Shapeshifting

On this page I would like to examine the possible causes of a shape change and perhaps come to a plausible explanation of this phenomenon described in all cultures. The werewolf legends raise two fundamental questions, which I will explore in the following.

Wy Shape Transformations?

The terms of classical natural sciences do not provide a satisfactory answer to this question. As already explained in the description of the anatomy of werewolves, a shift is a process that requires a great deal of energy. It is therefore in stark contradiction to all phenomenological observations, which all follow the principle of minimalism of effort. In addition, there is the question of the biological utility of a manifestation of such an ability. Assuming that shape transformation is a fact and not the product of some superstition, there must be a plausible explanation for the fact that a human being can transform into animal intermediate forms of any degree up to that animal itself.
The fact that there seem to be different degrees of transformation, ranging from purely mental shifts in which the physical body remains unaffected, to initial physiological changes such as sharpening the senses, to complete shifts at the physiological level, suggests that the roots of any transformation seem to lie in the psyche of the person concerned. It is believed that these are people suffering from lycanthropy. An interesting and promising approach to describe the connection between mental illness and physical shifts is provided by Indian mythology and the world view of shamanism and its model of the soul.
Shamanism sees in the human being not only the person as we perceive him, but also a spiritual system, which is carried by different spiritual forces (levels of consciousness), which forms a level of interaction with the environment beyond the physical dimensions. Together with a multitude of ghost experiences of different qualities, this carrier forms the soul. The human being is healthy exactly when the interaction within the spiritual forces is harmonious. If harmony is disturbed for any reason, the soul becomes ill. Since matter is a temporary phenomenon of the spirit, our physical being, our body, our physical well-being is a projection of our soul and our soul state. Thus, physical ailments are surjective representations of disharmonic interplay of some spirit forces. In the case of lycanthropy, it is a transformation of the physical image into the respective animal form.

Transformations only at Full Moon?

In order to get to the bottom of this question, you first have to understand the phenomenon of lycanthropy. The actual questions that need to be answered are
1. What is lycanthropy?
2. What are the causes of lycanthropy?

During my research on the Internet, I came across the following three explanatory approaches:

• The scientific-psychological interpretation takes the amnesia of lycanthropes exactly over the period of shift to conclude that lycanthropy is a special form of schizophrenia.
  
  
• The esoteric explanation approach is that the soul is immortal and goes through different lives in changing bodies, both as a human being and as an animal or plant. In such a change it can happen, according to the esotericists, that memories of the previous life are not completely forgotten. These would under certain conditions be washed to the surface of consciousness and gain the upper hand.
  
  
• The shamanic explanation is that souls can also wander in the life in question. If this happens, the now "free" body may be taken over by another soul who has lost its body and perhaps had something to do, yet.

Fig.: different transformation stages

However, none of the three views offers a complete and satisfactory explanation for the development of lycanthropy, because the scientific-psychological interpretation offers only an interpretation of the symptomatology, esoteric explanation implies that a lycanthrope must suffer from lycanthropy from birth, and the shamanic explanation does not require infection by a werewolf bite.

Based on the thesis that there really is a reversible shift and that it can only be carried out at full moon, the shamanic model of being and that of cosmic forces offers the most suitable basis from which a halfway plausible justification could be found.
The special thing about the full moon from an astrophysical point of view is the quasiconjunctional conformation of the celestial bodies Sun, Earth and Moon. This constellation may shift the interaction of the spirit forces in such a way that a lycanthrop can indeed change over into the state of a shift.
This only as a representation of a possibility…

Last modified at 29.12.2018