Ammon was not always a demon. He was formerly a divinity originating from the Ammonites, that Aramaean tribe defeated by Jephthah, Saul and other great leaders of Israel.
In those times Ammon was represented as a being of prodigious stature with the head of a wolf, and later with that of an owl. In this context, Ammon was one of the first gods with the appearance of a lycanthrope.
It is said that Ammon's temperament was fearsome, although like all creatures related to wolves he was also sociable and sought the company of his peers.
When Ammon was enraged he used to vomit tongues of fire capable of destroying entire regions, although these episodes are quite rare in his history.
Ammon's true passion was to discover the secrets of the past and the riddles of the future. In fact, Ammon was believed to be able to navigate through time.
Almost all the grimoires coincide in calling him a prince, thus alluding to his noble lineage. The forbidden books of the Middle Ages maintain that Ammon's main occupation was to reconcile lovers and friends who for one reason or another have drifted apart; provided that the reason for their disputes is less than the possibilities of their love projected into the future.
Perhaps that is why most of the cursed books maintain that Ammon was the first lycanthrope in love.
Legends of men turning into wolves have existed since ancient times, and their origins are lost in the mists of time.
In this darkness the myth of werewolves is born, whose characteristics are somewhat incongruous, even for that poetic logic that studies mythology.
Within that terrifying vision of horror, the projection of human features combined with the bestial and the wild stands out. The logical response to the dangers that rural life entails would be to imagine the feared natural predators as catalytic vehicles of the myth, however, the extraordinary human imagination chose to evoke its nightmares through the skin of a man transformed into a wolf through certain circumstances. that vary according to their latitude, but that always maintain a common feature: the true enemy is not the wolf, but the man who inhabits it.
The primitive inhabitants who arrived in Europe from the East found a hostile region of endless forests and treacherous swamps and swamps. The new environment was surprising to them, except in one point: the wolf, a creature they already knew and feared in equal measure.
The migratory waves of Indo-Europeans brought with them the word that designated them. Its root has not changed to this day: Vrika, Lycos, Lupus, Vulf, Wilf, Irfus, Wolf, Lobo. All these variants grow from a common stem: the Indo-European word Vrik, which designated wolves in general.
It did not require much imagination to endow the wolf with cunning, strength, and intelligence, since these virtues are typical of this skillful cooperative hunter, with a complex social life, capable of inhabiting large communities where roles are clearly established.
It is strange, but also revealing, that the legends of werewolves speak of solitary, isolated creatures that run wild in the forests looking for unwary prey, while real wolves only move in packs.
This contrast makes it clear that what is truly shocking in the combination between men and wolves is not precisely the wolves, but the human being.
The forerunner of the werewolf myth is Ammon, the enamored werewolf, although he achieved greater popularity in the story of Lycaon, that unfortunate king of Arcadia. The legend is collected by Pausanias, Plato and Ovid, among many others.
Lycaon was the son of Pelasgo (or of Titan and Gaia); he was the founding father and first king of the city of Licasura, erecting an altar on Mount Lyceum in honor of Zeus Thunderclap. However, he committed the imprudence of wanting to deceive the gods by inviting them to a banquet in which he served roast meat from his own son, disguised in a kind of stew.
The heresy was exposed. Only Demeter, mother of Persephone, managed to taste the blasphemous delicacy, whose claims led Zeus to condemn Lycaon and his entire lineage to become wolves, that is, to live and eat like wild beasts.
From this legend is born the tradition of the werewolf. Lycaon is a deformation of the Greek word lykhos, "wolf", which over time would end up designating all werewolves through the compound word: lycanthrope (from lykhos, "wolf", and anthropos, "man").
Many scholars claim that the legend of the transformation into a wolf during the full moon is a late addition, possibly medieval, based on an account by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (Naturalis Historia), where he narrates the curse suffered by the sorcerer Domacus. , who for having committed anthropophagy was sentenced to become a wolf during the nights of the full moon.
The myth of the werewolf flourished throughout ancient literature. It even appears in the Satyricon, attributed to Petronius. There, in chapter XLII. One of the roguish protagonists of it, named Nirceo, tells us how a Roman soldier approached the cemetery during the full moon, undressed leaving his clothes on a grave, urinated on them, and then turned into a ferocious and enormous black wolf. .
Thus Petronius concludes the story of the lycanthrope in the mouth of Nirceo.
I understood then that he was the wolf Melisa had told me about, and from then on she would have let me kill rather than eat a piece of bread in her company. Those who do not know me, and believe that I lie, go to trial, but may the guardian geniuses of this house drown me if what I have said is false.
An equally dramatic situation occurs in the Arthurian cycle, where a werewolf named Melion appears in King Arthur's court.
Now, not only classical antiquity knew werewolves, in fact, the idea that man could become a wolf is strongly present in Norse mythology, where the figure of the Berserker existed, that is, half-bear half-human creatures. or wolves.
These types of transformations were later adopted by the people of the Balkans. Many of these legends were based on real events, many were even taken seriously by intellectuals of enormous stature.
One of the legends of werewolves from the Balkans states that if a man drinks in the same waters in which he recently drank a wolf, he can transform into a lycanthrope.
In Ireland it was believed that if a friar was excessively severe with his faithful on Easter Eve, they would surely turn into wolves. Even the notorious Saint Patrick cursed an Irish clan for their lack of faith, turning all its members into werewolves within seven years.
Some Spanish legends mention that the local witches had a particular facility for turning into wolves. It was said that if one of these ladies stared at an infant, he would also belong to the select clan of werewolves.
In Italy they were less complicated in terms of the possibilities of transformation, since it was only enough to have been conceived during the full moon, or to sleep outdoors during Fridays under the light of the moon to belong to the family of lycanthropes.
The werewolf could take various forms. He sometimes adopted the figure of a black wolf of enormous dimensions, or also as a human-shaped being but excessively hairy and with deep red eyes. This last form is the one that knew how to have more illustrative representations in the grimoires.
The werewolves of the Middle Ages attacked the neck directly, consuming the raw meat, though not the organs, just the muscles and skin.
In general, it was thought that witches could become wolves by wearing certain cloaks with magical properties. This belief also achieved something of a metamorphosis, as over time it became art. In Goya's fantastic work, The Flight of the Witches, a sorceress can be seen under a cloak just before taking the form of a wolf to go to the coven.
During the height of the Holy Inquisition, it was not necessary to look at a werewolf to detect it, since there were very precise signs to check if a man changed his shape at night.
Some of the "symptoms" that were attributed to lycanthropy were the following:
Swelling of the face.
Insensitivity to insect bites.
Use of words whose semantics were suspect.
Insensitivity to the stings applied by the pious inquisitors.
These were some of the excuses for torturing those accused of lycanthropy, but perhaps the most famous of all was the so-called "belly clamor". (Cramps and poop, come on…)
In Italy, during the 16th century, it was thought that werewolves, when they returned to their human form, hid the excess hair inside their skin, that is, that the shaggy black fur grew inward during the day to sprout during metamorphosis. There are several references to the poor devils who fell under the clutches of this belief, who were scalded alive to corroborate the most ridiculous accusations of lycanthropy.
The processes against werewolves are varied and very numerous. There are the records of a well-known trial against a pack of werewolves in Paris, the proceedings against Courtaud and the Ansbach wolves, among many others.
The remedies to combat werewolves are so numerous that it would be impossible to mention them all, so we will only give an account of the most common ones, which does not mean that they are the least absurd.
In France it was believed that the only way to kill a werewolf was by extracting three drops of blood, a task as complicated as it was implausible. To add a greater degree of difficulty, the tradition maintains that the extraction must take place at the same moment of the metamorphosis.
In the Balkans they were more prudent, since it was enough to give the lycanthrope an infusion of aconite, a medicinal plant, to eliminate it permanently.
For those lore fundamentalists, we advise that the belief in silver bullets as a means of killing a werewolf dates back to precisely the time bullets were invented.
It is fruitless to search for legends of werewolves killed with bullets from bullets before the invention of gunpowder.
Let me clarify, in passing, that a silver bullet is not enough to kill a werewolf. The matter is a little more complicated, since the bullet must be made with the silver of some religious or sacred object, and then sanctified by a cleric.
The legend is so well known that we do not believe we are capable of contributing anything new, in fact, we have only compiled information without drawing any personal conclusions. So that we are not accused of pathological lukewarmness, we will make a small contribution to the debate, somewhat elusive if you will, but still original:
Werewolves do not exist, that is, there is no classical legend that combines both natures. We will never read that a lycanthrope can speak, reason or love; nor will we see a man with wolfish characteristics, since if he had them he would be a wolf and not a man. Wolves exist and men exist, and the legend only acquires relevance during that fleeting moment of metamorphosis, in those few seconds in which two natures are confused, where two essences sway without imposing one on the other.
Only in those ephemeral moments can we speak of a being that is part man and part wolf.
And finally, I am going to go a little further... I risk another hypothesis: we all suffer a daily metamorphosis. Every day we transform into a being that we are not by acting in this THEATER that is LIFE. We are fully aware of this and we change our way of being and acting according to what suits us at all times. But there are times, that this change is not entirely conscious...