Vampires...

The Vampire

The vampires are corpses that come to life when the sun goes down and that need the blood of the living to perpetuate their 'lives'. The myth of these undead varies depending on the time and the place where they are described but in general, they are believed to need coffins to rest and to need to be incinerated by fire or sun or to have their heads ripped off in order no find their long expected peace.
The myth is thought to have begun in ancient times among the Slavs as a legend in Hungary, Transilvania and the Carpatos but in ancient Greece we find similar beings, the Lamias, needing blood for nourishment, though they were different from vampires in many other aspects. An ancient Scandinavian legend prays that the vampires are the descendants of a horrible, cruel and terrible race of gods.

Many things are said of vampires: the cannot see their shapes in mirrors, they may adopt the form of a bat or of a wolf, their beauty and strength is highlighted as years go by, they need to sleep in the earth where they were buried, they can fly... The methods used by people for protection of them are even more varied: show them Aconite, Napelo, Garlic or a crucifix, acquire one of the special talismans made in their homelands... and never ever invite them to our homes, the only way in which they can sort the protection of the hearth... To kill them a stick is to be driven into their hearts, they must be exposed to sun or blessed water or, a slower way, close them up inside their tombs or coffins so that they need of inanition. To save someone that is being transformed by a vampire, it's necessary to kill the source, send the victim away or protect it with garlic.

How a new vampire is created has been a well-debated topic, for some say it must drink from a dark god, from a vampire or just die of a vampire's bite. If anyone is suspected of being a vampire, depending on the zone and time of history, special rituals were to be performed so that the soul of the demon could rest in peace or, at least, stop being a threaten for the mortals. One of the most famous ceremonies carried out was that of disinterring the corpse and to examine it deeply: if it possessed any trace of new blood in the veins and mouth or signs of the body not being corrupted, a stake is to be driven into his heart; some even say the head should be cut off (specially used in France for murderers or dangerous criminals) and the corpse burnt. If a suicide was suspected of being among the undead, then, it was to be buried in a crossroad (vaguely resembling to the Hecatean tradition, see Hecate) and, in England, a spear stuck into their hearts, so that they could not leave their grave nor chase those who had caused it's death. The incineration of the vampire as a way of purification and the immolation of all the small crawlers that could be found surrounding the place resembles that of a witch, but in this case, it is highlighted that the fire is not a safe method of ending a vampire's life during the night, but one for ending his dwelling during daytime, when the creature remains unconscious and the famous stake can be used without more danger than that of failing the first strike: a second one would make it live again (the two strikes conception was almost restricted to Germanic tribes, having many examples of similar cases, of heroes only able to be defeated in a first strike, among their most ancient tales).
The legend was made public during the romanticism, being the scary details of the vampires' practices, altogether with their irresistible beauty and seduction and the fascination they awakened in those they dealt with, the main reasons of their popularity. Their guilt for killing, their lack of responsability, their deadly love and their similarity with a savage animal have made thousands of writers chose them as main characters in many of their books.

Starting with the brief chronicles of some Catholic priests in Transilvania we find E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Vampirism" (1821), Johann Ludwig Tieck's "Wake not the Dead" (1800), Polidori's (also taken for Byron's) "Vampire" and Alexei Constantínovich Tolstoi's vampire tales (1841), among which we find "the vampire" and "a family of vampires" (where we are introduced in the notion of a vampire only attacking people known in life and of their family). So important was the subject of "vampirism in the XIX century that they inaugurated a whole new stage inside the romanticism, called "Gothic Novel" or "Dark/Black Novel".

Sheridan le Fanu, Mary E. Braddon, are both important names in the history of the vampiric literature but, the culminating stage of that first wave of vampiric tales is the novel Dracula (1897) by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. This book, made a film in the middle of the XX century, narrates the deeds of the Transilvanian Count Dracula, a vampire that traveled to England, tired of a monotonous life in his homeland. The bloody count was inspired by the Transilvanian voivode Vlad Dracul, whose massacres made honour to his name "Dracul" meaning Dragon in Latin letters, or "devil" in Rumanian.

With the initiation of the film era, more and more people learnt about them, and films as "Nosferatu" and "The Dance of the Vampires" reached high positions in the statistics. Nowadays, and in spite of the time that passed since the beginning of the apogee, vampires are still interesting and can be seen in TV, films, role games, pc games, comics, books and music and their Gothic reminiscence is popular among all the fans they have among the world. New versions of Dracula and even musicals about him are annually made and each year leaves a large list of sold volumes on such topic, as the Vampire Chronicles written by Anne Rice or "The Vampire's Hour" by Stephen King.

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The vampires are corpses that come to life when the sun goes down and that need the blood of the living to perpetuate their 'lives'. The myth of these undead varies depending on the time and the place where they are described but in general, they are believed to need coffins to rest and to need to be incinerated by fire or sun or to have their heads ripped off in order no find their long expected peace. The myth is thought to have begun in ancient times among the Slavs as a legend in Hungary, Transilvania and the Carpatos but in ancient Greece we find similar beings, the Lamias, needing blood for nourishment, though they were different from vampires in many other aspects. An ancient Scandinavian legend prays that the vampires are the descendants of a horrible, cruel and terrible race of gods.
Many things are said of vampires: the cannot see their shapes in mirrors, they may adopt the form of a bat or of a wolf, their beauty and strength is highlighted as years go by, they need to sleep in the earth where they were buried, they can fly... The methods used by people for protection of them are even more varied: show them Aconite, Napelo, Garlic or a crucifix, acquire one of the special talismans made in their homelands... and never ever invite them to our homes, the only way in which they can sort the protection of the hearth... To kill them a stick is to be driven into their hearts, they must be exposed to sun or blessed water or, a slower way, close them up inside their tombs or coffins so that they need of inanition. To save someone that is being transformed by a vampire, it's necessary to kill the source, send the victim away or protect it with garlic.
How a new vampire is created has been a well-debated topic, for some say it must drink from a dark god, from a vampire or just die of a vampire's bite. If anyone is suspected of being a vampire, depending on the zone and time of history, special rituals were to be performed so that the soul of the demon could rest in peace or, at least, stop being a threaten for the mortals. One of the most famous ceremonies carried out was that of disinterring the corpse and to examine it deeply: if it possessed any trace of new blood in the veins and mouth or signs of the body not being corrupted, a stake is to be driven into his heart; some even say the head should be cut off (specially used in France for murderers or dangerous criminals) and the corpse burnt. If a suicide was suspected of being among the undead, then, it was to be buried in a crossroad (vaguely resembling to the Hecatean tradition, see Hecate) and, in England, a spear stuck into their hearts, so that they could not leave their grave nor chase those who had caused it's death. The incineration of the vampire as a way of purification and the immolation of all the small crawlers that could be found surrounding the place resembles that of a witch, but in this case, it is highlighted that the fire is not a safe method of ending a vampire's life during the night, but one for ending his dwelling during daytime, when the creature remains unconscious and the famous stake can be used without more danger than that of failing the first strike: a second one would make it live again (the two strikes conception was almost restricted to Germanic tribes, having many examples of similar cases, of heroes only able to be defeated in a first strike, among their most ancient tales). The legend was made public during the romanticism, being the scary details of the vampires' practices, altogether with their irresistible beauty and seduction and the fascination they awakened in those they dealt with, the main reasons of their popularity. Their guilt for killing, their lack of responsability, their deadly love and their similarity with a savage animal have made thousands of writers chose them as main characters in many of their books.
	Starting with the brief chronicles of some Catholic priests in Transilvania we find E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Vampirism" (1821), Johann Ludwig Tieck's "Wake not the Dead" (1800), Polidori's (also taken for Byron's) "Vampire" and Alexei Constantínovich Tolstoi's vampire tales (1841), among which we find "the vampire" and "a family of vampires" (where we are introduced in the notion of a vampire only attacking people known in life and of their family). So important was the subject of "vampirism in the XIX century that they inaugurated a whole new stage inside the romanticism, called "Gothic Novel" or "Dark/Black Novel".
Sheridan le Fanu, Mary E. Braddon, are both important names in the history of the vampiric literature but, the culminating stage of that first wave of vampiric tales is the novel Dracula (1897) by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. This book, made a film in the middle of the XX century, narrates the deeds of the Transilvanian Count Dracula, a vampire that traveled to England, tired of a monotonous life in his homeland. The bloody count was inspired by the Transilvanian voivode Vlad Dracul, whose massacres made honour to his name "Dracul" meaning Dragon in Latin letters, or "devil" in Rumanian.
With the initiation of the film era, more and more people learnt about them, and films as "Nosferatu" and "The Dance of the Vampires" reached high positions in the statistics. Nowadays, and in spite of the time that passed since the beginning of the apogee, vampires are still interesting and can be seen in TV, films, role games, pc games, comics, books and music and their Gothic reminiscence is popular among all the fans they have among the world. New versions of Dracula and even musicals about him are annually made and each year leaves a large list of sold volumes on such topic, as the Vampire Chronicles written by Anne Rice or "The Vampire's Hour" by Stephen King.