Here's the interview--long forgotten by me--I did in 2010 that ultimately sank me with the "mainstream" online vampire community. On reflection, I'm not sure how the shitstorm that followed actually developed--a lot of slander, rumor, and hearsay, I suspect. At any rate, here it is for your edification. My only regret is not exploring my own nature as a sanguinarian. What can I say--I just wasn't comfortable sharing it with the world. Anyway...
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Vampire? Say What?
What is a vampire, anyway? There has to be something more than cloaked gentlemen from Creature Double Feature. Time to play my favorite game (isn’t it everyone’s?)—etymology!
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary gives a tidy summary. The word “vampire” is of French origin and came from the German Vampir, which in turn came from the Serbo-Croatian vampir. As for the vampir, it can be a reanimated corpse that rises from the grave by night to suck the blood of the sleeping, or simply a creature that exists by preying on others.
This would be a neat definition if it were complete. Historians, linguists, and many other scholars trace “vampire” to Slavic origins. One example is the Lithuanian wempti, meaning to drink. Another possible root is the Turkishuber or witch, the Russian upyr, or the Polish upior. In the end, the term came into English from the French in the Eighteenth Century, which is why we have “vampire” instead of “wempti” or “upior”.
Where does this leave the modern real vampire? They’re not walking corpses and they don’t necessarily prey on others. One connection I see is longing. The vampire of lore is drawn to commit certain acts because of an inner need. Real vampires also have a need, whether it is for emotional soothing, power, awareness, or energy. We could say that real vampires have needs, know they have needs, and do something to satisfy those needs, as opposed to the usual human who may aspire but never attempt. What is a real vampire? Ultimately you may come to your own understanding.
We go from the real to the folkloric entity that binds human societies together. There are hundreds of vampiric creatures in worldwide legend and folklore. It’s my conclusion that there is something in the human psyche wired to explain certain occurrences through vampire-like creatures. In turn, this is a clue as to how the vampire in some form can be found in virtually every world culture. To me, each creature is more colorful than the next. Here’s a brief sampling.
In the Philippines, the aswang is an extraordinarily beautiful woman by day. At night, she turns into a flying monster. Her preferred prey are local children, but sometimes her blood thirst is so strong that she will feed on anyone convenient.
The civatateo of the Aztec Empire were servants of the central god Tezcatlipoca. This status was their afterlife reward for having died in childbirth, which to the Aztecs was as noble as dying in battle. Hideous to look upon, the civatateo were especially fond of feeding on children, perhaps in a kind of revenge for the infants that claimed their own lives. To a mortal, a child would appear to be dying of a wasting illness.
Appearing in many Japanese folktales, the kitsune is a shape-shifter. Most often she takes the form of a wild fox or a beautiful maiden. Sex is her device for feeding from a victim. The kitsune is also a great prankster.
Lamia was once the queen of Libya. As punishment for some affront, the goddess Hera slew Lamia’s children. As revenge, Lamia abandoned her mortal form to drift through the countryside draining the blood of infants. Later, lamia was any child-killing demon.
The rakshasa is an especially powerful vampire in India. Its shape-shifting abilities are unparalleled. At the very least a human can be struck with nausea and vomiting just by passing through the area where a rakshasa has been. A young boy who, for whatever reason, eats human brains will become a rakshasa.
Greece has an especially rich vampire tradition, and the common name for these creatures is vrykolakas. They can be created through improper burial, immorality in life, or dying unbaptized. Everyone who is killed by the vrykolakas will then become vrykolakas.
I can’t leave this subject without mentioning my personal favorite, the Balkan vampire watermelon. Any object left outside on the night of a full moon was believed to become vampiric, so why not watermelons? Of course, vampire watermelons aren’t to be feared. They don’t have teeth, and if they did, they wouldn’t create much horror by biting ankles. More than anything, they are a nuisance, rolling around and growling at people. I bet you’ll never look at a watermelon the same way.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary gives a tidy summary. The word “vampire” is of French origin and came from the German Vampir, which in turn came from the Serbo-Croatian vampir. As for the vampir, it can be a reanimated corpse that rises from the grave by night to suck the blood of the sleeping, or simply a creature that exists by preying on others.
This would be a neat definition if it were complete. Historians, linguists, and many other scholars trace “vampire” to Slavic origins. One example is the Lithuanian wempti, meaning to drink. Another possible root is the Turkishuber or witch, the Russian upyr, or the Polish upior. In the end, the term came into English from the French in the Eighteenth Century, which is why we have “vampire” instead of “wempti” or “upior”.
Where does this leave the modern real vampire? They’re not walking corpses and they don’t necessarily prey on others. One connection I see is longing. The vampire of lore is drawn to commit certain acts because of an inner need. Real vampires also have a need, whether it is for emotional soothing, power, awareness, or energy. We could say that real vampires have needs, know they have needs, and do something to satisfy those needs, as opposed to the usual human who may aspire but never attempt. What is a real vampire? Ultimately you may come to your own understanding.
We go from the real to the folkloric entity that binds human societies together. There are hundreds of vampiric creatures in worldwide legend and folklore. It’s my conclusion that there is something in the human psyche wired to explain certain occurrences through vampire-like creatures. In turn, this is a clue as to how the vampire in some form can be found in virtually every world culture. To me, each creature is more colorful than the next. Here’s a brief sampling.
In the Philippines, the aswang is an extraordinarily beautiful woman by day. At night, she turns into a flying monster. Her preferred prey are local children, but sometimes her blood thirst is so strong that she will feed on anyone convenient.
The civatateo of the Aztec Empire were servants of the central god Tezcatlipoca. This status was their afterlife reward for having died in childbirth, which to the Aztecs was as noble as dying in battle. Hideous to look upon, the civatateo were especially fond of feeding on children, perhaps in a kind of revenge for the infants that claimed their own lives. To a mortal, a child would appear to be dying of a wasting illness.
Appearing in many Japanese folktales, the kitsune is a shape-shifter. Most often she takes the form of a wild fox or a beautiful maiden. Sex is her device for feeding from a victim. The kitsune is also a great prankster.
Lamia was once the queen of Libya. As punishment for some affront, the goddess Hera slew Lamia’s children. As revenge, Lamia abandoned her mortal form to drift through the countryside draining the blood of infants. Later, lamia was any child-killing demon.
The rakshasa is an especially powerful vampire in India. Its shape-shifting abilities are unparalleled. At the very least a human can be struck with nausea and vomiting just by passing through the area where a rakshasa has been. A young boy who, for whatever reason, eats human brains will become a rakshasa.
Greece has an especially rich vampire tradition, and the common name for these creatures is vrykolakas. They can be created through improper burial, immorality in life, or dying unbaptized. Everyone who is killed by the vrykolakas will then become vrykolakas.
I can’t leave this subject without mentioning my personal favorite, the Balkan vampire watermelon. Any object left outside on the night of a full moon was believed to become vampiric, so why not watermelons? Of course, vampire watermelons aren’t to be feared. They don’t have teeth, and if they did, they wouldn’t create much horror by biting ankles. More than anything, they are a nuisance, rolling around and growling at people. I bet you’ll never look at a watermelon the same way.
Who Are The Vampires? A Survey
Who are the vampires?
Good question. A lot like climbing Mount Everest with no gear and with no idea how far away the summit is.
The real answer is that there is no real answer and there cannot be a real answer. At the very least, there can’t be only one answer. I can say with conviction that the real vampire community is a fluid and organic entity. There is always change and there is always room for change.
Ask ten vampires, get twenty answers.
“Vampires are the next step on the evolutionary ladder.”
“Vampires manipulate energy.”
“Vampires have suffered an acute loss.”
“Vampires drain life force from other beings.”
“Vampires are humans with heightened senses.”
“Vampires need to drink blood.”
“Vampires are supremely powerful leaders.”
“Vampires drain mental energy without being aware they are doing it.”
“Vampires are initiated members of certain groups.”
“Vampires worship ancient and immortal gods.”
“Vampires are the children of vampires.”
It’s a simple enough question and a good beginning, at least as a matter of facts and figures. Yet after stepping into the vampire community I soon understood that it’s a question with an almost impossible complex answer.
All right, then. I decided to tackle the question from two perspectives. On the one side, I would collect data through a carefully crafted survey to be collected from individuals describing themselves as real vampires. The other side would be more subjective and reflect my personal conversations and relationships with real vampires. My hope is that putting both sides together will present a multifaceted and multidimensional existence of the real vampire.
In truth, there is no real answer. I would not recommend trying to capture the essence of the real vampire in simple words. Rather than taking this as any kind of absolute fact, use it to tickle your imagination, as a starting point in your own explorations of the vampire community and of any subculture.
When I began my research I had already taken and administered enough surveys to know that quantitative research would suit my purposes. My goal was to present the real vampire using more routine data such as age and politics in order to show that real vampires exist much like anyone else.
Where to start? I made a list of what I wanted to know about real vampires. Where do they live? How do they vote? How is family life? The survey would present simple questions in order to draw more complex conclusions. I structured the questions to be neither too broad nor too particular—asking about the political spectrum rather than specific party affiliations, for example.
I was hesitant to leave anyone out of the final compilations, but I knew I needed to work a galaxy of information into a form I could handle. Originally the survey was open to anyone eighteen years old or older. I decided that my concentration group would fall between the ages of 25 and 50, which is based upon my finding that most of the respondents to the survey were in this bracket. After a lot of deliberation, I decided to narrow the pool to real vampires living in the United States, as this is where I live and is where I have had most of my vampiric adventures.
After this basic trimming, survey replies were chosen as randomly as possible until I had one thousand bits of data. I chose to use a thousand because I felt it was sweeping enough and yet would work neatly in breaking down percentages.
The process took me two years, hundreds of contacts, and a lot of shuffling papers, but in the end I had my statistical vampire. I could only reach one conclusion. Vampires cannot be put into such dry and empirical terms!
All the same, let me share the results of my vampire survey with you. Keep in mind that the vampire community is a fluid entity. Any information given here is an honest result of my statistics carnival, but may or may not reflect actual vampires you may meet.
Real vampires are everywhere. At least a small population of self-described vampires can be found in all fifty states. The heaviest concentration exists in the Northeast Corridor, between Washington DC and Boston, while the Los Angeles area is a close second. Other significant populations can be found in Central Florida (Tampa and Orlando), Austin, Texas, Seattle, Washington, and Chicago, Illinois. Some surprise hotbeds of vampire activity are Spartanburg, South Carolina, St. Louis, Missouri, Akron, Ohio, Madison, Wisconsin, Dothan, Alabama, Athens, Georgia, Nashville, Tennessee,
Naturally, existence as a real vampire is a little more difficult in some areas. 71% of respondents indicated this as a concern to some degree. Even respondents living in the areas of greatest vampire concentration are still concerned about their place in their greater community. Fortunately, only 3% reported any violent incidents as a direct result of being a vampire—which is still 3% too many.
84% indicated that silence is the best safety measure in any community. Vampires are open about their vampirism with other vampires and like-minded people, but keep it quiet among untried groups. Of that 84%, 42% resent having to mask who they really are.
My sample group members were between 25 and 50 years of age, as I’ve said. Within this group, the largest swell occurred between 28 and 32.
In my own experiences the gender break among vampires is fairly even, but the survey revealed that 63% of respondents were male and 37% were female. How many of these are actually transgender is unknown.
I asked a number of questions about politically important issues. The vampires were predominantly conservative in the sense of favoring a smaller government and keeping government interference out of their lives.
Spirituality and religion are complex subjects in the vampire community. With this in mind, I asked responders to choose from a wide variety of concepts and affiliations, with the option to make as few or as many choices as desired. Thus I discovered Evangelist Shamanics and Neo-Pagan Qabalists.
Only a handful of respondents said that they have lost employment for reasons they believe relate to their vampirism. This is survey data, but my conversations with vampires tell a different story. The statistic here is most likely not an accurate reflection—the numbers are probably much higher.
When asked about religion and spirituality, the most popular response was “unaffiliated but spiritual.”
Good question. A lot like climbing Mount Everest with no gear and with no idea how far away the summit is.
The real answer is that there is no real answer and there cannot be a real answer. At the very least, there can’t be only one answer. I can say with conviction that the real vampire community is a fluid and organic entity. There is always change and there is always room for change.
Ask ten vampires, get twenty answers.
“Vampires are the next step on the evolutionary ladder.”
“Vampires manipulate energy.”
“Vampires have suffered an acute loss.”
“Vampires drain life force from other beings.”
“Vampires are humans with heightened senses.”
“Vampires need to drink blood.”
“Vampires are supremely powerful leaders.”
“Vampires drain mental energy without being aware they are doing it.”
“Vampires are initiated members of certain groups.”
“Vampires worship ancient and immortal gods.”
“Vampires are the children of vampires.”
It’s a simple enough question and a good beginning, at least as a matter of facts and figures. Yet after stepping into the vampire community I soon understood that it’s a question with an almost impossible complex answer.
All right, then. I decided to tackle the question from two perspectives. On the one side, I would collect data through a carefully crafted survey to be collected from individuals describing themselves as real vampires. The other side would be more subjective and reflect my personal conversations and relationships with real vampires. My hope is that putting both sides together will present a multifaceted and multidimensional existence of the real vampire.
In truth, there is no real answer. I would not recommend trying to capture the essence of the real vampire in simple words. Rather than taking this as any kind of absolute fact, use it to tickle your imagination, as a starting point in your own explorations of the vampire community and of any subculture.
When I began my research I had already taken and administered enough surveys to know that quantitative research would suit my purposes. My goal was to present the real vampire using more routine data such as age and politics in order to show that real vampires exist much like anyone else.
Where to start? I made a list of what I wanted to know about real vampires. Where do they live? How do they vote? How is family life? The survey would present simple questions in order to draw more complex conclusions. I structured the questions to be neither too broad nor too particular—asking about the political spectrum rather than specific party affiliations, for example.
I was hesitant to leave anyone out of the final compilations, but I knew I needed to work a galaxy of information into a form I could handle. Originally the survey was open to anyone eighteen years old or older. I decided that my concentration group would fall between the ages of 25 and 50, which is based upon my finding that most of the respondents to the survey were in this bracket. After a lot of deliberation, I decided to narrow the pool to real vampires living in the United States, as this is where I live and is where I have had most of my vampiric adventures.
After this basic trimming, survey replies were chosen as randomly as possible until I had one thousand bits of data. I chose to use a thousand because I felt it was sweeping enough and yet would work neatly in breaking down percentages.
The process took me two years, hundreds of contacts, and a lot of shuffling papers, but in the end I had my statistical vampire. I could only reach one conclusion. Vampires cannot be put into such dry and empirical terms!
All the same, let me share the results of my vampire survey with you. Keep in mind that the vampire community is a fluid entity. Any information given here is an honest result of my statistics carnival, but may or may not reflect actual vampires you may meet.
Real vampires are everywhere. At least a small population of self-described vampires can be found in all fifty states. The heaviest concentration exists in the Northeast Corridor, between Washington DC and Boston, while the Los Angeles area is a close second. Other significant populations can be found in Central Florida (Tampa and Orlando), Austin, Texas, Seattle, Washington, and Chicago, Illinois. Some surprise hotbeds of vampire activity are Spartanburg, South Carolina, St. Louis, Missouri, Akron, Ohio, Madison, Wisconsin, Dothan, Alabama, Athens, Georgia, Nashville, Tennessee,
Naturally, existence as a real vampire is a little more difficult in some areas. 71% of respondents indicated this as a concern to some degree. Even respondents living in the areas of greatest vampire concentration are still concerned about their place in their greater community. Fortunately, only 3% reported any violent incidents as a direct result of being a vampire—which is still 3% too many.
84% indicated that silence is the best safety measure in any community. Vampires are open about their vampirism with other vampires and like-minded people, but keep it quiet among untried groups. Of that 84%, 42% resent having to mask who they really are.
My sample group members were between 25 and 50 years of age, as I’ve said. Within this group, the largest swell occurred between 28 and 32.
In my own experiences the gender break among vampires is fairly even, but the survey revealed that 63% of respondents were male and 37% were female. How many of these are actually transgender is unknown.
I asked a number of questions about politically important issues. The vampires were predominantly conservative in the sense of favoring a smaller government and keeping government interference out of their lives.
Spirituality and religion are complex subjects in the vampire community. With this in mind, I asked responders to choose from a wide variety of concepts and affiliations, with the option to make as few or as many choices as desired. Thus I discovered Evangelist Shamanics and Neo-Pagan Qabalists.
Only a handful of respondents said that they have lost employment for reasons they believe relate to their vampirism. This is survey data, but my conversations with vampires tell a different story. The statistic here is most likely not an accurate reflection—the numbers are probably much higher.
When asked about religion and spirituality, the most popular response was “unaffiliated but spiritual.”
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