An excerpt from a book in progress: "Creatures in the Mist" by Gary R. Varner to be released Spring 2007 by Algora Publishing.

Werewolves have been a fear of humankind since the Neolithic age and may have originated in the shamanic rituals that seemingly transformed men into wolf-like creatures. During the Middle Ages the lore of the werewolf expanded into tales of daily occurrences. There are places in the world that even today the werewolf remains a feared creature that decimates livestock and threatens the lives of local inhabitants. The interesting thing about the folklore surrounding the werewolf is that, like the Fairies and Wild Men legends, it is universally found. “The belief,” wrote Harvard Lecturer John Fiske in 1881, “is supported by a vast amount of evidence, which can neither be argued nor pooh-poohed into insignificance.”(1) Fiske cautions that the stories are a “curious mixture of mythical and historical elements.” But why, we may ask, is the werewolf legend so universally known?

Some scholars associate the original werewolves with martial brotherhoods which were extent in the early Greek, Persian, German, Scythian, Dacian and Celt societies. The initiates “magically assumed lupine features.” (2) This may account for many of the European tales but certainly not for those of other locations around the world.

Were-men are not confined to a wolf form, however. Depending on where the particular folklore originates these half-man half-animals may be a mix with bear, jaguar, tiger and even crocodile. However, the cause of a person being transformed into werewolf is almost always due to an evil agent, most likely the acts of a witch or a punishment for some specific and grievous sin. William Howells, once chair of the department of anthropology at Harvard University wrote, “Werewolves in general…are related to witchcraft in spirit if not explicitly.” (3) However, there were two forms of werewolf. Voluntary and involuntary. The voluntary werewolf became one because of his or her unnatural obsession with human flesh. This person also had sufficient magical powers to affect a physical transformation. Spence wrote of this form of werewolf: “In Teutonic and Slavonic countries it was complained by men of learning that the were-wolves did more damage than real wild animals, and the existence of a regular ‘college’ or institution for the practice of the art of animal transformation among were-wolves was affirmed.” (4) The involuntary werewolf was transformed by an evil magician or was sentenced to become such a beast for a certain number of years to atone for the commission of a sin. These individuals “were no malevolent beasts,” notes Michael Kerrigan, “but tragic victims of evil magic…” (5) Kerrigan goes on to say that “The willing werewolf was a terrible man-beast, ravening destroyer of anything in its path. Those changed by another’s curse, however, were submissive creatures, clinging hard to their old human nature…Gentle in their ways, and protective of family and friends, they killed only when driven to desperation by hunger…” (6)

However, it was only through Christianity that the belief in werewolves became synonymous with witchcraft. Fiske wrote that the belief in werewolves “did not reach its complete development, or acquire its most horrible features, until the pagan habits of thought which had originated it were modified by contact with Christian theology. To the ancient there was nothing necessarily diabolical in the transformation of a man into a beast. But Christianity, which retained such a host of pagan conceptions under such strange disguises…did not fail to impart a new and fearful character in the belief in werewolves. Lycanthropy became regarded as a species of witchcraft…and hundreds of persons were burned alive or broken on the wheel for having availed themselves of the privilege of beast-metamorphosis.” (7)

It may be, in fact, the influence of Christianity that induced a strong belief in werewolves in the first place. Such belief is particularly strong in Navajo culture. Anthropologist Harold Driver wrote “Witches are thought to roam at night as were-animals (wolves, coyotes, bears, and owls), to meet in witches’ Sabbaths to plan and perform rites to kill or injure people, to have intercourse with dead women, to initiate new members, and to practice cannibalism.” (8) As with the indigenous religions of Mesoamerica, Christianity has tainted the original belief systems and has made them into a mimicry of Christian theology along with the same gods, devils and traditions. Undoubtedly the belief in these were-animals and the powers that the shamans had to shape-change are drastically changed from their original nature. There is one bit of Christian folklore that even claims that St. Patrick caused this metamorphosis. According to the story St. Patrick was displeased by a family due to their lack of faith and he turned the entire clan into a pack of werewolves. (9)

That is not to say that shamans have not metamorphed into other animal forms since the stone age. Writing on shamanism, anthropologist and religious historian Mircea Eliade noted, “Naturally, the South American shaman, like his colleagues everywhere, can also fill the role of sorcerer; he can, for example, turn into an animal and drink the blood of his enemies. The belief in werewolves is widely disseminated in South America.” (10) The shaman is able to change into an animal form but his true body does not change. In shamanism, the body appears to be in deep sleep while the soul journeys out in the form of an animal to either fight with other shamans, wreck havoc upon a local populace or to experience other spiritual transformations. This shamanic technique was known in later times also and was used to accuse persons of witchcraft. “According to one mediaeval notion“, wrote Fiske, “the soul of the werewolf quit its human body, which remained in a trance until its return.” (11)

Such abilities are also part of Polynesian mythology. A dog on Oahu, known as Kaupe, also known as “dog-man”, was said to be able to transform itself into either a man or a dog—and it was a cannibal. This is the only dog in Hawaiian lore that was malevolent. Another legend is that of Pa’e who was able to “change herself into a ‘woman, a mo’o (lizard) or a brindled dog.” (12) While Pa’e in the form of a dog did kill an elderly couple, it was in defense rather than from a malevolent nature. The Hawaiians closely linked dogs to humans. The lesser god Ku’ilio-loa was said to have been “formed from man” by the god Maui.

There are several tales based in reality of werewolves, or at least of insane humans who believed themselves to be such. Fiske and others believed these human werewolves to be obsessed with cannibalism and they acted out the part of wild animals to kill and eat their victims. Since we have already consulted Fiske let us again turn to him for one of these true stories:

“In the year 1598, in a wild an unfrequented spot near Caude [France], some countrymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horribly mutilated and bespattered with blood. As the men approached, two wolves, which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket. The men gave chase immediately, following their bloody tracks till they lost them; when, suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth chattering with fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard, and with his hands dyed in blood. His nails were long as claws, and were clotted with fresh gore and shreds of human flesh.

“This man, Jacques Roulet, was a poor, half-witted creature under the dominion of a cannibal appetite. He was employed in tearing to pieces the corpse of the boy when these countrymen came up. Whether there were any wolves in the case, except what the excited imaginations of the men may have conjured up, I will not presume to determine; but it is certain that Roulet supposed himself to be a wolf, and killed and ate several persons under the influence of the delusion. He was sentenced to death, but the parliament of Paris reversed the sentence, and charitably shut him up in a madhouse.” (13)

Roulet was suffering from a psychological condition known as Lycanthropy. This condition has been recorded since classical times although it is a rarity in the modern day. These unfortunate people would flee to the woods at night, howl at the moon and seek out local victims or, if no living soul was available, dig up corpses and devour them. While common in Europe during the 15th to 18th centuries this condition is also known to have occurred in Ethiopia, India, Malaysia and China. It Italy it was believed at one time that any child born on St. Paul’s Night (June 29) or on the Annunciation (March 24) was likely to become a werewolf unless the infants father or grandfather burned the child’s foot or the nape of the neck with hot coal.

Other tales included that of Perrenette Gandillon. A French women, she “turned herself into a wolf and killed a child, the creature had no tail and human hands in place of front paws.” (14) The rumor of 1573, again in France, was that a pack of donkey-sized wolves was attacking and eating people in an area near the village of Dôle. That such tales and charges were common in an area and a time so charged with the inquisition and witchcraft trials may not be coincidental.

Fiske notes that werewolves, or rather, the belief in werewolves was also present in North America and Africa but it was mostly in Europe where cannibalistic desires drove men to such extremes in behavior. In many Native American traditions, various gods and nature spirits were also were-men. These were not the evil cannibals mentioned above but spiritual beings. Among the Yuma tribes that live on the Gila River in the American Southwest it is said that “dogs are persons” (15) that may appear in dreams in human form to relate various pieces of information. One informant during the 1930’s related that he never kicked his “really annoying curs” because they were, in fact, people. (16)

During the Classical Age Marcellus Sidetes, who lived in the reign of Hadrian, discussed the psychological condition of Lycanthropy:

“Men afflicted with the disease…go out by night in the month of February in imitation of wolves or dogs in all respects, and they tend to hang around tombs until daybreak. These are the symptoms that will allow you to recognize sufferers from this disease. They are pallid, their gaze is listless, their eyes are dry, and they cannot produce tears. You will observe that their eyes are sunken and their tongue is dry and they are completely unable to put on weight. They feel thirsty…One must recognize that lycanthropy is a form of melancholia.” (17)

Are we able to say that werewolves exist? Yes. Originally the werewolf was an aspect of the magical arts of the shaman. A transformation was sought in order to control others, seek revenge, or simply to experience the life of an animal to understand its powers as a spirit helper. Mircea Eliade wrote “The shaman encounters the funerary dog in the course of his descent to the underworld, as it is encountered by the deceased or by heroes undergoing an initiatory ordeal. It is especially the secret societies based on a martial initiation…that developed and reinterpreted the mythology and magic of the dog and the wolf.” (18) Perhaps due to this shamanic experience that was actively sought for thousands of years some people had this desire, this ability hardwired in their brains and became psychologically obsessed with it and the powers it gave. It still exists through various avenues of witchcraft, such as in the Navajo tradition. However, its continued existence may be more from the fear of it rather than in its reality.

NOTES
1. Fiske, John. Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company 1881, 70
2. White, David Gordon. Myths of the Dog-Man. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1991, 27
3. Howells, William. The Heathens: Primitive Man and His Religions. New York: Doubleday Books 1962, 124
4. Spence, Lewis. Legends and Romances of Brittany. Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc.1997, 291. A reprint of the Frederick A. Stokes Company publications, no date, New York.
5. Kerrigan, Michael. “The Faces of the Changeling” in Forests of the Vampire: Slavic Myth. New York: Barnes & Noble Books 1999, 120
6. Ibid
7. Fiske, op cit 79
8. Driver, Harold E. Indians of North America, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1969, 410
9. Anon. Strange Stories Amazing Facts. Pleasantville: The Readers Digest Association, Inc. 1976,435
10. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1964, 324
11. Fiske, op cit 78
12.Titcomb, Margaret. Dog and Man in the Ancient Pacific. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication 59, 1969, 20
13. Ibid 84
14. Briggs, Robin. Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. New York: Viking 1996, 88
15. Spier, Leslie. Yuman Tribes of the Gila River. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1978, 254. A reprint of the 1933 edition published by the University of Chicago Press.
16. Ibid
17. Ogden, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002, 177
18. Eliade, op cit 467