LYCANTHROPY. This term. though by derivation strictly applicable only to the taking by men of wolf forms, is applied generally to the belief in the transformation of men into wolves or other carnivorous animals, the forms taken being ordinarily those of the most formidable wild animals of the country—bears in Scandinavia, wolves on the Continent of Europe, jaguars in South America, tigers and leopards or hyenas in Asia or Africa, the latter form being particularly associated with attacks on corpses rather than on living beings. The actual practice of lycan thropy is clearly associated with a form of hysteria and a patho logical condition (frequently recorded in pregnant women) mani festing a depraved appetite and an irresistible desire for raw flesh, of ten that of human beings, frequently accompanied by a belief on the patient's part that he or she is transformed into an animal. In the Malay race such a state is deliberately induced by suggestion in persons subject to a form of extreme suggestibil ity known as latah. Cases of tiger spirits and the like induced to enter human bodies and resulting in similar symptoms must be classed with latah forms of the affliction, while the salves, skins, girdles, etc., used by wer-wolves particularly in Europe, to effect transformation are probably to be regarded as material aids to hallucination.
Ideas on lycanthropy have also become confused with beliefs as to the separable soul which often appear in cognate forms. Beliefs in witches and their familiar spirits, in the power of witches to assume other bodily shapes, to alienate their souls or their vital principles, and keep them for safety in some obscure animal or plant in distant places ; belief in the general possession of a bush soul, or nagual, as in central America; belief in totem ancestors, and in the re-incarnation of the soul in predatory creatures, such as tigers, alligators and sharks (see METEMPSYCHOSIS) ; belief in vampires, belief in possession by evil spirits—all these ideas as sociated with the experienced facts of lycanthropy have engen dered a large number of variable, confused and sometimes fantas tic beliefs associated with lycanthropy in various parts of the world.
The lycanthropist was known to the Greeks, who spoke also of kynanthropy, and Marcellus of Sida describes men as usually attacked early in the year, frequenting cemeteries and living like dogs and wolves. The Romans used a more general term Versipellis (cf. English "turnskin") for lycanthropists; Virgil
(Eel. viii.) ascribes metamorphosis into wolf form to the action of drugs. Pliny gives a story of an hereditary transformation as sociated with Jupiter Lycaeus; Agriopas describes a man as turned into a wolf after assisting at a human sacrifice to the same god, and Petronius tells a typical wer-wolf story. In Scandinavia and England lycanthropy seems to have been associated with outlawry, and the term berserker (q.v.) probably implies a man who was not only subject to excesses of bestial fury but who wore garments of bear or wolf skin. In the case of berserker the lycan thropic tendency seems to have been involuntary, but in Europe generally it is ascribed to deliberate choice and throughout the middle ages persons were believed to use magical means to trans form themselves into wolves. The tradition is not extinct on the continent of Europe, and in the British Isles still lingers (in Somersetshire and Arran, for instance) in the belief in old women who turn themselves into hares. If the hare be hurt a correspond ing hurt remains in the human body, which is characteristic of the belief generally. The usual method of effecting the change in Europe was by rubbing with magic salve or by putting on a girdle of wolf—or sometimes of human skin. Involuntary trans formation also occurs as the result of enchantment as in Marie de France's poem "Bisclaveret," or of miracles such as that of St. Patrick who changed Veretius, king of Wales, into a wolf. Although in the European form transformation is usual, another type of lycanthropy is described by Rhanaeus as occurring in Courland, in which there is no bodily transformation; the human body remains in a cataleptic trance but in such sympathy with a real wolf attacking cattle that the human limbs move and twitch as the wolf commits his depredations. This form of lycanthropy cor responds precisely with a form taken in Assam. The wer-wolf is called vrkolak by Bulgars and Slovaks, and by modern Greeks OpvicaaKas. Here again the body remains cataleptic while the soul enters a wolf. After its return the body is exhausted and aches as after violent exercise. This form is connected in popular belief with vampires, and Serbs give the same name vlkoslak to both, thus affording a link between the corresponding wer-tiger and vampire beliefs in Assam, where the vampire's astral body devours persons' livers and causes their death.