Werewolves and Projected Souls

This chapter argues that the ideas of soul-projection so strongly associated with werewolfism in the medieval and early modern periods were already associated with it in the ancient world. This notion is more or less explicitly articulated by Augustine, but long before him there obtained a striking parallel between werewolf narratives (in which the werewolf off on his adventures leaves behind the human shell constituted by his clothes and must keep them secure, so that he can don them again to retrieve his human form), and the ‘Greek shaman’ narratives (in which the soul-projector must keep his catatonic human body secure as he sends his soul off on his adventures, so that the soul can reanimate it again and he can continue his physical life in the world). Petronius’ intriguingly complex werewolf narrative, when taken with other evidence, presupposes the existence already in antiquity of other werewolf narratives broadly along the lines of Marie de France’s Bisclavret in which a werewolf, perhaps an innkeeper, is stranded in lupine form when his clothes are stolen by his unfaithful wife.