The Monstrefact Omnibus: The Werewolf

Huddled around our cultivated flames, this nighttime sun of burning wood, we invoke the ight of man, hot, food and drink, dance and song, story and myth. These acts tell us who we are, and yet the creatures of the outer night tempt us to darker, wilder orbits places in the wilderness from which our fire would be but a pinprick of light. They are the wildness from which we arose and might yet return, dressed in no furs but their own,

naked before no gods or none, man still remembers. They are our violent hearts, our erotic blood, flesh, hunger, and desire. Suckled by the moon, the werewolves creep closer, threatening to leap with shredding claw and ripping teeth, even as their howls urge us to cast aside our tools, our garments, our language tongues and join them in the all encompassing night. Here we begin a multi episode look at the werewolf shape shifters, who walk the line between human being and

the wild wolf in all manner of horrifying and alluring ways. Broadly, werewolf traditions and visions overlapped greatly with other shape shifter traditions. Pretty Much every culture boasts some version of the human into animal or animal into human story, as well as some manner of human animal hybridity. These theoryanthropes are many, serving as everything from divine avatars to tricksters and tormentors,

and entailing a plethora of animal forms. The werewolf, however, is a creature that specifically emerges from the nexus of human beings and the Eurasian wolf. The history of these two species is long debated, concerning their coevolution and the domestication of dogs some twenty thousand to forty thousand years ago, just before or during the last glacial maximum. Suffice to say, humans and some canids, perhaps cast off wolves or abandoned young,

forged a mutually beneficial relationship. In a sense, each social animal found a new pack in the company of the other. It's an interesting bond unlike any other. As neuroscientist John Allman discusses in his two thousand book Evolving Brains, each

species benefited greatly from the domestication. The wolves gained at its support for the rearing of their pups, and humans, now bolstered by the wolf's keen senses, became an even stronger hunter, able to outcompete their evolutionary rivals and protect their camps against nocturnal predators. Thus, our ice age ancestors brought canids closer to the fire of their culture, even as their wild kin howled and raged in the vast darkness beyond. Did they even then tell stories of fellow

hunter's lost to those outer orbits of wildness? Do they imagine humans transformed into wolves, perhaps by the dawning of a pelt or some act of savagery, We don't know. They thought enough of wolves to depict one in the

surviving cave paintings at Fonde Gamme Cave in modern day France. Elsewhere, I sage artists depicted the oldest known human animal hybrid in the lone minsh or lion man figure of Hollenstein's Stadel Cave, so we might reasonably assume such imaginings were possible, but it would be tens of thousands of years before specific words for what we think of as werewolves emerged

in human culture. In the nineteen forty eight book Man into Wolf, Austrian polymath Robert Eisler presented an elaborate take on humanity's prehistoric past, arguing that traditions of the werewolf are based in the dual emergence of our ancestors as two separate strains of early humans, one savage, violent and predatory, the other peaceful. The conflict between these early peoples, he argues, continues to resonate in the collective unconscious, as well as

our ongoing human struggles against war, pain, and cruelty. These arguments, however, depend on now outdated understandings of human evolution as well as union archetypes, so I don't want to misrepresent his ideas as modern scientific hypothesis, but rather as a work of cultural commentary, it's an interesting take on the very

real long history of man and wolf. Turning to contemporary scholarship, historian Daniel Ogden's excellent twenty twenty one book The Werewolf in the Ancient World stresses that we mustn't be too quick to view wolves as the mere bestial opposite of humanity and thus a fitting wild energy to entertain in

our myths and legends of metamorphosis. Certainly, as he points out, there are plenty of connotations in ancient accounts throughout the Eurasian wolfe's historical range that identify the creature as an embodiment of savagery or trickery, but others still acknowledge the social, noble, intelligent, cooperative, and tactical nature of wild wolves. In other words, we didn't just see our savage id in the wolf, something frequently cited in werewolf tales. No, we saw much of

our nobility in them as well. Ogden writes, quote, were wolves are wolves because there is a sense in which wolves are in and of themselves were wolves already insofar, that is, as they combine the qualities of the wildest and most lawless of animals with those of civilization. And humanity.

In twenty seventeen's she Wolf, A Cultural History of Female Werewolves, editor Hannah Priest also weighs in on this issue, arguing that while we often do look to humanity's prehistoric past for the seeds of werewolf legends, the narratives of werewolves are intrinsically bound to quote historical circumstance, civilization, and literature.

The European roots of the werewolf are perhaps linked, she suggests, not merely to the threat posed by wolves to hunter gatherers, or even to the wolf like and wolf aided nature of the hunter, but also to the threat posed by wolves to domesticated animals, ultimately a threat to agriculture and property. As we'll discuss later, this interpretation reveals much about the gendered nature of male and female were wolves and the sort of distinct threats they seem to embody toward male landowners.

Suffice to say, specific werewolf traditions do arise from the relationship between humans and wolves, but it's a relationship that changes drastically over time and takes on different forms across cultural lines. Well have much to explore in the weeks ahead, but for now, as we sit by our campfire, we gaze out at the most perplexing shapes in the darkness, Creatures that indeed blur the line between wilderness and civility,

Creatures that embody unnatural transformation. Informed it would seem, by the many ways we transformed the natural world and ourselves through the domestication of fauna and flora. As we discussed the last time, the origins of werewolf traditions may trace back to our prehistoric ancestors and the gradual domestication of the wild wolf, an act that may have made us

better hunters and better watchers of the dark. At different points in human history, we saw shades of the wolf in our own animal nature, just as we also saw shades of human intelligence, cunning, and society in the ways of the wild wolf. This is not, however, to say that the werewolf specifically is a universal concept. Shapeshifters and animal human hybrids exist in virtually all human cultures, but the werewolf naturally requires some familiarity with the species Canis lupus,

particularly the Eurasian wolf. Now, I want to stress that, yes, the wolf's range includes North America, and they certainly do factor into the rich traditions of various indigenous North American tribes, but these traditions, including the off sited skin walkers, are rather distinct from the werewolf concept as we know it today. We may come back to discussion on this topic later on. Let's start with the term werewolf or the Germanic wewulf.

This we can trace back to the writings of English Benedictine monk Bishop Wolfstan, and this would have been very early in the second millennium CE. While most famous for being the last pre conquest English bishop, his service began a mere four years prior to the Norman conquest of ten sixty six. Wolfstan did in fact warn the English of the threat posed by the quote would Fraco Verwulf,

this being a threat to the Church's flock. As Daniel Ogden explains in The Werewolf in the Ancient World, the usage here is broad and don't get excited, but it certainly doesn't refer to actual were wolves now. As Ogden explains, the traditional interpretation of the word werewolf saw it as a combination of the Latin vere or man with wolf a man wolf. But he stresses in his book that the commonly accepted theory today is that where derives from

the Anglo saxon war, meaning stranger or outsider. The were wolf is an outsider wolf, and this might, too, he argues, connect to Norse ideas of wolf and outlaw. In fact, he cites a thirteenth century Danish tradition that saw convicted thieves hanged beside the corpse of a wolf to fully convey the dead man's criminal nature to common citizens passing by.

Of course, these ideas line up with the way were wolves have often been presented dangerous outsiders, threats to law and ruling landowners, and if we think seriously about the animal itself, a lone wolf that is not part of a social pack. Male lone wolves, in reality, are generally only temporarily alone, moving from one social group to another or back into the same group they just left. But in some cases this may also constitute an individual infected

with rabies a most dangerous creature. Indeed, the term like panthropy, however, is much older, first employed by the second century CE physician Marcellus of Side, who employed the term like anthropia to describe medical conditions that we would now Ogden describes

define as different forms of mental illness. Marcellus's description continued to echo through ancient medical writings, and, as Nadine Metzger summarizes in twenty fourteen's Battling Demons with Medical Authority, published in the journal History of Psychiatry, these lichen throats were described as otherwise harmless, melancholic individuals who suffer from extreme dryness, hang out its cemeteries, and mimic the behaviors of wolves

and dogs. Modern interpretations have considered a number of actual ailments that might have underlined this broad diagnosis, rabies, porphyria, neurological dysfunction, and epilepsy. Some additionally make a case for some manner of true clinical lycanthropy. For ancient physicians, however, it was nothing that a little fasting or the consumption of a wolf's heart wouldn't cure. The term lycanthropy would remain a purely medical term, while other Latin words more

specifically described shape shifting beings. That is, until ninth century CE, historian Theophanes the Confessor described agents of the Byzantine emperor ascanthropes, a manner of word play, here to invoke the Greek myth of lychaan wordplay that would be repeated by George Hammertolos aka George the Monk later that same century, and this Ogden contends sets the word werewolf on the trajectory

that we enjoy today. It's interesting that we've long seen this duality of magic and medicine, of the rational and the superstitious in our werewolf media. As Matt Schimkowitz explores in a twenty twenty five AV Club article titled film Trivia FactCheck, original The Wolfman script kept the Werewolf at bay. The nineteen forty one Universal Horror classic film was originally intended to leave it ambiguous as to whether the film's Lawrence Talbot suffered from a monstrous curse or a distortion

of the mind. The nineteen forty six films She Wolf of London, as well as the nineteen seventy six Italian grindhouse favorite Werewolf Woman, both employ the idea of werewolf delusion rather than literal transformation. Finally, I want to come back to Bishop wolf Stand here. His name has nothing to do with werewolf, being rather a family name that meant Wolfstone in the sense of strength and resilience. But as Brad Steiger points out in nineteen ninety nine's The

Werewolf book. A much later German tradition recorded I Believe in the nineteenth century, told of a wolf stone erected over the grave of a slain werewolf, keeping the monster at rest, but also becoming a focal point for the parentormal. We continue this week with our look at werewolves, having previously discussed purported prehistoric origins of the were wolf in the experiences and observations of early humans, as well as the earliest known usages of the words werewolf and lacanthropy.

The former werewolf emerges in the early second millennium CE, while the latter lacanthropy has an older but complex history as a second century CE catch all for various mental illnesses, which came to be conflated with the Greek myth of Lachaan Like Haan was the legendary king of Arcadia who dared to try and trick the high god Zeus into

eating human flesh. His ploy was unsuccessful, however, and Zeus inflicted a fitting divine punishment for one so savage, which Avid describes as following in the Metamorphosis Henry Thomas Riley translation, Alarmed, he himself takes to flight, and, having reached the solitude of the country. He howls aloud and in vain attempts to speak. His mouth gathers rage from himself, and through its usual desire for slaughter, it is directed against the sheep,

and even still delights in blood. His garments are changed into hair, his arms into legs. He becomes a wolf, and he still retains vestiges of his ancient form. His hoariness is still the same, The same violence appears in his features. His eyes are bright as before. He is still the same image of ferocity, and just to be sure, all responsible parties are punished. Zeus follows this up with

a great flood. But Laikaan himself is indeed transformed into a wolf, and, like the Biblical Cane, as Riley points out in his notes, he is forced to live as a cast off outsider, a lone wolf. In some tellings,

his sons are transformed as well. While the myth of Likaan is sometimes held up as an ancient key to understanding subsequent werewolf tales, Daniel Ogden in twenty twenty one's were Wolves in the Ancient World maintains that the tale is a quote metaphorical derivative of the ancient folkloric traditions that are indeed the key. He devotes an entire later chapter in the book to Laichan and the complex interplay

there of three key categories. One historic evidence for a lupine transformation right of passage for young men of the Antet clan, Two various related myths of lupine transformation and sacrilegious acts of human sacrifice in cannibalism. And three a supposedly historical tale of an individual changing into a wolf after eating part of a human sacrifice at the Likekaea festival on the slopes of Mount like Chaan aka Wolf Mountain.

I won't attempt to summarize the entirety of his analysis, but Ogden does contend that the story is more werewolf

adjacent than anything. Laikayan is a man punished with transformation into a wolf, a transformation that occurs only once outside of his control, making him no more a true were wolf than Arachne, another victim of divine transformation punishment in Greek myth, is a were spider, so an unsatisfying were wolf and by no means the key trendsetter that some make him out to be, but still an important and

influential myth in the Grand tradition of were wolves. As discussed in the last episode, He's not key to the understand the word lacanthropy, but his myth eventually becomes conflated

with the term to some degree. Now. One of the tales interwoven in the Arcadian myth is that of the Olympic athlete DeMarcus, a boxer who is said to have been transformed into a wolf for a period of nine to ten years at the Festival of Lykaea, possibly due to ritual consumption of human flesh, thus, as is common in all Ichaean myths, blurring the line between man and beast. But Ogden stresses that the quote unquote werewolf ism of DeMarcus, if we may call it, that, is more directly related

to his status as a superb athlete. In keeping with various other supernatural stories of the time about athletes, including other accounts of lupine transformation, this would seem a tale as old as time. Multiple contemporary mma fighters, for example, and professional sports stars have been nicknamed werewolf. The Batman villain known as Werewolf is also an Olympic athlete, and let us not forget teen Wolf cousins Scott and Todd Howard,

known for their lycanthropic basketball abilities. This brings us back to a continuing point of contemplation in were wolf traditions, there is a certain bit of the beast that we admire and crave to manifest in our strength and speed, or even in our savagery. We'll have more to explore concerning ancient lacanthropy in the next episode, including the best cases for the earliest written and visual depictions of werewolves. We've been discussing the roots of werewolf traditions, both in

prehistoric human history and in ancient mythology and literature. Based on my readings, I think it's safe to say that werewolf tradition emerged from various elements in human history, in the human psyche, taking on different forms depending on time and location, and most importantly influencing later traditions, legends, folk tales,

and of course fictional takes as well. When we look for specific examples of early or even the earliest literary examples of werewolfs, it really depends on how narrowly or widely we refine our search. For instance, the oldest surviving work of literature, the epic of Gilgamesh features the wild man and possible beast men in Keitu, and there's certainly some crossover from here into later werewolf traditions, but to

be clear, in Ketu not a were wolf. More interesting, as Daniel Ogden brings up in the werewolf in the ancient world, the epic of Gilgamesh does feature reference to the goddess Ishtar having turned humans into various beasts, including a wolf. Much later, though still ancient to us, Homer's the Odyssey from the eighth century BCE refers to the witch circeansforming humans not only into pigs her specialty, but

into wolves as well. These are both cases of transformative witchcraft, and while Ogden contends that stories like this certainly feed into werewolf traditions, we'd be going overboard to single either out as a true case zero for literary or mythic leacanthropy. Focusing on the importance of temporary and even deliberate transformation

with connection between the two forms. Ogden points to a tale that is often singled out as the most obvious werewolf story from the ancient world, one appearing in the satiricon of Gaius Petronius arbiter from the late first century CE. The Latin satire contains a story told by the character Nicros at a banquet, and it roughly goes as follows. Back when the freedman Nicros was still a slave, he fell in love with the wife of an innkeeper and

would sneak off to her whenever he could. One night, when the master of the house was away, Nicros persuaded the current HouseGuest, quote a soldier as brave as Orcus, to accompany him on the midnight journey. Shortly afterwards, they found themselves in an acropolis amongst the tombs, where the moon shone down in them like the midday sun. And then Nicros observed the soldier in a most shocking and

remarkable act. He took off all his clothes, neatly, piled them up urinated in a circle around them, and then transformed into a wolf. The wolf howled and ran away, and when Nekros tried to touch the clothes that the soldier had left within the circle of urine, he found

that the clothing had turned to stone. In fear, he hurried on to see the innkeeper's wife, whose name was Melissa, and She told him that if he'd arrived earlier, he could have helped them, for a wild wolf had attacked their livestock, draining their blood before they were able to drive the beast away with a spear to the neck.

Nicros began his way home after that, passing where the clothing had been stacked, but finding only splashes of blood there, And when he finally reached his master's house, he found a doctor attending to the soldier who had suffered a grievous neck wound. Now we can easily identify the key attributes of temporary deliberate transformation with connection between the two forms, as well as various flourishes that would remain popular in

werewolf fiction up through modern times. Thus it's pretty definitive. Furthermore, Ogden contends that this one is quote one really good quirking story, which is key because the tale first and foremost serves as entertainment with humorous wrinkles concerning the storyteller, while also somewhat reflecting popular beliefs and the contemporary appetite for fantastic tales infused with the supernatural. In short, it's a werewolf story doing what werewolf stories have always done,

and that is entertained. Visual depictions are less definitive, as we often lack the full context of what we're looking at. Is it a mere wolf human disguised as a wolf, or merely wearing a wolf's pelt. There are various stopping points before we arrive at full werewolf, even as we contend with images tied to known tales such as the satiricon or the myth of Lycaan theoryanthropic figures can likewise

mean various things. Still acknowledging all of this, some images do read strongly as wear a wolf, at least to us Modern viewers across the gulf of time consider the sixth century Etruscan Pontic plate, which seems to depict a furry, bipedal humanoid with a wolf's head. The context is unclear, though probably linked in some way to Hercules and the

centaur depicted elsewhere on the plate. The theory anthropic figure here may represent death or the wolf man combination here may reference the god Faunas, who in Ovid's metamorphosis, attempts to rape Hercules while Hercules is dressed in his lover Amphilles clothing. We're reminded in all of this that the

werewolf is a monster. It is a thing, a form that illustrates various ideas, observations, and comparisons, and any of these ideas, observations, or comparisons may essentially summon an image comparable to the werewolf, completely on their own, detached in whole or in part from any particular werewolf tradition. That's it for now, But next week we will continue our journey, and we will turn our attention to the female werewolf.

As we continue our look at the werewolf in myth, legend, and media, we now turn to the female werewolf, a gendered take on the monster that might, at first glance seem to be mere titillation, but the roots of the concept weave their way through a variety of contemplations about

femininity and the wild in all their forms. I want to return to twenty seventeen's She Wolf, A Cultural History of Female Werewolves, which features multiple chapters by different authors that examine female werewolves in myth, legend, and media, everything from centuries old legends to modern cartoons. As previously mentioned, the book's editor, Hannah Priest argues that European werewolf narratives revolve around the threat posed by wolves to domesticated animals,

ultimately a threat to male owned agriculture and property. When the werewolf is male, the threat comes from outside the male land donor's domain, the outlaw wolf wanderer, who might seek to tear through the defenses and kill livestock or family members. Meanwhile, female werewolves tend to emerge from within the male land donor's domain, often endangering children and serving

as an overall threat to domesticity. Of note, the first Mexican wear wolf movie, Leloba or The She Wolf from nineteen sixty five, features both a female and a male werewolf, and they correspond to this form quite perfectly. The female werewolf the daughter of a well to do Mexican landowner and scientists, and the male werewolf pursuit her from afar.

In this gothic slice of Golden age Mexican cinema, the werewolf seems to represent the wild and uncontrollable elements of someone within the family unit and someone from beyond it.

For more on Laloba, see our recent episode of Weird House Cinema on the film, It's interesting that both the first Mexican Werewolf movie and the first werewolf motion picture period a now lost nineteen thirteen short titled The Werewolf, feature female licanthropes, but the vast majority of werewolf tales lean heavily toward male, often hyper masculine visions of wolf

human hybridity. Likewise, while the wolf man is often presented as a lone wolf, the female male wolf woman is often connected to a social group or part of a mated pair. This is interesting in how it connects to previous discussions of what our ancestors saw of themselves in wolves and vice versa. As highly social animals, wild wolves reflect aspects of human family and society, and it's only rational for these elements to influence our conceptions of human

wolf hybridity as well. In fact, as author J. Kate mentions later on in the She Wolf book quote, aside from a brief fashion for presenting female were wolves as lonely night stalkers in Victorian literature, the dominant presentation of female wear wolves from the Middle Ages onwards has been as part of a social unit comprising other were wolves or other humans. I won't attempt to summarize everything explored in the book. Definitely pick a copy up for yourself

if you're interested in this topic as i am. There's an entire chapter concerning females in the RPG world Werewolf the Apocalypse game, for example, but it explores the various ways in which female werewolf treatments explore societal ideas concerning female connectedness to nature and societal norms related to body, hair, menstruation, sexuality, aging,

and other topics. And in some cases, certainly, the female werewolf can be yet another example of the monstrous feminine, in which some aspect of female bodies or female experience is othered from the standpoint of patriarchal anxiety. Overall, however, a good monster tale can reveal and convey much more. The werewolf stands as a nexus between the wild and the civilized, between freedom and taboo, between liberty and control, and takes on so many additional meanings when applied specifically

to women. In Daniel Ogden's excellent twenty twenty one book The Werewolf in the Ancient World, he of course highlights the difficulty in deciding what exactly constitutes a werewolf versus other modes of ibrid monsters in various cultures that had no precise word for werewolf, and this applies to both masculine werewolves and feminine werewolves. Of course, he does mention an account that Priest singles out as the entry point of the female werewolf into literature. That is Gerald of

Wales's twelfth century CE Topographia Hibernia. Gerald recounts a priest's travels in post Norman invasion Ireland, and specifically his encounter with natives of Ossery, who spoke of how a man and a woman of their people were picked to undergo a seven year transformation into wolf. The locals end up bringing the priest to visit the dying she wolf and give her last rites. At this moment, the male counterpart peels away the wolf's hide from her body, revealing the

form of an old woman within. It's a perplexing story, as priest points out, it's a tale told by an invader. Gerald of Wales was half Norman and half wealth Welsh and certainly not Irish, and the story concerns the traditions

and customs of a conquered people. Furthermore, as Ogden points out, the story is all the weirder when you consider that the people of Ossery have to contend with all of this lacanthropy because they were cursed by a priest, and in later tellings of the same story, by Saint Patrick himself, all for the crime of being disruptive when he tried to convert them to Christianity. So driving out snakes is one thing, but cursing locals to become werewolves surely quite another.

In she Wolf, historian Merely Metsi explores Estonian werewolves, specifically accounts from the Isle of Sarema, where tales of female werewolves are more common than tales of male werewolves. Apparently, Estonia is rich in werewolf traditions, which survive in the form of various fairy tales, legends, and also some historic

accounts of witch trials. Metsiti explores the topic from a number of different but the overall argument that I found most remarkable was that the predominance of female werewolf tales in Estonian traditions may connect to greater levels of gender equality in pre Christian Estonian and a definite loss of

those rights as Christian influences permeated Estonian society. Furthermore, we may refer back to older connections between the wolf and fertility magic, traditional observations of lupine motherhood, and the link between maternity and sexuality that was subsequently eradicated under the

influence of Christian culture. In other words, while laws and top down societal norms might have subjugated women, their traditional power in Estonia was not so easily erased, and we see it remain as protest as recognition, and so forth in the tales of Women with the Secret Mind of wolves. One Estonian story shared in Mesave's chapter encapsulates several of

these ideas. The wife also has wolf pups. There are different versions, but it essentially tells the story of a woman who goes into the woods to hunt and secure meat for the family, while her husband seems to stay at home in the cabin and seemingly just complain about how chilly it is, citing the fact that their child is too cold. The wife tells them that their child is better off than those who sleep in the straw behind the house, and when the husband goes out to investigate,

he finds several wolf pups, which he promptly kills. The next night, while the man lounges in the sauna, a great wolf bursts him through the door. And attacks him. He manages to defend himself. He burns the wolf with a pair of tongs, scaring the creature off, and later via the old identifying wound trope, he learns that the wolf was in fact his own wife, seeking vengeance for

his killing of her wild wolf children. Female werewolf stories continue to entertain us while also retaining their ability to intentional or unintentionally reveal much about the times and places they emerge from, revealing both negative societal ideas about women as well as more celebratory and even subversive ideas about feminine power. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact,

The Artifact, or adam Alius Dependium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.