The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

There's a new kind of cosmetic procedure available, and it doesn't require injecting any acids, fat or toxins into the body. The main ingredient in this wrinkle- removing procedure is a patient's own blood.



The technology is called Selphyl, and it involves injecting a mixture of blood products into the affected areas. It's also called the "vampire face-lift," although calling it a face-lift is not accurate. Selphyl is a nonsurgical procedure akin to filler injections, while a face-lift is the surgical repositioning of facial tissues that have become loose over time.



Dr. Andre Berger of the Rejuvalife Vitality Institute in Beverly Hills, Calif., said the procedure is becoming very popular.



"I think this whole recent theme in the entertainment industry ... of using vampire, Dracula themes, has definitely caused a lot of the interest out there," Berger said.



But today's bloodthirsty pop culture is just part of Selphyl's allure. Some of the more well-known cosmetic fillers -- Juvederm, Restylane and Perlane -- are artificial. There are also collagen fillers and fillers that use parts of a person's own body, such as fat fillers and Selphyl.



"What's nice about [Selphyl] is you're only using that person's blood," said Dr. Susan Stevens Tanne, a cosmetic and laser surgeon at Cosmetic Laser MD in New Jersey.

Selphyl is prepared by drawing a patient's blood, separating the platelets from the red blood cells, blending the platelets with a fibrin mixture and injecting it to the area a patient wants to augment.



"You overfill the area by 20 percent so that a person sees an approximation of the final results, but it's slightly bigger than it will actually be," said Tanne.



In about a day, the excess is gone, and several weeks later, the fibrin matrix builds up, yielding the final result.



Selphyl patient Lynn Piper is pleased with her results.



"I think the trick is to stay on top of it and tune up a little at a time," she said.



Selphyl lasts about 15 months, according to the company.



"It causes almost no bruising because it's a thin, watery liquid and there's no allergy testing required, since it's a person's own blood," said Tanne.

'Vampire Face-Lift' Isn't for Everyone



Selphyl isn't the solution for all wrinkles, though.



"You can't use it on a full face, because there's not enough product," Tanne said. "It's also better for volumnizing areas or for more delicate lines."



She also said it's better for people with thin, "crepey" skin. Crepey skin is a natural consequence of aging and is characterized by loose folds and wrinkles.



The process by which Selphyl is injected as a facial filler is FDA approved, and it can be used on other parts of the body with wrinkles or decreased volume.



Tanne says it's very safe, but other doctors express more caution about Selphyl.



"Like any other idea or innovation, cautious people want to wait until the pendulum swings to make sure it's actually safe and the results are worth the time and expense to go through the procedure," said Dr. Malcolm Roth, director of plastic surgery at Maimonides Medical Center.



"Many of the current synthetic fillers on the market -- Restylane and Juvederm, for example -- with outstanding safety and efficacy data with millions of patients treated have one-year results or more," said Dr. Julius Few, director of the Few Institute and commissioner of cosmetic medicine for the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.



Roth also has some concerns about Selphyl's safety.



"One of the problems with your own blood is that some people pass out from having their blood taken," he said. "Also, blood tends to cause an itchy after-effect. Sometimes it causes burning or discoloration. You're injecting blood into a place where blood doesn't normally reside."



Selphyl Part of a Growing Trend



The use of cosmetic fillers is on the rise, and there's a growing demand for procedures that are noninvasive and nonsurgical. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons predicts that the number of cosmetic procedures performed will exceed 55 million, which is quadruple the number done in 2005. The group also predicts that 97 percent of those procedures will be nonsurgical.

"Most of the products create instant gratification and can take five years off someone's appearance," said Tanne.



"Injectables have very little downtime and very little risk," said Roth. "They are also less expensive than plastic surgery, and in this economy, that's had a major impact."

'Vampire Face-Lift' by the Numbers



Selphyl costs somewhere in the range of $1,100 to $1,500 per injection, which is much cheaper than a face-lift.



New fillers like Selphyl are part of another growing trend as well.



"There are more products coming to market to address very specific issues, such as fillers doing even more for longer periods of time," said Few.



"This is an exciting time -- novel technology and the development of new and promising ways to preserve a healthy appearance," he said.



While he may not be completely sold on the benefits of Selphyl, Roth is at least intrigued by its nickname.



"Vampires are hot right now. That's a sexy name, so it works."

The Religious Hunter



This person can be of any religion. Most are

Christian, but there have been Jewish hunters and Moslem hunters.



The Religious Hunter is convinced that the vampire is a servant of the Devil. 'A Spawn of Hell.' An actual demon with the power to steal souls and beguile the innocent. The religious hunter feels that killing a demon is not a sin, and truly believes that all vampires, or those claiming to be vampires, are pure evil.



It is not against their morals or religious convictions to kill in the name of God or to kill that which they feel is evil. They are very dangerous as they often refuse to listen to (or believe) the truth, feeling that a 'demon' always lies and is not to be trusted.



They often feel it is their duty to destroy vampires. Many of these people also feel there is a plot afoot by Vampires and by the Goth movement through out the world especially in America, Germany and some other countries, that the Goth movement is a plot to corrupt the innocent of the world (i.e.: the children or other people), these hunters are also bent on targeting these people. Deprogramming, religious indoctrination and even killings are their way of dealing with this perceived threat on the morals of civilization.



The Sports Hunter



This type of hunter, just like a hunter of large animals, hunts for sport. The thrill of the chase; the thrill of the win; and the thrill of the kill.



Because the Sport Hunter loves the hunt as much as the conquest, this hunter will often warn his prey, the vampire, of his intentions to harm or kill. In that way he knows the vampire will be alert to the threat and offer him a better and more interesting hunt. He knows the vampire to be more dangerous a prey than any large animal and he knows the vampire will do all that is necessary to defend himself and protect his or her friends and family.



So, mostly the Sport Hunter will warn the vampire either by openly declaring who he is and challenging the vampire. Or by stalking first, doing small things like harassing and following the vampire to let the vampire know he is there. Attempting to use psychology to unnerve his prey. In some rare occasions, a Sport Hunter will just attack the vampire with no warning, but mostly not. There is very little sport in a surprise attack.



The Sport Hunter, as the name implies, hunts for sport. To be matched against a cunning adversary, and to have the thrill of a dangerous situation. If he really feels superior to his prey, he will let them know who he is and what he intends.



The Religious Hunter is more silent in his intent for he believes the vampire to possess supernatural powers and gives no warning most of the time. For the Religious Hunter, it is not a game or sport, it is perceived as their duty. Therefore they won't give their prey a chance to escape.



The Revenge Hunter



This is a person who hunts to avenge someone he knows; and this type of hunter could be either a vampire or a human.



Example 1: A Vampire kills a human either accidentally or on purpose, and a friend of that person hunts the Vampire for revenge.



Example 2: A hunter killed a vampire, and a friend of the vampire (either human or vampire) went after this hunter for revenge.



Example 3: The vampire killed a hunter in self defense, and that hunter's friend went forth to hunt his friend's killer.



Anyone who hunts to even a score, is a Revenge Hunter.





There is also a forth kind of hunter, but we cannot actually say this is a true hunter. This is the vampire itself. Hunting other vampires, usually for criminal reasons. This hunter is the vampire 'policeman.' It is his job to track down, bring to justice or destroy the criminal vampire, the rogue vampire who breaks the laws of his vampire community. These vampire hunters deal only with other vampires. Their laws are very harsh for those who break the rules.



Inheritors can usually pick up on a hunter; most Classicals and other race designations, unless the individual is very psychic, cannot do so. Hunters are usually good computer hackers or detectives and can successfully trick certain agencies or organizations into giving out an address or phone number. Most hunters mean to do harm, or really kill, that which they hunt.



Caution should be taken for every threat. However, many are just playing, role playing or pretending. So you need not totally panic at every threat.

His rigid flesh seemed so alive under the press of my eager fingers. Although there was no pulse that coursed through him, I fancied that his veins breathed beneath my touch, that they gasped in ecstasy as I traced a path along their raised blue exquisiteness, that I had with my devout worship brought him back into the land of the living from the realm of the dead.



Had he been alive though, I would not have been there with him. Had he been alive, I would not have been be so desperately in love. Had he been alive, I would not have felt such an ache for him deep inside the bud. My heart bled for the loss of his life and it beat for his beauty in death.



I straddled him, my hot, moist thighs glistening with excited sweat. I pressed my wet palms to his chest and leaned over him gazing at his static beauty. I could wait no longer to kiss his full, blue lips, which were conveniently slightly parted as if they welcomed the warmth of my kiss. His cold shocked my hot mouth and made me gasp but I did not stop. Our heat and cold fought each other and for the very first time since I began defiling the dead I wanted my still lover to be alive.



I wanted to be in his deathly embrace, to feel his arms wrapped around me. I wanted to feel his icy palms on my ravening skin, to feel his chill whisper in my ear, the ice of his lips on my rigid nipples. I wanted to hear him gasp my name in the dark, to hear him say how good it felt to be so deep inside me, probing my wet heat with his exquisite cock. I wanted him to want me the way I wanted him, to look at me the way I looked at him, to love me the way I loved him, to need me the way I needed him. Hot tears stung my mournful eyes. I knew that my touch, my kiss, my dark passion would never be returned by him. I shivered from the chill of his skin as I caressed him, his rigid torso like that of a cold marble statue. I could see and feel the definition in every muscle as I traced the contours of his perfect biceps, his sculpted shoulders, the hard sinew on his chest, his abdomen and his huge, powerful thighs. His beauty was so breathtaking I felt it was a sin that he was dead. His still perfection made me weak with desire as I flicked my tongue over his nipples, kissed my way down his body and covered him in tender little bites.



I took his death-rigid cock in my hand, forcing it deep inside my dripping pussy. I moved rhythmically back and forth along the length of his dead meat. My mouth fell open in surprise at the voluptuousness of the sensation and in shock at the glacial cold that seeped into my loins. It spread through me, invaded me, infected me like a delicious virus for which there is no cure. It exhilarated and pacified me like an addict's fix.



I moaned into the semi-darkness of the echoing mortuary, lost to the sensations, so oblivious that there could have been someone watching and I would not have noticed them, would not have cared. My desire for him was agonising and blissful. I struggled with his death-frozen arms, pulling them upward, peeling open his death-grip, each finger protesting with a loud crack. I put his corpse-cold touch to my nipples, his caress so frozen that it burned me and I whimpered lamentations and ecstasies as I rubbed his thumb over my engorged, throbbing clit.



I was dizzy, completely absorbed and enslaved by sensation. He was beatific, a heavenly vision - an angel, no, more than a lowly angel - an archangel. I was fucking Gabriel and Michael, fucking saints and martyrs, I was fucking Jesus Christ himself.



I stroked down the length of the fresh autopsy wound on his torso with my fingers; it had not yet been sewn up. I could see the deepest red of the viscera inside him and the frozen-ocean blue of his plump, succulent veins. I could smell the scent of his dead meat. I wanted to fill him up, consume him; I wanted to be inside him the way he was inside me. I could not stop my desperate tongue from plunging into him.



I was frenzied, maddened by the desire to tenderly kiss his heart. My hands seemed to work on pulling apart his rib cage without my consent. Perhaps if I took his heart in my hands and kissed my passion to it, he would come back to life for me. Of course, I knew that he would not come back to life and that I could not resurrect him, but I had to do this. I needed to do this and if I did not I felt that I would go mad. If I did not try this I felt that I would die.



And there it was before me his still heart - passionate red and veined with bruised blue. I kissed it and kissed it and kissed it until I screamed with rage and grief and loss but still tears of unrivalled bliss almost sizzled on my burning skin. I was being reborn and redeemed, I was being purified, absolved by my lover, being saved by him - my dead Messiah.



As I came I shuddered and convulsed; a primal scream filled the unromantic white tiled mortuary and echoed off the walls, came back to me like the melancholy whisper of a ghost. The tears served to dilute my pain, carrying it away in a deluge of bitter grief and my flowing cum was the purge of my sins, the cleansing of my soul.



I lay there on top of him, the heat of my body creating tiny little droplets of condensation that fell from my skin onto his. I was breathing hard into his parted lips, gasping into him as if I could make his dead lungs breath once again.



I held him tightly in my arms as I lay there spent and satisfied, my heart fit to burst under the swell of my love and my grief. My limbs and my womb still twitched as the last vestiges of my devastating climax lingered on. I whispered to him that I loved him, that this soulless mortuary was the chapel in which I worshipped him.



And I knew then that he was the one, the one I would love, the one I would always remember, the one I would be with each time I chose a new dead lover. He was the one that I would always be searching for, among the living and among the dead.



I know that I will go on and on with my adoration, I will continue to shower him with my devotion until the day comes when he is taken from me. I will go on loving him, being saved by him, until another lays claim to him, until he is ripped from my arms and given to the earth's muddy womb to nourish her. I know that even if I live forever, I shall never find another quite like him, but I know that my desperate search will never end.

The vampire has long been a source of morbid fascination, particularly for authors of gothic fiction. Although The Vampyre - Polidori's uninspired pilfering of an unfinished tale by Lord Byron in 1819 - sparked a hugely popular revival in vampire literature that eventually led, in 1897, to Bram Stoker's Dracula (and its subsequent exhaustive film adaptation), vampire fiction can be traced back as far as classical Greece.



Many attempts to explain the vampire myth have been cursed by the difficulty in separating the genuine folklore from the lurid fiction it inspired; Stoker, for example, seems to have added several qualities to the vampire which were subsequently adopted into the literature as genuine - such as the idea that a vampire has no reflection. Some researchers have plumped for psychological interpretations of the vampire, others have suggested rare blood diseases (such as Dr Dolphin's porphyria hypothesis), but all are flawed and inspired more by the fictional vampire than his folkloric archetype.



The 'vampires' exhumed and dispatched throughout eastern and central Europe during the middle ages are not really the subject of this discussion. Paul Barber (1) studies these cases in some detail, and shows how corpses can be expected to appear in the 'vampiric' condition - bloated, with blood at the mouth. Such outbreaks are undoubtedly largely brought about by the plague, which was also a factor behind the witch hunts.



His hypothesis, although admirable, is somewhat strained when he tries to explain the many and varied apotropaic measures, and unconvincing in explaining why such a complex mythology developed originally. I believe that behind the old folklore is a core phenomenon. The vampire, and the apotropaic measures dictated by lore, is clearly essentially pre-Christian. In this article we will explore ancient worldviews and archaic magico-religious practices to gain an astonishing insight into the genesis of the vampire. The key to decoding the vampire, I suggest, is shamanism.



Shamanism



Shamanism is the earliest known form of religion, whose roots can be traced back to the Palaeolithic era, and is the root of all modern magic. The shaman would be held responsible for the fertility of his tribe's land, the welfare of his people and their luck in hunting. He would fall into a trance-like state and travel into the spirit worlds to consult with the powers of nature, seek out healing and divination. He might attain this altered state by the use of drumming, breathing techniques or the ingestion of psychoactive plants.



Such shamanic activities can be found entwined in mythology in which heroes travel to the land of the Gods or to the underworld. The shaman would visit the realm of the dead to consult with the spirits of the ancestors, and it is easy to see how such an out-of-body journey could be confused with a physical visit to the underworld. The shaman, like the vampire, has been to the abode of the deceased and returned.



The acquisition of shamanic abilities was often the result of serious illness, sensory deprivation, near-death experiences and the like. Shamanic initiation rituals typically involved the theme of suffering, death and rebirth. The initiate would often undergo a symbolic death; Frazer (2) cites several examples in which the potential shaman is taken away from the community and left in "the wilderness", the villagers being sometimes shown a dummy and told that it is his body - then, some time later, he returns reborn as a shaman.



During the time away from the village, the initiate searches for inspiration or a vision brought about by fasting or sensory deprivation. Eliade (3) explains that he might experience visions in which he is dismembered by spirits or is fed on blood. Initiatory visions may also involve a journey to the land of the dead, or meeting with dead ancestors. We might say, then, that the shaman has 'experienced' death and symbolically risen from his grave.



Study of the vampire tradition yields clues to the shamanic nature of the vampire; for example, Murgoci wrote that: "People destined to become vampires after death may be able in life to send out their souls, and even their bodies, to wander at cross-roads with reanimated corpses ... it merges into the ordinary witch or wizard, who can meet with other witches or wizards either in the body or as a spirit".



We see here the link between vampires and the out-of-body flight of the shaman. Murgoci also comments on the vagueness of many vampire terms which can vary in meaning from place to place, sometimes only denoting a witch who can project their 'soul'. The occult art of astral projection is still practised today, and is possibly a direct descendent of the ancient shaman's technique that still lingers on amongst the aboriginals of the Americas, Africa and Australasia.



There are reports of people suffering from the hostile attentions of magicians in out-of-body form in the annals of western occultism, as well as amongst the beliefs collected from 'primitive' cultures by western anthropologists. Psychic, magician and founder of the Society of the Inner Light, Dion Fortune, describes how such attacks can feel as though a great weight is upon the victim's chest whilst he lies in his bed, unable to move. She describes one of her own experiences thus: "That night I was afflicted with the most violent nightmares I have ever had in my life, waking from sleep with the most terrible sense of oppression in my chest, as if someone were holding me down, or lying upon me. I saw distinctly the head of Miss L, reducing to the size of an orange, floating in the air at the foot of my bed, and snapping its teeth at me. It was the most malignant thing I have ever seen."



Speaking of vampires, Fortune gives it as her opinion that true vampirism is impossible "unless there is power to project the etheric double". We must remember that in folklore the vampire rarely physically leaves his grave, preferring instead to ply his trade in incorporeal form. Visum et repertum, the report written in 1732 regarding the epidemic of vampirism started by the infamous Arnod Paole, describes a woman's attack by a vampire as follows (translated by Paul Barber): "In addition, the haiduk Jowiza reports that his stepdaughter, by the name of Stanacka, lay down to sleep fifteen days ago, fresh and healthy, but at midnight she started up out of her sleep with a terrible cry, feared and trembling, and complained that she had been throttled by the son of a haiduk by the name of Milloe, who had died nine weeks earlier, whereupon she had experienced a great pain in her chest and become worse hour by hour until finally she died on the third day."



This is a typical account in many ways, as the vampires make their presence felt in dreams, not dissimilar to medieval incubi and succubi.



The varcolac or vrykolakasis is a type of vampire found in Romania and Greece that is thought to cause eclipses. The following quotation from Murgoci clearly demonstrates that what we are seeing is a shaman in action. "They are recognised by their pale faces and dry skin, and by the deep sleep into which they fall when they go to the moon and eat it. When the spirit of the varcolac wants to eat the moon, the man to which the spirit belongs begins to nod, falls into a deep sleep as if he had not slept for weeks, and remains as if dead. If he is roused or moved the sleep becomes eternal, for, when the spirit returns from its journey it cannot find the mouth out of which it came and so cannot go in."



Often vampires are buried with a coin, a bulb of garlic, or some other object in their mouths in order to either stop their spirit returning to the body or to prevent it leaving to afflict the community. Sometimes a vampire's spirit is thought to take the form of a butterfly (the Greek word "psyche" means both "soul" and "butterfly"); also, in Serbia, the word for "hawthorn stake", "glogovac", also denotes a type of butterfly.



The choice of woods from which to fashion the impaling stake is informative. Ash is a popular choice, and here we should note that the shaman-God Odin hung upon the world tree Yggdrasil, which was usually thought of as being an ash tree. Hawthorn is the other most common wood with which to transfix a vampire. Now, when the hawthorn flowers is traditionally the signal to begin the Celtic festival of Beltane (May Day), and thus forms the maypole - another representation of the world tree or Cosmic Axis. Paul Devereux describes this important shamanic concept as follows: "The fundamental cosmology of shamanism consisted of three worlds, the 'middle Earth' of human reality, the upper world of spiritual beings, and the underworld of the shades .... Access to these Otherworlds was by means of a conceptual axis that linked them - a World Tree, a Cosmic Mountain, or actual features that symbolised such an axis, such as a tent pole, smoke rising through a tent's smoke hole, a beam of sunlight, a rope or ladder. By symbolically travelling in trance states along this axis, the Shaman could ascend to heaven or enter deeply into the body of the Earth, the Underworld."



So here we find the connection between souls, butterflies and stakes: the shaman's exteriorised soul ascends and descends along the Cosmic Axis - the stake (whose role, therefore, is to allow the spirit or soul to leave the body, whereupon the vampire's mouth is filled or his head struck off to deny the soul a body to return to).



Another symbol of the Cosmic Axis, the vehicle by which the shaman travels in spirit, is the thread. In Romania it is thought not to be wise to spin by moonlight lest a varcolac should use the thread to ascend to the heavens to eat the moon (varcolaci also eat the sun, and we will return to this point later). Similarly, in India, the vampires known as vetala enter the homes of their victims via a "magic thread".



Just as straight threads facilitate spirit movement, so tangles of threads hinder spirits. A shaman could use knotted threat to trap a man's soul as it wandered during his sleep, and witches would tie up the winds in string to sell to sailors - who would release the winds when needed by untying the knots. Related to the use of tangled threads and nets to trap spirits is the practice of holding vampires in the grave by giving them a fishing net or stocking to unravel, or sprinkling poppy seeds on the grave for them to count. Thorns, poppy seeds and hawthorn flowers were sometimes strewn along the road leading from the cemetery to the town to slow the vampire's progress.



Drinking Blood



Of course, no discussion of vampirism can neglect the subject of blood. Blood was believed by tribal cultures to contain the soul. The blood of a brave enemy or admired animal was drunk to bestow upon the drinker the positive attributes of the vanquished man or creature. The magical significance of blood is considerable, but I will raise only a few points here in the interests of space. For example the blood of a sacrificed animal was often drunk in order to produce inspirational effects, or a communion with the gods. Frazer records that lamb's blood was drunk at the temple of Apollo at Argos, the priestess of the Earth drank bull's blood at Aegira in Achaia, and the Goddess Kali descended upon the priest who drank the blood of a sacrificial goat in India. Every Sunday, the blood of Christ is drunk in churches around the world (in the guise of wine).



Eliade tells us that, amongst the Achomawi in America, the shamans would drink the blood of the sick. The sickness was said to be contained within the blood, and the shaman claims his helping spirits (damogomi) are thirsty so he swallows the blood in return for their guidance.



So we see that the drinking of blood is an integral part of the shaman's activities as well as those of the vampire. It should, I hope, be clear by now how the vampire can be viewed as the result of a misunderstanding of shamanic activity (particularly the malefic actions of the shamans of neighbouring, unfriendly tribes or villages). For a more detailed discussion of the shamanic aspect in vampire lore see an earlier article of mine



The Vampire and the Land



The remarkable story of the vampire, however, does not end there, for his myths hide even deeper meanings. Folklore attributes to the vampire the ability to cause disease in people and livestock and to bring storms and bad weather. This clue will help to delve deep in the vampire's black heart.



The concept of kingship appears to have developed from earlier priesthoods that, in turn, were derived from the figure of the shaman. This evolution meant that kings and chiefs were often thought to have direct contact with the spirits of nature and the gods, and were even held to be divine. Frazer gives many examples of how kings were thus expected to be responsible for the fertility of the land and even the weather.



In the Arthurian myths, the Holy Grail is housed in a castle in the Wasteland. The Fisher King, who rules this barren land, is described as being "wounded through the thighs", ie impotent. Lewis Spence observed that: "If we look a little more closely into the story of the Lame Fisher King and his brother we find plenty of evidence that they are the people of the Underworld well defined in myth. In the first place, the ruler of Hades is frequently lame, and Vulcan, Wayland Smith and even the medieval Satan show this deformity."



We may add, also, that the vampire is invariably viewed as being impotent and so, like the Fisher King, he provides none of the fecundating influence over the land expected of kings. Instead he brings sickness and epidemics, storms, rain and hail; he casts spells on cows and their milk and curses the crops.



The vampire seems to be associated with winter and the deprivations it brings. In Romania, vampires were thought to wander between the feasts of St Andrew at the end of November and St George at the end of April. Nigel Jackson has demonstrated the habit of vampires and werewolves to roam throughout the Twelve Nights of Christmas, taking part in a "ritual contest between the forces of order and chaos at the liminal 'crack in time'" for the fertility of the coming year , and indeed we can trace the vestiges of the welcoming in of spring, and the expulsion of winter.



At the winter solstice, or at spring festivals such as Beltane, rituals would be carried out with the purpose of ensuring the victory of summer over winter. The winter ceremonies were designed to free the young spring sun from the winter Underworld, and May Day festivities saw the final victory as summer was welcomed in and winter cast out.



May Day celebrations often involved bringing a boy or girl decked out in greenery into the village, boys sometimes were called "Green George" (presumably named after the saint who defeated the dragon) and the girls symbolised the "May Queen". Sometimes a personification of the winter spirit is cast out at the same time. According to Frazer, for example, in Bohemia a puppet representing Death was thrown into the water as another puppet of a young woman attached to a tree was brought into the community to signify the coming of summer . The personification of winter was often treated like a suspected vampire, being thrown into streams or rivers, burned or dismembered.



The Seasonal Significance of Blood



Vampire traditions appear to have flourished greatly in countries with Indo-European heritage from Russia, Slavonia, the Balkans and Greece, to India in the east and much of central and western Europe. The tag 'Indo-European' is given to a group of connected languages rather than to any particular ethnic group. The origins of the original Indo-Europeans have long been the subject of heated debate, but it would appear that they hailed from the steppes of Russia.



We can trace certain typical mythological themes that have been imprinted by the Indo-Europeans upon the cultures they met in the sweep across Europe, some of which will be discussed shortly, but now I would like to consider another Indo-European clue.



It seems that the Indo-Europeans recognised two distinct forms of blood. According to Uli Linke: The standard etymologies offer strong evidence for such an interpretation. While contained within the confines of the body, blood was called es-r - 'inside blood'. When the flow of blood penetrated those bodily boundaries to emerge as a visible substance, it became kreu - 'outside blood'."



Kreu had the prevailing meaning of "blood from a wound", "gore" or "raw and bloody flesh", and the root in this sense survives in words such as the Latin 'cruor', Sanskrit 'kravyam', Welsh 'crau' and Cornish 'crow'. This association with bodily harm gives rise to other terms like the Breton 'kriz' (meaning "cruel"), Avestan 'kruma' ("cruel, gruesome, horrid") and the Old English 'hryre' ("decay, death").



Similarly in this semantic field, death was described in terms of the changing quality of the blood - "thickening, hardening" etc. Linke suggests that, in Proto-Indo-European culture, dying becomes semantically equivalent to a process of solidification - a metaphor for the passage of life. This idea of the dead stiffening and hardening in their graves may account for the custom of offering libations of blood, or substitutes made of substances like red ochre, to the dead.



This same language root is also associated with the season of winter: the Old High German 'hroso' means "ice", the Old Norse 'hrydja' indicates rain and snow, to name just two. The term for 'inside blood', es-r, gives rise to words implying the growth of life, and the warmth of spring.



So the season of winter can be shown to be connected semantically with the spilling of blood and the thirst of the dead for it.



Solar Myths of the Indo-Europeans



In the Baltic lands the cold of winter was thought to be caused by evil spirits or the moon (which is thought of as being the realm of the dead in some cultures), and at the winter solstice ceremonies were carried out to free the sun-Goddess Saule from a tower in which she is held prisoner by an evil king. In myth, she is freed by the twin Gods - a common motif in Indo-European solar mythologies.



The Slavs held that the Goddess of the spring sun, Kolyada, is lost on the winter solstice, and a traditional song tells of how the people would seek her out, eventually finding her in the Thunder God's palace. Throughout Indo-European lore, we find the sun having a fraught relationship with the Moon God or the God of rains or storms, often with violent or incestuous overtones.



In Hindu India, the spring Sun or daughter of the Sun is called Surya (since the main god is a God of the Sun called Surya, perhaps, as Janet McCrickard suggests, he was once feminine). Surya marries the moon Gods, the Asvins. In another version of the myth, the Asvins race against the moon to decide who will marry the Sun-maiden - the twins win. McCrickard comments that this "reiterates the theme of the European maze games, in which two men dance or run the maze to liberate the young sun-goddess from winter's grip".



Both twins and horses play a role in vampire lore as well. A horse will hesitate before a vampire's grave if he is led through a graveyard with a young, innocent child riding, and Gottfried says that in Yugoslavia "there is a belief that a vampire can be seen by a twin brother and sister born on a Saturday, who were their drawers and shirts inside out" . The reversal of clothes is possibly part of a belief that in the underworld or spirit realm all things are reversed that may also account for burying possible candidates for becoming vampires upside down.



Vampires, Werewolves and the End of the World



Before progressing further, I should first clarify the relationship of the werewolf to the vampire. It is virtually impossible to separate the two, particularly in Slavonic languages where they share the same name. Montague Summers explained this group of terms: "This word Slovenian volkodlak, vukodlak ,vulkodlak, is a compound form of which the first half means "wolf" whilst the second half has been identified, although the actual relation is not quite demonstrable, with blaka, which in Old Slavonic, New Slavonic and serbian signifies the "hair" of a cow or a horse or a horse's mane."



This is also etymologically identical to the Greek vrykolakas and the Romanian varcolac. Summers goes on to demonstrate the likenesses between the vampire and the werewolf, pointing out that a man who has been a werewolf in life is believed to become a vampire in death, and that in some areas those who eat the meat of a sheep killed by wolves also joins the ranks of the Undead when the die. Then the scholar advises us that: ".... it must be remembered that although the superstitions of the werewolf and the vampire in many respects agree, and in more than one point are indeed precisely similar, there is, especially in Slavonic traditions, a very great distinction, for the Slavonic Vampire is precisely defined and it is the incorrupt and re-animated dead body which returns from its grave, otherwise it cannot be said strictly to be a vampire."



Therefore, according to Summers, the difference is simply that the vampire is dead, whereas the werewolf is still living. However, as we have seen, the death of the vampire was probably merely the symbolic death of shamans and the wolf has associations with death and the underworld too.



Examples of this association include the fact that Etruscan tomb paintings show Hades, Lord of the Netherworld, wearing a wolf's head and skin; also when the Egyptian sun God Ra descended into the Underworld, at the prow of his barque was the wolf-god Upuaut, the Opener of the Ways. Jackson also notes that: "Throughout the ancient North an outlaw, murderer or temple desecrator was termed a 'Vargr'' or wolf, cast out from the tribe or community into the wilderness, and they could be killed without penalty by anyone because they were already 'dead' in symbolic terms."



The shaman's connection with wolves is due to the apparently liminal nature of the animal. Wolves haunt the boundaries of Man's world, slipping into villages from time to time then disappearing into the dark wildernesses, just as the vampire haunts 'the boundaries', and the shaman stands where the spirit worlds impinge upon Man's own world. As Nigel Jackson explains: ".... bands of shamanic warriors identified ecstatically with the wolf as part of their initiatory death mysteries. At one with the Furious Hosts of the Dead they lived and acted outside the normal order of things, characterised by lycanthropic transformations and sinister magical fury."



In the Slavonic terminology we have just seen, we see the clue - it means "wolf-coat" or "wolf-skin", referring to the shaman's habit of donning animal skins to identify with the creature that he 'shape-shifts' into whilst entranced. We see the use of wolf-skins in this account by Baring-Gould: "The Serbs connect the vampire and the werewolf together, and call them by one name vlkoslak. These rage chiefly in the depths of winter: they hold their annual gatherings, and at them divest themselves of their wolf-skins, which they hang on the trees around them. If anyone succeeds in obtaining the skin and burning it, the vlkoslak is thenceforth disenchanted."



So the werewolf is just as 'dead' as the vampire, and identical with regard to the shamanic associations.



Recalling the habit of some vampire-werewolves, such as varcolaci, of ascending to the heavens to eat the sun and moon, it is instructive to consider the solar mythology of Scandinavia and the Germanic lands in which the Sun Goddess Sunna flies across the skies in a chariot pulled by twin horse deities, Aarvak and Alsvidr. The Eddas explain that the Sun is pursued by a huge wolf named Skoll which sometimes catches up with her and tries to eat her (the moon is chased too, by another wolf), thus causing eclipses.



Sunna always manages to escape from the wolf in these cases, but at the end of the world the dark demon will finally devour her. McCrickard describes this cosmic apocalypse: "The rule of the gods is destined to end in the cataclysm called Ragnarok, a great cosmic purification .... Sunna will be overtaken and devoured, turning red first, then black, resulting in a terrible winter (Fimbulvetr) lasting three winters long .... Then wickedness will prevail; nothing will be honoured or respected, sacred things will be despised and humans will live only for violence and greed. Finally Sunna's darkened wheel will vanish and the stars will tumble from their places as the keystone of heaven's arch collapses, and everything vanishes into the abyss."



However, this is just part of a greater cycle as the universe is to be born anew, and Sunna will be reborn as her own daughter to shine once more upon a regenerated Earth.



So we have seen that the myths of the vampire hold many secrets: of the shaman; the drama of the turning year and his role therein; the balance between the forces of darkness and light, chaos and order, death and rebirth on both a personal and universal level.



Death and destruction are not purely evils but a necessary part of the drama of life. Just as a forest fire leaves behind fertile soils for new life to grow when the previous ecosystem was becoming stagnant, so does all life need an occasional clearing of the land of the dead wood in order to continue to thrive. The vampire is part of this great cleansing process, and is thus not to be feared!



References

1.Paul Berber, Vampires, Burial and Death, Yale University Press, 1988

2.Sir J G Frazer, The Golden Bough (Abridged), Macmillan, 1922

3.Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964

4.Agnes Murgoci, The Vampire in Roumania, "Folklore", Vol 37, Part 4, 1926

5.Dion Fortune, Psychic Self-Defence, Rider, 1930

6.Johannes Fluchinger, Visum et Repertum, Belgrade, 1732 (Translated in Barber, op cit)

7.Murgoci, op cit

8.Paul Devereux, Symbolic Landscapes, Gothic Image, 1993

9.Ornella Volta, The Vampire, Tandem, 1965

10.Frazer, op cit

11.Eliade, op cit

12.Liam Rogers, The Vampire as Shaman, "The Ley Hunter", No 119, 1993

13.Frazer, op citBE> 14.Lewis Spence, The Mysteries of Britain, Senate, 1994 (original date unknown)

15.Nigel Jackson, Christmas as you never knew it, "The Ley Hunter", No 120, 1994

16.Frazer, op cit

17.Uli Linke, Blood as Metaphor in Proto-Indo-European, "Journal of Indo-European Studies", Vol 13, 1985

18.Janet McCrickard, Eclipse of the Sun, Gothic Image, 1990

19.Robert S Gottfried, The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe, Free Press, 1983

20.Montague Summers, The Vampire: his Kith and Kin, Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1928

21.Nigel Jackson, Call of the Horned Piper, Capall Bann, 1994

22.Ibid

23.Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves, Smith Elder, 1865

24.McCrickard, op cit.

Paul heard the throb of the music coming from inside the Death Row club. It was like a heartbeat, strong, steady, exciting.



He sat alone in the diner across the street, his nose buried in a well-worn book. His copy of Bloody Love by Lily Transyl was already tattered, the spine rubbed and cracked, the cover creased, and some pages dog-eared from folding them over to keep his place.



Certain paragraphs in the book had been marked with luminous yellow highlighter pen. But now, after reading Bloody Love so many times, Paul barely needed to consult the text any more - he could recite page after page without faltering and swore that he knew the entire book by heart. And he was sure that Lily Transyl could read his mind, he was sure that Lily had written Bloody Love just for him. It was the book he had always wanted, the book he would have loved to write and the book that he would treasure forever. And tonight, he would do what he'd always wanted to do, inspired by Lily's words, sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was telling him to carry out his will.



Paul's body seemed to vibrate with excitement, anticipation tightening each muscle with deliciously painful little knots.



God, please let her be there. Please let her be there. I need this.



He waited patiently.



Each time the music swelled as the front door of the club was opened, Paul would feel a shock of electricity running through him as he searched the throng of bodies for her.



She called herself Belladonna.



He tapped his foot rapidly on the floor, on edge with anticipation, as he read and chewed on his black-lacquered thumb nail. He tutted at himself, worried in case a chip of nail polish was wedged in his teeth. It would absolutely ruin the look of his custom fangs if they were covered in flakes of bitten off nail varnish.



Paul's heart almost shot into his throat as he saw her curvaceous, killer body strut out into the night air as if she owned it, as if the very street she walked on belonged to her.



Dozens of people outside spoke to her as she passed by. She said nothing, but threw them a smile and carried on her way down the street.



Her skin glowed in the moonlight and the humid night air made her body shimmer with a touch of sweat. Her clothes, black shining rubber, looked fluid. Paul imagined smearing black liquid latex over her body, smoothing his hands over her curves, the swell of her breasts and the tight buds of her nipples.



"Gothic flesh," he whispered, and licked his lips.



As he stepped out into the night he began to perspire profusely, his clothes wet through in moments. He trembled as adrenaline raced through his system.



Tonight's the night.



Tonight they will come.



Belladonna took the same route from the club every time. She was always alone. Paul had often wondered why she was always on her own - such a stunning, fuckable chick would surely have her pick of men or women, or both.



He picked up his pace as she reached the dark alley she always took. Paul had the notion that she was inviting an attacker, practically goading him to do his worst.



He was mesmerized by her form, bathed in alternate flashing red and darkness from a buzzing neon sign that read Live Sex! and entranced by the gentle sway of her ample ass as she sashayed down the alley. He imagined taking a bite out of it as if it were a huge, fleshy peach, and instead of sweet, sticky juices running over his face, there would be the piquant taste of her blood.



The degradation of his surrounding aroused him - he knew what went on in this alley, day and night. Blood crushed into his cock and he adjusted himself as his skin-tight leather jeans became uncomfortable.



He inhaled deeply and smelled the scent of piss, old and new, and his eyes rolled as the thick soles of his black boots squelched onto a spent condom. A discarded hypodermic smashed beneath his feet and he wondered if there was death in the blood residue on the needle.



He looked down a dark side street, just off the rancid alley and saw bodies writhing together among piles of festering trash. His lip curled in disgust but all the while his cock grew steadily harder.



Belladonna half-turned her head and slowed her pace - she knew somebody was following her, somebody who was breathing heavily, breath baited in anticipation of something. She rolled her eyes.



Paul was sure she was allowing him to catch up with her after he'd been distracted by the side show in the garbage.



Ever-so-slowly, she turned around.



Paul stumbled backward against the slick alley wall as his knees buckled and all the strength drained out of his body.



Her eyes were wild, the irises black and shining. But there was something behind her eyes, something feral, something ancient, that shone, iridescent like illuminated amber - the glint in a cat's eyes catching the light.



She grinned at him as she reached out and grabbed him by the throat, effortlessly raised him clear off the ground and slammed him into the wall. As his mouth opened in a vain attempt to scream, she could see his custom fangs glistening with his excited saliva.



As she spoke, he could see the gleaming white tips of two pin-sharp incisors.



"What you gonna do, badass, bite me?"



Paul tried to scream but she was squeezing the air from his throat, crushing his larynx and his vocal cords.



"All you fucking wannabe vampires - you're giving us a bad rep."



The vampire stabbed her sharpened black nails into the flesh of his throat, tearing away skin and flesh and fat. She put her mouth to the pissing red wound and drank.



Belladonna rubbed his cock through his leathers as she fed on him, and laughed as he reached out, desperately trying to grab her right tit. His body spasmed then stiffened in the throes of orgasm even though he knew he was dying.



Paul's moans of pain and pleasure were an eerie gargle that rushed from the gaping hole in his throat.



"Damn, you're fuckin' hardcore!"



Belladonna laughed uproariously at him, her face painted with an expression that was close to admiration. She shook her head, grinning as she hooked two fingers into his mouth and under his tongue and yanked down hard.



She let go of him and his shocked body slid down the wall and landed on the piss-stinking alley floor.



As the vampire looked at her latest victim, she felt a fleeting stab of pity for him - an old habit she had not quite lost. He was so young and she wondered, momentarily, what he was like, what he did for a living, if he had a lover who would mourn him.



Then she spat on him. He was meat. Cattle to be herded for her sustenance. He was no more to her than a cheeseburger was to him. Food. Nothing more.



She walked away without a backward glance at the sack of skin-covered bones she left behind. He was all but dead now, drained of blood, no more than a pile of bones and ripped flesh.



The poetic irony of his demise did not escape him as death began to shroud him.



He had spent his whole life longing for his belief, his strongest faith, to be proven beyond any doubt - that vampires - real vampires, immortal vampires - existed.



His plan to draw himself to the attention of a real vampire was that if he drank human blood, slept in a coffin, lived a nocturnal existence, and showed dedication and respect for such a life, that his wish for immortality would be granted by them.



Paul smiled at the cutting irony of his murder, but the sensation didn't feel right. He reached up a shaking hand and touched his face; his brow knotted as he felt for his chin, only to touch his upper teeth and feel his tongue lying against his opened throat. Belladonna had ripped off his lower jaw and now all that hung from his face were strips of torn skin and ragged flesh. He choked out a gargled laugh, an unnatural sound that made his own skin crawl. The sound was wet sucking and dry blowing as blood and air escaped straight from his lungs and our through the hole in his neck, and out into the night air.



I did it. I did it! I'm gonna be a real vampire now . I'm gonna live forever.



Paul reached out and grabbed hold of his discarded jaw bone. He was certain, that if he held it in place before he died, it would miraculously reattach itself and be good as new when he woke to his new life as an immortal vampire.



The last drop of life ran out from the torn artery in Paul's neck; he slumped, dead, face down in a pile of human shit. The last thing he heard was the rattle of his jaw bone hitting the ground beside him.

How does it feel to know you are all you will ever be?



How does it feel?



Does it eat you up inside?



Does it sting?



Does it feel like a kick in the balls every time you think about it?



Do you lie awake at night and wonder when your tenuous grip is going to fail you and everything slips away...again?



Does it pray on your mind that your reach will always exceed your grasp?



Clutch at straws.



Flail wildly.



Quicksand dance.



Do you want to scream, tear your hair out, pound the wall with your fist when you dwell on the fact that you cannot even rise to your own lowly expectations?



Knuckles on plaster.



Slide down the wall with a wet face.



Does it chip away at that hard exterior, stab a jagged beak into your soft meat underneath the shell, when you sit alone and ponder all those hopes and dreams and wishes upon stars that will never be granted?



I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight.



Please.



Please.



Please?



Does it feel like salt in an open wound when you realise that you are not the one, you are not blessed or charmed or smiled upon by Gods or other assorted deities?



This is it.



Is that all there is?



Fade to black.



Does your rage hammer in your temples, mercilessly pound the back of your eyes with your crushing red torrent, throb incessantly in the veins in your neck, because you know what you are?



How does it feel to know that you are all you will ever be?



Does it burn a hole in the pit of your gut knowing that your raging thirst will never be quenched?



You can feel it there, eating.



Gnawing.



Chewing.



Digesting.



In your reflective, solitary moments does it does it trouble you that your desire, your lust, your needs will never be met, you will never be satisfied?



Never be sated.



Never be validated.



Never be.



Never.



How does it feel to know that in this world, outside your own door, out there you mean nothing?



How does it feel to be insignificant?



How does it feel to know if you died today you would leave no mark?



How does it feel, knowing that the world wouldn't be aware that you ever existed and even if it did it wouldn't care?



How does it feel to be nothing?



Black hole.



How does it feel to be nobody?



Zero



How does it feel to not even exist?



I was not here.



How does it feel to mean little more in the grand scheme of things than a figment of your own imagination?



How does it feel to be a flat, one-dimensional character on a page, drawn with a thin, scratchy nib in black ink in a series of keen lines?



How does it feel to be a stick figure?



No depth.



No texture.



No colour.



Transparent and cold.



Shallow.



Hollow.



Empty.



How does it feel to know you are all you will ever be?

I want to be under your skin, crawl through your flesh, slide down the length of your veins and tease the walls of your arteries with my tongue. I want our bones to calcify and fuse, our sinew to knot together and our souls to merge.



I want to swim in the tide that is your loving blood, to drink the unborn life that slumbers in your seed, see me through your eyes and see what you see in me.



I want to taste myself on your tongue, feel my wetness rubbed between your fingers and my juices slicken your lips. I want to feel the warm mound of my breast in your hand, know how you feel when you are inside my heat and the exquisite spasming of my loins on your erupting manhood. I want to feel your fingers and your lips and your tongue work their magic on me.



I want to feel the beating of your heart, to kiss it with my parched lips, feel it quiver beneath my touch and see it swell under the weight of the passion you hold for me inside. I want to bite down on the sinew of your life, consume the loving muscle that is mine and mine alone. I want to drink from your bleeding heart the love that you hold for me, and feast upon the dark desires which reside there.



I want to feel what you feel as I take your length in my mouth, slicken you with my hot, running saliva. I want to feel it as you feel it when I run my ravenous tongue around the tip of your engorged cock. I want to feel the crushing waves of ecstasy as you thrust down my throat. I want to know what it feels like when you come screaming my name and pulling hard on my hair, what it's like to bask in the afterglow of your devastating climax.



I want to feel the pain I give you as I cut through your perfect skin with my keen, flashing blade. I want to feel what you feel as your rosy rush escapes from under your skin, feel it as I suck on your torn flesh and feel the rush of your adrenaline as it courses through your veins.



I want to feel the raking scratch of my nails as I drag them down your back. I want to feel the divine agony of my bite at your throat. I want to hear myself gasping your name in your ear, feel the tightening grip of my thighs around you as I force you deeper and deeper.



I want to feel the blows of my violence as you feel them, the sting of my sarcasm, the force of my wrath, the joy in my wit and the delight in your laughter.



I want to know how it feels to hold me, to entwine your fingers with my hair, caress my face, to know my pain as you see it and feel it and to hear me bleed emotion from my dark eyes.



I need to know how it feels to desire me, to want me, to need me and to own me. I need to know how it feels to possess me and reject me, to love me and to hate me.



I want to know what it feels like when you feel.



I want to be inside you.