The Werewolf and the Full Moon

The moon tonight

The figure above is worked out in your browser from the average length of the lunar month, about twenty-nine and a half days. It is a close estimate and not an almanac, and it draws the moon as seen from the northern half of the world. It is offered as a small courtesy to those who like to know what is overhead. It has no bearing on anyone's nature.

The moon in the old sources

For most of its long history the werewolf did not need the moon. The cursed king of Greek myth is changed once and for good. The Norse heroes change when they put on a wolfskin. The knight of the Breton lay changes for three days each week, moon or no moon. The accused of the sixteenth century spoke of salves and belts, not of the sky.

The moon does appear, but as scenery or as one condition among several. In a Roman novel of the first century, a soldier becomes a wolf on a night when "the moon was shining like noon"; the storyteller mentions it to explain why he could see so well. Around the year 1200 an English writer remarked that in his country men were known to change into wolves "at the turnings of the moon." And in the folk belief of some regions of southern Europe, a person might become a werewolf by sleeping outdoors on a certain night in summer with the full moon shining on their face.

These are scattered threads. No one in those centuries would have said that the full moon was the rule.

How the moon took over

The rule was written in the twentieth century. Werewolf films of the 1930s and 1940s needed a clear, visible, repeatable cause for the change, one that an audience could anticipate with dread. The rising full moon was perfect. It gave the story a clock. Within a few years a set of ideas that folklore had held loosely, if at all, were fixed together as though they had always been so: the change comes at the full moon, it cannot be resisted, it is passed on by a bite, and it is ended by silver.

The idea took hold so firmly because it rested on much older habits of thought.

• The moon and the mind. For two thousand years it was widely believed that the moon stirred the wits. The word lunacy comes from the Latin for moon.
• The moon and the month. A change that comes round every month by the moon's calendar feels like a law of nature, and a curse is more frightening when it keeps appointments.
• The moon and the night. Before lamps, the full moon was the one night on which people could travel, hunt, and see what moved at the edge of the field.
• The moon and the wolf. The image of a wolf howling up at the moon is very old and very strong.

What real wolves do

Wolves do not howl at the moon. They howl to call the family together, to keep in touch across distance, and to tell other packs where the borders lie. They lift their muzzles because the sound carries farther that way. They are most active at dusk and dawn, and they howl on dark nights as readily as on bright ones. People simply heard them, and saw them, most easily when the moon was full.

This matters to the library because respect for the real animal is part of our purpose. The wolf of legend is a figure of fear. The wolf of the field is a shy, intelligent, devoted parent that has far more to fear from people than people have from it.

Moon names

Many farming and hunting calendars gave each full moon of the year a name. In some English-language almanac traditions the full moon of deep winter is called the Wolf Moon, for the season when hungry packs were heard nearest the villages. Names of this kind are a reminder of how closely country people once listened to the dark.

The moon and therians

Because the therian community began among lovers of werewolf stories, newcomers sometimes wonder whether the full moon affects their shifts. Many have kept careful notes to find out. The honest result, reported again and again, is that it does not. Shifts follow mood, setting, rest and attention, not the calendar.

That is not to say the moon means nothing. Plenty of therians, and plenty of other people, love a moonlit walk, and feel more themselves under an open night sky. That is a pleasure, and a good one. It is not a cause. Nobody needs to fear the full moon, and nobody should expect it to do anything for them that an ordinary quiet evening would not.