Vampires (Part 2): Spectral Siphoning, Hungry Ghouls, & Cannibal Witches

In the conclusion to our investigation into vampires, we speculate on the possible reality behind the phenomenon, and discuss its variations, from spectral energy vampires, to grave-plundering ghouls, to vampiric witches and sorcerers, referencing historical accounts and documentation from a variety of cultures. In the final analysis, we discuss what the vampire might signify within our collective psychology. 

Transcript

Astral Vampires:

In part 1 of this series, we discussed beliefs regarding the occult properties of blood, as well as the spiritual makeup of the human being. Perhaps these insights can help us to understand the vampire. As we have now learned that the etheric body is tied to blood, the vampire’s need to procure it begins to make more sense. Perhaps the blood is not only formed by the etheric body, but feeds back into and sustains it, circulating life essence across the spiritual bodies like it circulates through the physical body. 

As mentioned in the last episode, there is an idea that suggests that the vampire is essentially a residual aspect of the soul, the etheric body, which remains tied to a corpse after death, temporarily leaving its corporeal vessel to feed.  Dr. Pierart provided the following explanation. “Poor dead cataleptics, buried as if really dead, in cold and dry spots where morbid causes are incapable of affecting the destruction of their bodies, the astral spirit, enveloping itself with a fluidic ethereal body, is prompted to quit the precincts of its tomb and to exercise on living bodies acts peculiar to physical life, especially that of nutrition, the result of which, by a mysterious link between soul and body which spiritualistic science will someday explain, is forwarded to the material body lying still within its tomb, and the latter is thus helped to perpetuate its vital existence.” Dudley Wright elaborates on this premise, noting “It is held that this ethereal form can go wherever it pleases, and that it is possible for this body to feed on human victims and carry the sustenance to the corpse lying within the tomb by means of an invisible cord of connection, the nature of which is at present unknown. This would explain many of the anomalies presented in many vampire cases, such as phantoms which are seen to disappear, and the lack of any evidence that the vampire had physically left its coffin. Also, there are cases where staking was ineffective, and the vampire plague only ended when the bodies were completely destroyed.

The formation of the vampire can perhaps be further understood by looking at the Kabbalistic belief regarding the soul and its process of deconstruction at the time of a person’s death. “The human spirit consists of four parts, according to traditional Kabbalah. They are the Neschema, or eternal spark of God, the Ruach, or the mind-self part, the Nephesh, responsible for the survival instinct and autonomous activities of the flesh, and the Guf, which is literally the body itself. The Neschema is eternal and reincarnates. The ruach is immortal and rests until the Neschema it sprang from is finished with the cycle of reincarnation. The Nephesh and the Guf are mortal aspects of the spirit that die and return to the Earth. The Nephesh continues to live for about six weeks after the body dies. It is mostly invisible, but can be seen by some people more easily than others. The Nephesh is a living entity, like the body, and it needs sustenance to survive. The Nephesh usually starves and returns to the Earth after 6 weeks. Offerings to the memory of the person it was attached to can keep the Nephesh alive. Ancestor worshippers have generations of Nepheshim who serve as guardians of the family that honors them. They can become something akin to the House Gods of Rome, domestic deities that aid the peace and prosperity of the home. The Nepheshim is not fully conscious, nor even very human at all. It is a shadow, and it may contain some memories of its life, but they are hazy at best” Rufus Opus. Recall that in Europe the custom was to wait 6 weeks before checking for decomposition, the same amount of time the Nephesh, or etheric body, stays in the corpse. The Chinese held a similar belief in a person having two souls, one of which could linger after death and become a vampire. Allegedly, there were sorcerers that could exploit this process, not only keeping the spirits of the dead alive, but raising them up to do their bidding. This brand of sorcery was known as necromancy. In Greece and Rome these notorious necromancers were known as the Goets. The Melanesian talamur went about this by eating a small piece of a corpse, which was believed to give them control over the ghost within it, thus becoming his servitor. There is also the remarkable account of the renowned offspring of the vrykolakas, who had unique power over vampires, and were often sought for aid in “laying” troublesome spirits. In Russia, people believed that vampires could be created through copulation between a witch and a werewolf or devil. Not only could these left-hand practitioners allegedly create and control vampires, but they could actually themselves become them.


Energy Vampires:

A last consideration is that the feeding method of the vampire doesn’t have anything to do with blood, and is purely energetic, and that energy then prevents the physical body from shutting down completely, and so it continues to produce its own blood. In all my research, I was not able to find one account where the victim was actually proven to be drained of blood or had visible bite marks. Nor could I find any victims attesting to this happening. They would simply see an apparition of the deceased before suffering unexplained illness. That the vampire drank blood seems to be an assumption made because the victims were often pale and suffered symptoms that could be likened to blood loss, while the bodies of the vampires appeared to have an over abundance of blood. We may indeed be dealing with an entirely spiritual phenomenon. In fact, the oldest and most common form of vampiric entity was incorporeal. Furthermore, many cases in the 18th century feature entirely spiritual phenomena as well. Perhaps the true nature of the vampire, then, was misunderstood by an increasingly materialist culture in the age of enlightenment.

Rudolph Steiner referred to these spectral forms as energy vampires. These are hostile beings which find nourishment, not from the blood of humans, but from the negative energy they produce, much like the astral larva described by Paracelsus we covered in the episode on demons. Steiner believed these entities exist in the spiritual realm, and it is there they must be confronted, like the shamans who embarked on spirit journeys to conquer the sources of mental anguish for their patients.

“Everything that feeds on negative feelings, on anxiety, fear and superstition, despair or doubt, are in reality hostile forces in supersensible worlds, launching cruel attacks on human beings, while they are being fed. Therefore, it is above all necessary to begin with that the person who enters the spiritual world overcomes fear, feelings of helplessness, despair and anxiety.”

Rufus Opus corroborates this theory of the etheric body becoming vampiric. “Nepheshim also seem to be able to feed on strong emotions, and on geo-magnetic currents. People in extreme stages of grief often see glimpses of the person they are mourning. This occurs when the spirit is able to consume some of the raw emotion, and is empowered sufficiently to appear to the person grieving. In rare cases, the Nephesh can become a psychic vampire, learning to draw life from the living by stimulating strong emotions of fear, passion, or despair.”

The following are two accounts of what could be classified as energy vampires.  (Refer to episode)


Physical Ghouls:

If there is any truth to this subject, the astral or energy vampire theory seems to be the most plausible explanation. And yet, like all things of this nature, there are always exceptions, cases that suggest both physical and nonphysical events transpiring, rendering the phenomena almost incomprehensible. For example, one account tells of a vampire that was stabbed with a lance and instantly vanished, along with the weapon. When the grave was then inspected, which had no sign of forced exit, the same lance was found in the corpse. Another puzzling anomaly was that vampires were sometimes observed to have dirty feet as if they had been walking, though the grave, again, was undisturbed. There are even stories of vampiric ghouls which appear to be purely physical, rotting corpses, and literally consume the flesh of dead bodies, something more akin to what we would today identify as a zombie. The Tasmanian aborigines held the custom of guarding the body of the deceased on the first night, to prevent it from being stolen and eaten by these beings. The Chinese vampire, the jianshi, or hopping vampire, earned its name by the fact that its rigor mortis prevented it from bending its limbs, thus forcing it to jump in order to move, a flesh and blood creature, and yet, it was thought to consume chi rather than blood. The Russian viecsy, was thought to, upon first waking, gnaw at and consume its own flesh. Not all of the beings we have covered here can be considered vampires in the strictest sense or labeled as such, but they all share the same essential quality as predatory, undead entities.


Living Vampires:

As mentioned at the start of this journey, the undead vampire was not the only form of this phenomenon. Another variant was the living vampire, that is a person, who, by means of magical ability, fed on the life essence of other human beings. This was often done through the intentional separation of the etheric or astral body from the physical body, not unlike the methods we explored in the previous episode on shamanism and similar practices. A common name for this is the double, as it retains the consciousness and often the appearance of the person. Through this projection of the double, the practitioner was evidently more effective in these vampiric designs. In southern Europe, it was believed these witches could take on spectral forms completely invisible to the eye, or appear as a small wisp, slipping through a keyhole or crack and entering people’s homes. In Southeast Asia, tales of these vampire witches are prevalent. In Malaysia, she is known as the penangalan, a monstrous witch who preyed on villagers and drank their blood. She was said to have a particular predilection for newborn children. After submerging her body into a bath of vinegar, her head detached from her body, which then moved around by floating, trailing a string of entrails behind it. There is also the mananangal of the Philippines, a word which literally means “separator”, usually a female who’s detached upper body takes on the form of a winged beast similar to a gargoyle. It used its long proboscis tongue to feed on pregnant women and suck the hearts of their unborn.  I believe these types of stories where the witch detaches a part of the body may be a metaphor for out of body trance states, projection of the double. A more overt reference can be found in the lore of the Suranamese of South America, regarding the asema, a witch that is said to remove his or her skin and fold it neatly before stalking the night in the form of a blue orb. In Wallachia, the murony is said to be a living man who shapeshifts into various animals in order to hunt and feed more effectively. In the previous episode on shamanism, we found shapeshifting to be one of the abilities of the spirit double. This is perhaps the origin of the popular image of the vampire turning into a bat. 

Throughout Europe in the time leading up to the 15th century, a new, universal image of the witch was being formed by a relatively small number of church clerics, which would serve as the template for the convictions of the early modern witch trials. This image was created through an amalgamation of folk beliefs, notably a vampiric flying demon of the Mediterranean. Historian Ronald Hutton posits “ In the Alps and Pyrenees, and the lands immediately south of them, a rich crop of folkloric motifs features in prosecutions for witchcraft, one of them certainly very ancient. This is the figure of the strix, the night-flying, child-killing female demon. By the middle ages, if not earlier, it was being merged with that of the human witch, and this composite directly underlies the formation of the early modern stereotype of the satanic witch.” He further elaborates that in Italy the word strix came to be defined as “witch”, and eventually became the modern word “strega”.  The next ingredient added to the cauldron was allegations of sacrilegious rituals which epitomized Christian notions of heresy, meant to invoke shock and fear in the populace. For example, one accusation against supposed witches was that they used the blood of children and child sacrifice in their rites. A 1438 text on witchcraft describes an initiation whereby the witch would drink the blood of murdered infants from a flask in a church. Almost always, the activities ascribed to them involved blood drinking, especially targeting children. Italian witch hunter Gianfresco Mirandola wrote that it was the witch’s wont to prick babies with needles and drink their blood. The witch became the archetypal anti-human, who was part of far-reaching satanic conspiracy, conscripted by the devil himself in a concerted effort to destroy the Christian world. The leaders of this campaign effectively lumped together relic pagan practices, all forms of magic from folk to ceremonial, as well as alternative Christian sects, into this mold. In fact, most of the people charged, even those who were actually practicing magic, identified as Christians. 

These allegations are considered by scholars to be fabrications, resulting from a complex of sociopolitical pressures and power agendas of the period. Even several state and religious authorities of the time, some of which were involved in the trials, were skeptical of or outright dismissed the ideas as fantasy. The suspected witches were brutally tortured until they confessed to the crimes which had been imputed to them, rendering their testimony inadmissible by today's standards. 

However, new research has uncovered historical documents which strongly suggest that the medieval concept of the witch developed by the Christians, was in part based on older pagan beliefs. This type of evil witch character is commonly distinguished in many cultures as a superhuman entity, with an almost mythical status, distinct from the average people who practiced magic. The Tswana people of Botswana, for instance, distinguished the two as “day sorcerers” and “night witches”. The night witches were evil crones who held nocturnal gatherings, smearing their naked bodies with blood, and assaulting people in their homes. They were attributed with the ability to put their victims into a deep sleep from which they could not wake, and enter houses even when the doors were locked. On the Trobriand islands, there was also a belief in a similar witch, who could fly and become invisible, meeting on the reef beds to plot their wicked schemes. It was believed they would harvest organs from living humans for their gruesome cannibal feasts. While human sorcerers were thought to cause lesser misfortune, these witches were believed to be responsible for major catastrophes. Of particular interest to scholars in tracing the development of the medieval witch figure, is the apparent Germanic belief in a cannibal witch, referenced in a code of law instituted by King Clovis of the Franks in 507 AD, which imposes a strict penalty against a stria who eats a person. This variation of the Roman strix, according to Hutton, suggests a native belief in a similar night-flying witch. This record also imposes a fine on anyone who falsely accuses someone of being a witch, or being an accomplice to a witch, specifically one who carries a cauldron to where the stria do their cooking. Yet another fine would be issued against anyone who killed a slave under the suspicion of them being a witch, because “in no way should Christian minds believe that a woman can eat up a living human being from within.” 

In 789, the holy roman emperor Charlemagne declared to the conquered Saxons being forcibly converted to Christianity, that “If anyone, deceived by the devil, believes, as is customary among the pagans, that if any man or woman is a striga, and eats men, and on that account burn that person to death or eat his or her flesh, he shall be executed.” In the year 1000, a Swiss monk remarked that “whereas savage foreign tribes were said to practice cannibalism, here at home, witches were said to do the same. In the 13th century, a belief is recorded among the French and Germans of women known as the lamia, who flew into homes and dissolved the bones of their victims from within, before sucking their blood. The evil witches whom the benandanti of Italy battled during their spirit journeys were also believed to drink the blood of children, causing them to slowly waste away. The Roman Catholic bishop, Buchard of Worms, gave penance to women who labored under the delusion that while they slept, their souls would leave their bodies, banding together to harvest human organs and flesh, then restoring their victims to life by replacing their missing parts with straw and wood. It is interesting to note here that at the time, these beliefs were actually discouraged by the church, suggesting a preexisting tradition. Some of the witch trial campaigns gained momentum in part due to local fears of witchcraft that were already present. They were simply given a scapegoat. The concept of black, vampiric magic appears to be virtually universal and far predates any Christian belief system, and so this subject remains worthy of serious inquiry. Throughout history, there undoubtedly existed magic practitioners who sought to harm or exploit others, and still today, there are people who claim to do the same. 

On a final note, it should be said that while some of the witches mentioned were thought to consume the body rather than drink the blood, we can probably assume that, because the practices are often mentioned together, that they functioned in a similar manner and represented the same process of subtracting one’s life essence and adding it to one’s own, for the purpose of gaining some sort of magical power. In many descriptions of medieval witchcraft, it was claimed that blood and other human bodily substances were distilled into ointments and used to anoint the body, conferring powers such as invisibility, flight, and shapeshifting. 

The following is an alleged true modern account of what was believed to be a living vampire, submitted to a journal in 1910. The story took place in a small place in the tropics where a number of English officials were stationed. It relates that several of these officers complained of strange unexplained illness which would only alleviate when they left the area. The focus of the story then centers on one of the men’s wife who begins to experience paranormal phenomena. On another occasion she asked her husband to inspect the back of her neck for a bite mark, but he could find nothing of the sort. She then recalls a dream, (Refer to episode)


Conclusion:

“These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder

Which, as they kiss, consume”- William Shakespeare

Whether or not there is any reality to the vampire, it certainly speaks to a psychological reality. On one level, the vampire seems to exemplify our dark desires, our hedonistic impulses. In this sense, blood itself represents the forbidden fruit. But beyond this, it perhaps most truly represents the state of active addiction. The inability to find fulfillment from one’s own inner peace gives way to an insatiable need to gain a sense of wholeness from external sources, which degrades one’s humanity and ultimately causes a person to become self-absorbed and violent out of necessity, as ultimately such an existence can only be maintained at the expense of others. The former is symbolized in the vampire transformation, and the latter in the consumption of another person’s life force. The addict suffers suppression of rational thought as they become obsessed with the object of their addiction, as they are unable to function without it. "Everyone knows the phenomenon of trying to hold your breath underwater - how at first it's alright and you can handle it, and then as it gets closer and closer to the time when you must breathe, how urgent the need becomes, the lust and the hunger to breathe. And then the panic sets in when you begin to think that you won't be able to breathe - and finally, when you take in air and the anxiety subsides...that's what it's like to be a vampire and need blood." ~ Francis Ford Coppola. What begins as a conscious choice ends in slavery to one’s own impulses.  A person in this state can only find temporary satisfaction, so they are driven ceaselessly to feed their addiction. We find all of these characteristics in the vampire. It is no coincidence that people who were said to become vampires had often exhibited these traits in their lives. Others were turned by harboring intense negative emotions, which is in itself a form of addiction. As I’ve said before, addiction can manifest in many ways, beyond simply the use of substances. The evil sorcerer became addicted to power, as do the corrupt politicians and business tycoons in the world today. Like any drug, they will always have to seek more to achieve the same effect. All of these examples can be considered earthly attachments which were believed to keep a part of the soul attached to the physical plane, existing in a liminal state, neither living nor dead, but undead. A person can experience this undead state psychologically as well, as their condition deadens their ability to feel joy. 

In Jungian psychology, the vampire has been suggested to represent the shadow, the undesirable, unconscious aspects of the psyche which we tend to try to suppress and eradicate. Many are not even aware of or do not believe in its existence. The whole dilemma of discerning whether or not vampires are real, and what exactly they are, reflects the inner struggle of coming to terms with the shadow. By our efforts it should be dead, and yet it is not. Jung himself also acknowledged the idea of psychological vampires, people with egotistical personality traits that lead to exclusively predatory, parasitic relationships with others. In contemporary psychology this type of person is identified as having narcissistic personality disorder.

Austrian psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry, Otto Kernberg typified the narcissistic personality as having a “very inflated concept of themselves and an inordinate need for tribute from others. Capable of only a shallow emotional life, they have difficulty experiencing any empathy for the feelings of others. Their ability to enjoy life, except for their experiences of their own grandiose fantasies and the tributes that they can manipulate others into giving them, is severely limited. They easily become restless and bored unless new sources are feeding their self-esteem. It is as if they feel they have the right to control and possess others and to exploit them without guilt feelings—and behind the surface, which very often is charming and engaging, one senses coldness and ruthlessness.” The literary reinvention of the vampire which presents the vampire as a well-to-do and physically attractive being is perhaps the best representation of this. 

In his book, The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch identifies a cultural swing towards egotism in the wake of modernity. He attributes this to the cultural move towards secularism and abandonment of community values. The vampire is now romanticized in the entertainment industry, which is perhaps a reflection of this culture of narcissism. Again, I would argue that in essence, narcissism is simply another form of addiction, the addiction to feeding one’s own ego. Beyond the hyper individualistic and hypercapitalistic milieu of modernity, the advent of social media seems to add fuel to this fire, acting as the perfect breeding ground for this type of pathology, encouraging people to gain fulfillment from the attention of others, soliciting tribute like the blood drinking gods of old. It is reinforced as a cultural value by rewarding those who engage in it and devaluing people who don’t have “clout”. While all of these things can be tools for good, they seem to have also encouraged a culture of vampirism, as people spend more time seeking attention and self-gratification than creating things that have value and the ability to elevate our consciousness. Instead, what is created is an imbalance in the forces of consumption vs generation, the end result of which may be a culture that consumes itself, like the hungry ghoul locked inside its coffin. This is how we end up with things like "reaction to reaction" videos. 

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