The Halloween party carries its share of beliefs and symbols.
Among these, witches, pumpkins and… black cats, around which so many superstitions hover.
Since ancestral times, their black dress has brought them a lot of misery and even today, these myths stick to their skin.
The proof: in shelters, black cats are the least adopted.
But out of the question for Stephanie to let herself be influenced.
“These beliefs are absurd but do so much damage.
I adopted a black cat, the most fearful, the one to whom life had never smiled, the one who had been beaten.
Since then, my little Haka has lived her best life.
However, superstitions are tenacious, as Anne-Marie from Oradour-sur-Vayres testifies: “One of my colleagues told me that she had come across a black cat and that her husband had died the following night.
She firmly believed in the cat's role in her death.
Since then, when she sees some on her way, she crosses her fingers so that another misfortune does not happen to her.
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All was well for the cat, whether black or not, during ancient Egypt.
Appreciated for its role as a formidable predator, it allowed the first growers to protect their crops from rats and mice.
Venerated to the point of being sometimes mummified at his death, the little feline also fascinated for his incredible fertility, which earned him to give his features to the goddess Bastet
(a woman's body and a cat's head)
, symbol of motherhood. , protection of the home and fertility.
The black cat was not the object of any animosity, because its color was associated with the silt of the Nile, there still pledge of fertility.
“An Earthly Incarnation of the Devil”
To understand the origins of these dark ideas, we must take a leap into Christian Europe in the 8th century, when the fight against earlier pagan cults was gaining momentum.
“It is at this time that we will begin to darken the cat.
The papal bulls, that is to say the legislative texts enacted by the sovereign pontiff, defined the cat as an earthly incarnation of the devil.
From there, it was fought”, tells us Christian Doumergue, author of the book
The cat: legends, myths and magic powers
, at the editions of Opportun.
The symbolism of colors in the West then came to crystallize these beliefs, black being associated with the devil.
But black cats are not the only ones to be stigmatized.
"We also told stories of demonic appearances in the guise of ginger cats, this color being able to symbolize the flames of hell", continues Christian Doumergue.
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According to medieval beliefs, the black cat was the companion of witches, who could themselves transform into a felid to spread evil.
So they were persecuted.
They were hunted down, hunted and killed in atrocious conditions: dismembered, scalded, quartered… There were thus pyres of cats, very popular on the feast day of Saint John, in June.
In Scotland, black cat rhymes with prosperity
The fear of the curse linked to black cats was quite strong in the countryside until the beginning of the 20th century, according to Christian Doumergue.
But not everywhere.
Among the British, a black cat at home portends a good marriage for the young girl in the family.
And among the Scots, the black cat was synonymous with prosperity.
Sometimes the life of a black cat was hanging by a hair... In France, some people considered that a little white tuft on the throat was the mark of Christ: he was no longer perceived as a satanic being.
In Brittany, a white hair found on the coat of a black cat could be enough to save its life, this white hair even serving as a talisman if it were torn from it.
Fortunately, some today appreciate having a little panther at home.
But the choice of its name often bears witness to the imagination that is set in motion.
Marie-Edith named her black cat Brocéliande.
As for Cécilia, who crossed paths with her kitty in the fog of a New Year's Eve, she named her Mystik.