A Ritual for Transformation
“Hail, hail, hail, great Wolf Spirit, hail
A boon I ask thee, mighty shade,
Within this circle I have made.
Make me a werewolf strong and bold,
The terror alike of young and old.”
Thus begins an ancient incantation. The lycanthropic literature of the past is filled with such eerie chants. Delivered in desolate locations, sometimes form within the perimeters of mysterious circles scratched onto the ground, and generally beneath the ghostly light of a
full moon.
As invocation of evil, the chants called upon the spirits of the trees and air, of heat and fire, of cold and ice. Repeating the chants over and over again, the votary prepared himself psychically for his experience. Yet however intently he might feel the words, they were not enough to bring him to the altered state of mind that would enable him to kill and eat his victims. Essential was a girdle or belt cut from the skin of a wolf or a hanged murdered, to be worn around the waist. But more important by far were the vapors that he might inhale or the slaves or ointment with which he rubbed his naked body. Made from ingredients as foul as they were potent, there contained psychoactive substances that released the beast within the lycanthrope and set him on his bloody course, in the company, as one chat has it, of the “elect of all the devilish hosts-wolves, vampires, satyrs, ghosts!”
With evil intent, a man traces two circles in flat ground according to an age-old formula. When he has completed the second circle, he will build a fire of pine of larch and black poplar, then will suspend an iron cauldron from the tripod. Into this he will drop four or five of the following ingredients; opium, poppy seeds, aloe, henbane, hemlock, parsley, solanine (an extract of night shade), and asafetida, a gum resin. After stirring all the components together in the cauldron, he will start the fire and allow the contents to simmer. When flames leap up, he will begin his incantation: “Elect of all devilish host, I pray you send hither, the great gray shape that makes men shiver. Come! Come! Come!
Having removed his clothing and put on a wolf-skin girdle, the initiate now rubs his entire body with a
hallucinogenic salve. Such ointments, which were absorbed through the skin, were made from ingredients as varied as camphor, aconite, aniseed, opium, poplar leaves, bat’s blood and root, mixed with the rendered fat of a cat. Before the ointment begins to take effect, the man breathes in the intoxicating fumes floating from the bubbling cauldron, which prepare him mentally for the next stage of his strange ritual.
Under double influence of the fumes and salve, the man falls to his knees, imploring the spirit of the unknown to bestow on him the power of metamorphosis. With his hands raised, he intones these words; “I beg, I pray, I implore thee-thee unparalleled Phantom of Darkness-to make me a werewolf-------a werewolf!” Within the man’s hallucinogen-charged mind, a male-volent form has already begun to reveal itself. He feels as if his own body is changing, growing hairier, his nails lengthening into claws his words resound into night: “Make me a man-eater. Make me woman eater. Make me a child-eat. Make me a werewolf!”
Fully transformed, at least in us own mind, the werewolf bounds off into the darkness have vowed “heart, body and soul” to serve the powers of evil, he is fated now to wander each day between sunset and sunup in search of human flesh. But however strong and meaning he thinks himself, he knows that even as a werewolf he will be vulnerable, hence the must chant as a charm the final words of the transformation ceremony: “Melt the bullet, blunt the knife, rot the cudgel, strike fear into man, beast and reptile so they may not seize the gray wolf, nor tear his from his warm hide. My word is firm, firmer than sleep or the strength of heroes.”
It was a special night for me. As the guest of honor for the Roann Public Library's Night of Fright, I was asked to come in and read from my novel Shadows over Somerset and I was thrilled to find a captivated audience of about a dozen souls eager for the tale. I read from chapter 6 wherein my protagonist Michael Somers joins in the hunt for a lost boy, only to discover he has been killed by a creature Michael had previously thought to be the product of myth, legend, and superstition... for little Joey Tremble had been killed by a vampire, reawakened after being trapped for centuries in an underground tomb. The audience thrilled to the suspense and laughed aloud during some of the more light hearted scenes. I was more than pleased by their reactions.
