Occult Mythos

there are so many different conflicting myths and legends regarding things like werewolves and vampires... what version do you believe...

i personally don't know a lot of the different version because it never really interested me... but i do think the one that says to become a vampire you must drink the blood of the vampire that bit you... making it a choice... which then gives a distinguishing factor from Werewolf's who have no choice...

but yeah... i would love to hear some of the other theories.

A great deal of my classical vampire knowledge is from Bram Stoker's Dracula. First becoming a vampire takes more than one bite. Although the symptoms of vampirism do begin to appear it's not until the victim dies that they become a true vampire. I have heard the requirement of drinking the blood of the vampire who bites you but i don't remember if it was in Dracula or not. It has been several years since i read it.

Werewolf mythos is something i'm less farmiliar with although a common theme seems to be that Lycanthropy is usually a curse, punishment, or otherwise beyond their control. However the common bite-transfered lycanthropy is apparantly a modern idea and is rare in the original werewolf myths.

I've been a fan of occult lore for a long, long time . . . Here's some of my favourite vampire myths.

Vampire myth started way back in Mesopotamia with a trio of Sumerian demons, the most famous of which is named Lilu. These demons eventually combined over time and evolved into Lilith, one of the most famous mythical vampires around for her Hebrew roots and connection to the Biblical Adam. She was Adam's first wife, but they had an argument over who would get the dominant position during sex. Adam insisted that he get the top, and Lilith got so mad at him she packed her bags and flew away. She went to the Red Sea, where the demons lived, and mothered a whole line of baby demons called the Lilim. Once Adam and Eve got the boot out of Eden, she and some buddies decended on them and basically raped them, causing Adam to father demons, and Eve to mother even more demons. There's not much about her in the Talmud, even though she was popular when it was written, so most of the information comes from later Hebrew writers and a slew of Medieval legends. Eventually, Lilith became such a popular entity that she became an entire breed of undead bloodsuckers called just that--liliths. Even though she's more of a succubus in nature, she set the tone for later vampires who absorbed energy and drank blood or semen.

Ancient China had vampires as well, called Chiang-shih (translates into "Hopping Corpse" I believe), and they were created when the inferior part of the soul, called the p'o, didn't vacate the premesis after death. The result was a sort of zombie that occasionally glowed green and sprouted talons, liked to rape women, and decapitate travellers. They fed on the life force of their victims.

While Japan never had a classical undead human vampire, they did have kappas, which may be some of the greatest mythological creatures the world has ever known. They looked a bit like little green monkeys with webbed feet and turtle shells, and their heads were shaped like a bowls which were filled with water. Should the water spill, the kappa would lose its strenth. Anyway, the kappa liked to hang out by riverbanks where it would lure livestock into the water and then proceed to suck the victim's blood through its butt. I kid you not. In its spare time, the kappa liked to rape women, attack people for their livers, and munch cucumbers.

Britain was less involved in vampiric lore than one would think, but the Roman-occupied Celts had legends of corpses who wandered out of their tombs at night to attack living passersby. They introduce something interesting in the idea that the corpses wanted to drink blood in order to regain a lifelike appearance. This was usually animal blood, but the odd human could be thrown in for good measure. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that this is the first example of a vampire drinking blood to regenerate. I've also read an interesting story of blood-sucking fairies in Ireland who guarded a place called the Dun Dreachfhoula--which is pronounced "Drac-ola"--but scholars have never located any such place. Scotland's most famous blood-sucking creature is the banshee, a lady vampire who took the form of a traveller's sweetheart before revealing her true nature and drinking his blood.

Ancient Greece boasts tales of two women named Lamia and Mormo. Lamia was a Lybian queen who raised many children fathered by Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus' wife Hera was a jealous little thing (with good reason, I suppose), and she got even with Lamia by stealing away all of her children. A distraught Lamia, unable to strike back at Hera for taking her children, instead took out her vengeance on the children of other women by killing them and drinking their blood. Mormo's story is similar: she ate her own children, earning her a place in the legions of Hecate, the Queen of the Ghostworld and mistress of black magic. Like Lilith, both women eventually had types of vampires named after them: the lamiai and the mormolykiai respectively.

Slavic and Romanian (AKA Transylvanian) vampires are the most well-known of any of them. The Slavs basically comprise anything in Eastern Europe, except Romania and Hungary (so Russia, Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic--you get the picture), but Romania and Hungary were close enough to have the same vampires running around. Slavic vampires weren't really like the be-all-end-all evil vampires of Gothic literature. They weren't made by other vampires, they were the products of murders, violent accidents and suicides. If you died after being excommunicated (booted out of the Church), you were coming back as a vampire. If you were conceived during a holy day, you would become a vampire whether you liked it or not. If you died before you were baptized, you were going to be a vampire with a taste for sheep. If you were born with teeth or a caul, you were also destined for vampirism. Now, when a person with a high vampire risk was going to be buried, the Slavs took great percautions, ones that eventually led to the vampire weaknesses of modern fiction. They put crucifixes in the coffins, poured holy water, had priests perform exorcisms, and sprinkled seeds over the graves because vampires had a fixation with stopping to count everything in sight (anyone remember The Count from Sesame Street? Yeah.) In extreme cases, the heart or stomach would be staked, and sometimes a good old fashioned decapitation would follow. Some races (the Kashub in partcular) put the head between the feet before reburial, or just burned the whole corpse and were done with it.

Vampires made the perfect scapegoats for the Slavs, and they were blamed for everything from livestock maladies to poltergeist activity. When looking for one, people believed that the culprit would probably be someone who died within the past forty days (because of the forty days between Jesus' death and ascension). Upon exhuming the body, they looked for signs of growth in the hair and nails, and bloating. Both normal parts of decomposition, the vampire hunters often found these symptoms.

While I'd love to share more about vampire lore and go into the history of therianthropy, I'm a little tired. I'll continue another time.

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Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative.

I applaud your vast knowledge on this subject.

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NICKY:Oh, Schadenfreude, huh? What's that, some kinda Nazi word?
GARY COLEMAN:Yup! It's German for "happiness at the misfortune of others!"
NICKY:"Happiness at the misfortune of others." That IS German!
Avenue Q song: Schadenfreude
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http://stavaros-the-arcane.deviantart.com/

Thanks!

Part of me mourns the fact that I could have put all of that effort into learning quantum physics so I could become a multi-billionaire . . . and the other part just doesn't care.

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Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative.

very impressive... good to learn stuff like that

Thanks, Rai. That's nice to hear.

I've been an occult junkie and a history junkie since I was little. Some people learn stupid things like a second language or how to add . . . Me, I dedicate myself to really useful information, like how to kill multicultural vampires 158,000 different ways!

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Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative.

Stupid things? *can speak 2 languages fluently... well semi fluently and is learning 3 atm* ah i see... but yeah i love history... there are just so many different stories about vampires i get caught up in it all lol

Lol, relax, I was being sarcastic. Learning a second language would be a useful thing worth effort. So would adding . . . I suck at all manners of mathematics.

There's a good book called simply Encyclopedia of the Undead by Bob Curran. It's simple, straightforward, and entertaining. Check it out if you're interested.

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Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative.

i figured lol... i love math... so easy and fun *is sad... and she knows it*

i will check it out... hell we might have a copy in this house... dad's an occult fan/writer and he always has referance material for that kind of stuff.

It's okay . . . we can be losers together.

That's pretty awesome. Curran wrote a book on just vampires as well. Judging by his Encyclopedia of the Undead, it would probably be a good resource as well.

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Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative.

yay i'm not being a loser alone anymore ^^ so happy

anyone know about things that are still occult but don't get as much love as Vampires and Were wolfs?