Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies Quotes

“In French folk traditions Mélusine becomes a sort of tempest, and Georges Brassens remembers this when he speaks of her cries. Let us remember also that at the time of the fairy’s flight, Jean d’Arras writes: “Then the lady, in the form of a snake . . . went three times around the fortress, and each time that she passed in front of the window, she let out a cry so strange and full of pain that everyone was crying with compassion. . . . Then she went in the direction of Lusignan in such a rustling and such a racket that it seemed, everywhere she went, that thunder and a storm were about to break out.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“In Lithuania, at least two Doubles can be found—laimé-dalia and sveikata—which can be noted because of the perspectives they open to us. Laimé-dalia, literally “fortune-part,” is a psychosomatic entity that is part of the personality.22 It can reside in the human body or in a separate being and enter into the body of a swan or another animal. In folktales it becomes Dalia, a sort of personal goddess who is similar to the Norse fylgja and the Finnish haltija. The dalia is each person’s chance, destiny, fate.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“The alter ego can also wander like Puuk. In northern Germany, Puk or Puck designates a dwarf or a domestic genie.21 In Norse, puki is a spirit, a demon, or a dead person. In medieval England and Ireland, Puck is a sprite of sorts, and we find him at Oberon’s side in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“In Finnish, henki designates at the same time “soul,” “breath,” and “life” and is understood as the vital force necessary for movement of the body.17 This entity disappears at our death, and when a person is close to death, the door or window is opened so that it can leave. For the same reason, in France there was the custom in many places of raising a shingle from the roof in the house where someone died. When an evil person died, the henki would leave in the form of a tempestuous wind.a The henki can leave a person’s body at times other than death. In such instances it exits from the mouth in the form of a small animal—a mouse, a butterfly, or a fly, as the forest-dwelling Finnish of Varmland believed. The henki possesses many traits of the Norse hugr, but the hugr is also related to another soul called vaimas in Finland. In the north of this country the inhabitants use this term for a quiver, such as an involuntary tremble or an eyelid that flutters suddenly, phenomena that the Carelians name elohiiri, “vital mouse,” or ihohiiri, “mouse of the skin,” the mouse being the spirit that can move throughout the whole body.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“It is clear that a Double, whatever its name and nature, is given to us for our whole earthly existence. It is fitting to recall here that for Plato, the Pythagorians, and Empedocles the daimôn is a divine principle whose function is to link our individual destiny directly to the cosmic order.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“As a general rule, we sacrifice every year to this genie, for our whole life [an allusion to the celebration that we call a birthday]. The genie is for us the attentive protector, and it happens such that he never goes far from us. He accompanies us from the time he takes us into his charge when we come out of our mother’s stomach, until the last day of our life. So the genius is a power that lives in each of us, and it is thought to predate each of us, like an immortal element within the individual. In this sense, it is very close to the Greek daimôn and Norse fylgja. It determines our personality, but it is neither soul nor life. It symbolizes, in a way, our spiritual being.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“Genius is the god under whose protection everyone lives, starting from birth. He is called genius, surely from geno [I conceive], either because he is involved in some way with our conception, or because he is himself conceived at the same time as we are, or again, because he looks after us and protects us. In the hypotheses that Censorinus proposes, we find exactly, once more, the concept of the spirit guardian, the tutelary genie, and thus of the Norse fylgja and the Finnish haltija. Censorinus goes on: Some scholars were of the opinion that one must worship two genies, but only in houses where married couples live. Elsewhere, Euclides, a student of Socrates, confirms that in every case a double genie would be given to us, an idea that can be illustrated with the help of the sixteenth book of satires, by Lucilius.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“There is no doubt whatsoever that the idea of a detachable soul, a Double, is a fundamental aspect of shamanism, whose influence on the Hellenic world is manifest. We will take as the last witnesses the enthusiast cults, that of Bacchus, for example. If the Bacchants fast, dance, sing, and shout to achieve divine delirium, it is in order to free their spirit Double from their body, as Maurice Halbwachs has clearly shown.10 What is this technique if not a variation of the shamanistic ecstatic technique?”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“The representatives of Greek shamanism are Abaris and Aristeus of Prokonnessos. It is said that Abaris came from the Hyperboreans, that is, from the extreme north of Scythia, and that he was sent by Apollo and gifted with the powers of healing and predicting disasters. He never ate, Herodotus tells us, and he walked Apollo’s arrow from one end of the Earth to the other. This miracle worker, whom Pindar makes a contemporary of Cresus, thus carries the arrow, the sign of magic air travel. The importance of this in the mythology and religion of the Scythians has been shown and its parallels to Siberian shamanistic rituals have been pointed out by Mircea Eliade. Using the name of Abaris as evidence, we can confirm, without great risk of error, that he belonged to the Avar race, a people of the Turkish family originating from the Caspian steppes, who were therefore in contact with central Asian shamanism. That, according to Herodotus, Abaris is Hyperborean simply connects him to the northern Asian shamanism of the small Ural-Altaic and Siberian tribes.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“In The Republic Plato divides the soul into three parts—reason, heart, and appetites—while emphasizing at the same time that it cannot be divided. In Timaeus he even distinguishes between a mortal soul and an immortal soul. Pindar (518–438 B.C.) conceives of the soul as a shadow, an image of life. “It sleeps while the body acts. When man sleeps, it shows him the future in dreams,” he says, specifying: “Whereas all human bodies follow irresistible death, the image of life remains alive because it comes from the gods and from them alone.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“For Plato, the Pythagoreans, and Empedocles, the psuchè is represented by a daimôn, a supernatural being that leads an independent existence within us—”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“Prior to the sixth century A.D., the Greeks used several terms for that which, in their view, animated the body. If we believe Homer, this is thumos, “passion, will, spirit” and psuchè, “life, breath,” which escapes from the mouth of the dying person—the shadow image leaving the lifeless man (Iliad XXII, 466 and 475), breath image, or bodily substance. In Homer the concept of the soul is connected to more ancient beliefs and is in sharp contrast to them. This great poet also used the terms phrén/phrènes, “diaphragm, will, thought”; êtor, “lung”; and kér, “heart, feelings.” Empedocles, who died around 490 B.C., used prapidès, “diaphragm,” a word that designates, without clearly distinguishing between them, both an organ of the body and a psychic activity.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“How did shamanism come to be known on Western medieval soil? Was it brought by the Indo-Europeans, or did it exist before them? Whatever the answer, one thing is certain: We can find traces of it among the Greeks and the Romans as well as among the Celts and the Germans. Carlo Ginzburg has endeavored to bring to light the connections of this kind that exist within the Celtic world; I have presented the connections existing within the Germanic world; E. Rohde and M. Halbwachs established, some time ago, the connections of ancient Greece to shamanism.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“So man possesses Doubles, most often two of them. One, material and physical, has the power either to take on animal appearances or keep its human form; the other, spiritual and psychic, is also capable of metamorphosis, but appears mostly in dreams. These Doubles have the ability to reach the other world—or any place whatsoever in this world—in one or another of their forms, as soon as the body has been put to sleep, sent into a trance, or made to fall into catalepsy. It is difficult to distinguish precisely between the physical alter ego and the psychic Double, given that even our distant ancestors confused them, as has emerged from the evidence gathered over the course of this inquiry. Every ethnic group and every civilization thought of the Double in its own way, but within the geographic area we are working with here, all evidence seems to indicate that the foundation common to all forms of this belief is shamanism.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“From these beliefs and practices it emerges that the shadow is the visible form of an invisible reality. Copying the external shape of an individual, it also possesses that person’s internal properties. In short, it attests in broad daylight to what is manifested in other forms at night. It is important to note that to the mind-set that concerns us, it is impossible to dissociate the shadow from the soul, for the shadow is the alter ego of both soul and body.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“In Argovie, Helvetia, if an individual’s shadow falls upon the first stone of a building under construction, he loses his health because in doing so it is thought that the health of this person has been walled up. The same occurrence in Bulgaria indicates the person concerned will die thirty or forty days after and become the genie of the place being built.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“We can now understand all the implications of the ancient Turkish greeting “May your shadow not grow smaller!” and its counterpart, the curse “You will no longer cast a shadow!”7 In Jewish tradition it is stated that death is announced to Heaven thirty days ahead of its occurrence; from that time on, the shadow of the person becomes smaller and smaller until it disappears all together.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“For example, during the cycle of the Twelve Days,a the shadow is carefully observed because the fate of the living is determined according to it. In Germany it is said that whoever does not have a shadow on Christmas night, or whoever’s shadow is headless, will die in the coming year.4 The Bulgarians believe in similar observations for the night of the Feast of Saint John, as do Jews for the seventh night of the Pentecost festival.5 In the mountainous mining regions it is said that misfortune will soon come to the one whose shadow has a big head. Among the Wendes, people of Slav origin established in Lusace, it is believed that the fate of the man whose shadow trembles on a wall will be bad. In Mon frère Yves by Pierre Loti, a woman from Brittany asks her listener to change places because his shadow is giving her the impression that misfortune is going to strike him. Jacob Grimm tells a legend in which a woman is warned of a menacing danger by the gesticulations of her shadow.6”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“The shadow has always been the visible form of the hidden side of man. It is the carbon-copy outline of the body, but it is made of a more subtle material, and writers and philosophers have expended treasure chests of imagination trying to describe it. It is not simply the silhouette projected when the body intercepts rays of light, but another self who has all the physical and psychic qualities of the self, enjoys all the same prerogatives, and at the death of its possessor goes away into the other world so aptly named the Kingdom of Shadows.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“The fylgja, tutelary spirit and spiritual Double of the individual, comes thus to take her leave of the person whom she has always accompanied and who has arrived at the end of his existence. She appears in general as a woman, but greater in size than normal, which allows her to be distinguished from a common mortal. She may also appear as an animal whose fur is gray or red, the colors of the supernatural and bloodshed, which leaves no doubt as to the immediate fate of the individual. That she turns to another member of the same family after service to the first is dissolved, as in The Saga of Hallfred (part 2, chapter 4), indicates that she has existed before her protected one and endures after his demise—thus she is clearly an independent entity who binds herself to a person only for the time of that person’s earthly existence, a detail that must always be kept in mind.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“And in a chant from the Poetic Edda of Helgi, Son of Hjörvard, Helgi, who knows he is destined for death, tells that he has seen a woman riding a wolf, and those were his tutelary divinities.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“It was said at Commercy (Lorraine) in the nineteenth century that when a person was seriously ill, those around him must take notice if some owl—a barn or screech owl—came fluttering about the place. If we interpret such an appearance with the help of the Northern mind, we can go beyond simply observing that these are birds of bad omen and see in their presence one of the last manifestations of the spiritual zoomorphic Double that comes to take his leave of the man.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“Connecting us to the other world—or rather, in accordance with the mind of our time, to the hidden side of the universe—the psychic Double has knowledge of the destinies of others through their potential alter egos. It is the Double who will accompany the individual throughout his earthly existence.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“Without returning to what I have said in any preceding chapter, let us remember that the principle characteristic of the spiritual Double is to manifest itself in dreams, in animal form, and to disregard both time and space, for its appearance precedes the events revealed to the sleeper, whether they be close or far-off. This alter ego concretizes, in an immaterial form—if I can risk using this oxymoron—its possessor’s thought (hugr).”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“The difficulty also comes from the fact that a person does not have only a single, unique Double. There are at least two: one physical and sometimes zoomorphic; the other spiritual and also able to take animal form.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“According to the inquiries of twentieth-century ethnologists, date of birth plays an important role here: A seer may be born on Christmas or Saint John’s night, during the twelve days of Christmas or during Advent, or on All Saints’ Day, Saint Andrew’s Feast Day, Ember Days, New Year’s Eve (the Saint Sylvester), New Year’s Day, a Sunday during a full moon or a new moon, and, regarding time, most often at midnight, the moment that is no longer today and not yet tomorrow, a true “no man’s time” belonging to the spirits.2 People gifted with second sight are very frequently born with a caul. They can also be recognized by their joined eyebrows or by a peculiar look in their eyes. Their possible birthdays imply connection between the world down here and the next world; they are bridges erected between the two worlds, and the Double has something of the same dual nature.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“The Finnish magician and the Icelandic hamrammr can choose the form under which they will run afar. The psychic alter ego appears in the form of a bear if he is well intentioned or friendly; in that of a wolf and even a seal if he is evil and looking to do wrong.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“Indeed, it is said (in Lithuania) that the man who runs around changed into a wolf can, when he drinks to his neighbor’s health and pronounces the word sveikata, transmit to him his werewolf characteristics. All that needs to happen for this to occur is that the other replies, “Thank you!”22 Sveikata means “health” and is also one of the names for the alter ego.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“the transformation of men into beasts (the epitome of horror, given that the image of God is denatured)”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages

“In studying the beliefs behind the theme of metamorphosis, J. Frazer and other researchers following in his footsteps developed the concept of the external soul, the “free soul” (Freiseele), recorded in Stith Thompson’s catalog of folktale motifs. We have seen that the word soul lends itself to confusion and that it would be better to use the term animus, or, to be perfectly exact, Double or alter ego. We also know that the body is host to at least three entities, according to those Germanic traditions that are representative of the most ancient stage of these concepts: Every man has his animal fylgja,1 a psychic Double that is in some ways the equivalent of the Greek daimôn and the Latin genius (see appendix 1); and we all have at our disposal a physical Double (hamr) skilled at metamorphosis.”
― Claude Lecouteux, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages