In Which I See a FOX

A  L  O  H  A !

No foxes in Hawaii, but is that. . . . ?

“ A fox 

passing through the wood

 on business of his own 

stopped several minutes 

and sniffed. ” 

                      J.R.R. Tolkien, 

                                      The Fellowship of the Ring

Bushy tail, pointy snout, ears pricked-
Ready to bolt at their approach

“ Hungry for beautiful words, 

the fox comes rooting 

around in the hedge. . .

 He reads my mind 

with one glance and is 

gone. ” 

                  Jay Woodman

Beguiled by a Kitsune!

“Nothing's perfect," 

sighed the fox. ” 

 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 

The Little Prince

" When a fox is fifty years old,

 it can transform itself 

into a woman. 

When it is one hundred, 

it becomes 

a beautiful woman 

or a shaman; 

Some become men

 and have sex 

with women. 

They can know events 

from more than a thousand li away 

and are good at witchcraft, 

beguiling people and

 making them 

lose their senses. "

                           Guo Pu, 

                                   Records from Within the Recondite

]\[

Thank You

for magically
appearing here!

               Warmly, cloudia

Books and Theses on Spirit Foxes:

Bathgate, Michael R. The Shapeshifter Fox: The Imagery of Transformation and the Transformation of Imagery in Japanese Religion and Folklore. Chicago: The University of Chicago, June 2001. Doctoral thesis.

Blacker, Carmen. The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Japanese Shamanistic Practices. Routledge Curzon, 1999.

A thorough description of Japanese shamanism that includes an entire chapter on magical animals, including kitsune.

Davis, Winston. Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980. 

A study of the Sukyo Mahikari sect, a religion that believes in possession by spirit animals and the dead. The author describes several cases of fox possession and exorcism.   Link