- Joined
- Jul 3, 2023
- Messages
- 44
- Reaction score
- 72
Anne Rice. She created the modern vampire, and it is us. Our alienation, our endless search for redemption, our cruelty, our emptiness. She touched something profoundly deep within the modern psyche, and through her the myth became theodicy; a meditation on loss, on our sense of being forever trapped in time, on our relationship with religion, with sexuality and with death. Lestat, you know, for all of his super powers was absolutely, hopelessly human. And in his humanity he was powerless. And that powerlessness was his greatest strength. Straight up RC. Look into the mirror darkly and see what lurks in the shadows of our posturing and glamor and it's only smoke and mirrors, and it's funny, because I used to go to vampire clubs in the hopes of finding the real deal, and among all the fangs and beautiful clothes, ambient music, and goth not an immortal in site and no-one fed from me. Like, duh. I was probably looking for Miriam Blaylock. But all joking aside the modern vampire is pure magick, and if you can pull the power from so deep that you end up infecting an entire culture then you are weaving spells as stories. Shamans did the same. It's the power of the word to enchant.I like this topic.
I have at home book on study of Vampirism throughout time and Europe. Indeed the lore of dead, undead and were-volves was rather mixed together from our point of view. It was simply the same thing. Actual separation and definition of werewolf and vampire are modern thing, started during time of Bram Stocker and little before him as matter of horror stories that only during that time and later solidified.
Also why vampire nowadays? Werewolf is a being if wildness. How much of untamed wildness is left in the world? It is hard to imagine werewolves to thrive in modern world, unlike vampires, who are able to blend in, as the modern cities are just like castles to them and they can adapt to it way better than raging beat that would be cornered way faster. Vampire also seems to fit human "needs" better as a myth. It is indeed a goal and desire of our society to be eternally young, we are sometimes called culture of the youth.
In the wildness, in small settlements vampire would have way harder time than werewolf, either fast running out of blood, or not being able to catch enough of stupid humans to feed upon. Animals would not be whatever sufficient so he would have to go to sleep and hope that humans will multiply to offer more sustenance to the vamp.
When we go to geek stuff, is vampire visible on cameras? I think he could be, but it seems favored in pop culture to make vamp invisible for cameras as well as photography. On old photos it made sense because those cameras were using mirrors, but that is not part of that tech anymore. But being invisible for cameras nowadays is like having political imunity. It allows vamp to hunt right under hunter's nose relatively safely.
In the history, if I remember correct, the werewolf was either permanentky changed/cursed or could control the changes, not connection to the moon. Norse tales speak about permanent change, when people shapeshifted, or of shapeshift using magic tools that allowed full control over the change, as well as preserving of mind.
And the vampire! Oh bats. A liminality if ever there was one. He comes alive where fiction bleeds out into consensus reality and it reminds us, perhaps subliminally, of what it was like to believe, and to want to jump into a picture book and chill with the elves and almost be able to pull it off. And the vampire comes, wrapped in terrors, offering hope...that maybe, just maybe life can't be confined to our rationalism.