The werewolf occupies a distinctive and recurring position in the depth-psychological corpus, functioning simultaneously as myth, clinical metaphor, and symbol of the boundary between civilized consciousness and instinctual possession. Liz Greene, drawing on the Greek origins of lycanthropy, situates the werewolf squarely within the lunar domain of Artemis: the figure appears when solar consciousness collapses and the savage instinctual self erupts, destroying precisely those it loves. Walter Burkert traces the phenomenon to archaic Greek ritual—the Lykaia and the myth of Lykaon—where werewolfism is the mythological residue of cannibalism, sacrifice, and initiation into liminal masculine bands. For Jung, the werewolf belongs to the category of mana-projection: when psychic contents are cast outward onto another person, that person becomes 'sorcerer, witch, werewolf, or the like.' Rachel Pollack reads the werewolf as a Tarot emblem of the id's eruption beneath lunar light, while Eliade situates lycanthropic lore within shamanic transformational complexes linking the human to the animal beyond. The tension running through the corpus is fundamentally one between possession and initiation: is the werewolf a catastrophic loss of ego to the archaic instinctual layer, or a threshold rite marking entry into deeper self-knowledge? The figure thus condenses anxieties about regression, the shadow, lunar madness, and the violence latent in eros.
In the library
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The werewolf appears when the Moon is full, and it is said to destroy only those it loves. Any of you who have ever seen the old Universal Pictures film The Wolf Man… Lycanthropy in folklore is a state of possession by a supernatural bestial force which turns savagely against those upon whom the person is e
Greene identifies the werewolf as an expression of lunar-instinctual possession—rooted in Greek myth of Artemis—in which the collapse of solar consciousness releases savage destructive force directed precisely at objects of love.
Greene, Liz; Sasportas, Howard, The Luminaries: The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope, 1992thesis
Lykaon himself turned into a wolf. In another, frequently told version, the grueso
Burkert traces the werewolf motif to the Lykaon myth, where cannibalistic transgression at a sacred meal results in divine punishment through bestial transformation, revealing lycanthropy's ritual roots in sacrificial crime.
Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972thesis
If an important psychic component is projected on a human being, he becomes mana, extraordinarily effective—a sorcerer, witch, werewolf, or the like.
Jung classifies the werewolf as a projection of unconscious mana onto another person, thereby framing lycanthropic attribution as a psychological mechanism of projection rather than supernatural fact.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Civilization in Transition, 1964thesis
In Europe, there is at least one case of a 'werewolf' on record in sixteenth-century Livland. There, the werewolvish activity consisted for the most part of breaking into other people's cellars at night and drinking any beer found there.
Burkert contextualizes historical werewolf accounts within the anthropological study of male initiatory bands, connecting European werewolf lore to African leopard-men and archaic patterns of ritual transgression.
Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting
129 WEREWOLVES AROUND THE TRIPOD KETTLE Apollo in person. The purificatory god was himself in need of purification, for he had killed.
Burkert places werewolf symbolism in proximity to Apolline purification rites, suggesting that the werewolf complex is intertwined with the ritual dynamics of killing, guilt, and the need for cleansing.
Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972supporting
A werewolf howling under a full moon is a vivid metaphor of the power of
Pollack employs the werewolf as a Tarot metaphor for the eruption of the id under lunar influence, contrasting it with the super-ego repression represented by the Emperor card.
Pollack, Rachel, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980supporting
In 1897, he examined the role of dog and wolf in the eschatology of the Greeks, trying to discover connections between religious ideas of these animals in antiquity and the problem of the werewolf, cynanthropy, and lycanthropy.
Hillman's account of Roscher's scholarly project situates the werewolf within a comparative mythological inquiry linking wolf and dog symbolism to Greek eschatology, cynanthropy, and the history of nightmare research.
Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972supporting
Cf. also the confused but copiously documented book by Montague Summers, The Werewolf.
Eliade situates werewolf literature within the shamanic complex of animal transformation and connection to the beyond, citing Summers alongside discussions of initiatory animal-spirit bonds.
Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951supporting
The cow-woman, the werewolf, the lion-baron, and the goat-devil are only notorious and striking examples. People, trees, animals, even objects and words have a double life.
Padel cites the werewolf as emblematic of a broader world-view in which all things carry a double life, linking lycanthropic imagery to the Greek tragic sense of divinity permeating ordinary existence.
Padel, Ruth, In and Out of the Mind Greek Images of the Tragic Self, 1994supporting
Jung references 'The Werewolf' as one of several Nordic folk tales illustrating the archetypal motif of the helpful old man figure and related transformative fairy-tale patterns.
Jung, Carl Gustav, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1959aside