by Lilith Silverhair
"Even a man who's pure of heart
and says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
and the Autumn Moon is bright."
- Curt Siodmak
Modern film makers and writers have done much to make the werewolf a pitiable creature. A man trapped by his own baser desires, unable to control the change or the urges that come upon him when the Moon shows Her full form each month.
But deep in our hazy past there was a time when the 'werwulf,' (spirit-wolf or man-wolf) was honored among our ancestors. The Wolf and those able to take her shape were worshipped as Goddesses and heroes.
Belief in shapeshifters was found throughout the range of the wolf's former habitats: from Europe and Asia as far east as India and China and throughout North America. What ties the legend if the werewolf together in all of these places is the fact that the wolf was the largest predator indigenous to those regions. The violence and aggression of were-beasts make this seem on the surface to be a hunting and warfare legend. True, it is this, but also much more.
Prehistoric peoples learned the ways of the hunt from the animals around them, and they learned the concept of time from watching the phases of the Moon. The Moon phases also concurred with the female menstrual cycles and so hunting, sex and time became totally enmeshed. The Full Moon was also the time in which the women of the tribe bled, in effect, canceling all sexual activity. The men's minds turned to the Hunt, knowing that sexual activity would resume after they had brought enough meat home to supplement the diet of grains and berries the women provided.
It is this circular reasoning that created the association of a female deity concerned with hunting, and in many cultures She was a Wolf. Apollo Lycaeus (Wolfish Apollo) was mated to Artemis as the "divine Wolf-bitch." The Sabine Goddess Feronia was "Mother of Wolves." Perhaps the most well-known of all was Diana, Mistress of the Hunt. Gaulish Diana under her totemic name Lupa, "She Wolf," was Mother of wild animals. Young men learned magic and shapeshifting from Her and She guided and protected them (provided, of course, that they never set foot inside a Christian Church.) Her follower's shapeshifting ability followed the Moon phases and the Moon was another form of the Goddess.
Shapeshifting abilities usually lay within the realm of one person in the tribe, the shaman. It was reasoned that at the moment of death, the animals that the hunters killed and/or emulated took themselves to the spiritual
"other-world." For the shamans to 'speak' to these animals, so that they could intervene on behalf of the humans, the shamans themselves must lose their own bodies and take on the aspects of the animals. And so the first shapeshifters were born.
Down through the years the werewolf was known in almost every culture. The title of the shaman who held high position in the life of the Slavs was
'volkhvi.' Variants are the German Volk, 'people' and the Russian Vrach,
'physician.' This indicates that the werewolves were people, shamanic healers in wolf masks.
It wasn't until Christianity came on the scene that the werewolf became the demonic creature that he is today. Christ was known as the Lamb of God and the enemy of the lamb is of course the wolf. The shift toward the imagery of the Lamb of Christ led in natural sequence to the wolf as satanic. The werewolf whose first meaning in biblical translations meant 'outlaw,' devolved from that into 'ravening wolf,' as in Matthew 7:15: "Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Werewolves were captured and tortured by the Inquisition alongside accused Witches.
And so the werewolf descended throughout the centuries; from deity to demi-god, from shaman to satanic. The noble wolf, whose only crime was to howl at the Moon and teach awkward humans to hunt was demonized by those who would rather be led by a lamb than a true king or queen of beasts.
Sources:
The Beast Within: A History of the Werewolf. Adam Douglas - 1992
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Barbara G. Walker - 1983
