From the earliest Greek stories the werebeast is as vulnerable to injury as the man himself. Often the story's culmination is reached when an injury inflicted upon the beast becomes manifest on the man. Michel Verdung, for example, was arrested and tortured on the basis that his wife was tending a wound which had been inflicted upon him while he was a wolf.
Jean Bodin's Demonomanie had an account of how the Royal Procurator, General Bourdin, had shot a wolf in the thigh and discovered it embedded in the thigh of a man lying in bed. In another example, alleged to have happened in around 1566, all the district's witches and warlocks had gathered in the forms of cats and attacked a group of five men. The men fought hard and managed to kill one of the cats; the rest were discovered in their bleeding, in their human forms the next day. They were all able to give accurate accounts of the circumstances of their wounding as cats.
But if only God had the ability to create life, how could such low creature as Satan's instruments metamorphose their bodies? The theology relating to transformation changed fundamentally during the medieval period, with huge ramifications for those accused of witchcraft and lycanthropy.
Sympathetic Wounding and Metamorphosis are covered extensively in the book of Unnatural Predators. Join our mailing list for more info. about the book, site, events and merchandise.
