Werewolf

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

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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