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Forbidden History of Europe Page Stamp 1105.Qxd The Forbidden History of Europe - The Chronicles and Testament of the Aryan 901 year to fight the evil witches.981 Considering many aspects of their cult I perceive them as dualistic animists, whose THE SPIRITUAL WARS OF traditions were shared by shamans in Eurasia. The benandanti went to war versus the maelific witches four times THE BENANDANTI each year. Having been called to arms by a golden “angel of heaven” by the sound of its beating drum, they mustered together on the field of battle.981 They stated that the good angel “stood near our standard”.981 Their weapons were of sorghum, which, being a cultivated crop, would truly be harmful to witches and demons under Magian theology. AN ANGEL FOUGHT ON Troubled by an Inquisitor’s repeated and disbelieving questioning, a nervous benandanti detainee stated “Our angel is THEIR SIDE handsome and white, and their angel is black and and is the Devil”.981 Elements within the group were confused by aspects of their beliefs.981 While one might think that this indicates the implausibility of benandanti testimonies, as to their membership of the said society, for reasons which I shall soon explain, confounded details should be seen as natural in the 16th Century. Even asking members of a typical Christian congregation what their faith requires and THE DEVIL professes, you would still yield varied accounts. Yet this could not dismiss their very existence. ACCOMPANIED THEIR Reports of a race of shape-shifters, who could assume the shape of wolves goes back as far as 500 BC, at the very ENEMY least. Herodotus explained that Neurian wolfmen inhabited the Northern parts of Scythia.982 They had their own princes, and followed Scythian customs.982 These tribesmen, he claimed, could change into the shape of wolves at particular times of the year.982 Sadly he says little else that could yield further details concerning their history, or how WOLF MEN REPORTED long they had inhabited these parts. Out in woodland Scandinavia, and Baltic hinterlands this supposed fable about IN SCYTHIA DURING THE dog-men proved to be anything but. In Ratramnus of Corbie’s letters to Rimbert the matter of the dog-headed men BRONZE AGE in Scandinavia arises.983 These the 9th Century AD missionaries termed Cynocephali. Were they fictitious Rimbert had asked, or were they men who needed to be converted?983 Rumour had it that the dog-men dwelt in villages, wore clothing, tilled the soil and kept livestock.983 That the pagans themselves knew of such persons is corroborated by a number of Germanic and Scandinavian literary references, in addition to pictorial renditions of fully clothed and shod dog/wolf men on a variety of plaques and memorial stones. In at least one case they are shown in juxtaposition with animals, signifying that the artist wanted to contrast a wolf man with an animal. It would not be out of place to suggest that the Cynocephali wore a canine or vulpine facial mask. After all masks have been discovered in both Scandinavia and Russia in high states of preservation, and dating to MISSIONARIES HEARD the Middle Ages.984 In Novgorod the masks were not animal skins slipped over the head, but purposefully made OF DOG-HEADED MEN strap-on leather plates with hideous countenances (complete with rows of jagged teeth, or horny stumps).984 The IN 9TH CENTURY wearers probably terrified those unaccustomed to seeing them. Country folk entertained similar customs. The SCANDINAVIA European mummers, who were much condemned by Catholic and Protestant preachers alike, have until this century gone about at Christmas-time dressed as goats, stags, bears and the like, often draped with bells.985 They made their way into the villages seeking food and alms, but wished misfortune on those stingy enough to turn them away empty handed.985 That such recent ceremonies have an historical precedent is proven by renditions of men dressed as animals in mediaeval illuminations.985 Wolf/dog men were certainly not confined to the Nordic and Teutonic sphere. Wolf or dog-headed folk lived in Slavia too. The name of the Wendish Wilzi folk meant the “wolf-people” or “the terrible-people”.986 As to be expected, the Mongols met with various kinds of shape-changers during their conquest of European Russia, the Urals and Western Siberia. Much further eastward, near Tibet, they encountered wolf-people who consumed the bodies of their kin after they had died.987 West of this place the Mongols chanced upon men who lived on steam that emanated from boiling meat, and others known as the dog-heads, and yet others who were supposed to have had the hooves of oxen.987 Other seemingly ridiculous tales were recounted, but they bear features of witch shape-shifting frequently associated with European coven gatherings. Filled with anxiety over their humiliating defeat at the hand of Prester John, and fearing that they would be executed for their failures upon returning home, the fleeing Mongols came to Nochoy Kazdar (the land of dogs), where, we are told, the local menfolk assumed the guise of dogs.988 These dogs raged against the Mongols in huge packs, a veritable army of them, and inflicted a heavy toll on the ragged Western horde.988 On his mission to the Great Khan, the Fransiscan monk De Bridia learned that A GERMAN Mongol horsemen had also chanced upon dog-headed men in the (Ural?) mountains near Russia.989 AMBASSADOR SAW Even later, in 1557, the German ambassador to Muscovy (Sigmund Von Herberstein), noted for the disbelieving DOG-HEADED MEN IN reader that he clearly saw, with his own two eyes, a group of dog-headed men standing about chatting by the side of 16TH CENTURY the road.990 They otherwise dressed in peasant-style garb, that is, in the characteristic white smock of the Slavs.990 MUSCOVY 902 The Forbidden History of Europe - The Chronicles and Testament of the Aryan The academics who mustered at a 1985 symposium into the conversion of the Norsemen speculated that Cynocephali were members of a military brotherhood once extant in pagan Scandinavia.991 Certainly there is linguistic and historical/folkloric evidence for such a finding, not only there, but in Russia, Germany and the Baltic SHAPE-CHANGERS COULD zone. BE MALE OR FEMALE For the Balts wolf-men were a fact of life. But in the Baltic-Scandinavian region though, werewolves were not necessarily of the male sex. Such data may reflect an additional tradition of lycanthropy, or dispel the theory that they were members of a pagan military brotherhood. 992 In the opening years of the 17th Century there were 18 ESTONIAN TRIALS recorded trials held at Meremoisa (Estonia).990 Some 31 individuals were prosecuted for shape-changing. Thirteen of them were male, and the remaining 18 female.990 During the trial defendants admitted that they donned wolf pelts when they transformed into wolves, and kept them concealed under stones when they were not being worn.993 As they bounded through the forests by night they hunted small game.993 They operated in groups, moving about after dark as a wolf pack might.993 The prosecutor was keen to establish whether these werewolves went hunting in a purely spiritual form, or whether they did so in the flesh. The legal implications of this are obvious; if it was a physical event, then obviously the individual had potentially perpetrated crimes in the flesh.993 Under examination by the prosecution they admitted undergoing a mental transformation, becoming for all intents and purposes a wolf. That is despite the fact that they had before hand dressed as wolves to complete the effect. THE WOLF MASTER One of the accused admitted finding a leg wound the following day, inflicted by a dog encountered during his nocturnal roaming.993 As to how they began their career as werewolves, two themes emerged. In one case a woman was given roots to eat, and in another a young man’s shape-changing was inaugurated by receiving a pelt from a black-clad man.993 Baltic Livonia (a region supposedly festooned with werewolves even as late as the 16th Century) has yielded some very interesting accounts of demi-Christian beliefs personally held by werewolves. Having witnessed the image of a limping child around Christmas time, the werewolves collectively mustered for war, and came out of the wilderness, driven forth by a master carrying a whip (consider the parallels here not only with the Magi, but the flagellant movement which appeared in Europe during the early Middle Ages).994 The master was so deeply loved BELIY VOLK, LEADER OF by them that they could not envisage any greater lord in this world than him. He forced them to cross over a river, THE RUSSIAN which parted at the sound of his whip.994 WEREWOLVES This wolf-leader might have been a Russian for such a figure appears in Eastern Slavic folklore as Beliy Volk (the White Wolf), Lord of wolves, werewolves and the beasts of the forest.995 The inclusion of Beliy (“white”) in his title is, I believe, indicative of his good, rather than malign disposition. The act of fording the river (presumably situated in Estonia) was viewed as crossing over into the lands of the dead. From the Magian perspective this could equated with traversing of the river of molten metal which separated hell from paradise. On Judgement Day, it would cause indescribable torments to the unholy. The Livonian werewolves however crossed the river without even getting their feet wet (something a Rus’ Volkhv claimed he could do).994 They professed to be the ultimate adversaries of the witches, a point which typecastes them as holy beings and champions of the good, rather than ferocious predatory beasts.994 One Livonian werewolf, called Thiess, spoke frankly about his lycanthropy while held in detention by the Christians, and as a result was sentenced to a mere 10 strokes of the whip by the authorities.994 This is a far cry from burning at the stake, and at one time it is highly likely that werewolves were tolerated as a nuisance, and not always subjected to the severe chastisements that witches could expect.
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