Becoming a Werewolf

Aion

Werewolves still capture the imagination, as they have for literally thousands of years. Ancient Greek writers discussed the phenomena and noted several ways one could transform into a Beast. Similar stories can be found all over the world, often taking on the attributes and aspects of the totemic animals of those cultures. There are European and Russian stories of werewolves as there are Greek and Roman ones. In China there are were-tigers, in Japan, were-foxes and bears, in the Congo there are were-jackals.  Lots of people in lots of countries have been magickally transforming into many kinds of animals for many many centuries.  It seems there are two intertwining threads here, the Mythic and the Magickal.
 As a hunter follows old tracks and spoor of a wolf through hills and forests, so to will we track down the telltale myths and symbols scattered here and there, and who knows what we will bump into? What follows is simply a little stalking. The simple thesis (and not an original one) is this:
 Werewolves as we know them are a collection of mythic patterns of magickal transformation and evolution – the right brain/left brain struggle of the Beast & Angel, the Self & Shadow. Unleash the Shadow (or wolf), the story goes, and you get great power & physical strength (werewolves are said to be virtually immortal and can regenerate…!), but you also unleash bloodlust and the purely aggressive animal being, claws, fangs and all. People often get hurt. Houses get trashed. Lots of clothing gets ripped and sheep go missing. This is scary stuff.
On the other hand, the werewolf meme points to a very important (can I say Typhonian?) primal magick in operation here, maybe the oldest magick of them all: Animism/Animal Magick. Lycanthropy, I believe, is one of the paw- prints of these ancient pre-aeonic strata of magick. Hunting magick, communion with the animal spirits, trance-possession by animal spirits (which are still happening today in many countries to many shamans) and animal spirit worship.
 Keeping this in mind, let’s take a quick look at what various bits of folklore teach us on ‘how to become a werewolf.’ What mythic or shamanic secrets does this process reveal?

Basically, you can become a werewolf in two different ways:

1. You can be born one.
Some say people can be born as werewolves as a result of a curse being put on an infant or a pregnant mother; others mention a born-on-Christmas-curse (it is an affront to god, so you must suffer. Go figure.) Still others simply say that there are lineages of werewolves among us, that some families have the ‘Lycanthropy gene’ if you will. Born under a bad moon. We have all met these sorts of people. New York City is full of them.  Some claim that hereditary werewolves can be nice & not kill humans, but people who become werewolves due to curses are simply screwed. By the way, the Church considered all werewolves headed to hell and if you ever tasted human blood, zap. Damned for eternity.

2. You can become a werewolf through Sorcery.
     A sorcerer can make you one through a spell or you can do a ritual yourself to become one. Since magickally this is the juiciest, let’s look at what kinds of rituals we are talking about. Here are some ritual components, often mentioned in several places, in werewolf rituals:

* Wearing a wolf skin or a magickal belt of wolf or of human skin.
* Using a psychoactive ointment: Smearing one’s body with, for example, ‘boiled wolfsbane, opium, foxgloves, bat blood and the fat of a murdered child.’ Other recipes for werewolf body-rub call for such ingredients as hemlock, poppy seed, belladonna, nightshade and animal fat of some kind, usually that of a wolf.
* A brew like this was often to be cooked up in an iron cauldron, in a thrice-cast circle, during self-transformation rites, before being rubbed on the body or eaten.
* Ritually eating the brains of an animal a wolf has killed or eating the flesh of a wolf itself.
* Ritually drinking rainwater collected in a wolf’s paw-print or drinking from a wolfish watering hole.
* Jumping over a log, stabbing it with a copper knife and uttering an incantation (this rite is from Russia.)
* Casting a circle in the woods and invoking ‘evil spirits’ or ‘the devil’ or (and I love this one), invoking the ‘Lord of the Forest!’ (In 1603, a 12 year-old shepherd boy, Jean Grenier claimed that, ‘the Lord of the Forest’, had given him a magical wolf skin & ointment that turned him into a wolf.)

Looking at these all together, it seems that we have the ingredients for an animistic shamanic animal/spirit trance-ritual-worship here (minus the baby fat, and one wonders what the Inquisition’s fixation was with baby fat…). Magickal links and tools (the wolf skin, the cauldron, the cast circle); presumably psychoactive or empowered sacraments (drug-filled rubs and potions, wolf or animal flesh, special wolf-water); and specific chants or words of power (spells, prayers, curses) directed to the shadowy source of all this dark, looming magick: the one called the Devil by Christians, but who is really ‘The Lord of the Forest.’
 Who is this Shadow lord of Wolfish transformation? In my opinion, a good case could be made for the Great Beastly God himself, Pan.
Thousands of years ago, in Northern Greece, wolves were associated with the cult of Pan, as was a ‘wolf mountain.’ Later, a Roman festival carried on several of the ritual actions and ideals that the cult of Pan had perpetuated through the ‘Festival of the Wolves,’ Lupercalia. During this festival, naked men (Luperci or ‘wolf wardens’) in goatskins ran about the town whipping and (some say) fornicating with willing women who needed help with fertility. The festival was named after Lupercus (‘wolf god’), ie: Faunus, ie: Pan.
Of course the Christian Devil took on the appearance of Pan (horns, hooves, night time raves etc.), and authors like Margaret Murray indicate that the survival of ‘witch cults’ in Europe continued to worship ‘Olde Hornie’ on into the middle ages. It seems reasonable to assume that ancient animal/animist magicks were part and parcel of these survivals. Such  ‘wolf shamans’ would most certainly be twisted by the Church into werewolves.
 We could stalk the werewolf gnosis further, discussing Viking/Seidr Wolf berserkers or exploring the links to Shiva – Pashupati, the ‘Lord of Beasts’; but that is enough for one little ramble through the dark woods and it is a full moon tonight… and so I must be loping on my way. Io Pan!