The future of this blog

In the empty spaces left behind, the Wolves prowl the wasteland.

The well had almost run dry, and the whole Wolf Cult project was to be shuttered and deleted.

So much time had been spent on research that other authors had independently superseded the work, and the ill-omened Black Dog stalked the project.

But… wolves are survivors and this blog and this project is being renewed. The themes will be more esoteric, but there will always be clarity between the seen and the unseen, between known and the speculative.

Image © Peter Marlow
Text – Of Wolf and Man

The Beast Within…

I’m teaming up again with storyteller Jason Buck on Dec 11th for two hours of Werewolf stories and lore. Tickets on sale now!

https://tinyurl.com/TheWolfWithin

First Traces of Wolves and Men

The fact that there are several words for ‘wolf’ of Common Indo-European date shows that the wolf was widespread throughout the Indo-European territory. It also indicates its cultic and ritual significance, which is clearly attested in the oldest Indo-European traditions.

– Indo European and the Indo-Europeans, Gamkrelidze & Ivanov.

The early Indo European (IE) words for wolf and their strong presence 10,000 years later is one of the first key indicators of the cultural resonance of Wolves and the Wolf.

Early domesticated dogs can be seen in murals from the Çatalhöyük site in modern day Turkey which has been dated at approximately 7000 years old.

The mural known as the ‘Shrine of the Hunters’ also possibly shows the beginnings of a ritualised form of hunt that becomes a recurring theme in subsequent Indo European daughter cultures. 

(Wolf/dog in mural detail from, “Shrine of the hunters”, Çatalhöyük, as reconstructed by James Wellaart)

The hunters/warriors are nude save for a clearly depicted (ritual?) belt. The hunters’ prey, a gargantuan auroch, is surrounded on all sides by the hunters as well as smaller animals that look remarkably like domesticated wolves. The animals are hunting side-by side with warriors.

Even further back in time, Mesolithic images of men hunting with wolves, have been found in the prehistoric rock paintings of Tassili N’Ajjer. The images have been dated to c.11,000 BCE.

Further cave paintings of hunters and domesticated canines have been found at Tadrart Acacus.

(Rock art depicting man hunting with dogs. Tadrart Acacus, Libya. © Peter Boekamp)

(Hunter and dog, detail of image from Tadrart Acacus, Libya)

However the earliest image of a wolf can be found in the font De gaume cave in the Dordogne area of France. The images date from the Magdalenian period approximately 15,000 BCE

It is also from this approximate culture that the first symbolic image of a half-animal/half-man figure is found. 

Often described as “The Sorcerer”, the image is in the cavern known as ‘The Sanctuary’ at the Cave of the Trois-Frères, Ariège, France.

The subtlety in the image is hard to discern in the photograph above, however artist Henri Breuil sketched a more vivid image in the 1920s:-

While accuracy of the image has been questioned, its authenticity was confirmed by Jean Clottes as recently as 2011.

If it is a human in a horned head-dress, it’s parallels with the antler headdresses found at StarCarr are unmistakable. 

Thrown to the Wolves

The cultural perception of wolves is suffused with misconceptions and inconsistencies. But the truth is far more nuanced.

The late Barry Lopez opined that, “the wolf exerts a powerful influence on the human imagination. It takes your stare and turns it back on you.”

Lopez, who died in 2020, had an extensive career and left a rich body of work. Of significant relevance to this blog is his classic classic nonfiction Of Wolves and Men. First published in 1978, it describes the complicated and enduring relationship between Wolves and humanity.

The notion that wolves are constantly eager for conflict and human blood, is a gross distortion of the reality of wolf behaviour. The so called ‘Alpha wolf’ theory has also been long debunked by David Mech, same author who coined the phrase.

It is far more likely that these perceptions of wolves are reflections of how humans see themselves.

So Isra Al-Thibehs poetry, despite its romanticism, is in its own way, more accurate than many who paint the wolf in false colours that they would wear themselves. Those blogs and postulations projecting all manner of ideas and concepts into the concept of wolves are chasing their own tail.

As this blog will explore in the coming weeks, the true influence of wolves on humans and human behaviour is both deeper, stranger, wyrd and weirder…

“The Wolves of Winter” Chris Mcauley

“I Was Raised by the Forest” by Kat Philbin

The world is dying.
Yet we are alive
Outsiders, trapped between the forms of man and wolf.
As humans we feel trapped and confined.
Only in our lupine form do we feel free.
The smell of the hunt lingering in the night air.
The cities are dangerous and growing.
We need to feel the earth beneath our claws.
To see the unobstructed moon in the sky.

The human chemicals taint our senses.
We grow hungry and impatient.
When will their time end and ours return.
Before the great empires sprawled across the Earth.
When the glories of Rome and Carthage were fancies of the human mind.
We were worshipped as a pantheon.
Moon kissed and blessed by Gaia herself.
Our packs roamed and defended villages who fed us.
Man sacrificed their children for our protection and to sate our hunger.

Now we feature in films as mirages.
Our pride ruined by human celluloid vanity.
The mother wilts and her bounties deplete.
Starving and impatient we once again populate human cities.
By stealth we assume mantles of politicians, police and schoolteachers.
In the light of the moon we reveal our true nature.
Feasting in the alleyways and narrow twisted streets.
In the winter of your world.
As both our species die from poverty and hunger.
You will feel our teeth at your throats.

Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature

Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature

Between the Monster and the Man

By Minjie Su
——-
(2023, 227 pages, €80 excl VAT)

SUMMARY
At the heart of any story of metamorphosis lies the issue of identity, and the tales of the werwulf (lit. ‘man-wolf’) are just as much about the wolf as about the man. What are the constituents of the human in general? What symbolic significance do they hold? How do they differ for different types of human? How would it affect the individual if one or more of these elements were to be subtracted?

Focusing on a group of Old Norse-Icelandic werewolf narratives, many of which have hitherto been little studied, this insightful book sets out to answer these questions by exploring how these texts understood and conceptualized what it means to be human. At the heart of this investigation are five factors key to the werewolf existence —skin, clothing, food, landscape, and purpose — and these are innovatively examined through a cross-disciplinary approach that carefully teases apart the interaction between two polarizations: the external and social, and the interior and psychological. Through this approach, the volume presents a comprehensive new look at the werewolf not only as a supernatural creature and a literary motif, but also as a metaphor that bears on the relationship between human and non-human, between Self and Other, and that is able to situate the Old-Norse texts into a broader intellectual discourse that extends beyond medieval Iceland and Norway.

CONTENTS
——————
Introduction

– Werewolves in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature
– Werewolves in the Franco-Latin Tradition
– Texts in Focus
– Goals and Structure

Chapter 1: Þeir fóru í hamina
– The Werewolf’s Skin
– The Skin’s Position in Werewolf Literature
– The Skin’s Position in the Appearance-Essence Binary
– The Skin of the Old Norse-Icelandic Werewolves
– Ála flekks saga: A Case Study
– From lupus to leprosus

Chapter 2: Klæddr eða Nokkuiðr
– The Werewolf’s Clothing and the She-Wolf
– The Clothes–Body Dynamics: The Man-Wolf
– The Clothes–Body Dynamics: The Metaphorical She-Wolf
– Dress: Definition, Classification, Function
– From Naked to Clothed: The Knight
– From Clothed to Naked: The Lady

Chapter 3: Et ek þeirra hold
– The Werewolf’s Food and Food Taboo
– What and How Does a Wolf Eat?
– Food and Taboo: What Werewolf Does or Does not Eat
– Tabooed Food and Tabooed Sex: The She-Wolf’s Appetite
– The Scale of the Werewolf’s (Possible) Food: The Acceptable
– The Point of No Return: Human and Horse Flesh

Chapter 4: Á skóg með hryggðum
– The Werewolf’s Landscape and Mindscape Theories and Tools: The Foundation
– Mapping the Werewolf’s Mindscape: An Overview
– Úlfhams rímur: A Tale of Generations
– Úlfhams rímur: Dark Land, Dark Mind

Chapter 5: From Monstratus to Monstrare
– The Werewolf’s Purpose
– Classification of the Characters
– (Were)wolf as Learner: monstratus
– The Disguised Hero as Learner/monstratus, or the Werewolf’s Pupil
– Wolf as Teacher: monstrare
– The Konungs skuggsjá Werewolves: The Foundations
– The Konungs skuggsjá Werewolves: Teaching (of) the Wolf

Conclusion
– What Can We Learn from the Wolf?

Available from Brepols

Hour of the Wolf

The hour approaches

The Wolf Gods

Whether Gods of men or Gods of wolves, the totemic embodiment of wolves runs deep into the psyche of humanity.

Emerging in multiple cultures, the Wolf and Wolf shapes are recurrent spiritual and physical themes.

Humans are both attracted and repelled by the persistence of Wolves, and this dichotomy has itself persisted from deep-time pre-history until the present. There have been Wolf warriors in Nordic, Roman, Slavic, Islamic and many other cultures. Equally there have been self styled Xtian Werewolf Bishops, and Wolf coated assassins through to modern day elite military units.

The Wolf is eternal.

Image: Wolf God Tattoo by Rubywolfe
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgm4xiIjz4M/

Werewolves, Warriors and Winter Sacrifices

Unmasking Kivik and Indo-European Cosmology in Bronze Age Scandinavia

Anders Kaliff and Terje Østigård

“Pastoralism and warrior bands were essential parts of ecology and cosmology; novices were initiated into these brotherhoods as ‘werewolves’. By putting on masks or cloaks, they became ancestors and played a key role in a series of winter sacrifices linked to the agricultural cycle.

“The werewolf myth contains remnants of all lifecycle rituals – from birth to initiation as warriors, marriage, death and becoming an ancestor. Ethnographically, the cultural and cosmological instituion manifested in Kivik can be identified through parts of Europe up to modern times.”

Full 256 page PDF here:
https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1595266/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Gaulish Wolf Warriors and Werewolves

“Moonlight” by Frederic Remington

In this intriguing blog from ‘Howls of the Hunter’ the author “Lucogaros Noxtouiduâ”, describes a reconstructed Wolf Warrior/Werwolf concept.

The Gaulish word for werewolf doniouailos is a reconstructed word from donios meaning “human” and uailos meaning “howler”. Many cultures believe that the names of things hold power and that to speak a thing’s name is to call it into existence so this taboo is being honoured by using the word howler instead of wolf. It is uncertain if the Gauls themselves had a word for this creature so one was created using already attested words. The Gauls did not leave us with any stories of their own regarding this creature either. I have used the similarities found across other cultures to see what may have influenced them so that I can attempt to recreate it. In order to do this I have explored werewolf lore and wolf cults from Greece, Rome, Germania, Ireland and other areas across Europe around the time of the Gauls. The doniouailoi of today will not be the same as they may have been back then because of this but hopefully it will be close enough.

Read the full blog post here
https://howlsofthehunter.wordpress.com/2021/10/22/doniouailoi-werewolves/

A Vampire in Croatia

…there was a widespread belief in Eastern Europe that every soul that died under the curse of a werewolf was doomed to return as a vampire.

In the 1950s archaeologists excavating a 1000 year old Cemetery near the fortified church in Brodski Drenovac, Croatia, uncovered an unusual grave.

In what came to be known as Grave 32 the archaeologists found the remains of a woman that showed evidence of torture prior to death and significant damage to the chest cavity suggesting a stake through the heart. The person had also been beheaded, and partially dismembered prior to burial.

All graves in the cemetery faced East in the direction of the rising sun with the exception of Grave 32, which faces West. The severed head had also been placed unusually, with the back of her head toward her neck.

The folklore of that time, unlike the modern tropes, held that a dead Werewolf would become an undead Vampire, so it is likely that the poor unfortunate who suffered at the hands of her murderers was believed to be either a werewolf herself or under a werewolf curse.

Unfortunately I’ve not been able to verify this story outside of the single Croatian article attributed to “The Office of Treasures and Mysteries” which you can read in its original language here.