According to Armenian beliefs, there are women who, as a result of mortal sins, are condemned to spend seven years in the form of a wolf. A spirit approaches the women and gives them the wolf skin. He orders them to put it on, and as soon as they do, wolf marks appear on his right hand. Having conquered his nature, he eats his own children, one by one, then devours the children of his relatives according to genealogical closeness, and finally attacks the children outside his family. She then wanders alone at night, and locks and doors open when she approaches. When she is close to morning, she reverts to her human form and sheds her wolf skin. In these cases the transformation is involuntary. But alongside this belief in involuntary metamorphosis are beliefs that humans can transmute into animals at will and then return to their original form.
In particular, France seems to have been infested with werewolves during the 16th century, so there were many consequential lawsuits. In some cases, for example, those of the Gandillon family in the Jura, the tailor of Chalons and Roulet, all occurring in the year 1598, there was clear evidence against those accused of murder and cannibalism, but none associated with wolves; in other cases, such as that of Gilles Garnier in Dole, 1573, there was clear evidence of the existence of a wolf, but none against the defendant; In all cases, with very few exceptions, the defendant was willing to confess and even detail the circumstances of the metamorphosis, which is one of the recurring themes of medieval witchcraft. Even when this fever of lycanthropy (both accusers and suspects) reached its zenith, it was proven in the case of Jean Grenier in 1603, in Bordeaux, that lycanthropy was nothing more than a sick illusion. Since then, the loup-garou ceased to be considered a dangerous heretic and reverted to the pre-Christian position of him as a simple "werewolf" threat. However, female wolves (lubinso lupins) were considered in France to be timid and harmless, in contrast to the feared loup-garou.
According to Bishops Olaus Magnus and Majolus, in the provinces of Prussia, Livonia, and Lithuania, 16th-century werewolves were more destructive than "true wolves," their heterodoxy stemming from the claim by Catholic bishops that they formed a "cursed school". of those "who desire innovations contrary to divine law."
However, at the beginning of the 17th century in England, people accused of witchcraft were still zealously persecuted by James I of England, by then the wolf had already become extinct, so this pious monarch was free (Demonologie, lib. iii. ) of accusing werewolves as victims of an illusion induced by an "overabundance of natural melancholy". Only small creatures like the cat, hare, and weasel remained as vehicles for the evil sorcerer to transform into.
Not all werewolves of the Christian dispensation were considered heretics or viciously disposed against humanity. According to Baronio, in the year 617, a group of wolves appeared in a monastery and destroyed several friars who held views on heresy. The wolves sent by God tore apart the sacrilegious thieves in the army of Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, who had come to plunder the treasure of the Santa Casa de Loreto. A wolf watched over and defended Saint Edmund Martyr, King of England from wild beasts. Saint Odo, abbot of Cluny, ravaged by a pack of foxes, was released and escorted by a wolf (A. de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, 1872, vol. ii. p. 145). Most of the werewolves were innocent and God-fearing people, suffering from the spells of others, or simply destined for an unhappy fate, and who in wolf form behaved admirably, honoring and protecting others. his benefactors. The Bisclaveret in the poem William and the Werewolf by Marie de France (c. 1200), the hero belonged to this class and the many princes and princesses, ladies and gentlemen, who were temporarily left in the form of beasts in German fairy tales (or March). See Snow White and the Rose Red, where the ferocious bear is actually Prince Charming.
In fact, the power to transform others into wild beasts was not only attributed to evil sorcerers, but also to Christian saints. Omnes angeli, boni et mali, ex virtue naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra (All angels, good and bad, have the power to transmute our bodies) was the phrase of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Saint Patrick transformed Vereticus, King of Wales, into a wolf; and Saint Natalius cursed an illustrious family with the result that every member of it was condemned to be a wolf for seven years. In other stories, the divine will is more direct, in Russia it is assumed that men become werewolves provoking the wrath of the devil.
Certain beliefs about the werewolf are based on documented facts. The Beast of Gévaudan was a creature that terrorized the general area of the province of Gévaudan, in the present Department of Lozère, in the Montagne Margeride of southern France, between 1764 and 1767. The beast was frequently described as a giant wolf, that attacked livestock and humans without distinction. She was killed, according to the stories, by Jean Chastel with a silver bullet, hence the myth that werewolves can only be killed with this device.
Theories of its origin
A recent theory has been proposed to explain werewolf episodes in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. Ergot, the ingestion of which causes poisoning, is a fungus that grows where rye is grown in the wet seasons, after very cold winters. Ergot poisoning often affects entire villages or at least poor parts of villages, causing hallucinations, mass hysteria and paranoia, as well as seizures and sometimes death (LSD is derived from ergot). It has been proposed that ergot poisoning causes people to believe they are werewolves, or an entire village to believe they have seen a werewolf.
Like most attempts to use modern science to explain religious beliefs and folklore, this theory is controversial and unsatisfactory. For example, it does not explain why outbreaks of witchcraft hysteria and animal transformation legends exist throughout the world, even in places where ergot is absent. Hysteria and superstition have existed throughout the world for all of recorded history, and generally speaking, mushroom poisoning is not the reason for all these occurrences.
Similarly, some modern researchers have attempted to use conditions such as rabies, hypertrichosis (excessive hair growth all over the body), or porphyria (an enzyme disorder with symptoms including hallucinations and paranoia) as an explanation for the werewolf belief. , although the symptoms of those ailments do not fully match the folklore or evidence of mass hysteria episodes.
There is also a rare mental disorder called clinical lycanthropy, in which the affected person has the delusional belief that they are transforming into another animal, although it is not always a wolf or a werewolf.
Others believe that werewolf legends arose as part of shamanism and animal totem poles in primitive nature-based cultures. The term "theranthropy" has been adopted to describe a spiritual concept in which the individual believes that he or she has the spirit or soul, in whole or in part, of a non-human animal.
The subject of lycanthropy in Extremadura lacks to date the minimal research studies, which is not surprising if we take into account that this is the general trend in the rest of the Peninsula, with exceptions in the westernmost area. Leite de Vasconcellos, Pedroso, Coelho and Teófilo de Braga, in the Portuguese world, and Risco, Bouza-Brey and Prieto, in Galicia, have investigated the world of lycanthropy, and their almost unique contributions can be considered classic. . . The lack of studies in other regions does not mean the absence of this cultural fact. This is precisely what is happening in Extremadura, a region that is part of the west of the peninsula, an area that, according to Caro Baraja, maintains more deeply rooted what has been called the "lycanthropy phenomenon."
In Extremadura, this phenomenon is attached to very specific areas, although with slight exceptions. These are the border strip with Portugal, the Sierra de Gata, Las Hurdes, Tierra de Granadilla and Las Villuercas, natural spaces in which the livestock tradition has been of capital importance for the economy and where the wolf plays a prominent role in multiple folklore variants.
The word lycanthropy or lycanthropy refers to the transformation of man into a wolf, although this word is also generally used to talk about metamorphosis into any other animal. The voice derives from Lycaon, who was king of Arcadia and punished by Jupiter because of his crimes:
«a devouring fire seized the palace. Terrified, Lycaon fled for the shelter of the beasts of the field, hoarse and moaning, raging with blood and death, and, oh, wonder! , his clothes turned into hairy skin; the arms and legs of him, in paws. The wolf with phosphorescent pupils appeared, acts ferocious, with violent forms"
According to Publio Hurtado, the lycanthrope from Extremadura is known by the name of lobushome or lobisome, as in Galician-Portuguese lands, reserving the name of ribosomes for those people who on some occasion turned into donkeys. The latter happens only on the night of San Juan and the victim must be the last of seven siblings, with no female in between.
They say that some witches from La Codosera went to the meetings or covens of San Juan on the back of the town sacristan, who every year for San Juan took the form of a donkey. To free him from such a spell, it was necessary to bleed his right front paw. The same metamorphosis occurred in Guijo de Granadilla in the person of a cheerful young man and an excellent singer. As it was customary to go around the brides on the night of San Juan, the young man also went to sing to his family, but without realizing that he had acquired the form of a quadruped. Logically,
«instead of singing, what he did was touch the window and there was her owner, so he woke her up braying. With what if, huh? , a donkey here giving the can. The bride goes and grabs what she had in her hand and it was a jocino, who put his hand through the window and nailed the donkey's whole leg that made him the groom again... Of course, no bride knew that the harretá that the groom put donkey. He didn't stay like a donkey any more times, but what did stay was lame forever. »
After the previous cases, it is not surprising that Ramón Heredias, a gypsy living in Ahigal, pointed out to me that they never buy a donkey between dusk and dawn on "San Juan's Day" without first bleeding a leg just in case. . He himself told me that one of his ancestors from Mérida was rabid and his father had a good business with him:
«In San Juan he made a donkey and sold it at the Badajoz fair; but the other day it was already calé, and the one who bought it was left without a donkey and didn't realize the matter. Since they didn't know him, he had sales every year because they didn't know him and that of the one who doesn't know you who buys from you. »
The conversion into a donkey is only one section of zoanthropy in Extremadura, as is the transformation of certain people and for different reasons into deer, owls, cats, dogs and bulls. I have compiled myths and legends that speak of all these phenomena or details, the most numerous being those that allude to lycanthropy, with the particularity of gathering formulas, mechanisms, procedures, which indistinctly occur in each and every one of the indicated metamorphoses. .