it near your left arm. In many parts of Europe, a practice said to ensure not only wakefulness, but also to protect livestock and prevent misfortune is to nail live bats head down above doorways. Not for the faint of heart, this practice was reported as recently as 1922 in Sussex, England and may indeed continue today. Canadian Indians relate that bat "medicine" can also bring about the opposite effect of staying awake; traditions claim that placing the head or dried intestines of a bat in an infant's cradle will cause the baby to sleep all day. In a similar vein, Mescalero Apaches believe that the skin of a bat attached to the head of a cradle will protect a baby from becoming frightened.
Bats have also been said to induce love or desire. In Roman antiquity, Pliny maintained that a man could stimulate a woman's desire by placing a clot of bat blood under her pillow. In Texas, one lovesick suitor was told to place a bat on an anthill until all its flesh was removed, wear its "wishbone" around his neck, pulverize the remaining bones, mix them with vodka, and give the drink to his beloved. A similar love potion from Europe recommends mixing dried, powdered bat in the woman's beer.
Bat hearts or bones are often carried as good luck charms. Variations on a belief that apparently began in Germany, and have been repeated in the United States, predict that bats bring good luck at cards or lotteries. The prescription is to wrap a bat's heart in a silk handkerchief or red ribbon and keep it in a wallet or pocket, or tie it to the hand used for dealing cards. Some also believe that tying a silk string around a bat's heart will bring money.
Another superstition from Germany relates that bullets from a gun swabbed with a bat's heart will always hit their target. According to the Egyptian Secrets, attributed to Albertus Magnus in the 13th century, mixing lead shot with the heart or liver of a bat will have the same result. Some American Ozark pioneers had another variation of this belief: they carried the dried, powdered hearts of bats to protect them from being shot and to keep wounded men from bleeding to death.
It is common in folklore that the desired effect of a potion or medicinal preparation reflects real or imagined characteristics of the ingredients. (We've heard about cannibals eating the heart of a valiant but vanquished foe to obtain the foe's courage.) It is also common that the desired effect of a potion can be the opposite of the characteristics perceived in their ingredients. It is easy, therefore, to imagine the motivations for some bat preparations thought to cure various maladies.
The association of bats with human hair (BATS, Summer 1992) is seen here too. Many beliefs in Europe and the United States relate the value of bats' blood, or their excrement, as a depilatory. But in England and North Carolina the use of bats' blood has been advocated to prevent baldness. In India, using a hair wash of crushed bat wings in coconut oil is said to prevent both baldness and graying of hair.
Medicinal preparations using bats are legion and have been recommended for many other maladies. Folk healers prescribe a large variety of bat preparations for problems with vision, ranging from dimness to cataracts. Other bat folk medicines are said to be remedies for snakebite, asthma, tumors, sciatica, fevers, a painless childbirth, or to promote lactation. Sir Theodore Mayerne, who lived in the 15th century, prescribed "balsam of bat" as an ointment for hypochondriacs, his recipe consisting of "adders, bats, suckling whelps, earthworms, hogs' grease, stag marrow, and the thigh bone of an ox." In the 1700s one physician recommended that, properly prepared, the flesh of bat was good for gout. Folklore from Brazil suggests taking dried, powdered bat as a remedy for epilepsy. In more modern times, Texas folklore advocates drinking bat blood to cure rheumatism and consumption, and asserts that rubbing warts with a bat's left eye will remove them.
We can trace many of the folk remedies and magical properties ascribed to bats directly to their physical features and lifestyles. Wakefulness at night or sleeping all day are well-known characteristics of bats. Although none are blind (except by injury or congenital defect) and most have good vision, "blind as a bat" is still a commonly heard phrase, and many people believe it. But before the discovery in the 1930s that most bats use echolocation to navigate both at night and in total darkness, many people were convinced that bats not only had excellent vision, but that they could actually see in the dark. The use of bats to treat ailments of vision is therefore not surprising.
The extensive folk association of bats with hair can likewise explain their use as a depilatory or for preventing baldness. A less likely possibility is that bats are believed to promote lactation because, for their size, lactating female bats can produce a truly prodigious supply of milk for their young. Perhaps even more fanciful is that the 18th century doctor might have imagined bats to be a remedy for gout because they rest with their feet above their heads.
Obviously, the origins of many bat folk medicines are extremely, if not completely, obscure. Why should bats cure tumors, help hypochondriacs, or induce love? (In colonial North Carolina, eating roast bat was a recommended cure for children who ate dirt. Where did that one come from?)
Linking bats with witchcraft and magic, and ascribing other mystical powers and properties to them has certainly contributed to our apprehension about such seemingly strange and miraculous creatures. However, as we learn more and more about bats, we find that the truth is, in many ways, more miraculous than the legends.
[bio]
Gary McCracken is a professor in the Department of Zoology and the Graduate Programs in Ecology and Ethology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has studied bats for many years and is author of the entry on bats in The Encyclopedia of American Folklore and Superstition.
Are bats a delicacy in some countries?
by Christen Conger
Off the coast of Tanzania, nestled against Africa's eastern coast, sits the island of Pemba. While it's not a tourist hotspot, Pemba boasts dazzling shore lines, complete with coral reefs, sprawling mangroves and clove trees, which give the air a faintly spicy aroma. Perhaps more impressive than the pristine geography is the anatomy of one of Pemba's native residents.
The Pemba flying fox bat is one of the largest bat species in the world, with a wingspan stretching 5.5 feet (1.6 meters) across. Since the 1990s, conservationists have worked feverishly to preserve the dwindling population. The flying fox bat used to be a routine dish on Pemba dinner tables, and people hunted so aggressively that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classified the bat as endangered in 1992.
Although the IUCN bumped the flying fox bat's conservation status from endangered up to vulnerable in 2008, it isn't uncommon to encounter bats on the menu in other African and Asian locales. According to Bat Conservation International, there are more than 1,100 species of bats around the globe, composing about one-fourth of all mammalian species. Moreover, the largest, meatiest varieties fly the skies in the Eastern hemisphere.
Bats on the Menu
Travelers in parts of China, Thailand, Guam and even Australia might run across bats in food markets and restaurants. Varieties of fruit bats, including the sizable flying fox bat, are the most popular to eat. When it comes time to cook them up, Pemba islanders usually roast their bats, and other cultures might toss bits of bat into soups and stir-fry. In 1976, Calvin W. Schwabe, defender of strange foods the world over, offered up a simple Samoan recipe for bat in his book "Unmentionable Cuisine." After skinning and disemboweling the bats, Schwabe recommended cutting up the meat and either baking or deep-frying it with salt, pepper and onions.
In "Extreme Cuisine," famed chef Anthony Bourdain cautions traveling gastronomes of a particularly pungent smell that wafts from simmering bat. But the actual flavor should be far more benign. As with many mystery meats, bat reportedly tastes a lot like chicken. To rustle up one's own batty entrée, Bourdain says to season it with some peppers, onions or garlic (not unlike a roasted chicken recipe) to mitigate that strong scent.
Fruit Bats and Emerging Diseases
Sampling local bat may not be a wise choice in light of recent medical developments. In Guam, officials linked flying fox bats to a form of dementia called ALS/PDC; among the native Chamorro people, the incidence rate was 50 to 100 times higher than sample populations. And while fruit bats' insect and fruit diet may seem harmless enough, they may also harbor some unwanted and downright dangerous diseases. Medical experts have traced strains of SARS, Ebola and other emerging diseases back to them. Fruit bats in Gabon, for instance, have been culprits for carrying Marburg and Ebola virus. Officials are mostly concerned about bats leaving behind pathogens after nipping a piece of fruit or passing them along to another animal through tainted saliva, as in the case of Nipah virus in Malaysia. Nevertheless, if savvy travelers are offered morsels of deep-fried bat, they ought to choose health over cultural etiquette and politely decline the exotic snack.
