The single greatest flaw of the 1941 film The Wolf Man is that Lon Chaney Jr. doesn’t own his condition. It’s a curse in the film, but does it have to be?
In The Devil’s Notebook, Anton Szandor LaVey wrote an essay titled How to Become A Werewolf, and in it he discusses the elements of importance to lycanthropic transformation. But it is the individual experience of the transformation and coming down from it which is the real draw.
Connecting with the creature that dwells in all of us from time to time, allowing it dominion over us, succumbing to its appetites and carnal desires can be a liberating escape from the suit and tie lives we lead.
Some tuck their Baphomet’s, keeping their religion private. I have to conceal my fangs and claws. The beast within struggles to escape from that social norms prison that I must cage it in. There is a rage and lust boiling just below the surface, unknown to those I interact with from day to day. When I open that cage I come alive.
The euphoria of the transformation, and the catharsis of return make this social norm life we lead tolerable. I could never see lycanthropy as a curse. That connection to our basest of instincts is what makes us truly human.
Hail Satan!