Network Spotlights
For the Full Multimedia Experience, visit:
Confused about how to navigate this site? Click on the red button below and go straight to the
Orientation Station
Photos
Badge
Birthdays
Top Content
Vampire Theories - Atlantans to Judas
Science Denial
In 2005, Costas Efthimiou, a physics professor from University of Central Florida whose work attempt to debunk pseudoscientific ideas, such as vampires and zombies, made the headline by claiming that vampires are a mathematical impossibility.
To reach such a conclusion, he used the following assumptions: in Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600. A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.
If mortality rates were taken into consideration, the population would disappear much faster. Even an unrealistically high reproduction rate couldn't counteract this effect.
"In the long run, humans cannot survive under these conditions, even if our population were doubling each month," Efthimiou said. "And doubling is clearly way beyond the human capacity of reproduction."
However, not all vampire legends support the belief that vampire victims become vampires and there is no further evidence that such a law would follow a geometric progression. Last but not least, there are many other ways for vampires to survive without proliferating
Vampire Theories-Aliens
The Atlantans, in their quest to prolong life, have conducted biological and genetic experiments which end result was a new human that could live for centuries but had to drink the blood of humans in order to survive.
Vampires have escaped the Great Flood as the Atlantans, not satisfied with the results, had buried them in an underground crypt.
Lilith and Caine/Cain
Lilith, according to Hebrew Jewish texts, was the first woman created for Adam.
After his failure, she was allowed to stay out on her own, as a witch, mother of all demons. She was allowed to kill infants up until their naming day (7 days for girls and 8 days for boys), unless they had a charm over their sleeping place with the names of the angels on them. Then, she promised, she would not kill them.
Cain was the firstborn son of Adam and Eve. He was banished, with a mark, from the land of his parents because he killed his brother in a jealous rage. Cain wandered until he found Lilith by the Red Sea. She took him in and showed him the power of blood.
From Cain and Lilith came a host of demons and vampires in the vague myths. Cain is mentioned in the Bible as having a number of legitimate children, with an unnamed woman/ wife. Some of his children are even highly regarded, as they are listed with their inventions, such as the harp and metal working. But, past Gen. 4:26 there is no more mention of Cain's children or his line. Cain himself is referred to only twice more, in the New Testament, as "the prototype of the wicked man."
From what there is presented in the Bible, there is little to go on with the myth of Cain and Lilith. Lilith herself appears only in Jewish apocrypha texts-- she is in neither the Torah or the Bible.
Surprisingly, Cain and Lilith’s children resurfaced 1000 years later in the epic poem Beowulf, and with much more mention than he ever receives in the Bible. Beowulf was first written down and preserved by monks-- who were the only literate people in their time. The tale originated somewhere in the 600's in England, and was thought to have been written down at a later time
...Till the monster stirred, that demon, that fiend,
Grendel, who haunted the moors, the wild
Marshes, and made his home in a hell
Not hell but earth. He was spawned in that slime,
Conceived by a pair of those monsters born
Of Cain, murderous creatures banished
By God, punished forever for the crime
Of Abel's death. The Almighty drove
Those demons out, and their exile was bitter,
Shut away from men; they split
Into a thousand forms of evil-- spirits
And fiends, goblins, monsters, giants,
A brood forever opposing the Lord's
Will, and again and again defeated.
(Ll. 101-114)
...Cain had killed his only
Brother, slain his father's son
With an angry sword, God drove him off,
Outlawed him to the dry and barren desert,
And branded him with a murder's mark. And he bore
A race of fiends accursed like their father...
(Ll. 1261-1266)
Judas Iscariot
A somewhat obscure myth, folklore holds that vampires originated with Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Christ for 30 pieces of silver. When Judas tried to return the silver and could not, he cast it away as something hateful to himself. Because Judas had betrayed Christ to the Romans, he and his family were cursed.
The Bible holds that Judas committed suicide because of his guilt; suicides in vampire folklore were very likely to come back as vampires, so this may have helped contribute to the belief that vampires originated with Judas.
Also, vampires descended from Judas were usually identifiable by their red hair. This probably points to the origin of the myth among the Greeks, as they believed red hair to be a mark of vampirism. Among the dark Greek, red-hair would certainly seem strange, but among people farther north, closer to the Scandinavian countries which feature such hair, there would be little to no stigma attached to it.
The Vampire as a Scapegoat
Vampirism has been described as "a corpse that comes to the attention of the populace in times of crisis.". Those times of crisis are mostly times of death and suffering such a wars and worse, epidemics.
Explanation for the unusual condition of the exhumed corpse and the night attacks.
Folkloric vampirism has typically been associated with a series of deaths due to unindentifiable or mysterious illnesses, usually within the same family or the same small community. The "epidemic pattern" is obvious in the classical cases of Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole, and even more so in the case of Mercy Brown and in the vampire beliefs of New England generally, where a specific disease, plague, tuberculosis, was associated with outbreaks of vampirism.
Following the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century the plague continued to devastate Western Europe until the eighteenth century. Then is receded to the Eastern European lands, and until the mid-nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire suffered cruelly from the effects of this dread disease.
The violence of this disease was such that the sick communicated it to the healthy who came near them, just as a fire catches anything dry or oily near it. And it went even further. To speak to or go near the sick brought the infection and a common death to the living; and moreover to touch the clothes or anything else the sick person had touched or wore gave the disease to the person touching.
In his book, De masticatione mortuorum in tumulis (1725), Michaël Ranft makes a first attempt to explain folk's belief in vampires in a natural way. He gives the following explanation when talking about the case of Peter Plogojowitz:
"This brave man perished by a sudden or violent death. This death, whatever it is, can provoke in the survivors the visions they had after his death. Sudden death gives rise to inquietude in the familiar circle. Inquietude has sorrow as a companion. Sorrow brings melancholy. Melancholy engenders restless nights and tormenting dreams. These dreams enfeeble body and spirit until illness overcomes and, eventually, death."
Once it was established that dead bodies– as opposed to spirits of the dead– were the cause of death, the vampire became the icon for the plague. The Church introduced another element of fear with vampires rising from the bodies of suicide victims, criminals, or evil sorcerers, though in some cases an initial vampire thus "born of sin" could pass his vampirism onto his innocent victims.
As personification of Evil and bringers of Death, vampires became the absolute scapegoat to explain the unexplainable.
A Scapegoat for Death in the Dark Ages
The european vampire who appeared in Europe during the dark ages was an explanation for Death. A village suffered from a disease or death or, as is more often the case, a series of deaths. These events were mysterious, in the sense that there were no physical causes known to the villagers that could be offered to account for them.
Often times such deaths were attributed to vampires, which were corpses that came to the victims at night, attacking them, often times sucking their blood to the point of death. The way to stop the vampire was to either use various precautions to prevent it from entering the home, or to actually destroy the vampire itself. This was usually done by digging up graves, searching for corpses that showed signs of being a vampire. Although these signs varied, they usually included characteristics indicating consumption of blood and/or lack of decay (i.e. red lips, flushed cheeks, bloated figures, etc.).
A vampire corpse, once identified was disposed of in a certain prescribed way. Frequent methods used were decapitation of the corpse, removal of its heart, impaling of the heart with a special sharp object, cremation, or some combination of these acts. By these methods, the vampire was found and eliminated. Attributing the deaths to a vampire is the only thing explaining the fatalities, since there was no known physical cause at the time. By doing this, the villagers could take a course of action to stop the deaths.
If vampires did not exist, nothing would explain these deaths and people would feel helpless, since they would not have known what to do. In other words, by attributing a cause to the terrible event, a course of action could be taken to make things better. In this case, the vampire is that cause, or a scapegoat for the deaths. It is feared because of this, yet steps can be taken to destroy the vampire, and stop the deaths. Thus, in the minds of the Slavs, the vampire was an anxiety reliever since it was a scapegoat for a fearful event, which could be destroyed.
Today, we have medical science to explain diseases and epidemics, and this function of the vampire is gone. We may still be afraid of having a disease, but now we turn to a doctor, not a vampire, to explain. Thus, although the image of the vampire among the Slavs remains with us, there is no room for its previous social role in our society.
Consequently, we can conclude that the pre-existing social role of the vampire image was that of a scapegoat. With this established, we are ready to investigate the role of the vampire in today's society, and determine upon our findings whether a shift in its social role did take place, and if so, to explain the causes of that transformation.
Often times such deaths were attributed to vampires, which were corpses that came to the victims at night, attacking them, often times sucking their blood to the point of death. The way to stop the vampire was to either use various precautions to prevent it from entering the home, or to actually destroy the vampire itself. This was usually done by digging up graves, searching for corpses that showed signs of being a vampire. Although these signs varied, they usually included characteristics indicating consumption of blood and/or lack of decay (i.e. red lips, flushed cheeks, bloated figures, etc.).
A vampire corpse, once identified was disposed of in a certain prescribed way. Frequent methods used were decapitation of the corpse, removal of its heart, impaling of the heart with a special sharp object, cremation, or some combination of these acts. By these methods, the vampire was found and eliminated. Attributing the deaths to a vampire is the only thing explaining the fatalities, since there was no known physical cause at the time. By doing this, the villagers could take a course of action to stop the deaths.
If vampires did not exist, nothing would explain these deaths and people would feel helpless, since they would not have known what to do. In other words, by attributing a cause to the terrible event, a course of action could be taken to make things better. In this case, the vampire is that cause, or a scapegoat for the deaths. It is feared because of this, yet steps can be taken to destroy the vampire, and stop the deaths. Thus, in the minds of the Slavs, the vampire was an anxiety reliever since it was a scapegoat for a fearful event, which could be destroyed.
Today, we have medical science to explain diseases and epidemics, and this function of the vampire is gone. We may still be afraid of having a disease, but now we turn to a doctor, not a vampire, to explain. Thus, although the image of the vampire among the Slavs remains with us, there is no room for its previous social role in our society.
Consequently, we can conclude that the pre-existing social role of the vampire image was that of a scapegoat. With this established, we are ready to investigate the role of the vampire in today's society, and determine upon our findings whether a shift in its social role did take place, and if so, to explain the causes of that transformation.
The Antechrist
Another interesting origin of the vampire is the negative image of the Christ. A series of oppositions can be easily described:
Blood
Blood represents life in the Christian religion and the Eucharestia is the transformation of wine into blood, bread into flesh. The vampire is the total negation of all the symbol of the Eucharist as Dracula sucks the blood that Jesus is giving away. More interesting is the process of contamination by which the Vampire is dividing himself into new Vampires by having them drunk his own dark blood.
Eternity
As the Christ lives in Eternity, the vampire is dealing time against blood. The vampire is moving in an endless time, as the Christ will come back at the end of times
Give / Take
Christ is the source, an energy that radiates, and a supernovae. Dracula is the end, a place where nothing comes out, and a black hole. Christ gives his life to save humanity as Dracula takes the other’s lifes to save him from returning to dust.
The Passion
Both are lying on wood before they die – Christ against a cross and Dracula in the wooden coffin. The nails of the cross correspond to the fangs of the vampire. Christ dies loosing his blood from the wounds caused by the nails on the Golgotha as Dracula sucks the blood with his fangs causing his victim’s death for his own survival.
Saints and martyrs are sometimes bearing the stigmata from the Christ as the victims of the vampires are marked by the two little holes from the kiss of the vampire.
The hammer / the spear / the stake
There is a parallel between the roman soldier that put his spear into Jesus’ chest and the killing of the vampire through the perforation of his heart with a stake. On one hand Christ lives the divine escaping from his wound and on the other hand Dracula is destroyed by the world that brutally invades his body.
The dove / the moon
To the holy couple sun/dove correspond the satanic couple moon/bat.
Blood
Blood represents life in the Christian religion and the Eucharestia is the transformation of wine into blood, bread into flesh. The vampire is the total negation of all the symbol of the Eucharist as Dracula sucks the blood that Jesus is giving away. More interesting is the process of contamination by which the Vampire is dividing himself into new Vampires by having them drunk his own dark blood.
Eternity
As the Christ lives in Eternity, the vampire is dealing time against blood. The vampire is moving in an endless time, as the Christ will come back at the end of times
Give / Take
Christ is the source, an energy that radiates, and a supernovae. Dracula is the end, a place where nothing comes out, and a black hole. Christ gives his life to save humanity as Dracula takes the other’s lifes to save him from returning to dust.
The Passion
Both are lying on wood before they die – Christ against a cross and Dracula in the wooden coffin. The nails of the cross correspond to the fangs of the vampire. Christ dies loosing his blood from the wounds caused by the nails on the Golgotha as Dracula sucks the blood with his fangs causing his victim’s death for his own survival.
Saints and martyrs are sometimes bearing the stigmata from the Christ as the victims of the vampires are marked by the two little holes from the kiss of the vampire.
The hammer / the spear / the stake
There is a parallel between the roman soldier that put his spear into Jesus’ chest and the killing of the vampire through the perforation of his heart with a stake. On one hand Christ lives the divine escaping from his wound and on the other hand Dracula is destroyed by the world that brutally invades his body.
The dove / the moon
To the holy couple sun/dove correspond the satanic couple moon/bat.
Sex and the Vampire
Of all the monsters of fiction, the only one primaly associated with sex is the vampire
Nonetheless, the vampire of folklore was not a sexually attractive figure; he was a dead man who fed on blood, a monster about as attractive as a zombie. Bram Stoker changed all that with his novel, Dracula.
Stoker used the vampire as a metaphor for the Victorian view of sex as innately dangerous. In Dracula, sex with the Count transformed women into seductive sirens and horrific baby killers – the opposite of the Victorian ideal of chaste and nurturing womanhood. Originally, only female vampires were especially beautiful. Lamias and other such spirit-like vampires were always ugly in their true form, but had the ability to shift their appearance to that of a beautiful maiden, in order to lure men to them.
With the coming of the Victorian age, both the male and female vampire became beautiful and both exhibited a sexual appetite, though both vampire and vampiress retained the beauty as only a facade. The penetration of skin by sharp canine teeth easily evokes both violence and eroticism. In anger or distress the vampire still revealed its ugly, more corpse-like side.
In the modern psyche, women have unconsciously adopted vampires as an archetype for the dangerous male. When a woman has sex with a mortal man, she risks pregnancy and social shame. When she has sex with a vampire, she risks actual death. In both cases, women take the chance in trusting men who may not be trustworthy. In the vampire, so many male attributes are exaggerated, from physical strength to sexuality.
Today our vampires still retain those traits, played up even more. But still the vampire can show that evil, ugly side. The vampire, while always a nuisance and a evil to society, has grown even more callous in his vanity, perhaps to show the evil associated with pride and absolute power.
Nonetheless, the vampire of folklore was not a sexually attractive figure; he was a dead man who fed on blood, a monster about as attractive as a zombie. Bram Stoker changed all that with his novel, Dracula.
Stoker used the vampire as a metaphor for the Victorian view of sex as innately dangerous. In Dracula, sex with the Count transformed women into seductive sirens and horrific baby killers – the opposite of the Victorian ideal of chaste and nurturing womanhood. Originally, only female vampires were especially beautiful. Lamias and other such spirit-like vampires were always ugly in their true form, but had the ability to shift their appearance to that of a beautiful maiden, in order to lure men to them.
With the coming of the Victorian age, both the male and female vampire became beautiful and both exhibited a sexual appetite, though both vampire and vampiress retained the beauty as only a facade. The penetration of skin by sharp canine teeth easily evokes both violence and eroticism. In anger or distress the vampire still revealed its ugly, more corpse-like side.
In the modern psyche, women have unconsciously adopted vampires as an archetype for the dangerous male. When a woman has sex with a mortal man, she risks pregnancy and social shame. When she has sex with a vampire, she risks actual death. In both cases, women take the chance in trusting men who may not be trustworthy. In the vampire, so many male attributes are exaggerated, from physical strength to sexuality.
Today our vampires still retain those traits, played up even more. But still the vampire can show that evil, ugly side. The vampire, while always a nuisance and a evil to society, has grown even more callous in his vanity, perhaps to show the evil associated with pride and absolute power.
The Shadow
Freud and Jung, the major thinkers of our time, have based their work on the book from Stocker which was published in 1897. Count Dracula posed many threats to Victorian social, moral and political values: he changes virtuous women into beasts with ravenous sexual appetites; he is a foreigner who invades England and threatens English book and superiority; he is the embodiment of evil that can only be destroyed by reasserting the beliefs of traditional Christianity in an increasingly skeptical and secular age; he represents the fear of regression, a reversal of evolution, a return to our more primal animal state.
Let us examine how the main school have analysed the emergence of the vampire as a central figure of human societies.
According to psychoanalysis and the Freudian school, any dreams about vampires or other forms of the undead, are a metaphor for the fascination and fear mankind has with the concepts of death and the dead
"All human experiences of morbid dread signify the presence of repressed sexual and aggressive wishes, and in vampirism we see these repressed wishes becoming plainly visible."
The first thing a Freudian will usually comment on in regards to a vampire story is how they are a metaphor for infantile and perverse sexuality.
For Freudian scholars, Dracula, is a combination of all the traditional myths of the vampire merged with what they consider to be the epitome of Freud's Oedipal complex concept. A Freudian will look at the sexuality combined with brutality of the feeding off of the living's blood and say it is suggestive a child's interpretation of watching his parents copulate for the first time.
Other topics of importance are how death coexists with the longing for immortality, showing man's love-hate relationship with both concepts, how greed, sadism, and aggression are intermingled with desire and a compulsion to possess and express said desire, and the consistent use of metaphor for virginity, innocence, and vulnerability and the overlapping of images of guilt.
For Jungians, the fact that the Vampire developed in nearly every culture in the world at the same time without contact amongst developing humans is both proof of the vampire as the archetype ("an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective experience"), but also proof of Jung's concept on the Unconscious Collective.
The concept of vampires and vampirism indicated that vampires are not mere stories or explanations created by personal experience or folk tales, but are in fact a species-wide psychological structure that all humans share in primitive thought
The Jungian interpretation of the vampire assumes that all humans have a vampire inside of them. What this means is that Jungian believe vampires are an intuitive concept to the human psyche. Something we understand in some way, shape or form, from the moment we exist into this world. Vampires reflect significant issues universal to all human life.
For Jung himself, the vampire was the representation of a psychological aspect he called, "the shadow." The Shadow is made of aspects of one's self that the conscious mind and ego were unable to recognize. The shadow was primarily negative concepts, such as repressed thoughts and desires, out anti-social impulses, morally questionable judgment, childlike fantasies, and other traits we normally feel shame for expressing or thinking.
Jung himself describes this shadow self as:
"The Shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real."
Jung interpreted the vampire as an unconscious complex that had the ability to taken over the conscious mind by means of "enchanting" the psyche or akin to what we might label a spell.
The vampire became a key fixture in society according to Jungians, because it became a mental scapegoat of sorts. It allowed humanity to project the negative aspects of ourselves onto something we could both openly revile and admire without actually acting out the desires and impulses ourselves. The vampire acts in the way humanity wishes it could, but can not due to social restraints.
Jung also added that there are other traits the vampire possesses, such as auto-erotic, and narcissistic traits, as well as a personality that is predatory, anti-social, and parasitic.
Let us examine how the main school have analysed the emergence of the vampire as a central figure of human societies.
According to psychoanalysis and the Freudian school, any dreams about vampires or other forms of the undead, are a metaphor for the fascination and fear mankind has with the concepts of death and the dead
"All human experiences of morbid dread signify the presence of repressed sexual and aggressive wishes, and in vampirism we see these repressed wishes becoming plainly visible."
The first thing a Freudian will usually comment on in regards to a vampire story is how they are a metaphor for infantile and perverse sexuality.
For Freudian scholars, Dracula, is a combination of all the traditional myths of the vampire merged with what they consider to be the epitome of Freud's Oedipal complex concept. A Freudian will look at the sexuality combined with brutality of the feeding off of the living's blood and say it is suggestive a child's interpretation of watching his parents copulate for the first time.
Other topics of importance are how death coexists with the longing for immortality, showing man's love-hate relationship with both concepts, how greed, sadism, and aggression are intermingled with desire and a compulsion to possess and express said desire, and the consistent use of metaphor for virginity, innocence, and vulnerability and the overlapping of images of guilt.
For Jungians, the fact that the Vampire developed in nearly every culture in the world at the same time without contact amongst developing humans is both proof of the vampire as the archetype ("an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective experience"), but also proof of Jung's concept on the Unconscious Collective.
The concept of vampires and vampirism indicated that vampires are not mere stories or explanations created by personal experience or folk tales, but are in fact a species-wide psychological structure that all humans share in primitive thought
The Jungian interpretation of the vampire assumes that all humans have a vampire inside of them. What this means is that Jungian believe vampires are an intuitive concept to the human psyche. Something we understand in some way, shape or form, from the moment we exist into this world. Vampires reflect significant issues universal to all human life.
For Jung himself, the vampire was the representation of a psychological aspect he called, "the shadow." The Shadow is made of aspects of one's self that the conscious mind and ego were unable to recognize. The shadow was primarily negative concepts, such as repressed thoughts and desires, out anti-social impulses, morally questionable judgment, childlike fantasies, and other traits we normally feel shame for expressing or thinking.
Jung himself describes this shadow self as:
"The Shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real."
Jung interpreted the vampire as an unconscious complex that had the ability to taken over the conscious mind by means of "enchanting" the psyche or akin to what we might label a spell.
The vampire became a key fixture in society according to Jungians, because it became a mental scapegoat of sorts. It allowed humanity to project the negative aspects of ourselves onto something we could both openly revile and admire without actually acting out the desires and impulses ourselves. The vampire acts in the way humanity wishes it could, but can not due to social restraints.
Jung also added that there are other traits the vampire possesses, such as auto-erotic, and narcissistic traits, as well as a personality that is predatory, anti-social, and parasitic.
A Model for the Masses
People are regularly asked what they found so appealing about the vampire. The answers reveal incredible diversity. Qualities mentioned include: eroticism, immortality, power, victimization, beauty, elegance, romanticism, the supernatural, mystery, and the unknown.
Of these, three were mentioned most often, the first of which was sexual attraction. People found the biting and blood-sucking element of the vampire extremely sexual. They also found the fact that vampires are immortal quite appealing. The third major appeal of the vampire is power. The vampire's dominance in the biting of its victim was especially highlighted in this category. All three of these appeals are supported with extensive testimony by vampire fans.
Of these, three were mentioned most often, the first of which was sexual attraction. People found the biting and blood-sucking element of the vampire extremely sexual. They also found the fact that vampires are immortal quite appealing. The third major appeal of the vampire is power. The vampire's dominance in the biting of its victim was especially highlighted in this category. All three of these appeals are supported with extensive testimony by vampire fans.
With its original association with evil, disease, and death, it is surprising that this creature of the dark has garnered the appeal it has in American culture today. Indeed, our fascination with something that was once feared seems to indicate that the vampire's function in today's society is fundamentally different from that which it was originally.
Many scholars have attempted to explain the vampire's appeal in psychological terms literary scholar James Twitchell claims that psychoanalytically speaking, the vampire image is so popular because it represents a "complete condensation of problems and resolutions of preadolescence." He claims that children must deal with first time feelings of sexual energy and hostility, and that the vampire image acts out these situations, through its blood sucking and preying on the living.
Kirk J. Schneider, a faculty member of the California School of Professional Psychology, offers a vastly different explanation. He maintains that the vampire figure, specifically Dracula, is appealing because it is horrifying. Schneider states that true horror is when we are unexpectedly immersed in the infinite. Seeing this boundlessness is analogous to the boundlessness of that which is sacred, and thus dealing with the horror allows us to get a feel of what it would be like to deal with the holy. Dracula seems infinite is his power -- and the characters in the story as well as the audience must deal with that endless power. In regards to Dracula, Schneider states that "Dracula is not simply about a monster, it is about the mysterious force which permits monstrosities."
Perkowski claims that the figure of Dracula the Vampire functions as a symbol of evil. He states the Vampire "is a focus of fascination for forbidden, proscribed feelings and acts rife with guilt and fear, a focus for venting one's secret desires to surfeit." To support his claim, he contrasts Dracula's role with that of Santa Claus, claiming that they embody elements that make them polar opposites.
There are many reasons that vampires are so popular. The vampire has the appeal of immortality, which has been a goal of man for ages. Men built the pyramids in an attempt to gain immortality, yet it comes naturally to vampires. Vampires have the appeal of power over others, which is very alluring to someone who feels that they have no power of their own. Finally and most importantly, vampires have a sexual appeal. This sexual appeal ranges from the more normal (dominance, charming, and innuendo of oral sex) to the strange (blood fetishes, sadomasochism, and necrophilia). All claims can be justified in some way or another.
The vampire usually is seen as a metaphor for the dark side of humans: our greed, lust, obsession, predatory natures, desire for eternal life, the tragic quality of being boxed in by fate. On another level, the vampire has the qualities of the dark rebel, the outcast, the ultimate opponent of the established order and the daylight world. Trapped in a half- world between the living and the dead, the vampire carries the tragic qualities of an outsider who does not fit in, a situation that many people can identify with.
Whereas the vampire was needed in the past as an outlet of fear and anxiety by being a scapegoat for unexplainable calamity, today not much seems to remain from his original essence. The vampire has freed itself from the contingencies of its social role to become a true archetype. Earlier in history, the associations of fear with the vampire were inseparable in its transmission, whereas today the image can stand alone, making it subject to a much broader scope of interpretation. As a multifaceted creature, the vampire is able to fulfill a wide range of elements in the individual psyche.
One thing, however, is known for sure: the image has withstood the test of time and change of cultures. In doing so, it has shown that, real or unreal, the vampire seems immortal with its continued presence in our society.
Many scholars have attempted to explain the vampire's appeal in psychological terms literary scholar James Twitchell claims that psychoanalytically speaking, the vampire image is so popular because it represents a "complete condensation of problems and resolutions of preadolescence." He claims that children must deal with first time feelings of sexual energy and hostility, and that the vampire image acts out these situations, through its blood sucking and preying on the living.
Kirk J. Schneider, a faculty member of the California School of Professional Psychology, offers a vastly different explanation. He maintains that the vampire figure, specifically Dracula, is appealing because it is horrifying. Schneider states that true horror is when we are unexpectedly immersed in the infinite. Seeing this boundlessness is analogous to the boundlessness of that which is sacred, and thus dealing with the horror allows us to get a feel of what it would be like to deal with the holy. Dracula seems infinite is his power -- and the characters in the story as well as the audience must deal with that endless power. In regards to Dracula, Schneider states that "Dracula is not simply about a monster, it is about the mysterious force which permits monstrosities."
Perkowski claims that the figure of Dracula the Vampire functions as a symbol of evil. He states the Vampire "is a focus of fascination for forbidden, proscribed feelings and acts rife with guilt and fear, a focus for venting one's secret desires to surfeit." To support his claim, he contrasts Dracula's role with that of Santa Claus, claiming that they embody elements that make them polar opposites.
There are many reasons that vampires are so popular. The vampire has the appeal of immortality, which has been a goal of man for ages. Men built the pyramids in an attempt to gain immortality, yet it comes naturally to vampires. Vampires have the appeal of power over others, which is very alluring to someone who feels that they have no power of their own. Finally and most importantly, vampires have a sexual appeal. This sexual appeal ranges from the more normal (dominance, charming, and innuendo of oral sex) to the strange (blood fetishes, sadomasochism, and necrophilia). All claims can be justified in some way or another.
The vampire usually is seen as a metaphor for the dark side of humans: our greed, lust, obsession, predatory natures, desire for eternal life, the tragic quality of being boxed in by fate. On another level, the vampire has the qualities of the dark rebel, the outcast, the ultimate opponent of the established order and the daylight world. Trapped in a half- world between the living and the dead, the vampire carries the tragic qualities of an outsider who does not fit in, a situation that many people can identify with.
Whereas the vampire was needed in the past as an outlet of fear and anxiety by being a scapegoat for unexplainable calamity, today not much seems to remain from his original essence. The vampire has freed itself from the contingencies of its social role to become a true archetype. Earlier in history, the associations of fear with the vampire were inseparable in its transmission, whereas today the image can stand alone, making it subject to a much broader scope of interpretation. As a multifaceted creature, the vampire is able to fulfill a wide range of elements in the individual psyche.
One thing, however, is known for sure: the image has withstood the test of time and change of cultures. In doing so, it has shown that, real or unreal, the vampire seems immortal with its continued presence in our society.
Blood Symbolism
Perhaps the single most notorious characteristic of the vampire is his penchant for drinking blood. Most dead creatures (ghosts, demons …) in the Indo-European and Semitic world are considered thirsty, not just vampires. While some dead were content with any liquid offered, vampires almost always choose blood.
Alan Dundes suggests that aging and dying are correlated to dehydrating; the same way a ripe plum shrivels into a prune. He further hypothesizes that people, therefore, assumed that the dead would be thirsty since they are dried out. This belief led to the practice of pouring libations on graves to appease the dead. This belief was later applied to vampires who went looking for their offerings.
Another answer is that the dead's craving for liquids is not merely to regain the appearance of youth, but to give them life again, blood being the supreme elixir of life.
Blood both fascinates us and repulses us; it simultaneously represents purity and impurity, the sacred and the profane, life and death. Little wonder then that it is heavily used in religious, magic rituals as well as art creation.
When shamanism is associated with women, blood letting during menstruation is an important part of 'walking with the spirits'. Followers of the cult of Kali in India often drink blood. Sisir Das, a practitioner of Hindu occult rituals, drank the goats' blood of 207 sacrificed goats at the Kali temple in Bengal's Midnapore district over the course of four days.
Throughout history the many liquid substances (milk, honey and wine) offered in sacrifice to the dead, to spirits and to gods, were symbols of blood. Sacrificial blood was itself obtained from animals in classical times, and from human sacrifice among Asians, Africans, aboriginal Americans, and from prehistoric Europeans.
In a similar fashion, the history of art is full of images of blood, from the representations of wounded animals in the cave paintings of Lascaux to the most recent representations of extreme Body Art.
In his book 'Violence and the Sacred', Rene Girards' theory of sacrifice states,
"The physical metamorphoses of spilt blood can stand for the double nature of violence...Blood serves to illustrate that the same substance can stain or cleanse, contaminate or purify, drive men to fury and murder or appease their anger and restore them to life"
(Girard, 1972)
Alan Dundes suggests that aging and dying are correlated to dehydrating; the same way a ripe plum shrivels into a prune. He further hypothesizes that people, therefore, assumed that the dead would be thirsty since they are dried out. This belief led to the practice of pouring libations on graves to appease the dead. This belief was later applied to vampires who went looking for their offerings.
Another answer is that the dead's craving for liquids is not merely to regain the appearance of youth, but to give them life again, blood being the supreme elixir of life.
Blood both fascinates us and repulses us; it simultaneously represents purity and impurity, the sacred and the profane, life and death. Little wonder then that it is heavily used in religious, magic rituals as well as art creation.
When shamanism is associated with women, blood letting during menstruation is an important part of 'walking with the spirits'. Followers of the cult of Kali in India often drink blood. Sisir Das, a practitioner of Hindu occult rituals, drank the goats' blood of 207 sacrificed goats at the Kali temple in Bengal's Midnapore district over the course of four days.
Throughout history the many liquid substances (milk, honey and wine) offered in sacrifice to the dead, to spirits and to gods, were symbols of blood. Sacrificial blood was itself obtained from animals in classical times, and from human sacrifice among Asians, Africans, aboriginal Americans, and from prehistoric Europeans.
In a similar fashion, the history of art is full of images of blood, from the representations of wounded animals in the cave paintings of Lascaux to the most recent representations of extreme Body Art.
In his book 'Violence and the Sacred', Rene Girards' theory of sacrifice states,
"The physical metamorphoses of spilt blood can stand for the double nature of violence...Blood serves to illustrate that the same substance can stain or cleanse, contaminate or purify, drive men to fury and murder or appease their anger and restore them to life"
(Girard, 1972)
Fallen Angels
This theory inspired from the Books of Enoch claims that vampires are the offspring of the union between the Watchers (Fallen Angels) and humans.
When the Children of the Watchers had consumed all of the food available, they turned to mankind and began to eat their flesh and drink their blood. One of the legends says that a single Nephilim survived by hiding in a cave that was sealed water tight. Hence, was able to propagate a line later.
In another adjunct, vampires are the offspring of the daughters of Eve (female humans) and the Angel of Death sent by God on Earth. Vampires have the mission to control and thwart the demonic offspring of the fallen angels.
Nanobots
Nanobots, created either by renegade scientists or a race of reptilians, were introduced into a handful of human bodies in order to repair damaged cells. These nanobots performed so well that they rendered their hosts immortal.
However, the Nanobots themselves are not immortal and must self-replicate by utilizing the iron atoms from the hemoglobin in the host's red blood cells. The result of this nanoreplication process is the constant need for sufficient supplies of blood.
Unable to keep up with the demand, the host has no choice but to seek out blood from others. If the colony of Nanobots exceeds the host's ability to supply sufficient RBCs, some nanobots may migrate into another host, usually the next victim of the primary host's bite.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Sorry For Fake on -
Think about this for a moment.
In the way that Vampires have been described, White, scary looking and so on.
If a alien was seen abducting/sucking blood [At least something] from a human in the 1600-1800.
It would be described down in generations to something like the vampires are described.
What im trying to say is that, it might be aliens that were actually seen but since in that time, they didnt know what that was.
They told the stories about the scary looking white human like figure, eating on humans!
Reptillian type of aliens. Love to good ones :D
You never know ;)
© 2012 Created by Humanity Healing International.
