Werewolf Stories, page 13
Reverend Peter Irwin-Clark, an evangelical Anglican priest in Brighton and a former lawyer, brushes off criticism of such work by reminding his detractors of the frequent references in the New Testament to demonic possession and the commandments of Christ to his followers to cast out evil spirits.
The Church of England has established the Christian Deliverance Study Group for the purpose of examining the issues of exorcism and demon possession. To divert criticism by mental health professionals that evil spirits are more likely to have their origin in psychiatric disorders than Satan, the church has issued guidelines that advise priests to work in close cooperation with medically trained professionals.
Rev. Tom Willis, an authorized Church of England exorcist for more than 30 years in the York diocese, told the Guardian that his experiences have convinced him that about one in ten people see a ghost in their lifetime:
People see apparitions, objects moving around, they experience being tapped on their shoulder, doors opening or strange smells. I’ve seen objects disappearing and re-appearing in a neighboring room. It’s not clear to me whether this is an offshoot of the human mind — some sort of stress leaking out — or if it is something using human energy. I’ve had the experience of poltergeists reading my mind. It can be quite frightening.
In their remarkable book Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession, Ed and Lorraine Warren recount the exorcism of Bill Ramsey, a man possessed with the spirit of a werewolf, by Bishop Robert McKenna. The Warrens were in attendance, along with a number of journalists and four off-duty policemen, especially hired by the bishop to defend him from the werewolf’s violent attacks. During the course of the exorcism, when Bishop McKenna placed his crucifix against Ramsey’s forehead,
the werewolf inside him went berserk. He came up from his chair snarling and growling and grasping at the Bishop. … The Bishop had no choice but to retreat beyond the altar gate. Bill, spittle flying from his mouth, eyes wild, began to rush through the gate. … But the priest stood absolutely still now, holding his cross up once again and beginning to speak in Latin. … Bill felt suddenly weak. … He felt his desire to attack the Bishop begin to fade. … The werewolf’s power was slipping quickly away. A faint roar sounded in Bill’s chest, and then faded. He brought up his hands, but they were no longer clawlike. They were merely hands.
Father Pellegrino Ernetti, an exorcist with the Vatican, has stated that some people actually do make pacts with Satan to become powerful werewolf-like creatures and to gain material success on Earth. He tells of a young French boxer who made such a pact after his career in the ring had proven to be very disappointing. After he allowed the beast to come into him, he was soon winning bout after bout — but then he still had the conscience to realize that his opponents very often were severely injured or disabled after fighting with him.
Father Ernetti said that the young boxer had the courage to come to him for help, and after a difficult series of exorcisms, he was able to drive the beast from his body. Now the man leads a happy, normal life as a garage mechanic in Paris.
For the first time since 1614, the Vatican issued new guidelines for exorcisms in January 1999. The new rite of exorcism is written in Latin and contained in a red, leather-bound, 84-page book, and it reflects Pope John Paul II’s efforts to convince a skeptical, materialistic generation that Satan is alive, well, and very much in the world. As Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, a Vatican official, put it, “The existence of the devil isn’t an opinion, something to take or leave as you wish.”
Although the revisions do not drastically alter the words or the gestures to be used by the exorcists, the update does provide optional texts that may be utilized by the priests. And the new guidelines stress that the priest must be certain that the afflicted is not suffering from a mental illness or the excesses of his or her own imagination.
Sources:
“Clergy Responds to an Increasing Demand for Exorcisms.” Guardian, December 30, 1998.
D’Emilio, Frances. “Vatican Updates Rules for Exorcisms.” Associated Press, January 26, 1999.
Steiger, Brad, and Sherry Hansen Steiger. Demon Deaths. New York: Berkley Publishing, 1991.
Warren, Ed, and Lorraine Warren. Werewolf: A True Story of Demonic Possession. New York: St. Martin’s, 1993.
Fairy Lore: Selkies and Dryads
Within the history of fairy lore, there exists a tradition of these magical — and sometimes manipulative, dangerous, and even deadly — entities having the ability to shape-shift into a near-dizzying number of forms. We’ll begin with one of the lesser-known creatures that falls into the fairy category. It is the Selkie, a beast that is most associated with the people and the old folklore of northern Scotland, the Shetland and Orkney islands, Ireland, and Iceland. It is fair to say that the Selkie is not too dissimilar from the legendary mermaid, although, as will become apparent, there are significant differences.
Like the mermaid and merman, the Selkie is an animal that dwells deep in ocean waters and has a long-standing connection to the human race. Also like mermaids, the Selkie is said to be a seducer supreme. Whereas mermaids and mermen, in times past, were perceived as being half-human and half-fish in appearance, they were not shape-shifters. Rather, they were a combination of creatures. The Selkie, however, has the unique ability to take on two specific forms, that of a seal and that of a human, both male and female. Whereas mermaids are limited to living in the oceans, the Selkie exists as a seal in the water and as a human on land. It achieves the latter by discarding its seal skin and taking on human form — that of a beautiful, alluring woman or a handsome, muscular man.
One theory suggests that Selkies are the souls of drowned seafarers, such as sailors and fishermen.
While the Selkie is certainly a manipulative creature — as all fairies are said to be — it is not a malicious one, for the most part. Not only do Selkies have a deep affinity for the human race, but they are also attracted to us — physically, emotionally, and sexually. A Selkie may live in the seas of our world for an extraordinarily long period of time. Should, however, one of these magical things develop an attraction to a human, they will cast off and carefully hide their sealskin and take to the land in human guise. A twist on this aspect of the legend maintains that if the person in question can locate the hidden hide, then the Selkie will remain with that person, and its love will last as long as its human companion lives.
Even when the Selkie stays on the land with its lover, the time may come when the yearning to return to the sea becomes overpowering and, finally, irresistible. Generally speaking, the Selkie — which, in typical fairy style, has an extremely long lifespan — will only do so when its human partner has passed on. When the grieving process is over, the Selkie will seek out the sealskin that it discarded and hid years earlier, take on its original seal form, and spend the rest of its life traveling the seas.
As for what the Selkies really are, that is very much a matter of conjecture. Most people would likely relegate the entire matter to the world of folklore. Just maybe, however, most people might be wrong. One theory suggests that Selkies are the souls of drowned seafarers, such as sailors and fishermen. The notion that the human dead can return to our plain of existence as animalistic shape-shifters is widespread. Then there is the theory that the Selkies represent an ancient group of humans who, in the distant past, chose to return to the seas in which life began: they gradually took on new forms as they became more accustomed to living in the water.
A sixteenth-century engraving depicts dryads dancing around an oak tree. In ancient Greece the Dryads were both guardians of the trees and the trees themselves: every tree had its own spirit, which could appear in tree form or as a sprite-like fairy being.
A more down-to-earth scenario concerns an ancient Hebrides clan, the MacCorums. They were said to display one specific and unusual characteristic, a genetic anomaly that affected their hands, giving them a webbed and flipper-like appearance. This led to the creation of a rumor — one that eventually became accepted as hard fact — that the waters off the Scottish mainland were the collective domain of animals that were part human and part seal.
Whatever the truth of the matter, it is intriguing to note that despite having centuries-old origins, beliefs in the Selkie still exist in certain parts of Scotland, including its surrounding isles, and Iceland. By contrast, mermaids now are almost universally seen as mythological entities. Indeed, David Thompson’s 1954 book, The People of the Sea, which is a full-length study of the Selkie saga, makes it abundantly clear that well into the twentieth century, the Selkie was perceived by Scottish folk as a real, living shape-shifter.
Of the many and varied kinds of fairies that were said to possess the awesome powers of shape-shifting, certainly one of the most mysterious, and strangest of all, was the Dryad. It was a definitive elemental of magical proportions that took shape-shifting to a unique level. The Dryad was a supernatural entity that featured heavily in ancient Greek mythology and was exclusively associated with forests and woods. There was a very good reason for that: the Dryad had the uncanny and eerie ability to transform itself into a tree!
In essence, the Dryads were what we would consider today to be nature spirits — nymphs, one might be justified in saying. While in ancient Greece, the Dryads were seen as the guardians and protectors of trees and of the woods, there was a related belief that they were the trees: that each and every tree had its own spirit, which could appear in the form of the tree itself or as a sprite-like fairy being.
While in ancient Greece, the Dryads were seen as the guardians and protectors of trees and of the woods, there was a related belief that they were the trees.
Different trees were possessed by — or could shape-shift into — different elementals and vice versa. For example, according to the Greeks, ash trees were the domain of the Meliai, well known within Greek mythology as the protectors of the mighty Greek god Zeus during his earliest years. Mulberry bushes were cared for by a subgroup of Dryads known as the Morea. The Syke did likewise for fig trees, the Balanos for the oak, and Ptelea for the elm tree. There was a good reason why so much care and dedication went into protecting the trees: should a tree die, then the elemental within it — or, depending on one’s belief system, the entity that could shape-shift into the tree — would die, too. Just like the Selkie of Scotland and Iceland, the Dryads possessed the magical ability to transform themselves into beautiful women and handsome men, with the female entity being the most often reported.
Despite the ancient origins of the Dryads, and just like the trees and forests around us, they have never really gone away. For example, they appear prominently in C. S. Lewis’s classic Chronicles of Narnia books and movies, demonstrating that despite the passage of time, the old traditions and beliefs continue.
Sources:
“Dryades Oreads.” Theoi Greek Mythology. 2016. http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/Dryades.html.
“The Dryads.” Roman and Greek Gods. 2016. http://www.talesbeyondbelief.com/nymphs/dryads.htm.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. Wayne, NJ: New Page Books, 2004.
Gifford, Elisabeth. “The Secret History Hidden in the Selkie Story.” Elisabeth Gifford (blog). May 3, 2014. http://www.elisabethgifford.com/blog/2014/5/3/the-secret-history-hidden-in-the-selkie-story.
“A Selkie Story.” Education Scotland. 2016. http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandsstories/aselkiestory/.
Thomson, David. The People of the Sea. Edinburgh, Scotland: Canongate Classic, 1996.
Towrie, Sigurd. “The Selkie-folk.” Orkneyjar. 2016. http://www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/selkiefolk/.
Fenrir
When Garmr, the hound of hell, breaks free and begins its awful baying, Fenrir, the wolf child of the giantess Angrboda and the god Loki, will snap its fetters and devour the father of the gods, Odin, before Vioarr can protect him. All of these events signal the onset of Ragnarok (in Old Norse, “the final destiny of the gods”), the destruction of the old world and the old gods. Vioarr, the strongest of the gods after Thor, appears soon after Odin has been killed by Fenrir, and he avenges him by grasping the wolf’s jaws in his hands and ripping its mouth apart. Fenrir dies, and Vioarr joins the generation of gods who will live in the new world.
After Loki fathered Fenrir with Angrboda, the gods decided to rear the wolf. But when Fenrir grew too strong for them to handle comfortably, they bound him.
In some accounts of the myth of Ragnarok, Loki fathered three children by his dalliance with the giantess Angrboda — Fenrir, the wolf child; the Midgard serpent; and Hel. The gods decided to rear the wolf, but when Fenrir grew too strong for them to handle comfortably, they decided to bind him. The werewolf easily broke his fetters until dwarfs at last managed to create a chain that he could not shatter until he regained his freedom at Ragnarok, the end of the old world.
In certain tellings of the onset of Ragnarok, Garmr and Fenrir become one wolf that rips free of its chains and kills Odin. In other accounts, Garmr is also a wolf, and when Fenrir is freed, one of them swallows the sun, the other the moon. Still other versions allow Garmr and Fenrir to assume their traditional roles in the drama and assign the names Skoll and Hati to the two wolves who devour the sun and the moon.
Sources:
Davidson, Ellis H. R. Gods and Myths of the Viking Age. New York: Barnes Noble, 1996.
Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Translated by Angela Hall. Rochester, NY: Boydell Brewer, 1993.
Fortune, Dion (1890–1946)
Dion Fortune, the British occultist and author of the occult classic Psychic Self-Defense, defines the “psychic parasitism” and “psychic vampirism” that can result from any relationship in which one of the partners “feeds” upon the energy of the other. Such a psychic drain may occur in a pair of friends or lovers, between marriage partners, between parent and child, and even in the office or workplace. Fortune was a pupil of J. W. Brodie-Innes, one of the leaders of the Golden Dawn, and she later formed the Fraternity of the Inner Light.
In her book Psychic Self-Defense, she tells how on one occasion she inadvertently created a werewolf with a powerful projection of her will. She had been lying in bed in that familiar altered state of consciousness wherein one is half-awake and half-asleep, brooding over her resentment against someone she was convinced had deliberately slandered her. In an interesting flow of thought progression, she considered throwing off all restraints and going berserk, like the Viking warriors of old. Then came the thought of Fenrir, the powerful and evil “judgment day” wolf of Norse mythology.
“Immediately I felt a curious drawing-out sensation from my solar plexus,” she writes, “and there materialized beside me on the bed was a large wolf.”
When she appeared about to move, the wolf snarled at her, and she admitted that it required all of the courage she could muster to order it off her bed. At last, the creature went meekly from the bed, turned into a dog, and vanished through the wall in the northern corner of the room. The next morning, Ms. Fortune said, someone else in the house spoke of dreaming of wolves and having awakened in the night to see the eyes of a wild animal glowing in the dark.
Sources:
Cavendish, Richard. The Powers of Evil. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975.
Fox Maidens of Japan
The seventeenth-century scholar P’u Sung Ling devoted his life to collecting and recording accounts of the fox maidens of Japan. One such story tells of the encounter of a young man named Sang.
Late one night Sang heard a knock at his door. When he allowed the unexpected visitor to enter his home, he was astonished to behold a girl of such great beauty that his heart began immediately to pound. When she identified herself as Lien Shiang, a singing girl from the red-light district of the village, Sang allowed his passion to take full control of his senses and he made love to the beautiful girl until dawn. Lien Shiang left at sunrise, but she promised to return to him every fourth or fifth night.
On one of those nights when Sang was not expecting Lien Shiang, he sat alone, deeply engrossed in his studies. When he glanced up from his work, he was startled to see that a very young, very elegant girl with long, flowing hair stood watching him. For a nervous moment, Sang wondered if she might be one of the fox maidens about whom he had so often heard eerie tales. The lovely girl laughed and promised him that she was not such a creature. Her name was Lee, and she came from a very honorable family.
When Sang took her proffered hand and led her to a sitting cushion, he could not help noticing how cold she felt. She quickly explained that she had been chilled by the evening frost as she walked to his house. Lee went on to astonish Sang by her admission that she had fallen in love with him from afar and that she had decided to sacrifice her virginity to him that very night. Hardly able to believe his good fortune, the young student enjoyed an evening of rapture with the beautiful and highly responsive girl.
Before she left the next morning, she forthrightly asked Sang if there were any other women in his life. The student admitted his liaison with Lien Shiang, and Lee became very serious when she stated that she must be careful to avoid the other girl, because they were of very different classes. Then she presented Sang with one of her shoes, whispering that whenever he touched it, she would know that he was thinking of her. But before she left in the mist of dawn, she admonished him never to take the shoe out when Lien Shiang was there with him.
The next evening, when he paused in his studies, Sang took the shoe from its hiding place and began to stroke it lovingly, his thoughts filled with the memory of the lovely Lee. Within moments, she was at his side. After their embrace, Sang wondered aloud how she had come to his home so quickly, but Lee only smiled and evaded the question.
