As Professor Margaret Murray discovered herself, vampirism was not the prerogative of the merchant or peasant classes, but was a cultic observance confined to the environs of the nobility, often as an adjunct to rites of the Noble and Royal Witch Covens of Scotland.
We can say with confidence then that real vampirism was indulged in by living beings who, unerringly, were members of the pre-christian and anti-christian high nobility and royalty. The most famous vampire stories, those of Dracula, Bathory and de Rais, support this conclusion. The historical evidence therefore supports the etymological origin of the word ’vampire’ - An Overlord.
Vampirism, up until the early 1700’s, by which time it had been in decline for several centuries, was not merely or solely the practice of a few isolated, high-born opportunists seeking some form of personal advantage or satisfying private perversions. Vampirism took two forms and the bloodline descendants of the ancient vampire lords had, in Britain, set the practice within an overall, multi-faceted social and cultural framework, stemming from the Iron-Age, that never gets an airing in the Gothic novel.
Vampires weren’t just vampires, as the penny dreadful would have us believe, they were individuals and families who used the practice to achieve specific aims and thereby fulfill those specific social obligations which, since the Scythian-Celtic period of the High Dragon Kings, were equated with their rank and position as leaders and overseers.
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