I decided to continue our Halloween theme until Halloween, so here’s a little something about werewolves.
We probably all know werewolves in some manner; the French know the loup garou, the Italians know lupo mannaro, Slavs have all manners of types of names on the version of the word vlkodlak or volkodlak, including the creature I have mentioned last time in some parts of Slovenia… the kodlak, seemingly something between a werewolf and vampire, similar to the vrykolakas in Greece; the Saxons knew werwulf, “were” here being the word for “man”, so man-wolf (or ‘fiend’, a later word for the devil), and so on. Wolves are by no means the only creatures that people are supposed to shape into – Baring-Gould, in his book on werewolf myth and legend, visits several other beings, such as bears, who have a shape-shifting ability; in Africa, many animals, including cats (most notably in Azande culture, where women and cats seem to share traits and similarities and sometimes even shape – Edward E. Pritchard), elephants, hyenas, lions and so on.
In Ancient Greece, the legend and variants thereof of king Lykaon (or Lycaon), the originator of the word lycanthropy, which still signifies the imagined state of werewolfism today, represents one of the potential starters of the myth; a very curious version mentioned by Lycophron, goes like this:
Lycophron, Alexandra 479 ff (trans. Mair) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
“A landsman, feeding on simple food, one of the sons of the oak [i.e. the Arkadians], the wolf-shaped devourers of the flesh of Nyktimos (Nyctimus), a people that were before the moon, and who in the height of winter heated in the ashes of the fire their staple of oaken bread.”
[N.B. Nyktimos was a son of Lykaon (the Wolf) whose father slaughtered him as a meal for Zeus. The ancient Arkadians were said to have been born before the moon and to have fed on acorns.]
From <http://www.theoi.com/Heros/Lykaon.html>
Many of Lykaon legends (it may interest you to know that lykon seems to be the word for a wolf) imply that Callisto – whom Zeus seduced and had given the shape of a bear – seems to have been Lykaon’s daughter… so another shape-shifter brought into a myth of a shape-shifter, whose given name is very close to the word for the wolf even before he commits the murder that causes him to be cursed with his form, which could suggest that typical mythological predisposition of a marked person, created to make a point for a specific purpose.
There are four notable categories of shape-shifting (or therianthropy) we should consider when talking about animal to human and human to animal changes.
- A human who changes form through spells, curses or special powers; this change may be constant, occasional or sporadic or once in a lifetime. Good examples are a change that is supposed to last the curse duration or spell duration, changes that are time-space specific (such as due to specific events, like lunar changes with werewolves, or with beings that need eg water every now and then) or only for a specific occasion, with the duration varying to a great degree.
- A human (or sometimes) who has two or more forms congenitally. This is shape-shifting without the necessity of curses, charms and spells, but happens because of one’s inborn capabilities, often due to mixed parentage. Some Chinese dragon stories, to my knowledge, deal with usually young men who have a dragon father and a human mother. Occasionally, the change into the animal form is the final one and irreversible.
- An animal who is turned, via a spell or curse, into a human for a time being or for a lifetime.
- A spiritual therianthropic change, such as possessing an animal’s mind or appearing, in a spiritual form, as an animal. Warging in Game of Thrones is a brilliant example of this type of transformation, which, in a way, is not a transformation in a physical sense at all.
What we must remember, always, when dealing with therianthropic beliefs, is that to the believers, even nowadays, such shape-shifting is very real and irrefutably possible, as well as mostly dangerous.
While some insist that werewolfism represented only a very small proportion of the witch hunts that plagued Europe from about the 13th century on and, in some parts, lasted well into the 18th century in a slightly less official manner (Baring-Gould), that is poor science. Werewolfism was considered a serious matter, and cost many people their lives; to attempt to marginalise it, or any other part of that dark time, is much like denying the seriousness of various crimes because of a high representation of another. This is sadly still true of the Third world, where therianthropists and witches are often equatable and generally feared and persecuted as evil; we are talking about a superstition here that can and does mean lynch mobs and ridiculous trials that “prove” the guilt of a person simply because the belief that such a thing is possible is a part of aura of factuality of the people in question.
Modern werewolves are still often connected to the vampire myth in the Western world. They appear as large wolves, very powerful and dangerous and blood thirsty; some theorists believe that sporadic cases of rabies could have given rise to the myth of werewolfism, chiefly during the medieval era; I would contest the timing as we can see that the myths existed already, as well as the illness, as all mammals can carry rabies and the closeness to humans would make a domestic animal like a dog, cat or even cow a far likelier carrier, of these cats being the likeliest as they are in constant contact with the small to middle sized rodent population and co and would pick up the disease the easiest of all. Wolves, generally living at a distance from human settlements, would be unlikely to reach them easily during the very short period of aggression that is a part of the illness (the aggressive period, if it happens, is typically 2 to 10 days roughly, cf. here), and wolf attacks in general are rare. But they do happen, and even the modern ones, which is true of many animal attacks, remain unexplained, meaning that the usual motive for attack (such as defence, suddenly feeling threatened, defence of the young, partner or territory during mating season, etc.) appears absent and yet the attack happened anyhow. I believe that humans forget that they, too, are a part of the food chain, and while there are many theories about why humans are less likely a prey, I strongly suggest that they should be taken with due scepticism – the likeliest cause of humans being less likely a target is probably the fact that we are group creatures and therefore often more trouble than is worth (if you look at any large to middle-sized predator’s attack MO, you will see that group causes undue trouble to all) and we often keep exclusively to specific territories only, thus minimising contact with potential predators.
Other modern werewolves are full therianthropists, so full shape-shifters, and their shifting is usually but not always unconscious and reduced to the full moon. There are exceptions; Sgt Angua of the Ankh-Morpork guard in Pratchett’s Disc world series is a conscious therianthropist for most part, with an unconscious or semi-conscious phase during the full moon.
While modern werewolves mostly haunt films and books, there are beliefs of them existing out there among even modern Westerners. A good example can be found all over the Internet among the researchers of paranormal. The Beast of Bray Road (Wisconsin), for instance, is an example of a modern-day belief in werewolves, despite the fact that it has also been likened to a bear or Bigfoot. One thing to consider, before you get swept away by the seeming sincerity of the witnesses, is the witness memory phenomenon. A person may not lie about what they saw; they may be genuinely convinced that they saw it, including small details, conjured up by even perfectly mentally healthy mind. Fear, especially fear in groups, may soon create a numerically larger version of folie en familie ie familial folly – psychological state in which a person or persons convince others of veracity of a specific statement, such as existence of a supernatural being; religion, supernatural beings and similar delusions all fall into that category, and should be studies with this knowledge at hand, to preserve the healthy dose of scepticism necessary for assessment of any situation. Why do we need scepticism? Because without it, we cannot implement the most important thing Sherlock Holmes says to Watson on one occasion:
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”