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Catspells: A Collection of Enchantments for You and Your Feline Companion
"May sweet delight be this month's theme--I saw a cat in last night's dream..."--A country rhyme. Do you love cats? Are you charmed by their wiles and ways? Did you know that in the past, the cat was believed to represent the likes of witches, fairies, and spirits in corporeal form? This unique collection contains ancient cat lore and magic spells for healing, good luck, love, and enchantment. There's also an entertaining chapter on naming your cat--how about Diana, the goddess, the lionlike Llewellyn, or the Celtic wizard Merlin? Color and black-and-white illustrations throughout help make this book a delightful browsing book for cat lovers. 4 3/4" x 7 1/4".
88 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Claire Nahmad
34 books13 followersClaire Nahmad is descended from a long line of herbalists and wise women, and has spent her life learning the ancient arts and attuning herself to the life of the spirit. She has published eight books on new age themes. She lives in a remote part of South Yorkshire where she is studying the local lore and legends.
- description from cover jacket of the 1998 edition of Fairy Spells
- description from cover jacket of the 1998 edition of Fairy Spells
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 16, 2011
This is a wonderful book for anyone who loves cats. I've had it for well over a decade now and the ideas are as fresh today as when it was first written.
The title is a bit of a misnomer, as there aren't that many spells in this book - it is mostly legends, lore and other types of information. There is even a section with ideas for cat names based upon their age and personality. It suggests creating both a "kitten" name and an "adult" name for your cat, as well as a "secret" name known only to your cat and yourself. I had a pair of cats years ago when I lived in Minneapolis (after I bought this book) who I decided to try it on, and lo and behold, they helped name themselves! It was really neat.
Overall, I'd highly recommend this book for cat lovers and magical people - if you don't have it yet, go and grab it!
The title is a bit of a misnomer, as there aren't that many spells in this book - it is mostly legends, lore and other types of information. There is even a section with ideas for cat names based upon their age and personality. It suggests creating both a "kitten" name and an "adult" name for your cat, as well as a "secret" name known only to your cat and yourself. I had a pair of cats years ago when I lived in Minneapolis (after I bought this book) who I decided to try it on, and lo and behold, they helped name themselves! It was really neat.
Overall, I'd highly recommend this book for cat lovers and magical people - if you don't have it yet, go and grab it!
April 13, 2013
I'm not even sure where to begin with this 89 page book, at least it was a short book and I didn't have to spend a lot of time with it unlike other books. Another good thing was that this book has a page listing of the spells within the book - which is something that I absolutely approve of for all spellbooks - in general. It's a usability issue at that point.
But other than that...
...
This book is pretty much a mountain of romanticizing and misappropriating bullshit presented as facts. Some of the biggest things that are just... awful:
1. No Sources at all.
Almost the entire introduction as well as the paragraphs which open the various sections of spells - discuss old manuscripts, old texts, and old folklore (wiselore? - which the author talks about and never explains what the hell that is), yet there is not even a single reference to a name or to an author. Nothing. As far as I can see, the author has just stated that there's some mysterious old book(s), she's quoting from. So, what books are we talking about? What lore are we talking about? What stories are we talking about?
How old is "old"? How old is "ancient"? What exactly are you trying to reference here and establish as a good source by authenticating it via... it's age?
I'm not really sure, but it seems to me that this author pretty much just pulls most of this stuff out of her ass. Or better yet, she actually does have a source somewhere down the line and makes such a piss poor job of understanding whatever the source is discussing, that she utterly ruins the material.
Even worse, she can't seem provide any logical evidence for her claim that British people don't like white cats (which seems to be pretty much just some bullshit). Her attempt at trying to discuss Roman propaganda and various other things about the Roman and British interacts doesn't even have anything to back up ANY kind of material. It would be one thing if she could source quote at least ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE AT ALL THAT THE ROMANS SAID ANYTHING ABOUT CATS.
2. Gods
Pretty much the majority of this book is saying that Diana is an Egyptian Moon-Cat goddess - which is pretty much so damn fictitious I'm not spending my time to answer how idiotic that is, when you can go to google and type in the name, and get the Wiki almost immediately. Sufficed to say, she's not Egyptian. And I have no idea who she's talking about with "Butis" here...
Furthermore, this author says, "Celtic mother-goddess, Ceridwen ... was attended by white cats who carried out her orders on earth," which is absolutely ridiculous. Ceridwen does have animals who are associated with her in her lore, but it's not cats. It's a pig and a hen. Also, there's some evidence to suggest she's Welsh (and a sorceress , not Celtic. The origin of her being a Celtic Pagan Deity may have come from 12th Century Poets.
3. Cait Sidhe/Cat sith
Since it's no surprise that the author doesn't do sources very well, it shouldn't be a surprise that she doesn't explain folklore concepts or characters well either. This spirit category, has both specific lore (though often hard to fine) like The King of the cats and has known cultural associations like them not being exactly the best spirits to interact with or make dealings with. I won't go into very much of this by myself, as I am not very well versed in this area either, however it seems a bit odd that the author would strip out much of the culture's opinion of a spirit. Instead, the author casts this spirit as a friendly little helper that's here to guide you around the Fairylands, instead of you know stripping your soul. Next she'll say the Kappa is a cute friendly little guy who justs likes cucumbers.
4. Binary Gender-Normative
A lot of what this book uses as gender pronouns are she. She. She. She. But even worse than that, she makes statements that women are really the only ones who should work with cats because they "understand" them better. This author completely erases all witches who are male, men who like cats, or a combination of both. It's like...so men who are witches don't exist... Okay, author. Okay. Or any other gender that's not in the binary spectrum. They just don't exist either.
5. Familiar = Pet
I'm not even going to go into this one because there's a lot of issues wrapped up in this one, but making a "pet" which was started off as a pet, a "Familiar" is ridiculous.
-------
Another thing that really bothers me throughout this book is that, this author basically mashes up a variety of spells without any actual thought process. Like for example, she takes the Key of Solomon and strips out pretty much everything about the context of the Key of solomon, and turns around and uses PIECES and PARTS of the symbolism and rituals from KoS within her spells.
One of the problems with this is generally, when you pull something out of context like "Mercury's Angels" - ie angels which have some reference to the planet Mercury in the KoS - you don't get a grasp for what the whole point of calling down angels were in the first place and what they have to do with anything. Why are these angels "mercury's" and why do they have anything to do with this spell? How are they helpful? It is like pulling a snippet out of a long 800 page Novel and using that snippet as a reference to whole Novel itself.
The other is that it looks as if the author is also combining various forms of folk magic and Christian folk magic together, which in of itself is not bad - but rather combining them in ways that don't exactly make sense. Like, justifying the reason for doing Spell A within a Christian folk magic context. Since there is a distinct context for Christian folk magic, using a piece of it (like a word or phrasing) is very similar to the above mentioned KoS problem. It's a snippet out of whole book. Even more so, if the form of Christian folk magic she's using is not syncretic and open to adjustment, then adding something on top of it or misrepresenting it's nature or context - is actually appropriative of the practices.
Some other things that bother me are:
A) Using an eleven page piece of filler which talks about names for cats, is very goddamn annoying.
B) Attributing things which were EVOLVED BY BREEDING to a mysterious or mystical source. The concept of Evolution existed when this book was published, so why are we attributing the way a cat moves (which is very specific) to a mystical sense?
C) The illustrations make me not want to take this book very seriously. It really does distract me.
D) The overly dramatic flourish of the language of the book. In one case, it seemed like she was describing the spell twice - and she was. It felt like someone was rushing to fill up space before the deadline.
So would I recommend this book? No. It's a poorly done book, and surprisingly this isn't even the typical problematic author or publishing house.
But other than that...
...
This book is pretty much a mountain of romanticizing and misappropriating bullshit presented as facts. Some of the biggest things that are just... awful:
1. No Sources at all.
Almost the entire introduction as well as the paragraphs which open the various sections of spells - discuss old manuscripts, old texts, and old folklore (wiselore? - which the author talks about and never explains what the hell that is), yet there is not even a single reference to a name or to an author. Nothing. As far as I can see, the author has just stated that there's some mysterious old book(s), she's quoting from. So, what books are we talking about? What lore are we talking about? What stories are we talking about?
How old is "old"? How old is "ancient"? What exactly are you trying to reference here and establish as a good source by authenticating it via... it's age?
I'm not really sure, but it seems to me that this author pretty much just pulls most of this stuff out of her ass. Or better yet, she actually does have a source somewhere down the line and makes such a piss poor job of understanding whatever the source is discussing, that she utterly ruins the material.
Even worse, she can't seem provide any logical evidence for her claim that British people don't like white cats (which seems to be pretty much just some bullshit). Her attempt at trying to discuss Roman propaganda and various other things about the Roman and British interacts doesn't even have anything to back up ANY kind of material. It would be one thing if she could source quote at least ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE AT ALL THAT THE ROMANS SAID ANYTHING ABOUT CATS.
2. Gods
Pretty much the majority of this book is saying that Diana is an Egyptian Moon-Cat goddess - which is pretty much so damn fictitious I'm not spending my time to answer how idiotic that is, when you can go to google and type in the name, and get the Wiki almost immediately. Sufficed to say, she's not Egyptian. And I have no idea who she's talking about with "Butis" here...
Furthermore, this author says, "Celtic mother-goddess, Ceridwen ... was attended by white cats who carried out her orders on earth," which is absolutely ridiculous. Ceridwen does have animals who are associated with her in her lore, but it's not cats. It's a pig and a hen. Also, there's some evidence to suggest she's Welsh (and a sorceress , not Celtic. The origin of her being a Celtic Pagan Deity may have come from 12th Century Poets.
3. Cait Sidhe/Cat sith
Since it's no surprise that the author doesn't do sources very well, it shouldn't be a surprise that she doesn't explain folklore concepts or characters well either. This spirit category, has both specific lore (though often hard to fine) like The King of the cats and has known cultural associations like them not being exactly the best spirits to interact with or make dealings with. I won't go into very much of this by myself, as I am not very well versed in this area either, however it seems a bit odd that the author would strip out much of the culture's opinion of a spirit. Instead, the author casts this spirit as a friendly little helper that's here to guide you around the Fairylands, instead of you know stripping your soul. Next she'll say the Kappa is a cute friendly little guy who justs likes cucumbers.
4. Binary Gender-Normative
A lot of what this book uses as gender pronouns are she. She. She. She. But even worse than that, she makes statements that women are really the only ones who should work with cats because they "understand" them better. This author completely erases all witches who are male, men who like cats, or a combination of both. It's like...so men who are witches don't exist... Okay, author. Okay. Or any other gender that's not in the binary spectrum. They just don't exist either.
5. Familiar = Pet
I'm not even going to go into this one because there's a lot of issues wrapped up in this one, but making a "pet" which was started off as a pet, a "Familiar" is ridiculous.
-------
Another thing that really bothers me throughout this book is that, this author basically mashes up a variety of spells without any actual thought process. Like for example, she takes the Key of Solomon and strips out pretty much everything about the context of the Key of solomon, and turns around and uses PIECES and PARTS of the symbolism and rituals from KoS within her spells.
One of the problems with this is generally, when you pull something out of context like "Mercury's Angels" - ie angels which have some reference to the planet Mercury in the KoS - you don't get a grasp for what the whole point of calling down angels were in the first place and what they have to do with anything. Why are these angels "mercury's" and why do they have anything to do with this spell? How are they helpful? It is like pulling a snippet out of a long 800 page Novel and using that snippet as a reference to whole Novel itself.
The other is that it looks as if the author is also combining various forms of folk magic and Christian folk magic together, which in of itself is not bad - but rather combining them in ways that don't exactly make sense. Like, justifying the reason for doing Spell A within a Christian folk magic context. Since there is a distinct context for Christian folk magic, using a piece of it (like a word or phrasing) is very similar to the above mentioned KoS problem. It's a snippet out of whole book. Even more so, if the form of Christian folk magic she's using is not syncretic and open to adjustment, then adding something on top of it or misrepresenting it's nature or context - is actually appropriative of the practices.
Some other things that bother me are:
A) Using an eleven page piece of filler which talks about names for cats, is very goddamn annoying.
B) Attributing things which were EVOLVED BY BREEDING to a mysterious or mystical source. The concept of Evolution existed when this book was published, so why are we attributing the way a cat moves (which is very specific) to a mystical sense?
C) The illustrations make me not want to take this book very seriously. It really does distract me.
D) The overly dramatic flourish of the language of the book. In one case, it seemed like she was describing the spell twice - and she was. It felt like someone was rushing to fill up space before the deadline.
So would I recommend this book? No. It's a poorly done book, and surprisingly this isn't even the typical problematic author or publishing house.
September 27, 2022
This book was everything I wanted it to be, which is absolutely delightful garbage. I had much fun reading about how my cat can cure my warts. Deducting points because she doesn’t spay or neuter and she lets her cats free roam outside, and also because the spells scan poorly for poetic meter. What a mess, Claire.
November 18, 2022
Such an interesting and cute book! The name recommendations are a little odd though. Just curious if having multiple cats, makes the spells stronger? I hope so.
But on the plus side, my boyfriend thinks our cats and I are going to hex him… which I’ll continue to let him think for my benefits.
But on the plus side, my boyfriend thinks our cats and I are going to hex him… which I’ll continue to let him think for my benefits.
March 30, 2019
Interesting information about cat magick.
January 21, 2020
Cute book. Loved the artwork. Fun read for a cat lover.
December 20, 2020
Short book, but great information if you love cats, and have cats.
January 12, 2011
I picked my cat's three names out of this book, and named him when there was the moon, like recommended, and he acts just like his names describe in the naming section of the book. Granted, this was almost 8 years ago when I was a teenager that I did this. I never tried any of the other spells, but the naming went well :) There's some interesting bits of the history of cats in magic too.
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May 1, 2017Hardcover
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews