I wrote the title of this post and cringed a little because, for much of history, people have held to the legend of vampires. So much so that they’ve become part of our narrative. To say that vampires are a myth is almost to sever a piece of our own identity. But, when did this happen, this merger of man and other? And what is the appeal?
That’s what we’re going to touch on today.
Last Friday I released a video on my YouTube channel, in which we talked about the ways that vampires are used to enhance Gothic themes. We looked at a couple of examples: Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. And then we talked about other ways that vampires could mirror the types of irrational themes that we work with in Gothic literature. If you’re looking for it, you can find it here.
In keeping with this week’s theme of vampires, I thought I’d dig into some of the history of vampires. Not just the one we all know, but the stories from around the world in which blood-thirsty creatures – man or demon – came to life in Egypt, Greece or India.
Most vampire lovers know that much of the modern perspective of vampires stems from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a book which many attribute to the historical figure of Count Vlad Tepeš, a man referred to as Vlad the Impaler. He was a hero of the Romanian people, waging war on the Ottomans. The nickname came from his tendency to impale those he took captive.
But vampire legends began long before Count Vlad or Bram Stoker.
Ancient Evidence of Vampire Lore
Some think that the vampire originated in ancient Egypt. Matthew Beresford, who wrote the book From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth, wrote that there is evidence that vampires came into being in ancient Egypt when someone summoned a demon into our world. If you’ve ever read Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, you’ll recognize this legend as consistent with her vampire history.
Further support for the Egyptian origin of vampires resides in the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, the cat-faced goddess of war. She drank blood in such abundance that the Egyptian people feared that once wars ceased, she would turn from a warring ally to blood-thirsty enemy. In an attempt to stave off that event, they took to holding a festival at the end of every war in order to signal to her that the blood binge was to cease.1
Other ancient cultures also show evidence of vampires. Pottery shards excavated from ancient Persia depict creatures drinking human blood2. The Sumerians and Babylonians told similar legends of the demon-goddess Lilith who they claim was Adam’s first wife and refused to submit to his leadership. Instead, she left him and roamed the land, preying on pregnant women and drinking the blood of infants.3
A family purported to be descendants of the Oracles of Delphi tells a story of Ambrogio, an Italian man who came to Greece and met Selene, one of the maidens of the temple of Apollo. He fell in love with the young woman, incurring the wrath of Apollo. The sun god, who wanted Selene for himself, cursed the man by making him unable to bear sunlight. Ultimately Ambrogio won over the goddess Artemis who gifted Selene and himself with immortality. This immortality was passed to another through drinking the person’s blood.4
Hindu folklore tells the story of a vampire, Vetala. What’s most interesting is that Bram Stoker’s family lived in colonial India where he grew interested in Indian occult traditions. Sir Richard Burton, the British explorer who was also in India at the time translating these tales from Sanskrit into English, spoke of having discussed these with Stoker.5 So it’s just as likely that Stoker took his inspiration from India than that he extrapolated from the tales of Vlad the Impaler.
We could go on, listing stories from China and Europe and elsewhere, in which blood-drinking creatures have played a dominant role. But why do we, as humans, have such a long-standing obsession with these creatures?
The Eternal Appeal of the Vampire
Stories of vampires have grown in popularity in the modern era with movies like Twilight, and T.V. shows like The Vampire Diaries and True Blood.
If you look at some of the earlier tales of vampires, the tone is one of warning. Sekhmet, for all her benefits in battle, was a deity to be appeased and avoided. Lilith and Vetala were cautionary tales. People in medieval Europe used vampire legends to explain plagues and other pandemics. Even Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a creature to be feared and destroyed. But today, vampirism is glamorized, romanticized to the extent that whole sub-cultures exist in which people who identify as vampires can drink blood or feed off of the energy of others’ souls, albeit generally with the consent of the other party.
With respect to historical references – those of the cautionary type – the vampire seems to explain those things that are so hard for people to understand. Things like the blood-shed on the battlefield, the miscarriages and infant deaths that plagued much of history, and the outbreaks of disease that run rampant through society at different times. In those cases, Sekhmet, Lilith and the unnamed vampires of medieval Europe, come in handy. They assign blame to those circumstances in which we humans find ourselves powerless.
When it comes to the modern era’s obsession with the romanticized vampire, I attribute that to a post-modern society in which humans exert less effort to survive than they have in prior eras and therefore have more time for self-romanticizing. An era in which humans have assumed an ascendant view of themselves as little gods.
Vampires are essentially the darker cousin of our Marvel superheroes. The immortal, quasi-all-powerful beings who exist for their own benefit and who gift whomever they choose with their benevolence. Iron Man and Batman choose to war and pursue justice on behalf of mankind when and if they please. Modern vampires like Damon and Stefan and Elena of the Vampire Diaries sometimes slaughter and gift people with healing indiscriminately, vacillating between monster and mage.
They can’t be controlled. They give what they choose, when they choose to give it. They exist above humanity, on a transcendent plane of immortality and super-human strength and heightened sensory abilities. They are the human version of modern gods.
So, in truth, the vampire has simply come full-circle, from Sekhmet to the modern day. The only difference is that in prior eras, we held vampires apart from ourselves as something of a capricious god whom we needed to appease and/or avoid. Today, modern humanity attempts to take this godhood for itself, refusing to submit to any external entity.
Conclusion
Regardless of whether one holds the historical perspective – of vampires as an explanation for those inexplicable times of suffering and loss – or a modern perspective in which we seek the immortality and power for ourselves, the vampire speaks to all of the tendencies of the human heart.
Because of that, the vampire will always exist, whether in myth or mainstream culture.
1 Taylor, A. (2017, August 24). Meet Sekhmet, The Ancient Egyptian Cat Goddess And Possibly The World’s First Vampire. Retrieved from https://www.ranker.com/list/goddess-sekhmet-first-vampire/april-a-taylor
2 Marigny, Vampires, p. 14.
3 Gaines, J.H. (2021, April 14). Lilith: Seductress, Heroine or Murderer? Retrieved from https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/lilith/
4 Belmont, M. The Scriptures of Delphi. Retrieved from https://www.gods-and-monsters.com/scriptures-of-delphi.html. And The Vampire Origin Story. Retrieved from https://www.gods-and-monsters.com/vampire-origin.html.
5 Sen, A. and Sharma, A. (2018, January 21). Meet Dracula’s Indian Ancestor Vetala. Retrieved from https://www.thehindu.com/society/meet-draculas-indian-ancestor-vetala/article22479854.ece