Werewolves just chilling by a wall in “Les Lupins” by Maurice Sands, 1858
(14) LYCANTHROPY
“You hear him howling around your kitchen door.
You better not let him in.
Little old lady got mutilated late last night.
Werewolves of London again.
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London!”
Not just London, as werewolves are a widespread concept in European folklore.
And not just werewolves either, as I’m opening up this special mention entry to the concept of werebeasts throughout the world. Technically that would be therianthropy, as the better-known term lycanthropy is specifically for werewolves (literally from the Greek for wolf and man). Although werewolfism and werebeastliness would be more amusing to use.
You all know the basic concept – a human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf, or some sort of wolf-human hybrid, either on purpose or involuntarily by some sort of curse or affliction (often spread by the bite or scratch of a werewolf), with such transformations typically (but not always) by the light of the full moon.
The concept has a long history. Personally, I think it has one of the longest in human history – or prehistory – originating with animal powers, totemism or transformation in shamanism.
As the use of the Greek term lycanthropy might signify, the more recognizable predecessors of the concept originated in classical history, with references to men transforming or being transformed into wolves in Greek literature or mythology. One of the most famous was the myth of Lycaon, whom Zeus – styled as Zeus Lycaeus, translated by Robert Graves as Zeus of the she-wolf – transformed into a wolf (as divine punishment).
However, while the term lycanthropy itself was used by the Greeks in classical literature, it was apparently only in later classical history, used rarely, and in a clinical sense for a particular form of insanity rather than transformation.
The term werewolf was more recognizably used for the concept. And as that term might signify, the even more recognizable predecessors of the concept originated with the role and totemism of the wolf in pre-Christian or Iron Age Germanic paganism, itself often traced further back to proto-Indo-European mythology – where lycanthropy is apparently reconstructed as an aspect of the initiation of the warrior class.
This heady mix clashed head on with Christianity, leading to the concept of the werewolf in medieval Europe – although that concept reached its definitive height in the early modern period, hopelessly intertwined with the overlapping concepts of vampires and witchcraft, so much so for the latter that there were werewolf trials among witch trials.
And like vampires, the elements of werewolves in folklore are also worthy of their own top ten, from the underlying causes of lycanthropy, the nature of their transformation, and other characteristics – including, most crucially for those European peasants up to their necks in fangs, their weaknesses or possible cures.
And as for wider therianthropy or werebeasts – “Until the 20th century, wolf attacks on humans were an occasional, but still widespread feature of life in Europe. Some scholars have suggested that it was inevitable that wolves, being the most feared predators in Europe, were projected into the folklore of evil shapeshifters. This is said to be corroborated by the fact that areas devoid of wolves typically use different kinds of predator to fill the niche; werehyenas in Africa, weretigers in India, as well as werepumas (“runa uturuncu”) and werejaguars (“yaguaraté-abá” or “tigre-capiango”) in southern South America.”
Although I think that overlooks bears in Europe. There’s also the plethora of werebeasts in the modern fantasy genre, most notably in Dungeons and Dragons, where basically were-anything goes.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)