polska: Werewolf in Slavic mythology

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

In Slavic mythology, a werewolf is a human-shapeshifter who temporarily takes the form of a wolf. Werewolves were often described as ordinary wolves, though some accounts noted peculiarities in appearance or behavior that hinted at their human origin. Werewolves retain human intelligence but cannot speak. According to folk beliefs, transformation into a wolf is the most common form of shapeshifting among Slavs. The concept is ancient and appears to varying degrees among all Slavic peoples, with the most detailed accounts among Belarusians, Poles, and Ukrainians. In Russian folklore, the character is often simply called a shapeshifter, sharing clear similarities with the werewolf. South Slav…

Evidence: 53 • authority: 88

The Werewolves of Arcadia. This chapter separates the ancient data on the werewolves of Mt Lykaion into three categories: (1) that bearing on the elaborate complex of aetiological myths about Lykaon himself and his human sacrifice, the bulk of which is surprisingly late; (2) that bearing upon the historical Anthid rite associated with the Lykaia festival, a rite of maturation with affinities to such rites known from other Greek cities; and (3) that bearing upon a traditional tale in which Damarchus was transformed into a wolf at the Lykaia festival. The data in the latter two categories is heavily and confusingly concatenated and must be disentangled. When the two data-sets are appropriatel…

Evidence: 53 • authority: 88

Werewolves and Projected Souls. This chapter argues that the ideas of soul-projection so strongly associated with werewolfism in the medieval and early modern periods were already associated with it in the ancient world. This notion is more or less explicitly articulated by Augustine, but long before him there obtained a striking parallel between werewolf narratives (in which the werewolf off on his adventures leaves behind the human shell constituted by his clothes and must keep them secure, so that he can don them again to retrieve his human form), and the ‘Greek shaman’ narratives (in which the soul-projector must keep his catatonic human body secure as he sends his soul off on his adven…