The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

BATMAN LIVE
08:49 Dec 04 2011
Times Read: 538

I ran across this and thought I would put up some stuff about it. If you want to see a lot of it you can by going into YouTube but in here I am only putting a little. Sam Heughan is Batman and he has done various movies. I just watched one on Hallmark called A Princess for Christmas but he is known more in the UK for theater actually. He is a Scotsman but he doesn't have a brogue like Gerard Butler. If he ever had one he has mastered it and sounds merely British (at least to me being non British)



Here is a pic of him from the Christmas movie I just watched. He doesn't always wear his hair quite like this. He was playing a European Prince in the movie thus more formal looking.

MIDWINTER
20:07 Dec 02 2011
Times Read: 546






The Winter Solstice



The exact time and date will slightly vary each year for the Winter Solstice, but in 2011, the Winter Solstice begins at 05:30 UT or 12:30 AM (EST) on December 22nd in the Northern Hemisphere.



The winter solstice occurs at the instant when the Sun's position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from the observer. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the event of the winter solstice occurs some time between December 20 and December 23 each year in the northern hemisphere, and between June 20 and June 23 in the southern hemisphere, during either the shortest day or the longest night of the year, which is not to be confused with the darkest day or night or the day with the earliest sunset or latest sunrise. Though the Winter Solstice lasts an instant, the term is also used to refer to the full 24-hour period. (wikipedia-Winter Solstice)



Alban Arthan is a Neo-Druid celebration of the Winter Solstice. According to Wikipedia, Neo-Druidism is as follows:



Neo-druidism or Neo-Druidry (referred to simply as Druidry by some adherents) is a form of modern spirituality or religion that generally promotes harmony with nature, and respect for all beings, including trees, animals, lakes, hills, and all aspects of the natural world. It is considered to be a Neo-pagan faith by some adherents, along with such religions as Wicca and Germanic Neo-paganism. By other modern druids it is considered to be a philosophical movement that includes religious tolerance. Some modern druids are adherents of Christianity,Taoism, or indeed are atheists. Modern Druidism or Druidry is not necessarily a theistic belief system but much more diverse than the field usually denoted by the term Neo-Paganism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-druidism



Therefore what this generally means is that it is a modern tradition that draws from what they know of the older traditions of Druidry.



This was a time when many celebrated. The Anglo-Saxons had a holiday that shifted around from before the day of Samhain, using the lunar calendar, to December 25th, over a period of time. The holiday was called “The Night of Mothers” or “Mother’s Night.” Bede believed that around 730 BC they settled on observance of this holiday on the Winter Solstice. When Christianity moved into Britain it was observed as one of the Twelve Days of Christmas. The premise of this day was that one’s dreams that night would foretell happenings in the year to come; good or bad fortune.



The Neo-Druids now celebrate Alban Arthan on the Winter Solstice. They derived the name of the festival from writings done by Iolo Morganwg.



“Iolo Morganwg was the bardic name of Edward Williams (March 10, 1747 – December 18, 1826), an influential antiquarian, poet, collector and literary forger. The name is Welsh for "Ned of Glamorgan".



Iolo's philosophy represented a fusion of Christian and Arthurian influences, a proto-romanticism comparable to that of William Blake and the Scottish poet and forger James MacPherson, the revived antiquarian enthusiasm for all things "Celtic", and such elements of bardic heritage as had genuinely survived among Welsh-language poets. Part of his aim was to assert the Welshness of the South, particularly his home region of Glamorgan, against the prevalent idea that North Wales represented the purest survival of Welsh traditions.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iolo_Morganwg



Alban Arthan in Gaelic literally means “light of Arthur,” although some say in Welsh it means “light of winter.” It appears the first definition is an older interpretation of the name. Essentially this is a Celtic/Druid celebration. The Welsh festival begins at sundown the evening prior to Solstice. It is also referred to as Gwyl Canol Gaeof. It is the birth of the Sun God; the Divine Child. This day is often referred to as Yule as well which generally runs from December 23 to the 25th. There are some that merely celebrate Yule on December 25 in lieu of the Christmas celebration. The celebrations are very diverse now in modern times. There are those that don’t belong to any organized pagan community that follow these festivals and observe them perhaps not so traditionally.



Samhain was connected more with those Celts living in the Isles but Alban Arthan was much more universal in its nature and has been celebrated by a much wider group of people long before the Celts arrived. It is believed that the Summer and Winter Solstice celebrations are the oldest festivals celebrated by mankind. Even though we know that the sun will come up each morning and due to space exploration much more about the planets it was a different story with the ancients. They took nothing for granted. Their very survival depended on a good crop. Therefore, for these people the return of the sun was connected to life or death.



“What Stonehenge is for Alban Hefin, Newgrange is for Alban Arthan. Newgrange (Brú na Bhoinne) is a mighty Neolithic passage tomb and temple structure in the valley of the Boyne River in Ireland. Its age is presently estimated at approximately 5200 years, making Newgrange older than the Pyramids of Gizeh and Stonehenge. Newgrange is aligned towards the sunrise of the winter solstice. When the Sun reaches a certain angle, the light shines through a special window (the famous "roof box") along a 17 meters/57 feet long passage and at the end of the passage falls onto a big stone, which bears the carving of a three-fold spiral. The event lasts for about 15 minutes, during which the light is wandering across the floor of the passage and the stone at its end, as if it wanted to tell a story.



This alignment has been esoterically interpreted as the insertion of a ray of light by the Sun God into the womb of Mother Earth, to bring about the creation of new life in spring.” (druidic.org)



The deities you will find associated with Alban Arthan are Brighid and Dagda and the plants are the Mistletoe and the Holly. Evergreens are used to decorate homes during this time period.



“The green reminds us of the promise that nature will be green again in springtime and life will return to our lands. In the Irish tradition, a house decorated with greeneries is expected to offer a place of rest to nature spirits fleeing from cold and darkness.” (druidry.org)



One special tradition of midwinter festivals in the Northern regions of Europe is the burning of the Yule log. According to legend the log must be taken from one’s own land or be a gift. It is put in the fireplace and burned very slowly for twelve days. The log is lit by using a remnant of the Yule log from the year prior. In this way, one is passing the light from one year to the next. After the twelve days the log is extinguished and the ashes are safely put away. The rest of the log is saved to ignite the next Yule Log the following year. When spring arrives the ashes are mixed with the seeds for planting.



There is always a constant struggle between the the Oak King, referred to as the God of the waxing light, or the Divine Child, and the Holly king, the God of the waning light, or the Dark Lord. As the year comes to a closing and the winter solstice arrives, the Oak King wins the battle and rules, until he is again defeated by the Holly King when the Summer Solstice returns. This is a perpetual battle because it is the reverse in the lower hemisphere.









http://www.angelfire.com/sc/majick/winter.html

http://www.druidry.org/obod/festivals/arthan.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iolo_Morganwg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-druidism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice



Copyright 2008 RKB aka Sinistra

(Solstice date and time update 2011)

ELIZABETH MILLER
19:26 Dec 02 2011
Times Read: 548

I had this entered in my other journal back in 2009 so I decided to move it here because I am seeing some of the same false information being spread around again. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not fond of this book, sorry. I just think it is brought up far too often when speaking of vampires being merely a work of fiction. Most cannot separate Hollywood from facts. After this which actually will end up before I am going to post some of the book so if you have never read it you can see how it actually starts and its epistolary writing style which he copied from earlier writers. Dracula is in public domain in the US.



I do casually know Elizabeth Miller off the net since she gave me permission to publish an article she wrote at one time. She also has posted on my FB (she's a friend) when I would get mad at some in the vampire community because they keep using Latin in naming things incorrectly. I had two years of classical Latin a long time ago but Elizabeth taught Latin for 9 years so she stepped in and helped me one day. It was funny because everyone shut up at that point, lol.



======================================





Dr. Elizabeth Miller, Professor of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland, is an internationally renowned expert on Dracula. She has published four books and dozens of articles on the subject, including the controversial Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (2000). President of the Canadian Chapter of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, she has been interviewed extensively by various media around the world, and has lectured in Canada, the United States, Ireland, Germany, Poland and Romania.



Bite Me: What inspired you to write your book Dracula: Sense & Nonsense?



Elizabeth Miller: Since I began working on Dracula as a literary scholar, I have become increasingly alarmed at how many misconceptions and inaccuracies have appeared in print (and on television documentaries) about Bram Stoker and his famous novel. I wish to stress that I have no problem with speculation--indeed, without it, few advances in scholarship would occur. But I do feel an obligation to challenge speculation that is presented to us as fact. That there has been such proliferation of questionable 'scholarship' and downright errors indicates to me a cavalier attitude towards Dracula, coupled with a greater interest in sensationalism than in accuracy. Dracula: Sense & Nonsense was written to set, where possible, the record straight.





Bite Me: Do you ever feel you are ruining the fantasy for millions of people over the world?



Elizabeth Miller: To begin with, I doubt if millions will read my book! But my answer is a resounding NO. The novel is a fantasy. The people who are ruining the fantasy are those who insist that everything in the novel had to be based on someone or something. Bram Stoker was a novelist--the book is a work of fiction, and a wonderful one at that. Why does Count Dracula have to be based on anyone? Why does there have to be a model for Castle Dracula? We are dealing with creations of a writer's imagination. However, there are things about Stoker and the writing of the novel that we do know, thanks in part to the existence of his working notes for the book (which I have examined) and, of course, the text itself. It is the obligation of scholars to separate the facts about the author and his book from the preponderance of fabrication with which we have been bombarded.



Nowhere in my book do I challenge interpretations of the novel, unless these use unsubstantiated 'facts' as proof. And I certainly would not want to deprive anyone of the pleasure of watching a Dracula movie or reading a new adaptation of the Dracula legend. In fiction (be it a novel or a film), anything goes. But non-fiction is a different matter. The factual errors raise my blood pressure!





Bite Me: What singular misconception would you like to change most?



Elizabeth Miller: Oh, that's easy. All of the nonsense about the so-called 'connection' between Count Dracula and Vlad the Impaler. I devote a full section (close to 50 pages) to that in the book. Never has so much been written by so many about so little. Outrageous claims range from statements that Stoker based his castle Dracula on a fortress built by Vlad in Wallachia to the 'fact' that Stoker's use of wooden stakes as a means of destroying vampires was based on his knowledge that the historical Dracula impaled his foes on stakes. According to existing evidence, Stoker knew very little about Vlad (he most likely did not even know his name was Vlad, nor is there any evidence that he knew about Vlad's atrocities). He stumbled across the name 'Dracula' in a couple of paragraphs in an obscure book at the Whitby Public Library. He liked the name, and appropriated it for his already created vampire character. No proof has been found that he knew any more about the historical figure than a few scraps of information found in the book in Whitby (that he was a Wallachian voivode who crossed the Danube, fought the Turks, and was ultimately defeated and replaced). Given the paucity of evidence, how can we say that Vlad the Impaler was the inspiration of the novel?





Bite Me: What are your views on vampires? Do they exist?



Elizabeth Miller: That depends on your definition of 'vampire'. If you mean a revenant who returns from the grave to feed on the blood of the living, or a supernatural being who lives forever on blood, then my answer is no. There are, however, people who for one reason or another (ranging from psychiatric obsession to a matter of choice) drink human blood; maybe one can call these people 'vampires', using a very loose definition. And of course, there are vampire bats (but not in Transylvania, as some writers have claimed).





Bite Me: What aspect of vampirism interests you the most?



Elizabeth Miller: The novel Dracula. It fascinates me. I have read it many times, and have read just about everything that's been written about it. I am especially interested in the genesis of the novel, as well as how it has permeated our culture since its first appearance in 1897.





Bite Me: Any research you have found about Scotland?



Elizabeth Miller: Only bits and pieces about the Cruden Bay connection (dealt with later). I know of no vampires in Scottish folklore. But then, I am not a folklorist and have not investigated that aspect of the subject.





Bite Me: How did you first become interested in vampires?



Elizabeth Miller: You can blame it on Lord Byron! About ten years ago, I was looking for a new field of scholarly research and decided to go back to the subject of my M.A. thesis, the poetry of Lord Byron. It was then that it struck me that the first vampire fiction in English literature was written by Byron's personal physician, John Polidori (a graduate of Edinburgh University). That led me quite naturally to Dracula--and I was hooked!





Bite Me: What have been the highlights of your Dracula studies?



Elizabeth Miller: That's a difficult one. There have been so many. Certainly one highlight occurred in 1995 when the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in Romania conferred upon me the honourary title 'Baroness of the House of Dracula'. Other exciting moments include reading a paper on Dracula at the Romanian Embassy in Washington D.C.; being interviewed for a TV documentary by the Learning Channel (U.S.) For their "Great Books: Dracula"; the launch of Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (actually my third book on Dracula) in Romania last year; and attending as guest lecturer the world premiere of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's 'Dracula'.





Bite Me: In the UK at present there is debate over the location of the model of inspiration for Dracula's--castle between Whitby and Cruden Bay. Which one would you say it was? Or is it neither?



Elizabeth Miller: Neither. There is no doubt that Bram Stoker spent time in both places while he was working on Dracula. The influence of Whitby on the novel is clear: three chapters are set there; Stoker's Notes for the novel (located at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia) contain several pages of material about the town; and it was in Whitby that he found the name 'Dracula'. Cruden Bay (including Slains Castle) is not mentioned in either the Notes or the novel. Some have suggested that Slains is the model for Dracula's Castle. I do not accept that. In my view, Castle Dracula exists in only one place--the pages of Stoker's novel. He knew what castles looked like; he was certainly aware of the conventional castle of earlier Gothic fiction. He hardly needed a model.





Bite Me: What are you working on now?



Elizabeth Miller: Actually, my fourth book on the subject is just out. Entitled Dracula, it is an elaborate coffee-table art book with over 130 illustrations covering the whole range of Dracula/vampires. I have also recently completed A Dracula Handbook, an in-house publication of the Canadian Chapter, Transylvanian Society of Dracula. I am also working on a couple of scholarly articles, and I keep active as editor of the Journal of Dracula Studies.



[from Bite Me issue 6 (Glasgow, Scotland), 2001, pp. 12-13]

http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/russo.html