Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Robert Lamb. Here in this special omnibus edition
Speaker 2: of The Monster Fact, we've put together all five episodes
Speaker 2: of our recent look at the werewolf in myth, legend
Speaker 2: and media, from prehistoric wolf interactions and the ancient world
Speaker 2: to modern media incarnations of lacanthropy. So let's dig right
Speaker 2: in draw blood, where the limit of our campfire's glow
Speaker 2: licks against the darkness of the wild's strange forms leap
Speaker 2: and prowl, sometimes human, sometimes lupine, often somewhere in between.
Speaker 2: Huddled around our cultivated flames, this nighttime sun of burning wood,
Speaker 2: we invoke the ight of man, hot, food and drink,
Speaker 2: dance and song, story and myth. These acts tell us
Speaker 2: who we are, and yet the creatures of the outer
Speaker 2: night tempt us to darker, wilder orbits places in the
Speaker 2: wilderness from which our fire would be but a pinprick
Speaker 2: of light. They are the wildness from which we arose
Speaker 2: and might yet return, dressed in no furs but their own,
Speaker 2: naked before no gods or none, man still remembers. They
Speaker 2: are our violent hearts, our erotic blood, flesh, hunger, and desire.
Speaker 2: Suckled by the moon, the werewolves creep closer, threatening to
Speaker 2: leap with shredding claw and ripping teeth, even as their
Speaker 2: howls urge us to cast aside our tools, our garments,
Speaker 2: our language tongues and join them in the all encompassing night.
Speaker 2: Here we begin a multi episode look at the werewolf
Speaker 2: shape shifters, who walk the line between human being and
Speaker 2: the wild wolf in all manner of horrifying and alluring ways. Broadly,
Speaker 2: werewolf traditions and visions overlapped greatly with other shape shifter traditions.
Speaker 2: Pretty Much every culture boasts some version of the human
Speaker 2: into animal or animal into human story, as well as
Speaker 2: some manner of human animal hybridity. These theoryanthropes are many,
Speaker 2: serving as everything from divine avatars to tricksters and tormentors,
Speaker 2: and entailing a plethora of animal forms. The werewolf, however,
Speaker 2: is a creature that specifically emerges from the nexus of
Speaker 2: human beings and the Eurasian wolf. The history of these
Speaker 2: two species is long debated, concerning their coevolution and the
Speaker 2: domestication of dogs some twenty thousand to forty thousand years ago,
Speaker 2: just before or during the last glacial maximum. Suffice to say,
Speaker 2: humans and some canids, perhaps cast off wolves or abandoned young,
Speaker 2: forged a mutually beneficial relationship. In a sense, each social
Speaker 2: animal found a new pack in the company of the other.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting bond unlike any other. As neuroscientist John
Speaker 2: Allman discusses in his two thousand book Evolving Brains, each
Speaker 2: species benefited greatly from the domestication. The wolves gained at
Speaker 2: its support for the rearing of their pups, and humans,
Speaker 2: now bolstered by the wolf's keen senses, became an even
Speaker 2: stronger hunter, able to outcompete their evolutionary rivals and protect
Speaker 2: their camps against nocturnal predators. Thus, our ice age ancestors
Speaker 2: brought canids closer to the fire of their culture, even
Speaker 2: as their wild kin howled and raged in the vast
Speaker 2: darkness beyond. Did they even then tell stories of fellow
Speaker 2: hunter's lost to those outer orbits of wildness? Do they
Speaker 2: imagine humans transformed into wolves, perhaps by the dawning of
Speaker 2: a pelt or some act of savagery, We don't know.
Speaker 2: They thought enough of wolves to depict one in the
Speaker 2: surviving cave paintings at Fonde Gamme Cave in modern day France. Elsewhere,
Speaker 2: I sage artists depicted the oldest known human animal hybrid
Speaker 2: in the lone minsh or lion man figure of Hollenstein's
Speaker 2: Stadel Cave, so we might reasonably assume such imaginings were possible,
Speaker 2: but it would be tens of thousands of years before
Speaker 2: specific words for what we think of as werewolves emerged
Speaker 2: in human culture. In the nineteen forty eight book Man
Speaker 2: into Wolf, Austrian polymath Robert Eisler presented an elaborate take
Speaker 2: on humanity's prehistoric past, arguing that traditions of the werewolf
Speaker 2: are based in the dual emergence of our ancestors as
Speaker 2: two separate strains of early humans, one savage, violent and predatory,
Speaker 2: the other peaceful. The conflict between these early peoples, he argues,
Speaker 2: continues to resonate in the collective unconscious, as well as
Speaker 2: our ongoing human struggles against war, pain, and cruelty. These arguments, however,
Speaker 2: depend on now outdated understandings of human evolution as well
Speaker 2: as union archetypes, so I don't want to misrepresent his
Speaker 2: ideas as modern scientific hypothesis, but rather as a work
Speaker 2: of cultural commentary, it's an interesting take on the very
Speaker 2: real long history of man and wolf. Turning to contemporary scholarship,
Speaker 2: historian Daniel Ogden's excellent twenty twenty one book The Werewolf
Speaker 2: in the Ancient World stresses that we mustn't be too
Speaker 2: quick to view wolves as the mere bestial opposite of
Speaker 2: humanity and thus a fitting wild energy to entertain in
Speaker 2: our myths and legends of metamorphosis. Certainly, as he points out,
Speaker 2: there are plenty of connotations in ancient accounts throughout the
Speaker 2: Eurasian wolfe's historical range that identify the creature as an
Speaker 2: embodiment of savagery or trickery, but others still acknowledge the social, noble, intelligent, cooperative,
Speaker 2: and tactical nature of wild wolves. In other words, we
Speaker 2: didn't just see our savage id in the wolf, something
Speaker 2: frequently cited in werewolf tales. No, we saw much of
Speaker 2: our nobility in them as well. Ogden writes, quote, were
Speaker 2: wolves are wolves because there is a sense in which
Speaker 2: wolves are in and of themselves were wolves already insofar,
Speaker 2: that is, as they combine the qualities of the wildest
Speaker 2: and most lawless of animals with those of civilization. And humanity.
Speaker 2: In twenty seventeen's she Wolf, A Cultural History of Female Werewolves,
Speaker 2: editor Hannah Priest also weighs in on this issue, arguing
Speaker 2: that while we often do look to humanity's prehistoric past
Speaker 2: for the seeds of werewolf legends, the narratives of werewolves
Speaker 2: are intrinsically bound to quote historical circumstance, civilization, and literature.
Speaker 2: The European roots of the werewolf are perhaps linked, she suggests,
Speaker 2: not merely to the threat posed by wolves to hunter gatherers,
Speaker 2: or even to the wolf like and wolf aided nature
Speaker 2: of the hunter, but also to the threat posed by
Speaker 2: wolves to domesticated animals, ultimately a threat to agriculture and property.
Speaker 2: As we'll discuss later, this interpretation reveals much about the
Speaker 2: gendered nature of male and female were wolves and the
Speaker 2: sort of distinct threats they seem to embody toward male landowners.
Speaker 2: Suffice to say, specific werewolf traditions do arise from the
Speaker 2: relationship between humans and wolves, but it's a relationship that
Speaker 2: changes drastically over time and takes on different forms across
Speaker 2: cultural lines. Well have much to explore in the weeks ahead,
Speaker 2: but for now, as we sit by our campfire, we
Speaker 2: gaze out at the most perplexing shapes in the darkness,
Speaker 2: Creatures that indeed blur the line between wilderness and civility,
Speaker 2: Creatures that embody unnatural transformation. Informed it would seem, by
Speaker 2: the many ways we transformed the natural world and ourselves
Speaker 2: through the domestication of fauna and flora. As we discussed
Speaker 2: the last time, the origins of werewolf traditions may trace
Speaker 2: back to our prehistoric ancestors and the gradual domestication of
Speaker 2: the wild wolf, an act that may have made us
Speaker 2: better hunters and better watchers of the dark. At different
Speaker 2: points in human history, we saw shades of the wolf
Speaker 2: in our own animal nature, just as we also saw
Speaker 2: shades of human intelligence, cunning, and society in the ways
Speaker 2: of the wild wolf. This is not, however, to say
Speaker 2: that the werewolf specifically is a universal concept. Shapeshifters and
Speaker 2: animal human hybrids exist in virtually all human cultures, but
Speaker 2: the werewolf naturally requires some familiarity with the species Canis lupus,
Speaker 2: particularly the Eurasian wolf. Now, I want to stress that, yes,
Speaker 2: the wolf's range includes North America, and they certainly do
Speaker 2: factor into the rich traditions of various indigenous North American tribes,
Speaker 2: but these traditions, including the off sited skin walkers, are
Speaker 2: rather distinct from the werewolf concept as we know it today.
Speaker 2: We may come back to discussion on this topic later on.
Speaker 2: Let's start with the term werewolf or the Germanic wewulf.
Speaker 2: This we can trace back to the writings of English
Speaker 2: Benedictine monk Bishop Wolfstan, and this would have been very
Speaker 2: early in the second millennium CE. While most famous for
Speaker 2: being the last pre conquest English bishop, his service began
Speaker 2: a mere four years prior to the Norman conquest of
Speaker 2: ten sixty six. Wolfstan did in fact warn the English
Speaker 2: of the threat posed by the quote would Fraco Verwulf,
Speaker 2: this being a threat to the Church's flock. As Daniel
Speaker 2: Ogden explains in The Werewolf in the Ancient World, the
Speaker 2: usage here is broad and don't get excited, but it
Speaker 2: certainly doesn't refer to actual were wolves now. As Ogden explains,
Speaker 2: the traditional interpretation of the word werewolf saw it as
Speaker 2: a combination of the Latin vere or man with wolf
Speaker 2: a man wolf. But he stresses in his book that
Speaker 2: the commonly accepted theory today is that where derives from
Speaker 2: the Anglo saxon war, meaning stranger or outsider. The were
Speaker 2: wolf is an outsider wolf, and this might, too, he argues,
Speaker 2: connect to Norse ideas of wolf and outlaw. In fact,
Speaker 2: he cites a thirteenth century Danish tradition that saw convicted
Speaker 2: thieves hanged beside the corpse of a wolf to fully
Speaker 2: convey the dead man's criminal nature to common citizens passing by.
Speaker 2: Of course, these ideas line up with the way were
Speaker 2: wolves have often been presented dangerous outsiders, threats to law
Speaker 2: and ruling landowners, and if we think seriously about the
Speaker 2: animal itself, a lone wolf that is not part of
Speaker 2: a social pack. Male lone wolves, in reality, are generally
Speaker 2: only temporarily alone, moving from one social group to another
Speaker 2: or back into the same group they just left. But
Speaker 2: in some cases this may also constitute an individual infected
Speaker 2: with rabies a most dangerous creature. Indeed, the term like panthropy, however,
Speaker 2: is much older, first employed by the second century CE
Speaker 2: physician Marcellus of Side, who employed the term like anthropia
Speaker 2: to describe medical conditions that we would now Ogden describes
Speaker 2: define as different forms of mental illness. Marcellus's description continued
Speaker 2: to echo through ancient medical writings, and, as Nadine Metzger
Speaker 2: summarizes in twenty fourteen's Battling Demons with Medical Authority, published
Speaker 2: in the journal History of Psychiatry, these lichen throats were
Speaker 2: described as otherwise harmless, melancholic individuals who suffer from extreme dryness,
Speaker 2: hang out its cemeteries, and mimic the behaviors of wolves
Speaker 2: and dogs. Modern interpretations have considered a number of actual
Speaker 2: ailments that might have underlined this broad diagnosis, rabies, porphyria,
Speaker 2: neurological dysfunction, and epilepsy. Some additionally make a case for
Speaker 2: some manner of true clinical lycanthropy. For ancient physicians, however,
Speaker 2: it was nothing that a little fasting or the consumption
Speaker 2: of a wolf's heart wouldn't cure. The term lycanthropy would
Speaker 2: remain a purely medical term, while other Latin words more
Speaker 2: specifically described shape shifting beings. That is, until ninth century CE,
Speaker 2: historian Theophanes the Confessor described agents of the Byzantine emperor ascanthropes,
Speaker 2: a manner of word play, here to invoke the Greek
Speaker 2: myth of lychaan wordplay that would be repeated by George
Speaker 2: Hammertolos aka George the Monk later that same century, and
Speaker 2: this Ogden contends sets the word werewolf on the trajectory
Speaker 2: that we enjoy today. It's interesting that we've long seen
Speaker 2: this duality of magic and medicine, of the rational and
Speaker 2: the superstitious in our werewolf media. As Matt Schimkowitz explores
Speaker 2: in a twenty twenty five AV Club article titled film
Speaker 2: Trivia FactCheck, original The Wolfman script kept the Werewolf at bay.
Speaker 2: The nineteen forty one Universal Horror classic film was originally
Speaker 2: intended to leave it ambiguous as to whether the film's
Speaker 2: Lawrence Talbot suffered from a monstrous curse or a distortion
Speaker 2: of the mind. The nineteen forty six films She Wolf
Speaker 2: of London, as well as the nineteen seventy six Italian
Speaker 2: grindhouse favorite Werewolf Woman, both employ the idea of werewolf
Speaker 2: delusion rather than literal transformation. Finally, I want to come
Speaker 2: back to Bishop wolf Stand here. His name has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with werewolf, being rather a family name that
Speaker 2: meant Wolfstone in the sense of strength and resilience. But
Speaker 2: as Brad Steiger points out in nineteen ninety nine's The
Speaker 2: Werewolf book. A much later German tradition recorded I Believe
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century, told of a wolf stone erected
Speaker 2: over the grave of a slain werewolf, keeping the monster
Speaker 2: at rest, but also becoming a focal point for the parentormal.
Speaker 2: We continue this week with our look at werewolves, having
Speaker 2: previously discussed purported prehistoric origins of the were wolf in
Speaker 2: the experiences and observations of early humans, as well as
Speaker 2: the earliest known usages of the words werewolf and lacanthropy.
Speaker 2: The former werewolf emerges in the early second millennium CE,
Speaker 2: while the latter lacanthropy has an older but complex history
Speaker 2: as a second century CE catch all for various mental illnesses,
Speaker 2: which came to be conflated with the Greek myth of
Speaker 2: Lachaan Like Haan was the legendary king of Arcadia who
Speaker 2: dared to try and trick the high god Zeus into
Speaker 2: eating human flesh. His ploy was unsuccessful, however, and Zeus
Speaker 2: inflicted a fitting divine punishment for one so savage, which
Speaker 2: Avid describes as following in the Metamorphosis Henry Thomas Riley translation, Alarmed,
Speaker 2: he himself takes to flight, and, having reached the solitude
Speaker 2: of the country. He howls aloud and in vain attempts
Speaker 2: to speak. His mouth gathers rage from himself, and through
Speaker 2: its usual desire for slaughter, it is directed against the sheep,
Speaker 2: and even still delights in blood. His garments are changed
Speaker 2: into hair, his arms into legs. He becomes a wolf,
Speaker 2: and he still retains vestiges of his ancient form. His
Speaker 2: hoariness is still the same, The same violence appears in
Speaker 2: his features. His eyes are bright as before. He is
Speaker 2: still the same image of ferocity, and just to be sure,
Speaker 2: all responsible parties are punished. Zeus follows this up with
Speaker 2: a great flood. But Laikaan himself is indeed transformed into
Speaker 2: a wolf, and, like the Biblical Cane, as Riley points
Speaker 2: out in his notes, he is forced to live as
Speaker 2: a cast off outsider, a lone wolf. In some tellings,
Speaker 2: his sons are transformed as well. While the myth of
Speaker 2: Likaan is sometimes held up as an ancient key to
Speaker 2: understanding subsequent werewolf tales, Daniel Ogden in twenty twenty one's
Speaker 2: were Wolves in the Ancient World maintains that the tale
Speaker 2: is a quote metaphorical derivative of the ancient folkloric traditions
Speaker 2: that are indeed the key. He devotes an entire later
Speaker 2: chapter in the book to Laichan and the complex interplay
Speaker 2: there of three key categories. One historic evidence for a
Speaker 2: lupine transformation right of passage for young men of the
Speaker 2: Antet clan, Two various related myths of lupine transformation and
Speaker 2: sacrilegious acts of human sacrifice in cannibalism. And three a
Speaker 2: supposedly historical tale of an individual changing into a wolf
Speaker 2: after eating part of a human sacrifice at the Likekaea
Speaker 2: festival on the slopes of Mount like Chaan aka Wolf Mountain.
Speaker 2: I won't attempt to summarize the entirety of his analysis,
Speaker 2: but Ogden does contend that the story is more werewolf
Speaker 2: adjacent than anything. Laikayan is a man punished with transformation
Speaker 2: into a wolf, a transformation that occurs only once outside
Speaker 2: of his control, making him no more a true were
Speaker 2: wolf than Arachne, another victim of divine transformation punishment in
Speaker 2: Greek myth, is a were spider, so an unsatisfying were
Speaker 2: wolf and by no means the key trendsetter that some
Speaker 2: make him out to be, but still an important and
Speaker 2: influential myth in the Grand tradition of were wolves. As
Speaker 2: discussed in the last episode, He's not key to the
Speaker 2: understand the word lacanthropy, but his myth eventually becomes conflated
Speaker 2: with the term to some degree. Now. One of the
Speaker 2: tales interwoven in the Arcadian myth is that of the
Speaker 2: Olympic athlete DeMarcus, a boxer who is said to have
Speaker 2: been transformed into a wolf for a period of nine
Speaker 2: to ten years at the Festival of Lykaea, possibly due
Speaker 2: to ritual consumption of human flesh, thus, as is common
Speaker 2: in all Ichaean myths, blurring the line between man and beast.
Speaker 2: But Ogden stresses that the quote unquote werewolf ism of DeMarcus,
Speaker 2: if we may call it, that, is more directly related
Speaker 2: to his status as a superb athlete. In keeping with
Speaker 2: various other supernatural stories of the time about athletes, including
Speaker 2: other accounts of lupine transformation, this would seem a tale
Speaker 2: as old as time. Multiple contemporary mma fighters, for example,
Speaker 2: and professional sports stars have been nicknamed werewolf. The Batman
Speaker 2: villain known as Werewolf is also an Olympic athlete, and
Speaker 2: let us not forget teen Wolf cousins Scott and Todd Howard,
Speaker 2: known for their lycanthropic basketball abilities. This brings us back
Speaker 2: to a continuing point of contemplation in were wolf traditions,
Speaker 2: there is a certain bit of the beast that we
Speaker 2: admire and crave to manifest in our strength and speed,
Speaker 2: or even in our savagery. We'll have more to explore
Speaker 2: concerning ancient lacanthropy in the next episode, including the best
Speaker 2: cases for the earliest written and visual depictions of werewolves.
Speaker 2: We've been discussing the roots of werewolf traditions, both in
Speaker 2: prehistoric human history and in ancient mythology and literature. Based
Speaker 2: on my readings, I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 2: werewolf tradition emerged from various elements in human history, in
Speaker 2: the human psyche, taking on different forms depending on time
Speaker 2: and location, and most importantly influencing later traditions, legends, folk tales,
Speaker 2: and of course fictional takes as well. When we look
Speaker 2: for specific examples of early or even the earliest literary
Speaker 2: examples of werewolfs, it really depends on how narrowly or
Speaker 2: widely we refine our search. For instance, the oldest surviving
Speaker 2: work of literature, the epic of Gilgamesh features the wild
Speaker 2: man and possible beast men in Keitu, and there's certainly
Speaker 2: some crossover from here into later werewolf traditions, but to
Speaker 2: be clear, in Ketu not a were wolf. More interesting,
Speaker 2: as Daniel Ogden brings up in the werewolf in the
Speaker 2: ancient world, the epic of Gilgamesh does feature reference to
Speaker 2: the goddess Ishtar having turned humans into various beasts, including
Speaker 2: a wolf. Much later, though still ancient to us, Homer's
Speaker 2: the Odyssey from the eighth century BCE refers to the
Speaker 2: witch circeansforming humans not only into pigs her specialty, but
Speaker 2: into wolves as well. These are both cases of transformative witchcraft,
Speaker 2: and while Ogden contends that stories like this certainly feed
Speaker 2: into werewolf traditions, we'd be going overboard to single either
Speaker 2: out as a true case zero for literary or mythic leacanthropy.
Speaker 2: Focusing on the importance of temporary and even deliberate transformation
Speaker 2: with connection between the two forms. Ogden points to a
Speaker 2: tale that is often singled out as the most obvious
Speaker 2: werewolf story from the ancient world, one appearing in the
Speaker 2: satiricon of Gaius Petronius arbiter from the late first century CE.
Speaker 2: The Latin satire contains a story told by the character
Speaker 2: Nicros at a banquet, and it roughly goes as follows.
Speaker 2: Back when the freedman Nicros was still a slave, he
Speaker 2: fell in love with the wife of an innkeeper and
Speaker 2: would sneak off to her whenever he could. One night,
Speaker 2: when the master of the house was away, Nicros persuaded
Speaker 2: the current HouseGuest, quote a soldier as brave as Orcus,
Speaker 2: to accompany him on the midnight journey. Shortly afterwards, they
Speaker 2: found themselves in an acropolis amongst the tombs, where the
Speaker 2: moon shone down in them like the midday sun. And
Speaker 2: then Nicros observed the soldier in a most shocking and
Speaker 2: remarkable act. He took off all his clothes, neatly, piled
Speaker 2: them up urinated in a circle around them, and then
Speaker 2: transformed into a wolf. The wolf howled and ran away,
Speaker 2: and when Nekros tried to touch the clothes that the
Speaker 2: soldier had left within the circle of urine, he found
Speaker 2: that the clothing had turned to stone. In fear, he
Speaker 2: hurried on to see the innkeeper's wife, whose name was Melissa,
Speaker 2: and She told him that if he'd arrived earlier, he
Speaker 2: could have helped them, for a wild wolf had attacked
Speaker 2: their livestock, draining their blood before they were able to
Speaker 2: drive the beast away with a spear to the neck.
Speaker 2: Nicros began his way home after that, passing where the
Speaker 2: clothing had been stacked, but finding only splashes of blood there,
Speaker 2: And when he finally reached his master's house, he found
Speaker 2: a doctor attending to the soldier who had suffered a
Speaker 2: grievous neck wound. Now we can easily identify the key
Speaker 2: attributes of temporary deliberate transformation with connection between the two forms,
Speaker 2: as well as various flourishes that would remain popular in
Speaker 2: werewolf fiction up through modern times. Thus it's pretty definitive. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: Ogden contends that this one is quote one really good
Speaker 2: quirking story, which is key because the tale first and
Speaker 2: foremost serves as entertainment with humorous wrinkles concerning the storyteller,
Speaker 2: while also somewhat reflecting popular beliefs and the contemporary appetite
Speaker 2: for fantastic tales infused with the supernatural. In short, it's
Speaker 2: a werewolf story doing what werewolf stories have always done,
Speaker 2: and that is entertained. Visual depictions are less definitive, as
Speaker 2: we often lack the full context of what we're looking at.
Speaker 2: Is it a mere wolf human disguised as a wolf,
Speaker 2: or merely wearing a wolf's pelt. There are various stopping
Speaker 2: points before we arrive at full werewolf, even as we
Speaker 2: contend with images tied to known tales such as the
Speaker 2: satiricon or the myth of Lycaan theoryanthropic figures can likewise
Speaker 2: mean various things. Still acknowledging all of this, some images
Speaker 2: do read strongly as wear a wolf, at least to
Speaker 2: us Modern viewers across the gulf of time consider the
Speaker 2: sixth century Etruscan Pontic plate, which seems to depict a furry,
Speaker 2: bipedal humanoid with a wolf's head. The context is unclear,
Speaker 2: though probably linked in some way to Hercules and the
Speaker 2: centaur depicted elsewhere on the plate. The theory anthropic figure
Speaker 2: here may represent death or the wolf man combination here
Speaker 2: may reference the god Faunas, who in Ovid's metamorphosis, attempts
Speaker 2: to rape Hercules while Hercules is dressed in his lover
Speaker 2: Amphilles clothing. We're reminded in all of this that the
Speaker 2: werewolf is a monster. It is a thing, a form
Speaker 2: that illustrates various ideas, observations, and comparisons, and any of
Speaker 2: these ideas, observations, or comparisons may essentially summon an image
Speaker 2: comparable to the werewolf, completely on their own, detached in
Speaker 2: whole or in part from any particular werewolf tradition. That's
Speaker 2: it for now, But next week we will continue our journey,
Speaker 2: and we will turn our attention to the female werewolf.
Speaker 2: As we continue our look at the werewolf in myth, legend,
Speaker 2: and media, we now turn to the female werewolf, a
Speaker 2: gendered take on the monster that might, at first glance
Speaker 2: seem to be mere titillation, but the roots of the
Speaker 2: concept weave their way through a variety of contemplations about
Speaker 2: femininity and the wild in all their forms. I want
Speaker 2: to return to twenty seventeen's She Wolf, A Cultural History
Speaker 2: of Female Werewolves, which features multiple chapters by different authors
Speaker 2: that examine female werewolves in myth, legend, and media, everything
Speaker 2: from centuries old legends to modern cartoons. As previously mentioned,
Speaker 2: the book's editor, Hannah Priest argues that European werewolf narratives
Speaker 2: revolve around the threat posed by wolves to domesticated animals,
Speaker 2: ultimately a threat to male owned agriculture and property. When
Speaker 2: the werewolf is male, the threat comes from outside the
Speaker 2: male land donor's domain, the outlaw wolf wanderer, who might
Speaker 2: seek to tear through the defenses and kill livestock or
Speaker 2: family members. Meanwhile, female werewolves tend to emerge from within
Speaker 2: the male land donor's domain, often endangering children and serving
Speaker 2: as an overall threat to domesticity. Of note, the first
Speaker 2: Mexican wear wolf movie, Leloba or The She Wolf from
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, features both a female and a male werewolf,
Speaker 2: and they correspond to this form quite perfectly. The female
Speaker 2: werewolf the daughter of a well to do Mexican landowner
Speaker 2: and scientists, and the male werewolf pursuit her from afar.
Speaker 2: In this gothic slice of Golden age Mexican cinema, the
Speaker 2: werewolf seems to represent the wild and uncontrollable elements of
Speaker 2: someone within the family unit and someone from beyond it.
Speaker 2: For more on Laloba, see our recent episode of Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema on the film, It's interesting that both the
Speaker 2: first Mexican Werewolf movie and the first werewolf motion picture
Speaker 2: period a now lost nineteen thirteen short titled The Werewolf,
Speaker 2: feature female licanthropes, but the vast majority of werewolf tales
Speaker 2: lean heavily toward male, often hyper masculine visions of wolf
Speaker 2: human hybridity. Likewise, while the wolf man is often presented
Speaker 2: as a lone wolf, the female male wolf woman is
Speaker 2: often connected to a social group or part of a
Speaker 2: mated pair. This is interesting in how it connects to
Speaker 2: previous discussions of what our ancestors saw of themselves in
Speaker 2: wolves and vice versa. As highly social animals, wild wolves
Speaker 2: reflect aspects of human family and society, and it's only
Speaker 2: rational for these elements to influence our conceptions of human
Speaker 2: wolf hybridity as well. In fact, as author J. Kate
Speaker 2: mentions later on in the She Wolf book quote, aside
Speaker 2: from a brief fashion for presenting female were wolves as
Speaker 2: lonely night stalkers in Victorian literature, the dominant presentation of
Speaker 2: female wear wolves from the Middle Ages onwards has been
Speaker 2: as part of a social unit comprising other were wolves
Speaker 2: or other humans. I won't attempt to summarize everything explored
Speaker 2: in the book. Definitely pick a copy up for yourself
Speaker 2: if you're interested in this topic as i am. There's
Speaker 2: an entire chapter concerning females in the RPG world Werewolf
Speaker 2: the Apocalypse game, for example, but it explores the various
Speaker 2: ways in which female werewolf treatments explore societal ideas concerning
Speaker 2: female connectedness to nature and societal norms related to body, hair, menstruation, sexuality, aging,
Speaker 2: and other topics. And in some cases, certainly, the female
Speaker 2: werewolf can be yet another example of the monstrous feminine,
Speaker 2: in which some aspect of female bodies or female experience
Speaker 2: is othered from the standpoint of patriarchal anxiety. Overall, however,
Speaker 2: a good monster tale can reveal and convey much more.
Speaker 2: The werewolf stands as a nexus between the wild and
Speaker 2: the civilized, between freedom and taboo, between liberty and control,
Speaker 2: and takes on so many additional meanings when applied specifically
Speaker 2: to women. In Daniel Ogden's excellent twenty twenty one book
Speaker 2: The Werewolf in the Ancient World, he of course highlights
Speaker 2: the difficulty in deciding what exactly constitutes a werewolf versus
Speaker 2: other modes of ibrid monsters in various cultures that had
Speaker 2: no precise word for werewolf, and this applies to both
Speaker 2: masculine werewolves and feminine werewolves. Of course, he does mention
Speaker 2: an account that Priest singles out as the entry point
Speaker 2: of the female werewolf into literature. That is Gerald of
Speaker 2: Wales's twelfth century CE Topographia Hibernia. Gerald recounts a priest's
Speaker 2: travels in post Norman invasion Ireland, and specifically his encounter
Speaker 2: with natives of Ossery, who spoke of how a man
Speaker 2: and a woman of their people were picked to undergo
Speaker 2: a seven year transformation into wolf. The locals end up
Speaker 2: bringing the priest to visit the dying she wolf and
Speaker 2: give her last rites. At this moment, the male counterpart
Speaker 2: peels away the wolf's hide from her body, revealing the
Speaker 2: form of an old woman within. It's a perplexing story,
Speaker 2: as priest points out, it's a tale told by an invader.
Speaker 2: Gerald of Wales was half Norman and half wealth Welsh
Speaker 2: and certainly not Irish, and the story concerns the traditions
Speaker 2: and customs of a conquered people. Furthermore, as Ogden points out,
Speaker 2: the story is all the weirder when you consider that
Speaker 2: the people of Ossery have to contend with all of
Speaker 2: this lacanthropy because they were cursed by a priest, and
Speaker 2: in later tellings of the same story, by Saint Patrick himself,
Speaker 2: all for the crime of being disruptive when he tried
Speaker 2: to convert them to Christianity. So driving out snakes is
Speaker 2: one thing, but cursing locals to become werewolves surely quite another.
Speaker 2: In she Wolf, historian Merely Metsi explores Estonian werewolves, specifically
Speaker 2: accounts from the Isle of Sarema, where tales of female
Speaker 2: werewolves are more common than tales of male werewolves. Apparently,
Speaker 2: Estonia is rich in werewolf traditions, which survive in the
Speaker 2: form of various fairy tales, legends, and also some historic
Speaker 2: accounts of witch trials. Metsiti explores the topic from a
Speaker 2: number of different but the overall argument that I found
Speaker 2: most remarkable was that the predominance of female werewolf tales
Speaker 2: in Estonian traditions may connect to greater levels of gender
Speaker 2: equality in pre Christian Estonian and a definite loss of
Speaker 2: those rights as Christian influences permeated Estonian society. Furthermore, we
Speaker 2: may refer back to older connections between the wolf and
Speaker 2: fertility magic, traditional observations of lupine motherhood, and the link
Speaker 2: between maternity and sexuality that was subsequently eradicated under the
Speaker 2: influence of Christian culture. In other words, while laws and
Speaker 2: top down societal norms might have subjugated women, their traditional
Speaker 2: power in Estonia was not so easily erased, and we
Speaker 2: see it remain as protest as recognition, and so forth
Speaker 2: in the tales of Women with the Secret Mind of wolves.
Speaker 2: One Estonian story shared in Mesave's chapter encapsulates several of
Speaker 2: these ideas. The wife also has wolf pups. There are
Speaker 2: different versions, but it essentially tells the story of a
Speaker 2: woman who goes into the woods to hunt and secure
Speaker 2: meat for the family, while her husband seems to stay
Speaker 2: at home in the cabin and seemingly just complain about
Speaker 2: how chilly it is, citing the fact that their child
Speaker 2: is too cold. The wife tells them that their child
Speaker 2: is better off than those who sleep in the straw
Speaker 2: behind the house, and when the husband goes out to investigate,
Speaker 2: he finds several wolf pups, which he promptly kills. The
Speaker 2: next night, while the man lounges in the sauna, a
Speaker 2: great wolf bursts him through the door. And attacks him.
Speaker 2: He manages to defend himself. He burns the wolf with
Speaker 2: a pair of tongs, scaring the creature off, and later
Speaker 2: via the old identifying wound trope, he learns that the
Speaker 2: wolf was in fact his own wife, seeking vengeance for
Speaker 2: his killing of her wild wolf children. Female werewolf stories
Speaker 2: continue to entertain us while also retaining their ability to
Speaker 2: intentional or unintentionally reveal much about the times and places
Speaker 2: they emerge from, revealing both negative societal ideas about women
Speaker 2: as well as more celebratory and even subversive ideas about
Speaker 2: feminine power. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: The Artifact, or adam Alius Dependium each week. As always,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
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