One With Beasts

(• • • Life or  • • • •    or   • • • • Spirit)                                               The Book of Crafts  26

Powerful mambos and houngans assume the shape of animals, especially serpents, dolphins, goats and owls.  Sometimes the loa bestow this form as a short-lived gift; others achieve their new bodies through their own spirit-granted powers.  A long dance and song dressed in the skin of the animal in question brings on the change.  Most Caribbeans fear shapeshifters, and avoid one who knowingly sheds her own skin to run with beasts.

[Depending on the forms attained, this spell resembles the Life Effects Lesser Shapechange or Perfect Metamorphosis.  A really lucky bokor can get a spirit to shift his body while it rides him, but this, like other channeling spells, is risky.]