The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

January 28, 2012 by author



Vampire religion. It is a topic as controversial to those outside of our community as it is to vampires themselves. While vampirism itself is not strictly a religion (Joseph Laycock presents an eloquent and insightful argument for modern vampires as an identity group in his work, Vampires Today), a great many vampires have developed religious systems and spiritual beliefs that integrate vampirism into their personal symbols, myths, and practices. As more and more outsiders become aware of our community and seek to learn seriously about our practices, we find that many academics and scholars can only approach our community in terms of belief. They see our claim to vampirism as part of a new spiritual path. They lump us in with Wiccans, neo-Pagans, and the modern magickal community. And, even though some members of the vampire community rail against such categorization, it is not entirely unwarranted.



Not everyone in the vampire community makes vampirism a part of their religious path, just as not everyone who is vampiric adopts the archetype of the vampire as part of their fashion or self-image. But there are enough magickal orders and vampire covens operating now in the United States and abroad to warrant attention as a specific spiritual movement (the term in academia is NRM, or “New Religious Movement”). Most of these spiritual or religious vampire groups have their roots in neo-Paganism, although some are connected more intimately with chaos magick, esoteric, or left-hand path traditions. Quite a few have simply adopted traditional Pagan practices to something more palatable to their vampiric experience of the world (an approach we took within my own group, House Kheperu). They redesign the holidays along the Wheel of the Year to account for a balance of darkness and light. They work with deities who have overt or implied vampiric qualities or who have a greater affinity with night, dark mysteries, or rebirth. Many identify as “dark Pagans,” a somewhat misleading term because dark Paganism is less about wallowing in darkness and more about finding a balance between the darkness and the light.



Through such groups, the vampire has developed into more than just a fictional archetype. For some, it is a potent magickal identity that can be related to the witch. Witchcraft has gained so much acceptance in recent years that I imagine most people’s response to that statement will be something like, “Witchcraft is a real and sincere religion! Vampires are just creatures from myth.” Please consider that, when witchcraft was first becoming established as a modern tradition, the word “witch” was still burdened with all of the baggage left over from the European witchcraze. To the average person in Gerald Gardener’s day, a witch was someone who made a pact with Satan for her powers, an ugly old crone who flew naked on a broomstick and sacrificed children at night in the forest. A wicked perpetrator of unholy magick – that is the folkloric witch, and she is an archetype that persists in cultures around the globe right alongside the folkloric vampire. Despite all of this negative baggage, however, Gardener and others saw something relevant to their experiences and beliefs — relevant enough that they chose to call themselves witches despite what the world might think.



Reclaiming is a process undertaken by modern Pagans to reframe the image of the witch. There are positive aspects to the archetype of the witch – the connection to nature, an affinity for magick – and these qualities have been brought to the forefront while other traditional qualities – pacts with Satan, maleficent behavior – have been carefully stripped away. Years of educating the public and active PR have helped to establish modern witches as individuals separate and distinct from the largely negative figures from folkloric witchcraft (this is especially true in the case of Wicca). How is this different, then, from what is happening to the word “vampire?” The archetype has endured because it is rich and complex, evolving through the years from the horrific revenant that preys upon peasants to the elegant, empowered being we now see portrayed in books and on the stage. Archetypes are merely the faces of myth, and myth rests at the roots of all religion.



So, is vampirism a religion? For those of us who are naturally vampiric, we know that one does not need to follow some esoteric spiritual path just to be a vampire. But there are many people around the world who are increasingly integrating the archetype of the vampire into their spiritual practices. Whether they are vampiric or not, they nevertheless honor the concept of vampirism, and their views help to enrich and diversify our community. Vampiric magickal orders and spiritual paths give people who struggle with vampirism in their daily lives a sense of greater context as well as deeper personal meaning for their identity as vampires, so in many ways, these new traditions are helping to enrich our community. Many of the established groups do us a further service by outreaching to Pagan and mainstream magickal orders, helping to dispel the notion that all vampiric people are predators without conscience — a belief that is prevalent in many magickal and psychic communities, particularly with regards to psychic vampires. These groups in all their manifold forms have been integral in the process of vampire “reclaiming.”



Certainly there are some bad apples among the self-proclaimed “vampire religions,” but on the whole, vampire religious groups have helped evolve what outsiders think of as a vampire. As uncomfortable as some members of our community may be with the notion of religious belief, I think vampiric spirituality is here to stay.



–M. Belanger



http://twilightpath.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/reclaiming-an-archetype-vampire-religion/