Occult for Fun and Profit!

I had a roommate once at an art school in California over the summer who called himself Cockroach.  No, it's not just a borrowed cliche, he actually had a giant white cockroach painted on the back of his full length black leather trenchcoat which he wore religiously in the middle of 114 degree Southern California weather.  He had long black hair, white, white skin, and pale purple glasses.  He even wore his fingernails long and manicured to fine points.  His art was dark and Cravenesque, a 3-dimensional fleshless face in a box, an oversized portrait of a sinister vampire, three skeletons relaxing around a campfire in a cavern of vascular flesh....well, you get the idea.  I asked him once wether he thought he was a vampire. 
His response: Of course not.  Vampires don't exist.  I'm a witch.

I have since met many people who purport to being involved in one way or another with Wicca, witchcraft, or the occult, not to group the three together too ignorantly.  My point, or the idea that I am trying to come to, is that there is a similar response among the practitioners when asked about the validity of their art to that of the many sects of Christianity.  That is, "the way I do it is right, everyone else is wrong." 

For myself, I like to believe that true Wicca is gentle.  Earth loving, pagan in origin, and more about healing and worship of the natural world and its wonders.  But I do know that there are groups who delve into what seems to the earth children as deeply misguided dark arts. 

These are the practices and rituals that, for my current purposes (research, writing, character study, etc...not to put a hex on the guy who yelled at my wife like a jackass over a damn babyruth candybar...although...) I want to know from you all, what are some practices you've heard of?  Perhaps witnessed or read about.  Any sources you have seen and trust, or even if you have participated.  The stranger the better, as long as its real or believed to be real. 

What do you know?

Transformations of Werewolves

Historically, the werewolf myth centers on a person transforming either into a full wolf that is only distinguishable from a normal wolf by its enormous size, or into a kind of hybrid between wolf and man.  Given that many people throughout the ages purport to being capable of either one of these transformations and have in most cases been diagnosed with clinical lycanthropy, which is akin to having a tattoo slapped on the forehead saying "I'm a total nutjob," we can reasonably add this as a third, non-physical type of transformation.  Then, of course, you have the intellectual werewolves who make psychological connections between our innate desires, rages, and nobility and the personifications that we project on the wolf.

Bear in mind, I in no way stand in judgment of any of these-at the very least I am guilty of at least two theories of my own-though I simply am laying out a kind of brainstorm for myself concerning what might influence the transformation and if those external factors might alter the transformation itself.

For example: Perhaps none of these transformations are untrue when it comes to werewolf mythos.  If one werewolf is born into lycanthropy, then maybe he changes at every full moon and the days before and after without fail.  Perhaps this doesn't begin to occur until he hits puberty (not to unduly remind everyone of Teen Wolf, which really was not that bad of a movie...) and thus the transformation itself becomes a rite of passage into manhood.

But what about the evil bastard who makes a deal with the Devil and receives a wolf skin belt that initiates the transformation.  For him, there is no rite of passage.  There is only destruction and damnation.  So to speak.

Then we have to consider the consciousness of the beast.  In some myths, a werewolf acts completely independent of the will of the man it previously was.  It acts on instinct and the drive to tear flesh and feed on blood and anything in its path.  In other myths (stories such as Bisclavaret) the wolf retains the consciousness of the the man.  It even acts in a friendly manner toward those who are his beloved. So can't we then choose to assign consciousness to the manner of transformation and perhaps the final form as well?

Just thinking out loud.