Vampires 101
This section contains information about vampires. I have drawn it from various sources and its is a basic introduction to the nature and creation of vampires. There are many different kinds of vampires and therefore many different ways of viewing them and this is simply my perspective drawn from various vampires near to my heart and so if you disagree that is your prerogative this is mainly drawn from Ricean vampires because i find those vampires to be the most interesting and seductive beings.
Vampire - preternatural creature transformed from a dying mortal, which sustains itself on the blood of the living. Having once been human vampires are the closest in kind to humans. In folklore around the world the vampire image invokes terror and inspires a wide variety of rituals, which are intended to kill these immortal creatures. Tales of vampires date back to ancient times, and are found across most world cultures. Among the earliest vampire images are the bloodthirsty goddess Kali, the Egyptian Deity Osiris, and Yama, the Tibetan Lord of the Dead. Other names for vampires include Nosferatu, Verdilak, and Lamia.
Features of the Vampire - There are several features, which distinguish the vampire from the ordinary mortal. There are the most expected ones, they cannot move about in the daytime, as the sun will burn them to death, fire will destroy them. However there are other things, which are less obvious, yet, still observable. After they have died, or been born to darkness as it is often called, Vampires retain their mortal features, but the change in their cellular makeup makes their skin and lips white, translucent, and reflective, and their fingernails gleam with a highly polished luster. After drinking blood, the Vampire becomes flushed and ruddy, less luminous. As a result of their appearance Vampires often drink before they attempt to come in close contact with mortals to reduce the chance of detection. A Vampire's hair grows thicker and fuller after receiving the Dark Gift. It does, however, remain the same length as it had when the mortal who became the vampire died. Their skin hardens over time, which diminished facial creases, giving the vampire a more unearthly and ethereal look. Their fangs grow front the canine teeth. As a result of these features vampires often look like angels. This gives them a supernatural allure. Mortals often find themselves irresistibly draw to these dark seductive creatures because vampires of that allure.
Vampire Powers - these vary greatly from vampire to vampire. Each vampire has different abilities depending on the strength of their blood, their age and their inherent abilities. Vampire's powers increase with age
1. Physical Powers - Physically vampires are very strong. For example vampires can bend a copper penny double and some of the very old ones can walk through plaster walls and hurl cars out of their way.
As part of their strength they can project their voices to an earsplitting level. They can also speak too low for mortals to hear.
They possess great speed of movement. They can seem to mortal eyes to vanish and reappear when in fact they only move to fast for the human eye to detect.
As vampires age their body cells harden and whiten; they seem like marble to the younger ones. Nevertheless their bodies remain flexible, light, and dexterous. They can jump to great heights, and some of the more powerful ones can even levitate and fly across continents and oceans. A few vampires even practice astral projection, a process whereby only the consciousness leaves the body and travels with out the body. These powers of flight and astral projection are perhaps the most frightening to vampires. It leaves them feeling unconnected and frightened as if they have no grasp still on the physical world any longer.
Vampires have an advanced ability to heal. Their wounds close with a preternatural speed and a limb cut off may be reattached and full restored simply through this healing ability.
2. Mental Powers - Vampires possess metanormal perception, a heightened sense of pleasure and pain, and a hyperdimensional consciousness: they can hear mortal voices of anguish from around the world, as well as listen in on each other's thoughts. This experience of the sensory world increases their appreciation for life. When they look at art, for example, they can see the entire process that created it.
These enhanced powers of concentration allow them to experience the sensory qualities of any give moment to a degree beyond that of any mortal. These powers allow them to read at great speed, pick up other languages easily, and mimic sounds with astounding accuracy. Possessing acute vision they can see in the dark and perceive the spiritual depth that is buried in mortal flesh. Primarily it is the will of the vampire that determines the extent of the functionality of these powers. The more confident the vampire the stronger these abilities are.
Vampires can read minds with astounding accuracy, except those of their own fledglings. A veil of silence descends between vampire and maker so that they can never again have such access to each other’s thoughts. Being able to read minds allows vampires to confuse or mesmerize their victims. Some are so skillful that they may drink from a victim and then cause the victim to forget the incident. This ability to share thoughts allows vampire to communicate far more clearly than mere words. They can send full-blown images through their thoughts.
Some vampires possess the ability of telekinesis. The ability to move objects with the mere wish to do so. They can open locked doors, shove another vampire away without touching him, or opening and closing doors.
Human Qualities - Vampire retain some of their human qualities from their mortal lives. Some more than others. They feel their own unconscious compulsions, and feel lonely, anguished, guilty, compassionate, angry, bored, sad, and more. They seek companionship, and some even desire to do good with their powers. Vampires cut a romantic image as a dangerous creature of the shadows, but add to it the power of retaining human emotions and psychological conflicts.
Names of Vampires - Vampires have developed many names over the years. These are but a sampling of the names they are called, this list is by no means conclusive: Children of Darkness, Angel of the Night, Drinkers of the Blood, and many other names
Beauty - Vampires are passionate creatures. They have finely attuned senses and place great value on aesthetic principles. Vampires like beautiful things and they most often choose their fledglings for their stark beauty. Older Vampires who used to believe that they were children of Satan chose the most beautiful of mortals to give them the ‘dark gift’ so that their beauty working for evil would heighten the insult to god.
Children of the Millennia – these are ancient vampires who have survived for a thousand or more years and have become legends among vampires. They are often considered outlaws by vampires of covens.
Covens – these are communities of vampires. It is composed of two or more powerful vampires who agree to share territory and not to kill each other. Long lasting covens are rare in vampire history, as fights about conformity and supremacy tend to break them up after a time. Many vampires are distrustful of covens and prefer to hunt and guard their territory alone.
Bites - The vampire bite is how vampires draw blood from their victims and how they make other vampires; also how they receive greater abilities from a more powerful vampire. As a literary tool the bite has two meanings first the teeth, which bite down, represent a fortress protecting the inner soul and second, the bite indicates the imprint of the soul on the flesh. The arch deception in the vampire bite is that it is so small that is seems almost harmless and insignificant, yet through it a vampire can drain its victim of life.
Blood – This is the substance which makes life possible. In ancient times, deities were thought to reside in the blood and were invoked and appeased by blood sacrifices. Blood was believed to provide spiritual regeneration and held the tantalizing promise of immortality. The downside, however, is that the vampire must consume blood in order to survive. Without this life giving fluid vampires grow weak and wither away, starving for eternity because they no longer have the strength to feed themselves. The creation of a fledgling vampires can alleviate the blood thirst of old ones. The more the blood thirst is spread the less and less the older vampires need to drink. Eventually some of the elder vampires may only drink to refresh their powers or simply because they enjoy it. Since this blood flows through the brain of the vampire it enhances mental abilities as well as the physical ones. The vampires can feel and perceive with greater clarity and intensity. They can jump to great heights and attain great speed. They can also levitate and fly across continents and oceans.
Mentally, they can read minds, call out to other vampires across the world, and confuse the thoughts of others. This ‘dark blood’ also has the power to heal. When vampires are injured they heal quickly, even faster if they can drink from an older and stronger vampire. Yet that which can heal, can also destroy. A unique property of a vampire’s blood is its combustibility. Once set alight the vampric blood kindles with astonishing speed to immolate the vampire.
Fire – a form of energy associated with life, vitality, regeneration, purification, and change. The medieval alchemists retained the idea from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus that fire is the center of creation and that it was a primary element in any kind of transmutation. He said all things derive from fire and eventually return to it. Without it survival is difficult, although fire paradoxically possesses the power to destroy. Fire also shared qualities with the sun and, as such, partakes in the concept of divinity. Many cultures view fire as a means of purifying and/or annihilating forces of evil. This is why it is most often used against vampires. It is impossible to understate the effects of fire on vampires. Vampires love the warmth and light that a fire gives off as well as the ability to be close to it even though more often than not it is the agent of destruction for most vampires. The vampire blood has a special combustibility property, which also allows old and strong vampires to set alight younger ones simply with the whim to do it. Also fire pains a vampire like no other creature. The pain of a mortal burn is nothing compared to the exquisite pain it inflicts upon a vampire. It is a lightning pain, which can bring down the strongest of vampires. Also fire burns that do not kill the vampire take much longer to heal than other kinds of injuries. A vampire can go for decades blackened by a burn if he or she cannot partake of the healing blood of another. Therefore the fire contains both a fear and a joy for a vampire.
Boredom – the bane of immortals, who remain the same through centuries of change. Boredom kills the spirit just as effectively as fire or sun kills the body. Few vampires actually have the stamina for immortality. A vampire must possess the stamina, flexibility, and imagination required to accept inevitable changes as time goes on. Most vampires, rather than being killed simply waste away from boredom and depression as they must watch all they hold dear fade away and change as they themselves remain unchanged.
Making a vampire – this is an should be an extraordinarily carefully planned thing. Some covens have special rules and rituals, often called Dark Rites, or Dark Rituals, which are intended to govern the making of other immortals to prevent the mishaps which can occur in the making of another. Most coven rules are created to ensure that no single fledgling will be born with more strength than other coven members. Some generally accepted rules, or perhaps a better term would be guidelines, in the selection and making of a fledgling are as follows: fledglings should be beautiful in keeping with the seductive nature of the vampire, they should be chosen in love and never out of revenge, they should have had a sufficient number of years on the earth before they are brought over. Never make a child vampire. The actual physical process is simpler. The chose mortal must be drained by the vampire to the very point of death, just before the heart stops. This is a risky procedure since it is the natural tendency of the vampire to drink until the heart stops and it is a strong impulse to continue on. But in the making of a fledgling, also known as the working of the dark trick, the vampire must stop drinking just before the heart stops. They must also be sure to take enough of the blood so that they mortal does not have too much of its own blood left because if there is not sufficient space for the vampire blood the change will go awry and result in hybrids. These creatures do not last long. The mortal must be sufficiently drained so that the vampric blood, or dark blood, can take hold and fuse with the mortal’s heart thereby affecting the transformation. The mortal’s system must then be immediately infused with the vampric blood. The mortal will drink from the vampire, either from the wrist, or more intimately from the neck. While the mortal drinks from the vampire the vampire experiences intense pain in the chest especially around his heart. When the vampire begins to feel numb, dizzy, and or faint they know that they must push the fledgling away. The giving of the dark gift will never fail to bring up a veil of silence between the maker and the fledgling. The thoughts of the maker and the fledgling may never be directly exchanged.
Coffins – the tradition sleeping place of vampires and central to all vampire literature, it serves as a forceful reminder that vampires are the living dead. Because coffins fully enclose their contents, the external appearance hints that there are great secrets within. The coffin does serve as a womb-like receptacle, for it offers protection, but it can also be a trap and thus an ambiguous symbol of both strength and vulnerability. In many cultures, coffins are viewed as a sort of chrysalis, a place of mystery and transition. The dead are sealed inside as a caterpillar in a cocoon, and are expected to transform into spirit and move on. Alchemists refereed to coffins as the ‘philosophical egg,” meaning a vessel of transmutation. Vampires reverse the symbol by making a transition to eternal substance. One way that coffins symbolize the vulnerability of a vampire is that a vampire can be locked into a coffin. This is a way vampires are starved and they react violently to such entrapment. This is symbolic of being buried alive except that a vampire is immortal and must endure this agony for much longer than a mortal.
Fledgling – the name of a newborn vampire. The term is fairly relative. A one hundred-year-old vampire might view a newly made vampire as a fledgling, while a six thousand-year vampire might view a vampire of a century or two as a fledgling. Also general advice for fledglings they should be kept like family and not as a coven. Covens as a general rule do not last, family set ups tend to be more lasting and more peaceable.
The Sun – a symbol of divinity and spiritual enlightenment, it is a metaphor of grace. As such, vampires are unable to endure the rays of the sun. The sun and fire are one of the 2 things that can destroy a vampire. As a vampire gets more advanced in age the sun may not kill it in one single exposure. Some vampires can go for multiple days as long as they are not exposed directly to the sun for the entire day. During the daylight hours a vampire loses direct control over its body and if left in the sun the body will do whatever it can to protect itself.
Killing - This is what vampires must do to survive. Killing means vastly different things to each individual vampire just as love and pain and hope are different things to each individual human. Killing is no ordinary act to one vampire killing means reexperiencing and celebrating the loss of his own like when he was embraced into the dark gift. Through the victims blood he is aware that the person's precious life is draining away and out of the body. It can satisfy in a way that nothing else can. The blood of the kill lessens the effect of the cold and gives vampires a more flushed and human skin tone. It can allow them to pass as mortals easier. Some vampire prefer to allow their thirst to build and build until they can no longer ignore it and then they will blindly take the first pulsing victim that crosses their path, others still prefer to hunt amongst the evil doer and to feast upon the dark hearted among humanity. Still yet others simply send out an invisible pull to those who want to die and they allow their victims to come to them rather than actively searching them out.
Blood Thirst - It is this that drives the vampire to drink blood even after they no longer need blood to survive. Some of the older vampire, or young one infused with old blood, no longer need to drink nightly to live. After thousands of year some cease to drink at all. The blood thirst is a tool of survival in young vampires, since it allows them to get over their revulsion about killing, and in the very oldest vampires in the beginning the thirst was unbearable which is what drove the eldest of vampires to make others. The creation of a fledgling can help to lessen the blood thirst in the maker.
Death Sleep - The day time trance that vampires go into when the sun rises. Its is a form of sleep so heavy that vampires actually appear to be dead: should a mortal venture too close when a vampire is in this state, the vampire body will protect itself by reaching out and strangling the intruder
Darkness - implies the mystery of the unknown. In many creation stories darkness precedes the creation of light and the differentiation of matter. Once the light has been creative the darkness take on a more regressive and malevolent characteristics. Darkness becomes the realm of shadows from a psychodynamic perspective. The shadow is the repository of things feared, underdeveloped, or disowned of the human psyche. The vampire, then, is the monster lurking in the shadows, not bound by the staunch unyielding rules of society. Vampires are bound to the night the time of shadows symbolizing their dark nature.
More to Come...... Many thanks to the book, The Vampire Companion from which much of my information has been drawn.
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