1995
January 13:
Verstegan says werewolves “are certayne
sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an ointment which
they make by the instinct of the devil, and putting on a certayne
inchaunted gridle, 
does not only unto the view of others seem
as wolves, but to their own thinking have both the shape and nature
of wolves, so long as they wear the said girdle. And they do
dispose themselves as very wolves, in worrying and killing, and
most of humane creatures.” Verstegan hints that the werewolf has no
conscious memory of its actions while it is transformed —“to their
own thinking.” Other accounts, not Verstegan’s, have this
hand-in-hand with a belief that werewolves can only transform while
they are asleep.
From Virgil:
Moeris for me these hearbs [herbs] in Pontus chose,
And curious drugs, for there great plenty grows;
I many times, with these, have Moeris spide [spied]
Chang’d to a wolfe, and in the woods to hide:
From Sepulchres would souls departed charm,
And Corn bear standing from anothers Farm.
January 24:
Dean turns sixteen today. We’re in Montana, and I think we’re on the trail of a werewolf. That bow-hunting practice is going to come in handy. Sometimes you can’t use a gun, and this is one of them. Tomorrow we’re going out on a hunt, and I’m going to let him take the lead.
January 25:
Bull’s-eye. Dean is a helluva shot with anything. He’s coming into his own as a hunter.
Werewolves will avoid wolfsbane when they can, as well as holy artifacts and silver. Being stabbed or cut with a silver knife can sometimes force a werewolf to revert to human shape. The silver bullet legend is probably true, but not all hunters believe in it. You hear grumbles around the gathering places. I was at the roadhouse not too long ago and heard three hunters complaining that either they’d done something wrong when they made their silver bullets, or that some werewolves just weren’t affected.
Lycanthropy might have a cure. According to some traditions, killing a particular werewolf removes its curse on all those it’s bitten —severing the bloodline, in a way.
He who desires to become an oborot, let him seek in the forest a hewn-down tree; let him stab it with a small copper knife, and walk round the tree, repeating the following incantation:
On the sea, on the ocean, on the island, on Bujan,
On the empty pasture gleams the moon, on an ashtock lying
In a green wood, in a gloomy vale.
Towards the stock wandereth a shaggy wolf,
Horned cattle seeking for his sharp white fangs;
But the wolf enters not the forest,
But the wolf dives not into the shadowy vale,
Moon, moon, gold-horned moon,
Check the flight of bullets, blunt the hunters’ knives,
Break the shepherds’ cudgels,
Cast wild fear upon all cattle,
On men, all creeping things,
That they may not catch the grey wolf,
That they may not rend his warm skin!
My word is binding, more binding than sleep,
More binding than the promise of a hero!
Then he springs thrice over the tree and runs into
the forest, transformed into a wolf.
From an old edition of the Satyricon
New world versions. Loup-garou known in Canada and places where French settled in U.S. Loup-garou legends from precolonial Illinois: after the initial transformation, a loup-garou was doomed to spend 101 days of nightly transformations, followed by days of melancholia and sickness. The only way to get out of the sentence early was if someone managed to draw blood from the loup-garou, and in this case, neither party involved could ever speak of the incident until the remainder of the 101 days had passed.
Variation called rougarou known in southern U.S. —in some versions said to be a crocodile after transformation, rather than a wolf. Crocodile transformations also known in Egypt and Indonesia. Often New World versions are said to become werewolves because of some broken taboo. Cannibalism? One of the earliest werewolf legends is the story of Lycaon, transformed into a wolf after eating human flesh and trying to serve it to Zeus. Herodotus and Pliny also told of people turned into wolves. In the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar said to imagine himself as a wolf.
Throwing a piece of iron over a transformed werewolf is said to force it back into its human shape. Related to belief that faeries can’t touch iron?
April 20:
Going to Oklahoma City. More than two people involved? Word already out among hunters that McVeigh had some questionable associates. Possible supernatural angle. Sightings in the area in days before explosion. Daniel says he’s heard something about freak weather. 35º 28' N 97º 32' W
May 2:
Sammy is twelve years old today. He’s a handful. Spends all of his time on the computer, unless he’s arguing with me. I can’t understand him, and he doesn’t try to understand me. Typical father-son trouble, but it feels worse because neither one of us can talk about what happened to his mother. He wants to be in one place, live a normal life. The older he gets, the more he wants it. But the older he gets, the more I’m going to need him to help on the hunt. He’s got to understand that. We will finish this quest, and he’s going to be a part of it.
Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed.
—Eliphas Levi, introduction to Dogma et
Rituel de la Haute Magie
May 17:
This would have been our seventeenth anniversary. If we’d been British, turquoise. But Americans don’t believe in seventeenth anniversaries, I guess. And I never got to have one. Turquoise carvings place in Native American graves to attract good spirits and guard the grave. Also, turquoise tied onto a bow was supposed to make you shoot more accurately.
Levi: “Superstition is the sign surviving the thought; it is the dead body of a religious rite.”
Right mixture or the seven gives Electrum, per alchemists.
Gold: Au
Silver: Ag
Iron: Fe
Mercury: Hg
Tin: Sn
Copper. Cu
Lead: Pb
November 2:
Mary has been dead for twelve years. Biblical necromancy, from II Samuel:
7. Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor.
8. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other rainment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee.
8. And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die?
10.And Saul sware to her by the LORD, saying, As the LORD liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.
11.Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel.
12.And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul.
13.And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.
14.And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old woman cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stopped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
15.And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.
16.Then said Samuel, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the LORD is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?
Deuteronomy 18 also warns against divination from the dead. Widely practiced in the ancient Near East —Persia, Babylonia, Chaldea. King Herod also thought that Jesus was John the Baptist brought back to life by necromancers.
THE MAGUS, FRANCIS BARRETT
Hence it is that the souls of the dead are not to be called up without blood or by the application of some part of their relict body. In the raising therefore of these shadows, we are to perfume with new blood the bones of the dead, and with flesh, eggs, milk, honey, and oil, which furnish the soul with a medium apt to receive its body.
It is likewise to be understood, those who are desirous to raise any souls of the dead, ought to select those places wherein these kind of souls are most known to be conversant; or by some alliance alluring the souls into their forsaken bodies, or by some kind of affection in times past impressed in them in their life, drawing the souls to certain places, things, or persons; or by the forcible nature of some place fitted and prepared to purge or punish these souls: which places for the most part are to be known by the appearance of visions, nightly incursions, and apparitions.
Therefore the places most fitting for these things are church-yards. And better than them are those places devoted to the executions of criminal judgements; and better than these are those places where, of late years, there have been so great and so many public slaughters of men; and that place is still better than those where some dead carcass that came by violent death is not yet expiated, nor was lately buried; for the expiation of those places is likewise a holy rite duly to be adhibited to the burial of the bodies, and often prohibits the soul returning to its body, and expels the same afar off to the place of judgement.
Oil, from Exodus 30: Olive oil infused with cinnamon, calamus, cassia and myrrh. Cinnamon: control. Calamus: binding other elements. Cassia: curative, protective. Myrrh: purification
Oil of Abramelin: infused with cinnamon, myrrh, galangal
Galbarum oil: in Liber Juratus-angels
November 13:
Sammy’s soccer team won a division championship. On to the state playoffs. I’m proud as hell of him, and I’m sad too. He’s battling to keep himself together the only way he knows how —by rebelling. Only because he’s Sammy, he rebels toward being normal. I get it, even if I can’t let it keep happening. We owe Mary too much to give up now. But I’m going to keep this trophy.
December 1:
Qliphoth originally described as that which
separates the human form the divine design in the Tree of Life… or
worldly residue of once-holy sparks of divine being. Later seen as
evil or fallen versions of sephirot, or as necessary result of Adam
and Eve eating of the Tree of Knowledge, creating an imbalance in
the universe
that was restored by creation of qliphoth. Diagram here expanded to
incorporate ideas from medieval demonology. Qliphoth sometimes
characterized as coming into being whenever sin or evil occurs, and
manifesting as misfortune, disaster, or demonic entities.
Babylonian Talmud count the number of demons as 7,405,926? Figure from Weir, Pseudomnoarchia Daemonum. 1111 x 6666. Doesn’t divide evenly into 666. Or 616.