The Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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Friday, September 27, 2024
Wendigo...Werewolves: 'W' flesh-eaters
This is a real Texas security cam image showing a witch skin-walker? Wendigo? Hoaxer? Dogman? Werewolf/wolfman cryptid with odd gait for a man in a costume? (magazine.todo)
Nothing to see here. Oh, that? That's just light and shadow illusion. Tree stump? Loose bark?
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The Buddha reasons with abusive Alavaka.
What does Buddhism know about cryptids? Buddhism, like the other older Dharmic religions Vedic Brahmanism (now morphed into Hinduism) and Jainism, have long history of acknowledging non-human creatures in, on, and above the earth. There are monsters, ogres, reptilians, shapeshifters, gnomes, fairies, avians, and giants (maras. yakkhas, nagas, petas, kumbhandas, bhumi-devas, garudas, and asuras respectively). Among these, the cannibal ghouls known as ogres (yakkhas, yakshas, rakshasas, yakshis, yetis) are very smart humanoid creatures.
They are able to communicate with humans, take human "wives," and be reasoned with except in their ferocity and rapacity. They are sometimes in possession of advanced ET technology and dwellings, with psychic powers and preternatural strength, fierce emotions and lust. They are very dangerous and liable to attack humans. The most famous one found in Buddhist sutras is the Yakkha Alavaka. Others dwell in the Himalayas and in woodland, forests, and wilderness areas.
Some Natives not only saw them, they interacted and sometimes intermarried. They're human.
Is the cryptid Yeti ("Asian Bigfoot") a man or a bear? It is a meh teh (a "man bear")
Joshua Cutchin/Timothy Renner
Dogmen (lycanthropes, humanoid wolves) are real, and the wendigo goes by many W names, according to different Algonquin tribes. Others may have the Sasquatch tribe (hominin cryptids) to contend with, some of which are cannibal rapists and skin-walkers. Not all Bigfoot are bad, just it seems the unattached juveniles wilding and running rampant in the forest, stealing food and violating boundaries.
Not simply an animal species
The elder yakkhas and rakshasas ("forest guardians," "nature protectors") -- with fierce females of the species, the yakshis and yetis -- can't always rein in the youths entering puberty or their rutting season and must cut them loose. They then violate a cardinal rule to avoid human tribes.
Because these creatures are not strictly flesh and bone but in possession of technology or the paranormal ability to transform into orbs, alight in the middle of a field after a long set of footprints or enter the earth through crevices, caves, caverns, tunnels, or straight into rock (as with the rock-dwelling Tahquitz), tracking them is dangerous and confounding. Search parties become cases of high strangeness.
Windigo: The Flesh-Eating Monster of Native American Legend | Monstrum
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Portals: Teleport in, phase shifted disappearances
(Storied) This cannibal monster (yakkha, yakshi, rakshasa, naga, yeti, sasquatch) hunts during the coldest time of the year, traveling with the snow to terrorize humans with its insatiable hunger.
Ignore folklore. Come into the woods
Armed with sharp claws and teeth and capable of running with incredible speed, the wendigo, or windigo, is a lesson in excess and a manifestation of the anxieties that emerge in the harsh realities of winter — to survive it.
Explore the symbolic interpretations of the wendigo with Dr. Emily Zarka, who explains how this Native American legend can teach us about the spiritual beliefs and social values of the early indigenous peoples of North America.
Huge thanks to Dr. Will Oxford (Department of Linguistics at the University of Manitoba) for his time and assistance with the various pronunciations and spellings of the Algonquian languages used in this episode.
Islam knows wilderness monster jinn (djinn, genies)
Ancient Asian depictions of ogres (the jinn, djinn)
Killer origins of the werewolf | Monstrum
(Storied) Long before a full moon could transform a human into a beast, the werewolf (lycanthrope) was present across the literature, lore, and mythologies of ancient Europe. Whether a punishment for the wicked, a cure for the unlucky, or a blessing for the strong, the human to wolf shapeshifter is almost always violent. Real wolves posed a real threat to humans and their livestock, but how did these predators come to be associated with cannibalism, sorcery, and mental illness (lunacy)? The first in a two-part series, featuring werewolf expert and Gothic scholar Dr. Kaja Franck, this episode tackles the rise of the werewolf in its myriad forms, looking at what happened when Catholicism/Christianity interceded and turned the werewolf into the embodiment of evil — a change that reached its devastating climax with the persecution and execution of accused werewolves and the murder of countless wolves. #werewolf #mythology #werewolftrials #MonstrumPBS
The jinn are as real to Muslims as drags were to ancient Christians
Algonquian Spirit: Contemporary Translations of the Algonquian Literatures of North America, Ed. Brian Swann, University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
Atwood, Margaret. Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature, Clarendon Press, 1995.
Barnick, Adam. “The Shape of the Wendigo.” Glass Eye Pix, YouTube, 17 Oct. 2015, • THE SHAPE OF THE WENDIGO.
Blackwood, Algernon. “The Wendigo.” The lost valley and other stories…Illus. W. Graham Robertson, Vaughan & Gomme, 1914, pp. 71-132.
DeSanti, Brady. “The Cannibal Talking Head: The Portrayal of the Windigo ‘Monster’ in Popular Culture and Ojibwe Traditions.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 27, No. 3, Fall 2015, pp. 186-201.
Englehart, Steve. “Spawn of the Flesh-Eater!” The Incredible Hulk, Vol. 1, Issue 162, April 1973.
Bigfoot and the Tripwire
Harring, Sidney. “The Wendigo Killings: The Legal Penetration of Canadian Law into the Spirit World of the Ojibwa and Cree Indians.” Violent Crimes in North American, Ed. Louis A. Knafla, Praeger Publishers, 2003, pp.75-104.
Johnson, Basil. The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway, HarperCollins, 1995.
Schwarz, Herbert T. Windigo and Other Tales of the Ojibways, Illus. Norval Morrisseau, McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1969.
Smallman, Shawn. “Spirit Beings, Mental Illness, and Murder: Fur Traders and the Windigo in Canada’s Boreal Forest, 1774 to 1935.” Ethnohistory, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2010, pp. 571–596.
“The Orders of the Dreamed”: George Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and Myth, 1823, Eds. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Robert Brightman, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988.
Vess, Charles. “Cry of the Wendigo!” Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 1, Issue 277, June 1986.
Windigo: An Anthology of Fact and Fantastic Fiction, Ed. John Robert Colombo, Western Producer Prairie Books, 1982.
Written and hosted by Dr. Emily Zarka. Director: David Schulte. Executive Producer: Amanda Fox. Producer: Stephanie Noone. Illustrator: Samuel Allen. Editor: Produced by Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios. Instagram: monstrumPBS
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