Customer Reviews

Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Like sidoman, I picked up this book initially because I'm researching werewolves and werewolf trials in medieval Europe, and while it does have more to do with witches than it does werewolves, I still found it fascinating.

It's heavy reading; the translation is not the most effective and is halting and not always entirely clear. However, the book provides an interesting alternative explanation for the phenomena of fairies, witches, and werewolves in medieval Europe -- a very convincing explanation, but unlike sidoman, I didn't get the interpretation that Lecouteux truly believes in the existence of the paranormal beings he writes about.

If you're not of the scholarly bent, this book will be hard to get through, even if you're interested in the subject. As someone deep into the research of medieval paranormal beings, I found it utterly fascinating, as this was an interpretation of werewolves that I had not seen elsewhere.

contrary to sidoman's review, it is very apparent that M. Lecouteux is not necessarily a believer in the paranormal, but is reporting the beliefs of various people from the past. further, his thesis is precisely that the theme of the Double is much further-reaching than the previously recognized ideas of the doppelganger and similar doubled existences, but extends to the beliefs of the powers of witchcraft, werewolves, and many others. the idea seems to be that the Double (and here i will oversimplify, as the purpose here is not to provide a summary, but only to correct the more blatant misunderstandings of the previous reviewer) is the pre-Christian conceptualization of the "soul", and that Christianity brought a very different idea of how the nonphysical aspect of a human interacted with the world.

When I discovered that the author taught at the Sorbonne, my first thought was "Wow, the educational system of France is truly in it's sunset years ..." but first thoughts are always a little hasty. If you're a "big werewolf fan" (as some of the other reviewers seem to be), you will be very disappointed by this work. The text is vaguely scholarly but not terribly so. Basically it's a survey of themes in mythology and folklore. About 70% of the work focusses on Northern Europe. The author attempts to loosely connect these themes to a concept he calls "the double" ... but he draws very little in the way of conclusions and at times his web of connections is a bit of a stretch. It's a bit like the work of H. R. Davidson but without the wisdom and deep insight. In the author's defense his citations are very interesting and well chosen. He focuses on topics that are fascinating, for instance he spends a great deal of time discussing the hamr and fylgja in Northern cultures. I found the book to be a very enjoyable read (finished over the course of a single night) even though at times it lacked a bit in substance.

American academia tends to be dogmatically materialistic and rationalistic. Any scholar who dares suggest that there might actually be something to old legends -- that they may actually be useful as something besides anthropological curiosities -- will soon be ostracized as a "crank" or an intellectual ligthweight. Thankfully, things seem to be different in France. Lecouteux, a professor at the Sorbonne, actually takes the old accounts at face value and suggests they hint at a deeper truth.

Lecouteux suggests that many of our "werewolf" and "witch" legends stem from the survival of shamanic practices into Christian Europe. He suggests that much "shapeshifting" was actually the astral projection of the Double, another soul which is possessed by all people. (While this may seem like an alien concept to those of us raised to believe in the Cartesian Body/Mind duality, it's quite common in shamanic traditions). The double can leave the body and walk about in the material world: it can also travel in the spiritual world to the places beneath the ground. (Remember how many legends describe the land of Faerie as "under hill?" Lecouteux suggests they may have been describing an actual place which could be visited in shamanic trance or involuntarily).

Other European scholars have also explored the connection between "the Witch cult" and pre-Christian European Shamanism: perhaps the best-known is Carlo Ginzburg, whose *Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath* is also highly recommended. This idea has received little serious attention in Anglophone academic circles. Thank the heavens (or the Folk Beneath the Ground, depending on your point of view) that these works are appearing in translation. Hopefully some English-speaking scholar will explore these survivals in Britannia.

This is not a popular "werewolf" book: if you're looking for Lycan fiction, this will be a great disappointment. Nor is it a "how to" book which will teach you how to cast spells. It is a serious (but quite readable) academic study of medieval and renaissance legends and an invaluable addition to the library of any practitioner who wants to learn more about the Olde Craft as it was really practiced.

Overall impression: This is a book for specialists. It will not appeal to most werewolf fans.
Once again, I was driven by my compulsion to go out and buy this book, simply because it has something to do with werewolves. Even so, I had a sinking feeling from the beginning, because I knew this wasn't just another folklore collection. It was a book in the occult or paranormal category that happened to include folklore, which is a different sort of book altogether, and one that I often don't enjoy.
However, I have found some good legends or other redeeming qualities in books of this type before, so I tried to withhold my judgment until after I was done reading it. When I read reviews of books that trash the book simply because the reader doesn't agree with the author, it tends to make me angry, so I try not to do this myself.
It may be harder to keep an open mind on subjects such as these, but, when you get right down to it, there really isn't any difference between a Christian reviewer trashing a Jewish book because he doesn't believe in Judaism and a science-believing reviewer trashing a paranormal book simply because he doesn't believe in that stuff.
So, here goes the actual review:
As the title suggests, it does indeed have more to do with witches than werewolves. Only one chapter is devoted entirely to werewolves, though references to witches changing into other animals (mice, cats, flies, bears, weasels and so on) are scattered fairly evenly throughout the book. The included folklore is of the so-so variety. Although the author talks as if he has done some hefty research to dig up little-known folklore, most of it is fairly standard. The non-standard folklore is only presented in little bits that tend to frustrate rather than educate. Like many scholarly researchers, the author has the annoying habit of referring to some little detail from a legend to bolster his main argument, then just sliding past the rest of the legend while heartily congratulating himself on how he's such a great researcher to have even found that tale.
In fact, except for the author believing in werewolves, witches and fairies, this could easily pass as a highly scholarly work. I have not noticed any errors in it (as I usually do at least once with a nonfiction werewolf book) and it has the dry tone and constant lecturing of a scholarly work. In fact, after you read a bunch, you look back and realize that the author hasn't really said much, even though he filled a lot of pages.
For this reason, I think that this is the sort of book that will slip through the cracks. Scholarly researcher types will be turned off by the fact that the author believes in the paranormal, while the general public will be turned off by the dry, scholarly presentation. Thus, it will only appeal to certain specialists or to people (like me) who simply must read any nonfiction book with "werewolves" in the title.
I do have a few other points to make. The author takes a long time defining the concept of the "double" and talks as if he is doing a great master-work by proving that this concept, formerly little-known, is widespread in folklore and mythology. However, if you open up any decent encyclopedia of folklore, you'll find that the rest of the folklorists already know this. The "double" or "doppleganger" concept is both widespread and known to be widespread. It makes you wonder if he was trying to trick his readers into thinking he had broken some new ground, or whether he genuinely didn't know this fact.
However, if you are a heavy-duty researcher, you may still find items of value in this book. It contains short descriptions of quite a number of foreign-language books and articles about shapeshifters that I had run across the titles of before, but had never found any synopsis of before. This may help researchers who can read French, Russian, German, or other European languages. He also draws some parallels between French legends and Japanese legends that I had not seen made before, plus there are a few other points of value, such as the most extensive collection of records pertaining to the Theiss trial (a Livonian/Russian werewolf) that I have ever found. But most of these points will appeal to specialists rather than the general public.