Werewolf

German woodcut of a Werewolf from 1722

A werewolf (also lycanthrope or wolfman) in folklore is a person who shapeshifts into a wolf or wolflike creature, either purposely, by using magic, or after being placed under a curse. While in contemporary times a werewolf is a staple of horror genres and role-playing games, the werewolf phenomenon can be traced all the way back to shape-shifting practices of shamans, and represents the duality of man as an animal and spiritual being.

The medieval chronicler Gervase of Tilbury associated the transformation with the appearance of the full moon, but this concept was rarely associated with the werewolf until the idea was picked up by fiction writers. In popular culture, a werewolf can be killed if shot by a silver bullet, although this was not a feature of the folk legends.

Origin

Wloves had long held a special place for man; they were one of the first animals to be domesticated, used as hunting companions in older days, and today the canine, the most popular pet in the world, derives from the wild wolf. The transformation of a human into an animal, particularly a wolf, is a long standing tradition in many cultures. Shape-shifting was a common belief in shamanism, some tribes even believing the wolf held spiritual signifigance.

Some modern researchers have tried to use conditions such as rabies, hypertrichosis (excessive hair growth over the entire body) or porphyria (an enzyme disorder with symptoms including hallucinations and paranoia) to explain werewolf beliefs. Congenital erythropoietic porphyria has clinical features which include hairy hands and face, poorly healing skin, pink urine, reddish colour to the teeth, and photosensitivity; which leads sufferers to only go out at night. There is also a rare mental disorder called clinical lycanthropy, in which an affected person has a delusional belief that he or she is, or has transformed into, another animal, but not necessarily a wolf or werewolf. Supernatural lycanthropy myths could originate from people relating their experiences of what could be classified as a state of psychosis. ^{[citation needed]}

In Greek mythology, the story of Lycaon provides one of the earliest examples of a werewolf legend. According to one version, Lycaon was transformed into a wolf as a result of eating human flesh; one of those who were present at periodical sacrifice on Mount Lycaon was said to suffer a similar fate. The Roman scholar, Pliny the Elder, quoting Euanthes, says that a man of Anthus' family was selected by lot and brought to a lake in Arcadia, where he hung his clothing on an ash tree and swam across, resulting in his transformation into a wolf, a form in which he wandered for nine years. On the condition that he attacked no human being over the nine year period, he would be free to swim back across the lake to resume human form. The two stories are probably identical, though we hear nothing of participation in the Lycaean sacrifice by the descendant of Antaeus. Herodotus in his Histories tells us that the Neuri, a tribe he places to the north-east of Scythia, were annually transformed for a few days, and Virgil is familiar with transformation of human beings into wolves. In the novel Satyricon, written about year 60 by Gaius Petronius, one of the characters recites a story about a man who turns into a wolf during a full moon.

Common Turkic folklore holds a different, reverential light to the werewolf legends in that Turkic Central Asian shamans after performing long and arduous rites would voluntarily be able to transform into the humanoid "Kurtadam" (literally meaning Wolfmen). Since the wolf was the totemic ancestor animal of the Turkic peoples, they would be respectful of any shaman who was in such a form.

According to Armenian lore, there are women who in consequence of deadly sins, are condemned to spend seven years in wolfen form.{The Fables of Mkhitar Gosh (New York, 1987), translated with an introduction by R. Bedrosian, edited by Elise Antreassian and illustrated by Anahid Janjigian} In a typical account, a condemned woman is visited by a wolfskin-toting spirit, who orders her to wear the skin, soon after which she acquires frightful cravings for human flesh. With her better nature overcome, the she-wolf devours each of her own children, then her relatives' children in order of relationship, and finally the children of strangers. She wanders only at night, with doors and locks springing open at her approach. When morning arrives, she reverts to human form and removes her wolfskin. The transformation is generally said to be involuntary, but there are alternate versions involving voluntary metamorphosis, where the women can transform at will.

France had a multitude of reports of werewolf attacks — and consequent court trials — during the sixteenth century. In some of the cases — e.g. those of the Gandillon family in the Jura, the tailor of Chalons and Roulet in Angers, all occurring in the year 1598 — there was clear evidence against the accused of murder and cannibalism, but none of association with wolves; in other cases, as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole in 1573, there was clear evidence against some wolf, but none against the accused. Yet while belief in lycanthropy reached a peak in popularity, it was decided in the case of Jean Grenier at Bordeaux in 1603 that lycanthropy was nothing more than a delusion. The loup-garou eventually ceased to be regarded as a dangerous heretic, and reverted to the pre-Christian notion of a "man-wolf-fiend."

Some werewolf lore in France is based on documented events. The Beast of Gévaudan was a creature that terrorized the general area of the former province of Gévaudan in south-central France (it is now called Lozère). From the years 1764 to 1767, an unknown (perhaps human) entity killed upwards of 80 men, women and children. The creature was described as a giant wolf by the sole survivor of the attacks, which ceased after several wolves were killed in the area. A film called Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) presented a highly fictionalised account of this story.

The lubins or lupins of France were usually female and shy in contrast to the aggressive loup-garous.^{[citation needed]}

In sixteenth century Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania, according to bishops Olaus Magnus and Majolus, the werewolves were far more destructive than "true and natural wolves," and their heterodoxy appears from the Catholic bishops' assertion that they formed "an accursed college" of those "desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law."

The wolf was still extant in England as of 1600, but became extinct by 1680. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the punishment of witchcraft was still zealously prosecuted by James I of England, who piously regarded "warwoolfes" as victims of delusion induced by "a natural superabundance of melancholic."

Werewolves in European tradition were often innocent and God-fearing folk suffering from the witchcraft of others, or simply from an unhappy fate, and who as wolves behaved in a truly touching fashion, adoring and protecting their human benefactors. In Marie de France's poem Bisclaveret (c. 1200), the nobleman Bisclavret, for reasons not described in the lai, had to transform into a wolf every week. When his treacherous wife stole his clothing needed to restore his human form, he escaped the king's wolf hunt by imploring the king for mercy, and accompanied the king thereafter. His behaviour at court was so much gentler than when his wife and her new husband appeared at court, that his hateful attack on the couple was deemed justly motivated, and the truth was revealed. Other tales of this sort include William and the Werewolf (translated from French into English ca.1350), and the German fairy tales Märchen, in which several aristocrats temporarily transform into beasts. See Snow White and Rose Red, where the tame bear is really a bewitched prince, and The Golden Bird where the talking fox is also a man.

The power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but to Christian saints as well. Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra ("All angels, good and bad have the power of transmutating our bodies") was the dictum of St. Thomas Aquinas. St. Patrick was said to have transformed the Welsh king Vereticus into a wolf; St. Natalis supposedly cursed an illustrious Irish family whose members were each doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is even more direct, while in Russia, again, men are supposedly become werewolves when incurring the wrath of the Devil.

In the late 1990s, a string of man-eating wolf attacks were reported in Uttar Pradesh, India. Frightened people claimed, among other things, that the wolves were actually werewolves.

Werewolf Lore

Historical legends describe a wide variety of methods for becoming a werewolf, one of the simplest being the removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of wolfskin, probably as a substitute for the assumption of an entire animal skin (which also is frequently described). In other cases the body is rubbed with a magic salve. To drink water out of the footprint of the animal in question or to drink from certain enchanted streams were also considered effectual modes of accomplishing metamorphosis. Olaus Magnus says that the Livonian werewolves were initiated by draining a cup of specially prepared beer and repeating a set formula. Ralston in his Songs of the Russian People gives the form of incantation still familiar in Russia. According to Russian lore, a child born on December 24 shall be a werewolf. Folklore and literature also depict that a werewolf can be spawned from two werewolf parents.

Becoming a werewolf simply by being bitten by another werewolf as a form of contagion is common in modern fiction, but rare in legend, in which werewolf attacks seldom left the victim alive long enough to transform.

In Galician, Portuguese and Brazilian folklore, it is the seventh of the sons (but sometimes the seventh child, a boy, after a line of six daughters) who becomes a werewolf. In Portugal, the seventh daughter is supposed to become a witch and the seventh son a werewolf; the seventh son often gets the Christian name "Bento" (Portuguese form of "Benedict," meaning "blessed") as this is believed to prevent him from becoming a werewolf later in life. In Brazil, the seventh daughter become a headless (replaced with fire) horse called "Mula-sem-cabeça." The belief in the curse of the seventh son was so widespread in Northern Argentina (where the werewolf is called the "lobizón"), that seventh sons were frequently abandoned, ceded in adoption or killed. A 1920 law decreed that the President of Argentina is the official godfather of every seventh son. Thus, the State gives a seventh son one gold medal in his baptism and a scholarship until his twenty first year. This effectively ended the abandonments, but there still persists a tradition in which the President godfathers seventh sons.

In other cases, the transformation was supposedly accomplished by Satanic allegiance for the most loathsome ends, often for the sake of sating a craving for human flesh. "The werewolves," writes Richard Verstegan (Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1628), "are certayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an ointment which they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a certayne inchaunted girdle, does not only unto the view of others seem as wolves, but to their own thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they wear the said girdle. And they do dispose themselves as very wolves, in worrying and killing, and most of humane creatures." Such were the views about lycanthropy current throughout the continent of Europe when Verstegan wrote. The ointments and salves in question may have contained hallucinogenic agents.

An interesting exception to the ascocciation of Lycanthropy and the Devil, comes from a rare and lesser known account of a man named Thiess. In 1962, in Jurgenburg, Livonia Thiess testified under oath that he, and other Werewolves were the Hounds of God.^{[citation needed]} Warriors, who went down into hell, to do battle with witches and demons. Their efforts ensured that the Devil and his minions did not carry off the abundance of the earth down to hell. Thiess was steadfast in his assertions, claiming that Werewolves in Germany and Russia also did battle with the devil's minions in their own versions of hell, and insisted that when werewolves died, their souls were welcomed into heaven as reward for their service. Thiess was ultimately sentenced to ten lashes for Idolacy and superstitious belief.

An interesting distinction is often made between voluntary and involuntary werewolves. The former are generally thought to have made a pact, usually with the Devil, and morph into werewolves at night to indulge in mischievous acts. Involuntary werewolves, on the other hand, are werewolves by an accident of birth or health. In some cultures, individuals born during a new moon or suffering from epilepsy were considered likely to be werewolves.

Werewolves have several described weaknesses, the most common being an aversion to wolfsbane (a plant that supposedly sprouted from weeds watered by the drool of Cerberus while he was brought out of Hades by Heracles). Like vampires, werewolves maintain an aversion to religious artifacts such as crucifixes and holy water. One of the lesser known weaknesses is silver, as it is sometimes believed that a werewolf in human form will not transform when wearing a silver amulet. The repressive effect would be increased if the amulet were filled with wolfsbane. Stabbing with a silver dagger was believed to revert a werewolf to human form.

Various methods have existed for removing the werewolf form. The simplest method was the act of the enchanter (operating either on oneself or on a victim), and another was the removal of the animal belt or skin. To kneel in one spot for a hundred years, to be reproached with being a werewolf, to be saluted with the sign of the cross, or addressed thrice by baptismal name, to be struck three blows on the forehead with a knife, or to have at least three drops of blood drawn have also been mentioned as possible cures. Many European folk tales include throwing an iron object over or at the werewolf, to make it reveal its human form.

Literature

The process of transmogrification is often portrayed as painful in film and literature. The resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction regardless of the moral character of its human counterpart. The form a werewolf assumes is not always that of an ordinary wolf, but often anthropomorphic or otherwise larger and more powerful than an ordinary wolf. Many modern werewolves are supposedly immune to damage caused by ordinary weapons, being vulnerable only to silver objects (usually a bullet or blade). This negative reaction to silver is sometimes so strong that the mere touch of the metal on a werewolf's skin will cause burns. Current-day werewolf fiction almost exclusively involves lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being transmitted like an infectious disease by the bite of another werewolf.

More recently, the portrayal of werewolves has taken an even more sympathetic turn in some circles. With the rise of environmentalism and other back-to-nature ideals, the werewolf has come to be seen by some authors as a representation of humanity allied more closely with nature. Some recent fiction also discards the idea that the werewolf dominates the mind when one transforms, and instead postulates that the wolf form can be "used" at will, with the lycanthrope retaining its human thought processes and intelligence. This is sometimes called bimorphism.

As a side note, the general belief that silver can be used to defend oneself against a werewolf comes from the story The Beast of Gévaudan from 1764 to 1767. A magician named Jean Chastel blessed a silver bullet with which he seriously wounded the werewolf. Even though the creature did not die, it had learned that silver had become a powerful tool to aid the humans.^{[citation needed]}

It should be noted that some researchers believe the "silver weakness" is a mistranslation of "silvered metal" which actually refers to quicksilver (mercury), an injection of which was deemed fatal to werewolves (and of course, to other living beings). However, because silver and the naturally nocturnal wolf are both associated with the moon, the "silver weakness" is likely to endure.^{[citation needed]}

Examples of werewolves in recent film and fiction:

• In C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, werewolves are among the creatures present at the slaying of Aslan in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," and a werewolf, along with a hag and the dwarf Nikabrik, unsuccessfully tries to convince Caspian's side to resurrect the White Witch in "Prince Caspian."
• Remus Lupin, Fenrir Greyback and others in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.
• Sergeant Delphine Angua von Überwald, and the rest of the von Überwald family, from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.
• In the Nintendo game the The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link, the main protagonist, is a bimorphic werewolf for most of the game. But is similar to a werewolf for he transforms at twilight.
• Dark fantasy author Caitlín R. Kiernan has frequently written on lycanthropy and werewolves, most notably in her 2003 novel Low Red Moon and in such short stories as "The Road of Pins" and "Spindleshanks (New Orleans, 1956)" (both from To Charles Fort, With Love, 2005).
• John Landis' American Werewolf in London and Anthony Waller's An American Werewolf in Paris.
• Scott Howard, who appears in both the 1985 film Teen Wolf (as played by Michael J. Fox), as well as the cartoon series going by the same name.
• The movie Underworld (2003) and its sequel Underworld: Evolution (2006) portray a hidden 1,000 year-old conflict between Lycans (werewolves) and Vampires.
• Velkan Valerias and Gabriel Van Helsing in the movie Van Helsing.
• Oz in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It should be noted that the "wolf" form was rarely used in episodes, and most action took place off-screen, being alluded to the next day. The original costume was more like a wolf which was only used in the first episode, "Phases," while in the third and fourth seasons, the costume gained the look of an ape rather than a wolf.
• An alien (in human form) in Doctor Who episode Tooth and Claw.
• The central character in the movie Blood And Chocolate.
• In Stephen King and Peter Straub's best-selling novel The Talisman, the character Wolf came from an alternate Earth where werewolves were sheep herders.
• In Jim Butcher's book, Fool Moon, MacFinn is a loup-garou.
• Werewolves play a major role in Stephenie Meyer's book New Moon, where they are known as 'Protectors'.
• White Wolf inc published a Roleplaying game about Werewolves called Werewolf: the Apocalypse
• In Wes Craven's film, Cursed, in which the antagonist is a werewolf and the center of the story.
• In one of the books of Goosebumps, The Werewolf of Fever Swamp.
• In Neil Marshall's film, Dog Soldiers.
• Stephen Cole's Wereling trilogy describes werewolves as an underground civilization that secretly plans on overthrowing humans one day. The main character, Tom, was unwillingly turned into a werewolf and is a wereling, or a bimorphic werewolf.
• In Kelly Armstrong's "Women of the Otherworld" series feature werewolves, witches, necromancers, and vampires struggling to fit as "normal" in today's world.
• Patricia Briggs writes a series of novels with a skin-walker as the main character who is heavily involved in werewolf society.
• Kim Harrison's book "A Fistful of Charms" (part of the Rachel Morgan series) tells of Rachel's dealings with the local werewolf clans.
• Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter includes many "were" characters including werewolves, wereleopards, wererats, werehyenas, werelions, and weretigers, among other shapeshifters.
• Jane Yollen, along with other authors, created a book of werewolf short stories titled Werewolves. The stories featured many different types of werewolves, including traditional, peaceful, bimorphic, and genetically created.
• In the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson, the Erasers, the main enemy forces, are almost like werewolves, in that they are humans that transform into wolves. However, their transformation is totally voluntary, and they are the result of genetic experimentation rather than supernatural causes.
• The Sci-Fi Cable Network's The Dresden Files (TV Series) includes episodes featuring werewolves. The television series is, in turn, based on the fantasy/mystery book series, The Dresden Files, authored by Jim Butcher. The book series includes or makes mention of werewolves, Hexenwulfs, Lycanthropes, Loup-garou and reverse werewolves.
• In the films in the Ginger Snaps series, the connection between lycanthropy and puberty is explored, as well as relating a 'cure' for it to drug use. The werewolves in this series are vulnerable to ordinary damage, but silver and monkshood are thought to help combat lycanthropy as if it were an infection.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Baring-Gould, Sabine. The Book of Were-Wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition. London: Smith, Elder, 1865. ISBN 0-7661-8307-6
• Douglas, Adam. The Beast Within: A History of the Werewolf. London: Chapmans, 1992. ISBN 0-380-72264-X
• Prieur, Claude. Dialogue de la Lycanthropie: Ou transformation d'hommes en loups, vulgairement dits loups-garous, et si telle se peut faire. Louvain: J. Maes & P. Zangre, 1596. (By a Franciscan monk, in French)
• Rev. Montague Summers, The Werewolf London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1933. (1st edition, reissued 1934 New York: E.P. Dutton, 1966 New Hyde Park, N.Y: University Books, 1973 Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 2003 Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, with new title The Werewolf in Lore and Legend). Written by an individual claiming that werewolves are real, it is understandably filled with a number of bizarre conclusions but has an impressive bibliography. ISBN 0-7661-3210-2
• Wolfeshusius, Johannes Fridericus. De Lycanthropia: An vere illi, ut fama est, luporum & aliarum bestiarum formis induantur. Problema philosophicum pro sententia Joan. Bodini ... adversus dissentaneas aliquorum opiniones noviter assertum... Leipzig: Typis Abrahami Lambergi, 1591. (In Latin; microfilm held by the United States National Library of Medicine)

External links

• The French website of the werewolf: www.loups-garou.fr
• Arby Stones, "Hellhounds, Werewolves and the Germanic Underworld"
• The Book of Were-Wolves, by Sabine Baring-Gould, 1865
• Therianthropy History Timeline
• Cryptozoology - Werewolf - Skeptic World
• Allen Varney, "The New Improved Beast"
• The Werewolf Page

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