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Vyrdolak
Tue Nov 12 13:17:06 2002
I'm not human, and I generally strike most people as being pretty much in my
right mind. There are times when I feel like one of the few sane people in the
world, actually. I have some qualifications for assessing sanity, at the least,
since I'm a certified counselor with a Master's degree and have worked in a
shelter for battered women for the past six years. I'm also in my 40's and my
life is in fairly good shape--home ownership and a pristine credit rating and
all that sort of thing--so my mental health rarely strikes anyone as in doubt.
As for not being human, I don't necessarily expect anyone else to believe it,
but there are a few of us around.
Vyrdolak
Sun Nov 24 19:55:42 2002
I do not consider myself immortal. I am on the high end of the bell curve for
general toughness--I wouldn't say "invulnerable," but strong, resistant to injury,
rarely get sick, etc. However, this in no way exceeds the normal range for humans,
it just makes me an extraordinarily and enviably healthy individual. (In two
solid years in my very stressful and demanding job, I logged one and a half
sick days.)
To state it briefly, I am a non-human "soul" (entity, spiritual being, what
have you) incarnated for the time being in a humanoid body. My body ages more
slowly than most, but again, I'm just at one end of the normal bell curve for
humanoid bodies and their aging process. I don't know what a DNA test would
show up, probably nothing startling although I do have some medical anomalies.
I also can't have children. :-(
There is a folklore tradition of "living vampires" that is found worldwide
and in almost every culture--sometimes folklorists or anthropologists refer
to them as "vampire witches" or "blood drinking sorcerers" and the like, to
differentiate them from the stereotype "vampire" that is a revived corpse. Everywhere
this cultural tradition is found, these people share the same characteristics:
they are considered non-human (including by themselves), they resemble in every
respect human beings and blend into the societies they inhabit, they tend to
have certain natural advantages that make others somewhat envious or suspicious
of them, and they can utilize blood to attain power.
There are a number of serious academic monographs dealing with some specific
cultural examples.
As for "what I think of those who consider themselves human and a 'vampire'",
uh, well, I think they consider themselves human and some sort of "vampire"!
I mean, if someone is confident that they're human, I'm the last person to argue
with them, I guess they must be in the best position to know! I've noticed that
over the last several years, there has been a marked tendency for those in the
"vampiric communities" who are human-defined to want to get away from the "vampire"
identification, and find other terminology. The "V-word" has too much cultural
and psychological power to relinquish easily, though.
I have some articles planned for my website that will get more into this, but
so far I haven't had time to finish them. I have recently added some additional
old folklore material to the Rare Articles Archive section of my site, articles
and book excerpts from the mid-19th century.
I don't know if this helps clarify anything.
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