Tradition / Region: Catalan Mythology
Alternate Names: —
Category: Dog
The Myth
In Catalan tradition, the Pesanta is a creature of the night that enters houses while people sleep.
It is described as an enormous animal, sometimes appearing as a dog and sometimes as a cat. Its body is black and covered in thick hair, and its paws are said to be made of iron. Yet these paws are strange, for they have holes in them, marking the creature as something unnatural.
The Pesanta comes silently into homes after dark and climbs onto the chest of a sleeping person. There it presses down with its heavy weight, making it difficult to breathe. Those who suffer its visit cannot cry out or move, and they are left struggling beneath the creature as terror and nightmares fill their sleep.
By morning, the victim wakes exhausted, shaken, and often certain that something dreadful has visited in the night.
Thus the Pesanta was remembered as a night-walking beast — a great black dog-like spirit that crept into homes and weighed upon sleepers, bringing fear, suffocation, and dark dreams.
Gallery
Sources
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Pesanta. In Wikipedia, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesanta
Interpretive Lenses
Religious Readings
- Christian Ascetic Deep Dive
Philosophical Readings
- Nietzschean Deep Dive
Psychological Readings
- Jungian Deep Dive
Esoteric Deep Dive
- Hermetic Deep Dive
Political / Social Readings
- Marxist Deep Dive
Other
- How to Invite The Kuygorozh