How Magic Works in the Anteheroes (Part II - Souls, The Fey and Therianthropy)

by AstralFire - 07/02/2010

On an MP3 player, from a lecture by Theophilus Pendragon.

Humans have a clearly defined soul; this is easy to see for anyone who does much work in the field of psychemancy. Researchers speculate that this is why humans rose above all the other animals; through some freak accident of evolution (or for the religious, by an intelligent design) we were imbued with an inherent connection to the apeiron, a cosmic background radiation of magic that is a relic of universal formation. Shortly afterwards, we began to climb up the mountain of sapience. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that sapient magical creatures - the feathered serpents, the kumiho, the great mantas - also have souls, while the unintelligent - dragons, winged gazelles, krakens and their ilk - do not.

This basic connection to the apeiron manifests itself as a series of gates along the body which resonate most strongly with magic and emotion. The Hindus use the term 'chakra' to refer to them, and we owe a great debt to that tradition for determining the precise physical location and interactions of these gates; we here are most familiar with the Jewish word Sephiroth. Those younger wizards in the audience may have a moment to snigger, and then another to reflect in shame that their only knowledge of this word originates from video games.

Now then, manipulation of Sephiroth in some way is necessary to all forms of magic, even though only the Tantric schools specialize in them. For a long time, Western researchers did not further discuss Sephiroth in relation to non-practitioners. That was an utter mistake. It has only been in the last four hundred years, as human belief has undergone a series of dramatic and rapid changes across the world, that the community of mages and the fey have come to realize something - every human uses the Sephiroth of Keter, the chakra of Sahasrara, to connect to the supernatural world. Every thought, every belief, has an aftershock that flows out of their mind, through this gate, and into the apeiron.

Fey form in tune with human beliefs of their time and region, and while they do have an impact - their ultimate power comes from the people. It could be considered the world's first democracy. Indeed, it is my belief that the spirits were formed out of the chaos of raw energy by people, and owe their very existence to our subconscious thoughts. Naturally, the fey see it differently; they believe themselves to have been placed here by a higher power as our directors and masters, but made inherently responsive to our thoughts. All of which, my dear students, you should take as a lesson in the universal arrogance of all living creatures - us most certainly included!

Now, all - or most - of you know these things already. After all, I am not teaching a class of prodigious, bumbling eleven-year-olds. Ha! But why do I bring it up again? Well, today's lesson is on werewolves. Or more precisely, therianthropes. First, allow me to explain the use of the term - to begin the next section, I will open with a reading from your good friend - and mine - Wikipedia.

The word werewolf is thought to derive from Old English wer (or were)— pronounced variously as /ˈwɛər, ˈwɪər, ˈwɜr/— and wulf. The first part, wer, translates as "man" (in the specific sense of male human, not the race of humanity generally). It has cognates in several Germanic languages including Gothic wair, Old High German wer, and Old Norse verr, as well as in other Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit 'vira', Latin vir, Irish fear, Lithuanian vyras, and Welsh gŵr, which have the same meaning. The second half, wulf, is the ancestor of modern English "wolf"; in some cases it also had the general meaning "beast."

The term lycanthropy, a synonym, comes from Ancient Greek lykánthropos (λυκάνθρωπος): λύκος, lýkos ("wolf") + άνθρωπος, ánthrōpos ("human").[2] A compound of which "lyc-" derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *wlkwo-, meaning "wolf", formally denotes the "wolf - man" transformation. Lycanthropy is but one form of therianthropy, the ability to metamorphose into animals in general. The term therianthrope literally means "beast-man." The word has also been linked to the original werewolf of classical mythology, Lycaon, a king of Arcadia who, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses, was turned into a ravenous wolf in retribution for attempting to serve his own son to visiting Zeus in an attempt to disprove the god's divinity.
-- Wikipedia, "Werewolf"

Let it never be said that I don't find encyclopedias a useful tool in their place. However, should you ever more cite Wikipedia as a major source on a paper, Miss Mattingly, I will not be so kind a second time.

Considering that all long-term therianthropes are female, and not all of them are wolves, you might see the issue with the terms 'werewolf,' 'lycanthrope', and 'werebeast'. But it is not altogether unsurprising that such things had been associated with men, given the horrific and bestial appearance of a transformed subject and how non-feminine a warrior woman can look. And wolves are the most common form of therianthrope.

Therianthropy has its origin in what we call numina. For whatever reason, not all of the background 'belief' in the apeiron coherently forms into a true fey. Indeed, these are the minority when taken as a whole. Fleeting, primal thoughts and misconceptions oft-find themselves forged into a spirit animal instead. In this form, it tries to emulate an animal - but it cannot. Not only is its information incomplete, but animals lack the gates by which a spirit could attempt to draw more information. So, instead, it draws information about animals from the deepest, darkest places of the minds of intelligent creatures. In so doing, it becomes a fractured exaggeration of an animal, far more than any fey is an exaggeration of man.

And then - be it by curse or bloodline - a human is brought into close connection with one of these animalistic numina, these spirit animals. For a while, the two will struggle for control of the human's body; between two evenly matched minds, this struggle can last many years, but it is one that ultimately must end with a victor and a loser. A few results are possible at that point. The primary options: the human succumbs to the conflicting spirit and goes feral in a form of possession, the human's mind breaks utterly and they both die, or the human masters the internal magic. Mastery results in spirit shamans, most of which are females. Females have an advantage in successfully learning this form of magic because of a special condition that temporarily lets the spirit animal establish full dominance of the mind, followed by full submission for a few days. Yes, very good, Mr. Harrow - therianthropy.

Internal bleeding in an infected person near a magically charged chakra induces a transformation. One of the central chakras is by the womb, the moon emits radiation which inherently charges certain body chakra to regulate the human body... Primal instincts from the numina may cause a woman to synchronize her period with the rise of the full moon... I don't think I really have to explain how the rest of the puzzle pieces fit, do I? Now, it is possible for these conditions to be induced artificially, even in males, but...