Vampyrus, i (m.)

Vampyrus, -i (m.)

But how do you say "Vampire"?

I myself say "vom-PEER," with an unplaceable European accent, making waggly finger-fangs in front of my mouth. Oh, but you're talking about in Latin. The problem here is that there is no one word that means, strictly speaking, "vampire"; not in classical Latin, anyway. Greek and Roman folklore and mythology contain stories of reanimated bodies that return from the dead to vex or even kill the living, or of various blood- or flesh-eating monsters that hunt by stealth, trickery, or seduction. One has the option of using several words. [I am indebted to The Mad Latinist for his helpful thoughts on this pressing matter.]

lamia, -ae (f.): Along with the empusae, which often seems to be a synonym, these are female monsters, sometimes assocated with the goddess Hecate (herself "blood-drinking" according to one Greek magical papyrus), often concealing their monstrous forms (snake tails, metal legs, what have you) until it was too late. Lamiae have been adopted by the vampire-fan set, thanks perhaps to the Greek writer Philostratus via John Keats (see Keats's poem here, although I cannot vouch for the rest of that website -- but horror gamers might benefit from a read), but lamiae are really snake-monsters with a seduce-and-eat m.o. (So I suppose you could use the word for your Setite. Whatever.) But dictionaries of medieval Latin (written, of course, in the last century or so) do define lamia as "a type of demon," "a vampire," although the sample passages they provide still reference the human-animal hybrid appearance. -- Individual creatures named Lamia, Mormo, Gello etc. tend to be former royal hotties who for whatever reason have lost their wee bairns and have somehow become baby-stealin' monsters, the threat of whom could be used to keep wayward Greek and Roman children in line ("you'd better eat those ostrich brains, little Gnaeus, or the Mormo will eat yours"). -- Lamia is also a place in Greece and a Roman name; you can pretend that Aelius Lamia, a notable senator who served as both governor of Syria (without ever going there) and Prefect of the City (Rome) under Tiberius, was really a Ventrue or something, and that his state funeral in 33 AD was in fact a sort of celebration of his Embrace. -- Speaking of Lamia and funerals, I assume that Aelius Lamia or his family must the source of the name of the "Lamian gardens" in Suetonius's Life of Caligula where the mad emperor's ghost was said to vex people until his sisters dug up his improperly buried body and burned it. -- Finally, there's the Lamia bloodline in White Wolf's Dark Ages Companion (for 1st ed. V:tDA; possibly elsewhere, but I haven't kept up), which shares only the name and general female-vampire-ness.

Okay. So that's Lamia.

strix (or stryx), strigis (f.): screech-owl, but also a harpy or female vampire-like creature. As Ovid tells it in Fasti Book 6, the striges are the descendants of the Harpies, and fly around at night in bird form (which they can assume either naturally or by spell) and, upon finding children alone, gash them open with their talons and drink their blood, which is, you'll have to admit, pretty gruesome stuff. Striges are, strictly speaking, more a species of shapechanging witch than an undead predator, but this word seems to have been applied "vampires" in a more modern sense in the scholarly debates of the 18th century (about which see below). I suppose, switching to White-Wolf-game-hood for a moment, it would be an apt word to use for the "Harpies" that make your life miserable at Elysium. -- Back in the real world, compare Italian strega, "witch," or the vampiric strigoi of Romania.

Then there are two "modern Latin" words for "vampire":

vampyrus, i (m.): a straight Latinization of vampyr etc., this word (so far as I have bothered to find out) appears in Latin at about the same time the word "vampire" first shows up in English -- specifically, in the 1730s, when some notorious cases of alleged vampirism in Eastern Europe were making news all over, which led to scholarly debate, particularly in Germany, about whether such a thing could exist: for instance Johann Heinrich Zopf's Dissertatio de vampyris serviensibus... ("discussion about Serbian vampires") of 1733. Not long after the future Pope Benedict XIV wrote "De vanitate vampyrorum" ("on the falsity of vampires" -- which I guess to mean, knowing only the title, that he didn't believe in them, rather than that they broke his heart) in his De servorum dei beatificatione et de beatorum canonizatione ("on the beatification of the servants of God and on the canonization of the blessed"). Vampyrus also shows up in the scientific names of certain bats (non-blood-sucking fruit bats, but what can you do?). So vampyrus, if not an ancient word, is still a word you can feel pretty good about using. But for god's sake spell it with an "I" in English, won't you?

sanguisuga, -ae (f. or m.): "blood-sucker." This perfectly good ancient word, usually meaning "leech," was applied to vampires by, among others, Johann Christoph Pohl(ius) and Johann Gottlob Hertel(ius) in a Dissertatio de hominibus post mortem sanguisugis, vulgo dictis Vampyren (Leipzig, 1732: "discussion about people sucking blood after death, commonly called 'vampires'"). Johann Christianus Stock wrote in the same year a Dissertatio ... de cadaveribus sanguisugis ("... about blood-sucking cadavers"). -- Grammatical notes: I take the word to be functioning in these two titles as an adjective, as if from "sanguisugus, -a, -um," although it could well be a noun in apposition, i.e., "a discussion about people [who are] bloodsuckers after death." -- The gender of the noun in ancient Latin is feminine, and with the meaning "vampire" is given as masculine in a lexicon of recent Latin compiled online, for this word drawing on Sigrid Albert's Imaginum vocabularium Latinum (Saarbrücken, 1998). But it seems to me you may justly use the feminine or the masculine, depending on the sex of the vampire in question.

Finally, two quasi-imaginary possibilities via different sorts of Greek:

haematopota (or haemopota), -ae (m. or f.): from the ancient Greek haimatopôtês or haimapôtês , "blood-drinker." I have no "authority" for this other than that I've always liked the Greek word, applied to various monsters or mythological beings, including a dragon in a mock prophecy about sausage-sellers in Aristophanes, as well as the goddess Hecate and the Moon. (The Technocracy and their NASA puppets have, of course, kept that last from the public; I run a great risk in mentioning it here, but I do it for you.) The Latinization is my own based on other Latin borrowings from Greek. It sounds "cooler" to me than sanguisuga, but strictly speaking you're probably better off with that one. But if you use haematopota and decline it correctly, I expect there are few who would quibble; or you could at least blame me.

While we're on the subject of making up Latin words from Greek ones, modern Greek folklore has a vampire-like creature called the vrykolakas, from which one could (following the suggestion of The Mad Latinist) create a word: brycolax, brycolacis (m.). While I told him the word made me think of Swiss throat lozenges, I discovered the other day, looking over old notes, that I had used it myself in a game context a year ago, inventing a treatise De brycolacibus, so it must be okay. -- You can read some folktales involving vrykolakes see this site.

I pause now to share with you some more fine Latin vampirological titles of yore culled from an online bibliography:

Philippus Rohr, Dissertatio de Masticatione mortuorum ("Discussion about the chewing of the dead"), 1679.

Gabriel Rzaczynski, "De cruentationibus cadaverum" ("on the blood-stainedness of cadavers"), in his Historia naturalis curiosa regni Poloniae ("Curious natural history of the kingdom of Poland"), 1721.

Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Schertz, Magia posthuma ("posthumous magic"), 1706.

Joannis Wier, De lamiis liber: item de commentitiis ieiuniis. Cum Rerum ac verborumcopioso indice ("a book about lamiae, likewise about fictitious hungers [?], with a copious index of subjects and words"), 1577. -- I wish I knew more about this one.

Franz Anton Ferdinand Stebler, "Sub vampyri, aut sanguisugae larva a verae philosophiae et rationalis medicinae placitis detectum ac dejectum depravatae imaginationis spectrum" ("Beneath the mask of the vampire, or bloodsucker, the spectre of a depraved imagination detected and removed by those agreeable to true philosophy and rational medicine"), 1737.

And a recent book, presumably quoting an 18th-century skeptic in its title:

Klaus Hamberger, Mortuus non mordet: Dokumente zum Vampirismus 1689-1791, Vienna, 1992 ("--------------: Documents concerning Vampirism 1689-1791"). The Latin part might be fairly easy for you to translate yourself if you've worked diligently through part three of this series: what do you suppose it means? Check your answer below.

Ghosts

Similarly, "ghost" (or "wraith") is not straightforward; there are all sorts of words the Romans used interchangeably. (See D. Felton's Haunted Greece and Rome, Austin 1999, ch. 2, which I follow here). Possibilities include:

Lemures, Lemurum (m. plural, third declension): "ghosts," usually in a harmful sense. The Romans had a yearly festival called the Lemuria (not to be confused with the sunken continent), aimed at ridding their houses of ghosts. The related ritual involved walking around the house barefoot, making what we might call the "rock-'n'-roll shout to the devil" hand-sign and throwing beans around. -- No, really!

larva, -ae (f.): "ghost" (also "mask"), especially of the haunted-house variety, although this is largely interchangeable with Lemures. "Haunted (lit. disturbed, made unsafe) by ghosts" = larvis infestus (-a, -um).

manes, manium (m. plural -- a third-declension I-stem, as you'll have noticed): "spirits of the dead, shades, remains," but can also be used of a single ghost: e.g., manes Verginiae, "the ghost of Verginia" mentioned by the historian Livy (3.58.11). The writer Apuleius reserves the word for friendly or at least neutral spirits, but Livy's Verginia was decidedly not.

inferi, -orum (m. plural): "those below," the dead in the underworld. Also, by extension, the underworld itself, for example: apud inferos = "among the dead" / "in the underworld" / "chez Hades." -- You probably wouldn't say that your house was inferis infesta, but you might say that the apparition of Uncle Publius in the house had been "raised up from the dead" (ab inferis excitatus [-a, -um]). Zoinks!

umbra, -ae (f.): "shade," "shadow." Probably a familiar word for you gamer types. This word can be used in an "avaunt, foul shade!" sense, but more often describes what you find under, say, a tall, leafy tree.

imago, imaginis (f.): "image," "likeness," "appearance," "apparition." Depending on context this can also mean, for example, "ancestor bust," so it's not an inherently spooky word, unless those marble heads creep you out, and no wonder.

simulacrum, -i (n.): "image," "likeness," "effigy" etc. Also "pretence."

And there are others, largely synonyms to the last two (which, incidentally, can also be used of warning apparitions, visions, and other spectral presences that are not necessarily the spirits of the dead). One can also say mortuus (the dead man), monstrum (the monster, the apparition), and so on. -- If you want to look more into the world of Greek and Roman ghosts using the power of the Internet, start here.

Werewolves

We're on safer ground with werewolves. Well, you know what I mean. The Greeks and Romans had werewolf legends -- even, I think, werewolf ghosts, like in Scooby Doo, where it's not bad enough that something has to be a horrible monster, it's the horrible monster's ghost, but anyway-- and words that went with them.

lycanthropus, -i (m.): this is the obvious one; from the Greek word, lykanthrôpos, "wolf-man," which appears in medical treatises of the late Roman empire (if only in the context of people who behave like wolves). -- Has anyone else noticed the recent trend in television commercials involving people raised by wolves? One's for a sandwich place, another's for some SUV or other. Huh. Maybe it's just me.

versipellis, versipellis (m. or f.): "skin-changer" (gen. pl. versipellium). This is also an adjective, versipellis, -e, meaning "of changeable appearance." Feel free to use this word for any of the shapeshifters. -- The word appears in a famous story in Petronius' Satiricon (61f.), where a character named Niceros tells of the time his soldier friend turned into a ravening wolf; it was so upsetting that Niceros could never bring himself to have dinner with the man again.

There is apparently also a medieval Latin word virlupus, "man-wolf," but it's kinda lame and unnecessary, if you ask me.

Miscellaneous supernatural phenomena

(Some of these words are repeated from earlier parts of this series.)

Beyond the good old Latin dictionary and whatever I've picked up since my first year of high-school Latin in 1984-85, I rely here on Adkins and Adkins' Dictionary of Roman Religion, New York 1996, and the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., Oxford 1996.

This is simply a smattering of words that one might find useful in a "Latin for Gamers" context and is not meant as a serious introduction to Roman religion and ideas about magic; if so, it would be considerably longer and more complicated and would have forced me to do rather more research. -- Finally, I am myself largely ignorant about the use of Latin in the medieval magic tradition, which would certainly be a rich and probably more appropriate source of spiffy words for your Order of Hermes mage character or whatever. I have, however, included bits of what little I know or could find out; it's amazing what can be learned, for the purposes of imparting simple vocabulary, by skimming the titles of Latin treatises concerning magic and the occult.

Mages, magicians, witches

astrologus, i (m.): astrologer, fortune-teller. Also mathematicus, -i (m.) and Chaldaeus, -i (m., after a people from the Mysterious [Near] East).

hariolus, -i (m.): prophet, soothsayer.

haruspex, -spicis (m.): a type of Etruscan diviner or soothsayer who worked by reading entrails, interpreting strange prodigies, and observing flashes of lightning.

magus, -i (m.) Persian wise men and dream interpreters; in a general sense, a magician, astrologer, sorceror, wizard. The related adjectives are magicus, -a, um and magus, -a, -um, hence the ars magica or maga, the magical art. The feminine is maga, -ae.

malefica, -ae (f.): witch, evildoer. The noun Kramer and Sprenger made famous.

pontifex, pontificis (m.): pontiff, high priest. I want to shout out here to whichever writer of Blood Magic: Secrets of Thaumaturgy made fun of the false plural "pontifexes" on p. 55. Yo! Keep the faith!

propheta, -ae (m.): "prophet," as seen in a Bible near you. From the Greek word that means "foreteller."

sacerdos, sacerdotis (m. or f.): priest(ess). Originally among the Romans a word for foreign priests (they had a whole set of different specialized words for their own religious officials). The regular word for "priest" in Church-Latin. -- "priesthood": sacerdotium, -i (n.).

saga, -ae: witch, soothsayer, wise woman. The masculine is sagus, -i.

sortilegus, -i (m.) (also as adjective -us, -a, -um): fortune-teller, reader of lots, soothsayer.

vates, -is (m.): prophet, bard. The general sense is "an inspired poet."

venefica, -ae (f.): poisoner, witch. Especially appropriate for a witch who works by means of drugs and potions.

Spells, rituals, and spell-casting:

alchemia, -ae (f.): alchemy. Also alchimia and chemia. This is a medieval word. The adjective appears to be chemicus, -a, -um; another way to say "alchemy" (overtly) is ars chemica.

ara, -ae (f.): altar.

carmen, carminis (n.): generally "song" or "poem," but also any sort of verse, including oracular responses or magical incantations, and so "spell."

defixio, -onis (f.): Curse tablets, usually lead, with requests to the gods and other spirits to influence people or the outcome of events; others promised a future curse to, say, anyone stealing certain property. These were usually buried or thrown into wells, for the convenience of the darker sort of deity; others were posted in a "no trespassing, and we really mean it" kind of way. -- For an example of an elaborate Greek defixio from Egypt (in translation), invoking a ghost to make a particular woman all hot for the 'caster,' see this site. (Disclaimer: "Latin for Gamers" does not advocate the use of necromantic love spells.)

devotio, devotionis (f.): Promising one's own life, or the life of a substitute, to gain the goodwill of the gods. (Larger-than-life images of the promised victim could be buried instead; that's lucky.) -- Also, wax effigies roughly equivalent to "voodoo dolls" used in love spells or to cause pain and death. -- Finally, as a synonym for defixio.

lapis philosophicus (m.; genitive is lapidis philosophici): philosophers' stone (lit. "philosophical stone"). Also lapis philosophorum ("... of the philosophers").

lustratio, -onis (f.): the performance of a purification ceremony (lustrum, -i, [n.]), involving a ritual procession around the object, person, or place to be cleansed of evil influences.

magia, -ae f.): "magic," "the art of the magi." A synonym for ars magica. In a negative sense, try veneficium, -i (n.), "sorcery, poisoning." -- Well, don't actually TRY veneficium; I mean use it. No, that doesn't sound right either.

opus magnum (n.; the genitive would be operis magni): "the great work"; alchemical transmutation. (Of course we also have the phrase today "magnum opus," meaning someone's masterpiece.)

philosophus, -i (n.): philosopher; alchemist.

praedictio, -onis (f.): prediction, prophecy. -- And praedictum, -i (n.), which can also mean, less eerily, a command or pre-arrangement.

quinta essentia (f.; genitive is quintae essentiae): "the fifth element," after earth [terra, -ae, (f.)], air [aer, aeris (m.)], fire [ignis, ignis (m.)], and water [aqua, -ae (f.)]; "quintessence" for you Mage fans; or Leeloo.

transmutatio, -onis (f.): transmutation, as you may have guessed.

vaticinatio, -onis (f.): prophecy, foretelling, prediction.

virga, -ae (f.): wand (especially of the magical variety).

voces magicae (f. plural, from vox, vocis, "voice"): magic words, "foreign" or nonsense syllables one uses in casting a spell.

Spirits, gods, and other supernatural critters

daemon, daemonis (m. or f.): "demon." The Greek word daimôn had, anciently, if "anciently" is a word, a variety of meanings, but was basically a lesser divine spirit, not automatically either good or bad. The Christians, well, demonized the daimones, and the word and its Latinized equivalent became the regular word for those malevolent infernal guys. -- Also: daemonium, -i (n.).

deus, -i (m.) or dea, -ae (f.): god, goddess. Some odd forms to the declension: Deus: Vocative (address form) deus (cf. meus; nominative and vocative plural di; occasional ablative plural (especially in poetry) dis. -- Dea: The dative and ablative plural is deabus, to avoid confusion (deis being the regular form, but not readily distinguishable from the non-poetic masculine). -- From the adjectives infernus, -a, -um and superus, -a, -um come the handy phrases di inferni ("gods below") and di superi ("gods above"). Use them wisely!

draco, draconis: serpent, dragon. Hic sunt dracones = "Here be Dragons."

dryas, dryadis (f.): dryad, tree-spirit. Also hamadryas.

genius, -i (m.): a personal guardian spirit and fertility principle. (The female equivalent was called a iuno, iunonis [f.]). The Romans often worshiped them alongside lares (see below). It would be nice to say that lares watched over places and genii over people, but as the unknown "spirit of a place" was referred to as the genius loci, that's clearly not the case.

lar, laris (m.): a guardian spirit of the home and other places. The Romans had little shrines for them and did their utmost to keep them happy; worshiped alongside genii and probably the Penates (see below; although the Oxford Classical Dictionary says there is no evidence that they were regularly linked with them). Lares watched over the household, roads, crossways, and the Roman state as a whole. Possibly originally deified ancestor spirits; possibly not.

numen, numinis (n.): divine power, spirit, godhead. Spirits of woods, places, ideas, etc. The dividing line between numina and full-on gods is a blurry one. -- See below for World of Darkness misuse.

nympha, -ae (f.): nymph, spirit of woods or water. (Also a word for "bride," incidentally.)

Penates, Penatium (m.) (also di Penates): Roman household gods (cf. Lares). Their proper area of their influence seems to be the hearth, the pantry, and the interior of the home; they were also worshiped at the temple of the goddess Vesta (the goddess of the hearth). Don't ask me to tell you exactly how they differed from Lares; maybe there's some provider/protector division of labor, but I'm just making that up.

prodigium, -i (n.): prodigy, omen, monster -- anything unnatural that seems to indicate the gods are wicked pissed.

satyrus, -i (m.): satyr. Your basic half-man, half-goat sex-machine (machina sexualis).

semivir, -i (m.): on the subject of "half-men," this means "half-man," either in a mythological hybrid sort of way, or to refer to someone who just isn't very manly.

spiritus, -us (m.), "breath," "breeze"; but from meaning "breath of life" comes the later meaning "spirit" (for example, in Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Spirit), and may be used without serious difficulty for any incorporeal entity. -- You may look askance at that genitive form, expecting spiriti, but that is not the, uh, case. With this word you can, if you dare, Enter the Fourth Declension! (On that website, the "Umlaut" is meant to represent a long-vowel mark; for our purposes, you can probably ignore it.)

Obviously some of these words are more useful in a World-of-Darkness context than others. For the fae, except where obvious (satyrus), you're largely on your own, at least for now; I am vaguely aware that the word "fae" is supposed to be related to fatum, -i (n.), "fate," and one sees the plural fata in a "fair-folk" sense now and again. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some (medieval?) word in Latin that means "Changeling" in the original meaning of "something the fairies traded for my baby," but I don't know it.

White Wolf Latin

Here follows a (not all-inclusive) list of Latin or Latin-ish words in White Wolf games and game supplements I feel the need to discuss, mock, or correct for your edification and my own procrastinatory amusement.

(The other night I observed at a bookstore in Cambridge the existence of a book that pointed out the logical problems and continuity errors in every single X-Files episode. "Dear god! What kind of geek would waste time writing a book like that?", I thought to myself.)

Vampire

ductus (alleged pl. "ducti"): The title of a Sabbat pack leader, unfortunately. ductus, however, means "a leading, conducting, or drawing," for instance, "of water," like in "aqueduct" (Lat. aquae ductus, "conducting of water"). Another possible meaning is "leadership" -- but not the person who is the "leader." dux, ducis (m.), "leader" (and from which the word "duke" arises) would have been better, I think. As an extra bit of folly, even though ductus has that -us ending, it's not a second-declension noun, but a fourth-declension one. Suffice it to say that absolutely no form of the Latin word ductus is spelled ducti. Now, as the Mad Latinist had to remind me (I really should have picked up on it myself), there IS a word ductus, -i, from the perfect passive participle of ducere ("to lead"), meaning "someone who is led," "a follower" -- and so NOT a good word for "leader"! -- A certain Angry Game Developer (not angry at me, necessarily; he's just Angry) informed me in the course of a discussion on a White Wolf forum a few years ago that there is an "in-game" reason for this mistake, that young punk vampires don't know Latin any better than game-supplement-writers. Whatever.

lextalionis: That vampire "blood hunt" thing where the Prince of the City grants Slurpee rights to whoever bumps you off first. This is unobjectionable Latin: lex talionis, "law of punishment," from lex, legis (f.), "law," and talio, talionis (f.), "punishment in kind." Here's a handy little phrase: "I declare a blood hunt on Marius" = "Legem talionis exerceo in Marium" (lit. "I exercise/enforce the law of punishment against Marius") or, more impersonally, in the passive voice, "Lex talionis exerceatur in Marium" ("Let the law of punishment be enforced against Marius"). (Note here, and file away mentally, the fact that lex is nominative in the second version: it is the subject of a passive verb.) Either way, Marium is accusative after the preposition in. It may be harder to put the name of Philly Phlash the Brujah Anarch into the accusative case; you may therefore invoke the precedent of Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, and generally did not bother to decline foreign names. It's up to you to decide whether or not "Phillium Phlashum" sounds more dignified.

via: "Road" or "Path" of morality, like the Via Humanitatis, the "Path of Humanity." These are often fine as they are, although I haven't seen the newer edition of the Dark Ages vampire book. The word is first declension: via, viae (f.), "road, path, way." The second word should be in the genitive case. -- Problem viae: 1. Via Sanguinius: the Path of Blood (not to be confused with Tremere Thaumaturgy, below). Now why can't Vampire: the Masquerade get the word "blood" right? If one drops that "u" at the end, all becomes well: Via Sanguinis. There is also the adjective sanguineus, -a, -um, "bloody," but (a) it's -eus, not -ius and (b) via is feminine. So you could observe the moral code of the "bloody path," Via Sanguinea, and that would be all right, too, at least grammatically. -- 2. Via Ossis, the Path of Bone. Well, actually, this says "the path of THE bone, or A bone" (os, ossis [n.], "bone"); one is likely better off saying "...of bones" (Via Ossium) or using the adjective "bony" (Via Ossea).

vitae: The old-school Kindred word for "blood," presumably inspired by that famous line, "The blood is the life" (vita, vitae [f.], "life"). We can pretend to explain its form by assuming that it's the shortened version of a phrase like "source/stuff/whatever of life" or, more easily, the nominative plural ("lives"), used poetically for the singular, which happened, in poetry at least. In that case it would be declined like the feminine plural of a first-declension noun (like the feminine of an -us, -a, -um adjective, you'll recall). This would make the primary Tremere thaumaturgical path not Rego vitae but "Rego vitas": rego simply means "I rule," and would need an accusative direct object. -- Or one could defy convention (dangerous among the Tremere, to be sure) and rename the Thaumaturgical Path Rego sanguinem ("I rule blood") or, better, perhaps, Regere sanguinem ("to rule..."). -- Or, again, harkening back to the Tremere's Order-of-Hermes roots, one could invoke the word "art" (ars), and call it the Ars sanguinis regendi, "the art of ruling blood" (lit. "of blood being ruled"). For Latin, you see, is a language of many possibilities; it's just that Rego vitae isn't one of them.

On the topic of Thaumaturgy paths (as seen in Vampire: the Dark Ages, House of Tremere, The Vampire Players Guide, The Dark Ages Companion, and, in a couple of instances, just online, where some poor deluded fan has tried to do a translation of some Paths not otherwise translated), there are several where the scholarly Tremere should really know better, and a few that are fine:

Creo Ignem: This one is just dandy: "I create fire." Yay you!

Perdo Magica: Possibly okay by (presumed) accident, if we pretend that magica is neuter plural of the adjective, used as a noun: "I destroy the things pertaining to magic." Otherwise this will need to be Perdo Magiam, as magica by itself is not the noun "magic."

Rego Alchemas: Apparently "I rule alchemy! Yo!" But if you really ruled alchemy, you'd more intelligibly say rego alchemiam, as the noun in question is alchemia, -ae, or, possibly, before the Arabs added that "al-," just chemia. (Unless the spelling "alchemas" is not so much an error as a mystical clue for the initiated.)

Rego Aquam: "I rule the water." This is fine. Except the Brits called dibs on the waves.

Rego Astrae: No doubt intended to be "I rule the stars!" Except you don't. This is a translation I found online for the "Path of the Higher Spirit." astrum, -i (f.) = "star," meaning that you can have forms spelled astrum, astri, astro, astra, astrorum, or astris, but on no account can you have astrae. Which one do you need here? That's right, the accusative plural! Which is astra. -- Now, it's not in my classical Latin dictionary, but were one to employ an adjective astralis, -e, a random Roman dude would get that you were saying "having to do with stars," and (without bothering to check) it is likely that somewhere someone has gone on about the astral plane in Latin and employed this very adjective. I suggest therefore a better name for this path, Rego Astralia, "I rule the astral thingies," although there is the danger that people will mishear you, thinking you have power over, e.g., kangaroos and Foster's.

Rego Dolor: The Dark Thaumaturgical "Path of Pain" (dolor, doloris, m.). How freakin' sinister. I myself am pained to see no accusative here: Dolorem.

Rego Levinbolt: This one, fortunately, is not for real; it's some fan's attempt at a translation that I found online. Quite apart from the "come on, guys, you're not even trying" aspect, I've always thought "levinbolt" was an silly word anyway, sounding like the name of a flashy lawyer. ("Have you been injured? Call the law offices of Levinbolt and Obeah!") -- Let's just say "Rego Fulmen or Fulmina" (< fulmen, fulminis [n.], "lightning-bolt").

Rego Magica: See above under Perdo Magica.

Rego Manes: The Dark Thaumaturgical "Path of Spirit." This is described as demon-summoning, boys and girls, not ghosts or other spirits; instead of the poor Manes let's talk Daemones or perhaps Infernos. -- I am confused by the note (Dark Ages Companion p. 107) that the pagan ancestor of this path was called "Rego Mentem" and allowed for the calling of nature-spirits; mens (gen. mentis; f.) means "mind." Apparently the writer here had a copy of Ars Magica at hand, in which game some spirit-affecting powers do appear to fall under the category of Rego Mentem spells, because, presumably, the spirits in question have intelligent minds; but most of the spells there involve, you know, mind control.

Rego Motus: I actually have no problem with this one, although it might be accidental. Motus ("movement") is a fourth-declension noun (like spiritus and ductus above), and it happens that the accusative plural ("movements") is also spelled motus, although there's a slight difference of pronunciation, but as I haven't told you how to pronounce anything at all yet you'll just have to nod and smile. -- Now, uncharitably, perhaps, but based on analogy with others here, I'm assuming that someone wanted to say "I rule movement" and looked up the word and plugged it in without thinking about declension and just got lucky. -- It's also just as well that they didn't try to translate the more familiar name for this telekinetic power, "Movement of the Mind," into Latin, as they might have ended up with something like motus animi which actually means "emotion." So we've dodged a bullet there.

Rego Tempestas: One meaning of tempestas, tempestatis (f.) is "storm, stormy weather" (think "tempest"). This is the sort of thing I was on about under "Rego Motus" above: someone has looked up the word "weather" or "storm" and typed it in unaltered. (I'm trying to think of some kind of clever weather metaphor to show how the poor word has been tossed about recklessly, but -- I got nothin'.) I think you'll want the accusative here, tempestatem or perhaps tempestates.

Rego Umbrae : This is the "Path of the Middle Spirit," which I assume lets you get into those parts of the Umbra where your warlock vampire can be torn apart by wandering packs of Red Talons. You'll recall that in Latin umbra is simply "shade" or "shadow." You will need to rule it in the accusative, of course: Umbram. Best to stick to the singular here, because the plural might suggest either some sort of "Obtenebration"-like ability or else power over ghosts. -- Since it's the "Middle Umbra," in World of Darkness cosmology anyway, you could say more precisely "Rego Mediam Umbram." A native Latin-speaker, were he to exist, might wonder what the hell the "middle shade" is ("I think he said he's master of the central part of the area underneath that portico"), but then the Tremere guard their secrets closely, and shouldn't be understandable to just anyone. -- Now, it may be that this is in fact their attempt at translating "Spirit Thaumaturgy," power over spirits of the Middle Umbra, and not a power of transportation. (I could look it up, but all my game books are downstairs.) For that we can say "I rule the spirits" (Rego Spiritus) and move on.

Rego Securitas : This is meant to be the Path of Warding. By now you will not be surprised to hear that they've got the case wrong; securitas is a third-declension noun, and so the accusative is securitatem. Now, the primary meaning of securitas, -tatis (f.) is "freedom from anxiety" and thus even "carelessness," so a better word here might be custodia, -ae (f.), "watch, guard, care" (the quality rather than individual guards): Rego Custodiam. -- Were we free to break away from the chains of "Rego..." formulation, I would prefer to call this the Ars Arcendi, the "Art of Warding," from arcere, "to avert, ward off, keep away."

Rego Venalis: The Dark Thaumaturgical "Path of Corruption," this could only mean something like "I rule the people for sale" [< venalis, -e, "for sale" or "open to bribes"] with an older or poetic -is instead of -es in the masculine accusative plural). Fair enough, I suppose, but I think we're talking about more than bribery here. This is about poisoning hearts and unleashing the dark soul! -- I suspect that someone thinks "Rego" means "Path," and picked out an adjective that seemed to imply corruption. Let us call this Rego Corruptelam or ...Corruptionem (or the same words in the plural), corruptela, -ae and corruptio, -onis (both f.) being rough synonyms for "corruption, seduction, bribery," even (in the case of the latter) "breaking apart," or, perhaps, the Ars Corrumpendi (art of corrupting).

Transitus Velociter: This means "Quickly Passage." If you want quick passage, use the adjective velox.

[Pleasantly, the writers of the 4th edition of Mage's ancestor game, Ars Magica, with its similarly named spells, have managed to get that whole "verb + direct object" formula just right, and even put in accent marks to aid in pronunciation. There's a little Latin glossary at the end that (with the cautionary note that words like "ignem" and "mentem" are given only in the accusative because they show up in the game only as direct objects) should be required reading for Tremere or Order of Hermes players. The proper pronunciation of certamen! The correct plural of consors (consortes)! Go Atlas Games! -- Incidentally, as I write this (November 2003), Ars Magica ia available for free and legal download (in PDF) from the RPGNow website].

I'm not going to go into Discipline names here, which are often based loosely on Greek and Latin words, except to say that some of them are damn silly, as if the power to grow really tall were called "Magnaliciosity" or "Bigtasticate." And that's true for powers in some other WW games, too.

Mage

Ars Animae: The Life Sphere. Anima, -ae (f.) does mean "principle of life"; it's the soul or spirit you give up when you die. But vita means life, pure and simple, and is to be preferred here, as in the new Order of Hermes book.

Ars Conjunctionis: This Hermetic name for the Correspondence Sphere is okayish, but conjunctio means more "agreement" than "conjunction." The "new" name in the revised "Order of Hermes" book is Ars Conligationis, the art of "binding together." This is more fabulous.

Ars Cupiditae: Supposedly the "Art of Desire," an overall quality of being graceful and swashbuckle-rific. I'm not sure that "desire" is the best way to express this, but if you're going to use it, the word is either cupiditas, -tatis (f.) or cupido, cupidinis (m.), neither of which have a cupiditae. Cupiditatis is the closest fix; Cupidinis works as well.

Ars Essentiae: The Forces Sphere. Essentia can mean "element" or "essence" (as in quinta essentia), but "Art of the Element" doesn't work for me here. "Force" in Latin is vis, gen. pl. virium, and Ars Virium is a much sexier name for this Sphere.

Ars Hermeticae: Despite the good work done in the revised "Order of Hermes" book towards correcting Latin problems, this can only mean "Art of the Hermetic Female" or some such. Either ars hermetica or artes hermeticae.

Ars Manes: Spirit. Manes again! We just had that last night! By now you will know that the Manes are spirits of the dead, but not any of the other kinds of spirits this Sphere effects. The new OoH book gives Ars Spirituum, which works.

Ars Vis: Prime, given the old Ars Magica word for magic fuel, vis, in the world of Mage, Quintessence. Now, the problem is that the genitive singular of vis, "force, strength, or power" is not attested -- it never shows up in Latin. But a bigger problem is that vis is better used under "Forces." The "new" Hermetic formulation is Ars Potentiae, the Art of Power. Strangely enough, Ars Essentiae might work here as well in an okay-ish sort of way; it's as though Forces and Prime got all mixed up somewhere. Make of that what you will.

Certamen (gen. certaminis [n.]). I sometimes have trouble taking this word for a wizards' duel seriously because it's what high-school Latin-club geeks all over America know as "Classical Studies Trivia Quiz Bowl," but the medieval Order of Hermes could not possibly foresee that -- or could they? Properly pronounced "kair-TAH-men," the Latin word means simply "contest, match, rivalry; combat," and so is otherwise appropriate here.

De Angelis Libris, from the Forged by Dragon's Fire supplement: correct to Liber. -- In the same book, one sees discussion of "principiae" -- but principia is already a plural (< principium, -i [n.], principle, element, beginning). Clearly the writer was familiar with, e.g., Principia Discordia ("discordant principles") and thought "principia" meant something like "guide-book": it doesn't.

Spoliatio Posterus Ad Pensio Nam Nunc: The name of this Hermetic rote found in the Laws of Ascension Companion (and possibly elsewhere), which squeezes more Quintessence out of a Node for the present but temporarily diminishes its future production, may have been what tipped me over the edge into deciding to do this website. Clearly meant to be something like"Robbing Later to Pay for Now," what we in fact have is a list of grammatically unrelated words found in a dictionary: "A robbing, plunder, burglary. Later (adjective). To or toward. A paying, payment. For (explanatory: = 'because'). Now." When one looks down at one's book and sees "to pay for" rendered mindlessly word-for-word as "towards paying because," one feels one must act. -- "Okay, Mr. Latin Guy, you're so smart, what would you say here?" Well, if I were forced to come up with something it might be "Spoliare Posterum In Praesens," "To rob the future for the present" (which might make a good motto for Pentex or its real-world counterparts) or perhaps "... Ad Usum Praesentem" ("... for present use").

Werewolf

Bestia Bello: Almost "Beast-of-War," the violent face of the Wyrm. But of course the genitive of bellum is belli. Now, perhaps you will tell me that, after all, the centurion in Chronicle of the Black Labyrinth is of Germanic descent and thus prone to grammatical error in this (to him) foreign language. If it helps you sleep at night, fine; but if I were serving as a centurion in the Roman army I think I'd at least learn how to say "war" properly.

Magnis Vermis: Also perpetrated in Chronicle of the Black Labyrinth, the only thing this could be in Latin is a poetic spelling of the dative or ablative plural magnis vermibus ("to/for or from/by/with large worms"), but really, I think that's improbable and, if that's what it is, then why? More likely, what we have here is an example of that classic first-year-Latin-student mistake, namely, trying to make an adjective agree by giving it exactly the same ending as the noun. I assume from context this is meant to be "the Great Wyrm," but apparently once you've been corrupted by Bane-spirits you forget that the masculine nominative singular of magnus is magnus, so that your Great Wyrm is Magnus Vermis or, if plural, Magni Vermes.

The Chronicle... has, in fact, several examples of wretched Latin, much of which is, admittedly, referred to by the fictional editor as "bastardized" or what have you. Passing over the title "Ex disputandem re supernibus ab probati Quaestori Adversarique," which is, roughly, "Out of must be discussioned in thing aboveses by of approved for treasury official and of the adversary," I will limit myself to correcting the Laird of Demborough's Latin in the figure of the spiral seen throughout the book (for example, p. 73): for Circulus Duos read duo (if we're using the bare numbers here and not, as seems more likely, words meaning "first," "second," etc.); this circle should be the Saltatio Furoris (not furore); the fourth circle should be Calliditatis (not calliditate); the seventh Fidei (not fidetis -- what is up with that?). Am I a geek or what?

Changeling

In Nobles: The Shining Host I vaguely recall a mention of "dream rape," which they chose to give the name "Morpheus Sabinus" or something like that. I don't know where they get this stuff. True, Morpheus is the dude who is all about dreams, and in one Roman legend the first Romans, all men, stole women from their neighbors the Sabines. But the phrase Morpheus Sabinus could only mean "the Sabine Morpheus," perhaps indicating some variation of his legend or cult found exclusively among that people. If you had to call it something at all in Latin you might choose "stuprum in somnio" ("sex crime in a dream," from stuprum, stupri [n.], "immorality, rape, disgrace etc.", and somnium, somnii [n.], "dream"), but probably you wouldn't because, unless you're in one of those weird gaming groups I have fortunately only ever heard of where all female PCs end up getting raped by orcs or Dagon or malicious brownies or whatever, this is something only vaguely addressed in an out-of-print book that never gets mentioned again, and anyway, really, for many things, a simple English phrase suffices.

Wraith

Dictum Mortuum: the so-called "law of the dead" that prevents contact with the living. In fact it means more "dead command/decree" (from dictum, dicti [n.], "saying, order, command," and mortuus, -a, -um, "dead"), and that might imply that the command is no longer valid. Which, I suppose, is the case, since (a) no player characters have ever paid attention to it anyway and (b) they don't make the game anymore. But I would be more pleased to see the genitive plural here: dictum mortuorum, "decree of the dead (ones)." And so should you be.

Necropoli: meant to be the plural of necropolis, a Greek word meaning "city of the dead." In Greek, the plural is in fact necropoleis; in Latin, this becomes necropoles (necropolis, necropolis [f.], gen. pl. -polium); necropoli could only be the dative or, given the "rules" for declining loan-words from Greek that have "I-stems," possibly ablative singular.

World of Darkness

numina: k3wl p0w3rz for mortals. One often sees the plural numinae, as if numina were a first-declension noun in the nominative singular. As, I say, if. In fact the Latin word is, you'll recall, numen, numinis (n.), "godhead, (divine) power," a third-declension neuter noun, which makes numina the nominative (or possibly accusative) plural. "Numinae" is kinda like saying "powerses." (Never mind that numina are entities, "powers" as used in "powers-that-be" rather than "non-player-character-crushing abilities I have five dots in.")

Well, that's enough of that. When I get around to another installment, it will be a summarizing glossary (English to Latin) of the useful words encountered in this series, declension paradigms, and possibly more translation exercises, because I know you all love that sort of thing.

Return to the beginning .

Go on to the next part (a vocabulary list/review).

Return to Quislibet home .

Contact me.

Latin links:

Perseus Project searchable Latin-to-English and English-to-Latin dictionaries.

Lexicon of recent Latin.

Study guide to Wheelock's Latin textbook.

Allen and Greenough's Latin Grammar online (mostly).

Mortuus non mordet: "A dead man does not bite." Return.

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