HOW TO BECOME A WERWOLF
As I have already stated, in some people lycanthropy is hereditary; and
when it is not hereditary it may be acquired through the performance of
certain of the rites ordained by Black Magic. For the present I can only
deal with the more general features of these rites (which vary according
to locality) and the conditions of mind essential to those who would
successfully practise these rites. In the first place, it is necessary
that the person desirous of acquiring the property of lycanthropy should
be in earnest and a believer in those superphysical powers whose favour
he is about to ask.
Assuming we have such an individual he must, first of all, betake
himself to a spot remote from the haunts of men. The powers to be
petitioned are not to be found promiscuously--anywhere. They favour only
such waste and solitary places as the deserts, woods, and mountain-tops.
The locality chosen, our candidate must next select a night when the
moon is new and strong.[56:1] He must then choose a perfectly level
piece of ground, and on it, at midnight, he must mark, either with chalk
or string--it really does not matter which--a circle of not less than
seven feet in radius, and within this, and from the same centre, another
circle of three feet in radius. Then, in the centre of this inner circle
he must kindle a fire, and over the fire place an iron tripod containing
an iron vessel of water. As soon as the water begins to boil the
would-be lycanthropist must throw into it handfuls of any three of the
following substances: Asafoetida, parsley, opium, hemlock, henbane,
saffron, aloe, poppy-seed and solanum; repeating as he does so these
words:--
"Spirits from the deep
Who never sleep,
Be kind to me.
"Spirits from the grave
Without a soul to save,
Be kind to me.
"Spirits of the trees
That grow upon the leas,
Be kind to me.
"Spirits of the air,
Foul and black, not fair,
Be kind to me.
"Water spirits hateful,
To ships and bathers fateful,
Be kind to me.
"Spirits of earthbound dead
That glide with noiseless tread,
Be kind to me.
"Spirits of heat and fire,
Destructive in your ire,
Be kind to me.
"Spirits of cold and ice,
Patrons of crime and vice,
Be kind to me.
"Wolves, vampires, satyrs, ghosts!
Elect of all the devilish hosts!
I pray you send hither,
Send hither, send hither,
The great grey shape that makes men shiver!
Shiver, shiver, shiver!
Come! Come! Come!"
The supplicant then takes off his vest and shirt and smears his body
with the fat of some newly killed animal (preferably a cat), mixed with
aniseed, camphor, and opium. Then he binds round his loins a girdle made
of wolf's-skin, and kneeling down within the circumference of the first
circle, waits for the advent of the Unknown. When the fire burns blue
and quickly dies out, the Unknown is about to manifest itself; if it
does not then actually appear it will make its presence felt.
There is little consistency in the various methods of the spirit's
advent: sometimes a deep unnatural silence immediately precedes it;
sometimes crashes and bangs, groanings and shriekings, herald its
approach. When it remains invisible its presence is indicated and
accompanied by a sensation of abnormal cold and the most acute terror.
It is sometimes visible in the guise of a huntsman--which is, perhaps,
its most popular shape--sometimes in the form of a monstrosity, partly
man and partly beast--and sometimes it is seen ill defined and only
partially materialized. To what order of spirits it belongs is, of
course, purely a matter of conjecture. I believe it to be some
malevolent, superphysical, creative power, such as, in my opinion,
participated largely in the creation of this and other planets. I do not
believe it to be the Devil, because I do not believe in the existence of
only one devil, but in countless devils. It is difficult to say to what
extent the Unknown is believed to be powerful by those who approach it
for the purpose of acquiring the gift of lycanthropy; but I am inclined
to think that the majority of these, at all events, do not ascribe to it
any supreme power, but regard it merely as a local spirit--the spirit
of some particular wilderness or forest.
Of course, it is quite possible that the property of werwolfery might be
acquired by other than a direct personal communication with the Unknown,
as, for example, by eating a wolf's brains, by drinking water out of a
wolf's footprints, or by drinking out of a stream from which three or
more wolves have been seen to drink; but as most of the stories I have
heard of werwolfery acquired in this way are of a wild and improbable
nature, I think there is little to be learned from the _modus operandi_
they advocate. The following story, which I believe to be true in the
main, was told me by a Dr. Broniervski, whom I met in Boulogne.
"Ten years ago," my informant began, "I was engaged in a geological
expedition in Montenegro. I left Cetinge in company with my escort,
Dugald Dalghetty, a Dalmatian who had served me on many former
occasions; but owing to an accident I was compelled to leave him behind
at a village about thirty miles east of the capital. As it was
absolutely necessary for me to have a guide, I chose a Montenegrin
called Kniaz. Dalghetty warned me against him. 'Kniaz has the evil eye,'
he said; 'he will bring misfortune on you. Choose some one else.'
"Kniaz was certainly not particularly prepossessing. He was tall and
angular, and pock-marked and sandy-haired; and his eyes had a peculiar
cast--only a cast, of course, nothing more. To balance these detractions
he was civil in his manners and extremely moderate in his terms.
Dalghetty, faithful fellow, almost wept as he watched us depart. 'I
shall never see you again,' he said. 'Never!'
"Just outside the last cottage in the village we passed a gigantic,
broad-shouldered man, clad in the usual clothes of frieze, a black
skullcap, wide trousers, and tights from the knee to the ankle. Over his
shoulders was a new white strookah, of which he seemed very proud;
whilst he had a perfect armament of weapons--rifles, pistols,
yatagan--polished up to the knocker--and cartouche-box. He was
conversing with a girl at one of the windows, but turned as we came up
to him and leered impudently at Kniaz. The sallow in Kniaz's cheeks
turned to white, and the cast in his eyes became ten times more
pronounced. But he said nothing--only drooped his head and shuffled a
little closer to me.
"For the rest of the day he spoke little; and I could tell from his
expression and general air of dejection that he was still brooding over
the incident. The following morning--we stayed the night in a wayside
inn--Kniaz informed me that the route we had intended taking to
Skaravoski--the town I meant to make the head quarters for my daily
excursions--was blocked (a blood feud had suddenly been declared between
two tribes), and that consequently we should have to go by some other
way. I inquired who had told him and whether he was sure the information
was correct. He replied that our host had given him the warning, and
that the possibility of such an occurrence had been suggested to him
before leaving Cetinge. 'But,' he added, 'there is no need to worry, for
the other road, though somewhat wild and rough, is, in reality, quite as
safe, and certainly a good league and a half shorter.' As it made no
very great difference to me which way I went, I acquiesced. There was no
reason to suspect Kniaz of any sinister motive--cases of treachery on
the part of escorts are practically unknown in Montenegro--and if it
were true that some of the tribes were engaged in a vendetta, then I
certainly agreed that we could not give them too wide a berth. At the
same time I could not help observing a strange innovation in Kniaz's
character. Besides the sullenness that had laid hold of him since his
encounter with the man and girl, he now exhibited a restless
eagerness--his eyes were never still, his lips constantly moved, and I
could frequently hear him muttering to himself as we trudged along. He
asked me several times if I believed in the supernatural, and when I
laughingly replied 'No, I am far too practical and level-headed,' he
said 'Wait. We are now in the land of spirits. You will soon change your
opinion.'
"The country we were traversing was certainly forbidding--forbidding
enough to be the hunting ground of legions of ferocious animals. But the
supernatural! Bah! I flouted such an idea. All day we journeyed along a
lofty ridge, from which, shortly before dusk, it became necessary to
descend by a narrow and precipitous declivity, full of danger and
difficulty. At the bottom we halted three or four hours, to wait for the
moon, in a position sufficiently romantic and uncomfortable. A
north-east wind, cold and biting, came whistling over the hills, and
seemed to be sucked down into the hollow where we sat on the chilly
stones. The moment we sighted the slightly depressed orb of the moon
over the vast hill of rocks, and the Milky Way spanning the heavens with
a brilliancy seen only in the East, we pushed on again. On, along a
painfully rough and uneven track, flanked on either side by
perpendicular masses of rock that reared themselves, black and frowning,
like some huge ruined wall. On, till we eventually came to the end of
the defile. Then an extraordinary scene burst upon us.
"Whilst the irregular line of rocks continued close on our left, beyond
it--glittering in the miraculously magnifying moonlight with more
gigantic proportions than nature had afforded--was a huge pile of white
rocks, looking like the fortifications of some vast fabulous city. There
were yawning gateways flanked by bastions of great altitude; towers and
pyramids; crescents and domes; and dizzy pinnacles; and castellated
heights; all invested with the unearthly grandeur of the moon, yet
showing in their wide breaches and indescribable ruin sure proofs that
during a long course of ages they had been battered and undermined by
rain, hurricane, and lightning, and all the mighty artillery of time.
Piled on one another, and repeated over and over again, these strangely
contorted rocks stretched as far as the eye could reach, sinking,
however, as they receded, and leading the mind, though not the eye, down
to the plain below, through which a turbid stream wound its way
rebelliously, like some great twisting, twirling, silvery-scaled
serpent.
"It was into this gorge that Kniaz in a voice thrilling with excitement
informed me we must plunge.
"'It is called,' he explained to me, 'the haunted valley, and it is said
to have been from time immemorial under the spell of the grey spirits--a
species of phantasm, half man and half animal, that have the power of
metamorphosing men into wild beasts.' Horses, he went on to inform me,
showed the greatest reluctance to enter the valley, which was a sure
proof that the place was in very truth phantom-ridden. I must say its
appearance favoured that theory. The path by which we descended was
almost perpendicular, and filled with shadows. Precipices hemmed us in
on every side; and here and there a huge fragment of rock, standing like
a petrified giant, its summit gleaming white in the moonbeams, barred
our way.
"On reaching the bottom we found ourselves exactly opposite the pile of
white rocks, at the base of which roared the stream. Kniaz now declared
that our best plan was to halt and bivouac here for the night. I
expostulated, saying that I did not feel in the least degree tired, that
the spot was far from comfortable, and that I preferred to push on.
Kniaz then pleaded that he was too exhausted to proceed, and, in fact,
whined to such an extent that in the end I gave way, and lying down
under cover of a boulder, tried to imagine myself in bed. I did actually
fall asleep, and awoke with the sensation of something crawling over my
face. Sitting up, I looked around for Kniaz--he was nowhere to be seen.
The oddness of his behaviour, his alternate talkativeness and
sullenness, and the anxiety he had manifested to come by this route,
made me at last suspicious. Had he any ulterior motive in leading me
hither? What had become of him? Where was he? I got up and approached
the margin of the stream, and then for the first time I felt frightened.
The illimitable possibilities of that enormous mass of castellated rocks
towering above me both quelled and fascinated me. Were these flickering
shadows shadows, or--or had Kniaz, after all, spoken the truth when he
said this valley was haunted? The moonlight rendered every object I
looked upon so startlingly vivid, that not even the most trivial detail
escaped my notice, and the more I scrutinized the more firmly the
conviction grew on me that I was in a neighbourhood differing
essentially from any spot I had hitherto visited. I saw nothing with
which I had been formerly conversant. The few trees at hand resembled no
growth of either the torrid, temperate, or northern frigid zones, and
were altogether unlike those of the southern latitudes with which I was
most familiar. The very rocks were novel in their mass, their colour,
and their stratification; and the stream itself, utterly incredible as
it may appear, had so little in common with the streams of other
countries that I shrank away from it in alarm. I am at a loss to give
any distinct idea of the nature of the water. I can only say it was not
like ordinary water, either in appearance or behaviour. Even in the
moonlight it was not colourless, nor was it of any one colour,
presenting to the eye every variety of green and blue. Although it fell
over stones and rocks with the same rapid descent as ordinary water, it
made no sound, neither splash nor gurgle. Summoning up courage, I dipped
my fingers in the stream; it was quite cold and limpid. The difference
did not lie there. I was still puzzling over this phenomenon, still
debating in my mind the possibility of the valley being haunted, when I
heard a cry--a peculiarly ominous cry--human and yet animal. For a few
seconds I was too overcome with fear to move. At last, however, having
in some measure pulled myself together, I ventured cautiously in the
direction of the noise, and after treading as lightly as I could over
the rough and rocky soil for some couple of hundred yards, suddenly came
to an abrupt standstill.
"Kneeling beside the stream with its back turned to me was an
extraordinary figure--a thing with a man's body and an animal's head--a
dark, shaggy head with unmistakable prick ears. I gazed at it aghast.
What was it? What was it doing? As I stared it bent down, lapped the
water, and raising its head, uttered the same harrowing sound that had
brought me thither. I then saw, with a fresh start of wonder, that its
hands, which shone very white in the moonlight, were undergoing a
gradual metamorphosis. I watched carefully, and first one finger, and
then another, became amalgamated in a long, furry paw, armed with sharp,
formidable talons.
"I suppose that in my fear and astonishment I made some sound of
sufficient magnitude to attract attention; anyhow, the creature at once
swung round, and, with a snarl of rage, rushed savagely at me. Being
unarmed, and also, I confess, unnerved, I completely lost my presence of
mind, and not attempting to escape--though flight would have been
futile, for I was nothing of a runner--shrieked aloud for help. The
thing sprang at me, its jaws wide open, its eyes red with rage. I struck
at it wildly, and have dim recollections of my puny blows landing on its
face. It closed in on me, and gripping me tightly round the body with
its sinewy arms, hurled me to the ground. My head came in violent
contact with a stone, and I lost consciousness. On recovering my senses,
I was immeasurably surprised to find Dalghetty sitting on a rock
watching me, whilst close beside him was Kniaz, bloodstained and
motionless.
"Dalghetty explained the situation. 'Convinced that evil would befall
you in the company of such a man,' he said, pointing to the figure at
his feet, 'I determined to set out in pursuit of you. By a miracle,
which I attribute to Our Lady, the effects of my accident suddenly wore
off, and I felt absolutely well. I borrowed a horse, and, starting from
Cetinge at nine this morning, reached the inn where you passed last
night at eleven. There I learned the route you had taken, and leaving
the horse behind--on such a road I was safer on my legs--I pressed on.
The ground, being moist in places, revealed your footprints, and I had
no difficulty at all in tracing you to the bottom of the declivity.
There I was at sea for some moments, since the rocky soil was too hard
to receive any impressions. But hearing the howl of some wild animal, I
concluded you were attacked, and, guided by the sound, I arrived here to
find a werwolf actually preparing to devour you. A bullet from my rifle
speedily rendered the creature harmless, and a close inspection of it
proved that my surmises were only too correct. It was none other than
our friend here with the evil eye--Kniaz!'
"'Kniaz a werwolf!' I ejaculated.
"'Yes! he inveigled you here because he had made up his mind to drink
the water of the enchanted stream, and so become metamorphosed from a
man to a wild beast. His object in doing so was to destroy a young
farmer who had stolen his sweetheart, and for whom he, as a man, was no
match. However, he is harmless now, but it is a warning to you in future
to trust no one who has the evil eye.'"
Belief in the evil eye is everywhere prevalent in the East, and it is
undoubtedly true that people who have certain peculiarities in their
eyes, both with regard to expression, colour, and formation, are people
to be avoided. If malevolently inclined, they invariably bring ill-luck
on all who become acquainted with them. I have followed the careers of
several people in whom I have noticed this baneful feature, and their
histories have been one long tale of sin or sorrow--often both.
But though the evil eye denotes an evil superphysical influence, the
werwolf is not necessarily possessed of it. Sometimes a werwolf may be
told by the long, straight, slanting eyebrows, which meet in an angle
over the nose; sometimes by the hands, the third finger of which is a
trifle the longest; or by the finger-nails, which are red,
almond-shaped, and curved; sometimes by the ears, which are set rather
low, and far back on their heads; and sometimes by a noticeably long,
swinging stride, which is strongly suggestive of some animal. Either one
or other of these features is always present in hereditary werwolves,
and is also frequently developed in those people who become werwolves,
either at the same time as or soon after they acquire the property.
FOOTNOTES:
[56:1] Psychic influences are demonstrated by the position of the
planets. For instance, at a new moon, cusp of Seventh House, and
cojoined with Saturn in opposition to Jupiter, sinister superphysical
presences are much in evidence on the earth.