n their
eyes, both with regard to expression, colour, and formation, are people
to be avoided. If malevolently inclined, they invariably bring ill-luck
on all who become acquainted with them. I have followed the careers of
several people in whom I have noticed this baneful feature, and their
histories have been one long tale of sin or sorrow--often both.

But though the evil eye denotes an evil superphysical influence, the
werwolf is not necessarily possessed of it. Sometimes a werwolf may be
told by the long, straight, slanting eyebrows, which meet in an angle
over the nose; sometimes by the hands, the third finger of which is a
trifle the longest; or by the finger-nails, which are red,
almond-shaped, and curved; sometimes by the ears, which are set rather
low, and far back on their heads; and sometimes by a noticeably long,
swinging stride, which is strongly suggestive of some animal. Either one
or other of these features is always present in hereditary werwolves,
and is also frequently developed in those people who become werwolves,
either at the same time as or soon after they acquire the property.

FOOTNOTES:

[56:1] Psychic influences are demonstrated by the position of the
planets. For instance, at a new moon, cusp of Seventh House, and
cojoined with Saturn in opposition to Jupiter, sinister superphysical
presences are much in evidence on the earth.

CHAPTER V

WERWOLVES AND EXORCISM

In the preceding chapter I touched on one or two modes of evoking the
spirits that have it in their power to confer the property of
lycanthropy; I now pass on to the question of exorcism in relation to
werwolves.

Is it possible to exorcize the evil power of metamorphosis possessed by
the werwolf, or, as those would say who see in the werwolf, not the
possession of a property, but a spirit, "to exorcize the evil spirit"?

For my own part, and basing my opinion on my own experiences with other
forms of the superphysical, with regard to the success of exorcism I am
sceptical. I have been present when exorcism has been tried--tried on
people supposed to be obsessed with demoniacal spirits, and tried on
spontaneous psychic phenomena in haunted houses--and in both cases it
has failed. Now, although, as I have said, I regard lycanthropy in the
light of a property, and do not believe in the lycanthropist being
possessed of a separate individual spirit, I am inclined to think, were
exorcism efficacious at all, that it wo