Werewolves and Wild Men

If you too are charmed by Japan and want to learn a little more about these obscure bits of culture, Or if you just want to put on your headphones. Close your eyes and relax while listening to me tell you about a yokai that licks the scum from your drain with its disturbingly long tongue. Then uncanny Japan is for you. Now broadcasting from Spectre Vision Radio, you can find and follow me on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. ではまた

And I want to thank him for doing that. Thank him for being part of Strange Familiars and for doing a Christmas show with me every year. I look forward to it every year.

the archetype of whether that's the civilized human who goes wild or you know, the creature of the wild that makes itself known to to the civilized or the semi civilized or whatever. And so if you look at it from an archetypal point of view You know, if you if you take the path of Jung or even or even Freud

there is this sort of idea that, you know, we are the wild men and the wild women, that there's an element within us that's being projected in some way, you know, at least archetypally in in literature, in myth, in story, etcetera. Now obviously we would go further and say that people are actually encountering real things.

and where we place those on the whole matter versus spirit or or the or the matter spirit continuum, shall we say, is really interesting. But I was fascinated and I've been thinking a lot Yeah, probably taking up too much time thinking to be honest, about the the this whole idea of as we get tamer, they get wilder. Mm-hmm.

And so yeah, I think if we start maybe with the with the early ones and talk about, you know, let's go back as far as the early saints and and how they how they encountered it, because naturally, as as has often been said on Strange Familiars, you know, th the if you take the channel that the idea that these things are using the same channels to manifest, then we get the opposite ends of the continuum with, you know, the same two is seen as

integrated, holistic, whole and and holy. And I don't just mean the Christian saint, no, I mean across you know, the holy person across all traditions. And then you have at the opposite end the wild person. who is more sort of animalistic, savage, you know, the idea of being being dangerous, etc. etc. And then you have this really strange confluence of both figures. which is the saint who who is wild, the holy person who is wild.

And you also have the the the sort of the tame wild man, the kind of um encounter which you know, Bigfoot has brother or Bigfoot has guardian or Bigfoot has as land guardian, etcetera. So it is circular. It's a cyclical continuum as far as as far as I'm concerned.

So I'm gonna try and move through these some of these things with without hopefully confusing either myself or you or the people out there too too much. But these are more kind of just thoughts that have appeared along the way. So I hope that's I hope that's okay.

Just he just well he said he might as well be p nobody else knows what I'm reading, so they're So in a book of Nazareth has this extraordinary moment where at the moment of his great exaltation of pride and particularly after the conquering of the temple in Jerusalem and the sacrilege against the holy vessels and the

the articles of devotion there. We're told in the book of Daniel that his punishment is the Lord changes his heart, meaning obviously the centre of his personhood, which is what heart meant in those days, his heart from the heart of a man to the heart of a wild beast. He grows hair, um, he grows uh talons, uh he begins to walk on all fours, he loses the power of speech and he becomes wild and savage. And this is, as far as we know, one of the earliest ideas uh

somebody becoming bestial. Mm-hmm. Where it's actually written down, I'm sure there are much earlier myths and stories. And, you know, if we look at the kind of shamanic indigenous histories and traditions, um, you know, you have everything from

the idea of possession by the spirits that renders somebody wild but also puts them in contact with the divine, with the gods, with the transcendent. But this is the first written account as far as we know. We're probably looking at something that's been handed down from Somewhere around three thousand to two thousand BC. It may also have influence.

uh through kind of cultural appropriation, cultural transfer, the story of Lycon in Greece, which is a ki who is a a king who falls under the wrath of Zeus. And this is the name that gives us lycanthropy, which is the werewolf end of things.

So whether Lycon influenced the story of Nebuchadnezzar or Nebuchadnezzar influenced the story of Lycon, they both appear round about the same, roughly the same time. And we know that there was great travel incongruence from the Mediterranean to the Middle East at that time. So quite possible that as stories were told, they were adapted into various cultures.

So when you have particularly during the Roman times, when you have this this very stable network of, you know, a civil service and a kind of a a public road system through most of Europe into the Mediterranean down into the Middle East into Africa, people traveled and traveled a lot. And even in terms of the Middle Ages, you know, it was not.

beyond the bounds of possibility for someone who was, you know, reasonably reasonably okay from a wealth point of view to make in their lifetime a journey to Jerusalem, a journey to Santiago de Compostela. We have a story of Saint Anthony who imposes upon one man the penance, which is an incredible penance even now to think about.

he was a murderer and the penance he imposes on him is that he has to visit the tombs of all twelve apostles. Oh wow. And which are yeah, exactly, scattered all over the known world at the time. And he achieves it and then dies, and I'm sure it was died of exhaustion really at at the end of it all. But what's interesting around it is that the world was so stable at that time that you could actually travel to visit the tombs of the twelve apostles.

it you would be hard pushed to do that now in terms of how unstable the world is now. You know? So yeah, we have this idea of everything being separate, but there was much more um sharing of ideas, knowledge, story. And because the culture was much more of an oral culture and people's memories were far better than they are now. When you think about literature that was remembered by the average educated person.

And I'm also a wildlife biologist and wildlife behavior expert. On Tooth and Claw, we take listeners through stories of hair raising and often violent encounters with wildlife and then outline the often very human reasons behind these attacks. as well as ways that you can avoid run-ins with potentially dangerous wildlife yourself.

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And that is something that we have forgotten about today. Yeah. You know, okay, there's a a bit of a a lingua franca in English, I suppose, in a in a lot of the world today, but even still, you know, it's it's not as um not as present as as we might think. So um getting back to good old Nabuchadnezir, he is put under this punishment, and until he humbles himself uh he cannot return to civil society.

And there were all kinds of discussions in the early days, you know, was this possession, was it full on werewolf, you know, the curse of the werewolf? Was it a psychological illness or episode that he went through? And you know, the answer to that is obviously we'll probably never know. But certainly when the description is he didn't just act like a beast, he he became beastial.

in that, you know, he grew hair all over his body and his claw his his nails and teeth became, you know, claws and fangs. Now whether that's just exaggeration for the sake of a good story, who knows, but it certainly set the idea in motion. Remember, this is a story that would have been read in church. Everybody would have known this story quite well.

It would have been often referred to in sort of medieval mystery plays and things like that as, you know, pride and lust make us bestial. And literally in the case of Nebuchadnezzar, So you have this idea that evil actions, evil thoughts, etcetera, result in the human being falling from its exalted place as a creature of reason. uh to becoming a savage, you know, and I mean savage in the sense of the behavior, not the idea of, you know, indigenous people or in any kind of colonial way.

So from that point of view we have this constant balancing of uh sort of three factors, which is the human being as the point where you know, the highest point of creation because of reason, you know, and will and the idea of the the the illumined intellect, but fallen

So you have this idea then, yeah, it's possible for our appetites to overcome us and for us to act in a bestial way. And then you have on either side of that, you know, the angelic realm drawing us up, ever more enlightened, and the demonic realm drawing us down.

Now, what does the demonic realm want to do as far as the early fathers and mothers of the church were concerned? It wants to make the human being as a creature of reason a fool and the way that it makes it a fool is particularly through temptation, through the animal passions, and then if we fall into that, the worst possible moment of that would be to be possessed in such a way that we lose our reason and become animalistic.

Um so there is the fear of the wild man and the and the wild woman as such as being creatures who in some way are under a ban or under a curse. That's the the first kind of kind of um movement of it. The second though is this idea th though that the saint or the holy person can live in the wild and can even let go of the marks of civilization and live more in union with nature and this is a kind of an adamic

He goes to the mountains where he is fed by the ravens and there's an implication, that whole ancient idea of, you know, that the holy person or the person who has taken on the god madness or the the the vocation of prophecy or whatever you want to call it. you know, receives the gift of the language of the birds, this sort of mystical language of nature, this pre Adamic l language of nature. So there he is being fed by the ravens, being looked after them.

full of power, power over the elements, etcetera. He can stop rain from falling. He can call down fire from heaven, etc. And he becomes actually the the original archetype for monastic life. To this day the Carmelite order, which are the oldest monastic order in the Western Church, and coming from Mount Carmel, which was where Elijah had his hermitage, they see themselves as the the the spiritual sons and daughters of the Prophet Elijah.

So they they traced their monastic tradition right the way back to the early Desert Fathers and through the Desert Fathers back into the Old Testament because the tradition is that Elijah set up a brotherhood of prophets on Mount Carmel, and their job was to pray for the coming of the Messiah.

And one of the earliest apparitions of Our Lady is supposed to have been two the early hermits on Mount Carmel and that it was Our Lady who converted them to the faith. Now that's that's in the realm of, you know ancient foundation legend as such. Um but certainly the Carmelites would look to that as a kind of a spiritual inspiration story for their charism.

And that runs us through all the prophets and the wildness of the prophets, Elijah, Elisha, etcetera, you know, right the way through then to John the Baptist in the New Testament, who Christ refers to him as the Elijah who was to come, because Elijah was prophesied as that he would come two more times once before the coming of the Christ. And secondly, at the end of the world he would come to announce the coming of Christ at the end of of time.

So in this instance, the spirit of Elijah is given to John the Baptist. And he does exactly the same. He goes, he's driven by the Holy Spirit out into the wild. Again, he becomes this extraordinary wild figure living on wild honey and locusts. and covered in camel skin. Again, if ever you see any icon of John

I'm looking at one here now, actually at my desk, you'll see that he's he's given a very unkempt, wild look. Long, long hair all over his all over you know, from his head to his feet, that kind of idea. And then this is further then moved in if we stick to the apostolic age with the idea of Mary Magdalene, whom we've talked about many, many times already, but the idea again that the contemplative

the person of great love and prayer enters into this theotic relationship with God where they are transformed as such and so they become wild but in the understanding of the holiness of the wild. And if we pause that for a moment, we o we also have this in the gospel, in that Christ goes into the desert. and into the Garden of Gethsemane, uh, you know, at both ends of his public ministry. And these are seen again as the the Christ redeeming the wild as well as, you know

just speaking to people. And there's this beautiful phrase in the Gospels that says, after he has conquered the temptations of the demons in the desert, It says he was with the wild beasts and the angels came and ministered to him. And it's it's it's a throwaway line, but there is no such thing as a throwaway line really in the scriptures. And what we're talking about is

he has revealed himself to be the new Adam. He is the one who can cast down the demons. He's the one who can name the beasts and they are with him. And he is the one to whom the angels minister, which was the original understanding of the the Adamic human would have would have been like, you know? So there's this tension that we see all the way through. And this goes further than and stop me along the way at any stage if I'm boring you or or going too far or anything else.

What we see then with the desert fathers and mothers, who are the earliest of the monastics, is this i idea that it's actually the job of the monastic to go into the wild. and there to face the savagery of their own animal appetites and to overcome that through grace. So th there's the understanding that the monk must know him or the nun for that matter, but we but they would say the monk must know himself at one and the same time.

Monastic Fathers puts it beautifully, he says the monk must always keep his heart in heaven and his mind in hell. In other words, to know the the possibilities that are inherent in every moment and to choose rightly, you know, not to pretend that you're something you're not. And so you have this extraordinary revelation of this with the moment when we've mentioned this before.

When Saint Antony, who is considered the father of monastic life within the Christian tradition, goes into the desert and has as part of his encounter, yes, he overcomes the demons and he overcomes his own thoughts and he overcomes his own appetites, etc., all through grace, and he comes back as the kind of theotic person, the holy person.

But on his way, called out of the desert to preach the good news, he encounters two different beings. And this is recorded in his legenda, in his life to the to this day. The first he encounters is a centaur. And he's totally taken aback to see a centaur standing in the desert.

waiting for him, so he does what all good monks do, which is he makes the sign of the cross and the centaur disappears immediately and he realizes, Okay, this is just a deception of the enemy trying to distract him from his mission. So he goes on. But then he meets what is variously translated as either a satyr, a fawn, or a wild man. And the description that's given is more phone-like. It talks about a short person, a little man who is uh, you know, his.

Bottom half is like a beast, you know, the kind of goatey end of things. And he makes the sign of the cross thinking here's another demon to dismiss. But the creature goes nowhere. And he goes up further and he realizes this is a physical being, or at least appearing as a physical being. And there's this wonderful conversation that takes place between them where he realizes, Oh, this is a being of reason.

And they have a conversation where the little creature says, you know, look, we live in the wild. The wild has been given to us. uh just as the cities have been given to men. And unfortunately people when they see us are either frightened of us or they bow down and worship, thinking we're gods. But we're not gods, we're just other kinds of of creatures. And they have this Philosophical debate, really, or conversation along the way, and they they're invite the the little creature departs asking.

Antony to pray for him. And you have this lovely moment of Antony blessing the fawn, which is often depicted in iconography. And and that's seen in a number of ways. You know, you can see it as maybe a kind of a Christian parable or a Christian tale sort of saying, Well, you know, the monastic tradition has now tamed the wild and even the pagan deities are sort of bowing down.

But the early monastics didn't see it that way at all. They saw it as a clear description of, yeah, there are other things. There are other rational creatures. There are the creatures of the wild and human beings have been given the village, the town, the the civilized place. And these other creatures are creatures under God and loved by him, but they've been given the wild.

And so if you go into the wild, you're unlikely to encounter them and to differentiate between the apparitions of spirits that are there just to distract or to cause fear or amazement or whatever. and these other creatures who just live there. So you have this beginning of a kind of a categorization of the other as having various different manifestations along the way and this idea that they're just the people of the wild, you know.

And I remember I was telling somebody else this recently, one of our oldest brothers uh taught me a beautiful prayer to pray whenever I was travelling, which was to wish peace upon any being I meet along the way, whether seen or unseen, any being that I pass by, through or around.

And I think it's a it's it's a beautiful kind of prayer to have because it's the acknowledgement that I could be passing, you know, an infinite number of creatures that I don't have the sensory awareness to to see and not wanting to offend or whatever I I wish them blessing before I leave, you know. And this was the idea that the monastics who became wild men, who went into the desert and who shed all forms of civilization, including clothing quite often.

they were to to become as wild as possible to approach this Adamic union with with God. And this really reached its acme in the deserts with two particular groups of people. The Boskai or Grazers, these were monks who lived entirely as permitted and ran around on all fours, lived naked, allowed the hair of the head and the hair of the beard to grow, uh, engaged solely in silent contemplation and lived on whatever vegetation they could find along the way. They were rare, as you can imagine.

But they were not considered mad, they were considered having been taken by holy madness. which was the the idea later resurfaces in monastic life as the kind of the holy fool, the person who can turn all the conventions of society upside down, but who teaches in that way.

And to this day in the Orthodox tradition, particularly Russian Orthodoxy, there are men and women who are seen as holy fools and who are recognised as mad, definitively mad, you know, with mental problems and issues, but through whom God speaks. and who have great wisdom and who have to be protected by the society or the village or the town because the divine speaks through them and even through their their seeming madness.

Um, because he's gone off to spend time with his father. And I think this is again and again what we're called to as well, as as human beings, I think, in the midst of the chaos of the city and the kind of um

using the city as archetype now. Um, you know, the sort of the the chaos of civilization, the the the the crushing weight of presence, of human presence that we all experience, whether it's online in the midst of our day to day existence that, you know, to actually be able to get out into the wild to breathe air, to I mean, we know all the all the the advantages that people talk about now, like forest bathing and

moving into, you know, the e even just having a a a wide vista actually lowers blood pressure and calms the brain and the mind. So there is this invitation to recognise that the wild is something that the civilized creature actually needs and is drawn towards, but at the same time recognising that we are in somebody else's territory when we do that. and there is a kind of a code of behaviour expected in the midst of it all.

And that went so far as it you know, as I mentioned, the the grazers, the the monks who ran around on all fours, um we also had the dendrites who were monks who decided that they would live in trees. to be as near to heaven as possible, as near to the birds. Eventually they became the stylites who were the the monks who who lived on pillars.

And people often have this idea'cause they've seen it in iconography, you know, that there's some poor monk balanced on a pillar that's about six inches wide, you know, at the top of a the top of a tower. And that wasn't what the pillars looked like. They were quite wide, you know, there was a shelter on them, etcetera. But again, it was this idea of withdrawing, going to a liminal space, being between earth and heaven, in the middle of the wild, so as to receive this along the way.

To receive these crisis.

it also you know, there was a huge, huge movement and wave that also influenced the islands of Ireland and and even out as far as the Icelandic coast. And that's where we get another wild man account that turns up, which is good old Saint Brendan at the Navigator. supposedly one of the discoverers of the Americas, perhaps, but Brendan practiced this extraordinary practice called Peregrinatio Procristi, which was to journey for Christ.

And so what they would do, these wonderful monks, was they would get into their boat with a small little group of monks and some provisions and they would row out to where the tides could take them and then they would throw the oars overboard. And and simply say, Let the winds take us where they will. So uh Brendan was from a people down on the coast of Kerry, which is right on the the the sort of um southwest coast of of Ireland.

very wild seas right out at the Atlantic edge. So they were looking out at the edge of the world. I mean people already thought Ireland was the edge of the world to to some extent, you know. There was nothing beyond Ireland except possibly this mythical island of High Brassel.

Where all kinds of mythical creatures lived. So it was considered a dangerous sea to go out to go out across. But For whatever reason, and there's all kinds of theories that perhaps there may have been knowledge handed down even from pre Christian times, that there may have been knowledge that yet there is there is something out there. But he and a group of monks undertook this extraordinary journey. Which is recorded as the Navigatio. It's a very famous early medieval manuscript.

it gives the the the the per the pilgrimage, the peregrination of of Brendan and the various encounters and islands that he he connected along the way. But one of the islands he connects with is an island of hairy men. And they didn't seem to have the power of speech and they were quite, you know, aggressive, but the monks did their best to sort of trade with them and preach to them, etcetera, and eventually they they left them. They left them there. Now, there's all kinds of theories from

They met the Inuit perhaps they met possibly people who were dressed in bear skins or wolf skins or whatever, that the fact that they couldn't understand them may mean that they'd actually hit maybe the edge of Iceland and Icelandic languages wouldn't be very understandable to the Celts. So there's all of these possibilities, but it's recorded as they met wild men, and they were not surprised to meet wild men.

Because the understanding was that this is where, you know, once you go out into the wild, once you go to the edge of the world, you're going to meet all of these various kind of mythical creatures again, you know. And so you have this extraordinary current that continues right the way down. So you've got like Saint Christopher, the famous story of Saint Christopher, who's supposed to have come from one of those tribes.

the people who were known as the dog headed, you know, the sinuscephaly. And so Often in his iconography he's pictured as having a a dog head. And they say this may have been a a mistranslation of the tribe that he came from, the Marate.

they did live at the edges of the Roman Empire, they were people who were quite big and it may have been that people misread that as as a kind of a a pun in fact was being was being used, you know, that they were they were wild, they were dogheaded. But There is a category of early saint, particularly still in the Byzantine tradition known as the Sinus Esthley, who are saints whose whose official iconography shows them with dog heads.

And usually their stories of saints who had great physical strength or uh were wild men who were converted like Christopher was. or who fulfilled kind of these liminal functions like Christopher does as a patron of travellers and those who cross rivers, etc. So they become these kind of guardians and there's a long, long ancient tradition going right the way back into the very early mists of time that, you know

the the image of the guardian is naturally the dog. Um the one who is set set at the boundaries, you know. Um whether it's cerebrus, you know, with the the you know in in front of the um the Greek underworld or you have Fenris who brings brings about the great wolf dog who brings about the the rag the end of the end of the world, etcetera in the in the Norse understanding. So these sayings, these guardians were often given these images to depict attributes.

of their story or of their life or maybe even of where they came from. But the problem then becomes later it's kind of considered almost, you know, well, he actually had a a dog's head, you know.

bowing down, cowing in fear, because the spirits that he was that he was invoking were trying to attack him. So he had no time for the sorcerer after that and he said, No, I'll serve the spirits themselves, you know, take out the middleman kind of idea. So he begins to serve the the spirits themselves and then on one occasion a Christian monk

comes into the town and the spirits flee in terror. And he says, Oh, well, I need to follow him so he starts trying to follow him then and the Christian monk says to him, No, no, no, you don't you don't you certainly don't bow down, you don't worship us. We worship Christ and he explains. Christ to him. And so Christopher says he wants to serve Christ, but how can he find him?

So the monk sets him as a penance for his sins and for his violence, but also as a s as an act of charity, that he would because he was so big, that he would stand at a ford and he would assist people crossing the ford from then on. And that he wasn't to take money or charge people for it. So that's the idea of of St. Christopher as the patron of travel.

And on one occasion the story goes that as he's he he's wakes up one morning, you know, constantly praying that he would meet the Christ who he would be able to serve. And he finds a little child at the side of the river and the child says he has to cross the river to get to his father. So Christopher says of course says, Hop on my back and the child says, You won't be able to carry me.

And of course Christopher laughs in his side and he says, You know, how heavy do you think you are? You know, I've carried you know, huge burdens across the river, there's no problem. So the child gets on his back and as he begins to cross the river, the child gets heavier and heavier and heavier until Christopher is almost drowning. And at that point he cries out for help and the child

helps them get to the other side. And so Christopher says, You know, who are you? And he said, I'm the one you're looking for. I'm the Christ. He said, But how can you possibly be so heavy? And he said, Because I carry the sins of the world. And so at that stage Christopher repents completely and is totally forgiven and the Christ gives him the blessing of being the one who protects travelers because he's the only one who has actually carried the Christ, who carries the world.

It's a beautiful, a beautiful, beautiful legenda. Oh yeah. And it has led to the great understanding of of Christopher as and eventually Christopher gives his blood, he becomes a martyr because he he he chooses to stand for Christ but not to use his great strength to sort of attack those who are who are attacking him.

And gives himself up as a martyr. And one of the things that's really important, if we can just fix this, I'm gonna fix this now publicly, is he was never demoted as a saint. Okay. Um

So Christopher, Philomena, all of these various saints are now venerated under one title. which is the early martyrs of Rome. And we venerate all of them to this day. But we still invoke them in the litanies, we still pray to them. They're still Christopher is listed as one of the famous fourteen holy helpers. That all the medieval would have venerated. And you know, we still have churches dedicated to him. And there's even relics of Christopher in various places in both East and West.

I think it's it's very important just to get you know, it wasn't that that was kind of misreported and of course it made good media at the time, you know, all all these saints are no longer saints and it's absolutely not true.

You have this extraordinary story that St. Patrick himself once punished the Welsh king Veritricius by transforming him into a wolf. And so this is because while Patrick was in Ireland He became so disgusted with the wickedness of certain tribes that would howl like wolves, these may have been the kind of berserk warriors that were that were around, because when he tried to preach Christianity to them they would start howling and screaming.

So he cursed them and condemned them to become werewolves. This is legend, obviously. But the spell fell on the tribesmen, caused them to turn into werewolves once every seven years. they could stay in wolf form for seven years, then once that had passed they were to come back into humans, but then for another seven years and then back into the wolf until they died. The only thing was, which is really interesting.

Even as werewolves, they were not to be denied the sacraments of the church, according to Patrick. So again we have this archetypal idea of the wild receiving grace, you know, that the human being is still in there in somewhere. So they were still to receive the sacraments and you have these stories of the werewolves turning up every Sunday to sit outside the churches for mass, etcetera.

And then Gerald of Wales, about eleven ninety one, and Geraldus Cumbrancis is one of the most extraordinary stories of historians of Ireland. He records the testimony of a priest who swore that he once gave Holy Communion to one of the werewolves. that the werewolf presented itself, turned into its human aspect and asked for Holy Communion on a Sunday and he gave it absolution and it received Holy Communion, then turned back into a wolf and it went away.

There were so many stories of werewolves in Ireland that actually, up until the early eighteenth century, one of the names for Ireland was Wolfland. Yeah, you have all of these extraordinary stories. And to this day, actually, even though, you know, the last Irish wolf was supposed to have been killed somewhere seventeen hundreds, maybe, early seventeen hundreds, you have people who report wolves to this day, both spectral and real.

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gets up, looks out into into the darkness, and sees a giant wolf drawing near. So the two of them are terrified naturally and then even more so when the wolf begins to speak in a human voice and says to them, We're natives of Osrey, that's a place in the Midlands of Ireland. From there every seven years because of the imprecation of a certain saint, namely the abbot Natalis, this man and woman are compelled to go into exile not only from their territory but also from their shame.

The priest had heard of Natalis, who had come to Ireland shortly after the blessed Patrick to help him in bringing the gospel to the land. He had even read some of the holy man's works from what he had read, he had always imagined Natalis to be exceedingly severe and inflexible in his teachings, unlike Patrick. And one who would brook no deviation from any of his own interpretations of God's law. He sounds a very nice man to meet anyway.

The sin which and I love this, the wolf says the sin which my clan committed, we have even long forgotten. But the curse is still in force, so they don't even know why they're turning into wolves anymore. Every seven years two of us must lose our mortal form to wear the skin of a wild wolf, and we must live in the deep woods away from the clan. When the seven years are up we shed our animal form and regain our human shape, and two others must take our place. It's a terrible burden, father.

And one was that never that will never be lifted because Natalis died before he could lift the curtain. The wolf asks the priest to accompany him into the woods to give the last rites to his mate, the female wolf. The priest is filled with terror that the wolf would kill him, but he follows the wolf into the woods.

He gives the dying wolf holy communion and blesses her. The male wolf returns the priest to his campfire and bids him farewell, loping back into the forest. The priest calls out after him, saying he would come back on his way back. And on his way back from Ulster he goes into the forest to try and find them, but never found them anymore.

So there we go. It's quite a pathetic kind of legend in the sense that you have this extraordinary idea that they're doing penance for a sin that they have even forgotten what it was. You know, that this this um This constant descent into the bestial nature has taken away from them even the the understanding that they have, you know? So On top of that, we then have lycanthropy and werewolfdom and people becoming wild men being seen in the Middle Ages as a medical disease.

So if you'd like I can read you The Cure for Lycanthropy which comes from the eleventh century. So here we go. This is the description of it and what happened. Unlycanthropy, persons affected by lycanthropy go out at nighttime and wander among tombs and wild places. You can recognize them from the following signs. So we can all tick these off one by one to make sure we're not actually lycanthropes.

They are pale with dry, dull, and hollow eyes, without tears. The tongue is extremely dry and without saliva. They are very thirsty, and their legs are covered with scars from frequent stumbling. You must know that lycanthropy is a type of overuse of the melancholic humour, and it must be treated by bloodletting until fainting, and offering an appropriate diet and baths with sweet water they mean pure water.

Purgation by the hyra of Colosynth must be applied twice or three times and then use the herb viper terakia and the other healing methods for melancholy. When the disease is approaching you, you must sedate the patient by the use of wet compresses and an administration of opium. And I'll be delighted to hear that. Opium always comes up in all the medical cures. Anyway. Rubbing the ears and the nostrils with a somniferous method, in other words, applying the smear of sulfur.

So I think it's really interesting. You have this sudden jump. in the early Middle Ages to recognising that there is the curse aspect to it, there's the spiritual aspect to it, but there's also this understanding that actually people can go wild or in inverted commas mad. in a bestial way that can come from essentially what they're talking about is a mental health breakdown. Yeah.

And there are also a lot of the symptoms that they're talking about there are actually the symptoms of the onset of diabetes.

the sort of unclean thoughts idea, um, you know, that it that it could be temptation towards despair, but they recognize that there are ways of of healing and minding someone. on the edges of lycanthropy. This is to try and prevent someone descending into it completely. So that comes from about the year I think it's eleven ninety one. you have this gradation of wildness. You have

the terror and fear of the human being losing the veneer of civilization. You have the understanding that out in the wild there are the wild creatures themselves, these tribes of of monsters who are to be recognized as fellow citizens of the world, but the wild belongs to them in a way that it doesn't belong to us.

And then you have those who through spiritual discipline in all of the traditions go into the wild and even become wild for a while. You often refer to the story of Merlin, for example, becoming becoming the wild man so as to learn wisdom, to learn knowledge. And this was to my mind, I'm sure to many others, it sounds like almost a kind of a shamanic initiation of some description that he goes through.

And we still have it to this day. You know, what do people do when they need wisdom or when they need a break or when they need, you know, healing? They they go out into the wild and then begin to encounter the things that we know that are there. And so I think when there's the expectation of meeting

the monstrous and I mean that in in the best sense, out there. Or encountering the monstrous within ourselves, but through spiritual discipline, you know, arriving at a kind of a more balanced experience of it or you know, a cure of it or a disciplined use of it. what we find is that the wild and the domestic, shall we say, begin to work in a balanced way to bring about kind of healing.

But when we're divorced from the wild, as so much of the West is now at this stage, it becomes a place of fear and terror and horror. And I think we get that back. From the wild in return. So like the weekend hunter that you uh perhaps talk about or others talk about who goes out and sees the great beast in the woods and never goes back to the woods again. Whereas when you're

in your latest episodes when you were talking about, you know, the people of Pine Ridge and how Yeah, yeah, he's around. Yeah. You know, he's part of it. So are the little people. So are the You know, so are the spirits. Oh yeah, the UFOs fly by occasionally, you know. But we live in an awareness of all of those and we recognize that they're trying to tell us things. And sometimes we get ri we get the messages wrong or sometimes it's i it's I think

I I said to you, it really came across to me from the Pine Ridge episodes that the people there, you know, saw him as a messenger of greater awareness. You know, there's a m there's a moment I think where one of the people you're interviewing was like, you know, no, he doesn't bring bad news and he doesn't bring good news. He just tells us to notice things, you know, to be aware of things. that things are about to happen. So it's kind of a a gift of knowledge, you know, in the midst of that.

But the more divorced we become from the wild, the more we project our fears into it. And if we're gonna go with the whole co creation theory that we speak of, then if we're going in you know, fearing the great animal beast that's going to attack us, then the likelihood is that's what we're going to meet.

Either as a projection of our own psyche or as the clothes that the other will wear because it thinks that's what we want. And we're back to what color of Bigfoot did you see? You know And and that to me has led me to a little bit of a of a thought around the whole werewolf dogman end of things. Which is that if we are saying that the more divorced from the wild we become, the wilder Bigfoot becomes in return.

Then perhaps we're now at the stage of Bigfoot actually transforming back into the big bad wolf. Ah. And so maybe it's not a case of Bigfoot versus Dogman or Dogman being, you know, a different species or anything like that. But what if Bigfoot is actually becoming the wolf again? Becoming the darkest part of our psyche that was terrified of the wolf in the dark, the savage in the dark. And so instead of the kind of intellectual, you know, more alike us ape or ape like wild man.

What we're now being faced with is, you know, the wild actually saying, Well, I need to be even more aggressive with them to wake them up. And so we have these very fear fearful encounters.

And so it also struck me in the Pine Ridge approach, while he's, you know, they speak of spirit, and I'm always wary of. You know, when we translate terms from language to language, you know, someone can hear somebody say, Oh, it's a spirit and they immediately think what they mean in the Western understanding is non corporeal presence, ghost, etc. Whereas the older understanding of anything spirit was

it could be as physical one minute as it wants to be, and it could be as incorporeal one minute as it wants to be. And it can it has the transformation of matter. And that was always the understanding of the the Fay, for example, that they could conjure bodies for as long as they needed them and then just dissolve them back into into the elements again whenever they wanted to.

So when the people of Pine Ridge are saying, you know, yeah, he's a spirit but he's also a man and he's the big man, you know, and a different kind of man. You know, and then you look at something like, say, the Olympic project, etcetera, who are looking for a monkey in the woods and what they get are manifestations of monkeys in the woods. But again, uncatchable monkeys, uncatchable apes, I should say.

you do have this this kind of idea that that maybe if we were to approach the wild as some of these, you know, holy people of all traditions have done.

what we would find is that we would be met actually by something that is more open to to dialogue and we end up like good old Antony encounting the fawn or the satyr and having the conversation with it and parting as, you know, friends who respect each other's territories, rather than being run out of the woods by the big beast with the glowing eyes.

And so the Wood Rose was traditionally placed in churches as the supporting figure of the baptismal fund. They were usually around the base of baptismal fonts, just as the the green men were around the the kind of roof bosses holding them up. And you know, while we can say, well, they're they're symbols from maybe pagan pasts or early past as well. Actually if you really look at the history, they don't really manifest in Europe till the early, kind of early part of the Middle Ages.

Where they come from, there's all kinds of debate and discussion over. But it certainly seems that at least within the understanding of the kind of more ancient monastic tradition within Europe at least, there was this understanding that, you know, the world is populated by all of these things and they can help us.

And my my I I particularly love the fact that, you know, the myth of the green man in early in in the the very early records we have of it is that it's actually part of the legend of Seth, Adam's son. uh is given the first seeds of the forest. He's a forester, so he's given the first seeds by Abel. Obviously Abel is then killed by Cain and and Seth comes along afterwards, inherits these seeds.

and wanting to kind of, you know, become the forester and plant the forest, he decides that in tribute to his father Adam, who's now dead, he plants the seeds in the skull of Adam. And so the green man is supposed to be Adam's skull exploding with the forests of the world.

And it explodes in the four the four directions because the forest spread all over the world, but it's also it's supposed to be an indication that Adam will eventually live again through the fruit of the forest, because the fruit of the forest eventually becomes the tree of the cross. So you have this this beautiful weaving in of the wild itself, like nature itself, forest itself, is meant to be a conduit through which everything comes back to to original unity again.

collectors of folklore, but who kind of imposed her own ideas on it. So yeah, it goes back to the fourth century. Late fourth century example of a green man disgorging the vegetation from his mouth is at Saint Abre in Saint Hilaire de Grand France. also seen particularly in the churches of Jerusalem. foliate heads. And so the suggestion was in a tentative way by historians that the symbol may have originated in Asia Minor, been brought to Europe by travelling stone carvers.

And then the Green Man slowly then was incorporated into the more ornate Christian churches as the cathedrals particularly were built across Europe. And so you have this.

Beautiful thing. So the book is called Um that it comes from The Green Man in Medieval England, a Christian shoots from pagan roots written in twenty twenty two. And quote from it that I had Yes, a Judaic derived motif relating to the legends in medieval hagiographies that was known as the quest of Sat. The three or four twig seeds or carnals that were planted below the tongue of the postful land by his sunset after he dies.

These were given by the angel of mercy responsible for guarding Eden so that human beings could uh could create the forests of the world. These shoot forth bringing new life to humankind and are seen as a prophecy of the cross.

And I think one of the difficulties with a lot of the kind of the sort of folkloric stuff that was done, particularly in England, in the sort of early nineteen hundreds up to about nineteen fifty, sixty, was that through no fault of their own, um the the folklorists who were kind of searching for folklore at that stage and trying to find the remnants of of kind of pre Reformation.

folklore as to where all of this stuff had come from because so much of the iconography had been de uh uh defaced or destroyed or records broken down in the in the Reformation. That they just simply didn't know the medieval connections for this because Western Europe had been kind of cut off from the early roots, and especially while they may have had Latin, they wouldn't have had a lot of or access to the Greek text.

So again, there's an awful lot of kind of resource mock that's going on at the moment as these scholars are beginning to to find older and older records of these things.

To sort of finish on this on this thing of kind of the balance of the wild, I often talk about I had the great grace of visiting Mount Athos in in Greece about God, it's about fifteen, sixteen years ago now. Dathos for those who don't know it, there's a wonderful Netflix documentary on Mount Athos, so if anybody wants to have a look at that, you'll get the idea but but Mount Athos is

Essentially the monastic Republic of Mount Athos. So it's the center of Byzantine monasticism in Europe. It's a kind of a peninsula just off the coast of Thessalonica in Greece. And it is since very ancient times just solely for monastic observance. Some of the monasteries there would have maybe fifteen hundred, sixteen hundred years of continuous monastic observance.

It's very difficult to get into, particularly if you're not orthodox and we were allowed in because we were monastics, the three of us went and we spent ten days journeying from monastery to monastery and staying with the the monks there.

But one of the things you do as you're travelling through, because it's a it's a peninsula that's utterly beautiful. I mean it's just stunningly beautiful. And you you travel through kind of forest and up and down mountain to meet these monks and hermits al along the way. Some of them still live in caves, some of them live uh you live exactly as as the early monastics did. And then there are also beautiful monasteries with with um Magnificent, magnificent libraries and churches, etcetera.

Along the way, one of the things you're asked to do is you find these little forest altars, so they might have a little icon of Our Lady and usually there's a vessel of water there for you know, they're built near springs and things so pilgrims can can fill up on water. But you're also supposed to leave a little offering of food there.

Because there is a legend of the twelve hidden monks of Mount Athos, and these are monastics whose contemplation has become so great that they have passed even beyond being hermits, and they live wild in the woods. And they've arrived at a point where they live such a spiritual existence that they only materialize occasionally. But you're called to leave food for them.

And of course you do, and I'm sure the forest consumes the the food in however it does that, whether it's through the the monastics or whether it's through the wildlife or whether it's through um, you know, fellow pilgrims coming in your footsteps who are hungry. But again it's the idea is that you're recognizing that

you know, free communication with all all levels of creation, um whether the element the elements themselves or the animals and creatures. And so I think it's lovely to know that, you know, so often we think of spirituality as being something that separates us from the earth. And certainly there have been m uh you know long, long times in in Christianity and in various Christian denominations that that have even taught that.

But that's not what the the original understanding was at all. The original understanding was that that yeah, there there is a wildness within us that can be destructive, that we have to tame, but there is also a powerful wildness built into creation itself that is a holy thing in and of itself. And the more we encounter it, the more human we actually become. So in that sense, when we see something demonic or dark, you know, using wildness to frighten us.

generally you can recognise that whatever the demon is using to frighten or take take somebody down with, it's usually because in its fullest flowering it's something very virtuous and very beautiful. And so as one of the great philosophers, I can't remember which said, you know, the the the the the devil, the dark, the evil, whatever you want to call it, you know, does not have one original thought, but only corrupts what exists.

And so the more we we attend to the beauty of nature, the more we attend to actually minding nature properly. then the more we're actually following in the path, the original path that was laid out for humanity, which in our tradition we would say began with Adam, whose very name means the gardener, the steward, you know. Yeah, I think there's something to look at within the the theory that you have put forward and others with you that, you know

Bigfoot is getting wilder all the time. Like, you know, the aliens are always coming but never arrive and the fairies are always leaving but never go. And you know, they they bring us into this illumination. transformation and change, but that's about whether we actually activate that potential within us to change, I think, to communicate better, to to have a have a truce with the wild. And there's no better time to talk about this than Christmas because

as we've talked about m over many years, it's one of the the wildest and most liminal times there are. And I don't just mean the office Christmas party, you know. I mean it's it's so important for people to recognise what's actually going on. And you can start from the very earthly natural idea of the winter solstice and, you know

the moment when darkness slowly turns over to growing light and all of that and everything that happens at the natural cycles and you can you know, you can talk about Yule and you can talk about Christmas and all of those things. But In the end, I think we're given these liminal times. And it is for us it's a season that begins with You know, the ancestors.

of October, November and then into right down into the into the the dark days of December where we tell the ghost stories and the the horror stories and all of that as we kind of huddle around the fire. And worry about the big bad wolf that's out there in whatever shape it is. But then we trust that the light returns.

And when the light returns there is this understanding that we're being invited back out again, like out of the cave, out of the house, out of the monastery, whatever it might be, to engage with that beautiful world out there. And I won I really do wonder if the rise in at least the archetype of the dog man or the more savage Bigfoot or whatever it is is actually really either a a message from nature saying, you know, I'm gonna have to frighten you back into being awake again to what's out here.

Or simply we have lost so much touch with it that that we are giving it our fears and it's responding in return.

a gentleman called Martin Shaw and he has written a beautiful book. If I could recommend any book for Christmas for the strange familiar libraries, apart from your own books, of course, I'd recommend a book that he has written called Courting the wild twin.

And he goes into quite a number of very ancient fairy tales, European fairy tales, that all begin the same way, which is somebody uh uh finds that they cannot conceive a child or they're finding it very difficult to have a child and they go to

The witch, the fairy, the wise woman, whoever it might be, the wizard in the woods, whatever, the kind of figure of transformation, the liminal figure of magic. And they want they want a child. And they're told that they must accept if if they are going to do this, then they must go through this particular trial and usually the trial is

they have to go out into the woods and and make love, or they have to go to the stable and make love. Or, you know, they have to smear themselves in mud or dung or whatever it might be. But there's this thing of

So the monstrous child is thrown out into the into the into the forest or given to the witch or yeah in some way a knight or a soldier is told take them out into the woods and dump them somewhere or whatever or or they're hidden in the in the tower, you know, never to be seen. And generally what happens is the beautiful child grows up and everybody loves the beautiful child and the child is successful and has all the gifts and all the rest of it. And at some point

something happens. Either a terrible sickness overcomes or a plague enters or, you know, the monster appears at the gate. You know, the danger the danger appears. And nobody can solve this, you know, and the kingdom is falling apart. And of course, the wise woman turns back up, the wizard walks back in. Yeah, they go on pilgrimage to the to the monk or whatever it might be. And the answer they receive is, Where is the other child?

And so they're terrified to seek they they have to go and, you know, send the knights or send the soldiers, whatever, to seek the child and the child is now living out in the woods and has been raised by the animals or has become totally bestial or whatever it might be. But there's this wonderful moment in all of these stories where there is the reunion of

And Shaw goes on to talk about this, you know, from a psychological point of view as, you know, what where where's your wild twin? Where's the piece you have put away from you are ashamed of the story that you've left behind or whatever and says, Really, we never achieve wholeness or even holiness unless we welcome back the wild twin. It's a powerful, powerful book, and I would recommend it to anybody. But what I think is is really important is as as a society.

we have cast away the wild twin. We have cast away the the creature of magic, the the wonder, the enchantment, whatever. And taking your point, the stories don't say that because we've cast them away, We have lost enchantment. What they say is we can't see the enchantment anymore. We walk through the world and it's a world of rules where everything is perfect and beautiful and wonderful. But underneath there's the disquiet. Underneath the energies, the the wild energies are there.

underneath the spiritual balance isn't present. And so we need the wisdom person, the elder, the the medicine person, the monk, whatever whatever it might be, to be able to help us balance that again. And that usually means liberating the wild. Now it doesn't mean becoming savage.

it means that the two sides of us must be in balance, head and heart, if you like. Yeah. And this leads us right the way back to the saints again because there are a number of saints. We've had the dog headed saints, but we also have saints, I think that you've talked about before. Who are the saints who are beheaded and then carry their own heads.

So the saints carries their head at heart height, and they preach the deepest wisdom of all when the head is in the heart. So it's a it's a wonderful image. And again, it's not saying like we never say these stories didn't happen. Right. What we say is these stories did happen. And they were mythopaec stories where the word, the logos, is speaking through these events and giving us archetypes that speak to us.

And this goes back to Good Saint Nick and his wild brethren, Krampus and Belsnickel and all of these and and compliments on the extraordinary paintings. I'm I'm absolutely loving every one of them as they're turning up. The Bellsnickel one was actually so eerie, I kinda went, Ugh when when when I when I opened it was like, Oh yeah because um there is an Irish darker version of one of the good people who's they're often known as the twig people or the branch people.

And they appear as a pile of kind of porn twigs. that then suddenly get up and run away. Oh. And uh yeah, and and are are meant to carry great fear with them so that they the The your bellsnickel painting obviously pulled up an ancestral memory in me when I when I when I glanced at it first.

But yeah, I think it's it's fascinating to think about the fact that we talk about the saint and the wild man are present at one and the same time and are actually partners in this balancing of virtue over vice. and the reward for virtue and the punishment of vice. And it's it's like the two of them have have come together. So, you know, with Santa Claus in charge, the Krampus and the Belsnickel, etcetera, um, fulfill a function. So they're like the wild twin of Santa Claus.

you know, he he has brought the two sides back together again and allowed this kind of Christmas union of both Saint and Wild Man together.

And and again, you know, as Saint Nicholas, uh Saint Nicholas of Myra as the the you know, the originating figure, the originating life, there's a beautiful fact that that to this day his his relics wherever they are, they've been distributed in various places, they're still mostly in in in Turkey. But they continue to produce healing oil and miraculous oil to this day.

And uh and the and mo many of them these were adult encounters. It wasn't, you know, kinda children maybe convincing themselves. Right. Yeah. As many ch as many children do, you know.

called The Hog Father, who is a cross between a wild boar and Santa Claus. So have a go at that one. But if you're looking for a really solid strange, familiar-esque, kind of creepy story, even though it's and you often find this, the very stories that are marketed for children are very often the ones that that adults kind of remember forever when they read them. I would really encourage anybody out there to read The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper.

It's an incredible story and one that I go back to pretty much every year. And it won the Newbury Medal for fiction. But it's based on about twelve days in the life of an eleven year old boy who suddenly discovers he's at the very center. of a struggle between good and evil right around the solstice. Uh for and it it it so it moves from Solstice Eve to Christmas Day and with all of the various traditions included. Um you've got everything from the wild hunt to hern to the Arthurian legend to uh

the idea of what happens when we really wake up and begin to be aware of what's going on. There are slips. the the old elemental Welsh magic is present within it. You name it, it's in there and she knows her folklore well and weaves a beautiful story. It's part of a a seven volume series, but it can be read completely on its own. So that's called The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper and I'd encourage it for any of your listeners who are kind of like ten and up to have a go at it. All right.

to to keep this going. And also, you know, talk about the fact that Strange Familiars is is a place where original ideas are pouring out of this and the various um cross connections that you have with with with others within the within the paranormal world and and that's a really powerful thing. So uh yeah, thank you for for creating this space and where these kind of ideas and stories and

and people who maybe in i in normal life, in normal circumstances, maybe our paths wouldn't have crossed, but but Strange Familiars is kind of the clearing in the woods where where the paths all meet. So so thank you for that.

And we have a very Christmassy curiosity here. I saw this on the shelf

While you're on Etsy, check out our other offerings. Got artwork there, prints and originals, including the artwork for tonight's show. My books are there. If you purchase some from us on Etsy, I'll sign them before we pack em up. Strange Familiars T shirt stickers. Patches.

Allison has photographs and other ephemera there. Check it out, our shop name is Lost Grave. But if you type in Strange Familiars, our stuff should come up. Of course there's always links in the show notes to the Etsy shop as well. And we are giving away the stickers with any Etsy order ten dollars or more, you get a nice big Strange Familiars sticker with the Eyes of Night design on it. While supplies last, but we do have plenty of those for right now.

No danger of running out of those anytime soon. Yeah, once more, before we go, we should mention Kaya.life. I think their website was having issues for a while, so I want to keep mentioning them a little bit. That's our nonprofit that we are hoping to support. At Pine Ridge Reservation. They live right there at Pine Ridge Reservation. They're not an outside group. If you can help'em out, please do. It's K I Y A dot life Kaya.

All right. I think that's it until the new year. Two. I I think if I do an episode next week it'll probably come after after the new year. So it might be a little late next year. It'll be next year. Yeah. Next week slash next year.