The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World

Malice or revenge are typical motivations for fox spirits; and it can be for something as simple as startling it when it’s asleep or stepping on its tail, escalating to killing a cub or a mate. (In this, fox spirits are very similar to djinn, which also take the form of animals, typically dogs or cats, which must not be harmed, frightened or molested lest the hidden djinn retaliate.) Other motivating factors may be greed, lust or desire. They may want sex or food, especially treats they’re not likely to get in fox form.

According to Taoist belief, any fox that attains fifty years of age can shape-shift into a standard human. If the fox can make it to a hundred, he’ll be a skilled sorcerer, too. There are various beliefs regarding abilities earned through longevity. An alternative view is that foxes and wolves that survive eighty years can transform into humans. If these animals can achieve one thousand years, they’ll be divine. (And how does a fox or anyone live to be a thousand years old? Through alchemy.) Older people are likewise able to develop the ability to shape-shift.

A classic example from Japan: a samurai walking home one night spots a fox and shoots an arrow at it. The fox is wounded but doesn’t fall. It keeps going. The samurai follows it but is unable to catch up. Even wounded, this fox is too fast. He keeps following and eventually the samurai discovers that the fox has led him home. Suddenly, the fox transforms into a man and sets the samurai’s house on fire. Before the dazed and confused samurai can react, the fox transforms back into its original shape and escapes into the forest.

Victims of Transformation

Among witches’ notorious “crimes” is the transformation of human victims into animal form. The most famous example is Circe, the witch goddess of Homer’s Odyssey who transforms men into apes, pigs, and lions. Of course, one could say, as Circe does, that she isn’t transforming them, she’s revealing their true essence. (She regrets the prevalence of pigs and the paucity of lions, suggesting that Odysseus would have been a lion.) And of course, Circe doesn’t come looking for these men; she lives on a rock in the middle of the sea—they come to her. The motivation of fairy-tale witches who transform victims into animals isn’t always clear, but the witch is almost always depicted as the aggressor.

Victims are transformed into animals, most frequently horses. The victim isn’t treated gently but ridden hard, saddled, bridled or struck with the bridle.

What’s the evidence of transformation? There’ll be wounds on or in the mouth, traces of the bit. Another indication is when tack or riding equipment is missing. The victim may wake up suffering from dizziness, fatigue, covered in cold sweat or black and blue marks—“blue in the face”: all evidence of having been “ridden.”

Another fear is that animals may be indistinguishable from all the others. This may date from guilt about the treatment of formerly sacred animals. Once transformed, the victim who, unlike self-transformed witches who always seem to retain their human capacity for speech, loses the power to speak, and so is treated just like any other animal.

Circe’s spell is first discovered when Odysseus’ hungry sailors almost eat their comrade, transformed into a pig.

Artemis punishes the hunter Actaeon for a transgression by transforming him into a stag. His own dogs are unable to recognize him, he’s unable to call them off, and they rip him apart.

In the Japanese animated film Spirited Away, the heroine Chihiro yearns to rescue her bewitched parents, transformed into pigs, but they’re in a pen with hundreds of other pigs, destined for the dinner table. They can’t identify themselves to her and so it’s an impossible task.

Wolves and Werewolves

Depending upon what one understands a werewolf to be, the line between wolves and wolfmen may be very fine indeed. Mirror-images of each other, they can’t really be separated and so are considered together.

The emotions evoked by wolves and the treatment accorded to them parallel those toward witches. Some find profound beauty, spirituality, something indescribably unique and special about wolves; words aren’t sufficient to evoke the holiness many perceive. On the other hand, the passion, hostility, determination to exterminate wolves—out of all proportion to any damage they might possibly do—parallels emotions toward witches: the urge to kill off something wild, free, and independent.

Like witches, wolves are demonized. Wolves have historically been hunted and exterminated just like witches, shamans, and diviners.

By 300 BCE pagan Celts were breeding wolfhounds especially for killing wolves.

Vargr, “wolf,” was the term used in Icelandic law codes to refer to outlaws who could be hunted down like wolves. The word also implies that wolves could be hunted down like outlaws, the worst offenders.

In Anglo-Saxon England wolves were sometimes hanged near criminals. The Saxon word for gallows is “varagtreo,” “wolf tree.”

In France, in approximately 800 CE, Charlemagne founded an order for the purpose of exterminating wolves, the Louveterie.

In 1281, King Edward I hired a man, Peter Corbet, to destroy all the wolves he could find in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire.

The desire to eliminate wolves was frequently translated into what may be considered a “wolf-craze” similar to the European Witchcraze. In various parts of Europe and North America, it wasn’t sufficient to merely kill wolves; instead they were brutally tortured to death. There is a sadistic quality to the history of the extermination of wolves that more closely resembles the witch-hunts than extermination of other animal species. In the United States, for instance, wolves were captured alive and dragged behind horses until they were torn to pieces. Other wolves captured alive had their jaws (and sometimes penises) wired up and then were released.

Wolves, shy and wary, very rarely attack humans. (Not a single case of a wolf killing a human has been recorded in North America.) Dogs and automobiles are responsible for a vastly greater number of human death and injury, yet both are beloved. Wolves have been known to prey on livestock, but only when humans have encroached on their territory. It’s not wolves who’ve spread out—their territory has consistently diminished over the last two thousand years; humans have spread out, cleared and destroyed wilderness, removing wolves dining alternatives.

However, for some, wolves are the essential spirit of the wild. Without wolves, some magical earth power is also extinguished. In Lakota, the word for “wolf” translates as the “animal that looks like a dog but is a powerful spirit.”

Wolves are identified with witchcraft:

In Germanic tradition, wolves are witches’ mounts and were believed to carry them to sabbats.

In the Navajo language, the same word is used for “wolf” and “witch.”

Vargamors were forest-dwelling Swedish wild women who communed with wolves.

The connection between wolves and witches is so powerful that when some European Romany hear a wolf howl, the automatic reaction is to advise caution as the sound may signal the approach of a witch.

In myth and legend, wolves nurture humans: Zoroaster was allegedly suckled by a mother wolf; Siegfried, Teutonic hero, allegedly had a wolf for a foster-mother, and the founders of Rome, the abandoned babies Remus and Romulus, were found and nursed by a she-wolf.

The wolf was once Rome’s totem animal. The primordial horned spirit Faunus negotiates the balance between deer and wolves, the way the Greek deity Artemis sets the balance between wolves, deer, and hunters. The Lupercalia, Rome’s festival of fertility and purification, was held in honor of Faunus, also known as Lupercus, the wolf spirit. Remnants of the holiday linger in Valentine’s Day traditions. And Feronia was the Italian sacred spirit of magic, prosperity, and freedom. Her sacred animal is the wolf. Once upon a time, if slaves sat on a stone in her shrine, they gained their freedom. Feronia survives but not as a goddess; her most common manifestation is as a witch who roams the marketplace, once women’s place of power.

Wolves are identified with ravenous appetites, whether for food, sex or pleasure. They are identified with strong male sexuality, as in wolf whistles. A wolf is a euphemism for a sexually predatory man. One observes the evolution of demonization of wolves in the tale Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf Little Red Riding Hood meets in the earliest forms of the story is clearly a man. He forcibly gets her into bed; she only escapes by insisting that she needs to use the bathroom—this of course in the days prior to indoor plumbing. Later versions, cleaned up for children, suggest that the villain Little Red Riding Hood encounters is a real wolf, albeit a talking, cross-dressing one.

Werewolves

What exactly are werewolves? Monster-movie material or something real? During Europe’s Witchcraze, a concurrent werewolf panic (centered mainly in France but also present through other regions of Europe) resulted in the deaths of many men. Just as witchcraft was identified with women, werewolves were identified with men.

Johannes Nider, author of an early fifteenth-century witch-hunter’s manual The Formicarius, discusses male witches who transform into wolves. Werewolves may be nothing more than male witches. During the witch-hunts, as witchcraft became increasingly identified with women, public perception and theology may have required that men be classified differently—if men and women can both be witches, then all this theology about women being the gender more susceptible to Satanic wiles goes out the window. To wear a wolf’s skin may be a euphemism for walking the shaman’s or male witch’s path.

European werewolves, similar to Navajo skin-walkers, may not look exactly like real wolves. They may walk upright and have no tail, which sounds suspiciously like a person. Other descriptions suggest that werewolves have a human body but a wolf’s head, like an Egyptian deity or like a masked human.

Although they might or might not literally transform, once upon a time, many people strove to be identified with wolves.

According to Book 10 of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus’ grandfather was named Autolykos—“He who is a Wolf.”

The desire to identify with wolves is demonstrated by once popular boy’s names: Adolf, Rudolph, Wolfgang, Wolfram, and plain old Wolf.

The blues singer called Howlin’ Wolf was born Chester Burnett. His adopted name may be understood as a magical name, a veritable boast of primal male and magical power. In many of his songs he explicitly identifies himself with the creature, as a source of pride and power.

The Pawnee nation, Plains Indians from presentday Kansas and Nebraska, identified so profoundly with wolves that the Plains hand-signal for wolf is the same as the one for Pawnee. Others referred to them as the Wolf People.

Odin’s warriors behaved like wolves, hence the name “wolf-warriors.” Sixth- to eighth-century CE helmets and scabbards found widely through Western and Central Europe were decorated with figures that may be werewolves or berserkers.

The earliest written report of werewolves derives from Herodotus, the fifth-century BCE Greek writer. According to him, a tribe known as the Neuri, living north of the Black Sea, had members who turned into wolves for several days each year. Today, this is thought to refer to Scythian shamans.

Werewolf transformation manifests in two distinct ways:

those who shift back and forth between human and werewolf manifestations

those who assume the form of a wolf full-time

People become werewolves voluntarily and involuntarily. People become werewolves accidentally or intentionally. People transform themselves into werewolves or others do it for them. The second manifestation, the full-time wolf, is virtually always an involuntary transformation and is frequently the result of a curse.

How else do you become a werewolf?

Ancestry may be blamed. Someone from a family full of werewolves may be more likely to be one.

Simply sleeping in the moonlight may do the trick.

Taking off one’s clothes and howling in the moonlight is considered effective, too.

The notion that being a werewolf is contagious is popular nowadays but derives more from movie traditions than from any folk wisdom. It may derive from confusion between vampires and werewolves.

In Ojibwa tradition, eating meat that was previously tasted by a real wolf leaves you prone to transformation.

In the Harz Mountains, the witches’ playground, there is a “werewolf stream.” All one must do is find it and drink the water.

In the Balkans, there’s a special werewolf flower. Pick it and transform.

Various spells refer to magical belts which when worn help one transform.

European werewolves allegedly concoct salves similar to witches’ flying ointments to effect transformation.

Order of birth: being born the seventh son of a seventh son or the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter is good.

Someone born with teeth and/or a caul may indicate a potential werewolf (see DICTIONARY: Taltos).

Curses cause transformation, as do evil spells: Polish witches can transform you into a werewolf via methods of “spoiling.” The witches form a belt from human flesh. This is secretly placed over the threshold of a room where a wedding reception is expected. Should someone step over the girdle, they’re doomed to roam as werewolves. (Doom isn’t expected to be permanent; the witches’ goal isn’t malice, it’s extortion: you can pay them to remove the spell.)

A fairly international tradition recommends that you drink rainwater collected from a wolf’s footprint.

In Brazil, the notion of becoming a werewolf involves the acquisition of an animal alter-ego. Accomplishment takes some long-term planning: for three years in a row, intensely petition San Cipriano and roll in the ashes of St John’s Eve bonfires.

According to the witch-hunt era Roman Catholic Church, one can only become a werewolf by making a pact with the devil or by being a child born outside church-sanctioned marriage. No other methods exist. (So much for being the innocent victim of a werewolf attack!) However, according to various unofficial traditions Christian transgressions may be punished by involuntary transformation into a werewolf, including:

being born on Christmas Day, a day also associated with the winter solstice and the power of the sun. Prior to Christianity, this day was understood as falling within a time period when Earth’s innate anarchistic forces were at their most powerful. Another, possibly related superstition, suggests that those born on Christmas Day possess the ability to talk with animals.

illegitimacy

being born a Roman Catholic priest’s son

Breton folklore suggests that anyone who doesn’t go to confession for ten years is vulnerable to transformation to a “bisclavret,” the Breton werewolf.

Lest one think that only male werewolves exist, there are tales of fierce, female werewolves too:

A Welsh prince allegedly had his werewolf daughter eliminate his enemies.

In the Russian tale Ivan of Shiganska, a female werewolf kills the abusive husband her parents forced her to marry.

The loups-garoux of Haiti and the French Caribbean are a fusion of Breton werewolf traditions and African secret sorcerers’ societies. These island loups-garoux tend to be female. Typically the ability to transform is passed from mother to daughter. Loups-garoux can be violent; attacks tend to be random although children of enemies are particularly vulnerable.

This may be lore or legend but werewolves are no laughing matter. Many people died because of werewolves: not because werewolves killed them but because they were suspected or accused of being werewolves. As with witches, despite all the talk of harm, malevolence and bestiality, it’s the werewolves who have historically been victims, not victimizers.

Concurrent to the European Witchcraze, there was a werewolf-panic, most famously in France but also elsewhere. (Werewolf-panic did not strike the British Isles, perhaps because wolves were already extinct.)

Like witchcraft, it’s extremely hard to prove you’re not a werewolf, especially a diabolical one. The human being is allegedly taken over by the spirit of a wolf, thus transforming into a werewolf. The alleged werewolf may be sleeping in bed or locked up in jail while his soul roams free. Using this kind of definition of werewolf, anyone might be convicted as a werewolf even if far from the place where the “crimes” were committed. (And they’re may have been crimes; just because the werewolf didn’t commit the murder doesn’t mean that the murder didn’t exist. One wonders how many accusations of witchcraft were used to deflect attention from true perpetrators.)

As with witch-trial transcripts it’s very difficult to know which part, if any of the testimony is genuine. Confessions were obtained via torture, terror, and duress and aren’t reliable. At the same time, hidden within some of the transcripts are interesting tales that suggest real, true witchcraft may not have been eradicated in Europe.

Among the most famous historical werewolves are the following:

Gilles Garnier: A number of children disappeared in the vicinity of the French city of Dole, beginning (as best as can be told from surviving records) in 1572. The rumor spread that a local werewolf was responsible. In response, the local government passed a law permitting the people of their district to hunt werewolves although it was “out of season.”

At twilight on November 8, 1573, hunters, hearing screams in the woods, discovered a severely wounded little girl fighting off something lupine. The creature fled into the woods. Some of the hunters insisted that it was a wolf. Others said they recognized it as a man, Gilles Garnier, known as the Hermit of St Bonnot.

Garnier lived with his wife in a hut near where the attack occurred. He was a red-faced, long-bearded unattractive man with bad posture and a unibrow. On November 14, a ten-year-old boy disappeared in the area. Garnier was arrested and interrogated. He said that years earlier he had met a man in the woods who taught him to shape-shift into various forms, including those of a lion or leopard but, as Garnier pointed out very reasonably, wolves were most convenient because they were least noticeable. He claimed he spent most of his time in wolf-form and used his powers to obtain food for his impoverished family. Tortured, he confessed to the murders. On January 18, 1574 Garnier was burned alive and his ashes scattered to the winds.