Werewolf

See also: Wolf (homonymy)

The werewolf or lycanthrope is a character of Légende, vagrant and malfaisant, who passed to have the capacity to transform themselves into wolf.

Terminology

The term “garou” comes from the Francique werwolf which means “man-wolf already” (“wer” represents the same root as the Latin “to vir”, the man). Originally, Wolf wanted to also say “robber”. The Latin term are equivalent is versipelles .

The term “lycanthrope” comes him from the Greek lycos (“wolf”) and anthropos (“man”). It is thus an human being which is believed transformed into wolf. The term Thérianthropie tends today to replace.

According to Ernest Jones the Russian name is volkodlak , of volk=loup and dlak=poil, whereas the Slavic term vukodlak , which also designates the werewolf, is used in Bulgaria and Serbia to indicate the Vampire. In the same way in Czech: vilkodlak and in Greek: vrykolakas is used to indicate the vampire, which means that there exists a close connection between the werewolf and the vampire.

The legend

The three essential components of the belief in the werewolf are the ideas of animal metamorphosis, of cannibalism and about night voyage about a race of men living the regions of the edges of the Black Sea and able as skilful magicians speaks to be metamorphosed at will in wolves, then to take again their human appearance.

  • As of this time there was a belief in the fact that anthropophagous human beings, by the practice of the magic, took the appearance of a wolf to satisfy their monstrous appetites more easily.

  • Greek mythology tells that Latona, the mother of Apollon, was protected from the anger of Héra while being transformed into she-wolf.

  • Ovide (-43 - 17) , also reports that Lycaon, king of Arcadie and its fifty sons which famous for their were impiété, was used among many dishes for Zeus which had come to visit them under the appearance of a poor wretch, a dish containing human flesh which proved to be that of young person wire. Thus it could uncover God of the Gods. But this last, made indignant, pushed back with far the table from the feast, struck down all wire of the king, except Nyctimos, which went up on the throne and changed Lycaon into wolf:

Its clothing changes into hairs, its arms in legs
become a wolf it still preserves vestiges of its old form.
It always has the same gray hair, the same savage air, the same burning eyes;
it is always the image of ferocity.
Ovide, the Metamorphoses (I, 209)
  • Virgile (-70 -19) also speaks about it in its eighth eclogue, where it makes say to Alphésibée : “ I saw Moeris being made wolf and being inserted in wood ”.

  • Pline Old the (23 - 79) speaks about a Greek writer, Évanthes, quoting itself the books of Arcadiens, in which an individual of a certain family transformed himself into wolf after having suspended his clothing with a oak and having crossed a pond with the stroke. It took again its human form at the end of nine years and found even its clothing. He also speaks about certain Déménète de Parrhasie which was metamorphosed in wolf after having tasted entrails of a child, immolé in the sacrifice of human victims that Arcadiens still made in this time with Jupiter Lycéen .

  • At the 1st century, Arétée de Cappadoce explains why certain men who feel transformed into wolf are worked by the appetites and the pangs of this wild animal, are thrown on the herds and the men to devour them, leave during the night preferably, haunt the cemeteries and the monuments, howling with death, with a perpetual deterioration, the inserted eyes and hagards, not seeing that obscurely as if it were surrounded by darkness, the ravaged legs by the scratches and the dog bites.

The Germanic tradition

Many other legends in Scandinavia, Western Russia and Central Europe, refer to the wolves-garous. The Scandinavian garous by are struck same ostracism only elsewhere and, without being ordinary, the garou is more or less accepted in the company.

The Scandinavian equivalent of the wolf garou is the vargúlfr .
In the Saga d' Egill wire of Grímr the bald person , the Úlfr grandfather was called Kveld-Úlfr, the wolf of the evening, because each evening it became savage and wanted to sleep. Egill inherited this propriété.
In the Völsunga saga Sigmundr and Sinfjötli discover two deadened men. Of the skins of wolves was suspended above them in the house; every ten days, it was possible for them to leave these skins. Sigmundr and Sinfjötli passed the skins of wolves to them and then, they could not at all leave there, though in truth, they had preserved same nature as before: they howled like wolves, each one of them knowing the significance of this howl .
The women can also transform themselves into she-wolf: in the poetic Edda ( Hárbardhsljódh ), vargynjur is the woman-she-wolf that Thórr molesté, these warriors of the combatants of elite the belief in the wolves-garous is related to that of the voyages of the heart, whose it represents only one particular case. In Scandinavian mythology, Hamr , " the peau" , is one of the forms which " can take; the âme" , the man who can have several of them. It is precisely the internal format which marries the body envelope closely. The manifestation of the hamr is accompanied by an increase in force, can take the aspect of an animal, and be played of the distances and obstacles. Change in form, " while the individual falls in léthargie" , is " a point which points out fright exactly during which the spirit of the Shaman visit the other world and enters in communication with the spirits that it interroge".

According to Governed Boyer, the Hugr , in the Scandinavian tradition, is a universal active ingredient which can sometimes be collected by malevolent people to produce harmful effects. Thus in the Saga de Thórdr hredha , a man sees in dream eighteen wolves which are in fact the " hugr of loups" of its enemies, makes the " of it; bad hugr ".

A disorder of the imaginary one

Johann Weyer, doctor of the Netherlands (1515-1588) , explains the lycanthropie like an imaginary and morbid phenomenon. It thus describes the patients who are reached by it: they are pale, have the inserted eyes and the language strong sèche.
It is the same of Jean de Nynauld which publishes in 1615 lycanthropie, transformation and extase of the wizards :
“ mélancholie or madness louvière because of those which estoient some reached thinks of being transformed into wolf or dog. ”
Hake of Plancy, in its infernal Dictionary, published in 1818, defines the Lycanthropie like a
“ disease which, in the centuries when one saw everywhere only demon S, Sorcellerie S and Maléfice S, disturbed the imagination of the Cerveau X weak, so much so that they were believed metamorphosed in wolves-garous, and acted consequently. The melancholic persons more than the others were laid out with becoming lycanthropes, i.e. men wolves. ”.

A psychiatric disease

The belief that its own body can be transformed into wolf is a zoopathy, namely a symptom of a psychiatric disease in progress. The structure of this Délire is of type paraphrenic.

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