Vampires suck. But people love them anyway. For hundreds of years, mortals have credited tehse undead ingenues with a downright devilish disposition, so to help us dig up facts about blasphemous bloodsuckers we’re joined by Andrew, director of the new movie The Vampires of New Orleans.
SHOW LINKS
- Atun-Shei Films: Check out The Vampires of New Orleans, October 1: https://www.atunsheifilms.com
- From Killing the Dead, John Blair, 2026: Why go through the revolting business of uncovering and mutilating a corpse? These individuals were buried normally but were thought to be causing trouble, either because they were seen walking around or because they were thought to be spreading illness and misfortune from within their graves. In due course they were exhumed, found to be incorrupt, and dealt with accordingly. It is unlikely that the appearance of these corpses was exactly pristine, but incorruption is a flexible concept. These were not secret grave robberies but public attacks on the dead. The belief is that the vital power of the living person is retained after death within the corpse, which sometimes walks around or sometimes remains confined to its grave but in either case is animated by a force that is understood as abnormal, noxious, and unholy. If it walks, it can change into animal forms, a capacity which, like passing through doors and walls, calls into question its literal physicality. Such a corpse does not visibly suck blood but sometimes mysteriously absorbs the blood of others, and it will often become bloated and swollen, acquiring a livid appearance. The assumption seems to be that the Walking Corpse is a man who was bad in death as in life, and who, somehow failing to die properly, has entered a monstrous state, the Sinister failure to move on betrayed by the incorruption of the corpse.
- How to deal with such monsters? There are pragmatic and secular remedies, such as cutting off the head with a spade or the total burning of the corpse, usually performed by a posse of young men. In one case the heart has to be cut out and torn to pieces before the corpse will burn. Some ecclesiastics pervert gentler methods: Bishop Gilbert of Hereford recommended holy water, while Bishop Roger of Werchester trapped a revenant in its grave by laying a cross on top. For some Bishops, beheading a troublesome corpse was all in a day’s work, while others were astonished by the whole idea. The idea of a human soul animating its earthly body after death was never easy for medieval literati to swallow, and almost inevitably there are alternate explanations that invoked forms of demonic possession and “the operation of Satan.” Corpses really can be incorrupt, or at least seem to be: Soil conditions, the corpse, the nature of its container and wrappings will all influence this outcome. Normal biochemical processes produce swelling and bloating and decay, but rarer ones can make occasional corpses appear incorrupt and lifelike. The lifelike corpse is ambiguous: Is it very holy, or very unholy? It may seem strange that the lack of corruption is one sign of a saint but is also a sign of a vampire. But believers, living by experience rather than by theory, do not find it difficult to distinguish. Still, if a man was not known as a man of god, would his lifelike corpse have raised concerns? Usually we know of such cases from the reports of literate ecclesiastics invested in the saintly interpretation rather than the vampiric one. Voices now silent might have made comments of a different kind…
- As in archaic Greece, in Republican Rome there is a resounding lack of stories of walking corpses. That would soon change. In the first century CE, the dead were on the move again in the Eastern Roman Empire, and people were becoming aware of a new charismatic religion with a crucified leader who had walked out of his tomb. The move during the 2nd and 3rd centuries from cremation to internment was surely a powerful factor: No longer converted by fire into a radically different substance, the corpse in its grave was a more ambiguous entity, its inertness not quite so obvious. Had the dead person really moved on? In one story from the period a young man came to a Greek city and stayed as the guest of couple whose newly married daughter had died six months earlier. One evening an amorous girl visits and sleeps with him, and they exchange rings and a gilded wine cup, and she leaves before dawn. Eventually civic authorities open the dead daughter’s tomb and find her corpse missing. “We saw bodies and bones of the deceased family members, but on the bier where she had been placed we found only the ring that belonged to the guest and the gilded wine cup she had obtained from him.” Here the revelation that a corpse is not in its tomb and must therefore be walking around makes his first appearance in a secular story of the undead, but there is of course one very obvious parallel in the events of the gospels. But Christianity taught that Jesus would return on the last day to judge the living and the dead, uniting souls with their bodies, and until then corpses would lie quiet, so as Augustine argued, this left little room for the undead, and little option for clergy to ascribe restless corpses, when layfolk reported them, to anything other than demonic possession.
- How to deal with such monsters? There are pragmatic and secular remedies, such as cutting off the head with a spade or the total burning of the corpse, usually performed by a posse of young men. In one case the heart has to be cut out and torn to pieces before the corpse will burn. Some ecclesiastics pervert gentler methods: Bishop Gilbert of Hereford recommended holy water, while Bishop Roger of Werchester trapped a revenant in its grave by laying a cross on top. For some Bishops, beheading a troublesome corpse was all in a day’s work, while others were astonished by the whole idea. The idea of a human soul animating its earthly body after death was never easy for medieval literati to swallow, and almost inevitably there are alternate explanations that invoked forms of demonic possession and “the operation of Satan.” Corpses really can be incorrupt, or at least seem to be: Soil conditions, the corpse, the nature of its container and wrappings will all influence this outcome. Normal biochemical processes produce swelling and bloating and decay, but rarer ones can make occasional corpses appear incorrupt and lifelike. The lifelike corpse is ambiguous: Is it very holy, or very unholy? It may seem strange that the lack of corruption is one sign of a saint but is also a sign of a vampire. But believers, living by experience rather than by theory, do not find it difficult to distinguish. Still, if a man was not known as a man of god, would his lifelike corpse have raised concerns? Usually we know of such cases from the reports of literate ecclesiastics invested in the saintly interpretation rather than the vampiric one. Voices now silent might have made comments of a different kind…
- From Vampires & Vampirism, Montague Summers, 1929: Around the vampire have clustered the most somber superstitions, for he’s a thing which belongs to no world at all. He is not a demon, for devils have purely a spiritual nature, they are beings without any bodies, like angels, as is said in Matthew. Vampires issue from their graves in the night, and those who are under the fatal malignity of their influence complain of suffocation and a total deficiency of spirit. A demon has no body, so the vampire is not strictly a demon, and neither can the vampire be called a ghost or Phantom, for an Apparition is intangible. A Canon of the Greek church is cited to the effect that “concerning a dead man, if he be found whole, is that which they call vrykolakas. It is impossible that a dead man should become a vrykolakas unless it be by the power of the devil, who causes these dark wonders. When such an incorrupt body shall be discovered, which as we have said is the work of the devil, they summon the priest to chant an invocation and solemnly perform memorial services for the Dead. The authors of the Malleus Maleficarum teach that there are three necessary elements of Witchcraft, which are the devil, the witch, and the permission of god. So are these three necessary causes of vampirism: The devil, the corpse, and the permission of god. In the Greek church this condition is often believed to be the result of excommunication, and this is an accepted and definite doctrine of the Orthodox Church. The vampire is believed to be one who devoted himself to black magic, and it is hardly to be supposed that such persons would rest undisturbed. It was sometimes said the vampire was offspring of a witch and the devil.
- From The Vampire In Lore & Legend, Montague Summers, 1929: In Berwick there dwelt a certain Infamous villain. After he was buried, he used the power of Satan continually to issue forth from his grave and rush up and down the streets of the town. There very shortly broke out a terrible pestilence which carried away the greater part of that town, and nowhere else did the plague rage so fiercely. The good priest who related this story to me visited once a sick man out of charity, and for duty’s sake warned him that he should make a full confession of all of his sins and receive the Blessed Sacrament. He put off filling the timely and pious admonition until tomorrow, but on the morrow he was dead. During the night this wretched man, so great a stranger to god’s grace and whose crimes were so many, was taken into the sleep of death, yet, unworthy as he was, they gave him a Christian burial which he did not deserve and which profited him nothing. For by the power of Satan, in the dark hours he was want to come forth from his tomb and to wander all about the streets, whilst on every side the dog’s howl the whole night long, and the dogs howled in every direction while that evil thing was abroad.
- From The Archbishop’s Vampires, Niels K Petersen, Magia Posthuma, 2012: The 1774 Dissertation on Vampires by Archbishop Giuseppe Davanzati has never been translated into any language, although it is relatively easy to come by an Italian copy. Montague Summers dedicated a couple of pages to Davanzati but is quick to dismiss the Archbishop’s conclusion. Davanzati was of the opinion that if vampires should exist they could not be something new. Consequently, he identified vampires with ghosts, and even elves common to the mythology of Southern Italy. The Church accepted the existence of ghosts as souls from Purgatory, temporarily allowed by god to return. So from a theological point of view, ghosts were not allowed to carry out evil acts, for which reason vampires could not exist. Protestants, on the other hand, denying the existence of Purgatory, believed that ghosts, if not illusory, had to be the work of the devil. Davanzati’s response to various theological counterarguments was to point out that vampires had apparently not been encountered in Spain, France or Italy. Perhaps it was rather the work of priests taking advantage of the local populace’s fear that led people to believe in this excess power of the devil? Like souls from Purgatory, vampires could be interpreted as an intermediate state between saved and damned. It was inexpedient to go on with this identification, and dangerous from a theological point of view. The conclusion then was that this is all a human creation. Vampires were for him figments of the imagination, not because they were inexplicable from a scientific point of view, so much as because the miracle of their existence made no sense theologically. As for the incorruptibility of corpses, Davanzati was working in a period in which the Roman Church was redefining its ambivalent relationship with uncorrupted bodies, and Davanzati states, “It would not be difficult for me to believe said circumstance could be a purely natural thing in some cadavers.” https://magiaposthuma.blogspot.com/2012/04/archbishops-vampires.html
- From Dracula, Bram Stoker, 1897: I was not alone. I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. Opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, for they threw no shadow on the floor. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes, but it is the truth. They whispered together. “Are we to have nothing tonight?” said one of them as she pointed to the bag which the count had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing within it. For answer he nodded his head. One of the women jumped forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half-smothered child. The women closed round, whilst I was aghast with horror, but as I looked they disappeared. They simply seemed to fade into the rays of the moonlight and pass out through the window, for I could see outside the dim, shadowy forms for a moment before they entirely faded away. Then the horror overcame me. I fled, and felt somewhat safer in my own room, where there was no moonlight and where the lamp was burning brightly. Those awful women. Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is nought in common. They are devils of the Pit! I shall not remain; I may find a way from this dreadful place. And then away for home, where the devil and his children walk with earthly feet! At least god’s mercy is better than that of these monsters.
- From Satanic Feminism, Per Faxneld, 2017: Gothic villains, like the one in “Dracula,” are clearly modelled on older ideas about demons seducing women. Becoming a vampire is described as an escape from the confines of patriarchal society. Whether or not the author believes women should be allowed to escape is another matter. The vampire women are depicted as straightforwardly unholy through parallels to traditional ideas about witches. Dracula plays the part of Satan, and his female cohorts thus become the equivalents of a witch-cult, inverting the rules of society. There is a tradition of viewing vampirism as almost synonymous with Satanism. The Malleus Maleficarum describes a witch who becomes a vampire-like creature after her death. “Dracula” has been so popular that it has been claimed that only the Bible has been more broadly disseminated. It has further been called ‘the most religiously saturated popular novel of its time.” Stoker’s female vampires could be considered disciples of Satan, due to their relationship with the novel’s title character. Dracula is not explicitly the Devil in disguise, but he has a very similar function, the name Dracula being a form of the Romanian word for dragon or devil. Kline and others have argued very convincingly that Stoker’s vampire women are a malicious portrait of nineteenth-century feminists, but to critics like Senf the female vampires are “a feminist response to women who were only ornamental.” Stoker, she claims, undermines traditional assumptions about the relationship between the sexes as well as accepted cultural beliefs about the role women should play within society.
- From The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice, 1985: “Do you remember the story of the witches? The time you cried at the witches’ place? ” “Cried over the witches? ” I looked at him blankly for a moment. But it stirred something painful, something humiliating. “We were little boys,” he said, “And the priest took us out to see the place where they burnt the witches in the old days, the old stakes and the blackened ground. You began to scream and to cry. They sent someone for the Marquise herself because your nurse couldn’t quiet you. ” “I was a dreadful child, ” I said, trying to shrug it off. Of course I did remember it now: Screaming, being carried home, nightmares about the fires, the images of men and women and children burnt alive. Nicolas was studying me. “When your mother came to get you, she said it was all ignorance and cruelty. She was so angry with the priest for telling us the old tales. ” I nodded. The final horror to hear they had all died for nothing, those long-forgotten people of our village, that they had been innocent. “Victims of superstition, ” she had said. “There were no real witches. ” No wonder I had screamed and screamed. “But my mother, ” Nicolas said, “told a different story, that the witches had been in league with the devil, that they’d blighted the crops, and in the guise of wolves killed the sheep and the children. ” “And won’t the world be better if no one is ever again burnt in the name of god? ” I asked. “If there is no more faith in god to make men do that to each other? What is the danger in a secular world where horrors like that don’t happen?”
- “What is the explanation for all this? ” I asked, staring at them one by one as if they were quite peculiar. “What are you meant to be? Chainrattling ghosts who haunt cemeteries and ancient castles? Is it great fun living in filth and stench such as this?” “Our leader is Satan, ” said the dark-eyed woman. “And we serve Satan as we are meant to do. You will bring down the wrath of God on all of us with your defiance in vanity and wickedness. You disregard the Dark Ways and live among mortals and walk in the places of light. ” “And why don’t you? ” I asked. “Are you to go to heaven on white wings when this is all ended? Is that what Satan promises? I wouldn’t count on it.” “You will be thrown into the pit of hell for your sins! ” said one of the others. “And when is that supposed to happen? ” I asked. “God and Satan have not troubled me! I won’t stand here for any judgment of Satan unless you bring Satan here. ” The young one seemed small standing in this vast chamber, the voice issuing from him effortlessly, his hands limp at his sides. “Since the ancient days there have been our kind haunting the cities of man, preying upon him by night as god and the devil commanded us to do. The chosen of Satan we are, and those admitted to our ranks had first to prove themselves through a hundred crimes before the Dark Gift was given to them. ” He came just a little nearer to me, the torchlight glimmering in his eyes. “And on these were imposed the Rules of Darkness: To live among the dead, for we are dead things, returning always to one’s own grave or one very nearly like it. To shun the places of light, luring victims away from the company of others to suffer death in unholy and haunted places. And to honor forever the power of god: the crucifix, the sacraments. And never, never to enter the house of god, lest he strike you powerless, casting you into hell. “
- From Are Vampires a Religion, Daniel Walker, Satanic Bay Area, 2020: Founded in 1989, the Temple of the Vampire describes itself as “the only authentic international organization in the world that represents the true vampire religion.” We wouldn’t know how to begin debunking that, so the statement pretty much has to stand. According to the Vampire Bible–yes–the Temple promises the secrets of becoming a “living vampire,” which is lucky, as “dead vampire” would surely enjoy fewer takers. The Vampire Bible describes a coming apocalypse in which vampire gods will subdue mankind, sparing only the faithful practitioners of the one true vampire religion. So a bit of a mixed bag in terms of public relations. Now it may sound like I’m poking some fun at these people. And…yes. But of course, much of Modern Satanism seems silly to some people too, so hey. Here’s the real question: Are the Temple of the Vampire Satanists? Well, no, after all the Vampire Bible doesn’t mention Satan anywhere. Why would we even ask? But ya know, some of the vampiric rhetoric sounds, erm, a touch familiar. Take the “Vampire Creed”: “I worship my ego and I worship my life, for I am the only god that is. We are elitist for good reason. We believe the value of the individual is superior to that of any group or tribe or nation.” The creed does not in fact have the initials “ASL” hastily scribbled out at the bottom, but I wouldn’t blame you if you checked anyway. In fact, the Church of Satan lists the Temple of the Vampire in a directory of organizations that it attests to “respect and admire.” That directory has only two entries, and the other is a conservation group for bats. Tropes being what they are, it’s entirely possible the Temple of the Vampire is also a conservation group for bats and we’d never know. If you take old Anton LaVey’s preaching, flip it upside down so that the horns look like fangs, and call that a church, is this a new religion, or an old one? If we agree that the vampires aren’t Satanists, it the only reason because they say they’re not? What, at the end of the day, defines religion: the symbol, or the substance? And if we recognize that religion is personal, self-made, and subjective, then what authority is there outside of the self to answer these questions? 2https://www.satanicbayarea.com/2020/10/26/temple-vampire-religion/
- From Vampires Today, Joseph Laycock, 2009: It was Lilith Aquino, along with William T Butch, who founded the Order of the Vampire as a group within the Temple of Set. Setians belonging to the order of the vampire specifically emulate the vampire as a glamorous and superhuman being. The order of the vampire attribute its techniques to contact with vampiric entities. According to their website, the order’s founders undertook research that “brought them into dialogue with vampiric forces.” The order of the vampire forbids illegal activity as well as the consuming of blood. The Temple of the Vampire is probably the most active, secretive, and controversial left hand path vampire group. The temple became a registered church in 1989 under the leadership of its founder, Lucas Martell. The Temple regularly calls itself the “one true vampire religion” and publishes a Vampire Bible. The Temple of the Vampire emphasizes the ego and survival of the fittest, and is clearly in the tradition of the Church of Satan. Several people share suspicions that the Temple of the Vampire is actually a front for the Church of Satan, allegedly created as a direct response to the church’s rival, the Temple of Set, and that the primary purpose of the temple is to generate revenue that’s passed on to the Church of Satan. It is difficult to prove such claims, but there is evidence to support such a connection. The Church of Satan has served as an advocate for the Temple of the vampire, as the Church of Satan’s website features a link to the Temple of the Vampire. The church has promoted the Temple of the Vampire in their newsletter ,and the Temple of vampire has reciprocated in theirs. Despite this evidence, Church officials denied any connection between the two groups. Martell is indeed a registered member of the Church of Satan.
- From Psychic Self-Defense, Dion Fortune, 1930: Some Eastern European troops had been brought to the Western Front, and among these were individuals with the traditional knowledge of Black Magic for which South Eastern Europe has always enjoyed a sinister reputation. These men, getting killed, knew how to avoid the disintegration of the Astral Body and maintained themselves in the etheric double by vampirising the wounded. Vampirism is contagious; the person who is vampirised, being depleted of vitality, is a psychic vacuum, himself absorbing from anyone he comes across in order to refill his depleted vitality. The earthbound soul of a vampire sometimes attaches itself permanently to one individual if it succeeds in making a functioning vampire of him. Merely to drive the resisting soul out to the Judgment Hall of Osiris would have involved leaving behind an astral corpse, which for some time would have continued to give trouble. It may be interesting to note in connection with this case that at the occult college in Hampshire we had some rather curious happenings. There was an outbreak among us of exceedingly bad “mosquito bites.” I remember waking up one morning to find a patch of blood the size of the palm of my hand on the pillow; it had apparently come from a small puncture just behind the angle of the jaw. Several others had similar experiences. I have never seen anything like it, either before or since. Z expressed the opinion that it was a vampire’s work, and cited similar cases which he had met with in the course of his experience. He said he had seen cases in Africa where the victim had become so bloodless that it was with difficulty that blood could be obtained for examination, for it could hardly be induced to flow from the debilitated tissues. Nothing can be done for such cases by medical science. They are dying by inches, and yet no organic disease can be demonstrated. Nevertheless, their appearance is that of a person sinking from repeated hemorrhages.
- From Vampire: The Masquerade Storyteller’s Handbook, Bruce Baugh et al, 2000: The Children of Baal are believed to have stemmed from the sands of the Near East, where men and monsters intermingled through the folklore and fables of the region. Their sires knelt at shrines and venerated dark deities, and tales recount black citadels, fallen stars, comet-crater cities, insect-monsters, foul sorcerer-kings, and all manner of similar depravities dating back to the Old Testament. The Baali are explorers, students of the unknown, the unknowable, the unspeakable, and their eyes and ears glean forgotten secrets. Theirs is the secret song that has echoed through eternity. Modern nights find the few remaining Baali hated, feared, and hunted on a host of fronts, prey to a hundred detractors and divisions, from within and without, doomed to a slow, steady passage from magician to monster to memory. Yet still they toil for the erosion and eventual destruction of this world, to make way for Those Who Wait Beyond. The Children of Baal seem drawn to places of antiquity – libraries, temples, standing stones, and long abandoned places of power. They congregate with ghouls and converts of other clans in orgies of flesh, rekindling ancient heresies. Those in the know claim that the Baali actually have their own inscrutable code of ethics, but little about this is known. Many Baali cannot bear to gaze upon or handle even the most mundane articles of religious paraphernalia. Do those who predate Christianity still fear the crucifix and wafer? Do age and cultural origin determine the nature of such aversions? Only the eldest Baal-worshipper would know for sure. To those outside the covens, the Baali appear like nothing so much as devil-worshipers. Only those inside the cult – or who have stolen its secrets without their knowledge – know the true depths of their philosophy.
- From Vampire: The Requiem, 2nd Edition, Rose Bailey et al, 2013: The Lancea Sanctum is quite simply an organized Church of vampires. god cursed vampires to be hungry and dead, and in their damnation they are called on to do god’s work. In the Book of Job, Satan is god’s agent, and the tormenter of an innocent man, and the Sanctum see themselves as doing the same. They torment the innocent and root out those who are weak. The Sanctum is to the human church what the individual vampire is to the living. They do the will of god himself by producing the trials and persecutions that refine the faithful, and they send the faithful to the right hand of Jesus. Sanctum theologians once called the organization the Third Version of Judas, true betrayers who are too pious to be allowed the consolation of goodness. They do everything they can to make sure the church survives, and with fear they keep the church on the straight and narrow. Those found wanting become the next generation of Sanctified, rising from the grave to atone for unforgivable sins. Devotees of the sanctum considered themselves the moral center of vampire culture. The Sanctified manipulate church leaders and mortal congregations for their own purposes, and human links are especially useful to them because there is no other way to find the knowledge they seek to both suppress and use.