Natural Magick Metamorphoses of Werewolves and Metals

Among the cultural artifacts that the Crusades brought back to Europe were the medicinal practices of Geber, Rhazes, and Avicenna and a cultural belief in the alchemical manifestation of metamorphosis—transmutation. Geber is actually a fourteenth-century name attributed to a number of works, some parts of which 

Metamorphosis, according to Professor Bynum, involves a transformation from one form to another, while marntainmg a common characteristic or aspect. For example, Bynum relates the poet Ovid s tale of Jove s punishment of King Lycaon, who was savage with his subjects and also attempted Jove s murder. Although Lycaon is thoroughly and bodily transformed into a wolf ( Lykos = wolf in Greek)  

He turns into a wolf, and yet retains some traces of his former shape.. . .  

There is the same grey hair, the same fierce face, the same gleaming eyes, the same picture of beastly savagery. 

FIGURE 43. Painting in a fifteenth-century manuscript depicting the eleventh-century Persian physician Avicenna (Abu Ali-al Hussin ibn Abdallah ibn Sina, 980-1037) in an apothecary shop. See color plates. ( Archivo iconografico, S.A./CORBIS). 

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