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Over the years, I have maintained a massive correspondence with vampires all
over the globe. Mostly, we have written to one another in order to share experiences
and obtain a sense of community. Correspondence between vampires is often very
guarded at first. It is hard to know whether the person on the other end is
legitimate or not. Although there is a great impulse to share who and what we
are with others who understand, too many of us know from direct experience what
it is like to reveal too much, and be judged, or to confide profound personal
details to someone who turns out to be a poser - someone who's only pretending
to be a vampire for their personal amusement.
Usually those who are pretending to vampirism eventually reveal themselves by
making outrageous claims. They will claim to be many hundreds or many thousands
of years old. They will lay claim to the powers and weaknesses one only encounters
in movies and books. They fixate on blood and bloodlust, and often even claim
to have killed people in order to sate their hunger.
These people are pretty easy to differentiate from the real vampires. Real vampires
very rarely make wild, unsubstantiated claims. They are usually very cautious
about claiming any "supernatural" ability, and they demonstrate skepticism
on their own part as well as a rational approach to the more extraordinary aspects
of their natures. There are some aspects of vampirism that you really have to
experience in order to understand, like how it feels to feed from another person
or what the memories of past lives are really like. Knowledge of these things,
tentatively revealed at first, usually helps correspondents establish one another's
legitimacy, and then a profound and mutually self-revelatory relationship can
ensue.
Once I have gained the trust and friendship of my correspondents, they are
very forthcoming. We all love sharing our experiences, primarily to see if anyone
else has had the same thing happen to them. As it has been mentioned again and
again, it is easy to doubt your sanity when the extraordinary experiences are
yours alone. When you learn that other people who could not possibly know about
these secret things have experienced them too, you don't feel like so much of
a freak. Even if you live in an isolated area of the country, surrounded by
conservative people who would do you bodily harm if you ever revealed half of
your personal beliefs to them, you suddenly feel much less alone. The sense
of community, however tenuous and widespread, is a comfort.
You will see several different themes often repeated in the letters which
follow. One of the primary themes is the sense of isolation and the desire for
community. Almost all of us have grown up knowing that we were different, but
never daring to hope that others were different just like us. The very act of
corresponding is one of the first steps of reaching out to others like ourselves
and accepting that we are not the only ones.
Another main thing accomplished through the correspondence is an exchange
of experiences. This goes along with the sense of isolation. All our lives,
there have been these other aspects to our perceptions and experiences that
no one else around us seemed to share. Experiences which for us occur on an
everyday basis are at best accepted only by fringe members of the mainstream
community. As a result, few of us ever find anyone in our local communities
whom we can confide in. Although we are bursting with experiences that we'd
like to share in order to get a different perspective, most people would look
upon us as freaks or worse if we ever opened up about these things in a mundane
setting.
And so we struggle to find others like ourselves who have lived the same kind
of lives and had the same kind of experiences so we can finally talk about them
to someone who understands. This exchange is also vital to our sense of community,
and it helps us to establish what it really means to be what we are. By comparing
and contrasting ideas, beliefs, perceptions, and experiences, we find out what
is normal for people like us, what is a little unusual, and what seems truly
unique to ourselves alone.
Finally, we discuss personal spirituality. This is pretty much how we interpret
our unique experiences and put them into context within our lives. I have found
that it is nearly impossible to live as we do, so aware of both the material
and the spiritual aspect of existence, and not develop some kind of spirituality.
Think about it. Your very existence is defined by your ability to sense and
manipulate the energy of other people. You are acutely aware of your own energy
and subtle body. The entire realm of the subtle reality is something you experience
hand in hand with ordinary reality every day. If you are going to believe in
yourself and not convince yourself that you're crazy, then you have to believe
that there is more to the world than just the physical, material existence.
It's as simple as that.
Although they are spiritual, very few vampires are religious. Religion and
spirituality are two distinctly different things. Religion generally seeks to
translate mystical experience into something that can be quantified, defined,
and reduced to one particular set of rules. There is little flexibility in these
rules, and the diversity of individual experience is almost always stifled.
Spirituality, however, is an intensely individual thing. Spirituality is developed
from direct, personal experience of the divine, unmediated by scripture or dogma.
Most vampires may have started out in an organized religion, but their very
nature conflicts with the teachings of most accepted world religions. It is
impossible to keep the faith of a religion which views you as inherently wrong,
if not outright evil. A great many vampires have been attracted to Wicca and
neo-Paganism as a result, but even these religions are a little too dogmatized
for our kind. Wicca, with its creed of "An it harm none" is antithetical
to vampirism, and many Wiccans are openly hostile toward vampires. And so vampires
find themselves defining their own spirituality which fits neither here not
there but which is defined by each individual to suit his or her own needs.
And now, the letters. The first letter in this series is from a vampire in
Athens, Greece who I made contact with only a few years ago. He is very articulate
and intelligent, and his English is nearly flawless. This is the second or third
letter we've exchanged. At the writing of this letter, I had already told him
a little about myself and my group. This is his response. It is a pretty typical
piece of vampire mail.
Athens 25/11/98
I was glad to read that you are astral vampires and
not "blood sucking" humans like most "vampires" around.
So my first question is how did you realize your nature and at what age? Were
there any signs of your vampiric identity when you were still a child? Has
anyone in your family vampiric tendencies? About myself, others in my family
had metaphysical experiences, but none can store their energy or take from
others. The only exception is my grandma though she isn't conscious at all
of vampirism. Yet she has unveiled many vampiric truths and sometimes surprises
me for that. I don't know if the Bloodline is passed genetically to others,
but I suspect so, judging from the fact that those humans to which I've shown
the way and practices of vampirism never make it.
--Nikos
The following is an out-take from a letter written in late 1996. The writer
is a man in his thirties who lived in central Pennsylvania. In the second paragraph,
he talks about making the transition from mortal to vampire in a previous life.
In an earlier letter, we had already established that he believed vampires had
undergone a ritual or process which allowed them to separate themselves from
their physical bodies and therefore escape the wheel of death and rebirth. Vampires,
in his system, can best be described as astral entities who, if they take up
mortal flesh at all, do so under their own compunction and on their own terms.
I've since fallen out of contact with this gentleman -- quite regrettably. It
is my sincere hope that he does not mind my sharing this, with his anonymity
in tact, for the sake of sharing knowledge with others.
21 November 1996
So you've come across two more of our kind and possibly
a third -- good. I agree with your statement concerning the responsibilities
that come with the knowledge of our true nature. It is easy for a person to
call themselves by some name in a feeble attempt to belong to the ideal of
the name. To know, to understand and to be requires much more. However, for
those of us who are well aware (unclouded??) of our nature, it is no chore.
Our instincts grow stronger with our awareness and as you have pointed out
-- grow weaker with ignorance. I do not refer to ignorance as a lack of intelligence
of mental functionality, but rather as one, who for whatever reasons, chooses
to ignore that which they know to be true. The "Potentials" as you
call them. I can see some as simply being so engrossed with "playing
the part" of a human that, after a time, they forget what is the play
and what is real. We are the ultimate chameleons after all. We can fit in
anywhere we choose as anything we wish. It allows us to get close to those
who we wish to feed off. A more complicated form of stalking than simply wearing
camouflage (UV and scent clear) and quietly sneaking up on something. Some
of the best feeding requires direct interaction with the host, where the host
is willingly (if unknowingly) giving us what we need. It is an acquired talent.
As to your question about the ridiculous references
in literature about being "made into" a Vampire, I have to agree
with you. You are born to this life, freely chosen and accepted. I will go
so far as to say their (sic) is ample possibility for a new Vampire to be
born, but present science and economics have distracted many of those who
could possibly make the transition. I can remember back to the time before
I left my mortality behind and the transition itself (as well as the pain).
I can remember discussion with others, who made the transition with me, as
to the ramifications of our actions. Endless debates over the differing viewpoints
of morality. Discussions of insanity, delusional mentality, and other psychosis.
It seems like those discussions will never end, and perhaps that is wise.
As long as we know what we are, how we are, and keep in mind why we are, then
I see no reason why any of those discussions should worry us.
As to my experiences with awaking the knowledge in
others -- I must admit I haven't encountered any "Potentials" in
this life, but have in others. In those instances where I have, simple manipulation
(mind games) has always brought about their remembering and return. I have
never had to reveal anything which would put me (in whatever body I then existed)
in danger (and we do remember those times!). And I must also admit that there
has (sic) been times where I deliberately did not awaken an individual simply
because of the risk involved.
--Eloran
As I've said many times before, it is not an easy thing to be a vampire in this
day and age. Again and again in the letters I receive, I hear from other vampires
around the world how they are mistreated and discriminated against because of
what they are. Because the mundane world is so oppressive to us, most of our
kind hide in the shadows, keeping their true natures secret from their neighbors
and coworkers and essentially leading a double life.
Some of us have tried to "come out"-- and we have been slapped down
for it. One sanguine vamp that I know appeared on the Ricki Lake Show in 1996
after being interviewed in Jeff Guinn's Something in the Blood. She is still
feeling the repercussions of coming out about her vampirism so publicly. In
a letter dated January 24, 1999, she shares some of her woes with me. Although
what she has gone through has been extreme, she is hardly an isolated case among
us.
I have finally found an employer who doesn't care about my life or what the
guests in our hotel say about me. Becoming a freak-show on international television
has its consequences ... It is the ignorance of the daylight world that continuously
pushes me (or at least tries) into the ground. However, I will not disappear.
I will not stay quiet. The vampire community is real. We are poets, doctors,
lawyers, artists, teachers -- we are all the things that the daylight world
is. For the most part (there are a few loose cannons), we hurt no one. For those
of us who are born this way it has thus far been a hard existence. It should
not have to be that way. I have risked everything to speak out about who I am
and that I should have the same rights as everyone else.
In recent years, my vampire contacts have not been limited to pen pals with
whom I exchanged physical letters. The Internet has provided a fertile place
for vampire communities to take seed and grow. In the earliest days of my correspondence,
I had to rely on small-press publications which were advertised largely by ad
swaps and word-of-mouth to make any contact at all with other vampires.
Such little fanzines and newsletters were not only hard to find, they were
hard to maintain (I ran one myself). They were never self-sustaining ventures
but financed purely by their editors as a labor of love. The Internet, which
is largely free and accessible to practically everyone, has seen a recent upsurgence
in vampire-related groups. Many of these are for role-players or the kind of
posers that real vampires tend to avoid, but an increasing number of message
boards, newsgroups, websites, and e-lists are attracting a very serious, intelligent,
and well-informed community of real vampires. What follows is a typical first-contact
email with a vampire who, like myself, was pleasantly surprised to find another
rational, intelligent soul in the Internet:
12/13/99 e-mail
As for the term, "vampire", I do agree. It's
often referred to indirectly or as the "v" word since none of us
are particularly fond of it. Words that substitute it are often "family",
"hardcore feeders" or "nephilim". An open dialogue would
be interesting. What do you consider to be defining characteristics of yourself
and others? Set beliefs and theories in regards to vampirism? I am unsure
where to begin for myself. Ask whatever questions you like.
--Xian
As the years go on, what will continue to build and define the vampire community
is our communication with one another. As we share our experiences and ideas
through the medium of the written word, on e-lists, through websites, or blogging
tools like LiveJournal, we forge ties among one another, networking and building
common ground. And as time goes on, I think the personal sharing will be reinforced
more and more by individuals within our community who write articles, books
and stories based on their beliefs; people who create music, art and even theater
that is inspired by what we experience everyday. And in this manner, we will
nurture the community until it becomes a culture in its own right, something
which we all have participated in, and which, through its expression of our
identity as vampires, will support and enrich us all.
~Michelle Belanger (C) 2003
This article is presented as part of an ongoing effort to present other views outside of, as well as within, the online vampire community. Those of us who consider ourselves vampiric don't always look at things from the same viewpoint due to our life experiences. As such, the views and opinions contained in this article are entirely those of the author(s), and may not necessarily be shared by SphynxCatVP. The webmaster is not under obligation to update or otherwise keep current the contents of this article. Most importantly, only you can decide for yourself whether this article or any of the author(s) other views are useful or applicable to you - you are responsible for using your own reasoning and judgement, so judge wisely.
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