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Western |
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Vulpines |
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That's not what they meant... |
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Graves, roofs, and your own living room |
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Where next? |
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 Frequently Asked Questions About Fox SpiritsThese questions are taken from emails sent to me by my fellow fox researchers.
Does a fox actually transform, or is its body an illusion? What are the ramifications for the fox's romantic relationships with humans? Whether the fox actually transforms depends on the story. In some stories, the fox doesn't change, and someone who sees through the illusion sees the fox with, say, a skull on its head. In most stories, though, either the fox changes or the illusory body is so realistic that the question of whether it's real isn't brought up. Fox stories are very careful not to hint at bestiality. Also, stories generally assume that male foxes change into male humans and female foxes change into female humans, but there are a few stories in which foxes swap sex. They do have sex with humans in the swapped forms, but the stories don't indicate whether, say, a male fox changed into a human woman can get pregnant. It's interesting to note that all children born to a human-fox union are born to a fox mother and a human father. Human women occasionally sleep with (but not marry) foxes, but I haven't come across a story in which a human woman gives birth to a child by a fox. One Chinese scholar who supposedly spoke at length with a fox asked why women who slept with foxes never got pregnant, and the fox said, "Perhaps it's because the fox leaves nothing behind." This makes sense if you consider that foxes have sex with humans to harvest ch'i, which can happen only if the harvestee orgasms and the harvester restrains orgasm. If a male fox doesn't orgasm, then, yes, he'll leave nothing behind. It's also likely that the people telling the stories were uneasy with the idea of a woman getting pregnant by a fox. That would explain why women never get pregnant even when they have sex with foxes of a less mystical and more hedonistic bent. If you'd like to read more on this topic, the best place to go is "Foxes and Sex in Late Imperial Chinese Narrative." Do Japanese foxes need human skulls to transform into humans? If they revert to fox form, do they need another skull to change again? In some stories from both Japan and China, foxes need skulls to transform. Often they need the skull of a young woman to transform into a young woman, and so forth. The ritual described in one story has the fox balancing the skull on its head and worshiping or leaping up and down before the full moon. The skull slides off frequently, but when it stays on, the transformation has "taken." I have no idea whether the fox needs to find a new skull to change again—in the stories, the humans they tricked never give them the chance. This isn't the only way that foxes transform, though. Stories differ depending on when and where they come from and who was telling them—the stories told by the literati are different from the stories told by the peasantry. Stories also differ in the amount of detail they lavish on the process of transformation. The fox usually shows up fully transformed, and has better things to talk about than how she got into the shape she's wearing. Have you come across anything about unmasking fox spirits with dog or chicken blood? I've come across a story in which the suspected fox was "tested
with dogs," which probably meant letting live dogs at the suspected
fox. (The test in this case failed, by the way. The fox was too
old to be afraid of dogs. Presumably its powers were too strong
for the dogs to break its illusions, too.) I haven't come across
the idea of dog blood being powerful against foxes, although
it would make sense from a magical perspective. Chicken blood's
new to me. Both practices may be part of local tradition, however.
The fox stories we have tend to be written down by the literati,
who had different beliefs than the peasantry. I would take the practice
with a grain of salt, but not completely dismiss it. I saw a film in which a fox concubine seduced the husband to get rid of the first wife and eat the children. Is this a real part of foxlore or a movie invention? This is a more violent story than most fox stories I've heard. It sounds more like a Korean fox than a Chinese or Japanese fox. I haven't found a story in which a fox concubine tries to steal the man away from the first wife, but it fits with the tradition, and there may well be stories out there in which this happens. Chinese and Japanese foxes do sometimes attack the children of someone who has wronged them, but this is a matter of vengeance, and they don't eat the children. (Generally they burn the house down with the children inside. Chinese foxes sometimes seduce daughters, too.) |