The small scorpion lizard ( tsâne′nĭ ) is sometimes called also gigă-danegi′skĭ , “blood taker.” It is a striped lizard which frequents sandy beaches and resemble the diyâ′hălĭ, but is of a brown color.
It is believed also to be sucking blood in some mysterious way whenever it nods its head, and if its heart be eaten by a dog that animal will be able to extract all the nutrient properties from food by simply looking at these who are eating.
The small spring lizard ( duwĕ′ʻgă ), which lives in springs, is supposed to cause rain whenever it crawls out of the spring.
It is frequently invoked in the formulas.
Another spring (?) lizard, red, with black spots, is called dăgan′ʻtû′ or aniganti′skĭ “the rain maker,” because its cry is said to bring rain.
The water dog ( tsuwă′ , mud puppy, Menopoma or Protonopsis ) is a very large lizard, or rather salamander, frequenting muddy water.
It is rarely eaten, from an unexplained belief that if one who has eaten its meat goes into the field immediately afterward the crop will be ruined.
There are names for one or two other varieties of lizard as well as for the alligator ( tsula′skĭ ), but no folklore in connection with them.
Although the Cherokee country abounds in swift-flowing streams well stocked with fish, of which the Indians make free use, there is but little fish lore.
A number of “dream” diseases, really due to indigestion, are ascribed to revengeful fish ghosts, and the doctor usually tries to effect the cure by invoking some larger fish or fish-eating bird to drive out the ghost.
Toco creek, in Monroe county, Tennessee, derives its name from a mythic monster fish, the Dăkwă′, considered the father of all the fish tribe, which is said to have lived formerly in Little Tennessee river at that point (see story, “The Hunter and the Dăkwă′”).
A fish called ugûñste′lĭ , “having horns,” which appears only in spring, is believed to be transformed later into the giga-tsuha′lĭ lizard, already mentioned.
The fish is described as having horns or projections upon its nose and beautiful red spots upon its head, and as being attended or accompanied by many smaller red fish, all of which, including the ugûñste′lĭ, are accustomed to pile up small stones in the water.
As the season advances it disappears and is believed then to have turned into a giga-tsuha′lĭ lizard, the change beginning at the head and finishing with the tail.
It is probably the Campostoma or stone roller, which is conspicuous for its bright coloring in early spring, but loses its tints after spawning.
The meat of the sluggish hog-sucker is tabued to the ball player, who must necessarily be active in movement.
The fresh-water mussel is called dăgû′nă , and the same name is applied to certain pimples upon the face, on account of a fancied resemblance.
The ball player rubs himself with an eel skin to make himself slippery and hard to hold, and, according to the Wahnenauhi manuscript, women formerly tied up their hair with the dried skin of an eel to make it grow long.
A large red crawfish called tsiska′gĭlĭ , much resembling a lobster, is used to scratch young children in order to give them a strong grip, each hand of the child being lightly scratched once with the pincer of the living animal.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The passage is a quintessential example of animism, attributing spirits, agency, and personality to various animals (lizards, fish, salamanders) and natural phenomena (rain), describing them as active agents that can cause rain, ruin crops, or inflict disease.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text illustrates a principle of correspondence or sympathetic magic where the physical resemblance of a mussel to pimples leads to them sharing a name, and where eating a lizard's heart grants a dog the power to extract nutrients by looking.
Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.
The text explicitly details the belief that a specific horned fish transforms into a lizard as the season advances, describing the metamorphosis from head to tail.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The passage mentions that the cry of a specific lizard is said to bring rain and that formulas are frequently invoked, indicating a belief in the causal power of sounds and spoken words.