Werewoman

In mythology and literature, a werewoman or were-woman is a woman who has taken the form of an animal through a process of lycanthropy. The use of the word "were" refers to the ability to shape-shift but is, taken literally, a contradiction in terms since in Old English the word "wer" means man. Werewomen are reported in antiquity and in more recent African folklore, where the phenomenon is sometimes associated with witchcraft, though sources often do not state the animal into which the woman has transformed and it is not necessarily a wolf. In areas where wolves do not exist, other fierce animals may take their place, for instance leopards or hyenas in Africa. Werewomen are distinctive as most legends of lycanthropy involve men, though the process is not restricted solely to men, and if they involve women it is usually in the role of a victim. The theme of the female werewolf has been used in fiction since Victorian times, while recently the term werewoman has become associated with transgender culture and specifically the fantasy of a forced, but temporary, transformation of a man into a woman.

In sixth century Lebanon, villages attacked by werewomen were advised by a local holy man to have themselves baptised and to take collective ritual preventive measures.

A 1591 broadside, Werewolves of Jurich, printed by Georg Kress, tells the story of the terrorising of the town of Jurich by hundreds of werewolves and depicts a number of male and female werewolves being executed, including some apparently wearing nun's veils.

In 1615, French physician Jean de Nynauld reported in De la lycanthropie, transformation et extase des sorciers (On lycanthropy, transformation and ecstasy of witches) the case of a woodsman who had been attacked by a wolf but had managed to cut off its leg. Immediately the wolf turned into a woman who was subsequently burned alive.

Lewis Spence, in his 1920 An Encyclopaedia of Occultism, recorded that in Armenia it was thought that a demon would present himself to a sinful woman and command her to wear a wolf's skin, after donning which she would spend seven years as a wolf during the night, devouring her own and other children and acting generally as a wild beast until the morning when she would resume her human form.

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