Thank you, LW...
And, as you say, while not a college dissertation, yet there is a lot of information here... which must be properly waded through to consider what is and is not relevant, factual and/or contextually accurate to the Slavic lands in question and their folklore.
As we all know, wikipedia, while full of information and somewhat reliable on most matters, yet wiki is most certainly not authoritative by any means on any particular topic. And where vampirology and/or Central and Eastern European research is concerned, the statements made reveal that it is surface-level at best in all such.
This is why, to acquire a full picture, one must read carefully the works of those professionals who have made it their academic business to study, evaluate in light of their specific fields of learning, and conclude according. Some of the more prolific professional academics in the area are all doctorate level historians, sociologists and anthropologists as follows (in no particular order of):
Dr. Jan Perkowski
Dr. Paul Barber
Dr. Bruce McClelland
Dr. Alan Dundes
Dr. Sabina Ispas
And, as I quoted most of these (and could quote ALL of these) from their own published works in my VR profile here, and in the case of Dr. Sabina Ispas, who is herself Romanian (where Transylvania exists), I quoted from her professional public address on the subject, ... the interpretation of vampires as blood drinkers was, in their professional opinions, made entirely by collective and superstitious conjecture of the local populaces. Such blood-drinking was never actually witnessed and the conclusions that such had occurred were the direct result of medical ignorance of what happens to the Human body following death that resembled corpses filled with blood.
There is not a single solitary account of someone actually witnessing or, for that matter, having been a verifiable victim of a "bloodsucker," in Central and/or Eastern European history.
There are, however, witness accounts of women having been with "vampires" in extended sexual activity that resulted in them appearing "exhausted and emaciated" from such long-term participation. It is this that... prior to all the blood-drinking stories... truly defined the vampire.
In fact, as late as the 20th Century, accounts persisted in those Central and Eastern European regions of vampires exhibiting exactly such sexual behaviors. For this reason, the accounts from those areas prior to Hollywood depictions even report men in the villages pretending to be vampires ... not so as to drink blood, but instead to try and seduce women into sexual liaisons with them under such pretenses given that THIS was what the vampire was thought to do by such native peoples in those areas.
Some of the accounts of their discovery as fraudulent vampire paramours are quite humorous, as recounted in Dr. Perkowski's seminal publication "Vampires of the Slavs."
The point is... despite our Western fictional depictions and all the many "lifestylers" out there emulating and adorating all such... the fact is that vampires were primarily and originally known for their prodigious and "insatiable sexual appetites," and not for blood-drinking. And this due to their natural multiorgasmic capacity... a capacity only females were previously known to potentially possess.
The only precedents in history of males possessing such unlimited sexual capacity are found in far more ancient accounts from Sumer, Egypt, and other founding civilizations that reported visitors descending from the skies, mating with females, and producing males in possession of this singular sexual capacity.
Yes... it is quite the spin on the Vampire legend. Yet, when one actually reads the primary-source accounts as well as the conclusions from actual Slavic researchers and "vampirologists," the weight of evidence for who and what "vampires" might actually be is incredibly compelling.
- Upir'
