ancient Persians and Chaldeans named those angels who fell to Earth the Cacodaemons. Cast out of Heaven (another world, another universe) for rebelling against the prevailing order, their leader, Ahrimanes, was determined to rule Earth and the primitive humans who resided there. However, regardless of where Ahrimanes endeavored to establish his kingdom, the Agathodaemons, the representatives of universal law, prevented him from exploiting or interfering with the natural evolution of humans.
After attempting to wage a violent war of defiance on Earth against the Agathodaemons, Ahrimanes and his army were once again defeated. According to the Persians, the Cacodaemons were rejected from Earth and took refuge in the space between Earth and the fixed stars, a domain which is known as Ahriman-abad. It is from this dimension that Ahrimanes, resentful and revengeful, takes his pleasure in directing his demons to afflict and torment human beings. Throughout all of history, these paraphysical beings, mimicking our human forms, have walked among us unnoticed, sowing discord wherever they wander, sapping our soul energy, invading host bodies whenever possible, causing vulnerable humans to seek the blood of their fellow beings.
The Old Testament book of Leviticus (17:14) acknowledges that blood is “the life of all flesh, the blood of it is the life thereof’ …
There are numerous ancient legends that refer to a great war that occurred in “Heaven” before the defeated angels or demigods came to Earth; and, after the Nephilim had transgressed against the laws of God, there was another violent conflict that raged on Earth between the forces of light and darkness in humankind’s prehistory. It was the defeat of the armies of darkness that forced them to return to their noncorporeal state and withdraw to other dimensions of time and space. Because of the dark forces’ continued efforts to corrupt and to possess humans, some mystics argue that the warfare continues unabated and that the great prize is the spiritual essence of humankind.
Human Blood Becomes Sacred to the Old Gods
At some point in those fierce and frightening prehistoric years, there came the realization that the shedding of a person’s blood was connected with the release of the life force itself. And because it was required by the gods, blood became sacred.
After the gods in their various guises retreated to their other dimensional universe, some of their most devoted human servants recalled the power inherent in blood and the life force, and a large number of magical and religious rituals became centered around the shedding of blood. In an effort to call back the gods to Earth and beseech them to grant favors, thousands of members of ancient priesthoods raised chalices filled with the dark, holy elixir of life over thousands of altars stained with both animal and human blood. In an effort to become like the gods, many individuals began to practice the drinking of blood as it pulsed from the veins of their victims.
Biblical scholar Hyam Maccoby in his book The Sacred Executioner maintains that Cain was the hero in the original telling of the slaying of Abel in Genesis. Cain built the first city and became the patriarch of metallurgists, musicians, and pastoralists (Genesis 4:16–22). In Maccoby’s reconstruction of Genesis, Cain’s killing of his brother was not a vicious homicide, but the primeval human sacrifice that secured the civilization of the human race.
As civilization advanced and humankind began to free itself from the demands of the old gods and their priests who demanded blood sacrifice, the life force and the fluid that symbolized it demanded a new kind of respect. Blood became holy.
The Old Testament book of Leviticus (17:14) acknowledges that blood is “the life of all flesh, the blood of it is the life thereof,” but the children of Israel are instructed that they “shall not eat of the blood of no manner of flesh; for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.”
Again, in Deuteronomy 12:20–24, the Lord warns, “… thou mayest eat flesh, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after … Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.”
Similar warnings against the ingesting of blood were soon a part of the teachings of all major religious faiths; however, the dictates of culture, magic, and religion could merely issue prohibitions concerning the shedding of blood by humans. Clerical dictates and civic pronouncements hold no threat to those who heed the whispers of the Old Gods to satisfy their bloodlust with the vital fluid of others. Ecclesiastical dogma and the terrors of Inquisitions can do nothing to quell the hunger of the real vampires who possess the bodies of their disciples and command them to crouch in the darkness and wait to drink the blood of men, women, and children and to drain them of their life force.
Mythic Vampires
The vampire legend has always been with us—from the shadows of the ancient Egyptian pyramids to the bright lights of New York City, the vampire’s evil remains eternal. From the villages of Uganda and Haiti to the remote regions of the Upper Amazon, indigenous people know the vampire in its many guises. The traditional Native American medicine priest, the Arctic Eskimo shaman, the Polynesian Kahuna, all know the myth of the vampire and take precautions against those whom they believe were once human and who are now among the undead who seek blood by night to sustain their dark energies.
Every culture has its own name for the night stalker. The word with which most of us are familiar rises from the Slavonic Magyar—vam, meaning blood; Tpir, meaning monster. To cite only a few other names for the vampire from various languages, there is the older English variation, vampyr; the Latin, sanguisuga; Serbian, vampir; Russian, upyr; Polish, Upirs; and the Greek, Brucolacas.
The physical appearance of a vampire in European folklore is grotesque, a nightmarish creature with twisted fangs and grasping talons. The cinematic depiction of the vampire in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) presented moviegoers with an accurate depiction of the traditional vampire. In this film, which was Murnau’s unauthorized version of the Count Dracula saga, we see actor Max Schreck’s loathsome bloodsucker, Count Orlock, skittering about in the shadows with dark-ringed, hollowed eyes, pointed devil ears, and hideous fangs. With his long, blood-stained talons, his egg-shaped head and pasty white complexion, Schreck’s Nosferatu captures the classic appearance of the undead as seen in the collective nightmares of humankind.
During many demon-haunted centuries in Europe, the dark powers of the vampire grew even stronger in the mind of the average man or woman. According to nervous admonitions, after dusk fell, the vampire’s hypnotic powers were irresistible, and his strength was that of a dozen men. He could transform himself into the form of a bat, a rat, an owl, a fox, or a wolf. He was able to see in the dark and to travel on moonbeams and mist. Sometimes, he had the power to vanish in a puff of smoke.
Desperate, frightened people sought to garland their windows with garlic or wolf bane, to obtain a vial of holy water, hang a crucifix on every wall, and say their prayers at night, but there was no certain protection from the attack of a vampire. Even a recently buried relative could have been cursed to become a vampire, and once night fell, the corpse, animated by blood lust, would claw his way out of the rot of the grave to seek unholy nourishment from his own family members. The vampire was a hideous predator that could only be killed by a stake through the heart and decapitation.
An alternate course of action against the vampire was to pry open its coffin during the daylight hours while it lay slumbering and pound a wooden stake through its heart—or, perhaps a bit safer, destroy the coffin while it was away and allow the rays of the early morning sun to scorch the monster into ashes.
Because we are so conditioned to hearing so many of the classic cinematic vampires speak with the same kind of foreign accent, some of us may be somewhat surprised
