Vampires (Part 1): Blood-Drinking Revenants & Sanguine Spiritual Mysteries

In this episode we explore the history of vampire beliefs as they are found all over the world, and retell alleged true historical accounts. In the latter part of the show, we explore spiritual mystery of blood in ancient religions and the occult. Humanity’s fascination with its special properties continues into the modern day.

In the spirit of the horror season, I will be mercilessly butchering many pronunciations.  

Transcript

Introduction:

Rumors have been spreading.

The townsfolk have been dreading;

Whispers of an eldritch horror

Lurking in the dark. 

A late night lonely walking;

Someone saw the creature stalking,

And he stood frozen, balking,

Then took the long way round the stones.

And all our days are haunted.

The clinician, he, though vaunted,

Was vexed and surely daunted

O’r this wasting unto death.

First a farmer’s wife;

Then it took the proctor’s life.

The last words uttered rife,

Were that the dead had come for them.

At length a group assembled,

Clutching lanterns, hands that trembled,

Armed with stakes and lances,

They descended on the tombs.

The fallen leaves were rustling.

In the dead of night, a bustling;

The coffin lid a’jostling 

Open, they gazed into its depths.

Within, the wight was keeping,

As if it had been sleeping,

Though from its mouth was seeping,

Gouts of fresh vermillion blood.

They stabbed and then they slashed,

And burned its heart to ash.

Though it was a dreadful task,

The dead would never come again.

The vampire is one of the most prolific supernatural entities known to man. It has been recorded in the mythology of some of the earliest civilizations, and in the folklore of virtually every culture. Throughout the Middle Ages its presence was felt quite literally, to which the many scores of recorded accounts of their grisly activities are a testament. And from the literary renaissance of the 19th century, continuing into modern day, saturating the horror genres of movies and TV, the vampire is very much still a part of the cultural zeitgeist. In this episode we will examine what the true nature of this phenomenon is that struck so much fear into the hearts of man and caused him to take drastic and gruesome measures against it. Of course, like most things we have examined thus far, the belief in vampires is now considered to be nothing more than the product of ignorant superstitions, and the idea is kept alive for the purposes of mere entertainment, or the musings of staid anthropologists, but for much of history, the vampire was an all too real, and perhaps the most formidable member of the coterie of malevolent beings thought to roam the night, stalking and preying upon unsuspecting persons in their sleep. For the purposes of our study, we will examine the vampire as a specific creature, as well as vampirism as a mode of being which describes the means by which an organism acquires its food and energy requirements, similar to zoological categorizations such as carnivore or herbivore. From this perspective, a vampire would be considered parasitic. This is an organism which derives nutrients from another organism at the expense of its host. The term vampire is a subset of this referring specifically to the drinking of blood. So, in this sense a vampire can be a range of different entities, both human and nonhuman, which engage in the act of vampirism. In its most common form, Webster International Dictionary defines a vampire as "a blood-sucking ghost or re-animated body of a dead person." 

The types of people who become vampires in death are further elaborated in Whitney's Century Dictionary, which states "dead wizards, werewolves, heretics, and other outcasts become vampires, as do also the illegitimate offspring of parents themselves illegitimate, and anyone killed by a vampire." The vampire was thought to be created through a preternatural transformation of a human being at the time of death, caused by various forms of degradation. The most typical examples of this were that the person was cursed or met a particularly violent end. 

The vampire would then stalk the world of the living, either with its physical body or by sending its spirit out from the body in the form of a ghostlike specter. While typically vampires are considered to be undead creations, there are several examples of "living vampires", witches who were said to practice black magic, having the ability to siphon off their victim's life force. Others were thought to be demonic spirits which took up residence in human cadavers once the person's soul had left the body, a belief held mainly by the Greeks. Further still are examples of vampiric beings that are altogether nonhuman, such as the Leanhaum Shee, a blood sucking fairy from the isle of Man, or the Russian wukodolak, meaning "wolf fairy".
So, as you can see, the subject of vampirism is complex and overlaps with many other phenomena which we have previously explored. Let's try now to parse out what we can, and to do that, as always, we will start from the very beginning.

Origins:

The earliest records of the belief in vampire-like beings can be found in ancient Mesopotamia. One of these was the Edimmu, souls of the deceased which roamed the earth, haunting remote and isolated areas. It was said that if a person were to wander into these places, the Edimmu would attach itself to the victim and plague him. They could also reach people in their sleep and suck the life out of them. The spirit could only be dispatched through exorcism carried out by a priest. Other examples can be found in the Mesopotamian catalog of demons. Listeners of the episode on demons will remember Lamashtu, the blood-sucking demoness, who kidnapped children and drank their blood. The translation of an ancient tablet, an incantation meant to banish such entities reads:

Spirits that diminish heaven and Earth,

That diminish the land.

Spirits that diminish the land

Of giant strength.

Of giant strength and giant tread,

Demons like raging bulls, great ghosts.

Ghosts that break through all houses.

Demons that have no shame.

Seven are they!

Knowing no care.

They grind the land like corn;

Knowing no mercy.

They rage against mankind;

They spill their blood like rain.

Devouring their flesh, sucking their veins.

Where the images of the gods are, there they quake

In the temple of Nabu, who fertilize the shoots of wheat.

They are demons full of violence

Ceaselessly devouring blood

Invoke the ban against them.

That they no more return (to this neighborhood).

By Heaven be ye exorcized! By Earth be ye exorcized!

Defining Vampires:

The word vampire is thought to be derived from the Serbian word wampira. In Slavonic cultures can be found perhaps the most extensive body of folklore regarding vampires, which were at the center of a wave of fear that swept across southeast Europe, lasting from 1723 to 1735, during which time an alleged vampire epidemic took place.

“Voltaire was surprised that in the enlightened 18th century there should still be people found who believed in the reality of vampires, and that the doctors of Sorbonne should give their imprimatur to a dissertation on these unpleasant creatures. Yet from 1700 to 1735 the subject of vampirism formed a principal topic of conversation and may be said to have been a mania all over the world, with Europe as the particular center. Pamphlets on the subject streamed from the press, the newspapers vied with one another in recording fresh achievements of the specters, and though the philosophers scoffed and ridiculed the belief, sovereigns sent officers and commissioners to report upon their misdeeds. The favorite scenes of their exploits were Hungary, Poland, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia, and in those countries a vampire haunted and tormented almost every village," Dudley Wright. 

The most prevalent conception of the vampire, found throughout most of Europe, is a restless human spirit which remained in the body after death, and by some mysterious preternatural means, was able to reanimate itself and feed on the blood of the living. The negative factors of the person's life which led to this transformation imply that this was a manifestation of a person’s discontent, an attempt to gain in death that which they could not in life. Unwilling to move on, driven by intense desire, the person’s soul became earthbound, and transformed into the monstrosity that was the vampire. This is a similar genesis to the concept of the ghost, except that the vampire managed to retain its physicality to a significant degree. The Sakai people of Perak are attested to have held the belief that vampires were indeed physical beings, as evidenced by their inability to pass through walls or hedges. It was believed that through the act of taking blood from living beings, the vampire was able to preserve, and on some level sustain a functioning physical body, serving as a perpetual vessel for the soul and anchor to the physical world. As it was still essentially dead, no longer producing its own vitality, it had to rely on constantly taking it from others in order to exist.  Author J. Scoffern wrote, "The best definition I can give of a vampire is a living mischievous and murderous dead body. A living dead body. The words are idle, contradictory and incomprehensible, but so are vampires."

18th century German historian Johann Heinreich Zopfius stated "Vampires come out of their graves in the nighttime, rush upon people sleeping in their beds, suck out all their blood and destroy them. They attack men, women, and children, sparing neither age nor sex. Those who are under the malignity of their influence complain of suffocation and a total deficiency of spirits, after which they soon expire. Some of them being asked at the point of death what is the matter with them, their answer is that such persons lately dead rise to torment them."

The vampire drank the blood of its host most commonly by biting the back of the neck, often leaving marks on the victim. They were however thought to prey upon people in other ways, such as through strangulation, infliction of disease, or unknown means which were invisible to the eye. In Romania, the phenomenon of sudden death syndrome was also attributed to them. 

European Ethnography:

Vampire beliefs can be found in Grecian lore, and in Crete it was known as katakhand. (Or Vrykolaka in Greece, which is Slavic origin, suggesting it was introduced to Greece from there). As mentioned earlier, this being was a demonic spirit which entered the body of a deceased person and rose to prey upon the living, first of which were the person’s relatives. It was said that the vrykolaka would knock on peoples’ doors at night, calling their names and beckoning them to answer. To answer the call and open the door meant certain death. It should be noted that this variation of the vampire may be accounted for by the Greek adoption of Christianity and subsequent embrace of vampire belief by the Greek orthodox church, altered so as to be congruent with their philosophy. It was further adapted by them in maintaining that anyone who was excommunicated would become a vampire and could only be cured through absolution. In other parts of Europe, vampires were discouraged as superstition by the church. The vampire is no stranger to the Scandinavians, who, like other Europeans, instituted court processes and special tribunals for handling the issue. Going back further, the vampire is also mentioned in the sagas and other stories of antiquity. One of the more unique tales comes to us from the Danes. In Germany, the vampire was called the nachzehrer. It was practice there to bury food with corpses so that they would not be hungry enough to rise again. In Russia, it was the vieszcy, which first preyed on its family, then neighbors, and also feeding on cattle. At midnight, it was known to climb the belfry and ring the bell, and its sound was an omen of death to all who were unfortunate enough to hear it.

Outside of Europe

Vampire folklore can also be found in many other parts of the world outside of Europe. In India, one of a number of vampiric entities is the Bantu Saburo, a revenant which was said to have power over dogs, luring men into the jungle and using them to run down their prey and then drink their blood. In Africa, among the Kaffir people, it was said that evil men lived a second time, returning from the grave to plague the living. There are even historical accounts of vampires in China, where similar measures for killing them are recorded, such as burning the body. Another method was to stand watch over a graveyard and wait for the vampire to leave the coffin, then remove the lid so that the air would eventually cause the body to decay. Another method was to throw rice around the grave, the reason for this being that, strangely enough, the vampire had a compulsion to count each piece before proceeding, thus distracting the vampire and giving people a chance to destroy it. This same method was used in Russia except with grain. This OCD characteristic is oddly a motif in vampire folklore. One account states that a family was instructed by a wizard to put a dog outside the door, so that the vampire would stop before entering to count every one of its hairs. The obsessive nature of the vampire makes sense within the context of how we understand them to be created. One could say they are attached to or obsessed with aspects of earthly life, of which this behavior is a manifestation.

Vampire Hunting

If a recently deceased person was suspected of having become a vampire, it was often customary in Europe for a public inquiry to be held involving the witnesses, and if approved, an exhumation of the grave and examination of the corpse was conducted after six or seven weeks, a period of time at which signs of decomposition could, under normal conditions, be readily observed. Firstly, there were methods of identifying a vampire grave. One sign to look for was the appearance of small holes in the earth, only the width of a finger. Divination could also be used, which involved having a child ride a horse through a cemetery. If the horse refused to pass over a grave, despite being spurred repeatedly, that grave was believed to be the abode of a vampire. Once the vampire grave had been identified, the body was exhumed and examined for certain characteristics. What were held to be the tell-tale signs of a vampire included a lack of any such decomposition or rigor mortis, as well as a fluidity and freshness to the blood. “The records state that when such a grave was opened it was generally found to contain a corpse as fat and handsome as that of a full-blooded man quietly sleeping. The finest vermilion blood would flow from the throat when cut, and this was held to be the blood he had sucked from the veins of living people.” - Wright. Sometimes this pilfered blood was observed to be running from the eyes, ears, nose, or mouth. In Polish and Russian lore, it is explained that this occurred when the vampire had consumed so much blood that it could no longer fit inside the body. The modern skeptic's interpretation of these records is that people of the time did not understand the natural processes of decomposition, the rate of which may slow or accelerate depending on varying environmental conditions, such as temperature. What might be construed as a vampire was in actuality, simply a body being preserved by the cold. However in many cases this explanation is inadequate. 18th century scholar Dom Augustin Calmet astutely noted that these perfectly preserved bodies were found among multiple decaying carcasses dug up at the exact same time, all of which had also been buried at the same time, and in some cases even in the same mound. 

Once it was determined that the suspect was indeed a vampire, there were a range of methods employed for neutralizing the threat, which often involved putting into place physical restraints and barriers which would prevent the dead from rising from the grave. Among the Wallachians, it was common practice to drive a nail through the skull of a corpse, or place thorny bush stems over it, so that the burial shroud would become snagged and restrain the vampire attempting to rise. Another method was to place heavy stones over the grave, a practice which anthropologist James Frazer identified as the origin of the tombstone. Sometimes, magic was utilized as well. Such practices devised to counter evil influences is known as apotropaic magic. talismans, objects ascribed with religious or magical power, would be placed over graves. One of the most well known examples of this is the use of garlic, which has been traditionally considered to have purificatory properties as well as the ability to ward against evil. In the historical region of Transylvania in Romania, the corpse's mouth would be filled with cloves of garlic. This may stem from the belief that a vampire could be created from an evil spirit entering a dead body, and it was a common belief in medieval Europe that they entered a person through the mouth. Indeed, in the Slavic regions, the belief was held that vampires could be created by demonic possession of a corpse, which happened in cases where the person lived a life of malevolence. Another Transylvanian practice which will no doubt sound familiar was driving a wooden stake through the body. This appears to have worked on both levels, as a physical restraint, pinning the body to the ground, and as a talisman, indicated by the use of certain types of wood such as ash and hawthorne believed to be magically potent. A recurring magical symbol used against vampires was the cross, invoked in several ways, whether it be through crossing the arms of the dead, placing a crucifix upon it, or burying the body at the crossroads. While there is varying symbology behind the cross across cultures, it is universally regarded as representing the nexus between spirit and matter, a point of convergence where multiple forces meet, and thus a spiritually potent liminal threshold between worlds. Perhaps one purpose for the cross was to guide a lost soul to the afterlife by allowing it to cross over, so that it would not linger and become a vampire. A similar idea can be seen in the practice of placing coins with the dead so that they could pay the toll to cross the river Styx, the body of water in Greek religion which all souls had to cross in order to reach the underworld. For more troublesome cases where perfunctory measures were ineffective, people resorted to the rending or outright destruction of the body, from decapitation to cremation of the heart or the entire body. There are a number of witness accounts that when the bodies were stabbed or dismembered, the vampire, which at first lay still, would suddenly cry out in pain. In 1732, Austrian medical officer Johannes Fluckinger reported that a corpse had groaned and bled fresh blood upon being staked. 

These things were done not only to deal with already turned vampires, but also as prophylactic measures towards those recently deceased who were suspected of soon becoming them. Examples of this can be seen in the English practice of burying those who committed suicide at the crossroads, or the Romanian practice of staking them upon burial. 

Failure to destroy vampires could have disastrous consequences. The Romanians believed that every person bitten or killed by a vampire, known to them as the nosferatu, would inevitably become one, and that nothing could save them from this fate.  People who had had their blood sucked in life were considered passive vampires, who then became active, predatory vampires in death. This ability to spread greatly increased their destructive potential in the European mind, being ascribed the ability to multiply and spread in a similar manner to a disease. Victims who have been attacked must eat dirt from the vampire grave and cover themselves with the vampire’s blood to avoid becoming one themselves.

Documented Vampire Accounts:

The following are a series of documented vampire accounts which were attested to by credible witnesses. The first account comes from a 1732 document signed by three regimental surgeons and countersigned by two lieutenant generals, and tells a story of a village near Belgrade plagued with vampirism. It begins, “In the spring of 1727 there returned from the Levant to the village of Meduegna, near Belgrade, one Arnod Paole, who, in a few years’ military service and varied adventure, had amassed enough to purchase a cottage and an acre or two of land in his native place, where he gave out that he meant to pass the remainder of his days.” It goes on to describe a man known to be of good and steady morals and affable to all, though he is prone to fits of melancholy. After he becomes betrothed to a village girl, his melancholy increases. Finally, he confides to her the source of his angst. “It was in Kosovo this fate befell me. Here you have hitherto escaped the terrible scourge. But there they die, and the dead visit the living. I experienced the first frightful visitation, and I fled; but not till I had sought his grave and executed the dread expiation from the vampire.” The man fell from a carriage not long after this, and days later succumbed to his wounds. Stories began circulating of villagers describing being haunted by the deceased, and four of them died. The villagers exhumed the man’s corpse and found it to be absent of decay and blood on its mouth. The body was burned as were the bodies of the four dead villagers, but the vampiric plague continued for several years, leading to the creation of the document. In it are the following written accounts.

"1. A woman of the name of Stana, twenty years of age, who had died three months before, of a thirty days’ illness following her confinement. She had before her death avowed that she had anointed herself with the blood of a vampire, to liberate herself from his persecution. Nevertheless, she had died. Her body was entirely free from decomposition. On opening it the chest was found filled with recently effused blood, and the bowels had exactly the appearance of sound health. The skin and nails of her hands and feet were loose and came off, but underneath were new skin and nails.

2. A woman of the name of Mihza, who had died at the end of a three months’ illness. The body had been buried ninety and odd days. In the chest was liquid blood. The viscera were as in the former instance. The body was declared by a heyduk, who recognised it, to be in better condition and fatter than it had been in the woman’s legitimate lifetime.

3. The body of a child eight years old, that had likewise been buried ninety days; it was in the vampire condition.

4. The son of a heyduk, named MiUoc, sixteen years old. The body had lain in the grave nine weeks. He had died after three days’ indisposition and was in the condition of a vampire.

5. Joachim, likewise the son of a heyduk, seventeen years old. He had died after three days’ illness; had been buried eight weeks and some days; was found in the vampire state. 6. A man of the name of Rusha, who had died of an illness of ten days’ duration and had been six weeks buried, in whom likewise fresh blood was found in the chest. 7. The body of a girl ten years of age who had died two months before. It was likewise in the vampire state, perfectly un- decomposed, with blood in the chest.

6. The body of the wife of one Hadnuck, buried seven weeks before; and that of her infant eight weeks old, buried only twenty-one days. They were both in a state of decomposition, though buried in the same ground and closely adjoining the others."

Spiritual Significance of Blood:

“The gods which seize upon man 

Have come forth from the grave;

The evil wind-gusts

Have come forth from the grave.

To demand payment of rites and the pouring out of

Libations,

They have come forth from the grave;

All that is evil in their hosts, like a whirlwind.

Hath come forth from the grave.

The evil spirit, the evil demon, the evil ghost, the evil

Devil,

From the earth have come forth;

From the underworld unto the land they have come

Forth;

In heaven they are unknown.

On Earth they are not understood. 

They neither stand nor sit

Nor eat nor drink.”


Vampiric Gods:

In order to understand the true nature of the vampire, it seems necessary to first establish the spiritual mystery of blood itself. What is evident when looking at archaic religious traditions, is that our ancestors universally ascribed deep spiritual significance and power to it. “According to primitive ideas, blood is life, and to receive blood is to receive life; the soul of the dead wants to live, and, consequently, loves blood. The shades in Hades are eager to drink the blood of Odysseus’s sacrifice, that their life may be renewed for a time. It is of the greatest importance that the soul should get what it desires, as, if not satisfied, it might come and attack the living. It is possible that bodily mutilations, which to this day accompany funerals among some peoples, have their origin in the belief that the departed spirit is refreshed by the blood thus spilt. The Samoans call it an offering of blood for the dead when the mourners beat their heads till the blood ran.” - Dudley Wright. This author also points to ancient practices regarding blood sacrifice as possibly done in part to quench the thirst of the dead. In the fairy tale "Faithful John", the statue containing the soul of the King’s servant says to him “If you will cut off the heads of your two children yourself, and sprinkle me with their blood, I shall be restored to life.”

Beyond the souls of the departed, there were gods who were believed to have a thirst for blood. These were often chthonic deities of the darker aspects of existence, who, while harbingers of death, also cultivated the light within the darkness and reigned in the forces of destruction. They were often propitiated in times of great peril and hardship, or to prevent such times from occurring. The Greek goddess Hekate, a deity of the moon, magic, and ghosts, was known to drink blood. She is associated with the crossroads (which we previously linked to vampires), boundaries, and the doorways between worlds. She is depicted as holding twin torches, representing the dual aspects of mercy and severity, shining her light into the underworld. She was also invoked as a protector, as she held power over all unruly and wicked spirits. Known to be a psychopomp, or being with the ability to travel between worlds, she served as a guide and ally to Persephone after her abduction by Hades. The ancient Egyptians worshiped a female warrior goddess named Sekhmet, whose name means: “She who is powerful.”, a goddess of chaos, war, and healing, depicted with the body of a woman and the head of a lion wearing a sun disk. A deity of terrible power, she was both feared and revered. She is sometimes referred to in Egyptian texts as “She Before Whom Evil Trembles'', the “Mistress of Dread”, or the “Lady of Slaughter.” According to Egyptian texts, Sekhmet’s father, Ra, sent her to punish humans for their disobedience. During her exploits, she developed a taste for the sanguine, drinking the blood of her victims. This developed into an insatiable thirst. Her father, in an effort to stop her from destroying humanity, dyed a large quantity of ale red. Sekhmet, duped into thinking it to be blood, drank her fill and was inebriated, which apparently settled her, and she then returned home peacefully. Every year, on the feast of Sekhmet, Egyptians commemorated the saving of mankind by drinking copious amounts of beer stained with pomegranate juice. 

The Mayans, known for their prolific engagement in human sacrifice, considered blood as nourishment to the gods. Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, upon arriving at the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, witnessed a ceremony wherein the priest, using an obsidian blade, sliced open the chests of a number of sacrificial victims, removing their still-beating hearts to be given as an offering. The temple was described as having two rounded towers made up of thousands of human skulls. It was believed that the god Huitzilopochtli had to be fed with human hearts and blood to keep the sun moving across the sky. The god was believed to be fighting a constant battle against the forces of darkness, which could only be sustained through human sacrifice. They believed that if they failed to do this, that it would mean their total destruction. The Mayan god of death, Camazotz, depicted with the head of a bat, was said to emerge from the underworld through a cave. It would then descend upon the people, grabbing its victims by the neck and decapitating them to feast on their blood. Legend has it that this god was the reason human sacrifice came to be practiced among the Mayan people. 


History of Humans Using Blood:

Aside from spirits and gods, humans were not unknown to seek the power of blood. It was thought in some ancient cultures to have revivifying and healing properties. Medieval physicians prescribed baths of human blood. It was also thought to have been consumed in ritual and religious context, specifically in communion with gods. Scholars have suggested that there were secret cults devoted to Hekate which practiced blood-drinking, even though the practice was outlawed in Greek society. Her patrons likely propitiated her seeking the secrets of the spiritual worlds and of magic. One of her titles was fittingly “the keeper of keys”. Blood was also used in magical practice to enhance the powers of the practitioner or the working itself. Australian indigenous sorcerers believed that an initiatory consumption of bloody human flesh gave them their ability.

There are cases across history where blood was used as a recognized medical treatment for a variety of ailments from plague to epilepsy to melancholy, and even death itself. At the end of the 15th Century, a dying Pope Innocent VIII was fed blood rendered from three young men in an attempt to restore his health. The use of blood to treat sickness was part of a broader category of medicine often referred to as “corpse medicine” which involved the use of flesh and bone as well, though blood was deemed to be the “elixir of life.” Many recipes described elaborate and often gruesome steps to curate blood for optimal benefit to the patient.

In the 1860s, French biologist Paul Bert conducted experiments where he surgically joined albino rat pairs resulting in a shared bloodstream. Bert’s groundbreaking work earned him the Prize of Experimental Physiology of the French Academy of Science in 1866. However, the medical community lost interest in the subject until the early 1900s when scientists, fascinated by the physiological symbiosis of Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, revisited Bert’s work. His procedure was refined, and the technique was termed, “parabiosis”, (derived from the Greek words para “besides” and bios “life”). Throughout the 1900s, scientists used the technique to study a variety of human conditions including diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, but it was not until the last two decades that the focus turned to aging and regeneration.  (From NIH: Parabiosis for the study of age-related chronic disease Alexander Eggel and Tony Wyss-Coray)

In 2016, Stanford Medical School graduate, Jesse Karmazin, used the theory of parabiosis to create a California company marketing blood transfusions from young donors to combat and reverse the aging process. The company was named Ambrosia, referring to the ambrosia of Greek mythology which was said to have the power to bestow immortality. While the company protects the confidentiality of its clients, there was no shortage of elite customers willing to pay the exorbitant $8000 price for a single transfusion and a shot at the fountain of youth. However, in 2019, the FDA issued a consumer warning against Ambrosia that there is no evidence that the process has any impact on diseases associated with aging. Despite this, Silicon Valley giants continue to invest billions into biotech companies researching the anti-aging properties of young blood.


Spiritual Science:

“Blood is a Very Special Fluid.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust

What is it about blood that people believed it to be such an important part of spirituality and so coveted by spirits and gods? Its life-sustaining properties on a biological level are well known. The most important function of blood is taking oxygen from the lungs, rendering it bioavailable and distributing it throughout the body. It is commonly expressed in religion that man was given life by the breath of God, and blood, being the carrier of breath, is the link between the outside source and the inner being. This body of beliefs seem to suggest that blood not only holds great spiritual power, but is somehow a link between matter and spirit. We will now explore this idea further from a spiritual, occult perspective suspending our disbelief and approaching the possibility of vampirism as a genuine phenomenon.

According to Austrian esoteric philosopher Rudolph Steiner, there are three distinct bodies within man that together constitute his entire being; the physical body, the etheric body, etheric referring to the fine spiritual matter in between physical and spiritual, and the astral, or entirely spiritual body. Man begins as pure consciousness and forms these successively denser bodies as he comes into earthly manifestation. Each of these in turn organize and are linked to certain systems within the physical body. Without these links, the physical body is essentially lifeless. It is when the astral body develops that we see the manifestation of ego.

“We have seen how the external formless substances enter the human body, and how the etheric body turns these substances into living forms; how further, the astral body fashions pictures of the external world, how this reflection of the external world resolves itself into inner experiences, and how this inner life then reproduces from within itself pictures of the outer world. Now, when this metamorphosis extends to the etheric body, blood is formed.” 

In other words, the sum of each man’s experience, and thus his whole identity as it has developed throughout his life, is imprinted in his blood. Therefore blood is the physical expression of the individual. This idea is not without anecdotal evidence, as we see the phenomenon of organ and blood recipients taking on personality traits and memories of their donors. This encoding of the blood transcends the individual; the information stored within it is carried on through lineage. According to Steiner, ancestral experience, wisdom, and morality were inherited through blood. Furthermore, in the early days of humanity, blood was not mingled beyond the tribe, and this “pure blood” gave man exceptional abilities such as clairvoyance. When people began commingling blood through exogamy, or marrying outside of the tribe, these abilities were lost. These ideas are no doubt connected to royal families and their preoccupation with the preservation of pure bloodlines. 

Because blood is inherently tied to identity, “it is that, about which, the real fight must be waged, when it comes to a struggle concerning the man between good and evil.” “The myths and legends tell of these things. They say: ‘That which has power over thy blood, has power over thee.’ Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is why the representative of the evil principle says: ‘Sign thy name to the pact with thy blood. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over to myself.’