Quick, what do you know about newts?
About the only thing I knew was that
witchly recipes always seem to call for an “eye of newt”. But what are they?
Why are they so treasured by witches and sorcerers? Well, their eyes, anyway.
What could possibly be so ‘magical’ about their eyes?
Whenever a newt is depicted in a
movie or ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ tv episode, I always think they look like a
lizard. But research says they are not lizards, they are a type of salamander,
which makes them amphibians. They have 3 distinct life stages; aquatic larvae,
terrestrial juvenile and semi-aquatic adult. The adults return to the water to
breed, then back to their homes on land. But they do have a ‘lizard-like’ body,
so there!
Newts are found all across the
northern hemisphere.
Newts have the ability to regenerate limbs, eyes, spinal cords,
hearts, intestines, and upper and lower jaws. This certainly must have seemed
pretty magical to humans in earlier time periods, since humans can’t do any of
that. Once you have a live newt in your supplies, you are pretty well set for
newt parts for whatever ‘recipe’ you want to use.
In addition, many newts have a
toxicity in their skin, which they have developed to protect them against
predators. Some have a strong enough toxicity to kill a human. Although this is
only in their skin, if it was thought to be throughout their entire body, an
eyeball might be considered a fairly easy method of measurement and
transportation of that toxic substance. Hence a potion meant to cause harm to
someone might well call for the toxic properties of a piece of newt.
I really didn’t expect to find any
particular reasons why a newt might be prized by witches and sorcerers, but
there you have it. The ability to regrow some pretty important parts of
themselves and the ability to poison other creatures would have seemed pretty
remarkable to man, some of whom may have tried to harness one or both of those
abilities through magic.
These days, newts are often kept as
pets, so don’t get out your pitchforks and torches just because your neighbor
keeps a newt in their aquarium.
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