The werewolves who protected and fought for the good of the community, the same as the witches who lived at the edge of the village, shared in the powers of the Gods and Goddesses of the wilderness beyond. To give and to take. To heal or to curse. To frighten or to seduce. To travel across time and boundaries otherwise impassable to mortal humans and there to meet with strange spirits and with the beloved dead, the Ancestors. To have the ability to change shape and to divine the past and the future. To speak sooth, the Divine truth of prophecy, and to propagate as needed between the people, the Gods, the land, and the Fey. To fight in the air or in other worlds for the fertility of the fields, the orchards, the beasts and the tribe or village itself.
The power of the werewolf, of the warrior, springs from that deep well, one that goes back millions of years. Woden, as the God with the ability to loosen bonds, could unfetter the chains of civilization and society, even of convention, and so He is rightfully lord of the wolves and of the werewolves. He is the First Fruit of the World Tree, the one who sacrificed Himself to be reborn as something other,to journey elsewhere and come back again with great gifts of knowledge and abilities beyond the norm. He became two-natured, a King and a trickster, a warrior and a shaman.
Shapeshifting, flying, seducing, with the ability to curse or to heal, the Gods and Goddesses of the troop of night [Wild Hunt] reflect the same power of the witches and werewolves who came at Their command. Just as the full moon is said to cause the transformation of man into wolf, so the Moon Goddess calls forth the chosen to fly to far places, to the battle, to the feasting. As the Goddess could give life or take it, so Her witches had the same authority. They walked as She walked, between worlds and as a part of the cycle of nature. While those who were called by Woden, who sworn to Him, walked the dual nature of man and beast, partaking of both and belonging to no world and all worlds. They were both within and without the rules of law, the so-called “natural order,” by obeying an even greater and more mysterious natural order that had little to do with human rules. They could protect or they could consume, just as nature can give bounty or death.
These are all powers outside the pale, making those who bear them outsiders and dwellers in the unknown wilds, the desolate places, the Old Forest of myth and legend, the world of Faery. Half here and half there, a living bridge between two very different and yet intertwined worlds.
- The Bird-Foot Goddess and the Werewolf God, Veronica Cummer
