The Wolf's Eyes

A free press is good but sometimes . . .

2012-03-05T11:00:00.000-05:00

I came across this news item the other day while wandering the Web. At first, it seemed like just another story about a candidate for the Darwin Awards narrowly avoiding a fate that he must surely have seen coming. As I explored a bit though, I found that this story had gone viral (I found pages and pages of hits citing almost exactly the same keywords and the same news articles) and effected a great many people, including Ritch Duncan, one of the authors of the sublimely funny Werewolf's Guide to Life: a guide for the newly bitten. The author of that book, which is clearly a parody, shares his thoughts here.

The press has every right and, indeed, duty to report the news. I fully support the rights of free speech and freedom of the press that help to create a strong check against abuses of power in our culture. Unfortunately, though, news has, in many ways, become another form of entertainment so that we see incidents like this, reported locally, going viral as news outlets search for more "interesting" stories. In this case, the connection with the occult, the blood letting and the mention of werewolves was just too much for many news outlets, blogs and websites to pass up.

From what little we know about this case, I would side with Ananael Qaa on this issue. This assault had little or nothing to do with the occult and a lot to do with BDSM that got out of hand. A copy of a necromantic spell book, a werewolf parody and a folder of items of unknown provenance do not an occultist make. At most, the ladies in question might have had some interest in communicating with the dead and/or gaming. Neither of these requires blood letting but a certain type of kinkiness does and it seems that our intrepid traveler from Arizona simply got more than he bargained for in this exchange.

Make no mistake, I am sure that the young man's experience was horrific. Multiple stab wounds and cuts, even superficial ones, are not an experience that one can easily put out of mind and I suspect this fellow will need some serious counseling to come to terms with his indiscretion. What horrifies me more, though, in this case, is the ardor with which this case was reported and the absolute failure of most, if not all sources, to do some research or to include that research in the piece. If they had done so, they would have discovered, in about five minutes, that:

Leilah Wendell - the author of the necromantic spell book in question, does indeed have a web site devoted to death and communication with the Angel of Death. A cursory glance reveals that her work is geared to the idea that, in looking at death face on, one may come to live more fully. I believe that at least one branch of Tibetan Buddhists spend some time meditating in graveyards as a way of teaching themselves about life's impermanence. Same idea.
The Werewolf's Guide to Life is a parody and is freely available on Amazon. Many readers comment that the book is quite funny and most of them do not seem to take it seriously. I've read the book. It is a hoot and has nothing at all to do with serious occult practices.
A web search of the term "introduction to sigilborne spirits" yields nothing but more references to this news piece . . . there does not seem to be any book out there by that title.

Conclusion: the ladies in question were likely what we in the esoteric community refer to as "posers" and their sexual peccadilloes had little or nothing to do with the occult. I know of no source that teaches one to summon werewolf spirits - male or female - and believe me that, if such a source did exist, I would have dragged it out into the full moon's light and tried it by now.

Speeding shape shifters

2012-03-02T11:00:00.001-05:00

I love these quick tales of the skinwalker in Arizona. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am of the opinion that there are many more things in the world than science has considered in its philosophy. Tales like these make those of us who are interested in what lies outside the bounds of "acceptable" science think and think hard.

The skinwalker phenomenon is taken very seriously by the Dineh, the people that white folks call Navajo. The yenaaldlooski is a figure of terror amongst the Navajo and related tribes, said to be capable of changing from human form into the form of an animal or part animal. The type of animal the skinwalker becomes depends upon the animal skin that he or she wears when making the Change. The Navajo believe, with some basis, if the stories are true, that they have every right to defend themselves against the depredations of a skinwalker and that sometimes means that the walker ends up in the sights of a deer rifle.

To quote from the article:

As one Navajo commentator remarked, “Navajo witchery is the essence of predatory criminality. No law enforcement agency of any kind intrudes into the matter of traditional Navajo self-defense when this extremely ancient evil threatens one’s very health and life.”

The fascinating thing to me is that this creature of nightmares from a Native tradition is now being seen, on open highways no less, by people of European descent. I can not imagine what a skinwalker would be doing trailing a car down a lonely highway at high speeds but I am sure that the experience would be unsettling, to say the least. Perhaps, the skinwalker is something of a parasite and actually derives some of its energetic sustenance from the fearful reaction of its prey?

Real Life Werewolves! Or not . . .

2012-02-29T11:00:00.001-05:00

I loved the headline for this news article. The story is about hypertrichosis, one of the maladies that may have contributed to the werewolf myth (but is certainly not wholly responsible for it).

Basically, hypertrichosis is a genetic condition that causes uncontrolled hair growth and those that suffer from the condition certainly do bear a strong resemblance to the Wolfman of the movies - although hypertrichosis sufferers do not develop the chompers of Lon Chaney Jr's creature. In fact, reading this article, we discover that Danny Ramos Gomez, the circus performer who is the subject of this article, is quite normal in all other ways: from enjoying sports to having a girlfriend.

What was not normal about this young man's life was the cruelty of people, who did not even know him, teasing him in the streets. Fortunately, Mr. Gomez seems to have developed a thick skin over the years. Having people howl at me as I walked down a road minding my own business might be enough to make me grow fangs.

Shape Shifters - from all over

2012-02-27T11:00:00.004-05:00

Here is an interesting list of shape shifters from world legend. I apologize in advance, this page does have a lot of ads on it, some of which are in questionable taste.

Werewolves are, of course, mentioned but so are some other interesting shifters of note. It seems that people all over the world believe that it is possible for a human (or other type of being) to change forms.

Conventional wisdom seems to be at a loss to explain the prevalence of this belief. While it is certainly true that psychological disorders such as lycanthropy can help to explain why people of all cultures believe in a man to animal transformation and it is true that some of the belief derives from human consciousness of its shadow side and projection of same, these factors just do not cover the entire range and depth of shape shifting beliefs throughout the world.

In order to truly understand the universality of the belief in shape shifters, we have to look beyond science and into other dimensions. We have to look deeply into the world of magic and see what that world is truly capable of manifesting. Only then will we begin to realize that the depth of shape shifter lore derives from the depth of experience available in other realities than our consensual one, realities that sometimes bleed over into the one where most of us live.

What Wendigo?

2012-02-24T11:00:00.001-05:00

I noticed this article from Nick Redfern yesterday and just had to take an opportunity to comment on it.

The article describes a horrific crime in which one man attacked another with a knife. The victim was actually decapitated before the police could arrive and the team that arrested the perpetrator noted that the killer had actually eaten part of his victim's body.

Redfern goes on to point out that this murderer, Vince Weiguang Li, had, a week previous to this attack, been delivering newspapers with an extensive article about the legendary Wendigo. After the terrible slaying of Tim McLean aboard the Greyhound bus, the author of the Wendigo article stated that there were many similarities between Li's actions and the Wendigo myth. We are left wondering . . . is Redfern trying to say that Li's actions were prompted or guided by this article? Or perhaps that something more sinister occurred and Li, in some way became a Wendigo?

I have written about the Wendigo in a previous post. While it is true that Li attacked his victim in a fury and ate part of his body, what I see in this report is another cannibalistic psychopath like Jeffrey Dahmer and not an ancient Algonquin nightmare. If Li had, indeed, become a Wendigo, I rather suspect that the RCMP would have had a good bit of difficulty taking a fifteen foot raging monster into custody.

To me, this is yet another example of a tenuous link between a criminal and the esoteric being used to increase the entertainment value of the news. It is bad enough that Tim McLean had to die in such a horrible way but it is even worse suggesting that his killer might have been some sort of supernatural being. As I have pointed out, time and again on this blog, humans are some of the most savage animals out there. Our species does not need any supernatural influence to prompt us to bloody action and the crippled psyche of a madman does not equal the terror of the Wendigo.

But it does make a great headline.

Bigfoot 'community'

2012-02-22T11:00:00.000-05:00

While Sasquatch is not my primary area of interest, I have been watching the goings on in Bigfoot circles with some amusement these days. I am reminded of a group of children on the playground in elementary school. There is an awful lot of pushing and shoving (especially amongst the boys), the bigger kids are bullying the smaller kids and there is a general feeling of chaos and disorder that no amount of teacher intervention can overcome. Anyone who has ever had charge of such a scene knows that all you can do is keep the kids from hurting themselves and each other.

In a so-called community in which a group of people is attempting to verify the existence of a creature from legend, you would think that there would be more open mindedness. Instead, you see people drawing battle lines wherever they go. Passionate arguments break out over whether Sasquatch is a hominid or an ape, about how the creatures behave i.e. are they shy and avoid humans or are they curious and attracted to humans, do they stalk and hunt deer, are the little 'shelters' found in some locales really Bigfoot nests, etc. I have seen an argument on a Bigfoot forum about the color of eye shine for these animals. And when I say that these arguments are passionate, I am being charitable; the term flame war enters my mind.

While I am convinced that there is something in the woods that is causing these reports, as I have said in other posts, I am not entirely convinced that Sasquatch is a native of this dimension. Bigfoot researchers are notorious for overlooking reports that do not fit into their pet theory about the animal (i.e. those reports that put Bigfoot in the vicinity of UFO's or that have the creature vanishing into thin air). While researchers seem glad to have the assistance of Native people in finding "hot spots", they tend to ignore the legends of these people which state plainly that what we call a Sasquatch is a spiritual being.

My point to the Bigfoot "community" is this, though. You have the cart before the horse, folks. Before you can argue about the habits of this creature and whether is is more closely related to apes or humans, you actually have to find one and convince the scientific community that the critter exists. To do that is going to require a systematic, long term effort on the part of someone or some group of someones, not tramping around in the woods on weekends and vacations with a thermal imager hoping to get lucky. It is time, from this outsider's point of view, for the Bigfoot community to grow up and start looking for ways to field teams of highly trained individuals who are familiar with scientific evidence recovery procedure, tracking, stalking, surveillance, capture and tagging instead of hanging around waiting for the next big publicity stunt to argue about.

The Beast Within

2012-02-20T11:00:00.002-05:00

In reading through some encyclopedic werewolf books, like Brad Steiger's staggeringly huge The Werewolf Book, one can not help but note that, in many of these discussions of the werewolf lore, serial killers, especially cannibalistic serial killers get lumped into the mix. Frankly, I have no idea why authors do this unless it is to fill more space and make the book seem more "in depth".

As I have said repeatedly, throughout this blog, a werewolf in the lore is simply a human who has the ability to become a wolf or a wolf like creature. Yes, a wolf is an apex predator and, yes, there are instances in the lore of the werewolf using his or her gift to wreak havoc on the local populace. I fail to see, though, how this occasional propensity for taking prey of opportunity (humans are, by most animal standards, slow and weak) links the werewolf to an altogether human monster - the serial killer.

One does not have to theorize that the serial killer and, in particular, the serial killer who eats his victims is motivated by any wolf like tendencies. Instead, such a murderer is motivated by extremely complex but all too human compulsions emerging from the darkest parts of the human psyche, from the same dismal place from whence crimes of torture and genocide arise. Human beings are more than capable of extremely cruel and twisted behavior without injecting the idea that they are moved to commit these acts by some inner animal compulsion.

Animals do not kill over ideology or religion and they rarely kill for sport. While a cat might play with its prey as a way of sharpening its hunting skills, no cat could approach the level of torture that humans have committed against each other. This is a strictly human behavior and one we have to own and see clearly and drag into the light of day before it will began to fade. I say that it is time that we stopped trying to blame some "beast within" for the atrocities that humanity has committed and, instead, own our crimes so that we, as a species, have a chance to progress.

A Remotely Viewed Dogman/Manwolf

2012-02-17T11:00:00.001-05:00

Here is a fascinating story, from Lon Strickler over at Phantoms and Monsters. Be advised that the accompanying illustration is anatomically correct.

I have read any number of sighting reports for my favorite cryptid but this report is unique. You can read the article for yourself but, suffice to say, that Mr. Strickler got a request for clarification on an entity that had been sighted on a ranch in North Central Texas and, in conjunction with his group, Spirit Rescue International, conducted a remote viewing session to check the area out psychically.

For those of you unfamiliar with remote viewing, it is a technique that I would characterize as travelling clairvoyance that has been experimented with by US intelligence and military assets. I am not a remote viewer so I will not try to explain the technique but I do know that experiments in remote viewing have yielded some amazingly accurate results.

In this case, Mr. Strickler conducted several 'passes' of the target area, refining his focus each time and was able to view an entity similar to the one in the illustration on his page. His impression of the creature was that it was a sort of guardian entity for that region and the witness seemed to concur.

As I have noted elsewhere, the Dogman/Manwolf phenomenon seems to be tied in some way to Native American sites of all sorts. P & M notes that the witness in this case was of Native ancestry and Mr. Strickler noted that he would be researching local Native lore to see if there was a creature matching what he saw in the legends of the local tribes. I would also wonder if there were any Native burial grounds, mounds or other sacred sites in the area.

This being could certainly be a watchman for such a site or might be attached to the witness herself through her tribal heritage. It is not uncommon for people who come from families of magicians and, in this case, medicine people to have spirits who have worked with the family line for generations and who contact each successive member in their turn. It might simply be this person's time to associate with the spirit that watches over and/or works with her family, clan or tribe.

The Change: a question for horror fans

2012-02-15T11:00:00.001-05:00

Youtube is rife with film clips of the personal favorite werewolf transformation sequences of a number of different contributors and I have watched quite a few of these in the past few days. It seems that one of the continuing themes in these sequences is the male werewolf making his Change while a female, usually attractive and buxom, looks on on horror, screaming at the appropriate times. These clips usually end when the werewolf has become his monster self but, one presumes that the young lady in question becomes the snack du jour for a creature who has just used a whole lot of energy to make the Change.

My questions to all you horror movie buffs out there is this: why is it that people in horror movies, and, in particular, easy on the eye young women, are incredibly stupid?

Granted, my survival instincts may be a little more sharply honed than those of most people after years in the martial arts and working in security as a young man. Still, even if I had never, ever done any of those things, I would have the sense to beat feet if I happened to be present when some fellow dropped to his knees, started to growl, had his eye color change, suddenly developed really impressive canines and generally exhibited behavior that led me to believe that he was not going to be a nice being when he got up.

Instead, what I saw, over and over, in these film clips was a young woman standing there with her mouth open, using valuable time that could have given her a chance to find a secure hiding place (or at least get up a tall tree) to scream, have hysterics and otherwise make certain that she was still going to be firmly in place when the werewolf arose from his Change. If she did finally flee, one was certain that it was entirely too late and that the wolf would have her before she got very far.

In the modern parlance: what's up with that?

Teen Werewolves

2012-02-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I am on a bit of a video jag. I finally figured out how to get a video into my blog so congratulate me and try not to flinch.

My last foray into the video world took us to the the Effigy Mounds . . . this video takes us to Texas, of all places and, surprise of surprises, my hometown.

At first blush, this new story is about a group of teens who have gone above and beyond in the quest to be non-conformists. I admire them just for that. I would never have had the courage to stick out like that when I was in high school. It was bad enough being a 6'4" freshman who weighed in at a hefty 160 pounds (could I have some of that skinnyness back, please?).

When I took another look at this video, however, I was struck by the statement that a couple of the kids made: their 'pack' was family. In this day and age that is seeing the radical re-definition of the word family, I have maintained for some time that those of us who do not have much in the way of blood relations have to make our own families.

I can not make any claims about this group of teens. Perhaps they are just posers who decided on a specific meme for their group and stuck to it. Or maybe these are kids who feel the need for family and have turned to a group that I have pointed out before, the wolf pack, as a model for something that is lacking in their lives. In my opinion, they could do far, far worse and, if the image of the wolf pack lends them strength in what is one of the most difficult periods of human life, then I say more power to them.

An Unusual "Dream"

2012-02-10T11:00:00.004-05:00

I had a dream last night that I wanted to relate while it is still fresh in my mind.

As often happens in my dream world, I was dreaming about nothing in particular - I remember there being a lot of movement, running around, but not much else - when suddenly my dream materialized into something more lucid. I was standing with three tall figures surrounding me, clad in long brown robes. Think of the Jedi with their full hooded robes in the Star Wars movies. These three figures had there hands folded into the sleeves of their robes and, as I watched one of them looked up at me.

The figure, though bipedal, had the head of a wolf and, when it drew its hands out from the sleeves, I could see that they were covered in grayish fur, long fingered and had sharp claws at the tips of the fingers. I did not feel threatened but this startled me so, in the dream, that I "woke up" (I believe I was in a hypnagogic state).

I have been very focused on my Buddhist practice of late and wonder if this was not a "wake up call" from the Otherside to start paying more attention to my shape shifting studies. I am going to sit with it for awhile and see what happens.

Full Moon Musings

2012-02-08T11:00:00.011-05:00

The moon is full tonight
Glowing bright upon the starry sky
Lighting my way as I walk

Silver stranded light
Falling all around me
Intense yet subtle vibration
In my bones and flesh
Calling me
Softly
Along the way
The Moon Lit Path
Where few walk
And most fear to tread.

I lift my head
My soul howling
Returning the Call
And walk my way
In Mystery.

Effigy Mounds

2012-02-06T11:00:00.001-05:00

Take a look at this TV news story about the Wisconsin Manwolf/Michigan Dogman phenomenon.

Despite the clips of werewolf movie monsters with bloody teeth interspersed throughout and the expected lack of research on real werewolf folklore (the writers of the piece obviously derived their knowledge of the werewolf from the Lon Chaney classic movie and even included a clip as homage), I was pleasantly surprised to see that Fox actually gave some time to these interesting incidents. I was even more pleasantly surprised to see that the TV channel managed to track down the leading authority on the Wisconsin/Michigan sightings, Linda Godfrey, and even interviewed a couple of the witnesses from her books.

What further surprised me though, considering that I am pretty well read on the subject, is Ms. Godfrey's mention, in this piece, of the overlap between the earth mounds in Wisconsin and manwolf sightings. I believe this story was done in 2009 and I have not had a chance to read Ms. Godfrey's latest book so that information may be contained there but I found this interesting in the extreme.

I have not been to Wisconsin but, several years ago, I did have a chance to visit an effigy mound site in Iowa, across the river from Wisconsin. It has been many moons since I made that visit but I still remember the feeling of walking that ground and knowing that it was sacred and that it should be treated with respect. Given that the First People certainly had access to powerful magic and a known history of shape shifter myths, one could theorize that the manwolf/dogman is some order of spirit attached to these mounds, perhaps as a guardian.

The immediate argument that springs up when I propose such a theory is that people are seeing something that seems to have physical mass. The witness who had a manwolf leap into the back of his truck felt the truck move. That, those who argue with me will state, is not something a spirit can do. I would argue in return that there is a long history in Western and Eastern esoteric traditions of spirit manifestation. In other words, it is possible, given the right set of circumstances, to bring a spirit through into physical form.

While there are certain rites in ceremonial magic that can bring this to pass, the fact is that we do not know for certain exactly what other sets of circumstances will make manifestation happen. It seems probable and, indeed, likely, that there are portals that allow this sort of manifestation to take place and I, for one, would be willing to lay odds that such portals might be found around places of power such as the effigy mounds of Wisconsin.

Worgen

2012-02-03T11:00:00.001-05:00

I have a confession to make. I have spent several enjoyable hours now playing a Jedi Knight on the new Star Wars: The Old Republic game. I had, honestly, thought that the world of gaming was composed of a bunch of kids earnestly gunning down zombies and aliens in increasingly realistically realized worlds but I was ill-informed. It seems that there is something out there called an MMORPG -massive multiplayer online role playing game.

Seeking to expand my horizons a little bit, I went online to look at other MMORPG's and discovered this character on World of Warcraft. I dug a little farther and found these interesting links on the character:

WOW Character Trailer

Worgen Start Area

Unfortunately, I can not find the video review that introduces us to the character but I will say that I would find it hard to resist playing a character that does not feel it knows you until it has sniffed your crotch, who can leer with the best of them while asking if you like furry and who is, according to the reviewer, a pretty awesome killing machine? I guess that if I ever get tired of playing a certain Zabrak Jedi Knight in SWTOR, I can always find a home on WOW :-)

The Pigeon Hole Syndrome

2012-02-01T11:00:00.001-05:00

Location -London, England
Date -April 1994
Time -early morning
Anthony Wilson had just woken up in his parent’s settee (he was going to work while his sister and her husband had the spare room). He switched off the alarm clock went to the toilet and then lay back down on the settee for an extra five minutes. He went to grab a cigarette when through the now open door a strange apparition sort of stumbled into the room, looked left and then it slowly turned its head toward him. He described the “creature” as very tall (about 6’6” to 7’ tall) two dimensional sort of “dogman”. It had height and width, and most curious of all, its body shape was in angles---a man’s body but with a large dog/wolf’s head. The creature stared straight at the witness, and then started to walk toward where he was lying, but it moved in a clockwork sort of way. When it stopped and leaned toward the witness that’s when he managed to let out a huge shout. That seemed to unnerve it and it took several steps back and disappeared out the door where it came from.
Source: Your True Tales---October 2005
Type: E -When an entity or humanoid is seen alone, without related UFO activity (Example: bedroom visitation)

This little tidbit appeared on the Phantoms and Monsters blog on 23 January. This is another interesting example of how perception plays a large role in how a sighting is reported and to whom. In this case, rather than assuming, as one witness I have reported on did, that the creature was demonic or a part of the Nephilim, this witness had an odd experience and, apparently, given the footnote, reported it to a UFO researcher.

Now, I am not a strong believer in the "aliens from outer space" theory of UFO origins. My thinking is that any civilization advanced enough to be able to travel the vast distances between stars is not going to have much interest in a race of beings that have barely crawled out of the primordial slime in geological terms and they certainly are not going to be interested in abducting people, poking and prodding them and then releasing them with their memories only partly wiped. Again, if a civilization this advanced did decide that they needed more information on our species, they would have scanning technology that would make the clumsy abduction scenarios totally unnecessary and, should they need a specimen or three, I am sure they could manage it without dragging people out of bed in the middle of the night and scaring hell out of them.

But this is not a post on aliens and their tech. It is a post about an individual who had an experience of high strangeness and then had it categorized as the appearance of an "alien" without several very important questions being answered.

First of all, are we even sure that the witness was awake at the time of this unusual sighting? The witness clearly indicates that he had just awakened and was still lying on the settee when the sighting occurred. This being sounds a lot like something that would spring out at me in those moments between sleep and wakefulness and those visions are sometimes frighteningly real to me. I would be far more eager to accept this explanation than I would to embrace the idea that this was some sort of space alien.

Even granting that the witness was fully conscious, we have to look at other details of this brief story. I can think of several scenarios that might play in this situation:

Was this witness a regular smoker? Did he actually light the cigarette he reached for? If so, what was his age and physical condition? Might this gentleman have experienced a transient ischemic attack (a mini stroke) as the result of the constriction of blood vessels when nicotine hit his system. That could certainly produce some interesting hallucinatory effects.
We also have no history on the witness. Any history of mental illness in the family? Might this be a schizophrenic manifestation? Any history of drug use especially of the hallucinogenic sort?
Could the sighting be attributed to the Persinger effect i.e. sources of electromagnetic radiation that might induce hallucinations?
What do we know about this home? Had there been any previous paranormal events in the house? Any history of haunting or strange events in the area? This sighting happened in England, a place renowned for its ghost population, Black Dogs, Big Cats and other cryptids and paranormal phenomenon. This could easily have been one of England's famous hauntings with a really bizarre twist.
Did the witness or anyone associated with the witness practice any of the magical arts? This two dimensional being sounds a lot like the sort of half done manifestation that an inexperienced practitioner might produce.
Does the home sit on a ley line? Could the sighting have been the result of one of these mysterious currents of earth energy effecting the witness' perceptions.

I could continue but I am sure the reader gets the idea. This is a fascinating account of something that the witness could not explain and felt strongly enough about to report. It happens that, in this case, the witness saw something that resembled my favored cryptid. I think that, as investigators and researchers, or even simply as people interested in these phenomenon, we need to do a better of job of approaching witnesses with an open mind and not a set of preconceived notions that allow us to slot witnesses into a category and move on to the next encounter.

Proof

2012-01-30T11:00:00.001-05:00

Linda Godfrey, the author of several books on the Dogman/Manwolf phenomenon has commented, on more than one occasion, that she would not believe it possible for a human to transmute into a wolf or bipedal canine creatures like the Manwolf, unless someone sent her a good clear video of the transformation taking place. While I imagine that Ms. Godfrey might actually change her view about physical transformation if she got such a video and could verify that it had not been tampered with, I would bet that skeptics would still be tearing the film down months later, looking for a "logical" way to explain this seemingly impossible phenomenon.

In Bigfoot circles, these days, there is huge excitement about the DNA studies in process and the tight lipped secrecy surrounding those studies. Believers are convinced that the studies will move the world one step closer to belief in the existence of their favorite cryptid while skeptics are certain that these tests, like ones that have gone before, will be inconclusive and do nothing to either verify or deny the claims of the thousands of people who have seen something out in the woods.

The list goes on, of course. Every cryptid/monster/ghost hunter wants to believe that certain evidence will provethe existence of their pet creature. On the other side, we have the skeptics who would be loathe to believe no matter what evidence is presented, short of an actual body (and even then, they would be looking carefully for a hoax.

What does it mean to prove something? How does one go about it?

Amongst many other definitions (invulnerability, for example, or the legal system's rules of evidence), the dictionary defines proof as " The evidence or argument that compels the mind to accept an assertion as true."
(Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/proof)

So, to prove something, you must compel the mind to believe that an assertion is true. Folks, let me tell you, that is a very tall order indeed since each mind is going to be a little different and a different standard of proof is going to be required for each person. Some people, as we can plainly see, are going to be willing to believe based on nothing more than witness testimony while others are going to require far more to "compel the mind" to accept that something is true or "real" -another loaded term with multiple definitions.

This is the crux of the ongoing battle between believers and skeptics. Believers feel that skeptics are requiring a totally unreasonable burden of proof in the psychic/paranormal/high strangeness realm, that the idea that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" is untenable and can never really be reached, that skeptics have, in effect, closed their eyes to whatever proof there might be for the proposed entity. Skeptics, for their part, feel that believers are just plain gullible, that their standards of evidence are so low that they will "buy" anything and that if acceptable standards of evidence are used, one can plainly see that these beings (or whatever) probably do not exist. Checkmate.

I think that the issue here is the word "compel". When we seek to prove that something is so, we are trying to compel, or force, if you will, someone to believe what we propose. I can not speak for the rest of the world but I know that if someone tries to force me to do anything, I get as obstreperous as a mule. It seems to me that a middle way is needed that embraces the willingness to look at all of the evidence, without dismissing anything as impossible, but that is able to look at that evidence with the rigor of a skeptical (from a Greek word that means "to examine") mind.

We humans so love to draw our battle lines, to view issues with an us vs. them mentality. Blood has been spilled countless times in the quest to be right. A little less entrenchment and a little more respect, on both sides, would go a long way toward making the field of the paranormal and related fields a lot nicer place to "live".

Werewolf or Not?

2012-01-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

In this article, Nick Redfern relates one of the seminal events in cryptozoologist Jon Downes' young life and, interestingly enough, it has to do with a werewolf report.

I'll leave you to read Redfern's wonderfully creepy re-telling of the story but I do want to point out something at the end of the tale that makes me relatively certain that Downes did not encounter a creature of this plane that day. In the final part of the story, Redfern quotes Downes as saying:

In the half-light we could see an amorphous shadow of what appeared to be an enormous black predatory creature crouching over the carcass of the roebuck. If you looked at it directly there was nothing to see, but out of the corners of our eyes it was clearly visible. That was just too much for us. We were explorers no longer and ran like hell until we finally found ourselves on the cliff path that traverses the long journey between Abbotsham and Westward Ho.

Given the eerie events that led up to this sighting and the fact that the percipient was, I believe, 13 at the time, this reaction seems more than reasonable. The interesting thing to me though is that this monster could not be seen if looked at directly but was plainly visible if looked at our of the corner of the eye.

Now, I am sure that there is someone out there who can give a detailed biological explanation of why this might be so but I am more interested in the folklore that surrounds such a statement. If you have even a passing acquaintance with the faery lore of the British Isles and, particularly, if you have read W Y Evans-Wentz' massive tome, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, you know that one of the ways that ordinary people (that is, those not gifted with 'The Sight') could see the faery is by catching them in the corner of the eye. This tradition was so strong that seeing flickers out of the corner of the eye was a sign of faery infestation and meant that a place should be avoided (unless one were quite stalwart or had a relationship with 'Those Ones').

The faery lore of the Isles is also loaded with accounts of what the Scots called the Seelie and Unseelie Courts of Faery, that is, the faery who regarded humans with some tolerance and, at times, benevolence, and those who did not. I think it entirely possible that Mr. Downes encountered not a werewolf in Abottsham, but one of the many Unseelie faery. I base that thought on the knowledge that faery are known shape shifters and that faery lore also includes something called the cu sith, or faery dog, which can be quite fierce during a hunt. Although such creatures are usually described as white with red ears, I doubt that we have a complete taxonomy in the lore.

Werewolf or faery dog, Mr. Downes was likely well advised to "beat feet" out of there since either being could do a human serious damage. Something to remember when you go tracking that set of enormous canid prints you found in the forest.

Skeptics and Misidentification

2012-01-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

I have been engaged, for the past little while, in doing some web research on werewolf sightings and have been pleased to note that there are quite a number of sightings that have occurred in the last four to five years. This sighting, reported in the Fresno, CA, area has me agreeing with the author of the blog that the witness saw something that he could not explain . . . in fact, the witness saw three of these beings running in what sounds suspiciously like a pack. The size of the creatures, their speed and the upright posture make this a classic manwolf sighting.

It is easy and comforting to write such sightings off. The supposed skeptic would look at this report and theorize that the witness was deluded, was lying/hoaxing or simply misidentified a group of known animals. While I will admit that it is always possible that someone who reports a manwolf may have psychological issues or may be taking medication that inhibits perception or may just be lying, I am always puzzled by the bold assertion that the subject must have misidentified a known animal.

My questions to the supposed skeptic is this: what animal stands more than six feet tall and is bipedal besides homo sapiens sapiens?

Bears can get up on their hind legs and can waddle quickly for short distances but they certainly can not approach speeds of 45 miles per hour while doing so. Also, bears are bulkier than the creatures described and tend to avoid populated areas unless driven by hunger. In additions, bears are not pack animals and the chances of seeing three bears together, much less three bears standing on their hind legs, all at the same time, are about nil.

There are large wading birds (storks, cranes, etc) that could approximate the height described but I find it hard to believe that anyone could mistake a skinny wading bird for a 250 pound manwolf especially given the long spearing beak of such a bird. It is also germane to the point to note that a wading bird, while it might be seen in a flock, would be seen near water (not mentioned here) and would only be running so that they could spread their wings and take flight, something the witness would surely have noticed in the time he had the beings in sight.

Finally, it is just possible that the percipient saw a group of humans perpetrating a prank. Again, we note that the witness is adamant that his vehicle was travelling at 45 miles per hour and that the animals he saw were keeping up with ease. It was not until he accelerated to near 70 miles per hour that he was able to outrun this pack. Even if the witness was mistaken about the speed, which seems unlikely, the prank must have been perpetrated by three six foot plus world class athletes willing to wear outrageous makeup for no discernible reason.

Perhaps, somewhere in the wide world of zoology, there is an animal that would be a better possibility for explaining this sighting but, if so, it is not indigenous to the area and its presence in the wilds of Fresno would be as mysterious as the sighting of a manwolf. Rapidly hopping kangaroo, anyone? Anyone have any other thoughts on what sort of known animal this could be?

Black Dog of Hanging Hills, CT

2012-01-23T11:00:00.001-05:00

This article is decidedly tongue in cheek but brings up an American folktale that is irresistible to the collector of paranormal or cryptid lore.

“If you meet the Black Dog once, it shall be for joy; if twice, it shall be for sorrow; and the third time shall bring death.”–W.H.C. Pynchon

The Black Dog of Hanging Hills, CT, does not correspond well to the huge, hound-like Black Dogs of England with their fiery red eyes. This little fellow seems to be quite harmless on first meeting and the illustration that accompanied some of the articles I read looks downright adorable. Would you not be tempted to rescue this canine if you saw him at your local SPCA?

This Black Dog looks more like a dachshund/Labrador cross than a raging hellhound to me but, despite his friendly demeanor and looks, the Black Dog of Hanging Hills does have one thing in common with his larger, scarier cousins: an association with death. Specifically, it is said that the person who meets this dog three times will die.

Now, it is common for the sighting of a Black Dog to be seen as a death omen but I have never run across a piece of folklore like this one where seeing the Dog once has a positive effect, seeing it twice has a negative effect and the third time is fatal. Most people are "lucky" if they see a Black Dog once in their life but this particular being seems to be so friendly that it is possible for a person who frequents the area to see its most famous resident more than once. Implicit in the saying quoted by Pynchon above is the idea that one can escape the nasty part of this 'curse' by simply avoiding the region where the Dog lives. I did not find any stories of the Dog hunting anyone down to curse them.

I have commented, in passing, in other entries about the propensity of human beings to try to disempower that which frightens them. Faery become harmless creatures with gossamer wings, sprinkling pixie dust as they go. Angels don gowns and have trouble keeping up with fast drivers. I have to wonder if the Black Dog of England and Europe did not get downsized and made a little less dangerous in this tale from across from Connecticut as a migration toward turning the Black Dog of old into a pampered pet that happens to live in a graveyard.

Elliot O'Donnell 100th Anniversary

2012-01-20T11:00:00.001-05:00

Nick Redfern noted the other day that this year marks the 100th anniversary of Elliot O'Donnell's classic work Werewolves. I thought that I would take the occasion to quote a small section of the work that I happened to re-read the other day.

The setting is Montenegro in Europe and the teller of this tale is an geologist on expedition. This fellow, whom O'Donnell identifies as Dr. Broniervski, has lost the services of his normal guide and has retained another guide who turns out to be not all he seems. The new guide leads the professor off into a rocky wilderness and then insists that they camp in a certain area. The professor goes to sleep but is awakened to the following. Does this creature not sound familiar to those with an interest in canid cryptids?

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 . . . .

The story has a happy ending since the doctor's first and trusted guide comes to his rescue and dispatches the werewolf before it can make him a midnight snack. O'Donnell's book is filled with exciting, intensely descriptive stories like this that often purport to be the first person testimony of persons who experienced them. Despite its somewhat sensational tone (black magic and blood lust, read all about it!!), I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the lore of the werewolf.

Manwolf/Dogman report from Minnesota

2012-01-18T11:00:00.001-05:00

I hope that some day my blog will be so popular that people send me reports like this one. All I can say is that I hope Lon Strickler and his Phantoms and Monsters blog stay active for years to come.

While there are, from what I have read, sightings of bipedal canids all over the country, there seems to exist a particular cluster in Michigan and Wisconsin. This sighting happened close to the Minnesota/Wisconsin border so, in my mind, it falls into the sighting cluster in that area.

This is a classic Dogman/Manwolf sighting. While hoaxing is always a possibility, I have the feeling that this witness saw something that he could not explain. The straightforward narrative, the initial identification of the creature as a wolf, the witness' curiosity and desire to move closer, the shock at seeing the animal on two legs and the flight to safety all point to an encounter with the area's resident canid cryptid.

The witness states that he spends a lot of time in the local forest and that he is familiar with the native fauna. His report of the beast that he saw notes nothing at all ephemeral about the animal -to his senses the cryptid appeared to be a physical entity that responded to the laws of Newtonian physics. I note this because some of the sightings of this being have witnesses seeing the entity "morph" or appear translucent. This animal appeared to the percipient as a physical being like one of the deer or other animals with which he was familiar.

It is also interesting that the creature noted his presence (he says that it looked at him) but seemed to be intent on chasing something else. The witness noted that he was quite happy that this was the case since, upon seeing the cryptid's size and bipedal stance, he turned and fled back to his vehicle, hoping that the animal was not following him. Reading the report, one has the impression that this animal was hunting in the forest and was involved enough in the chase not to be diverted by a human. One hopes, profoundly, that we do not have a day where the human is the subject of this chase. Given the Manwolf's proclivity for roadside feasting and reported tooth structure, there seems to be little to indicate that these beings follow a vegetarian diet.

Another noteworthy item here is that the witness did not seem at all inclined to go back to the area and look for physical evidence of the animal. Fear is a common reaction in witnesses to the Manwolf/Dogman phenomenon and, given the size, aspect and obviously carnivorous nature of these creatures, such fear is not without justification.

As with the Sasquatch question, I would love to see someone with a lot of tracking experience and woodcraft, go into the forests around one of these sighting clusters and live for an extended period of time and see what popped up. I have a strong intuitive feeling that the very physical manifestations seen in the forests of Wisconsin and Michigan have something to do with the Native peoples of that area and that someone who could associate with the tribes would have better luck finding some explanation to this mystery.

Manwolf of Defiance, OH?

2012-01-16T11:00:00.003-05:00

Here, we have an excellent set of news articles from the Defiance, Ohio, Crescent-News describing a series of manwolf sightings in 1972. Railroad employees working in this small town and a grocery store employee on his way to work all sighted the beast and the news sparked a number of reports to police that seemed to have more to do with the fear produced by the sightings than the manwolf itself.

Before I go further, let me make it clear that I seriously doubt this was a real manwolf and support the police chief's idea that this was either a prank or a bumbling attempt, on one occasion, at robbery. Perhaps the would be robber got a charge out of the report in the paper and started going out with his mask and furry feet on to stir things up and muddy the waters around his bungled attempt. It seems to me that an apex predator interested in attacking a human being would not need a club to get the job done, that the link to the full moon is just a little too obvious and that the "creature" appeared to be very attached to one specific area of this small town that currently has a population of a little over 16,000 people. Descriptions were vague and, while the human impersonating a manwolf would have had to be a large person, one might expect that a larger person would go in for strong arm robbery with a club.

What is really fascinating about these reports is the reaction of the townspeople. The paper made light of the sightings, quoting from the Wolfman movie and conjecturing that the police were being armed with silver bullets while the police chief assured people that the "thing" was a miscreant with a mask and a warped sense of humor. Still, the paper noted that a number of people had been reduced to near hysteria by perceived brushes with the "creature" even though they never actually saw the beast.

I was talking to a friend the other day and, as we spoke, we were interrupted by the howling of a hound somewhere nearby. My friend brightened up and stated that that must be the eerie sound she had heard in the middle of the night a week or so before. I asked why she looked relieved and she just shrugged and noted that it was a whole lot creepier at night when she could not identify it immediately.

These sightings happened in the dead of night. Humans are visual animals; a large portion of our brain is occupied with sorting and interpreting various visual stimuli but we have not evolved good night vision (yet). The darkness scares us whether we will admit it or not since we lose our primary advantage as featherless bipeds, the ability to see an attack coming and avoid it before it reaches us. In the darkness, the attack can come from any direction, with no warning and our puny sense of smell and hearing will seldom warn us unless we are very well trained. Combine that native fear with an assailant who is costumed as a horror creature and you have the stuff of nightmares.

Buddhism

2012-01-13T11:00:00.002-05:00

Although I have strong roots in Neo-paganism and core shamanism, if I were to be taken into the emergency room and asked for a religious preference, I would quickly reply, "Buddhist". That might surprise some people who have been reading this blog for a while but, when I was younger, I did indeed formally Take Refuge with a Tibetan lama so I am officially a Buddhist.

That event was surrounded by all sorts of magical synchroncities, not the least of which was the presence of a hundreds of crows in a tree next to the lama as he did the Refuge ceremony. The crows were quite interested in the proceedings and let their interest be known as only crows can.

I think that I tend to favor the Tibetan/vajrayana tradition since it has deep roots in the native religion of Tibet, a shamanic spirituality called Bon. It is said that the Dalai Lama would never have escaped Tibet had it not been for the timely warning of a Bon practitioner who, during a spirit possession, warned the young leader to flee before the approaching Chinese threat.

I bring my spiritual practice up since I have recently begun study with a Buddhist teacher who is cracking my egg on a regular basis :-) I find that Buddhism is a spiritual practice that I can live with since it recognizes the suffering that we see in so much of the human condition, looks clearly at it and provides a number of tools for working with the mind to alleviate that suffering. Best of all, to my view, it places the responsibility for alleviating suffering squarely on the shoulders of the practitioner rather than offering some supposed panacea or encouraging the practitioner to give their worries away to some deity. I often wonder how the deity feels about that.

In addition, in my ongoing shape shifting research, my practice helps me to settle my mind and sink into some contact with . . . the universal energy field, Force, or whatever you want to call it. To me, this is crucial since it is only at that level that the practitioner can begin to let go of what he or she views as "me" and access other parts of the construct that may be more aligned to the inner animal. Ultimately, of course, the Buddhist is looking for contact with that part of the self which Western mages might call the High Self, but part of the process is exploration of the entire human construct - body, mind and whatever else there is.

I am sure that that the Buddhists monks and priests probably never intended the practices to assist in the Change but I am equally sure that there are stories of shape shifters all through the Eastern lands so some of those folk likely realized that deep meditation aids in relaxing our grip on this physical form, even if it is only in the mind.

Muddying the Waters

2012-01-11T11:00:00.001-05:00

I found this 2007 article from Nick Redfern's "There's Something in the Woods" blog quite interesting.

Earlier in the week, I was talking about perception and how much our perceptions can shape how we view an event, paranormal or otherwise. In looking through this article, I was struck not so much by the sighting of what sounds like a Manwolf or Dogman type cryptid but by the rush to "explain" these occurrences and, in my view, to muddy the waters regarding the sightings.

The witnesses in this case very plainly stated that what they saw had, at first, appeared to be a large dog and then had risen to two legs and run out of sight. This type of sighting correlates well to the Manwolf/Dogman sightings in Michigan and Wisconsin. Despite the very specific witness statements, explanations put forward to the local newspaper ranged from "a crazed tramp" to aliens to a race of subterranean creatures (apparently the favorite of the local paranormal investigation group).

A crazed tramp? Seriously? I have had my share of encounters with "tramps" in the course of past security employment but I have never seen one that appeared to have the head of a dog/wolf.

An alien? Putting aside the obvious question of how we define an alien and whether such a being is an inner space or outer space phenomenon, this is an explanation that explains nothing. It is like saying that the witness to a full ghostly apparition saw an alien - the explanation means nothing.

A race of subterranean creatures. Again, this is an explanation that begs the question. Why would such creatures exist under Cannock Chase? Why would they have evolved such a distinctive appearance? And why are similar creatures seemingly seen on this side of the Atlantic? I am betting that a conspiracy theorist could have a great time with some of these ideas but, again, they explain nothing.

Although it is not really included in this article, one of my favorite non-explanations for Manwolf/Dogman sightings is something that you would hear on Finding Bigfoot - "it must have been a squatch!" While the investigation of Bigfoot is a very legitimate crypto-zoological undertaking, not every foreign enigma seen in the woods is a Sasquatch. If we set the witness descriptions of the two types of beings side by side they do not come anywhere close to matching. I have to wonder how many Manwolf/Dogman sightings have been "written off" as Bigfoot sighting over the course of time.

I know that I am showing a touch of sarcasm in this piece but I think that it is well justified. It is quite mysterious enough that people,, in both Great Britain and the United States, are reporting similar beings roaming their woods. Witnesses have come forward, even in the face of ridicule, to state what they have seen. I think that the least we can do for those people is to accept that they saw something, perhaps something unknown, and stop trying to jam those sighting into some convenient category that explains nothing. In all this chasing around, theorizing about underground species and aliens, we do not see a single report of anyone going out into the field and looking for sign, for instance. By rushing to "explain" these encounters, we do the witnesses and ourselves a disservice by not maintaining an open mind.

Who is safer?

2012-01-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

If you study the wolf, you quickly learn that, if offered a choice between fighting and not fighting, wolves will avoid a physical confrontation whenever possible. Even in matters of pack dominance, where there is a very real challenge to the alpha of a pack, the fights can get bloody but there are seldom casualties. Most often, pack dominance issues are settled not by combat but by a complex set of social interactions that reinforce the position of each wolf in the group. It is in matters of defending the pack's territory that fatalities are most common but a wolf pack will only dispose of an intruding wolf if they can not intimidate the stranger out of their territory.

Many people think of the werewolf as a monster: out of control, fiercely blood thirsty and a threat to all in the immediate vicinity. However, as we have seen repeatedly in the lore, a werewolf is "simply" a human who has the ability to shape shift into a wolf. While that person seems to carry some of their human intelligence into the wolf form, the person is a wolf and, I suspect, responds to the lupine instincts. Given that idea, the thought of a werewolf as a marauding animal, ripping and shredding its way through the human populace seems exaggerated.

While there are stories of werewolves avenging slights against them, it is far more likely that the human who walks as a wolf would tend to avoid human contact just as his cousin, canis lupus, does. A wolf with human intelligence would understand all too well how destructive people are and how willing they are to shoot first and ask questions later. Such a wolf would also understand that depredations against the human population would result in a general uprising against all the predators in the area and so would tend to avoid confrontations with people.

No predator is harmless to humans. Even the most benign black bear will rise up and kill a human who interferes with its cubs. Much of the fear that people feel toward wolves (and, by extension, toward the werewolf) is projection of their own fears about what humans might be like if allowed to be like animals (i.e, operating outside of all social constraints). Given the ferocity that humans display toward each other, such concerns are not entirely unjustified. It seems to me, though, that the human would be far safer encountering a werewolf in the forest than he or she would be encountering some of the members of the species homo sapiens sapiens.

Demons

2012-01-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I noted that the witness correlated his or her sighting with demonic activity (although I am puzzled by the witness' fairly blasé reaction to the sighting). There is a lot of confusion out there about demons so I thought that I would take a moment away from my canid obsession to discuss this topic.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word demon derives from
the Greek. daimon "deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity" (sometimes including souls of the dead); "one's genius, lot, or fortune;" from PIE *dai-mon- "divider, provider" (of fortunes or destinies), from base *da- "to divide.

Looking at this definition, we see that the Greeks had a far different view of these beings than the Christians who came after them. A daimon was seen as a helpful being that provided guidance to the person throughout life. There is a subtle notions of fate being involved but most magical thinkers believe that a daimon is capable of rendering guidance to a person who cultivates the art of listening through invocation and meditation. The daimon might not always be able to keep us out of trouble but it could point out the least troubled path.

Christianity, of course, came into conflict with the concept of the daimon because of that word "deity". To the Christian, there was one God and any other being classified as a deity, even a minor one like the daimon, was relegated to the status of a minion of Satan, a fallen angel deceiving the pagans into believing in the Old Ways rather than accepting the new faith. The word, daimon, came to be associated with a deceiving spirit and eventually evolved into the modern word demon.

Modern magicians of a certain sort do work with what magical texts refer to as demons. These creatures are actually "sub-lunar" (referring to their place in magical cosmology as between the earth and the moon, not yet rising to the level of the sun) entities who, when approached carefully and respectfully, can be bargained with to accomplish certain tasks swiftly and effectively. A classic example of this is work with the "demon" know as Bune from the grimoire, The Lesser Key of Solomon. Magicians who work with this entity find "him" to be quite helpful, although sometimes a bit too literal, and "repay" his services by testifying to what he has done for them, thus increasing the spirit's fame.

So, does this mean that the Christian notion of demons as evil spirits intent on doing harm to human beings is totally inaccurate? I would like to say yes to this and be done with it but the fact remains that there are spiritual forces that are inimical to human beings. I think of it in terms of vibration. If humans resonate at a certain frequency, then these entities, when they come into contact with us, would be the equivalent of a tuning fork set to a pitch that creates dissonance. These beings are alien to us and follow their own agenda which is not aligned with health and happiness for human beings. There is a reason why magicians learn, early in their training, not to summon anything that they can not banish.

Cynocephali

2012-01-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

Different people have different interpretations of a given event. This witness in a report to Lon Strickler's Phantoms and Monsters website, associated the being that he or she saw in the trees with the Nephilim, a legendary group of beings said to have arisen from intercourse between fallen angels and humanity. The report concludes with a dire warning of demonic activity attached to the UFO phenomenon. It seems, from reading the witness' report, that this person has rolled the whole realm of paranormal/anomalous activity under one blanket cause: demons acting in our world.

I wonder what Lon's witness would say if he or she were to discover that one of the most beloved of Christian saints, Christopher, was actually described, in contemporary texts as being of the race of "cynocephali" - the dog heads? There are illustrations of Christopher with a dog head during that time period that bear a remarkable resemblance to the Egyptian glyphs of Anubis. I wonder if the witness above would conclude that St. Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, reputed to have carried the Christ child across a river, was, in fact, a demon because of his unusual appearance?

If the person writing this report had been a Kemetic (Egyptian) pagan or had been even moderately interested in ancient religions, he or she might have interpreted their sighting as a manifestation of the god Anubis or his antecedent, Wepwawet. That might not have produced a warm fuzzy feeling in the witness since both gods are associated with the underworld and death but he or she would not have seen this sighting as evidence of something evil. It is interesting to note that Linda Godfrey in her book "Hunting the American Werewolf" describes an incident just like this one, only occurring indoors.

A modern Jungian psychoanalyst, seeing this same creature, might conclude that he or she had encountered an archetypal image from the depths of the collective unconscious. A UFO investigator might conclude that this being was yet another sort of alien/human hybrid. A so called skeptic would have gathered that, since such a creature could not exist, the witness was either mistaken, deluded or outright lying. In my own, magical perspective, I would be investigating the area where the sighting occurred for evidence of occult activity thinking that the sighting might have been caused by an improperly closed ritual invocation.

My point in all this is that perspective is everything. When we look at phenomenon with our minds as wide open as we can make them, all sorts of extraordinary ideas can be formed. In this New Year, let's all try to step back from our preconceived notions and expectations and look at things with fresh eyes. After all, you never know what you might encounter if you really look.

Novel Update

2012-01-02T14:12:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year to all!

I have been taking something of a break over the past few days as I have recovered from the long trip to Canada and back but I have been trying to get some writing done as well. I just passed the 75,000 word landmark on my novel and that seems, to me, to be a very auspicious beginning to the New Year. I expect to have the rough draft finished in the next couple of months.

May you, too, meet your goals in 2012 and don't forget to have a good howl now and then.

New Year's Thought

2011-12-30T11:00:00.001-05:00

I have just staggered back into the door after the long drive from Southern Ontario back to Georgia. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve so I wanted to get some thoughts down before I hide out in my home and watch the general drunkenness and revelry pass. I was out in the middle of the party when I was young; I remember what it was like and what it felt like when I woke the next day. I am older and wiser now and less likely to howl simply for the sake of howling but I do not begrudge the pups their time to celebrate. For myself, I will likely find a good movie to watch and retire early . . . if my neighbors are not too loud.

I am not going to encourage you to make resolutions for the New Year. Anyone who has ever worked out regularly at a gym or studied in a martial arts studio knows about the influx of well meaning people at the New Year who are gone by February or March. Change is difficult for humans; our habits and patterns are literally carved into our brains and it takes a lot of energy and more than a little gumption to break out of those ruts and make a permanent change. I do not say this to be discouraging; I simply note the reality of the situation.

Rather than sneaking up on yourself and trying to wrestle a change in your way of doing things by main force, let me suggest an alternative: take a class. One of the ways that we can help ourselves to change is to educate ourselves. If we start to study something and it really piques our interest, suddenly the change that we might like to make does not seem so onerous.

My inner wolf wants me to tell everyone that he is rooting for people to take classes to bring them closer to the earth, to help them realize that they are a part of the ecosystem in which they live and that they are connected to all living things. He wants me to tell you to learn to open your ears as well as your eyes, to use your nose as well as your fingertips, to begin to discover what a gift life is and to begin to appreciate it. I know that some of you will eagerly take up that challenge but it may not be for others so I offer a few thoughts on educating yourself below.

Choose your class wisely. Do not go for something open ended but, instead, look for a class in a subject of interest that has a distinct beginning and ending time, a limited commitment that you can easily work into your schedule. If you are not sure about whatever it is you think you want to learn about, you might just try taking a very short intro class (a weekend, perhaps) to see if it is something you want to pursue further.

Don't limit yourself. How often have you said to yourself, " I could never . . . "! Why not? What have you got to lose other than a little time and maybe a little money. Exploring something you thought you could not do may open a whole new world for you. Even if it does not, you have still faced off with something you thought you could never do and tried it. Points to you in either event.

Get your hands dirty. I am known for writing about magic and spiritual practice so, of course, I would be thrilled if a bunch of people wrote me back and said they had taken up meditation or signed up for the introductory Native American flute class they have always wanted to try. Some of you though will look at this post and think organic gardening or pottery or . . . well, fill in the blank. Again, do not limit yourself but be willing to get your hands on whatever it is you want to learn, figuratively or literally.

Let your inner child or wolf cub out to play. It is okay to smile, laugh, make a mess and generally behave like a delighted five year old as you explore your new knowledge. Permission is hereby granted to ignore the stuffy old codger inside of you that is telling you to be "nice" (whatever the hell that means).

Happy New Year to all. For those of you going out tomorrow, be safe! For those who are not . . . be safe too :-) !!

Traveling

2011-12-28T11:00:00.001-05:00

I am about to begin the great trek homeward from Southern Ontario to my new place in Georgia after visiting family. The thought of travelling minded me of this fact about wolves - there average travel speed, according to several sources, is five miles per hour.

Now, five miles per hour does not sound like a lot until you realize that a wolf can move at that pace almost indefinitely. In a full day of travelling, a wolf could cover more than forty miles. If you think this is an easy feat, watch the faces of Olympic marathoners crossing the finish line. Those people are going as hard as they can to finish a run of 26.2 miles. They can do it in a little over two hours but I doubt that they do much besides refuleing for the rest of the day.

A wolf, on the other hand, could conceivably cover twice that distance in a day, perhaps tuck up for a nap or stop to snack, and then go on without batting a lash. Day in and day out with only available food supplies and water limiting the range the wolf might attain. I would love to have endurance to run 12:00 minute miles for hours and hours on end.

So, as I get ready to cram myself into a metal box and fling myself down the highway at speeds in excess of 60 miles per hour, I think of the wolf, trotting toward its destination. I doubt that the wolf arrives where it is going needing a potty break and a good long leg stretch!

Safe travels to all who are on the roads or in the skies for this holiday season.

Boxing Day

2011-12-26T11:00:00.000-05:00

In Canada, where I am now sitting, trying to shake off the somnolence of the Christmas feast, today is known as Boxing Day. Contrary to what you might think, watching the crowds in this country descend on stores in a frenzy of after Christmas shopping, the boxing in Boxing Day is not the pugilistic sort brought on by the efforts of one shopper to overcome the competition. Rather, the tradition seems to be linked to very old European customs.

As you can see for the article, there are a number of different theories about how the name of Boxing Day originated. You can cheer for whichever one you wish but the common theme, as the article points out, is one of giving to those less fortunate. In keeping with the more or less universal theme of Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward <Humans>, it seems to me that this is a great time for any charitable contributions that you want to make in the year.

I have spoken, in past blogs, about the difference between want and need. We really have only four needs - shelter, water, fire and food - but those of us who live in industrial societies have so much more than we need. It seems to me only fair that we should share some of that excess with those who are not as fortunate.

This past spring, as I got ready to make my move to Georgia, I found myself getting rid of a lot of "things" that I had been carrying around for some time, without even realizing it. Getting rid of some of that "stuff", not only made my move easier but made me feel lighter in general. In the process of giving away items, I made some children happy, clothed some folks who needed it and placed some basic household implements in some person's home. I felt good about that.

I am not implying that everyone should perform the sort of radical stripping down that I experienced this spring but do take a look around you and see if there is not a thing or two you could get rid of that would benefit someone else. Or, look at your bank account and see if there is not a worthy charity that you could give a small contribution too. If cash is short, you might even consider donating your precious time to some good cause.

As the holiday season moves toward its denoument at New Year, I hope this post finds you all happy, well fed and ready to leap into the New Year. Be well, and listen for the distant howling of the wolves as I send out this greeting to you.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T11:00:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to take a brief moment, amidst my family gatherings, to wish all who celebrate it a Merry Christmas! Remember to curl up in a furry pile with someone you love :-)

Tracking

2011-12-23T11:00:00.000-05:00

Many moons ago, when I first discovered that I needed a spiritual underpinning to help me handle certain aspects of my life, I looked at my religious upbringing and decided that, much as I wanted to, I could not really live with the God of my childhood. That realization started a quest which continues to this day and that quest started in Native American lore since it was the only referent that I had outside of Christianity.

My father was adopted and his adopted mother, the grandmother who raised me, belonged to one of the many Plains tribes that spoke one of the languages in the Lakota language group. So, I began my spiritual quest by reading up on the Lakota spiritual tradition. Ranging from Black Elks Speaks to the more modern Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions as well as a healthy dose of academic literature about the practices of the Lakota, I took the words I was reading to heart and spent hours in the mountains surrounding Phoenix, where I lived at the time, trying to re-establish contact with my mother and Grandmother, the Earth.

I did what I did alone. I did not want to be seen as yet another "wanna be" Indian but the practices that I was reading about and trying to carry into practice were having their effect. To this day, I believe that my facility with visions comes from that time but, more importantly, I had a dream during this time that has stayed with me during my entire quest, no matter where that journy has taken me.

It is a sacred dream so I am not going to lay it out completely. Such dreams lose power if they are spoken of too often. Suffice to say that, one of the hallmarks of this dream was tracking. After making an error in judgment, I had to try to find someone that I had let slip away. As the dream came to a close, I had picked up the trail of this individual and was in active pursuit.

Now, one could certainly see this as symbolic of a human being led off into the widerness of the spiritual quest where the path winds and loops upon itself and, sometimes, runs into dead ends that make the tracker stop and then back track to the last place where the trail was clear. Such an interpretation would certainly be true, in my case, but I see this dream as something more.

In ceremonial magic, there are specific rites for seeking what is called the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. This being goes by a number of names ranging from the Greek agathadaimon to the HGA mentioned above to the more psychological concept of the Higher Self. Whatever, one chooses to call it, the pursuit of this "being" and the concept of union with it enhancing the wisdom and spiritual practice of the person is universal in the magical arts. I believe that this dream was a dream of my "good spirit" and that this being or part of myself is bumping me to continue my quest for union with it. Old friends from that long ago period have come back into my visions and there is a certain "earthiness" to my meditations of late that cue me to the period of that dream. I continue to track the being who manifested for me in that dream . . . who knows where it will lead me next.

Iktomi

2011-12-19T11:00:00.003-05:00

While I am on the subject of Native American shapeshifters, I want to also mention a shapeshifting being from Lakota myth who has a direct bearing on everything we do online, the trickster god Iktomi.

As mentioned in this Wikipedia article, there was a prophecy that Iktomi, the spider, would spread his web over the entire world. Being the god that the Lakota look to for new technology, many traditionalists believe that the spread of telephone wires and then the more invisible threads of the worldwide web make this prophecy a reality.

Iktomi falls into the category that folklorists like to call Trickster. He is not a malevolent being but sometimes his antics do go awry and cause trouble for the people. Other times, he provides the tools or knowledge that the people need to protect themselves. Much like Coyote and Raven, shapeshifting beings from other tribal legends, Iktomi sometimes performs a useful function even when he does something that seems to be off base, like stealing. Trickster beings are enormously complex; perhaps the most complex beings in folklore, but the Native people did not, as Europeans would likely do, view them as evil. Like any force of nature, the Trickster could cause harm or bring great benefit.

So, if you should happen to venture across a Native American man with red, yellow and white "war paint" on and black rings around his eyes, you might want to consider averting your eyes and treating that fellow with a lot of respect. And watch out for those strings that he uses to control people . . .

White Buffalo Calf Woman

2011-12-16T11:00:00.001-05:00

In European lore, there are many stories of shapeshifters both voluntary and involuntary. Many of these tale seemed to be draped in sadness or fear : the tricksy faery changing forms to confuse humans and lead them astray, the selkie having her skin hidden so that she can not return to seal form, a sister (or sisters) trapped in the form of a swan while a sorceress takes her place, the fierce werewolf hunting the night forests, presumably for human prey and so on.

Native Americans took a much more prosaic view of the shape shifting phenomenon. While we have seen, in the Dog Man posts, that some shapeshifters use their power for evil in the Native legends, there are many stories from the tribes that describe positive contact with shapeshifting beings. One of my favorites is the story of the White Buffalo Calf woman. There are a number of versions of this tale; here is one of them: http://www.hanksville.net/arvol/buffpipe.html

Interesting, is it not, that the Lakota, a tribe known for their hunting and warrior prowess, should derive the basis for their spiritual and religious culture from a myth about a woman? To this day, the White Buffalo Calf maiden is held in highest regard amongst Lakota traditionalists as the one who brought them their way of life. Prophecies surround the birth of any white buffalo calf and the elders of several tribes coming to bless and pray over any new born white calf.

I have to wonder if the sadness and fear that Europeans seem to infuse into their shapeshifting lore does not have to do with their disconnection with the land and its spirits that we discussed in an earlier post.

The Grail Priest

2011-12-14T11:00:00.005-05:00

While my primary interest, obviously, is the magic and folklore of shapeshifting, sometimes I come across an article that I feel the need to share. Such was the case with this article.

Mr. Coppens is a well known writer amongst adherents of speculative history and has written on a variety of topics which I found interesting and others that made me roll my eyes. To each their own, as it were. I found this article fascinating because I think that it describes an outward manifestation of something that is well known, if not terribly well understood, in occult circles.

There are certain people who belong to an Inner priesthood. Many of the members of various esoteric groups would like to claim this distinction but the members of this Inner Circle, if you will, are chosen by the Powers, probably archangelic, that operate on the Otherside and they are rare individuals. I believe that I have had the privilege of meeting and studying briefly with one of these people and my sole wish, to this day, is that he had remained on this earth long enough to really ground me into his teachings. Perhaps, I was not able at that time to absorb what he had to give me, but his death is one of the only times in my life that I can recall weeping in public. He was more than a father to me and I miss him to this day.

Looking at this article though, I was, for some reason, reminded of my dear mentor. If he had been a priest in a standard Christian tradition, I am sure that he would have been in trouble with his bishop all the time and that he would have left behind something like this church in Trehorenteuc as a "pointer" along the spiritual paths of those who would visit it. Henri Gillard understood something that my mentor taught me all those years ago: spirituality is a Quest of the highest order and it is not a Quest that can be dictated or guided by a set of doctrines, it can not be contained by any rules and it is not something that can be done for the Questor by an outside institution. The Quest is one that must be undertaken personally and the sweat and tears and sometimes blood that follow the effort must be shed by the person making the Quest. The role of a priest is not to act as some intermediary between the Divine and human beings but the embody the Divine, in some way, and empower the seeker to keep seeking, even when they are feeling down and beaten.

Myth is the language of the spiritual Quest and Fr. Gillard understood this, blending the local myths of the Grail into the wider myth of Christianity to bring to life a church that had been dying and turn it into a place of pilgrimage. Such dedication to bringing people along the spiritual path is the mark of a true priest, one called by the Powers, so I think that Mr. Coppens got the title of this piece just right. Fr. Henri Gillard truly was a Grail Priest.

Final Musings on the Indian Dog Men Post

2011-12-12T11:00:00.000-05:00

On a slightly different topic from Tuesday's post, I found it interesting that Mr. Walks As Bear differentiates between "good" and "bad" shape shifters.

In his view, the good shape shifters could simply be called shape shifters. These people might be mischievous and spooky when encountered in their animal form but they were not dangerous since they responded to the ethical standards of the people amongst who they lived. While I am not an expert in Native American myth, it seems to me that this sort of shifter was, for the most part, taken for granted since I have not encountered any stories about them in my wanderings. Shape shifting seems to have been a power that most Native tribes simply saw as a natural extension of one's devotion to an animal spirit or of one's prayers to the Great Spirit (Lakota called it Wakan Tanka - thee Great Mystery) to assist in some task, such as hunting or warfare.

On the other hand, evil shape shifters would be called skin walkers in Mr. Walks As Bear's view and they were to be avoided at all costs. I know of a couple of tribes that have stories of skin walker types - the Navajo and the Seneca - and both tribes are universally agreed that the only course of action when encountering one of these beings is to run like hell and hope for the best. Interestingly, the skin walkers amongst the Navajo are often called wolves and that is a form that they take frequently. If I recall the Seneca stories correctly, their "witches" often take the form of a canid and can be distinguished from a real dog by the fact that they glow from within, almost as if the animal had glowing embers inside them that shined forth from the the eyes and mouth (shades of the Black Dog legends of Europe).

In either case, no good could come from an encounter with a skin walker. The Navajo believed that such an encounter disturbed the hozho, the harmony, of a person and had to be remedied by staging a medicine ceremony for that person lest they become ill and die. Add this to the fact that skin walkers in the Navajo legends are liberal with their curses and you have a real threat on your hands. The Seneca legends do not seem to be quite so specific, at least the ones that I have encountered, but an encounter with a "witch" in human or animal form was something one was considered lucky to survive. Usually those who escape unharmed are those who go unnoticed or those who are fortunate enough to have the "witch" distracted from its purpose of doing them harm.

As I said above, it seems to me that Native peoples took the accepted type of shape shifter as a part of their culture and did not give it much thought but developed a lot of mythos around shape shifters who were less bound by ethics. One wonders if this were not the case in Europe which, until the Christian church completely stamped it out, had a reasonably vibrant pagan tradition with its own tales of shape shifters. It seems that both traditions rather took the "good" shifters for granted but one wonders if the "bad" shifters did not become the werewolves of terror filled myth.

Interestingly, as I write this there is a dog howling somewhere in my apartment building. Wonderfully evocative and a little spooky.

Musings on the Indian Dog Men Post

2011-12-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

I posted the essay from David Walks As Bear yesterday because, to me, with my research in the lore of Europe and, more specifically, Northern Europe and my sensibilities based in magic from across the pond as well, these words represented a totally different view of the phenomena that I have been studying. I know enough about Native American cultures to know about the Dog Men of the Cheyenne but it had never occurred to me to relate the sightings of the Manwolf in Wisconsin and the Dogman in Michigan with those long ago Native people who struggled with the Europeans so long ago.

I should have known better. Cultures with active shamanic practitioners are also cultures with active shape shifting lore. The two go hand in hand since the being that gives a shaman power is an animal spirit and the person who has guidance from an animal spirit is encouraged to invite that spirit into their everyday lives (in some cultures, this intrusion of the spirits is so forceful as almost be a matter of the spirits forcing the shaman to work with them). As Mr. Walks As Bear points out, the warriors of the Cheyenne Dog Men were encouraged to learn about and emulate their totem.

I know the stories of Lakota holy men who accomplished amazing things with the help of their spirit allies and I have heard of a Cheyenne ceremony of calling in spirits (I think it is called the Shaking Tent or Tipi but do not quote me on that) that is very powerful and produces effects in the physical sphere (thus the shaking of the tipi). It is fairly obvious that the Native peoples had some powerful forces to work with and they certainly had plenty of tales of shape shifters and animals that walked and spoke like humans.

The Dog Men may, indeed, have crossed that boundary into real transformation or they may have produced effects that make it appear that way. Those Native warriors would be long dead but there is no reason why they could not have passed their talent along to others (sons, perhaps?) so that we have a tightly knit group of shape shifters living in that region to this day. Or, alternatively, what people are seeing in those Northern forests are the spirits of those who walked as Dog Men years before. This would account for the lack of physical evidence in most encounters. We know from ghost studies that some spirits seem to be able to manifest so strong that they appear to be solid and can effect their physical surroundings. What better spirit to do that sort of thing than the spirit of a Native shape shifter?

Indian Dog Men

2011-12-07T11:00:00.003-05:00

Some more gleanings from my web surfing adventures the other day. This fellow is a mixed breed Native person with an interesting perspective on the Dogmen of Michigan. I pulled the text from a set of sighting reports on this website and decided to quote it in full since it had some really interesting ideas in it. Apologies in advance to any lovers of that "modern horror crud" :-)

Bear's Den by David Walks-As-Bear

Ordinarily I work Halloween every year. It just seems to happen that way. It's never been a biggy for me as I don't get spooked by modern-day monsters. But man, sometimes when I'm driving deep in the dark woods, on a full-mooned night I fret a little about things changing, eh. November is American Indian Heritage Month. It doesn't get a lot of play like Black History or Hispanic Months do but I figure that's okay. Squeaky wheels get the grease and heck, we're not alone. Folks with Polish, French, Hungarian and other ancestry don't have rusty axles, either. Still, since I am Shawnee, I thought I'd delve a tad deeper into Indian outdoor stuff.

So, there's the Legend of the Dogmen here in the Michigan north woods, eh. There's even a nifty song about them, eh. It seems like a shape shifting deal to me so, here we go. But first, if you want to learn more about this Mitten State mystery, go to Google and punch-in "Michigan Dog Man".

Now, as a rule, Indians are pretty generic. Like Americans, British or Lithuanians, their cultures and languages will vary a bit from region to region. But overall, everybody follows similar modes. That goes for Indian Warrior societies, too. Now these groups are made up of braves whose primary job is protecting their nation. And they often take the names of animals that they feel most symbolize their warrior prowess.

Back in the 1860's, there was a warrior group of Cheyenne called the Dog Soldiers or Dog Men. For many poor US Army troopers, they were the 'Special Forces' of their times. Like wolves or wild dogs, they were tenacious in their pursuit of their prey and would come back again and again and again until they won victory. Similar warrior societies using the dog or wolf can be found in almost every American Indian nation. The process for a warrior in this society is in learning how to become just as your totem, or symbol. And that lends its way into Indian shape shifting. Now I'm speaking figuratively not literally, eh.

But depending on your point of view, shape shifting can 'change'. For Indians, shape shifting is applied in hunting, song and dance, healing and warfare. A brave will study his spirit animal for many years to learn all of its uniqueness and mannerisms, trying to become one with it or just like it. Ordinarily, Indian shape shifting couldn¹t be more different than the modern horror crud. But there can be exceptions where this homily plays out close to modern day Dracs, and Frankysteins, eh. And maybe, the Northern Michigan 'Legend of the Dogmen' is one such instance, hmm?

The Cheyenne Dog Men supposedly were wiped out by the US Army. But there are stories, carried over from the elders, that tell of some of the Dog Men actually shape shifting into the 'real dogs' that they mimicked in battle. Thus, these few escaped the US Army's planned killing of them all back in the 'Battle of Summit Springs' in Colorado. Now, be you a believer of this or not, it¹s worthwhile to note that unlike the horror junk you see in movies and on TV, the Dog Men are not going to rip you apart and devour you, eh. They couldn't even if they wanted to. That's because even if they were bad spirits, most Indians know that you cannot be harmed by evil of any kind unless you invite it into yourself. Christianity and every other religion on the Earth Mother teach the same thing, eh.

Equally though, the Good Book and all of those other beliefs also speak of spirits that have manifestations here among us two-leggeds, too. Angels are one such example of good spirits and demons are the opposite in that they're evil. Well, Shapeshifters are usually considered as good, a tad mischievous maybe, but not evil. The same can't be said for their opposite, skinwalkers, eh. If the Michigan Dog Men are shapeshifters, then they'd be spooky, alright, as they're other-worldly. But not evil, though. So it could be that the 'Dog Men of Michigan' are just old Michigan Indian warriors, going through their seven-year routine of shape shifting. Who can say? But speaking of routine I do personally fret a bit when I'm driving deep in the dark woods, on a full-mooned night and things change know what I mean?

David Walks as Bear

From Your Friendly Writer

2011-12-05T11:00:00.003-05:00

Greeting, all!

As the holiday season approaches and I am faced with increased constraints on my time as well as travel requirements, I need to take a little pressure off of myself until after the turn of the year. Consequently, rather than shooting for a blog entry every day during the work week, I am going to move to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule until after the holidays are over and the pandemonium in my schedule settles.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the continued support and to wish you all well, whaetver holiday is approaching for you.

An Interview with Linda Godfrey

2011-12-05T11:00:00.001-05:00

Discovered this little gem while doing some web surfing.

I have read Ms. Godfrey's Beast of Bray Road and Hunting the American Werewolf and would really love to get my hands on a copy of The Michigan Dogman (it has not come out on Kindle or Nook yet and I am trying not to accumulate too many physcial books these days). The two books that I have perused fulfilled my requirements for cryptozoological writing:

They were well written;
They were not dry ponderous tomes but actually contained some humor;
The author did not seek to foist her point of view on others but, instead, provided a number of different theories about the creatures she was stalking;
There were plenty of eyewitness accounts and no account, no matter how strange, was thrown out;
The author continues to dig into this mystery and unearth new evidence to this day, demonstrating a real interest in the subject.

After reading Ms. Godfrey's books, I confess to an intense desire to make an extended field trip to Wisconsin and Michigan to explore the places she describes. As with Bigfoot, I would love to see someone go into the wilderness for an extended period of time to gather evidence for the Manwolf/Dogman. There is an even greater dearth of physical evidence for these werewolf-like animals than there is for Sasquatch. Photos and possibly DNA evidence would be best since this being would probably leave behind canid tracks that could easly be confused for those of a large wolf, an animal that lives in that part of North America.

In any event, do check out the link and, if you are interested, I strongly recommend Ms. Godfrey's books. She is a talented writer and artist and deserves the support.

Winter Cleaning

2011-12-02T11:00:00.001-05:00

The weather here in Georgia has finally taken on a distinctly wintry cast, with frost in the mornings and the temperature plummeting once the sun sets in the evening. The days grow shorter and we are moving steadily toward the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year.

My inner wolf loves this time of year, loves the frost on the grass and plants when we go out in the morning, loves the feel of heavier clothing, almost like fur, envoloping us as we walk. My senses always seem more alert and I am acutely conscious of nature all around me, even as I drive through the city. Some part of me is out there, trotting through the woods, breath bursting from his snout in white cloudy plumes, his dense coat even denser as the winter fill comes in. The image of my wolf, loose in the woods, makes me smile and it is even more amusing when the wolf appears, seemingly from nowhere, before me and curls up contentedly as I sip a warm drink.

I have not quite learned how to blend that inner wolf with the body that I am carrying around as a human but it is in this season that I have the strongest feeling that, one day, I will. After all, this is the time when the forces that strip away and clean the earth for the coming spring, are at their peak. In Germanic lore, Odin (or some other version of the Huntsman) rides forth with the Wild Hunt, a pack of hounds, some say wolves, coursing before him as he and the Huntsman ride. It is said that the person unlucky enough to view this sight will not live to see the daybreak but it is also said that, for the doughty person brave enough to stand tall and approach the Hunt, there is a place in that Wild Ride through the sky for him (or her).

In the same way, I feel that those forces are stripping away and cleaning that inside of me which will not own the inner wolf, that fears him, that fears the wild. Layers and layers of societal conditioning to be "nice" do not peel away easily. It requires a frosty wind laden with scouring ice to pull away that detritus and expose the person underneath. The process does not happen as swiftly as I would like but I suspect that , if it were any more swift, I might not be able to bear the pain.

When the process is done though, I will assume the form that has called to me for so long (astrally or etherically, most likely) and I will lift my head to the sky and howl as I join that great Hunt which travels through the sky, content in the knowledge that I have truly found my pack. Once, a being appeared to me in a dream and asked me what I really wanted. It has taken some time for me to answer that question but now I know. May the scouring continue . . .

The New Religion

2011-12-01T11:00:00.001-05:00

Somewhat off topic today but, I guess this might fall under the heading of magic, so here goes . . .

I was wandering through my Evernote account, looking at some old research materials when I came across a note I made to myself in 2009 with a thought that I never really finished. I had been reading HR Ellis-Davidson's excellent treatise on the old Norse versions of the afterlife, The Road to Hel, and had noted a section (p.117 -118 in my PDF text) where there are a number of references to spirits of the land (what the Norse called wights ) leaving an area when the new religion of Christianity took hold.

My note has a big question mark next to this statement. Why would the spirits of the land abandon an area simply because the religion changed? After all, if one accepts the idea that the land is alive and alive with spirits, as I do, then these are beings that had been a part of the land for generations. Perhaps they had even existed there before the coming of humans into that area.

Christianity had a pat answer for this phenomenon. These spirits were evil beings that were driven out by the holy signs of the Church. Of course, anyone who has ever come into contact with the spirits of the land knows that, no matter how urban or Christianized an area has become, there are still Those who remain to care for what is left to them. Not all of the wights have fled so this seems to give the lie to the Church's attitude of superiority. People in Iceland certainly still believe in the power of the wights/elves and I am sure that you can find some Irish and Scottish folk who, in an unguarded moment, will admit to having experience with the Faery realm.

Still, I think it is safe to say that many of the land spirits did move on when faced with an upswell of Christian practice so we have to wonder why. I do not for a minute think that they shrank from the holy signs and symbols of the new religion. What drove them away, in my mind, was the completely different attitude that the new religion brought to the land.

Genesis 1:28 And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after out likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and overevery creping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

That word, dominion, is one that Christian apologists have been trying to mitigate for a long time and, in fact, a whole theology of creation and blessing has arisen in response to this sort of statement in the Bible (a positive sign in my view). The fact remains though that Christianity introduced a sea change in human's attitude toward the land. No longer was the earth upon which they dwelt sacred and something with which they could live as a partner. Instead, the land was something from which food had to be wrested, often by main force (see the sentence of Adam, in Genesis 2 for details re that way of thinking) and over which humans had been given rulership. With an attitude like that filtering into an area, is it any wonder that the spirits that inhabited the land, that had walked with humans for many generations, decided that it was time to seek the deeper vastnesses of the wilderness and to leave humans to their labor?

Operation Werewolf

2011-11-30T11:00:00.002-05:00

We have spoken before about the terror that inspires the werewolf legend but we have not really discussed any of the ways in which human beings have attempted to harness that fear to their own ends. No discussion of the werewolf legend can ignore Unternehmen Werwolf - Operation Werewolf - the brain child of Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

Although anyone who suggested to the Nazi hierarchy that they might lose World War II was likely to face an early demise, the plans of the Third Reich became increasingly desperate as it became clear that the Allies were slowly rolling the German army back into Germany and that those forces were not going to stop until they occupied Berlin. Goebbels conceived of the idea of developing a guerilla force to fight behind enemy lines, based on the partisan forces that had operated against the Germans to good effect throughout the occupied territories. The idea was to create a regular military force of volunteers who would engage in a campaign of sniping, arson, sabotage and assassination against the Allies.

When it came time for Goebbels to name his group of Nazi partisans, he needed a name that would inspire dread throughout the German lands AND remind them of their leader. Adolf, Hitler's first name, means something along the line of 'noble wolf'. Hitler had played on this meaning in naming one of his military headquarters: Wolfsschanze - wolf's lair or sconce.

The wolf does not have a friendly place in Norse and Germanic myth. Wolves accompanied Odhinn, the god of the warrior dead, and the great wolf Fenris was partially responsible for the end of the world. The ulfhednar, berserk troops who battled with the magic of the wolf surrounding them, struck fear into the hearts of opposing warriors. Even the fairy tale story of Red Riding Hood, also Germanic in origin, casts a grim light on the wolf, as do the many legends of the werewolf that derive from the Germanic lands. Operation Werewolf could not have had a name that reached deeper into the fear-filled, ferocious dark side of the Northern lands. Given the Nazi love for the occult, I would not be at all surprised if the naming of the operation was not accompanied by magical working to induce further panic and fear; it is an open secret in occult circles that Hitler and his crew were more than interested in the arcane.

Anyone familiar with the history of World War II knows that Operation Werewolf amounted to very little in material terms. Almost all of the attacks that were attributed to this group were actually the work of regular German soldiers. What Operation Werewolf did accomplish was to set the Allies on edge. The belief that there were German insurgents operating in the occupied areas caused a number of unfortunate abuses of power and some out and out war crimes. It seems that the fear of the wolf can sometimes be more terrible than the creature itself.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf

Dog Suicides

2011-11-29T15:58:00.001-05:00

Once again, Lon at Phantoms and Monsters comes up with an item that piques my interest.

I find it fascinating the lengths to which scientists, rooted in their "nothing outside my five senses and instruments" mentality, will go to in order to 'explain' a mystery. Dogs jumping off bridges? No problem, we will asert that there are mink down there and that the dogs simply did not realize that there was a plunge involved in getting to the luscious scent.

While I might buy this explanation for some of the dog breeds (which I will leave un-named since I do not want to insult anyone's favorite breed), I have spent enough time working with dogs of varying sorts to be certain that this 'explanation' is sheer poppycock. Specifically, I have worked with search dogs. If you would like to see a dog get excited about scent, work with a wilderness search and rescue dog. These canines are trained, from a very early age, to view the 'game' of finding people outdoors as the most fun they can have without making puppies. I have been the lost person in search exercises and, let me tell you, when one of those critters finds you, you know that you have been found. They are as happy and excited to see you as they would be if they had found a fresh carcass in the field.

Nevertheless, as much as these dogs enjoy their work, I have never seen one come even close to plunging off a cliff when he or she was in a scent cone nor have I known anyone or heard any stories of anyone in the search world losing a dog that way. I can not say that it has never happened but, if it has, it is damned rare, not something that SAR people see every time the weather is clear and the scent conditions are fair.

So, while I might be able to believe that one or two dogs accidentally went over a bridge following a scent, any more deaths than that stretch into the unexplained, especially considering that all the dogs went off in the same place and those that survived actually tried to do it again. Contrary to the belief of some, dogs are not stupid and do learn from mistakes (well, most do. . . ).

I can not imagine what is 'calling' those dogs off that bridge on bright sunny days but I would love to see a team explore this further.

The Holiday Season

2011-11-28T11:00:00.002-05:00

Well, like it or not, Friday signalled the official beginning to the "Christmas" (not sure what this all has to do with the Christian celebration of Jesus' birth) shopping season. I live very close to one of the major shopping areas in my city and, believe me, the traffic on Friday let me know what I was getting into. I will be doing any live shopping on foot, thank you, since the so-called Christmas spirit does not seem to extend to hospitality to those who are driving with you.

In this season when people are getting into fist fights over the last "have to have" toy and smaller folks than I have to be careful not to be trampled in the crush, I often find that the cynical side of my nature gets the better of me. There just seems to be no end to the acquisitiveness of the human species and, while retail stores everywhere wait with bated breath to see if we are going to open our wallets and spend, I have a strong desire to boycott "Christmas" altogether, especially when, if I want to be politically correct and not offend anyone, I can not even call it Christmas anymore. Despite all the lip service paid to the "spirit of sharing" at this time of year, I see damned little of it in the behavior of the people that I observe around me, most of the time.

Still, I have not given up hope on the humans entirely. There are still people willing to stand out in all sorts of weather and ring a bell in front of a store and others, who will stop and give some change (or perhaps more), to the poor folks who do not have easy access to the things we take for granted. Every now and again, despite the crush of traffic, you will see someone yield a parking spot or stop long enough to let someone back out. Food banks will have an influx of goods that they will be able to use to feed those who can not feed themselves (for whatever reason) and combat hardened Marines will get sentimental and downright teary handing toys out to kids who would not otherwise get them. It seems that at least some people develop a soft spot for their fellow humans during this season.

I am not going to offer the usually soporifics that one sees at this time of the year. I think it is too much to ask to try to get people to love one another when three quarters or more of them are acting like jerks. I am not going to tell you that angels are watching over you or shove namby pamby sentimentality at you. I am not even going to encourage you to be "nice" (whatever that means) by appealing to religious morality or simplistic arguments about karma.

What I am going to do is remind you that wolves, after making a kill, have a very specific order to eating. They are hierarchical, so that the alphas eat first. The important thing to remember is that all members of the pack, even the omegas, get to eat as do the ravens and other scavengers that happen upon a kill. Humans are part of an ecosystem too and they need to learn that and live it so that there will be food and resources for all living things on this earth. Simplification starts with the little things like giving some unneeded clothes to those who need them or sharing the kids' outgrown toys with young people who will be glad to have them.

What better time to remember that you are a part of the circle of life (can you hear the Disney tunes in the background?) and begin to act on it than during this season of over the top spending?

Dark of the Moon

2011-11-25T11:00:00.001-05:00

The moon hides her face tonight and the only light that we will see when we walk out into the woods is the ambient starlight and, if we are too close to a city, the glow from the many streetlights that line the highways and byways. In the deep shadows of the trees, that light amounts to precious little and, without a lamp, it is easy to stumble and fall amongst the roots and branches of the wood.

As opposed to the full moon, when the etheric tides are at their strongest, the dark of the moon represents a time when those tides are at their low ebb. This fact, combined with darkness that is not pierced by the silver light of the lunar orb, may be why the new moon is associated with the dark arts and sorcery, at least in the popular mind.

Have you ever noticed though that, whenever some TV or movie director wants to develop a scary atmosphere, there is often a shot of the full moon included? The moon might be veiled in clouds but it is lambent and shining down on the earth. Why do you suppose that is? Is not darkness one of the primordial fears? Are not humans sight driven creatures? If you take away the light that brings vision to us, are we not blind and vulnerable?

It seems to me that, despite all the ballyhoo about werewolves and the full moon, that the dark of the moon would be a far superior hunting time for the wolf that has decided it has a taste for human flesh. What better night to harry and hunt some lone traveller on a long night road than the night upon which they can see little or nothing?

Perhaps, the whole business about transforming in the full moon light is simply disinformation planted by the werewoves so that people are not on their guard. Perhaps, the darker shadow, seemingly crouched at the base of the great oak around the bend, is exactly what the traveler's frightened mind thinks it is and the low growl that comes to the poor sot on the cool night breeze is not the wind whickering through the trees.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

2011-11-23T13:00:00.005-05:00

My holiday is going to be a little frantic with people coming and going and lots of cooking to do so I will be taking tomorrow off from blogging.

Normally, people look at this time of year as a time to stop and count their reasons for being grateful. I am sure that there are untold numbers of blogs across the blogosphere that are bearing some version of that message. My inner wolf snorts at a lot of the sentimentality that begins to filter into the societal consciousness around this time of year so I thought I would do something a little different for my Thanksgiving thoughts.

I have read, in several sources, that the wolf can consume almost 20 pounds of raw meat in a single sitting. Many of us, during our Thanksgiving feasts, seem to be attempting to replicate that feat. My inner wolf agrees that there is nothing wrong with a good feast but he also makes me note that, once he is done with his feast and has had a rest, he will be on the move again. Wolves travel in a ground covering lope that they can maintain for hours and my suggestion, for this feasting season, is that you follow the wolf's example. Once the festivities are done and you have slept off the turkey, make some time to move.

If you are a runner or walker, consider signing up for one of the Turkey Trot events that will be held across the country. If that is not your style, consider dragging some relatives off the couch and going for a walk around the neighborhood or, better yet, find a wilderness area and go for a hike. Get your bike out, air up the tires and go for ride. Put some music on and dance, with or without a partner. Do something that gets the blood moving and helps you shake off the some of the lassitude that you feel after the great feast.

Remember, the wolf is looking for the slow animal at the back of the herd for his next feast :-)

Sacrifice

2011-11-22T13:27:00.001-05:00

Sacrifice:

derived from the Latin word sacrificare (sacrifice; celebrate the Mass)
derived from the Latin word sacrum (sacrifice; sacred vessel; religious rites)
using the Late Latin suffix -ficarederived from the Latin word facere (to make; act, take action, be active; compose, write; classify; do, make; create; make, build, construct; produce; produce by growth; bring forth)

I had a run in with an old spirit helper early this week as part of an awakening realization about finding my place on this earth. This particular helper is often known for teaching people about sacrifice so I wanted to learn more about what the word meant.

When many people hear that word, sacrifice, they flinch internally. Sacrifice brings to mind images of animal slaughter in ancient rites or, at the least, an unpleasant giving up of something one would rather not give up. In general, the word sacrifice does not have a very good odour in modern day America.

If, however, we look at the roots of the word, we can see that sacrifice originally meant to make something holy. Notice all the action verbs in the root: to make, act, take action, do, create etc. Sacrifice today often implies a passive giving up such as the Lenten sacrifices of modern day Christians but, in its original context, sacrifice implied the doing of something - an action which created something holy.

If we follow this idea, we have to ask what holy means or meant.

The English word holy dates back to at least the 11th Century with the Old English word hālig, an adjective derived from hāl meaning whole and used to mean 'uninjured, sound, healthy, entire, complete’.

So, with a little etymological jump we can say that a sacrifice is actually the act of making something "uninjured, sound, healthy, entire, complete". Sacrifice is not a passive act of giving up and putting aside but an active act of healing and completion and wholeness. Any action that we do to remove our sense of otherness and separateness , any action that we perform to increases our sense that all beings are our relations, is, in the best sense of the word, a sacrifice.

Finding Bigfoot - My Way

2011-11-21T13:40:00.009-05:00

Note: I am not fully convinced that sasquatch is a remnant or unknown bipedal ape and not a creature of the Otherside. For purposes of this post, however, we are going to assume that the creature some call Bigfoot is a physical animal.

I have had a chance to catch up with the TV show, Finding Bigfoot, courtesy of YouTube, since I do not have cable TV at home. I am in agreement with most viewers and reviewers of the show that criticize some of the bald statements made on the show (Sasquatches behave in this manner) but who like the fact that these people are willing to go out and try a number of different things to gather evidence of this creature's existence.

I was heartened to see Cliff Barackman go off on his own to do a quiet solo hunt with pretty minimal equipment in the first episode of the second season. He sat in certain places in the woods, kept his movements to a minimum and kept his voice down. I suspect that he would not have spoken at all if he had not had cameras recording that required him to explain what he is doing. If you contrast his performance to the normal team hunt, it was like the difference between the covert insertion of a special operations team vs. a full scale beach assault. Normally, the team makes so much noise stomping around that I am amazed that they have any wildlife interaction, much less anything that resembles contact with a notoriously elusive legendary biped. You'll note that, even with thermal imagers, the woods around them are remarkably devoid of life in most cases.

What this comes down to is that the Finding Bigfoot team approaches their task through a filter of technology. Humans of this era are raised to believe that, if they can just bring enough tech to bear on a problem, they can solve it. I think that what is called for, in the search for sasquatch is not more tech, but a decidedly low tech, if not primitive, approach. Rather than hunting the Big Guy with helicopters, radio controlled planes, thermal imagers, night visions cameras and a host of people who spend a lot of time making whoops and howls in the forest, why not go for the covert insertion?

There are people out there like Tom Brown Jr. and Jon Young who have a very different approach to being in the woods. Rather than hauling a pack full of things around with them, they have learned (and teach) methods for becoming a part of the forest. Imagine, if you will, putting someone into "the squatchiest place on earth" who is trained to really observe nature; who can tell by looking at a track which way an animal's head is turned; who can move in near silence in the forest; who knows how to camouflage from both sight and scent; who can live on the land indefinitely, for months and even years if need be; who knows the woodland creatures of an area and can identify them by sight and tracks. Hand this individual a camera and a forensic kit and turn him loose in those woods for a few months and I'd be willing to bet that, if there is an unknown species out there, he or she would be able to gather some really good photographic and forensic evidence. Hell, such a person might even be able to make non-threatening contact with the species and be able to teach others how to approach them .

Jon Young calls what he does teaching people to see through native eyes. Not native, as in Native American, but native as in a native to this planet Earth that we live on. Maybe we need to behave a little more like natives of this planet if we are ever going to have a run in with sasquatch.

Some Wolf Facts

2011-11-18T13:00:00.000-05:00

Not a lot of time for writing today but I did want to share this link. There are some very interesting facts about wolves that I had not heard of before. For instance, I did not know that wolves are, apparently, quite adept swimmers and have partially webbed feet. Enjoy!

Needs

2011-11-17T10:38:00.000-05:00

I've often said that one of the reasons that werewolves fascinate people is that the werewolf, at least during its Change, is able to shuck the garments of civilization and do as its werewolf nature demands. The wolf running loose through the wood on a full moon night is not concerned with the balance in bank accounts or the sort of car to drive or even what manner of trophy spouse might be obtained. The werewolf has more primal instincts to attend to and this is the source of our fascination (letting go) and our horror (a wolf has to eat, you know).

I have been reviewing some of my old training from wilderness search and rescue and, going further, reading on some famous survival experts and it struck me that, when you take away all the tech and toys of civilization, what you are left with is what Tom Brown Jr calls the Sacred Four: Shelter, Water, Fire and Food. These are the things that we absolutely can not do without and, looking at this list, it becomes pretty obvious, to me at least, that much of the stress of our lives comes from being made to believe that we have other "needs" than the four I have listed.

The werewolf, in his fur form, has these needs covered. The pelt of a wolf (or even the movie style manwolf) will keep off the elements and prevent the animal from freezing even in artic temperatures. Water can be found easily by smell and fire, for wolves, is not necessary since they do not need to cook their food. Food, like water, can be tracked and the wolf is, after all, a carnivorous predator so anything it can catch is liable to be dinner from mice on up the food chain.

I've noted in other posts that the werewolf of lore sometimes invoked the shifting magic in order to help meet the very real needs of a human family. The hunting wolf could bring back fresh meat that was desperately needed in the lean times that could follow a bad harvest or overzealous tax collection and werewolves were even known to bring back the riches of a human victim (sometimes deliberately chosen) to supplement the family income. While we might find this ethically abhorrent, it was one way of ensuring the survival of both the human family and the werewolf when it was not in wolf form.

The word "need" is powerful. How many times a day do we use this word without thinking about it. I need a new *fill in the blank*; I need that *fill in the blank*; or my favorite, no, you don't understand, this is not a want, it is a need! The truth is, we really do not need much. We are made to believe that we have these needs. Maybe we could take a lesson from the werewolf in his wolf form and look at what it is that we really need in our lives. Once you relegate some things to the want pile, you might just find that you are breathing a little easier.

Djinn and Black Dogs

2011-11-16T09:49:00.001-05:00

If you look at this link, you will see an interesting statement on the second page.

"The black dog is the devil of the dogs and the djinn often appear in this form . . . "

The djinn of Islamic legend is a being created, according to the Quran, of 'smokeless fire'. In Islamic cosmology, there are three types of sentient beings: angels, humans and djinn. Both humans and djinn have the commonality of free will so there are good, bad and morally neutral djinn. The closest analogous being in Western lore would be the Faery although that species seems to have a much richer variety than the djinn. Islam is a religion that cuts things to the bone so I have to wonder if that propensity has not translated over into their fairy lore.

In any case, we do find one very clear cross referent between the djinn and the beings of western faery lore - a tendency for certain beings of that Otherworld to appear as dogs. The djinn, as you can see above, actually appears as a black dog, a being that we have encountered a number of times in the pages of Western folklore. I have not had a chance to research a lot of djinn folklore but the tidbit above may provoke some research into the lore of this Middle Eastern spirit.

While the Black Dog so famous in England and other places does not seem to be a faery creature, belonging instead to the realm of ghosts and apparitions, we have to remember that, in the minds of the tellers of these tales, often the dead and the faery overlapped or, in one place, a tale would be attributed to the faery and, in another, to the ancestors or the dead. What is important to note is that, even if we argue that the Black Dog is not a faery creature, the realm of faery has its hounds as well.

Called cu sith, faery dogs in Scottish Gaelic, these hounds were white and had red ears. One story that I know of where they appear is a tale in the Mabinogian concerning Arawn, one of the Lords of the Otherworld, often associated with the Land of the Dead, who rode with a pack of cu sith, wherever he went. Arawn's hunting party leads us into tales of the Wild Hunt, another faery phenomenon that includes awesome spectral hounds.

Certainly, we can muse that the supernatural dog stories of one culture influenced those of an abutting culture. We can use our logical minds to try to dispel the synchronicity but, in the end, the little child inside us that loves a ghost story or monster tale knows what our adult brain refuses to accept: the monsters are out there and the stories are similar because the monsters are too.

Disempowerment

2011-11-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

I am hopelessly out of touch with popular culture but someone mentioned to me the other day that there had been a movie adaptation of the fairy tale, Red Riding Hood. I've looked at the online plot synopsis and some photos and, while it appears that the movie was beautifully done (the photos are nice, anyway), the film was excoriated by critics and movie goers alike. Consensus: most people liked the young lady who played Valerie (Red Riding Hood) but no one else in the cast. It is tough to carry an entire movie by yourself.

Whether this was a decent movie or not, it is interesting to note that the writers for this adaptation chose to make the wolf in the fairy tale into a werewolf that haunted the forest around Ms. Hood's home village. The villagers knew the werewolf was there and even offered it animal sacrifices each month at the full moon, of course. It seems, from the story summaries, that there was an uneasy truce with the wolf until it decided to take a human life.

Folklorists have had a field day with the tale of Red Riding Hood, assigning all manner of meanings to it, most of which seemed to have hatched from the sexually obsessed mind of Sigmund Freud. In the fairy tale, the wolf comes to a bad end, receiving a bad case of axe induced indigestion, and it seems that the movie follows suit, killing off the killer werewolf via the use of silver. However, in the movie version, Ms. Hood's romantic interest is wounded by the werewolf and is going to become one at the end of the movie. Ms. Hood's interest in her lover does not seem to be abated though; he goes bravely off to get control of his beast and promises to return to her.

So, the script writers have once again taken an old tale meant as a warning to young women everywhere to beware of predators in whatever guise they may come and turned that warning on its head by succumbing to the desire to write yet another tale of paranormal romance, a grown up version of Twilight. At least, in this film, the werewolf gets the girl but it seems to me that, by turning the creatures of the night, whether werewolf, vampire or demon, into sexy objects of desire, we are doing ourselves a disservice.

In our materialist, senses are the only reality culture, there has been a subtle industry in disempowering the figures of legends. Angels, mighty spiritual beings of immense power, have become cherubs and winged androgynes who have trouble keeping up if one drives too fast. Faery, the respected and sometimes dreaded folk of the mounds, have become harmless sprites with dragonfly wings, suitable only to wave a wand over Disney's castle. Demons, those being of the Otherside who have energy that one can only call malevolent, have been reduced to ridiculous horned figures with pitchforks. I see this happening, subtly, in these stories where, although the being is fierce and dangerous, he (usually) can be tamed by the love of a woman. Both werewolves and the cold blooded predatory vampire are falling victim to this fate.

While it is true that some of the werewolves of lore have had spouses and that some of those spouses have been able to turn the wrath of their mate's beast self aside, such behavior was a last resort meant to keep the human wife or husband safe if it should encounter the werewolf. Those stories knew that the werewolf was a powerful, dangerous creature and not a beast to be trifled with in its animal form since its control left something to be desired. While the spouse of a werewolf might safely approach the beast, in my mind, it is akin to the individual who went off to live among the bears a while back. He was fine until the day one of them turned around and ate him. A werewolf is a wild animal when in its wolf form and no amount of sex and sugar coating will change that fact. Let's allow the werewolf to be the dark, powerful, magnificent creature we all want it to be and leave sex with werewolves to other werewolves.

Wake Up Call

2011-11-14T09:27:00.000-05:00

I woke this morning to the sound of howling.

I was unsure, as I roused, whether the howling was in my dreams. I laid there for several seconds wondering if the sound that wakened me had come from this world or the Other when the sound began again, low and deep, resonating in my depths, sending a chill up my spine. I am still not certain whether the howls were in my "inner" ear or whether some creature was making that distinctive sound under my bedroom window. I do know that by the time I got up and got a look around, I could find no animal, domestic or wild, to account for the cries.

My logical mind wants to write this off as a dog in the neighborhood having a bad morning. There is a very wolfy looking malamute in my apartment complex, for example, but I do not think he lives in my building. Whatever creature made that sound, if, indeed, the howls originated on this plane of existence, had a big chest. The howls started on a low timber and rose to a higher pitch before dropping again and I felt that they had to come from a large animal.

In my mind's eye though and to my magical persona, this was something important. There is a small hill, pushed up dirt from the construction on the complex, directly to the northeast of my building. I often walk the dog up there and spend a few moment basking in the moonlight, of an evening, before coming back down to my apartment and 'civilization'. As the howls resounded through my bedroom this morning, I could almost see my inner wolf, standing up on that little knoll, the moon behind him, lifting his head to howl, calling me to join him.

Novel update

2011-11-11T05:51:00.000-05:00

Novel update: for those of you who are interested, the rough draft is now close to 60,000 words and the plot is really beginning to move towards a denouement **wolfish grin**

If I had to write a jacket summary right now, it might sound something like this:

Not many beings in any world are willing to take on a werewolf, especially a rogue werewolf. But someone has to enforce the Charter for the wolves and, in Buffalo, that someone is Zach Collins . . .

When frightening disturbances in a rural New York state home escalate into something more terrifying, the family calls on the services of Buffalo Paranormal Investigations to get to the bottom of the issue. BPI's leader, Amber Morgan, quickly finds that this haunting is unique and she needs special assistance . . .
A rogue werewolf is stalking the pristine forests of the Adirondack Mountains, taking prey at its leisure . . .

From the moment Zach Collins agrees to help Amber Morgan with the newest and most puzzling case of her career, the two are thrown together into a maelstrom of events that will lead them into the wild mountains of central New York. There, they will seek a cunning hunter determined to bag the most challenging game of his life: the Black Dog, Zach Collins.

Goat-man

2011-11-10T12:40:00.000-05:00

I am interested in all things cryptid and paranormal so I thought I would take a break from canid cryptids today and focus on this blog post from Nick Redfern.

The first thing that struck me about this post, other than the fact that it is a story from my home state of Texas, was one of the local stories about the phenomenon. To quote Mr. Redfern:

As for the stories, one legend says that, many years ago, wannabe devil-worshippers in the area inadvertently opened up a portal to some hellish realm that allowed the vile beast open access to our world.

Now, as a magical practitioner, I would love to know the source of this tidbit. Seems to me that if some group succeeded in opening a portal into a "hellish realm" and actually managed to pop what one would then presume to be a demon through it, they were more than wanna-be's. Someone in that purported group would have to have some serious mojo to make something like that happen.

The alternative story, of a ghost stealing a goat's head to replace the one it lost, is so macabre and silly that my focus went back to the devil worshipper tale. Given that Denton is firmly in the middle of Southern Baptist territory and that, therefore, any use of magic, for purposes good, bad or in between would be considered the work of Satan, it is possible that what we have here is the memory of a group of magical practitioners in the area.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, one of the reasons why the paranormal may manifest in certain places is a thinning of the Veil in certain locations. One of the things that might thin the Veil would be magical work in an area over a period of time or, perhaps, a major working of some type that really "blows the doors open". What comes through these portals might depend on what area of the Otherside is on the opposite side of the portal.

As Mr. Redfern notes, bridges are one of those places that investigators recognize as places where high strangeness is liable to occur. In magical theory, this would be because the bridge is a place "in between" - when you are on a bridge, you are on neither this side nor that side but in between. A group using magic might well be interested in using such a spot, where the Veil might be a little thinner to begin with, for evocation work. If even a breath of a rumor about this got into town, I can well see a story arising where the Devil himself or one of his minions comes through to join the magical party.

Or perhaps, even more strangely, the Goat-man story reflects the tale of another type of shape shifter. A were-goat, anyone?

Dreamwalking

2011-11-09T08:16:00.000-05:00

My dream from yesterday brings up an interesting topic. Most people will agree that the full blown monster movie transformation of a human into a wolf is well nigh impossible. I never say that something can not occur but, given the energy outlay such a transformation would entail, I think that it is safe to say that, short of the intervention of a very powerful being, the physical Change is not likely to happen.

That being said, I've talked a little about the Germanic concept of the soul and its various parts, one of which manifests in an animal form of greater or lesser physicality. Many people interested in the lore of the werewolf point to this phenomenon as a possible source of the legend of the manwolf and I certainly agree that it is one of the feeder streams.

One of the other streams that feeds the werewolf legend is the world of dreams. My very first 'shifting' experience was a dream, long ago, of running as a wolf in a forest, actively hunting something. The dream was so vivid that I started awake as I was about to make the kill, still uncertain what it was that I was about to take down. In subsequent dreams over the years, I have been in wolf form, half wolf form, and even human form but with a strong wolf overlay. Various people with whom I have a connection have reported encountering me in their dreams, often getting the beejesus scared out of them until they realize who the animal is.

Dream walking is one of those subjects that is often filed as a subheading of astral projection and left at that. While I am not a huge fan of Michelle Belanger (vampires are not my thing), her book Psychic Dreamwalking contains at least one story where, while attempting to contact a person through a dream, she actually appeared to them while they were awake. The journals of psychical research contain any number of cases of "astral projection" where the projector was asleep or in a hypnagogic state but was perceived by someone who was awake.

Now let us suppose that someone like myself, who seems to run with the wolves in his dreams, cultivated the ability to allow the dream self to travel and perhaps even be seen. It seems likely to me that such a wolf, appearing to a stranger or even a friend, and behaving in an oddly intelligent manner, would provoke an instantaneous response in all but the most iron willed constitution: werewolf!

A Werewolf Dream

2011-11-08T19:24:00.001-05:00

I wrote a post recently about whether werewolves are pack animals and suggested that, since the werewolf is a man/wolf hybrid, and both species are social by nature, it was likely that they had some type of social structure that was only hinted at in the lore. Last night, I had a dream or hypnagogic vision that make me want to explore this idea a little further.

In the dream, I am a werewolf (not an uncommon occurence) but I am "stuck" in a half-shifted form. Basically, I looked like the sterotypical movie werewolf with the head and neck of a wolf shading down into a distinctly human body covered in short grey fur. My hands and feet were clawed but I still had opposable thumbs. Given my vocal apparatus, I am unable to speak and, of course, I can not show my face anywhere in a city since to do so would create mass panic. Nevertheless, I am trying to get someone, anyone really, to communicate with me and (this would only happen in my dream), I am carrying around a laptop that I am using to email people, when I can find a WiFi hotspot and place to plug in.

The rest of the dream is rather personal, spent wandering through a city in a long robe with a hood to hide my face, but suffice to say that I did find someone who was willing to speak with me (via the computer and then through sign language).

Setting aside any personal meaning this dream might have had for me, this night walk drove home the point that the werewolf is a creature outside of normal human society. Even the werewolf that is fully capable of shifting from one form to the other seems, in the lore, to be differentiated from human peers, unable to quite hide the animal side of the nature completely. The werewolf does not fit in, not just because of the Change, but because the Change opens the werewolf to a part of the self that most humans cannot or will not access.

Given this ostracism from "normal" human society and given what I have said above about both wolves and humans, it seems to me that the werewolf seeking companionship would have to either do as I did in the dream and find a sympathetic human or find others of its kind with which to associate. I am not sure how many "normal" humans would be willing to take a known werewolf into their homes so it seems more and more likely to me that the werewolf would have to either be a lone wolf, a very isolated life, or part of a pack with all that this implies.

I am curious to know what my readers think. Pack or isolated loner?

Post Samhain Report

2011-11-07T09:26:00.000-05:00

I found this Samhain season to be quite fascinating and very powerful. The energies of that time are still active, although more muted than they were during the noited holidays, and it seems to me that "things" are still settling out. In my wolfish way, I am intensely curious about my readers' experiences of this time so please feel free to share in the comment section.

Personally, I asked my ancestors for guidance in regard to a particular part of my life that really needs to see change. I did ritual work and divination and it looks like this is going to be quite the year for me - full of change and transformation of all sorts. What I am finding this translates into is a restless energy that is leading me out of the intertia that I have felt for some time and into making some positive changes in my life, changes that will free me up to pursue my goal of writing professionally.

What I am also seeing is a call for radical simplification of my life. If I want to live the way I want to live, I am seeing that I need to cut the dross out of my life so that I can survive on less. I have always been one of those people who felt that things were not enough but now I am being challenged to find what it is that is enough. This is a challenge that, after a lot of exploration, I find myself more and more ready to meet.

In general, what I am seeing is a definite movement toward introspection but not the introspective navel gazing so popular in some circles. Rather, this is the sort of introsepctive process that dovetails with the oft-quoted phrase, said to originate from the gates of Eleusis: first, know thyself.

Do, please, share your Samhain experiences, magical and mundane. I hope that everyone had a great holiday and that you are all well prepared for winter as it creeps (or storms, depending on where you are) into your lives.

Werewolves of Ossory

2011-11-03T10:47:00.000-04:00

I have read, on a couple of occassions, that the Irish have their fair share of werewolf tales. I came across this story online and thought I would share it with you. This is a Christian tale but the priest in the story seems to have actually emulated the compassion of the one whom he follows or, at least, he tries to bring that compassion forth despite his very real terror.

I am not a Christian but, after reading this text, I have a better grasp of why so much of the lore of the werewolf seems to regard the Change as a curse. I can not imagine the horror that a commited Christian would have felt in the situation in which these two old people found themselves. Cursed by a clergyman (of all things), they were forced to roam in the skin of a wolf for seven years, ostracized by their clan and, most awfully for them, unable to partake in the sacraments that their belief told them were the way of salvation. The only thing that I can think of that would be quite that awful for me would be living in a huge city with no access whatsoever to the forest that is my spiritual wellspring.

To make an incredibly bad situation even worse though, these poor wolves found themselves hunted for their skins which were said to be of great value. Knowing what we know about how people brought on the Change, it is entirely conceivable that these reluctant werewolves were being hunted precisely for the skin that they so wanted to be rid of. One can easily imagine that the skin of a werewolf would be a prize to someone who actually 'wanted' to become a wolf.

When one of those hunters wounds the female, the male does the only thing that he can do. Despite his "terrible" appearance, he finds a priest and persuades the frightened man to come administer the last rites to his wife. The sequence where the wife proves that she is, indeed, a human is quite graphic and could have come from the pages of a modern horror novel. Fortunately, the priest manages to overcome his fear and administer the last rites to this wretched woman so that she could at least die in the peace of her beliefs.

The curse of becoming a werewolf is well attested in the lore and this story is an example of the curse at its worst. It is one thing to choose the life of a werewolf and to do the magic necessary to bring the wolf to life but it is quite another thing for someone to be forced into a life that goes against all their beliefs and deprives them of the required rituals for maintaining those beliefs. The person who would do such a thing, Christian cleric or not, is a sick, sadistic individual and deserves a taste of his own medicine.

The Black Dog of Bungay

2011-11-02T09:01:00.000-04:00

I quote from this Black Dog story.

On Sunday 4th August 1577 an extremely violent thunderstorm shook the church of Bungay, Suffolk. A fearful-looking black dog appeared inside the church, in front of the parishioners. Two who were touched by the animal were instantly killed and a third shrivelled up like a drawn purse. On the same day a similar hound appeared in the church at Blythburgh, seven miles away, also killing three people and 'blasting' others. The market's weathervane depicts the fiendish hound. Other such devastating apparitions had been recorded, for sometime before 1613 a bull-like creature manifested inside the church at Great Chart in Kent, leaving a trail of dead and seriously injured, before demolishing part of a wall and disappearing. [17; 18]

While the phantom black dog of folklore is often seen as a harbinger of death, this little story puts the Black Dog in the position of directly bringing death. Of course, in that time period (1577), the happenings in these two churches were directly attributed to the work of the Christian Satan and the victims of this phenomenon were likely looked at askance - as sinners who had brought some great judegment on themselves.

If we dig deeper, however, there are a number of interesting anomalies in this tale:

First, the events happen during an extremely violent storm. In fact, in at least one version of the story, there are people in the church praying precisely because of the violent nature of the storm. So, we have a very high level of electromagnetic activity.

Second, one of the interesting phenomenon noted amongst researchers in Britain is the prevalence of churches along what they call ley lines. These "straight tracks" seem to be the associated with the circulation of earth energies and I would not be surprised to find one or both of these churches sitting on or near one of these lines and perhaps even at the juncture of one or more lines.

Finally, we have a group of people gathered together and very highly stressed. August is the time of the first harvest in the British isles. A violent weather distrubance during this time could lead to a bad harvest and, in that time, concern over making it through the long winter with enough to eat. Prayer would assuredly be in order.

Did the people in these churches simply invent the Black Dog to explain deaths due to a natural phenomenon? Was there, perhaps, an electrical anamoly, such as ball lightning, that might account for the destruction? Or did the people of Bungay and Blythburg encounter something even more mysterious, something linked to the energies of the earth coiled beneath them, something triggered by the violence of the storm, something huge and black that came through a portal inadvertently opened by cascading electromagnetism?

Whatever caused the havoc at those churches, the legend lives on to this day and it is one of the classics of paranormal literature

The Wolf's Howl

2011-11-01T14:41:00.001-04:00

I found this wonderful summation of the reasons that wolves howl on the PBS site. I wanted to share it with you but it also brought up some thoughts as I read through the material.

When we think of werewolves, we often think of a solitary human who transforms into a wolf or wolf-like creature under the light of a lambent full moon. What we do not often consider, is the social life of werewolves.

Wolves are pack animals. As this article mentions, the pack is the center of a wolf's universe. Human beings are social animals as well; most of us do not do well if we are isolated for extended periods of time. It makes logical sense to me, then, to assume that a human who changes into a wolf would be inclined to some sort of society as well.

The lore seldom mentions werewolves as part of a group but we do have some tantalizing hints. For example, the historian Herodotus tells us of the Neuri, an entire tribe that transformed into wolves once a year. In the case of Theiss of Livonia (1692), we are told that Theiss along with several other men, left their bodies, and assumed the shape of wolves in order to battle 'witches' who were blighting crops.

It would seem that, at least in some instances, the werewolf follows his wolf nature and establishes social groups from which he or she operates. Perhaps these groups are not packs, in the canis lupus sense of the word, but they do seem to be cooperative groups that work together towards a purpose. It is interesting to speculate on what that purpose might be.

Happy Samhain to All!!

2011-10-31T08:53:00.000-04:00

Happy Samhain to all!!

As I have said, in several posts leading up to this day, this is a time that has traditionally been regarded as a period when the Veil between the worlds is thin and the denizens of that Otherworld may come to visit. Whether you set a full place at the table for your ancestors this night, make a traditional offering of cream and porridge to the Little People or simply light a stick of incense or a candle and say a small prayer to the spirits that surround you, I encourage everyone to remember to sit and truly experience the magic of this time.

It is so easy, in our culture that makes everything commericial, to go with the flow and view Halloween as another excuse to put up lights, get dressed in a costume, go to a party or take the kids trick or treating. Then, after we have indulged in too much candy (or, for some, too many adult beverages), we slip into bed and wake the next morning and it is just another day after just another holiday.

Far be it from me to tell people not to have fun over this season. I remember well the excitement of being an elementary school child, planning my costume and my route through the neighborhood, hoping that the old folks down the street were going to be as generous with treats as they were the year before. Even as a child, though, as I went from door to door, ringing the bell with my friends and shouting "trick or treat!", I could feel the presence of Others along my path. I was aware of deeper shadows lurking in the shade beneath trees and people standing to the side of walkways that I saw with one set of eyes but not the other. Although I could not articulate it, I could feel the "aliveness" of the night - a time when I would not normally be allowed out - and knew that presences other than human walked with me as I followed my friends from house to house.

Later in my life, once I moved out of the 'party animal' phase and became interested in pagan pathways, I understood that feeling of being accompanied that I had experienced as a child. I sought the quiet spaces when I could and tried to commune with the spirits who reached through the Veil, even if just a little. This is the time of year when the blood of my Scottish ancestors really rises in my veins and I feel, on a visceral level, the awe and perhaps even fear that they felt of some of the beings that haunted Samhain night. It was not so long ago that even the good Christian folk stayed indoors on this night, unsure what they might encounter and even more unsure how to deal with it.

Go and enjoy the candy and maybe even a few adult beverages tonight but, when quiet falls later in the night, I encourage you to sit and listen. You never know who or what might be trying to speak to you across the Veil.

Ghosts of Creatures Past

2011-10-28T08:44:00.000-04:00

Nick Redfern, in this post. asks a very legitimate question in the first paragraph of the article:

People often ask me: why aren’t we ever able to secure hard, physical evidence of the presence and existence of such beasts as Bigfoot, lake-monsters, the Yeti etc? Well, it’s a very good question! Some might argue that given such creatures may be so few in number, this explains their overwhelming elusiveness. Fair enough. But what about those reports where people have seen Bigfoot vanish in a flash of light, or a werewolf-style beast do likewise? Like it or not, such cases most assuredly do exist. So, this suggests another possibility: maybe some of these “things” are not flesh-and-blood animals, after all. Perhaps, incredibly, they are the ghosts of long-dead creatures from equally long-gone eras.

He then goes on to describe, in extensive detail, the story of a young woman who encountered what appeared to be a sabre tooth tiger nearSeattle in 2009.

While I certainly accept the idea that some high strangeness may be the result of "ghosts" of extinct creatures, I do not see what bearing this has on "werewolf-style" beings such as the Dogman or Manwolf also described in Godfrey's writings.

I know of no fossil record of any bipedal canid, from any time period. While it is certain that physical evidence of such creatures is all but non-existent and that there is a great deal of strangeness attached to the sightings (including creatures 'morphing' as they were observed), it seems to me that it is unlikely that these creatures could be "ghosts" of anything that had existed previously. Rather, I think it likely that these beings are either a) a previously unknown species of canid that has developed the ability to locomote bipedally (unlikely, but something that must be considered) b) thought forms (also known as tulpas) created via magical workings of one sort or the other c) creatures of the Otherside that have crossed over into our realm temporarily, either physically, etherically or astrally.

In addition, I would note that time distortion is a common phenomenon in cases of high strangeness. If we extrapolate from the Faery tradition, time has a whole different meaning in that realm and presumably on the Otherside as a whole. If 'portals' do sometimes open between this world and the Other, then it is entirely possible that these extinct species could exist as phantoms or something more solid in the Other realm. To even further boggle the mind, we can also conjecture that there might be alternate dimensions where these extinct creatures never were extirpated. In either event, a 'portal' from one realm or dimension to another could account for the sightings of both extinct animals like the sabre tooth tiger, the mammoth and perhaps even Sasquatch (Gigantopithecus Blacki) and creatures that only exist in the realm of magic and imagination like the "werewolf-style" beings.

The Lay of Bisclavret

2011-10-27T10:54:00.000-04:00

In a researching my little article about Sir Marrok yesterday, I noted that several of the sources that I looked at contained references to an earlier story that is, for all intents and purposes, identical to Malory's recitation of the incident with Sir Marrok.

Called the Lay of Bisclavret (the werewolf, in the Breton language), the author, Marie de France, claims to have translated twelve stories, including this one, from Breton performances that she witnessed into French. De France's "Lays" predate Malory by 2 centuries and the Lay of Bisclavret is identical in even small details to the story of Sir Marrok. Only the names and locales have been changed. There can be little doubt that either both authors had access to the same French folkloric tale or that Malory blatantly copied from De France.

In either event, I find it interesting that, somewhere in French folklore, which is rife with werewolf stories, there is a seed story that produced this valiant and loyal werewolf, one so different from the run of the mill, shifty, violent creature portrayed in so many of the stories. It is also interesting that both authors thought enough of this tale to include it in their master works.

One wonders what it was about this little werewolf tale that compelled two authors, centuries apart, to make note of it ?

Arthurian Werewolf

2011-10-26T09:22:00.000-04:00

I am a fan of Patricia Briggs, the author who created the redoubtable Mercy Thompson and the excellent, werewolf infested world that surrounds Mercy. One of the great mysteries of reading Briggs' novels is the Marroc, the alpha of alphas in North America. I was consumed with wolfly curiosity by this title and wondered where it came from so I did some research and discovered that the Marroc derives from Sir Marrok, a werewolf who makes a brief appearance in Arthurian lore (look past the semi-scholarly review at the beginning, the story is toward the end).

The tale of Sir Marrok has some interesting points in it. Marrok must go into the forest three days out of the week and his Change seems to be more mandatory than that of most werewolves of lore. In order to Change back, he must recover his clothes and therein lies his undoing at the hands of a faithless wife. It is only by the wisdom and intervention of his liege and the queen that Marrok is freed from wolf form and regains his lands. It is worth noting, too, that Marrok was a member of the king's bodyguard - a knight of the realm trusted to defend the king unto death.

Many of the stories of werewolves represent the lvcanthrope as a shift, clever, perhaps even cruel person who uses his shape shifting ability for deeds ranging from malicious and petty to downright evil. Reading through much of the lore, one is struck by the sense that the people who tell these stories are almost jealous of the werewolf's ability and are certainly prejudiced against him or her. Malory has provided us with a nice counterpoint to those tales and Patricia Briggs reminds us of this counterpoint every time we read one of her novels.

Running

2011-10-25T09:43:00.000-04:00

Wolves are known for their endurance. Using the energy conserving lope that characterizes the breed, a wolf can cover miles in a day without apparent fatigue. When hunting, a pack of wolves will literally run a prey animal to the ground.

When I was younger and just beginning my explorations of alternative spirituality and magic, I was also in the process of dumping some addictions. One of the toughest for me was the cigarette smoking habit. I tried, several times, to quit and always went back to it. As I moved into my late 20's and early 30's and watched the smokers in my family suffer from a variety of health issues, I determined that I had to quit. But how? Nicotine patches were uncommon in those days and I had no insurance to pay for them anyway. I decided that my best course of action was to take up exercise and I chose to do something simple: run.

To make a long story shorter, I broke a pack of Marlboros in two and started running the next morning. More precisely, I staggered down the street, huffing and puffing and wheezing like an old man. I think I managed a mile that day but, by golly, when I got back, I knew I had found a way to quit. I felt so god-awful that I had a much better idea of what the smokes were doing to my body.

Running got easier as I practiced more and, as I began to develop as a runner, I also began to explore shamanic spiritual practices. This was the first appearance of Wolf in my life and I found, as I ran, that sometimes I had the feeling of Wolf loping along beside me. Sometimes, when I was away from the street and fairly safe, I found that the rhythm of the run moved me into the Otherworld and I had at least one intense trance experience during a run.

As I had planned, I ran my first 10K in the spring after I quit smoking and ended up running that race, another 10K and a 5K before life threw me some curve balls that broke the running habit. I have always regretted not getting back into my shoes so tonight I am off to participate in my local running club's couch to 5K program. As excited as I feel about this, I suspect that Wolf will be loping along beside me, giving encouragement.

Oh, by the way, I never returned to smoking.

Toward the New Year

2011-10-24T10:15:00.001-04:00

As we approach the pagan festival of Samhain, when the veil between the worlds is stretched thin, when magic dances in the cooling autumnal air, when the spirits of our ancestors flock close around us and when the Celts actually celebrated their New Year, I like to take a moment to reflect on the past year and ask the spirits what to expect in the coming year. I am not looking for specific predictions, as some might, but instead a pattern, a lattice work, upon which the events of the New Year will hang. One of my favorite tools for this reflection is the Tarot and today, I had the opportunity to sit and meditate and draw some cards for the coming year.

If I had to pick key words out of the reading they would be: crossroads, journey, the path and transformation. I used the Grail Tarot: A Templar Vision simply because I love the beauty and artistry of the cards, I have some past life resonance with the Templars and I have been a fan of John Matthews for many years.

Basically, what I am seeing for my coming year is a continuation of the transition that I have been in this year. In the past year, I started this blog and began work on a novel. I am halfway through the rough draft for the book so I am making good progress there but this reading seemed to focus more on the spiritual side of my nature - something that happens a lot when I do Tarot.

That focus on the spiritual used to frustrate the hell out of clients when I read out in public since, if they would not ask a specific question, the spirits that surrounded the cards always defaulted to providing them with information about their spiritual lives (I lost count of how many times I looked across the table at someone and asked them what they did to quiet their minds so that Spirit could speak to them). I always found it amusing when someone would get huffy with me because I had told them nothing about their relationship status when they had not asked about their relationship status.

But, I digress. In card after card, in this reading, I found myself standing at a crossroad with a path leading away from me toward a distant goal. The goal was always spiritual in nature - a temple or a Templar commanderie (basically a monastery for warrior monks) and I was always making good progress toward that goal with help from the beings that I met along the way.

I am well pleased with what I see happening in this reading. There will be the inevitable bumps and stalled spots along the road. I will get rained on and have adversity to overcome but that is nothing new.

I hope you will all, as Samhain grows closer, spend some time reflecting upon where you have been and where you are going in the coming year. If divination is something you do, spend some time with your favorite system. I think that you will find that the magic of this time of year aids your casting.

For Your Holiday Shopping Consideration

2011-10-21T08:35:00.000-04:00

For those of you wondering what you might get the cryptozoologist on your holiday shopping list, the Canadians have developed a line of quarters with "mythical" creatures on them:

Sasquatch

Mishepishu

Memphre'

I got the two lake monster coins for my birthday and am hoping to add Sasquatch to the collection over the holidays. The coins come with a nice illustrated card that tells the legend of the creature in a fairly straightforward, folkloric manner. I especially like the little tag line that the Canadian mint uses: "Spark the curiousity of kids of all ages!"

Of course, I expect the Canadian mint to come out with a loup garou coin at any moment since I am sure that the legendary werewolf must have followed the French into Quebec and other parts of Canada!

Hexham Heads

2011-10-20T11:02:00.001-04:00

I find it interesting how events come to be related. I was browsing this morning and found this story which the authors relate to this story. Looking at these two disparate events, this seems to me to be a perfect example of people deciding that there is a synchronicity and reporting it as such.

When we look at the two tales, one of a phantom, werewolf-like creature that appeared in association with the finding of two carved heads in Hexham, UK, and the other that appears to be a wolf scare in the nearby town of Allendale, the only things that the two pieces of lore have in common are proximity. Other than proximity, however, there is very little to indicate a relationship other than a common wolf motif.

The Hexham Head tale seems to me to describe the location of a magical talisman that was used to summon a specific type of entity. Whether the carved heads were of Celtic origin or of more modern manufacture, the fact that no less a scholar than Anne Ross serves as a witness in this case, gives it great credence. Ms. Ross is well known for her excellent and scholarly work on Celtic British archaeology but is perhaps best known for her more speculative work, The Life and Death of a Druid Prince. If a woman of that academic standing is willing to state, unequivocally, that she saw something that looked like a werewolf in her home, after these two heads were placed there, then I am inclined to believe her. Given the behavior of the beast in relation to witnesses, I am also inclined to think that it was a spirit summoned by the presence of the heads going off to do whatever it had been charged to do.

The Wolf of Allendale story, on the other hand, appears to be a pretty straightforward example of a stealthy wolf or wolves availing themselves of a free meal supplied by the local populace. I see no reason to think that there was anything paranormal about the wolf presence in the area. A century or two previously, the matter probably would not have been noted except my farmers grumbling at their losses. This case is only exceptional in that it demonstrated that there were a few remnant wolves in the forests of Britain some time after it was thought that the species had been extirpated. Given that we know there was at least one wolf "owner" in the area, it is entirely possible that, like some of the big cat stories in Britain today, the source of this tale was wolves escaped from captivity.

The Hexham Head story piques my interest from a magical point of view (what was the spirit summoned to do?) and the Allendale story reminds us that, if given the slightest opportunity, nature will surprise us. The only relationship that I see between the two is, as I said, proximity but it seems that some enterprising researcher somewhere said to him or herself, "Look. . . stories about wolves! Must be related!!" and thus it became so. The two reports are interesting, in and of themselves; there was no need to throw them together unless there are features of these incidents that were not shared with us.

Rain: a flash story

2011-10-19T10:27:00.000-04:00

It was cool and dreary out, the rain coming in a fine mist that watered the parched plant life but did little for my mood. Ordinarily, I would much rather have been curled up on the couch with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate, but, instead, I was waiting patiently for a computer tech to show up and work on my business laptop. The damned machine had decided that it no longer liked my wireless router and, after hours on the phone with our IT team, they had finally given in and were sending someone out to look at the device. In the meantime, I was at loose ends and restless.

The full moon had passed recently and I had, of course, taken my monthly run up through the North Georgia pines but, still, I was seized with a fit of pacing that I would normally associate with an oncoming moon tide. Samhain was still a couple of weeks away and I could sense the thinning of the Veil between the worlds that accompanied that time but that was not the source of my restlessness either. Something deep within was bothering me, brought up by the sodden weather and the forced inactivity; it was almost as though a core of energy deep within me was seeking to burn its way out.

I knew about fiery transformations, of course. Brother Wolf and I had been running as one for several years now. This feeling was something different . . . as though some piece of my self was detached and trying, for whatever reason to come back. My mentor had taught me meditation as a way of managing the stress of my new life so I decided to sit with this feeling and see what would happen.

I plopped down on the floor and folded myself into a quarter lotus, back propped against the couch and straight, breathing even and deep and slow. Almost as soon as my mind quieted, Brother Wolf stood next to me and beckoned with his head for me to follow. I grasped the warm, fur covered ruff at his neck, the same ruff that sprang from my body when I Changed, and followed as my wolf took me along a trail through the forest, then into a cabin in the deep woods. The place was made of logs and empty except for a single door that seemed to lead into a closet.

At Wolf's nudge, I opened the door and suddenly found myself in the closet. My perspective had changed, I was much smaller, a child again, and I was peeking out the closet door into a bedroom that I recognized. A man, broad shouldered and dark, stood over my mother, screaming obscenities. He had obviously lashed out at her with more than words; both her eyes were blackened and blood trickled for a cut lip as she tried to distance herself from him. I was acutely conscious of the throbbing at my temple and the sick dizziness of concussion as I lay helplessly on that closet floor, watching this monster mistreat my mother after he had clubbed me senseless and thrown me in the closet.

Suddenly, I understood the restlessness in my spirit. I had been a wolf for many moons now. I had honored the request of my mentor not to hunt the humans, except in self defense. I had given this little thought - until now. This man still lived and, as long as he lived, he would keep that part of my power that he had stripped away that day. There was only one way for me to take that power back. Like the power animal in a shaman's vision, I would eat him.

Unlike those visions, though, he would not re-assemble and be renewed.

Shifting Dream

2011-10-18T14:20:00.001-04:00

It seems funny to me that yesterday I wrote about the stealth of the werewolf and, that very day, my own inner wolf ambushed me, seemingly from out of the blue. I wrote the article that I posted yesterday morning and, as is my wont, I took a little siesta in the middle of the afternoon to refresh a mind that is working hard at both my job and my writing.

I dozed off quickly and, just as quickly, I found myself in a dream. A very short dream - almost what I would call a snippet - that was, despite its short duration, extraordinarily vivid. In the dream, I was in the midst of the Change, mostly wolf at the point where I entered this visionscape and about to get up, shake myself off and trot into the woods nearby. The really amazing thing about this dream though was that, as I Changed, I lay with my head in the lap of a dear friend who was stroking my fur and murmuring softly to me as I completed the transformation.

This person had, apparently, sat calmly in the woods with a Changing werewolf and not shown the slightest fear or alarm as I morphed out of one form and into another. The double feelings of the fire of that inner transformation combined with the warm comfort of my friend's presence really shook me as I came awake. My face and shoulders had that tingling sensation that one gets when there is something happening in the etheric level of existence and my jaw felt . . . odd, for several minutes after this incident. I won't say that I was physically transforming along with the dream but there was definitely something happening on the energetic level which directly abuts the physical. Very interesting sensation and I have to wonder if my friend's presence in the dream did not assist this process.

More pieces of the puzzle to experiment with!

Stealth

2011-10-17T09:08:00.000-04:00

I have mentioned, in previous posts, some of the advantages to being a werewolf but I want to focus, for a moment, on one of the tools in the werewolf's arsenal that I think would be a wonderful addition to anyone's life: stealth.

If you look at the literature of people who stalk canis lupus, wildlife biologists, for example, you find story after story of the hapless field worker trailing a wolf for miles, only to turn and find that wolf staring at him or her from a camouflaged location. The scientist is often left with the impression that the wolf or, more startlingly, wolves have been watching with some amusement and have only shown themselves as part of the fun.

We know that wolves play stalking games from a very early age and, if the testimony of the above-mentioned field biologists and Native people of areas that wolves frequent is to be believed, the wolf moves silently through its demesne, is quite elusive, hard to track and generally difficult to get a glimpse of until you become familiar with its habits.

Presuming that a werewolf operates from a wolf's instincts and is not necessarily the ravening monster of lore (see Barry Lopez' Of Wolves and Men for a detailed view of why wolves developed such a fearsome reputation), a werewolf would move with the same stealth as its natural cousin. Have you ever wanted to be invisible? Wanted to be able to melt into the forest and not be seen by man nor beast? The native stealth abilities of the wolf would put you in that position.

Even in the city, the stealth ability of a wolf would put you at a distinct advantage in moving around without being seen. You would be able to use every shadow, bush, tree, hillock, vehicle etc. for cover and, with your preternaturally sharp senses, would know when you really needed to blend in to avoid detection. While fiction writers would have you believe that the werewolf uses these abilities to stalk and kill humans, from my point of view, the hunt is as often a game as it is a pursuit for food.

As with my earlier post on survival, the stealth abilities of a wolf would be a major advantage to any human possessing them, whether those abilities were used for bagging game to feed the family or giving someone who needed a "tune up" a subtle warning that he is not as safe as he thinks he is.

More musings on the Full Moon

2011-10-14T10:22:00.000-04:00

I thought I was done with this topic, for this month at least, but this morning, early, I walked outside with the dog and looked up at the sky. Technically, the moon is waning and, if I looked hard, I could see the smallest sliver missing from the brilliant silver disc in the sky but that really did not seem to make any difference. The light of the moon struck me with almost palpable force and I had to resist the urge to just stand there and soak it in (of course, the dog was not going to let this happen either - she had to go :-)

Many magic workers follow the phases of the moon slavishly, having been taught that the etheric tides that are so important to their work, ebb and wane with the moon's course. Some of those workers have even internalized that knowledge and can tell, just from the way that they feel what phase the moon is in. But no creature in legend and lore is more tied to the phases of the moon than the werewolf.

While the myth of the werewolf only being able to Change at the full moon is belied by the ample evidence of lore and seems to be a modern invention, we still, as an example, see items in the legends that tell us that we can become a werewolf by drinking water from the track of a wolf upon which the light of the full moon has shone. As I stood in the radiant light of the moon this early morning, I had a palpable lesson in the reason for that association.

Where the moon struck my skin, I could feel its effect on my subtle body, feel the rays penetrating into that part of my body that is not "solid" mass. There was a feeling of loosening, almost, dare I say, shifting around me and I could see very clearly how, if one had the necessary magical "tech" one might use that feeling to shape a whole new form, either extruded from the physical body or overlaying it. One of the reasons why werewolves are tied to the light of the moon became very evident to me at that moment: the tides of the full moon could very well have helped a werewolf shape his or her second skin.

Perhaps, the new wolves used the moon tides to assist them until they had developed enough skill to be able to bring about the Change at any time. Even if that is not the case, it was an interesting experience - literally enlightening - and yet another piece in the magical puzzle I am trying to put together.

Full Moon Musings

2011-10-13T11:03:00.000-04:00

As luck would have it, the beautiful, clear weather that we have been enjoying here in GA broke over the weekend and we have had a period of clouds and rain that hid the moon from my sight last night. My meditations leading up to this full moon had led me to believe that something in my life was going to "give" at this full moon. After a frustrating meditation and a wild, restless night last night, I am still not sure what is trying to "give".

That is not to say that I think nothing happened and that my guides, for want of a better term, were in error. I am quite certain that my meditation and those restless dreams were the result of energies stirring the primordial soup of my consciousness and much of the fatigue and restlessness that I feel today is simply the murk trying to settle out of disturbed waters.

Many people seem to view the spiritual/magical path as a panacea for all that ails them. Say the right words, do the right actions, hook up with the right spirits and life becomes a gliding path of pleasure. I have one word for those folks but I try not to be vulgar in public. Shall we say simply that it involves feces from a male bovine and leave it at that?

The truth is that those who follow a magical/spiritual path, despite their sometimes transcendent, sometimes immanent experiences, spend an awful lot of time waiting for the murk to settle out of their waters since those waters get stirred up on a regular basis. It is the nature of the Work to unsettle the person who is doing it because we can not learn anything if we are sitting on our fat duffs, eating bonbons and watching TV. We actually have to try to do some of the things that we read about or learn from teachers and, when we do that, things happen in our conscious and subconscious that are not clear to us - sometimes for weeks, months or years.

That is where faith comes in. Faith, in my life, has nothing to do with believing unthinkingly in some Supreme Being who is going to bail my tail out of the afterlife fire. Faith, to me, is a belief that the process will work, that the meditation and magical practice and other aspects of the spiritual and magical life, will bring me to a greater contact with my potential.

Enough of my self absorbed meanderings. Happy Full Moon to you all. Samhain is coming!

An Urban Legend?

2011-10-12T08:58:00.000-04:00

Lon, over at Phantoms and Monsters, re-ran a story that I have seen in other places. I did some research of the story of the Demon Dog of Valle Crucis and all the sources that I found online referred back to this basic story.

I've commented in the past about how frustrating these tales are. We are given a location and some general geography of the area in which the alleged sighting occurred but we do not know the names of the witnesses. We are given a very detailed description of the hellhound chasing the car and the witnesses finally escaping over a bridge (running water). We are told that the witnesses went to an all night diner because there was no way they could sleep but then the story ends.

How did this story even get out to the public? Who did these witnesses speak to? Given that the many versions of the story that I read were all basically the same, with a detail or two added here or there, I have to conclude that the story was "lifted" from one source. Even the media, simply state that the story was found on a "web site" but no one seems to be able to trace back to the original source.

Other web sites that I looked at noted that the people of the church where this apparition arose are vehement about the fact that their church yard is not haunted. I would think they would know. Stories of Black Dogs have been rife in Great Britain for centuries. I have to wonder if this story is not an example of someone trying to transplant the legend to this side of the Atlantic.

Atavistic Fear and the Werewolf

2011-10-10T12:43:00.001-04:00

The werewolf has been a staple of horror movies and fiction for years. I was contemplating , the other day, just what it is that makes the werewolf so frightening. What is it that makes people, looking for a thrill, looking for the spice of terror in their lives, turn to the werewolf for that terror?

I think that it boils down to one atavistic fear, a fear that comes from the ancient time when humans were more likely to be the hunted than to be the hunter. The werewolf can not only kill a human being; a werewolf can eat a human being. I think that no fear rises from a deeper and more visceral level than the fear of being taken down and having a carnivore begin to feed before we are even dead. It seems to me that this is the atavistic fear that makes the werewolf such a creature of nightmares.

If you do not quite buy my theory, look at the number of people who scare themselves silly with videos like "When Animals Attack" or any of the Faces of Death videos which often feature animals mauling some hapless human. Whether we are talking bear, alligator, big cat or otherwise, people pay money to watch in horrified fascination as a predator attacks a human being.

Why should we be afraid, sitting securely in our living rooms, watching a video? What causes the spurt of adrenaline, the fight or flight response?

When we view these videos, just as when we watch a werewolf movie or read a novel, our brain tells us these things are real. And the reality of a predator attacking us and, indeed, eating us, is not a fear that we can bypass, rationally or otherwise. Add to that the supernatural elements of the werewolf as a creature who is one of us but can become a savage predator at will and you begin to see why the werewolf is such a "go to" staple in the horror genre.

More on Portals

2011-10-09T09:33:00.000-04:00

As a follow up to my last post . . . while it would be interesting to look at the statistical
correlation between pagan/magical folk in an area and the number of anomalous
sightings, it would be practically impossible to do. While there are many openly pagan/
magical people in the world now, there are just as many, if not more, that do not share
their proclivities outside their immediate circle of friends and family.

I think that an investigator would have to go deep cover as a local in one of these areas
in order to get a feel for what groups and individuals might be opening gateways to the
Otherworld or, at the very least, the researcher would have to gain access to a local with
intimate knowledge of the community. That sort of "infiltration" takes time that most
volunteer researchers simply do not have.

Let's use Sedona as an example. The place is a hotbed of UFO sightings and a ranch
in that area experienced phenomena similar to the Skinwalker Ranch sightings.
Sedona is also a nexus for New Age folk of all types, ranging from followers of so-called
channelled communication to more Neo-shamanic practitioners. Underneath that very
visible set of people, I am certain that there is a sub set of magical practitioners using
the energy of the land itself and all the energy stirred up by the more visible people for
their own experiments. If I am not mistaken, Israel Regardie, the famed Golden Dawn
magician lived in that area for a while.

Now, if you take the visible groups and people and add them to the less visible, stir in
the fact that the area was sacred ground for the First People there with the concomitant
ceremonials that would have accompanied that designation and you have a place
where the Veil between the worlds might just be thinner than it is in most places. The
equation gets even more interesting when you walk the area and see some of the
circles formed of native rock and crystals - visible reminders of all the workings done
that did not leave visible traces but that involved passage from one world to the next.

A Thought About Portals

2011-10-06T10:27:00.000-04:00

I get ideas for this blog for a lot of sources. One of those sources is my magical journals, kept on and off, over the course of time, depending on what work I happened to be doing in the period. Here is an interesting note from August, 2009:

I was just making a note to myself on my daily runic working when something hit me. When I began meditating on Isa yesterday, I had the distinct impression of a way being opened into the Otherwhere - in this case to what looks like an Ice Age glacier and I am guessing is the world of Niflheim

Now, I am opening this way more or less intentionally and I use a closing formula . . . to move out of my meditation, thus closing the way . . . Let's speculate, for a moment, about what might happen if someone 'accidentally' opened a way (an untrained sensitive, for example) and did not have the knowledge/skills to close it or did not even, really, realize that they had opened it. Or perhaps, someone has opened this way and left it open deliberately for whatever whacked reason.

I have theorized that some cryptids and other scary things may be visitors from the Otherside who attain full or partial manifestation when they pass into this plane. What if we are actually creating the weak spots and passages that these critters are sighted in?

To take this thought a little farther, the years since the 60's and especially the past twenty years have seen an unprecedented growth in alternate religions that use magic as a part of their practice. Wicca has been touted by some as being one of the fastest growing religions in the US and you have only to look at one of the public Wiccan boards to see that there are a lot of people out there doing Goddess worship and magic. Add to that the large number of Druids, Asatruar, non-aligned pagans and magicians of other stripes and you have a huge body of people doing or attempting to do some form of magic.

Like any group, magical practitioners run the gamut from the very competent to the totally incompetent. There is no Wizard's College that these people are required to attend and the books that many of them learn from are of questionable use at best. It seems likely to me that some of the interesting monster reports that we are seeing these days, including the manwolf/dogman sighting may have their provenance in the workings of magical practitioners who have not quite learned how to shut down and ground out the energies that they are working with. Anyone who has ever stood in a well cast circle, or other magical space, knows that the area is open to the Otherside. If that 'portal' is left open, either intentionally or unintentionally, it seems likely to me that we might see all sorts of interesting things spring forth to haunt our world.

The Curse

2011-10-05T09:58:00.000-04:00

While I have detailed some instances in which being a werewolf might be advantageous and, indeed, be a sought after condition, we can not ignore the fact that the legends of lycanthropy are full of people who became werewolves against their will. One of the ways in which this happened was through the curse of a witch or other magical practitioner.

We get into very murky water when we look at this phenomenon since now we have two separate streams of folklore to review. Such an endeavor could take up the full length of a book or, at least, a thesis but the points I would like to bring are simple. One, that, once again, the werewolf becomes werewolf through a magical process. Two, that not all werewolves regarded their condition as a gift.

While there are stories of families and tribes of werewolves, for the most part, a person becomes a human wolf through some sort of magical process, usually a sympathetic working that involves the wearing of wolf fur or a wolfskin belt to bring about the Change. Added to this may be spells and charms such as the Russian working I posted in an earlier blog. Magic and the manwolf walk hand in hand but I have not, in all my years of wandering through magical highways and byways, found a spell or curse for turning a person into a werewolf. I am sure that, somewhere out there, such a working exists but I have not run into it yet. I would suspect that it would be more of a glamour to make a person believe they are a werewolf than a full fledged transmutational working but, who knows.

What is important here is that, during the time period when werewolf lore reached full flower, there was also a profound interest in and fear of "witches" - magical practitoners who seem to have a practiced natural magic and healing. The Church, which saw all power that did not come directly from its god, as a challenge to its authority, periodically sought to purge Europe of these practitioners. There is a lot of argument amongst historians about how many died during the so-called Burning Times but the figure is really irrelevant. The fact remains that people were burned to death and some of them actually were magic workers.

Since, "witches" were naturally assumed to be in league with the Christian devil, these people were considered to have extraordinary power granted to them by that devil. Since there were many people who believed in a literal shape shifter who could change form into a wolf, it seemed logical at the time to assume that such a condition must have been brought on by the curse of one of these diabolical practitioners. In the righteous view of the Church and its followers, no one could possibly wish for such an affliction or seek it voluntarily (unless they made their own pact wit the devil in order to run wild, something we will return to later) so the condition had to derive from a curse. Case solved and, of course, the solution for the poor cursed werewolf was to burn him or her at the stake as well since magic could not be applied to reverse the affliction.

The idea of lycanthropy as a curse appears in movies and television (I am remembering the bleeding pentagram in the hand of the young werewolf in the Fox TV series). And, indeed, if one were to be Changed into a werewolf involuntarily and had no control over the condition then it seems likely that it would seem to be a curse; the involuntary wolf would live in constant fear of losing control and harming innocent people. I suspect that such a person might quickly either become a forest hermit or bring their life to an end unless they could find the means to bring their wolf form under control.

So, while many of those who read these words revel in the idea of the wolf running free through the misty forest, howling his love to the full moon lambent in the sky, remember that there may have been those for who that howl was a cry of fear and pain and call for assistance from whatever god that person worshipped.

Trance-portation

2011-10-04T09:52:00.000-04:00

As promised, today I am going to talk a little about my magical experiments with shape shifting. As I mentioned in the blog entitled Shape Shifting in Germanic Soul Lore, I have been working with the Germanic concept of the soul and particularly the fylgja or fetch. In the sagas, this part of the soul is represented most frequently either by an animal or a figure of the opposite sex which acts as a sort of spiritual guardian and guide. Of course, I am most interested in the animal portion although the other part of my fylgja has made herself known in the past little while.

My wolf, as I have come to think of it in this work, has allowed me several memorable "ride along" experiences. While I have still not quite mastered the trick of merging my consciousness with that of the fetch or making that fetch appear, solidly, on the material plane, I feel that I have made some progress in the last little bit.

I have been finding Diana Paxson's excellent book Trance-portation very useful in my explorations. Ms. Paxson outlines a step by step process for achieving trance states that I have found particularly useful since she is 1) one of the developers the modern oracular seidhr, a type of Norse trance work that seeks to provide answers to petitioner's questions and 2) steeped in the Northern tradition, being one of the principal proponents of Asatru (the old religion of the North) today.

I had done much of the work that Ms. Paxson suggests prior to reading the book but she brings it together into a nice package that really puts the student who is just starting out in a place where they can proceed safely, as long as they are willing to follow instructions.

This is a work in progress, of course. Some meditations are stronger than others. In some meditations, I seem to really get into the wolf state and in others, it is almost as though he is hauling me along. I do firmly believe though that, with continued work, the link will grow stronger and the fetch will begin to be able to manifest here in the physical realm as well. I will keep you posted as I am reasonably sure that this sort of work is one of the major sources of the werewolf mythos.

Novel Announcement

2011-10-03T09:31:00.000-04:00

Given that I had a number of very positive comments about my entry for the Virtual Zombie Blog Walk, I thought that I would mention that I have a novel in process as well. I am well over 38,000 words at this point and hope to have the rough draft completed by the end of the year. I do not have a strong desire to get on the 'trying to get published' merry-go-round so will work on honing the text, editing like crazy and publishing with Amazon and Nook in the spring. The book is still in formation, of course, but I have taken my knowledge of werewolf, Black Dog and faery lore, thrown in a dash of cryptozoology, shaken and stirred with the story of the Beast of Gevaudan and added in a romance element for a modern urban fantasy that I think you will find unique. Oh, and did I mention that there is magic?

As I get closer to putting the book out, I will give you a sneak peek at what is going on with these characters who are, as I write them, really coming to life for me. I believe that this book could actually develop into a series so stay tuned.

Tomorrow, I return to my version of the real world. I'll be talking a little bit about my continued magical experiements with shape shifting and the elements that are shaping those experiments.

Blogger Virtual Zombie Walk

2011-09-29T14:36:00.003-04:00

I am putting this up early as I may not have time to do it tomorrow. I hope you enjoy the story and the Zombie Walk event!
Impetuosity

I hate hot weather. I especially hate it when it is hot and steamy and that seemed to be the only kind of weather that existed in Lousiana that summer. I am a creature of misty, cool damp forests, of the first rays of the spring sun coaxing the earth from winter. I am a creature of thick fur and sharp fangs and, even in my human form, I am not happy when the temperature warms into the eighties. I am a werewolf.

I must have been mad when I agreed to go to a god forsaken little town in the middle of a steaming Lousiana bayou to check on a lone wolf who had gone missing. There are plenty of werewolf packs in the southern states with wolves who are much better acclimated to the temperatures than I am but, my pack Alpha, had asked me, his second, to check on this wolf since she was one of his get.

That is how I found myself, lying in a tangle of matted greenery that I could not identify, sweat rolling down my nose and off my chin, observing a small cabin where my subject was supposed to live. The night smothered me like heated velvet and it was all I could do to keep from panting, even in my human shape. I did not want to think about how hot I would be if I had to Change for this assignment.

One of the reasons that my Alpha picked me for this mission is that, in addition to being a werewolf, I grew up in a magical family and am accomplished at sorcery. He must have been having a psychic moment because, as I lay there watching the single wavering light through that cabin window, I could feel the tension in the air. Magic rose around me, as thick and dark and dank as the swamp from which it wafted. I did not recognize the specific working, but I knew the flavor of it. Bokor. A sorceror in the Voudoun tradition. As if in answer to my thought, a wild scream emanated from the cabin and a steady drum beat commenced.

That could mean several things and none of them were good. I had to get a closer look.

A stalking wolf moves slowly until he is certain that he has not been seen and that is exactly what I did, coming slowly and silently out of the brush, all senses, magical and mundane, on full alert. I did not expect human interference since bokor tend to work alone but someone powerful enough to pull the magic that I was feeling around me would not allow anyone to approach a working in progress.

Step by cautious step, I moved forward, tension rising in my shoulders as I got closer to the cabin. With hands extended, I approached until I could feel the magical barrier that surrounded the tiny cabin.
As I brushed my hand over the wards that protected the structure, I got a better feel for the practitioner who had erected them. Power seeped over me, power tinged with death and blood and the force of ancient spirits best left undisturbed. I closed my eyes for a moment, allowing myself to concentrate on the sense of the warding, looking for any gap that might allow me to use stealth to approach. After a couple of minutes of fruitless searching, I concluded that there was nothing for it but to go in hard and fast. I had to assume that my Alpha's lone wolf female was in the cabin with the bokor and the sorceror was working some magic on her as I stood there.

I stepped back into the humid heat of the canopy and quickly stripped out of my clothes. If I had to go in "hot", then I was going to go in the form that was best suited for maximum effect and damage.

The Change is often depicted in movies as a painful, bone cracking, joint popping transformation that hurts like hell and makes for a very bad tempered wolf on the other side. While it is true that the first few Changes are . . . uncomfortable, the werewolf's body quickly becomes acclimated to the shifting of shape. Once you are practiced at it, it only takes couple of minutes to move from man to wolf. I reached deep within, holding my wolf shape in my mind and calling that most primitive magic to me.

I am, honestly, always more comortable in my wolf form than I am in the to legged guise. My wolf is a great gray creature that tips the scales at over two hundered pounds but he moves with a grace, almost an elegance, that I could never accomplish on two legs. As the sounds of the forest amplified around me and the rank smells pushed into my snout, I huffed a sneeze and shook my head at the awful smell of rot all around me. The human me, though his nose is far better than a normal human, had not registered the smell of rot and decay that permeated the clearing.

I moved silently from the wood, ears perked for maximum hearing and nose to the air to detect all scents in the area. Again, I assured myself that that the bokor did not have backup and then I charged the wards.
A magical ward is intended to fend off psychic and magical attacks and to provide early warning of an intrusion on the warded area. Wards are not designed to stop a two hundred pound wolf and this one did not even slow me down. I passed through the mystical energy field and felt it flex and break around me as I arrowed for the entry to the cabin.

The drum beat within the structure faltered and I knew that I was discovered. There was no time for subtlety; I allowed the fierceness of the hunt to slam through me, powering my body as I threw my shoulder against the door to the cabin.

The door stood no chance against a raging werewolf. It burst from its hinges and and fell flat to the floor. I veered left around a solid wooden table in the center of the room, where a lantern sat casting flickering light over the scene. In the right hand corner of the room, a naked, half shifted female werewolf lay in a circle of intricately drawn glyphs that I recognized as veve, the symbols of the gods and spirits of Voudoun.

To the left, the sorceror stood, or, I should say, sorceress. I could not see her face in the deep hooded black robe that she wore but the hands were the hands of a woman who had worked with them her whole life. Her body, under the voluminous robe, was gaunt, as though she has been fasting for a time and her skin was a rich cafe au lait color. Even with the hood covering her face, it was the burning eyes that made an impression on me.

I had intended merely to take her down hard enough to knock her unconscious but she drew breath and extended her hand palm up toward me. A savage growl rose from my throat as I lunged under the extended hand and snapped, taking it off neatly at the wrist. I knew enough about bokor magic to recognize when someone was about to blow corpse powder in my face. One breath of the stuff, with its mixture of plants, corpse bones, blow fish venom and magic, was enough to bring down a full grown man and render him so comatose that he seemed dead. I was not going to find out what it would do to my wolf.

Traumatic amputations do not bleed as much as you would think; the tissues around the injury tend to contract to limit blood loss. Nevetheless, the bokor was losing a steady stream of blood and the room filled with the iron filing smell of it. The sorceress pulled her sleeve down tightly over the arm and held hard pressure on it as she turned to the female in the corner and spewed out a stream of words in a language I did not recognize.

The woman in the corner rose slowly, the lantern casting strobing shadows across her well muscled body and defining the rounded curve of her naked breasts. I looked into the eyes of her half shifted face, the jaw long but not yet thrust out into a snout, the ears pointed and eyes slanted. I hoped to see a fellow wolf, eyes golden or brown, looking back at me. Instead, I looked into deep wells of black as the woman pulled lips back from wicked canines and growled low at me. As the saying goes, the lights were on, but no one was home. The bokor had done exactly what I feared; she had created a zombie werewolf.

The sorceress' cackle, high and not quite sane, filled the cabin. "Kill him!" she cried and the female leapt from the circle with surprising agility.

Not surprising enough to prevent me from getting out of the way though. If I had chosen to enter the cabin in human form, I would have been killed in the first seconds of the engagement but my wolf is old and he knows how to fight. I did not want to be Alpha of a pack but, if I had wanted to, I could have easily challenged for dominance. This . . . thing was a werewolf but she did not have my age and combat experience to rely on. If I had wanted to give her the true death, I could have taken her throat out in the first pass.

My Alpha had been clear though. He wanted the female back and safe. That meant that I was going to have to use magic and brains to accomplish my task.

A zombie is tied to its creator. If I killed the bokor, it would kill the female as well and I would have failed my Alpha. While my wolf form was much handier to carry into a fight, it left me at a disadvantage in using my magical skills since I could not speak the Words that carried my will into reality. Unlike some of the impetuous young ones in my pack, I learned long ago that werwolves are not invincible and I had prepared for such eventualities.

I dropped my shoulder into the legs of the charging female and rolled under her, taking her off her feet and slamming her head hard against the floor. A blow like that would have taken a human out of the fight but it simply stunned my opponent. That was really all I needed, a break in the combat in which I could work. I growled low, keying the growl to a particular frequency that the bokor probably could not even hear.

It is possible, if you are a good enough sorceror, to key a spell to a particular phrase, uncommon word or even a sound. I am a good enough sorceror and I had keyed a series of spells to various low frequency growls. I had practiced hard to get the sounds just right so that I got exactly the correct magic, every time.
This particular spell was one that I had derived from a faery magic that opened the Ways between the worlds, what they called the Mist Covered Paths. In this case, though, it was not a Way that I wanted but the mist, which had certain magical properties that I needed. Even as I dodged another clumsy attack from the groggy female, fog began to creep into the room, a living presence that curled tendrils around each being in the room, human and lycanthrope, bringing a chill into the humid closeness inside the cabin.

For the first time, the bokor seemed confused. I am sure that blood loss had not done anything for her faculties but the mist itself had a glamoring effect on humans, slowing them, making them more likely to miss things. It was this type of fog in which humans sometimes became lost, never to be found again, either taken into Faery or becoming victims of some of the less savory denizens of the Otherside.

The mist did nothing but sharpen my already acute wolf senses. The female, still stumbling from her blow to the head, swiped ineffectually at me with wicked claws that I evaded by scooting under the table, I was waiting for . . .

There! I saw the magical connection that joined the bokor with her 'creation' out of the corner of my eye, a silver cord of magic, high up in the room, connecting the solar plexus of the bokor to the same center on her victim. I lunged from beneath the table, knocking the female aside with my shoulder as I leapt into the air, growling a second charm to make the cord manifest.

Before the bokor had time to react, I closed my jaws over the link and severed it with a shake of the head. The effect was almost instantaneous. The bokor shrieked with a pain that she had not even felt when I took her hand. The young female collapsed to the floor, apparently lifeless, but moments later rose to her knees. Her eyes glowed brilliant gold as she looked up at the woman who had held her prisoner and a vicious snarl escaped her as she continued the Change that had been interupted by the vicious magician.

I ambled out the door as the 'zombie' showed her creator what happens when you try to enslave a werewolf to your will. The screams quickly died away to wet gurgles and then there was only the sound of powerful jaws rending flesh. The sorceress did not suffer as she would have had I meted out her punishment but the young, as I have said, are impetuous.
Blogger Virtual Zombie Walk participants
Holly's Horror Land
Zombies Everywhere
Little Gothic Horrors
Anything Horror
Kay Bennett, Horror Writer and Poet
Bubba's Place
Horror Smorgasbord
Gnostalgia
Monkey Man
Words and Music
Red Shoes Chronicles
My Day in a Sentence
Pixie's Horror Galore
Strange State
The Misdaventures of a HalloweeNut
Halloween Blues
Kweeny Todd
The California Blogging Massacre
Horror Shock Lolipop
Vanessa Morgan
Improbable Frontiers
No really, you can eat it
Art by Living Dead Girl Nicole
Two Gory Chicks
Dust Bunny in the Wind
A Ghoul's Best Friend
Zombies are Magic
Cherry Neko Saves the World
Tall Tales
At the Mansion of Madness
The Haunted Rose
The Rotting Zombie
Halloween Overkill
Out of the Shadows
Creepy Glow Keyhole Gallery
Creepy Glowbugg
Bifocal Univision
Haiku-Koo-Koo
Sherry Soule
Anchors and Roses
Paranormal Researchers Group
Whispering Pines History
Lovely Miss Megs
Sean Thomas Fischer's Blogwash
Rise and Fight
Stump Town Horror
LoliClown's Little Blog of Horror
Zombie's Can't Love
Books and Beyond
The Grave Bandits
Screaming Goregasms
Lazy Daisy Life
Icky Monster
Pretty in Fiction
Ivy's Closet
Justine's Halloween
Annie Walls
Just Johnny
Ghost Hunting Theories

Above the Norm: Bizarre Arizona

The Black Dog of Lake Erie

2011-09-28T08:46:00.002-04:00

I am fascinated by the stories of Black Dogs that come out of Europe, mainly England, but this one is actually native to the US and, in fact concerns areas that I know, having lived on the shores of Lake Erie for several years:

http://www.thecabinet.com/darkdestinations/location.php?sub_id=dark_destinations&letter=l&location_id=lake_erie

While there is also some interesting material for those interested in other paranormal beings around Lake Erie, my ears perked up at the mention of this Black Dog, a Newfoundland that was supposedly killed in the locks of the Welland Canal, went on to haunt his ship mates and then to appear as a portent of doom to ships throughout the Great Lakes.

If you know the breed, a Newfoundland is about the last type of dog that you might think of in relation to hauntings and ghostly prognostications. The Newf, as they are sometimes called, is a giant breed with males sometimes weighing in excess of 200 pounds. So highly regarded were these dogs as water rescue animals that it used to be the law in England that one could have a public beach open without having a Newf in place to protect the swimmers. Boards dedicated to lovers of these dogs are filled with stories of the Newf not only rescuing swimmers in trouble but actually preventing young ones from going into the water until the dog was convinced that the child could swim.

I find it very interesting that the folklore of this Black Dog is so well developed and even includes an origin tale. This is much more similar to a ghost story than it is to the classic Black Dog encounter where the dog simply appears out of nowhere, sometimes with flaming eyes, and scares the beejesus out of some poor sot driving down a country road. It seems to me that the story of the Black Dog of Lake Erie is one of those stories like the myth of Thorr driving his wagon across the sky and thus creating thunder.

As I mentioned, I lived near the shore of Lake Erie for several years. I have listened to the scream of the wind when a storm blew in and have gone out in those November gales to relish the exposure to the raw, primal elements of earth and sea (lake) and sky. The wind blows so hard that your eyes water and you have to lean against the gale to make any forward motion, even if you are well over six feet tall and weigh more than a male Newf. Looking out over the lake, it looks more like an ocean than a large body of fresh water and I can see how it would be possib;le for a captain to miscalculate and lose a ship in weather that severe. It is easy to see how, when the wind is howling and a craft disappears into the depths of one of the Great Lakes, rumors might start to circulate of a great black dog seen crossing the deck of that ship the last time it was in port.

It is said that sailors are a superstitious lot. For some, it might be easier to accept the sinking of a vessel and the deaths of the crew if you could say that, after all, that ship was curced by the Black Dog of Lake Erie.

Lightening Up

2011-09-27T14:55:00.002-04:00

I am known for being deadly serious about my werewolves and shape shifters but, every once in a while, I like to lighten things up . . .

For those of you who want to get serious about being werewolves for Halloween and do not wish to undergo the trauma of the Change:

http://www.ehow.com/info_10076200_werewolf-ideas-halloween.html

And, as you know, I have a soft spot for stupid werewolf riddles:

Why was the werewolf arrested in the butchers shop?
He was chop-lifting.

How do you stop a werewolf howling in the back of a car?
Put him in the front.

What happened to the wolf that fell into the washing machine?
It became a wash and werewolf.

What do you get if you cross a hairdresser with a werewolf?
A monster with an all-over perm.

Why do werewolves do well at school?
Because every time they're asked a question, they come up with a snappy answer.

Where does a werewolf sit in the theater?
Anywhere he wants to!

Coors, the "Silver bullet."

What's a werewolf's least favorite beer?

These jokes brought to you courtesy of this bulletin board: http://permutedpress.com/smf/index.php?topic=3330.0

Real Werewolves?

2011-09-23T09:09:00.000-04:00

Imagine waking up to this headline on your morning paper:

WEREWOLVES EXIST!

You fling the paper down and read the front page story in which an author, known for writing about werewolves and other canid cryptids, receives a video tape of man shifting into a wolf. The film has been subjected to intensive scrutiny by agencies up and down the national intelligence food chain and no one has been able to show that it is a hoax.

Further, the subject of the film has sent in DNA samples that show that this individual has a very unique DNA structure. Scientists are closed mouthed about what they found on the analysis but word has leaked from the lab that elements of wolf DNA were mixed in with the core structure of human DNA. One of the biologists has been quoted as saying that he has never seen anything like it.

The search is, of course, on for the individual in that videotape. He has "fuzzed" his face in the film but intelligence professionals have managed to cobble together a good likeness of the person using advanced picture enhancement algorithms. When you turn on the TV, you see this picture splashed across the screen and know that it is just a matter of time before someone turns this werewolf in and human kind knows for certain that there really are werewolves. In notes leaked to the press, the werewolf has repented of his actions and simply wants to be left alone now.

How would you feel about that? How would you feel knowing that your neighbor, your friends, perhaps even your lover, sometimes answered the call of the moon and went running through the wilderness in another form? Would your intense curiosity lead you to turn that person in if you knew who they were or would you do everything you could to protect that person, to hide them? If they were caught, would you lobby for their humane treatment, get the ACLU to represent them and try to have them freed or would you exert whatever pressure you could on the government to make sure that all test results were made public? Given the werewolf's fiercesome reputation in lore, would you view the reality of werewolves as a threat to humanity or would you seek to find ways to co-exist peacefully with the lycanthropes? Do you even believe that people could co-exist peacefully with humans who turn to wolves?

I know how I would react but I am curious as to what readers think. Think about it and then share your responses.

Dwayyo - Another Type of Manwolf

2011-09-22T11:09:00.000-04:00

Just when I think that I am going to run out of interesting canid cryptids to write about, Lon Strickler over at Phantoms and Monsters comes up with a new sighting or a new historical account to pique my interest. Here is a story about the Dwayyo, Maryland's own version of the dogman/manwolf:

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2011/09/dwayyo-maryland-dogman.html

I have to say that, after reading this interesting article, I have the strong desire to go sniffing around Maryland's forested byways. Maryland is far closer to Georgia than Michigan/Wisconsin, that other hotbed of manwolf sightings.

There are a number of items in these witness accounts that I could discuss. I found it interesting, for example, that "Jim A" made a point of noting that the creature he saw was not hominid or ape (giving pause to all the cryptozoologists who want to lump these stories in with the Bigfoot sightings) but was definitely a canid that seemed to be adapted for upright, bipedal locomotion. We do not know a lot about Jim A, only that he was headed toward a camp site when he saw the cryptid, but one has the feeling that this gentleman had some experience observing wildlife; his account of the "almost spider-like" movements of the cryptid and the way its legs "stuck out from the trunk" seem to me to be details that he remembered because they were so out of character with what he was used to seeing in those woods.

Most interesting to me, though, is the final witness statement. We do not have a name for this witness but her testimony is quite interesting (if a little over dramatized) since she "felt" the creature before she actually saw it and appeared to experience profound feelings of fear or even terror before she ever spotted the being that attacked her car. We often see this sort of "feeling of being watched" and rising fear/agitation/terror in Bigfoot percipients and, of course, in those who experience hauntings or have run-ins with shadow people. If you look back into legends of the faery, you will encounter descriptions of a feeling of terror or awe when encountering these beings.

Science states that such feelings may simply be a human response to electromagnetic stimuli or low frequency sound in the area but my question is: what is the source of those stimuli? Again, there are a number of theories here but I would propose that these feelings arise from the visceral reaction of the human animal to the opening of a door or portal to the Otherworld and the arcane process that helps the spirits who come through the portal manifest in a more or less solid form in our consensual reality. To me, this is the simplest and most elegant explanation of the emotional experiences that accompany paranormal sightings.

Lycaon and Werewolf Origins

2011-09-21T08:57:00.000-04:00

One of the myths pointed to for the origin of werewolves is the story of Lycaon:

In the second century BC, the Greek geographer Pausanius relates the story of Lycaon, who was transformed into a wolf because he had ritually murdered a child. In accounts by Apollodorus (or pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.8.1) and Ovid (Metamphoses I.219-239), Lycaon serves human flesh to Zeus, wanting to know if he is really a god. Lycaon's transformation, therefore, is punishment for a crime, considered variously as murder, cannibalism, and impiety. (This abbreviated myth and the picture above cpme from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werewolf)

I find this a quite unsatisfactory version of the origins of the werewolf tribe. Here's why . . .

Once, again, as with the Norse accounts of shape shifters, we have a god in the middle of the things. As I recall, from my own study of Greek mythology, this incident actually occurs in a broader context than mentioned here. Zeus and Hermes are travelling the world in disguise and the whole tale is designed to show the virtues of peity vs. the punishment for impeity.

In a previous episode, Zeus has richly rewarded an older couple (their names slip my mind) who, when they recognize him as the god, place their entire meager resources at his disposal. The story of Lycaon is a counter point to this earlier tale. Lycaon is a king of Arcadia and, in some stories, has a number of sons, all of whom are, like their father, little given to time at temple and much given to time spent gratifying their senses. The tale varies from teller to teller but basically Lycaon is supposed to have served Zeus human flesh in one form or the other. The god turns him into a wolf and either slays his sons with lightning or turns them into wolves as well.

To my mind, it sounds as though the authors of this tale spent too much time chatting with Hebrew emigres. Zeus can hardly throw stones when it comes to ethics; he was renowned for shape shifting into various forms and seducing maidens who took his fancy, much to his wife Hera's frustration, and to slay humans with lightning, sometimes by mistake. Zeus actually killed his own father to take power in Olympus. I doubt that he was sitting in judgement over this mortal's moral turpitude, much as it may be deserved.

No, this is not really a story about the origin of werewolves. It is a story about the expected piety of the time and the result of failing in that piety. This theme of the cursed human becoming a wolf seeps down into the werewolf lore as one of the methods by which one may become a werewolf (the curse of a magical practitioner, since gods were no longer tolerated in Christian Europe). In addition, Lycaon's name is the root for the word lycanthropy.

While the story of Lycaon contributes to the werewolf legend, it is not the source of a belief in men turning to wolves.

Wendigo

2011-09-20T10:40:00.000-04:00

Many people interested in werewolf legends and lore come across a number other nightmare creatures in their research. One of these beings is a spirit well known amongst the Algonquin speaking people called the Wendigo.

The description of this spirit varies but almost all sources agree that the Wendigo was exceedingly tall (over fiften feet in some instances) and gaunt, possessed of an unquenchable desire for human flesh. The creature was often described as having tusks or fangs, matted hair and/or sallow skin. In some descriptions, the Wendigo is so thin that it can only be seen face on. One of the sources that I encountered for this spirit said that the creature got taller every time it ate a person so that it could never be full.

Some cryptozoologists have attempted to make the case that the Wendigo was actually a saquatch/bigfoot type creature. I think this is unlikely. The First People of that area knew their wildlife and I imagine that, like the Lakota who recognized a Big Man, they understood what a sasquatch was and that it was not the horror that they described as a Wendigo. Also, I seriously doubt that Native people would describe a creature that is almost universally recognized as massive as so thin that it was invisible from the side. I think that sasquatch witnesses would laugh at this idea as well.

Cultural anthroplogists make a strong case for the Wendigo being a mythic embodiment of the cultural taboo amongst tribes in the Northern woodlands, such as the Ojibway and Cree, against eating human flesh. Given the harsh winters in that geographic location, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that a group might run out of food and resort to cannibalism in order to survive. This was not ethically acceptable to the First People of that area and the idea is that, if a person partook of the flesh of another, he or she would become a Wendigo or might be possessed by the Wendigo as a transition toward becoming one.

Perhaps, the Wendigo is simply a mythic personification of the hunger that drives one to eat ones own relatives. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the Wendigo is actually a being that exists in the murky corners of the Otherworld, a being that is sometimes able to cross to our world for the occassional feast. Or, perhaps, the telling and retelling of the legend of the beast that springs to life when one consumes human flesh, laden with the fear of a thousand campfire tale nights, eventually took on form from those thoughts and fears and haunts those woods to these days.

I will let you decide.

Some references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo

http://www.prairieghosts.com/wendigo.html

Halloween

2011-09-19T08:34:00.000-04:00

I looked through my notes this morning and, while there is a wealth of information there, I did not find anything that I really wanted to write about. A couple of unrelated things in my life are coming together for this post. First, it seems that many of the blog writers that I follow are gearing up for Halloweeen. Also, I just finished re-reading Hunt For The Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp.

So, you ask, what do these two things have to do with each other?

At the end of Hunt For The Skinwalker, the authors posit several different theories for the extreme paranormal happenings on the observed ranch in Utah. For those interested in werewolves and canid cryptids, one of the very first incidents recorded in the book is an encounter with a monstrous, bullet proof, wolf-like creature that attacks the horses of the Gorman family on the day that they move onto the ranch. The book then goes on to detail many other bizarre encounters ranging from UFO's to Bigfoot type creatures. Kelleher and Knapp seek to explain these paranormal happenings, many of which were witnessed by scientists on scene, by looking at theories from an elaborate hoax or a secret military psi-ops experiment to the possibility of a Native American curse.

Like the authors, I found most of these "explanations" unsatisfying. What I did find interesting though was their rather extensive discussion of the multiverse theory and the possibility that the manifestations at Skinwalker Ranch and other "hot spots" throughout the world night bee the result of incursions from on universe or dimension into this one. While this does not explain the werewolf of legend, a man who becomes a wolf, it certainly could explain some of the more 'interesting' cryptid encounters on the ranch and elsewhere.

Now, how does this relate to Halloween?

In Celtic lands, the time that we call Halloween and then All Souls Day is called Samhain (pronounced roughly sow-un). In the legends and lore of the Irish, Scots and other Celtic races, there is an almost blase acceptance of the existence of other worlds and Samhain is one of two times in the year when the veil between our world and the Otherworld is thin. In many of the Celtic lands, until quite recently, it was not at all uncommon for folk to set places at table for their deceased ancestors and/or to leave offerings for the faery on their doorstep during this part of the year.

Last year at Samhain, I had the opportunity to go for a drive in the wooded areas of Western New York and I can tell you that those woods were alive with spirits - both the spirits of the dead and the spirits of those denizens of the Otherworld who walk close enough to our realm to cross over. The woods were full of shadow shapes that moved and flitted from one tree to the next and, had I been able to go out into those woods, I am sure that some interesting communication could have been had if I had been still and waited for the spirits to come to me.
So, this Halloween, as we contemplate the time when the Veil is thin and we think of the paranormal and all the interesting things that could possibly come through that Veil, I offer you a little challenge. Take a few moments, after the trick or treating and parties are done, and go somewhere quiet, preferably in nature, and sit. Listen with all your senses and see what comes to you on the wind.

Witnesses II - Mystery?

2011-09-15T15:10:00.000-04:00

The story for the Blogger Zombie Walk is almost complete and my work in progress novel is on hold for a couple of days while I let the characters work out where they want to go from here so I wanted to take some time to address the topic that I brought up on Tuesday. How do we know which witnesses are reliable?

The short answer to that question is that we really can not. Human beings are intensely complex and there is no way that you can know their motivations, fears, biases and more in a single conversation or even several interviews. People who have been married for fifty years still discover new things about their spouses if they are open to seeing them.

I know that there are people out there who will say, "But I just know that he was telling the truth; that <fill in the emotion> could not have been faked." Maybe not. The emotion could have been quite real but the cause of the emotion could have ultimately been natural. How many people do you know or have you heard of that got themselves into a panic over something innocuous? The fact is that genuine emotion does not equal truth. It simply indicates that a person had an experience that provoked emotion.

I am not trying to run down the work of paranormal investigators in this post. What I would like to see, though, is more people who are willing to say, I don't know. I would like to read a report that says, Witness A said this, Witness B said this and we discovered this evidence that tends to support the witness' story (or not). Here is our theory about what the phenomenon might be. End of report.

I would also like to know something more about the witnesses than that they seem reliable or are stable or do not seem to be seeking publicity. The investigators' impressions of a witness should certainly be a part of any report BUT those impressions should be backed up by something. Why do you, Mr. Investigator, feel that this witness is reliable? Why should I take your word for it? If you can not back up that impression then tell me, the reader of your report, that. Be honest and say that your intuitive impression of a witness is that he is stable etc.

One of the things that I see in various reports is a single sentence that says something like "the witness is an experienced hunter and outdoorsman". Again, why should I take your word for it. I have spent hundreds of hours in the wilderness, hiking and biking, worked wilderness search and rescue and maintain a profound interest in the woodlands that surround me but I do not consider myself an experienced outdoorsman. I can make due and I can recognize most of the common wildlife in my area so I would make a reasonable witness if I were to see something like a Bigfoot or a manwolf. Still, there are a lot of people out there with a lot more experience than I have.

If you are going to say someone is experienced, tell me why. How much hunting, fishing, tracking, hiking, or whatever does this witness do? If they are an aviator, tell me how many flight hours they have. If they are a law enforcement officer or other trained observer, tell me how long they have been on the job. In other words, tell me why I should view this witness as more reliable than any other witness.

As I said in the first post, witnesses are the most interesting and the most frustrating aspect of paranormal investigations. We have to approach them with open minds, be willing to hear what they have to say, look at all the evidence and then be able to say "Well, there are similar stories and in those stories or in this parapsychological journal, these phenomena are called X. In my experience, similar incidents seem to be Y or are caused by Z. In the end though, I don't know; all I can do is compare this story to other stories, look at any physical evidence, listen to my gut about the witnesses and make sure that I understand their background. In the end though, I can not really know."

After all, that is why we continue to pursue these things - because they are a mystery and we humans love a good mystery. If you can explain a mystery, then it is not a mystery anymore. Leave some room in your beliefs for mystery.

Interesting Site

2011-09-14T09:13:00.000-04:00

I am taking something of a day off today to work on the short story that I will post for the Zombie Blog Walk but here is some reading material that might interest you.

Werewolf Legends From Germany

Witnesses

2011-09-13T14:43:00.000-04:00

Witnesses are one of the most interesting and, at the same time, one of the most frustrating aspects of paranormal research and investigation. Those of us who are fascinated by the things that go bump in the night derive much of our information and our theories from the stories of people who are willing to come forward and tell there sometimes incredible stories. The problem is that researchers who are not stuck in "skeptical" mode want to believe witnesses but know that they can not simply take them at their word.

The human animal is a notoriously unreliable witness, as any seasoned law enforcement officer will tell you. Go to the scene of an automobile accident, separate all the witnesses and then interview them. If there are five witnesses, you will get five different accounts of the accident and all of those accounts will be colored by the emotional state of the witness, the time of day, the lighting, the witness' perception of those involved in the accident, etc. Police officers understand that they are essentially putting together a collage of witness statements and then comparing those statements with the physical evidence of skid marks, damage to the vehicles, injuries to the victims and so forth to develop a picture of what happened.

As a criminal justice major back in the early 80's, I was in a classroom one day when a man ran into the class, snatched the professor's briefcase off the desk and ran out. Of course, this was staged. We were required to jot down all the relevant details about the "perpetrator" that we could remember and then he was brought back into the classroom. Many of my classmates, who had no training in observation, were way off the mark when trying to describe this individual. One of them even assigned the wrong race to the "fleeing suspect".

Knowing that humans can be unreliable witnesses supplies a great deal of ammunition to the "skeptics" who want to debunk the entire paranormal realm. Since witness statements are the data core from which most paranormal investigators work, it behooves us to think about what factors might mitigate witness unreliability. When are humans most likely to observe clearly and correctly? When are they not?

I thought about proposing at least one answer to this question, but I would like to see what my readers have to say first. How would you reply to the skeptics who claim that human witness statements are unreliable sources of information and should, therefore, be discarded, especially if they are not accompanied by any physical evidence?

Shape Shifting in Germanic Soul Lore

2011-09-12T10:21:00.003-04:00

I was going back through some old research material over the weekend and stumbled across a book that I received when I was involved with a runic organization a while back. It is called, The Nine Doors of Midgard, and is written by "Edred" - the leader of the group. I found this interesting quote related to shape shifting as I perused the pages:

Sometimes closely related to the fetch in the way it works in an individual's life is the faculty of 'luck' (ON hamingja). This is a protective essence or substance which is the power to cause changes in the hyde-substance in the world. It is the faculty used in true shape-shifting, a craft that has been long lost with the perfect knowledge of the soul.

This quote occurs in a section of the book that discusses Germanic soul lore. Earlier in this section, Edred talked about the fetch as a multi-aspected part of the soul that is actually somewhat independent of the individual. One aspect of this fylgja or fetch appears in the form of an animal.

It seems to me that what Edred is saying here is that the animal form for a shape shifter is derived from the fetch and the power to attain transformation is derived from the hamingja or "luck" of the soul, a very complex aspect that seems to be a sort of personal power that the person is born with. I am not sure whether Edred is talking about an actual physical transformation or something else but, either way, this is surely something to think about.

Being very interested in runes and runic lore, I found this discussion fascinating. I will speak more about shape shifters in the legends of the North as we go on.

An Interesting Black Dog Story

2011-09-09T09:59:00.002-04:00

I happened across this interesting story while on the Mysterious Universe blog:

Otto Klemperer Black Dog Haunting

As with most short pieces, I found the article frustrating since it tells us almost nothing about the black dog, other than to note that it was, appparently, fairly large and hound like. What the article does not tell us is things like:

a) Where did the dog come from when it appeared? Did it simply appear or was it seen approaching the area from the street or some other mundane location?

b) Where did the dog go after its appearance? We are told that the dog appeared, disaster befell the conductor and then . . . nothing about the dog?

c) Did this dog appear as a regular animal or was there something about the dog that caused the initial fear reaction that Otto Klemperer felt when he first encountered the beast?

d) Did other people see the dog or was it just viewed by the percipient?

Despite my frustration, I also found this article quite interesting. H. R. Ellis Davidson, in her book The Road to Hel, a study of old Norse concepts of the afterlife, deals extensively with the fylgja, an animal form which accompanies a man and is, in some storeis, associated with portents of a person's future. For example, Davidson quotes from Njals Saga where one of the characters sees a he-goat lying in a hollow covered in blood. Njal tells the man to "take care of <him>self"since the goat is his fylgja. The implication is that the goat portended this character's wounding or death in battle.

The story of Otto Klemperer seems to me to combine two different streams of European folklore; the idea of the fylgja or fetch, as it became known in English speaking countries, and the legend of the black dog that appears before death or disaster befalls the witness. A good example of this is the phantom black dog that is said to haunt Newgate Prison, appearing before executions. For most black dog witnesses, though, the experience is a one time event so the appearance of a black dog throughout the conductor's life is fascinating. Might this man, for whatever arcane reason, have had a black dog as a fetch/fylgja?

Wolf Senses: Hearing

2011-09-08T11:43:00.001-04:00

A quote from Wolf Source:

It is believed that the upper range of a wolfs’ hearing is upwards of 80 kHz. The upper range of humans is only 20 kHz. It is stated that a wolf can hear up to 6 miles away in forest and 10 miles in open areas, including some high-pitched sounds that even a human can’t hear, in the range where bats and porpoises produce sound. Even when it sleeps, a wolf’s ears stand straight up so it can catch sounds made by other animals at all times. This helps the wolf catch prey, and lets it know when danger is near. Their large, pointed ears act like big scoops to catch lots of sound. Unlike humans, wolves can easily tell what direction sound is coming from by turning their ears from side to side. The direction the ears are pointing when the sound is loudest tells the wolf which direction the sound is coming from, which can help them locate rodents under a snow pack.

I often wonder how wolves and other canids filter the cacophony of sound they must hear around them. Imagine having your hearing being four times as powerful as what it is right now. It would give a whole new meaning to the term eavesdropping.

A Deal with the Devil

2011-09-07T10:17:00.000-04:00

Amazingly, the cool weather continues here in Georgia. Last night was the first time since I have been here that I was able to go to my tai chi class and not have to wring my clothes out afterward. Of course, that could say more about my teacher than anything else.

As I've noted before, Montague Summers, author of The Werewolf in Lore and Legend (originally printed, by the way, in 1933), was a churchman and therefore not at all friendly to creatures of the night. On p. 203 of the werewolf book, we find this chilling quote:

With regard to the voluntary werewolf, under who, for this consideration we may include any kind of shape-shifting . . . In the first place, an essential circumstance and condition is a pact, formal or tacit, with the demon <my note: the demon that Summers assumes brings the Change>. Such metamorphosis can only be wrought by black magic.

Summers goes on for a moment about this pact being a mortal sin and then tells us:

Again, the werewolf is a sorcerer well versed and of long continuation in the Devil's service, no mere journeyman of evil . . .

Now, at first blush, one is inclined to brush off Summers' words as the ranting of yet another paranoid religionist talking about something that he fears and therefore that he derides. Looked at more closely though, there might be an element of truth buried in this hyperbole.

Summers claims that the werewolf must make a pact with a demon or Devil in order to gain the power of the Change. In his eyes, of course, this is pure evil but, if we look at the work of folklorists like Mary Gerstein and Kris Kershaw, we quickly discover that there is a link between werewolves and various god figures and/or pagan religious practices (more on these writers later - no time to write a book today :-).

While I am not impressed with the scholarship of most modern neo-pagan writers, one of the themes that we see picked up constantly from pagan myths and folklore is the idea that the gods of the previous religion become the devils of the new religion. While this is not always the case, the argument has some validity and raises an interesting question. What if the Change, at least for some, comes about as the result of working with certain god forms? Certainly, if that were the case, the incoming new religion would regard those who worked with the old gods in such an intimate way as being in league with a demon or even their Devil since all gods not in their pantheon were automatically relegated to their Hell realm.

We might find cross reference for this in the Afro-Caribbean traditions where one wishing to acquire a certain skill made offerings at a crossroads for a certain number of nights until a "dark man" (usually associated with Papa Legba or other threshold deities) appeared and taught them the skill. Once Christianity took hold, it was said that those who performed this ritual were selling their souls to the Devil. How much more so would a priest, confronted with the terrifying reality of a manwolf, be inclined to label that person's relationship with a god as a pact with the Devil?

Weather

2011-09-06T14:10:00.002-04:00

I am sitting here on the first cool day I have experienced in my new area (Georgia). The remnants of Tropical Storm Lee and a cool front have temperatures down into the 60's today. The coolness is a welcome change from the high 90's I have been experiencing since I got here but, as is usual with me, when I sat down to write this post, I started thinking about werewolves and weather.

In my mind, and I think, in the minds of many, werewolves are cool weather creatures. We do not imagine them loping across the sandy deserts or prowling the sunny South of France. Instead, we see the werewolf as a creature of mist filled forests and full moon nights. As he stalks his prey, we see the werewolf exuding a plume of vaporous breath into the chill of the night and visualize his victims huddled closely together around a fire, trying in vain to stay warm and safe.

I wonder about this predilection for viewing the werewolf as a cold weather creature. Is it because of the fierce warmth of the beast itself that we can not imagine it in a hot zone. Or are we, perhaps, tapping into the cold roots of werewolf lore in the legends of the Northmen? Maybe, some part of our mind associates the werewolf with the great gray timber wolves of the North, forgetting that there are large numbers of wolves in more temperate climes. The warm weather wolves tend to be smaller, after all, and maybe just a little less threatening.

In any event, as the days grow slowly shorter, and the hot days of summer move inexorably toward the chill of fall, keep your eyes open for that shadow that blends so seamlessly into the dark night that you do not really notice it . . . until it is too late. Remember, Samhain is coming quickly, the Veil between the worlds is thinning and who knows what might pop into our world when we least expect it.

The Hound of Mons

2011-09-02T09:30:00.000-04:00

I am busily preparing for a trip out of town this weekend but I wanted to leave my readers with another titillating tale . . . this is another derivative of the black dog tales so common in Britain. Enjoy and I will see you on Monday!The Beast of Mons