The origin of wolves and related legends

1. Tracing the history of the legend of people turning into wolves

In English, the word human wolf is written as "Werewolves", and were means people in Old English. As the name suggests, Werewolves can be interpreted as Manwolves, a half-man, half-wolf monster.

The legend of the wolf can be traced back to ancient Greek mythology. Arcadia is the name of an inland city-state in ancient Greece. Surrounded by mountains and isolated from the world, the leisurely pastoral life inspired poets, making it the most fascinating place in pastoral poetry. In the pastoral poems describing Arcadia, people praise innocence and simplicity, and at the same time express their yearning for the world outside. In the poem, the shepherd plays the bagpipe and expresses his feelings to the fairies; the shepherdess drives the sheep and sings as they walk; the god of nature with goat's feet jumps and dances among the woods... In order to verify whether this place is like this, the main god Zeus He came to the Utopia in person after hearing about it, but Lykaon, the master of Arcadia, offered a sacrifice mixed with human blood to Zeus. So Zeus became furious and turned Lykaon into a wolf as punishment, which is the Greek word for wolf. Origin of the word ("lykos"). This myth also explains the religious rituals of using humans as sacrifices among the residents of Arcadia and the long-standing legend of people turning into wolves - "If you taste human blood while transforming into a wolf, you will temporarily lose the ability to return to human form unless you change into a wolf." No contact with human blood for 9 years." In Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey", Odyssey's grandfather's name is "Autolykos", which means "he is a wolf". The ancient Roman poet Virgil in the first century BC described a wizard who could use poisonous weeds to transform himself into a wolf. Although shapeshifting is usually understood to mean taking the shape of a wolf, early legends also included taking the shape of a bear, cat, and bird of prey.

2. The development and spread of the human-wolf legend

From the above text, we can see that the initial version of the legend only said that humans can turn into wolves, and it was not mentioned yet. The concept of wolf. The legend of the wolf that has a human appearance but can transform into a wolf can be traced back to the rise of witchcraft and occultism in the dark Middle Ages.

In the Dark Middle Ages, the entire European continent was lifeless. At this stage, various horrific legends about demons reached their peak, the most representative of which were the legends of vampires and wolves. With innate fear, people all knew that wolves would attack people, and at that time there was no reason for wolves to be afraid of people—muskets had not yet been invented, so the legend of the wolf was developed through Greek mythology. Sigismund, the king of Hungary and later the leader of the Germanic dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, prompted the church to officially recognize the existence of wolves at the Ecumenical Council in 1414. By the 16th century, legends of werewolves had spread throughout Europe. Near the end of the 17th century, a rumor spread about werewolves, saying that they turned into zombies that sucked human blood after death. Therefore, the legend of vampires was derived from the wolf (the legend of vampires will be mentioned in another article, and I will not describe it further in this article). In addition, people's fear of werewolves also included "Berserkers" - in Scandinavia before Christianity, Berserkers seemed to be worshipers of Odin, the god of war. Snorri Sturluson of Ynglinga Saga described it this way Of Odin's warriors: His warriors go into battle without any armor, and behave like wild dogs and wolves. They pierce the shields of their enemies, are strong as bears, and are as powerful as oxen. They kill. They are not harmed by fire or steel weapons. So this kind of madness is called "violent" fear. The legend of man-wolf spread rapidly across the land of Europe, and it became more and more bizarre and terrifying, so many kinds of ghost stories spread.

3. In the legend, who will become a wolf?

Werewolves are transformed from humans and are generally divided into

① Voluntary: this kind of person It is believed that he made a deal with Satan and sold his soul in exchange for the devil's power.

Many legends describe this kind of person who "transforms at night to kill humans and animals and then returns to his human form during the day." Due to the alarming spread of the legend of werewolves, the Roman Catholic Church, which gradually became dominant in Europe, decided to launch an official investigation. It was found that influenced by this legend, many people imagined that they were werewolves and thus had superhuman abilities, and finally became A patient with severe schizophrenia (also known as "lycanthropic delusion"). From 1520 to the mid-17th century, about 30,000 cases of lycanthropy were found in Europe, with the largest number in France, as well as Serbia, Bohemia and Hungary in Eastern Europe. I'll give you an example here: In 1589, a German lycanthropist named Stubbe Peeter murdered 25 adults and children, including his own son. Peeter not only kills them but drinks their victims' blood. He claimed that he would not let go of all animals and insects simply because he had "made a deal with the devil."

②Involuntary: Some legends point out that people will turn into wolves if they accidentally do something. In Sicily, Italy, if a woman becomes pregnant during a full moon, her child is believed to grow into a wolf. According to German folklore, if a person drinks water from a mountain spring, he will turn into a wolf. The Greeks believed that all epileptic patients were werewolves. Serbs believe that if you drink the water from a wolf's footprints you will turn into a wolf. Some legends refer to the wolf as God's punishment for criminals. Some famous saints (such as Saint Paul and Saint John) were believed to have the ability to turn criminals into wolves. In Albania, it is said that a woman who behaves shamefully will be visited by the devil and wrapped in a wolf's skin. In order to atone for her sin, she had to live like a wolf in wolf skin for 7 years before she could return to her human form.

In addition, there are some theories that children born on Christmas Eve will be wolves, and people with slanted eyebrows are considered to be wolves, etc. The well-known transformation of a wolf into a wolf under the full moon is a version that has been continuously interpreted from the Sicilian legend. "The magic of the full moon will cause the wolf's body to change impulsively."

4. Do human wolves really exist in this world?

Philosophers and religious thinkers put forward their theory: There is no possibility of human beings turning into wolves physically, but spiritually. When controlled by Satan and the devil, people will behave like wolves. Generally, in many beliefs, people believe that only God has the ability to change a person's body or mind. In fact, this is also true. There is no such monster as the wolf described in the legend, just like vampires have been proven not to exist.

As mentioned above, humans have an instinctive fear of animals like wolves - wolves tear down livestock wantonly and attack people from time to time. Wolves are cruel by nature, and their behavior has no moral standards. They only satisfy their own desires, so people regard them as the embodiment of devil and evil. However, people are full of curiosity and confusion about the strength, speed and social cooperation of wolves. .

We can explore again how the legend of wolves spread in Europe came into being. In many early European works, the so-called wolves were patients suffering from a very serious disease (personally I think it was severe schizophrenia). Please look at the following description:

You can identify the characteristics of these people: their faces are pale, their eyes are dull, their eyes are dry, their tongues are dry and they cannot secrete saliva, but they are very thirsty look.

These patients cannot control their own behavior, and the human wolf also loses the consciousness of human behavior after becoming a wolf. It is this kind of patients who cannot control themselves like normal people, and they exhibit the most wolf-like behavior - they will howl and pounce on them, they will bite the things they grab, and they are very strong.

As the legend continues to develop, these people are described as more and more like wolves, and then evolve into being able to transform from humans into wolves. In some early literary works and stories, transformation into a wolf was achieved only with the help of some magical props, such as wearing a wolf skin or wearing a magic belt. At this time, there was no mention of changes in one's own body, but more mentions of uncontrollable behavior.

Later, the legend continued to evolve, and the image of the wolf became more and more ferocious. Coupled with the mysterious witchcraft and magic, the wolf had super powers. In the Middle Ages, people's yearning for witchcraft and magic caused more and more serious problems - more and more people suffered from lycanthropy in search of the so-called magic power (see above), and this influence in turn deepened The terrifying nature of the legend gradually formed the man-wolf story that people are now familiar with. In modern times, with the booming film industry, legends from the past began to be put on the screen. As a good horror movie theme, the legend of the wolf has attracted a large number of directors and screenwriters. The transformation into a wolf is often the scariest part of these films. Changes that people could only imagine in the past have been realized in the movie. The audience can clearly see the entire change process: starting from the bone structure, skin texture, and teeth, the hair gradually covers the whole body, the nose begins to protrude, the fangs become larger, and the ears Lengthened and pointed. The original image of the wolf is very different from the image shown to everyone in movies today. The most obvious difference between the two is not in behavior, but in the depiction of physical changes.

Although many people know that wolves are a product born in nightmares and horror movies, wolves were once considered to be real beasts - beasts with ferocious temperaments and cruel predators. Today's society is no longer frightened by werewolves, but its influence is still visible - people's fear of wolves and similar unknown creatures that haunt the night has become almost natural. Let’s talk about Germany here. Germany is a country that respects wolves very much, just like eagles, and regards wolves as a symbol of honor. Wolfgang and Wolfhard are very common German names.

It is surprising that some people still believe in the so-called wolf legend today. Someone has conducted a survey in Russia, and 80% of the Russian farmers surveyed believe that there are real wolves. This shows how great the impact of wrong imaginations and legends on people.

Interlude: Reports of sightings of wolf-like creatures

For hundreds of years, social scientists and biologists have discovered that due to the many versions of wolf legends, the descriptions of wolves There is no similarity between them, and it is still impossible to have a complete and clear description of the appearance of the human wolf. But reports of sightings of similar creatures continue to appear around the world.

The most famous and recent of these reports was provided by a woman named Delburt Gregg, who lived in Greggton, Texas. On a sultry and cloudy night in July 1958, her husband went out, leaving her alone at home. It was going to rain and the wind was blowing non-stop. Gregg moved her bed under the window to stay cooler. About midnight, she was awakened by a strange noise, which was very close to her face, as if she was scratching the metal screen. Through the light of lightning flashing across the sky, she saw a "tall, shaggy, wolf-like monster clutching the screen window, staring at a pair of huge blood-red eyes with slits." Terrified, Gregg hurriedly jumped out of bed and turned around to pick up a flashlight, when the monster hurriedly ran into a large bush nearby. Soon Gregg, who was in shock, saw a tall man walking onto the road and disappearing into the darkness.

Another report was from 1936, when a man named Mark Schackelman claimed to have seen a six-foot-tall human on a small hill belonging to the Indians near the town of Jefferson, Wisconsin. The hairy monster is digging for something. This monster "had a big nose that protruded outward, and it looked like a dog and a bit like an ape." It had "long pointed ears, hands like a human, and it exuded a stench like a rotting corpse." The next night, Schackelmandian saw the monster making a strange "roaring sound of only three syllables." He was so scared that he closed his eyes and prayed. The monster did not attack him but disappeared quickly.

On October 31 of the same year, at about 8:30 pm, a young woman was driving alone on Bray Road near the town of Darwin, Wisconsin.

Suddenly the car jolted suddenly, as if the right front wheel had hit something. She stopped the car in a hurry, and just then a dark and furry figure rushed towards her from the car window. The woman was frightened, and immediately started the engine, and the car rushed out. The monster jumped onto the trunk of the car with a roar. The smooth metal surface prevented the monster from grabbing the car, and it was thrown out again. The woman went back and found a friend to accompany her back to check again. When the car was approaching the scene of the accident, the two suddenly found a tall black figure standing by the road. After staring for a while, they turned and disappeared into the dense forest.

Time passed, and in 1989, Lorianne Endrizzi was also driving alone on that road when she spotted a large black figure kneeling on the side of the road. She slowed down to get a closer look, and Endrizzi later said she saw the thing staring at her through the car window. She estimated the monster to be about 6 feet tall, with brown hair spreading all over its body, large, pointed fangs and pointed ears. Endrizzi also claimed that the monster had a dog-like nose and human-like hands. A local farmer also reported the same sighting, but he thought it was a huge dog.

These reports differed by many years and reflected basically the same situation, but none of the witnesses could clearly describe the specific details of this creature, despite using elephants to investigate sightings of aliens. The hypnosis technique used by the author. There are vague reports of catching the monster, but reliable evidence is scant. Without the hard evidence required by scientific research, this strange creature can only exist in legends and horror movies.

Answer: wuhao8637 - Tongjinshi origin level 6 5-25 19:19

Generally refers to the person who transforms into a wolf shape during the full moon in ancient legends. This should be the source. In ancient times, there was the worship of animal gods (such as Anubis who turned into a mountain dog in Egypt) and the reverence for the moon. It is also said that the ancestor of the wolf is Lycaon, the king of Arcadia. In Greek mythology, at a banquet, Lycaon cooked a child into a dish and presented it to Zeus. Zeus was furious and turned Lycaon into a wolf.

The image of a human wolf

The characteristics of a werewolf: eyebrows connected, fingers curved, nails as long as claws, ears and palms with hair, tail degeneration (this is not necessarily true), skin It has hair on the inside, is tall, ferocious, has heterochromatic eyes, and has unusually developed muscles.

Werewolf Stories

In legend, King Arthur of England once canonized two werewolves as knights and lords, and treated them as heroes.

On October 19, 1216 AD, King John Lockland of England was poisoned by a monk and finally

succumbed to his injuries. It is believed that the poison contains wolfberry, which means that the poisoned person will transform into a werewolf. Soon after, people heard various howls coming from his tomb, and the terrified residents dragged the body out and left it to rot. However, soon after, some people claimed to have seen the king transformed into a werewolf wandering in the forest. In addition to this case, sometimes ordinary people can also obtain the ability to transform into a wolf by obtaining a magical wolf skin. Werewolves can also turn their victims into werewolves by biting them

.

History of Werewolves

In the Middle Ages, "Sigismond" (Sigismond), the king of Hungary and later the leader of the Germanic dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire,

At the Ecumenical Council in 1414, the church officially recognized the existence of wolves! By the 16th century, wolf legends had spread throughout the world