In both ancient Greece and Rome, it was thought that sleep could be prevented either by placing the engraved figure of a bat under the pillow, or by tying the head of a bat in a black bag and keeping it near to the left arm. In the Ivory Coast, even today many think that bats are the spirits of the dead, and in Madagascar, they are assumed to be the souls of criminals, sorcerers and the unburied dead. In the Tyrol it is believed that the man who wears the left eye of a bat may become invisible, and in Hesse he who wears the heart of a bat bound to his arm with red thread will always be lucky at cards. To the Chinese and the Polish, the bat means long life and happiness, a good omen.
Wash your face in bat's blood, and you will be able to see in the dark; keep a bat bone in your pocket will ensure good luck; powdered bat heart will staunch bleeding or stop a bullet; bullets from a gun swabbed with a bat's heart will always hit their target; bat's blood into someone's drink will make them more passionate; stimulate a woman's desire by placing a clot of bat blood under her pillow; use a hair wash of crushed bat wings in coconut oil and it will prevent both baldness and graying of the hair; and the list goes on and on... how many wondrous and magical uses these small flying mammals have! Unfortunately for the bat, most of these 'wonderful' applications where its 'miraculous' properties are required, ensue its demise.
"All the charms of Sycorax, toads, beetles and bats, light on you."
Some ancient allegories about the bat even made it to the Bible. The Hebrew word atalleph so rendered (Leviticus 11:19; Deuteronomy 14:18) implies 'flying in the dark'. The bat is reckoned among the birds in the list of unclean animals, and to cast idols to the 'moles and to the bats' means to carry them into dark caverns or desolate places to which these animals resort (Isaiah 2:20), i.e., to consign them to desolation or ruin.
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