A Review of Claude Lecouteux’s Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies

I wanted to review Claude Lecouteux’s Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies, not only because I encourage others to read it, but also to organize my own understanding of the material. The book packs a great deal of material into its 176 pages (counting appendices), including sources from throughout Europe, cross-referencing phenomena shared by a host of different cultures.

First of all, the title may seem misleading. If a reader hopes to find a catalogue of the above beings, a recitation of accounts of these creatures throughout history, this book will not provide that. Its subtitle, “Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages,” gives a better notion of what to expect. I understand the choice of title, I think, given market preferences, but this book focuses on the concept of the Double as a key element in various supernatural accounts.

Lecouteux discusses how the Double exists as another self throughout the lore, a sort of alter ego. Accounts frequently describe people, who while in a sort of ecstasy or sleep, have a Double, acting either independently or under the direction of the matching person, and going forth to take action. When we use the term “Double,” this may or may not mean an apparent twin of the subject. Instead, Lecouteux seems to use the term as a concept that may include a variety of beings, sometimes human, sometimes another animal, sometimes monstrous, but functioning as an alter ego. Frequent in the descriptions, and repeating those from medieval Norse sagas of a human sending forth a double, we find the notion that if anyone disturbs the body of the sender, the person may die.

Central to the author’s discussion of the alter ego lies the conflict between Christian and Indo-European concepts of the soul. He writes that Christianity imposed the concept of a single, indivisible soul, a notion alien to the pre-Christian world. Lecouteux references Scandinavian and Germanic concepts of the threefold soul as a preserved example of the native concept. In the Norse concept, instead a single soul, we find three elements: the fylgja, the hamr, and the hugr.

The fylgja exists as a spiritual double of a person, a tutelary spirit, and an individual may have multiple fylgjur. A fylgja can leave while the human sleeps. Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean a clone of the human, and may be of either sex, human or other animal. In some accounts, the fylgja takes corporeal form. Often, the fylgja precedes its human. The spirit often takes an animal form, might not be able to take physical action, and leaves its human shortly before death.

The second component, the hamr, seems to be more closely associated with the concept of the double, and the one most relevant to this book. Accounts abound of individuals able to leave their body in another or additional corporeal form, and these stories Lecouteux attributes to the exercise of the hamr. Tales describe cases of a double being injured during his or her activities, and the wounds also appearing on the body of its human. The double runs the risk of not being able to reenter its human body upon returning to it, should the body have been moved.

The third component, the hugr, lies outside of the human, but may visit or manifest itself to an individual, sometimes to use the double/hamr for a mission or to fulfill a desire. Lecouteux’s description of the hugr seems to differ from some other sources, which define the component as thought. But the hugr may act against the human’s will, and seems to be a part of the soul or spirit, while often remaining outside of the individual. I think the author could have explained the element of the hugr a bit more.

Having presented this Norse three-part soul model, Lecouteux doesn’t necessarily stick to it. As presented, his model of the double, or doubles, takes its own dimensions and may be considered either as parallel or overlapping with the fylgja/hamr/hugr model, at least as I understand it. In his conclusion (vital for organizing the material presented), he states that a human usually owns two doubles, one being physical, the other, psychic. In stating that, upon seeing a double, one may confuse the physical or psychic doubles, perhaps Lecouteux raises the question as to whether they are not so easily defined. That is, does the author force clear definitions and categories upon something ambiguous? Is he lumping together diverse phenomena into preset containers? It isn’t an accusation, but a consideration.

Lecouteux places the concept of the double as the nexus of a range of elements including (listing items from his diagram) the dead, ghosts, metamorphosis, witchcraft, nocturnal flights, travels into the other world, nightmares, and phantoms. He also describes the double as being able to travel to other worlds, or to other locations at great distance within this world.

“The Double does not die with the body. This is the explanation for phantoms and ghosts and the root of necromancy,” Lecouteux writes. The death of a human liberates its doubles, the physical alter ego creating a ghost, the psychic alter ego, a phantom. And here I become uncertain which he means when he says,
“Both conserve their capacity for animal metamorphosis, but one manifests itself in dreams and can function as nightmare, while the other appears in reality, as a material being.” Without any further explanation, I would take that to meant that the ghost is the material being and the phantom, the nightmare, assuming each double maintains its place in its given realms of activity.

There are many rabbit holes I could travel down in discussing this book, but I’ll mention one. In his section, “The Nightmare,” he discusses a host of phenomena related to what I have heard most frequently described as night hag experiences. Modern readers may seek to explain the experience as that of sleep paralysis; all well and good, but the book approaches material from a folkloric perspective. Perhaps the concept of the night hag serves as the North American version of a phenomenon. Lecouteux references accounts in which a witch falls asleep, an animal leaves the witch’s body in order to “press or squeeze someone,” and when the animal returns to the witch's body, the witch regains consciousness. The author mentions the following terms for such beings:

German
Schrottel
Schreckli
Trude (Drude)
Drudenmensch
Alp
Walriderske
Hexe
Marriden

Hungarian
Lidércnyomas

Romanian
Zburăor

Lithuanian
Slogutis (pl. slogučiai)

The names and descriptions commonly connote a pressing or squeezing of the victim (as many people describe night hag attacks, with a sense and/or vision of something sitting on their chest).

Sleepiness, both in medieval Norse and more recent European accounts, also features prominently. The victim of an attack often becomes sleepy and, indeed, presents a more vulnerable target for a witch. These aspects, Lecoutueux notes, appear again and again, even in accounts lacking any sort of genealogical connection.

Lecouteux cites the oldest testimonial of such a being as from 1666, from Johannes Prätorius, who describes a red mouse leaving the mouth of a servant; however, he mentions an English charm against Alben dating back to about 800. And here is what is tantalizing about Lecouteux’s work. When such a range of six or seven centuries exists, what do we not know? Obviously, this information was passed on, yet we lack complete records. We only see the outlines of things.

To be an Alp or Trude appears to be a compulsion or obligation, an aspect that I find particularly interesting, as it places the perpetrator not just in the role of someone who, perhaps out of revenge or hatred, decides to go forth and press victims. One may be reminded of various werewolf stories, in which the werewolf unwillingly transforms. And of course, Lecouteux discusses werewolves in the book, but in their role as a double of the individual rather than simply a transformed human. I mention it here because, in common with the Alp/Trude accounts, the activity takes place at night, possibly with the implication of sleep and loss of control. As an aside, I am not familiar with the involuntary role of the witch in night hag accounts, nor that such attacks are always considered to be linked with a witch, but my knowledge of the topic is limited.

Now here we arrive at an intersection of topics that interests me. Jacques Vallee has discussed the overlap between folkloric accounts and what are reported as UFO abduction/visitation accounts. In tales of fairies, the witnesses often find themselves taken somewhere, perhaps passing into a hill and returning with a lost sense of time. Tales of UFO abductees follow a similar pattern, often with a nocturnal visitation, being taken through walls and into a spacecraft, and returning with a sense of lost time. Lecouteux only briefly mentions the parallels between UFO stories and stories about doubles, mentioning the work of Bertrand Meheust, who has apparently explored this facet. But again, the bulk of these various accounts seem to involve activity during sleep. The simplest explanation would be, “It was all a dream,” yet, experientially, that answer will probably not satisfy anyone who reads this book.

I think that this book would be helpful for anyone interested in European folklore, traditional witchcraft, dream phenomena, and even the more open-minded ufologists. I look forward to exploring the leads it presents, and also look forward to reading more Lecouteux (while lamenting the language barrier that exists, at present, before his many intriguing non-English sources).