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Christianity viewed animal transformation as demonic deception at best, actual deal with Satan at worst. The Church could not deny that something occurred—the reports were too consistent, the effects too observable. But transformation was reinterpreted as illusion created by demons to damn practitioners’ souls.
Some theologians argued that the Devil could not actually transform humans into animals (God alone had that power) but could create illusion so convincing that both practitioner and observers believed transformation had occurred. Others claimed the transformation was real but that the practitioner’s consciousness was displaced by demonic consciousness, the animal behavior coming from demon rather than the person’s transformed state.
The practice was prohibited, those who continued it prosecuted as witches or sorcerers. The animal skins were burned, the techniques condemned, the knowledge driven into hiding. But fragments persisted—in folk tales of werewolves, in legends of shape-shifters, in the enduring sense that under certain conditions, humans could access animal consciousness and that this access was both powerful and dangerous.
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