by Lord Byron from The Giaour (1813)

A Taste for Blood

Both the Vampyre (a human being raised from the grave) and the Werewolf (a man or woman transformed into a wolf) have much in common.  They are both made of mortal stuff; they are not fallen angles nor are they demons sent by Satan to tempt or corrupt.  Both display a supernatural strength and agility, as well as share the ability to "shape-shift", i.e. change their shape at will.  Further, both use their well-developed incisors in the never ending quest of the same nourishment -- hot, pulsing and deep red human blood.

However, while the vampyre needs blood to survive, draining his victims so that he might live;  the werewolf is both cannibal and carnivore,  relishing in the hunt itself and then reveling in the blood and flesh of his victims.

According to some occult lore, the werewolf, on his death becomes a vampyre -- an interesting graduation, don't you think?

Be that as it may, the vampyre and the werewolf have traveled through the myths of history trailing death and destruction forever burning their footprints into the blood they have spilled over the centuries.

In both occult history and folklore, the oldest vampyre figures were female, from the Greek Lamiai to the Malaysian Langsuyar and the Jewish Lilith.  In addition, there were many female "vampyre like" creatures that were prominent in the lore of polytheistic cultures.  Kali, the dark goddess of India was such a figure as were the witch/vampyres of West Africa.

Closely related to the female vampyres were figures such as the Incubus or Succubus and the Mara.  None of these entities were vampyres, though each behaved in ways reminiscent of vampyres -- attacking their male or female victims in the night and leaving them distraught and exhausted in the morning.

However, as the centuries passed, it was the male vampyre that captivated the majority of cultures.

The Making of a Vampyre

Based on mythology, there are many possible routes to the making of a vampyre.  Most vampyres, according to legend and lore, are made (or turned) by other vampyres.  Once bitten the victim then takes of the vampyre's blood and becomes infected with eternal life and burdened with the blood-lust required to sustain it.

The Vampyre's Kiss

He bent his head and kissed her palm.   The sudden unexpected sensuality of it took her breath away.

"What is it like?" Ardeth asked.

"Like food," he said, pausing to glance up at her, "or love." 

Some meals are sustenance, some feasts of delight."  He leaned over to put his lips against her wrist, to run his tongue along her vein.  "Some acts of love are mere biology, some a sacrament."

..... from The Night Inside by Nancy Baker

Vampyre Perils

Based on legend, stories and novels, the vampyre that myth has made is prone to the following weaknesses:

·         Weakened or harmed by sunlight. Although this vulnerability seems very prevalent, there are notable exceptions to it. As mentioned above, Dracula was relatively unaffected by sunlight. Poppy Z. Brite's vampires were only sensitive to the sun, not harmed by it.

·         Repelled/harmed by religious symbols. This appears to be a subject of great debate. A very prevalent belief, is the symbol itself is useless unless the wielder possesses a strong faith in the efficacy of the symbol, as a despoiler of evil. As such, the symbol is just the vehicle for the faith of its holder, and the actual symbol need not be religious. There is a movie in which a yuppie dispels a vampire by holding up his wallet! Apparently, his faith in money was enough that he could harm the vampire. Again, it was the faith and not the symbol that mattered.

·         Repelled by garlic and/or wolfs bane. During the Middle Ages when an illness would appear in a town, it would at times be attributed to the appearance of a vampyre in the area. These people would often be fed garlic that would, due to its antiseptic nature, destroy the bacteria causing the illness. This led many people to attribute garlic with the added property of a "vampyre repellent". As with everything else, this is not a wholesale answer to why garlic is given the properties it has, but it does offer at least one, up to now, acceptable explanation. Again, this doesn't seem to be universal. Its inclusion in the vampyre mythology may be due to the belief that since wolfs bane supposedly repelled werewolves (it's mild medicinal uses gave it a reputation for being magical during the plague years), it would exert a power on vampires (who are lumped in with lupines because both were supposed to be supernatural), as well.

·         Unable to cross running water, except at the ebb and flow of the tide. The reason for this is linked to the reason why vampires do not cast a reflection in mirrors. In the case of a reflection, the reflection was thought to be symbolic of a person's soul, something a vampire was thought not to have. Most mirrors, at the point in time that many of these beliefs were springing up, were not any better than a standing stream of water, so the water became associated in a fashion with the mirror.

·         Needs an invitation to enter someone's home of someone - cannot enter without one.

·         Cannot pass a thicket of wild rose or a line of salt

·         Has to stop and count every grain in a pile of grain (type of grain varies)

·         Does not cast a reflection. In some areas, vampyres are believed not to show in photographs, and in some, they are believed not to cast shadows.

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