Vampires
Legends about vampires or vampire-like beings have flourished throughout world folklore, to include the regions of India, China and Greece.
The current incarnation of the vampire is usually traced back to Eastern European myths and superstitions that inspired several vampire novels, the most enduring being Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).
In the eighteenth-century, Eastern European reports of vampirism ran high, taking two sometimes related forms of
- Physical vampirism – robbing another person’s vitality by drinking their blood.
- Spiritual vampirism – psychic possession of another person’s free-will and theft of their vitality.
Traditionally, vampires are said to reside in or around graveyards, having a strong aversion to daylight. They rise only at night to freely select their victims.
Repelled by the cross, these agents of darkness are known as the ‘undead.’
In the 1970s and ’80s moviegoers dressed up as characters and recited lines from the film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, perhaps entering into a state of consciousness which anthropologist Lévi-Bruhl called participation mystique.
A more recent newspaper report of alleged vampirism in Toronto tells of a man who forcefully cut and drank the blood of a young woman.
At first the woman was horrified and pressed charges, resulting in the aggressor’s imprisonment. Over time, however, she began to feel united and in love with him, visiting him in prison on a daily basis.
Paranormal researchers and psychics generally explain vampirism in terms of a restless earth-bound spirit or so-called ‘tramp soul’ that gains control of psychologically weak and vulnerable individuals.
By way of contrast, vampire nightclubs seem to be harmless, non-violent and socially acceptable outlets for individuals seeking to experience the numinous aura of the Jungian shadow.
A comparable situation might be the upstanding priest who enjoys horror movies during his off-hours.
But clearly not everyone can keep a mature, adult perspective on vampires. Violent murders have been committed by teens in vampire cults who take the Goth lifestyle to its tragic extreme.
» Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, Lycanthropy, Swedenborg (Emanuel), Transmigration, Werewolf
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