What Truth in these Horrors?

What are vampires understood as today, but cartoon characters? Before Bram Stoker wrote his novel, there were other beliefs about 'vampires.' The hardest part of understanding all this vampirism today, is what to discriminate from modern concepts, and what to discern from facts, and what are sensational tales.

Suggesting 'vampires are real,' involves a great deal of exposition about what is truth and what is lies today, as well as the completely different, 'what is truth, and what is lies' from hundreds of years ago. You can immediately respond with complete skepticism, especially based on any tales told in papers today. So many fictional stories, from movies, comic books, television series' and novels have inserted all kinds of fantastic ideas, from viruses to aliens, and all sorts of science fiction concepts.

This mystery has gone on so long, that disturbed people mimic whatever they saw vampires as and become it. The mental cases who idolize newer concepts can barely tell you anything about folklore prior to the 1930s. We have psychopathic killers using personifications of vampires to impress and fascinate their victims, and we have others who have no idea that their behavior resembles that of modern concepts of vampires.

There are arguments by pagan fanatics who suggest that drinking human blood is a religious experience, and other arguments ignored in the realm of vampire research, by scientists who use human blood and its components to further the efforts of 'immortality,' not knowing they are beginning to mimic the vampire concepts in fiction and popular culture, as well as the folklore of old.

Depressed and self-absorbed young people idolize their own concepts of vampires to shock people, get attention, control eachother, and carry out sado-masochistic activities on themselves.

Are any of these people really vampires? In some sense they are, but in what sense is 'some sense?" This is the biggest problem of all.

In 'what sense' is a vampire, a vampire?

The definitions number in the thousands. The 'werewolf' is included in so much vampire research for this very reason, because at times long ago, the 'werewolf' was synonymous with vampire. Its origins in etymology began with vampires and vice versa.

The definition of 'vampire' depends on the what period in history, what religion or culture you are talking about, although for the time before Bram Stoker, almost all definitions are the same or similar enough.

However, even these definitions vary, in details and also much ignorance is involved in many of these details. Certain details are thrown in with certain accounts, that are never questioned, never differentiated, and kept for future study.

For instance, a story about a body clawing on the inside of a casket, but never returning to life may be thrown in with a hundred other possible details of other accounts, like a story of a dead man, who has returned, mute, and seemingly mindless, like a zombie, but no account of how he got out of his casket.

Tied together with all sorts of accounts from folklore is modern fictional ideas, so much so, that there is always a sensationalized approach to vampire study. Even in religious perspectives. Certain facts are conveniently ignored, so that certain religious ideas are maintained.

Modern psychological phenomenon of psychotic people who murder people and drink their blood, even by victimizers who claim to be vampires are mixed in with all this because of the 'occult.'

'The Occult' is an even stranger concept, but without taking it into account, there can be no way to even begin to study vampires.

The very idea of a 'supernatural' element is essential to an average definition of vampires, even though Hollywood, and pulp novelists have attempted to modernize and science-fictionize, and even do this in order to 'normalize' or at least temporarily for the sake of entertainment, ask us to believe that vampires are just a misunderstood condition of some small minority of humanity.

Those pagan-types today who practice their own new religious idolization of vampires have at least still kept the 'occult' aspects of the original definition. Mythological or not, there certain occult concepts that have to be contemplated, in order to track down some sort of real definition.

We also have the metaphorical. The symbolic aspects of the vampire, in many details, represent, and always will, the nature of evil itself. Regardless of romanticism, or science fiction, or modern pop-culture, the vampire has assumed an archtypical persona in the unconscious, and whether or not its always been there may or may not be essential to its understanding.

The characteristics of some modern vampires follow this archtype, and some do not. For example, a film or story about a scientist who steals blood from people, clones cells or collects substances from it, in order to 'cheat death' is a vampire tale, even though fangs and silver bullets are not present. Often symbolism is present in such a story that gives us clues to these facts. All of this presents us with yet another facet of the definition, that isn't necessarily tied to folklore, the occult or even a modern science fiction idea, like 'vampirism is a virus.' It is simply there.

It can even be said that there are definitions within definitions, ironies within the definition, that characterize the archtype.

And yet with the occult, modern fiction, metaphor, and ancient folklore, we even have a straight answer definition, that may even be more horrifying than all the others combined. A stark reality, but one that is not necessarily directly connected to psychological vampires who axe-murder their parents and drink their blood afterwords.

In order to find this stark reality vampire, and its definition, it is important to understand all the others, because within it, lives details of the other concepts.

Its not a mix-and-match, because there is so much information that must be payed attention to, information within folklore which relates in other ways, not immediately recognized in its characterization, along with related details that are peripheral.

In the most modern movies for example, science fiction is used to fill in the blanks, to make believable the vampires' existence. A virus explaination is given, genetic engineering, genetic anomaly, or even alien influences are suggested. Other details are conveniently explained as misunderstood details, which must be looked at differently so that they then make sense. However, in this process of 'make believe' or suspension of disbelief (which is the fun of vampire movies), one element of the vampire's nature is left out, or forgotten or ignored. The metaphorical element, or ironic element is usually no longer applicable. Once you've put it into a science fiction box, what some people might call 'the mythic' element is no longer there, and somehow, while it may be fun to watch, it seems hollow.

Imagining how to make sense of all the details presented to us by Montague Summers, Dom Augustin Calmet, and other sources of folklore collections, along with the endless ironies as well as many of the religious ideas that have arisen about vampires, is very difficult indeed, as it is always simpler, as many recent 'vampire guide' books have shown, to lump it all together into one literal sense without any discernment whatsoever. Therefore, a 'vampire' from Peru that sucks 'fat' is a literal 'type' while an 'Algul' is just another 'type.' As if we were empirically classifying races, or subspecies. This is ridiculous. While many of these 'kinds' of vampires are taken as real in folklore, many are simply representative, they are allegorical, they are symbological, and many are completely supernatural with no physical reality implied.

Another problem arises when certain religious people, pagan or christian, attempt to personify some sort of category of vampire as a god, or misunderstood supernatural being, which cannot be identified with evil, or other classification that is entirely modern that refuses to allow any 'negative' connotations upon it whatsoever, thus impeding further, the understanding of the original intended meaning of the thing itself.

Face it, human sacrifice is human sacrifice, and its an act of evil, regardless of whether the victim consented. The fact that we have to argue about this today must be some sort of evidence of societal insanity. The same goes for people who steal other people's blood. There are concepts like this which have to be realized in order to begin to understand this at all!

So to begin this long 'hunt' we have to take into consideration all these things, and not listen to babbling occultists talking about 'doing what thou willt' or even frantic mumblings of fake bishops invoking holy icons and pledging holy wars with invisible entities.

There is a light of truth somewhere in the middle of all this, and what you will discover, beyond what is frightening and truly horrifying is that the misunderstanding of so many years can come to an end, and its not going to end up with you becoming a vampire!