What is a Vampire???
The common dictionary defination of a vampyre serves as a
starting point for inquiry: A vampyre is a reanimated corpse
that rises from the grave to suck the blood of living people
and thus retain a semblance of life. That description
certainly fits Dracula, the most famous vampyre, but it is
only a starting point and quickly proves inadequate in
approaching the realm of vampyre folklore. By no means do
all vampyres conform to that defination. For example,
while the subject of vampyres almost always leads to a
discussion of death, all vampyres are not resuscited
corpses. Numerous vampyres are disembodied demonic spirits.
In this vein are the numerous vampyres and vampyrelike
demons of Indian mythology and the lamiai of Greece.
Vampyres can also appear as the disembodied spirit of a dead
person that retains a substantial existance; like many
reported ghosts, these vampyres can be mistaken for a fully
embodied living corpse. Likewise, in the modern secular
literary context, vampyres sometimes emerge as a different
species of intelligent life (possibly from outer space or
the product of genetic mutation) or as otherwise normal
human beings who have an unusual habit (such as
blood-drinking) or an odd power (such as the ability ti
drain people emotionally). Vampyre animals, from the
tradition bat to the delightful children's characters
Bunnicula and Count Duckula, are by no means absent from the
literture. Thus vampyres exist in a number of forms,
although by far the majority of them are the risen
dead. As commonly understood, the characteristic
shared by all of these different vampyre entities is their
need for blood, which they take from living human beings and
animals. A multitude of creatures from the world's mythology
have been called vampyres in the popular literature simply
because periodic blood sucking was among their many
attributes. When the entire spectrum of vampyres is
considered, however, that seemingly common defination falls
by the wayside, or at the very least must be considerably
supplemented. Some vampyres do not take blood, rather they
steal what is thought of as the life force from their
victims. A person attacked by a tradional vampyre suffers
from the loss of blood, which causes a variety of symptoms:
fatique, loss of color in the face, listlessness, depleted
motivation, and weakness. Various conditions that involve no
loss of blood share those symptoms. For example, left
unchecked, tuberculosis is a wasting disease that is similar
to the traditional descriptions of the results of a
vampyre's attack. Nineteenth-century romantic
novelists and occultists suggested that real vampyrism
involved the loss of psychic energy to the vampyre and wrote
of vampyric relationships that had little to do with the
exchange of blood. Dracula himself quoted the Bible in
noting that "the blood is the life." Thus it is not
necessarily the blood itself that the vampyre seeks, but the
psychic energy or "life force" believed to be carried by it.
The metaphor of psychic vampyrism can easily be extended to
cover various relationships in which one party steals
essential life elements from the other, such as when rulers
sap the strengh of the people they dominate. On the
other extreme, some modern "vampyres" are simply blood
drinkers. They do not attack and drain victims, but obtain
blood in a variety of legal manners (such as locating a
willing donor or a source at a blood bank). In such cases,
the consumption of the blood has little to do with any
ongoing relationships to the source of the blood. It, like
food, is merely consumed. Often times, modern vampyres even
report getting a psychological or sexual high from drinking
blood.
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