Yes, everyone knows about Hollywood-style vampires that only come out at night, want to suck your blood, and are defeated by Christian symbols like crosses and Holy Water.
Unless they both feature in the same horror film, those vampires and witches have nothing in common. Based on the works of Bram Stoker, creator of Dracula, this kind of blood-sucking vampire exists.
- Stoker was enthralled by mythology from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the new discoveries of South American blood-sucking bats in Europe.
- Stoker blended numerous tales and added his own unique vision to create a notion that continues to amuse and captivate millions of people today. His idea, on the other hand, has little resemblance to the original European vampire.
The term "vampire" is used to describe a person who is undead.
- Almost all Central and Eastern European languages, whether Slavic, Finno-Ugric, or Romance, have similar-sounding terms relating to comparable ideas.
- Linguists think these terms come from the word "uber," which means "witch," and originally emerged in the Turkic languages of Asia. Upir, wampir, vampyr, upior, and more variations exist.
Did you think the term "witch" was perplexing?
One term (vampire, vampyr, upir) may mean witch, vampire, and/or werewolf in the Balkans.
- Vampires were thought to be revenants in Slavic regions, living corpses of witches/sorcerers/magical practitioners who rose from the dead for various reasons.
- They are destructive at their most neutral because they do not follow natural rules; at their worst, they rise with the purpose of inflicting damage.
Blood-sucking isn't mentioned at all in the original idea.
- Vampires need life-energy because they are in a transitional condition between death and life (mana, magic power, chi).
- This is best absorbed from individuals who are still alive. (It's worth noting that vampire bats virtually seldom harm humans.)
- Rather of sucking blood, life force is more likely to be taken via sexual energy or secretions, or by siphoning off mana or chi.
- Another theory is that the vampire is not dead, but rather a living practitioner who can send forth his shadow soul (and retrieve it as needed), and that this soul is perceived as a vampire.
Nigel Jackson's Compleat Vampyre is a good place to start (Capall Bann Publishing, 1995).
You may also want to read more about Paganism here.
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