A werewolf in mythology is a person who changes into a wolf at full moon, either for a few nights every month, or permanently. The name derives from either Latin vir (or Old English wer) meaning man, man-wolf or weri (to wear), wearer of the wolf skin. The Greek term Lycanthrope (wolf-man) is also used. The general term for the metamorphosis? of people into animals is turnskin? or turncoat (Latin: versipellis, Russian : oboroten, O. Norse : hamrammr).European werewolvesMany european countries and cultures have stories of werewolves, including Greece (lycanthropos), Russia (volkodlak), England (werwolf), Germany (wehrwolf), and France (loup-garou). In northern Europe, there are also tales about people changing into bears. |
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A werewolf in mythology is a person who changes into a wolf at full moon, either for a few nights every month, or permanently. The name derives from either Latin vir (or Old English wer) meaning man, man-wolf or weri (to wear), wearer of the wolf skin. The Greek term lycanthrope (wolf-man) is also commonly used. The general term for the metamorphosis? of people into animals is turnskin? or turncoat (Latin: versipellis, Russian : oboroten, O. Norse : hamrammr). History of the WerewolfMany european countries and cultures have stories of werewolves, including Greece (lycanthropos), Russia (volkodlak), England (werwolf), Germany (wehrwolf), and France (loup-garou). In northern Europe, there are also tales about people changing into bears. Shapeshifters similar to werewolves are common in mythologies from all over the world, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves. See lycanthropy for a more general treatment of this phenomenon. In Greek mythology the story of Lycaon supplies one of the earliest examples of a werwolf legend. According to one form of it 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. Pliny, quoting Euanthes, says (Hist. Nat. viii. 22) that a man of the Antaeus? family was selected by lot and brought to a lake in Arcadia?, where he hung his clothing on an ash tree and swam across. This resulted in his being transformed into a wolf, and he wandered in this shape nine years. Then, if he had attacked no human being, he was at liberty to swim back and resume his former shape. Probably the two stories are identical, though we hear nothing of participation in the Lycaean sacrifice by the descendant of Antaeus. Herodotus (iv. 105) tells us that the Neuri, a tribe of eastern Europe, were annually transformed for a few days, and Virgil (Ecl. viii. 98) is familiar with transformation of human beings into wolves. There are women, so the Armenian belief runs, who in consequence of deadly sins are condemned to pass seven years in the form of a wolf. A spirit comes to such a woman and brings her a wolf's skin. He orders her to put it on, and no sooner has she done this than the most frightful wolfish cravings make their appearance and soon get the upper hand. Her better nature conquered, she makes a meal of her own children, one by one, then of her relatives' children according to the degree of relationship, and finally the children of strangers begin to fall a prey to her. She wanders forth only at night, and doors and locks spring open at her approach. When morning draws near she returns to human form and removes her wolf skin. In these cases the transformation was involuntary or virtually so. But side by side with this belief in involuntary metamorphosis, we find the belief that human beings can change themselves into animals at will and then resume their own form. France in particular seems to have been infested with werwolves during the 16th century, and the consequent trials were very numerous. 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; in all the cases, with hardly an exception, there was that extraordinary readiness in the accused to confess and even to give circumstantial details of the metamorphosis, which is one of the most inexplicable concomitants of medieval witchcraft. Yet while this lycanthropy fever, both of suspectors and of suspected, was at its height, it was decided in the case of Jean Grenier at Bordeaux in 1603 that lycanthropy was nothing more than an insane delusion. From this time the loup-garou gradually ceased to be regarded as a dangerous heretic, and fell back into his pre-Christianic position of being simply a "man-wolf-fiend." In Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania, according to the bishops [Olaus Magnus]? and Majolus?, the werwolves were in the 16th century far more destructive than "true and natural wolves,'' and their heterodoxy appears from the assertion that they formed "an accursed college" of those "desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law." In England, however, where at the beginning of the 17th century the punishment of witchcraft was still zealously prosecuted by James I, the wolf had been so long extinct that that pious monarch was himself able (Demonologie, lib. iii.) to regard "warwoolfes" as victims of delusion induced by "a naturall superabundance of melancholic." Only small creatures such as the cat, the hare and the weasel remained for the malignant sorcerer to transform himself into, but he was firmly believed to avail himself of these agencies. The werwolves of the Christian dispensation were not, however, all considered to be heretics or viciously disposed towards mankind. "According to Baronius, in the year 617?, a number of wolves presented themselves at a monastery, and tore in pieces several friars who entertained heretical opinions. The wolves sent by God tore the sacrilegious thieves of the army of [Francesco Maria]?, duke of Urbino, who had come to sack the treasure of the holy house of Loreto, A wolf guarded and defended from the wild beasts the head of [St. Edmund]? the martyr, king of England. [St. Odo]?, abbot of Cluny, assailed in a pilgrimage by foxes, was delivered and escorted by a wolf" (A. de Gubernatis, ''Zoological Mythology'', 1872, vol. ii. p. 145). Many of the werwolves were most innocent and God-fearing persons, who suffered through the witchcraft of others, or simply from an unhappy fate, and who as wolves behaved in a truly touching fashion, fawning upon and protecting their benefactors. Of this sort were the "Bisclaveret" in [Marie de France]?'s poem (c. 1200?), the hero of "[William and the Werewolf]?" (translated from French into English about 1350?), and the numerous princes and princesses, knights and ladies, who appear temporarily in beast form in the Marchen of the Aryan nations generally. Indeed, the power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but also to Christian saints. ''Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra,'' was the dictum of [St. Thomas Aquinas]?. [St. Patrick]? transformed Vereticus?, king of Wales, into a wolf; and [St. Natalis]? cursed an illustrious Irish family with the result that each member of it was doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is still more direct, while in Russia, again, men are supposed to become werewolves through incurring the wrath of the devil. Historical legends describe a wide variety of methods for becoming a werewolf. One of the simplest was the removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of wolf skin, probably 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 werwolves 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. Various methods also existed for removing the beast-shape. The simplest was the act of the enchanter (operating either on himself 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 werwolf, 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. In other cases the transformation was supposed to be accomplished by Satanic agency voluntarily submitted to, and that for the most loathsome ends, in particular for the gratification of a craving for human flesh. "The werwolves," writes [Richard Verstegan]? (Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1628), "are certayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the devill, and putting on a certayne inchaunted girdle, doe not onely unto the view of others seeme as wolves, but to their owne thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they weare the said girdle. And they do dispose themselves as very wolves, in wourrying and killing, and most of humane creatures." Such were the views about lycanthropy current throughout the continent of Europe when Verstegan wrote. |
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A recent theory has been proposed to explain werewolf episodes in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ergot?, which causes a form of [food poisoning]?, is a fungus that grows in place of rye? grains in wet growing seasons after very cold winters. Ergot poisoning usually affects whole towns or at least poor areas of towns and results in hallucination?s, [mass hysteria]? and paranoia, as well as convulsion?s and sometimes death. (LSD is derived from ergot.) Ergot poisoning has been proposed as both a cause of an individual believing that he or she is a werewolf and of a whole town believing that they had seen a werewolf. Ergot has also been suggested as a cause for the "bewitchings" and mass hysteria leading to the [Salem witch trials]?. There is also a (rare) mental disorder called Lycanthropy, in which the afflicted person believes him- or herself to be a werewolf. |
Werewolves in film and literatureThe process of transmogrification is widely supposed in both film and literature to be painful; the resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction, regardless of the moral character of the person when human. People can supposedly be turned into werewolves either by a curse or by being bitten by another werewolf; supposedly the only way to kill a werewolf is with a silver object (usually a bullet). |
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A recent theory has been proposed to explain werewolf episodes in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ergot?, which causes a form of [food poisoning]?, is a fungus that grows in place of rye? grains in wet growing seasons after very cold winters. Ergot poisoning usually affects whole towns or at least poor areas of towns and results in hallucination?s, [mass hysteria]? and paranoia, as well as convulsion?s and sometimes death. (LSD is derived from ergot.) Ergot poisoning has been proposed as both a cause of an individual believing that he or she is a werewolf and of a whole town believing that they had seen a werewolf. Ergot has also been suggested as a cause for the "bewitchings" and mass hysteria leading to the [Salem witch trials]?. There is also a (rare) mental disorder called Lycanthropy, in which the afflicted person believes him- or herself to be a werewolf. Werewolves in Modern FictionThe process of transmogrification is widely supposed in both film and literature to be painful. The resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction regardless of the moral character of the person when human. The form a werewolf takes is not always an ordinary wolf, but is often anthropomorphic or may be otherwise larger and more powerful than an ordinary wolf. Many modern werewolves are also 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 legends almost exclusively involve lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being transmitted like a disease by the bite of another werewolf. Werewolves have been dealt with in many movies, short stories, and novels, with varying degrees of success. The genre was made popular in recent times by the classic [Universal Studios]? movie [The Wolf Man]? (1941), starring [Lon Chaney Jr.]? as the werewolf Larry Talbot. This movie contained the now-famous rhyme: "Even a man who is pure in heart / And says his prayers at night / May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms / And the autumn moon is bright." More recently, the portrayal of werewolves has taken a significantly positive turn in some circles. With the rise of environmentalism and other back-to-nature ideals, the werewolf has come to be seen as a representation of humanity allied more closely with nature. A prime example of this outlook can be seen in the role-playing game [Werewolf: The Apocalypse]? in which players roleplay various werewolf characters who work on behalf of Gaia? against the destructive supernatural spirit named Wyrm, who represents the forces of destructive industrialization and pollution. Author [Whitley Streiber]? explores these themes in his novels [The Wild]? (in which the werewolf is portrayed as a medium through which to bring human intelligence and spirit back into nature) and [The Wolven]? (in which werewolves are shown to act as predators of humanity, acting as a "natural" control on their population now that it has been removed from the traditional limits of nature). Werewolves still continue to be popular as monsters in movies and literature, however. The recent film [Ginger Snaps]? made use of lycanthropy as an analogue to puberty?, portraying the unsettling physical and emotional changes of human adolescence through the device of lycanthropic transformation. The novel Howling Mad by [Peter David]? takes the novel approach of featuring a wolf who has been bitten by a werewolf, becoming a "were-human" as a result. The werehuman provides the reader with a unique perspective on human civilization. Select films featuring werewolves: *[An American Werewolf in London]? *[An American Werewolf in Paris]? *[The Howling]? *[Silver Bullet]? *[Teen Wolf]? *[Teen Wolf Too]? *[The Wolf Man]? (1941) *[Ginger Snaps]? Select novels featuring werewolves: *The Wild ([Whitley Streiber]?) *The Wolven ([Whitley Strieber]?) *Howling Mad ([Peter David]?) |
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Werewolves have been dealt with in many movies, short stories, and novels, with varying degrees of success. The genre was made popular by the classic [Universal Studios]? move [The Wolf Man]? in 1941, starring [Lon Chaney Jr.]? as the werewolf Larry Talbot. It was this movie that made popular the rhyme: "Even a man who is pure in heart / And says his prayers at night / May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms / And the autumn moon is bright." |
Other uses of the term "werewolf" |
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A few of the films dealing with werewolves: :[An American Werewolf in London]? :[An American Werewolf in Paris]? :[The Howling]? :[Silver Bullet]? :[Teen Wolf]? :[Teen Wolf Too]? :[The Wolf Man]? (1941) Other uses of "werewolf" |
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:See also : vampire |
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See also : vampire, lycanthropy |
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from a 1911 encyclopedia, to be integrated and updated: In Greek mythology the story of Lycaon supplies the most familiar instance of the werwolf. According to one form of it 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. Pliny, quoting Euanthes, tells us (Hist. Nat. viii. 22) that a man of the family of Antaeus? was selected by lot and brought to a lake in Arcadia, where he hung his clothing on an ash and swam across. This resulted in his being transformed into a wolf, and he wandered in this shape nine years. Then, if he had attacked no human being, he was at liberty to swim back and resume his former shape. Probably the two stories are identical, though we hear nothing of participation in the Lycaean sacrifice by the descendant of Antaeus. Herodotus (iv. 105) tells us that the Neuri, a tribe of eastern Europe, were annually transformed for a few days, and Virgil (Ecl. viii. 98) is familiar with transformation of human beings into wolves. There are women, so the Armenian belief runs, who in consequence of deadly sins are condemned to pass seven years in the form of a wolf. A spirit comes to such a woman and brings her a wolf's skin. He orders her to put it on, and no sooner has she done this than the most frightful wolfish cravings make their appearance and soon get the upper hand. Her better nature conquered, she makes a meal of her own children, one by one, then of her relatives' children according to the degree of relationship, and finally the children of strangers begin to fall a prey to her. She wanders forth only at night, and doors and locks spring open at her approach. When morning draws near she returns to human form and removes her wolf skin. In these cases the transformation was involuntary or virtually so. But side by side with this belief in involuntary metamorphosis, we find the belief that human beings can change themselves into animals at will and then resume their own form. The expedients supposed to be adopted for effecting change of shape may here be noticed. One of the simplest apparently was the removal of clothing, and in particular of a girdle of human skin, or the putting on of such a girdle-- more commonly the putting on of a girdle of the skin of the animal whose form was to be assumed. This last device is doubtless a substitute for the assumption of an entire animal skin, which also is frequently found. In other cases the body is rubbed with a magic salve. To drink water out of the footprint of the animal in question, to partake of its brains, to drink of certain enchanted streams, were also considered effectual modes of accomplishing metamorphosis. Olaus Magnus says that the Livonian werwolvcs were initiated by draining a cup of beer specially prepared, and repeating a set formula. Ralston in his Songs of the Russian People gives the form of incantation still familiar in Russia. Various expedients also existed for removing the beast-shape. The simplest was the act of the enchanter (operating either on himself or on a victim); another was the removal of the animal girdle. To kneel in one spot for a hundred years, to be reproached with being a werwolf, 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 were also effectual cures. In other cases the transformation was supposed to be accomplished by Satanic agency voluntarily submitted to, and that for the most loathsome ends, in particular for the gratification of a craving for human flesh. "The werwolves," writes Richard Verstegan (Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1628)," are certayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the devill, and putting on a certayne inchaunted girdle, doe not onely unto the view of others seeme as wolves, but to their owne thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they weare the said girdle. And they do dispose themselves as very wolves, in wourrying and killing, and most of humane creatures." Such were the views about lycanthropy current throughout the continent of Europe when Verstegan wrote. France in particular seems to have been infested with werwolves during the 16th century, and the consequent trials were very numerous. 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; in all the cases, with hardly an exception, there was that extraordinary readiness in the accused to confess and even to give circumstantial details of the metamorphosis, which is one of the most inexplicable concomitants of medieval witchcraft. Yet, while this lycanthropy fever, both of suspectors and of suspected, was at its height, it was decided in the case of Jean Grenier at Bordeaux, in 1603, that lycanthropy was nothing more than an insane delusion. From this time the loup-garou gradually ceased to be regarded as a dangerous heretic, and fell back into his pre-Christianic position of being simply a "man-wolf-fiend," as which he still survives among the French peasantry. In Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania, according to the bishops Olaus Magnus and Majolus, the werwolves were in the 16th century far more destructive than "true and natural wolves,'' and their heterodoxy appears from the assertion that they formed "an accursed college" of those "desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law." In England, however, where at the beginning of the 17th century the punishment of witchcraft was still zealously prosecuted by James I, the wolf had been so long extinct that that pious monarch was himself able (Demonologie, lib. iii.) to regard "warwoolfes" as victims of delusion induced by "a naturall superabundance of melancholic." Only small creatures, such as the cat, the hare and the weasel, remained for the malignant sorcerer to transform himself into ; but he was firmly believed to avail himself of these agencies. Belief in witch-animals still survives among the uneducated classes in parts of the United Kingdom. |
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The werwolves of the Christian dispensation were not, however, all heretics, all viciously disposed towards mankind. "According to Baronius, in the year 617, a number of wolves presented themselves at a monastery, and tore in pieces several friars who entertained heretical opinions. The wolves sent by God tore the sacrilegious thieves of the army of Francesco Maria, duke of Urbino, who had come to sack the treasure of the holy house of Loreto, A wolf guarded and defended from the wild beasts the head of St. Edmund the martyr, king of England. St. Odo, abbot of Cluny, assailed in a pilgrimage by foxes, was delivered and escorted by a wolf "(A. de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, 1872, vol. ii. p. 145). Many of the werwolves were most innocent and God-fearing persons, who suffered through the witchcraft of others, or simply from an unhappy fate, and who as wolves behaved in a truly touching fashion, fawning upon and protecting their benefactors. Of this sort were the "Bisclaveret" in [Marie de France]?'s poem (c. 1200), the hero of "William and the Were-wolf" (translated from French into English about 1350), and the numerous princes and princesses, knights and ladies, who appear temporarily in beast form in the Marchen of the Aryan nations generally. Nay, the power of transforming others into wild beasts was attributed not only to malignant sorcerers, but also to Christian saints. Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra, was the dictum of St Thomas Aquinas. St Patrick transformed Vereticus, king of Wales, into a wolf; and St Natalis cursed an illustrious Irish family, with the result that each member of it was doomed to be a wolf for seven years. In other tales the divine agency is still more direct, while in Russia, again, men are supposed to become werwolves through incurring the wrath of the devil. |
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