THE PACK Message Boards

what books do you consider the best as far as legends/truths about werewolves/shapeshifters?

As for popularist books, Adam Douglas' The Beast Within. Charlotte Otten's A Lycanthropy Reader is also very good. For more scholarly interest Richard Noll's "Vampires, Wrewolves, & Demons". Montague Summer's The Werewolf is exhaustive (and exhausting) but the guy is seriously biased. If you can get your hands on Harry Senn's "Werewolves and Vampires in Romania" it's pretty fascinating.

Werwolves ( no misspelling ) by O'Donnel

The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring Gould

blade-of the-moon, those were the first two books on the subject I picked up way back when.

WolfVanZandt, I've read a couple of those but not all..thanks for the information

anybody read "Werewof"by Ed and Lorraine Warren?

I've read Baring-Gould (in fact, the entire book is on the Internet and not hard to find), but Summers is more complete. They both have a real bad attitude about Weres.
I haven't read the O'Donnel and Warren books.

the warren's book says the subject was possesed by a wolf spirit.

I've heard that in other places, too. It's actually a pretty common theory in the Therian community.

I've looked up therians and therianthropy and the more I read the less I seem to understand. WolfVanZandt, can you please post the basic ideas/theories/precepts behind it?

WolfVanZandt wrote:I've read Baring-Gould (in fact, the entire book is on the Internet and not hard to find), but Summers is more complete. They both have a real bad attitude about Weres.
I haven't read the O'Donnel and Warren books.

O'donnel's is a bit more difficult to find than the others, it contains legends of werewolves from all over the world. The phantom werewolf legend even prompted me to do a piece of art based on it.

Rodentia, you're talking about Therianthropy as though it were a belief system. It's not. I'm a Therian because I was born that way. Regardless of what any of us think is the basis of Therianism, the only bottom line right now is that we exist.

There's a saying, "You ask eleven Weres what a Were is and you'll get 12 answers". The reason for that is that we all begin answering the question with different equipment. I'm a science practicioner (a vocational evaluator with a research background) and a Christian. I will naturally lean toward a scientific expanation and I will not look first at idea of reincarnation. A magic practitioner would begin with completely different assumptions and look in different directions.

But, although Therians have been around as individuals for at least three generations (since the 15th century, anyway), the Therian community has only existed since 1993. We haven't had time to come up with hard answers. But we're working on it, but we don't have the survey companies and DNA labs that would give us quick answers, so it's going to take some time.

"The Werewolf book" by Brad Steiger is a pretty good source of info on Werewolves and shapeshifters.

Some of it IS on people who beleived they were Werewolves and attacked people, rather than an actual shapeshifter though.

And it has a odd little blurb about Little Red Riding hood, and whow that relates to witches, werewolves vampires and other things.

Wacky, eh?

Unfortunately, just about everything Steiger said about the Therian Community was pretty obviously unresearched. He equated us with RPGers and a lot of us are just not the role playing type. I know some LARPers in the Community but the law of averages works with us just like the larger human community. But, for instance, out of all the Howls I've been to, I've never seen anyone LARP, in fact, I've never seen any hint of anyone wanting to drag out the White Wolf equipment.

Most of the popularist books dwell on the time since the 15th Century and the fact is, Wereism after the 1400s bears almost no resemblance to Wereism before then. Wereism after the Inquisition bears the strong stamp of pathology that is very much missing from Wereism in the early Middle Ages.

Either Therians were driven insane or were wiped out altogether and the people that were called Werewolves in the later Middle Ages were not related to the original Werewolves.

Or something like that. There is always the idea that things spring from nothing. That, and they could possibly be; you weren't there; can't rule it out. Neither was I.

I meant no dis-respect..I'm just trying to understand. you say you are a Therian becuse you were born that way. what does that mean? how/what kind of shifting do you do? I just visited a site that listed a number of diffirent "types" ..if I am getting to personal, please let me know. I wish to learn, not invade your privacy.

Rondentia, you haven't offended me. Shoot! I don't see anything you said wrong but, even if you had, I'm a Christian Werewolf, don't you think I've developed a thick enough hide by now?

I don't shift, I'm a contherianthrope (which is a Therian that doesn't shift). And that's not exactly true either. I don't shift from a human nature to a wolf nature. Sometimes I have a pseudoshift. I have a very strong sense that I'm a wolf, even to having what we call a phantom body. I feel like a wolf. So sometimes, especially when I'm sleeping, my body will try to conform to what I feel like and, when I wake up, all my muscles are trying to get back into shape. It's like having a layer of worms under my skin - not particularly pleasant. The only other kind of shifting I do is berserking. If I allow myself to get mad (I rarely do), I blow up. But that's not necessarily a Therian trait. A lot of nontherians are like that.

Thanks, WolfVanZandt, for taking the time to explain that to me..it's definitely appreciated. I can see why you'd have to develop the thick skin you mentioned.

For my part, it's not too bad. I've carved out a pretty good niche for myself in the church and my profession and the city where I live. Still I catch flack from people that don't know me and that happens pretty often on the Internet.

Fortunately, I feel pretty good about myself so it doesn't much effect me what people who don't know me thinks.

Rodentia wrote:I meant no dis-respect..I'm just trying to understand. you say you are a Therian becuse you were born that way. what does that mean? how/what kind of shifting do you do? I just visited a site that listed a number of diffirent "types" ..if I am getting to personal, please let me know. I wish to learn, not invade your privacy.

Heh, the book i mentioned before had a section on a "Spiritual shapeshifting" i think they titled it. Had a bit of text that susposedly would help in the process. Sends you on a mental romp as a Wolf.

Of course, it has to be read by someone else, in a soothing voice, in a relatively quiet area. SO, i can't attest to if it works or not....

Is that Mind Games? I have that book. I was in a Mind Games group back in the 70s until we went to a meeting one cold, snowy winter night and the leader was drunk as a skunk. Heh, his consciousness was too altered for us to proceed that night. It didn't really go anywhere else after that. I don't think we got to the wolf exercise.

For folklore references, one of the better books I've found recently is "True Werewolves of History" by Donald F. Glut. It contains many stories that you'll have seen before if you have read the important four older werewolf folklore books (Hamel, Summers, Baring-Gould and O'Donnell), but it also includes a number of new ones, and it is well-written and well-researched. Certainly a nice break from Montague Summers' obscure rambling. I would advise staying away from Brad Steiger. There are too many errors in his "The Werewolf Book", and it just gets on my nerves. Good pictures, though.
Another book I've enjoyed recently is "Werewolves and Shapeshifters" by Darren Zenko. It has a multicultural, multi-species focus that nearly all of these books lack. I wish it had more legends, though. He has just a few folktales, expanded into short story format. It would have been nice to see a longer book.
If you are interested in nonfiction books in general, see my nonfiction werewolf book list or the therianthropic reference list. For the therian side of things instead of folklore, try websites such as the werelist, shifters.org, the wereweb or the codex.

nice sites..saw alot of books I've never heard of...thanks

wow! amazing sites! i was very impressed. thankyou! now i just have to work on saving up to but some of these books!!