The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Origins of Vampirism

Some are born as vampires or as victims. Others are trained by their parents or other adults to become vampire victims or even little vampires. Once one has been "bitten" by a vampire, one often turns around and becomes a vampire oneself. This parallels the story of the mythical vampire.

The choice to become a vampire or a victim has much to do with the spiritual development of the individual. Less developed people tend to be vampires. More highly developed people are more giving and tend to become victims of vampires until they learn how to protect themselves.

Occasionally people shift. Some who start out as victims learn the game and turn around and become vampires. Rarely a vampire type learns the error of his ways and changes. Some of these go overboard to "be nice" and may become victims.

A stronger person will influence a weaker one. Most of the time, women are stronger and tend to be vampires more than men. Men can secondarily become vampires, often because their energy was drained earlier in life by their mothers. They become vampires in an attempt to regain their lost energy. This causes power struggles in relationships.

Vampire Myths

Vampire myths go back thousands of years and occur in almost every culture around the world. Their variety is almost endless; from red eyed monsters with green or pink hair in China to the Greek Lamia which has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a winged serpent; from vampire foxes in Japan to a head with trailing entrails known as the Penanggalang in Malaysia.

However, the vampires we are familiar with today, although mutated by fiction and film, are largely based on Eastern European myths. The vampire myths of Europe originated in the far East, and were transported from places like China, Tibet and India with the trade caravans along the silk route to the Mediterranean. Here they spread out along the Black Sea coast to Greece, the Balkans and of course the Carpathian mountains, including Hungary and Transylvania.

Our modern concept of the vampire still retains threads, such as blood drinking, return from death, preying on humans at night, etc in common with the Eastern European myths. However many things we are familiar with; the wearing of evening clothes, capes with tall collars, turning into bats, etc are much more recent inventions.

On the other hand, many features of the old myths such as the placing of millet or poppy seeds at the gravesite in order to keep the vampire occupied all night counting seeds rather than preying on relatives, have all but disappeared from modern fiction and film.

Spells

Physical Spells: Those that require only one's body to enact, such as what the people of the Middle Ages called the ''evil eye'' or the hand-motion blessing of a Priest/ess. Physical spells were typically used for banishing, charming, and healing.

Verbal Spells: Often called charms, these need nothing more than your words to direct the energy. Most verbal spells rhyme (it makes them easier to remember). The word charm also means ''song'', and there's no reason you could not sing your spells if you like! Historically, charms were often used to attract love, encourage luck, and safeguard health.

Written Spells: Another very common medium. (By the way, Witches and wise people were among the first to learn to write!) Words have power, and the pattern of words, the medium they were written upon, and the aroma of the ink all shaped that power into a specific intention. Written spells were commonly used in healing arts and as part of wishes.

Component Spells: Candles, knots, herbs, crystals- all the ''tools'' in a Witch's kit may become components and focal points in his or her art. Component-oriented are among the most widely seen, in part because they offer the greatest variety of potential applications.


Visualised Spells: Typically combined with a meditative process, everything having to do with this type of spell is created in the mind's eye and carried out on the mind's stage. A simple example is the white-light bubble visualization many people use to cast a protective sphere around themselves.

Elemental Spells: Similar to component spells, these utilize a specific component (Soil, Wind, Water, Fire) as a means of empowering the spell or giving it greater focus. For example, taking a written wish and floating it on water moving away from you comes under this category, because the water bears your emotions, your wish is directed outward. Burning that very same paper releases the wish to Spirit, where the winds disperses it by smoke. Planting it helps the wish to grow, and so forth. . . .