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Vampires: A Myth in Decadence

Vampires: A Myth in Decadence

Like a dreadful soul captive inside an undignified human body, a supernatural entity haunts humans dreams in the darkest nights. The vampire, one of those nocturnal creatures that horrifies and perturbs men, has its source of origin in the most basic elements of popular folklore since ancient times. Popularized by the stories written by Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer's The Twilight Saga, or those brought to TV series in the form of True Blood and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, in more modern versions, is revealed to us as an immortal, gorgeous, sensual and powerful being gifted with special or supernatural characteristics that makes him one of the most fascinating, seductive and enthralling creature who takes whatever he has on its power to charm his preys and drink their blood.

In the last decades the vampire myth has been humanized to the point it has been ripped apart from his mean, sadist, evil, terrifying and demonic origin. From that he only has his thirst for blood and fangs, and sometimes that is alternated with the change on feeding from wild beasts degrading him to the same level as a lion of a tiger within the food chain. In this way the vampire has been unnaturalized from the true essence of the ancient myth pretending to make him fit in the centre of the most juvenile and trivial fantasies of pink teenage love. Don't we know the real colors of vampires are black like the night or crimson blood and red passion?

And it is, the vampire, even classifying within the fantasy genres or folktales -here I'll exclude the vampires written by LynnS13 or Nyhterides and their own mythology relating vampires with other fantastic and dark winged creatures based on necromancy- is a much more complex entity as it could be ancient. Another characteristic is that they are malleable and could have as many features as the author wishes to according to the part of the myth we are sticking to. This myth, more than unknown or uncertain, is one that form part of diverse kinds of narrations amongst a wide variety and distant traditions both oral and written proceeding from a diversity of cultures. Present throughout the same history of mankind , the vampire myth can be found in religion, mythology, theology and world wide folklore in the same way we can see Angels, demons, ghosts and witches as a common belief. We can classify then this category within the paranormal, supernatural, urban or mythological fantasy depending on how it's presented.

It is very probable that the vampire history comes directly and intrinsically from the necessity of personifying darkness and evil that responds to a collective subconsciousness. This creature is an represent the most suppressed primitive human instincts and impulses. It becomes in the pure incarnation of evil as a living entity and a representation of the wildest side of mankind in a bestial atavistic. It takes these creatures to a perpetual limbo where the eternal conflict between rationalism, carnal desires, religion and society collide and fights with free will.

The vampire is, besides the cited fear of our own nature, a complex combination of both fear and human beliefs that include: the blood attribution of a source of power and the souls vehicle; the fear of predators, to sickness or to death represented in the more palpable form of a corpse as well as the ancestral fascination with immortality and the primal instincts of survival. Some experts affirm that this myth, mostly the one that was popular in Europe after the XVII century, was born due to the imperative need of explaining, within a heavy atmosphere of pan inc and ignorance, the epidemics caused by real diseases that spread over Europe before science could explain them.

The term 'vampire' began to be used frequently in that continent after the XVIII century. It has its origin in the word vampir from the Slavic tongues and from German and Polish wampir and before that from the archaic root oper that has parallel rotors in Turk and Persian. It means 'flying being', to 'drink or suck' and also 'wolf'. We can infer and understand that its existence or presence in the human psyche is as ancient as the history of human language.

We can find these blood-sucking creatures within the Egyptian mythology in the form of Ka and Sejmet; in the Judaic theology as Lilith, the first Adam consort; also in China, Mesopotamia, Africa, Native American Aborigines, Aztec and I the Amazon tribes. The belief in these beings can't be denied from the humankind history and can never be separated as a simple trivial fantasy without a base or fundamental. Even religion wanted to prove or diminish the myth by sending priests and experts to the places where vampires had appeared. One of the most famous stories or cases was that one of Arnold Paole, documented in the XVIII century. Also we can find the chronicles of Fray Benito Jeronimo Feijoo, and many others.

As you can see, the myth has its origins in classical, morbid, gory tales and even they're are analogous, the vampire has become the nemesis of humans and his natural enemy, represented in men's deepest and terrible desires. The vampire is part demonic, part divine, part human and what it only wants from humans is to feed on their blood, energy and soul. It's a powerful being, but not immortal because we can find a way to 'k i l l' him as we know. It isn't either a loving soul that wishes to repeat the grade only because he is waiting for the love of his life to come for its written in the stars... Vampires are not romantic but they are lust and passion in its maximum expression. This creature only wishes to satisfy his sinful sexual desires like the mantis would do when ripping off the head of her mate after copulating.

Within literature, vampire classic stories, those cruel tales with a gothic or Victorian feel, are dated as far as the XVII century and begin to popularize in a greater scale in the XVII-XIX centuries in Europe with fantastic narrations written by Bram Stoker (Dracula), Edgar Allan Poe (Morella), Villiers de L'Isle-Adam (Vera), Alexandre Dumas (Le Dame Pâle), Samuel Taylor Colleridge (Cristabel), and Sheridan Le Fanu (Carmilla).

In conclusion, vampires are not a futile product of an exacerbated imagination of a few and are not superheroes dressed in leather hiding in tunnels under the city streets. They are not eternal teenagers sighing and longing in the high school halls for the newcomer girl and they don't go around in the woods wrestling with werewolves. And even though I don't doubt they like baseball, I don't think they'll invite you to a tea party in their crystal house in the woods. They only want to chase you, drink your blood and corrupt your soul. Vampires are evil demons so the next time you read a vampire story, think about how mutilated the triple essence of this creature can be as part of universal history... Of fear them to death.

This essay responds to the WattVampires and LynnS13 call to talk on the myth. I hope it can bring some light on the matter.