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This theory is going to assume two dubious
things: first, that White Wolf has some basis in reality and is not
just a role playing company that came up with a wildly popular vampire
game; second, that the Judeo-Christian deity was the original God.
I personally do not see a reason to give these "givens" any
validity, but popular belief is strong, and right now [1999] there is
a lot of popular belief in the White Wolf universe. Modern vampires want
to believe in the World of Darkness (TM). It might be the conspiracy theories
(everybody loves a conspiracy theory - come on, admit it, you watch Chris
Carter's television shows on Fox, don't you?) It might be the neat way
vampires are packaged into clans, and are then given certain powers according
to clan. People want to belong, and a clan is a surrogate club and family.
Besides, those powers are awfully nice.
Then again, maybe the creators of Vampire: The Masquerade were really
on to something when they took Anne Rice's theory of vampire creation
(first drain the body, then feed the vampire some vampire blood; make
it sensual if possible, but painful too, to give it a dark sadomasochistic
edge) and then came up with the idea of "Blood Bonding" to graft
onto the whole process. God, that's romantic. That is so romantic that
it oozes. I'm a vampire; blood attracts me, not so much in a fetishistic
way but more in the way heroin attracts a drug user. If a Blood Bond could
exist, that would fetishize the substance that I already lust after. Be
still, my beating heart. I think I'd be willing to live in a World of
Darkness just to get that sort of delicious rush and sexual torment.
Maybe.
The mythology is a bit of a problem. It's a little too Judeo-christian
for me. Also, I'm not sure it's even all that accurate.
Take a look at it from a White Wolf perspective, rather than from the
perspective of a universalist or, heaven forbid, an atheist. The mythology
does not hold water.
THE BOOK OF NOD
"I loved him, my Brother. He was the brightest. The sweetest.
The strongest. He was the first part of all my joy." - the words
of Cain(e) from The Book of Nod, copyright 1993 by White Wolf Studios.
The author of this particular creation myth has hit upon one truth
- that a sacrifice is meaningless unless one sacrifices that which one
loves dearly. The best parts of any existence are sacrificed to the
gods before the gods decide to grab them away first. A less cynical
way of looking at the sacrificial act would be to note that when one
gives up what one loves the most, one shows that the deity is more important
than the person making the sacrifice. Also that we must all let go that
which we love. But this is tangential to the Caine myth, which is supposed
to answer the question, Who was the first vampire? just as Adam and
Eve were the answer to the question, Who were the first humans?
Perhaps a better question would be to ask, Why Caine?
The King James Bible is rather cryptic about the whole story. The story
in Genesis 4 is short -- "And in the process of time it came to
pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto
the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and
of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering:
but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect..." Why on
earth not? What could possibly be wrong with being a vegetarian, or
offering the fruits that one loves? Cain's response seems perfectly
justified -- "And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell."
Hey, God, can we talk? I did all this for you; don't you love me?
God comes across like a person who desperately needs interpersonal
skills. "And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why
is thy countenance fallen?" Hello, God... your clue phone is ringing.
You're supposed to be omniscient, right? You figure this out... God
goes on to make matters worse by saying, "If thou doest well, shalt
thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.
and unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And
Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were
in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him."
It would be very tempting to imagine Cain's frame of mind being, "God
wants an offering of meat, does he? I'll give him meat!" with a
healthy dash of "Abel's so popular with God, why not send him straight
to Heaven?" However, the Bible makes no mention of Cain's emotions
or thoughts or other motivations; we are left to fill in the blank.
When people fill in the blanks in the Bible passages, filling in motivations
and emotions and such, the results are usually quite ethnocentric and
biased, so maybe it would be best to not speculate on what might have
been going through poor Cain's head.
Cain makes a bit of a mistake at this point. If you have read the story
of Adam and Eve, you already know that it's not a good idea to try and
obfuscate before Yahweh. Saying, "My wife made me do it" after
trying in an amateur way to hide in the garden isn't going to get you
anywhere. Cain isn't much brighter than his father -- when Yahweh asks
him, "Where is Abel thy brother?" Cain said "I know not:
am I my brother's keeper?" Stupid answer. Had I been in his shoes,
I would have said, "I sacrificed him. Was just following your suggestion.
Are you happy now?" But I'm not Cain.
Yahweh's response is predictable - "And he said, What hast thou
done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.
And now thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth
to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; when thou tillest the
ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive
and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. and Cain said unto the Lord,
My punishment is greater than I can bear." Ouch. Still, this is
par for the course if we're dealing with a vindictive father-deity.
What Yahweh does next is completely inexplicable, though: Cain quite
reasonably protests, "Behold, thou hast driven me out this day
from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid (ed: hah!
that's what he thinks!) and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in
the earth; and it shall come to pass, that everyone that findeth me
shall slay me." Well, wasn't that God's original idea? Apparently
not. "And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain,
vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon
Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." Uhhh. God? What in
hell are you doing?
IT WASN'T GOD'S IDEA
At least not according to The Book of Nod. (Which was written, for
the record, by sam Chupp and Andrew Greenberg, two very mortal if not
necessarily normal authors.) Listen to this. "I cried tears of
love as I, with sharp things, sacrificed that which was the first part
of my joy, my brother. And the blood of Abel covered the altar and smelled
sweet as it burned. But my Father said, Cursed are you, Caine, who killed
your brother. As I was cast out so shall you be. And he exiled me to
wander in Darkness, the Land of Nod." Stop the presses! Who's doing
the exiling, here? No, it's not God's idea to toss Caine out of the
only home he knows. It's Daddy's fault. Adam's. (Given that Caine killed
another of Adam's children, Adam's reaction is not all that incomprehensible.
Disownment has happened over lesser sins.)
WAS IT ADAM AND EVE?
Maybe Adam and Eve weren't quite so mortal as we had been led to believe.
First of all, the book of Genesis gives two creation myths. The first
is the one where the world was created in seven days; which puts the
knickers of evolutionists everywhere into a dreadful twist. At one point,
the sixth day to be exact, God creates life. "And God said, Let
us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
over the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him; male and female he created them." Adam and
Eve are not mentioned until the next chapter. AFTER the seventh day
(the day of rest which our lovely weekend is based on). This ought to
be a massive continuity error - unless Adam and Eve were not the first
normal humans, but the first vampires.
There's that whole stink over the Tree, and the Fruit of the Tree.
That fruit wasn't an apple, although artists have portrayed it as such
for centuries. Apples weren't exactly indigenous to the area, anyway
- they're a fruit for more temperate climates, such as those found in
Northern Europe. That aside, what if the "fruit" wasn't fruit
at all - but blood? Children are referred to as fruit in the Bible many
times. It's a common poetic device, just like calling sperm seed. The
Forbidden Fruit might very well be humanity.
Genesis says, "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into
the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded
the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat;
But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of
it: for in the day that thou eateast thereof thou shalt surely die."
What could be so deadly about knowledge, hmmm? Unless it's not final
death Yahweh is talking about, maybe, but mortal death? (By the way,
this is the part where God creates Eve out of Adam's rib, to be a "helpmeet."
After humanity has long been told to be fruitful and multiply. This
is how we know that we're dealing with two different creation myths.)
After Adam and Eve eat (by the way, who was that serpent who tempted
Eve, anyway? I'm sure White Wolf could fit in a Settite here, but Genesis
rather antedates White Wolf by several thousand years. The historical
Satan did not become a tempter and an embodiment of evil until almost
the birth of Jesus. Satan does not even appear as the one who does God's
dirty work until the Book of Job, which was written well after Genesis
- come on, you don't think these books were all written at once, by
the same author, do you? So who was that masked serpent? Inquiring minds
want to know...) they get thrown out of the garden. Rather like losing
one's mortality and being told to walk the earth forever until you get
killed or meet a sunrise, isn't it? "The Fall" is a universal
myth. Few things embody "The Fall" better than the vampire.
Becoming a vampire is like making the transition from child to adult
in twenty four hours. Do you remember adolescence? It's bad enough when
it's stretched out over an entire decade. Sudden losses of innocence,
as for example what happens on the battlefield, tend to be very traumatic.
Eden dies. The rest of life is a quest to somehow regain or rebuild
that essential innocence.
UNIVERSAL MOTHER
Another good candidate for First Vampire is Lilith. First of all, she
isn't originally Hebrew -- she was a demoness from the Sumerian culture
who made a brief cameo appearance in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Lilith doesn't
take on vampiric qualities until she is imported to the Israelites,
however. Once she is assimilated into the culture, she becomes the arcetypal
succubus. You can read a good version of the myth in Neil Gaiman's Sandman
series. A short version is as follows: Adam was given Lilith as his
first wife, but she was too independent and strong willed, so he rejected
her and drove her out of Eden. Lilith decided to mate with lots of demons.
Her offspring started to cause havoc, especially among the mortals.
An angel was sent to her to tell her that her children would be destroyed.
Lilith told the angel that she would kill three mortal children for
every one of her children that died. and so she did: sucking the life
out of sleeping infants, killing women in childbirth when she could...Her
children, the Lilitu, were allowed to proliferate, and they follow in
lilith's footsteps, killing infants and feeding on the lifeblood of
mothers in labour. They also sit on men's chests in the middle of the
night, copulate with them, and give them erotic nightmares. This follows
the stryx pattern of vampirism: the witch who gives love and death.
Lilith has a prominent place in The Book of Nod, too: She gives Caine
his first drink of blood, after Caine has resisted all of Yahweh's attempts
to forgive and forget. (Why? Caines' problem is with Adam, isn't it?
Assuming Adam is the real father...) White Wolf has arbitrarily placed
Lilith in its world mythology as being the first Mage, a Verbena; I
think it is far more likely that Lilith was a vampire. Who but a vampire
would know to give a starving vampire a drink? If Lilith antedates Eve,
was driven out of Eden before Adam and Eve, then perhaps she was the
first vampire; perhaps vampirism was the punishment for her independence.
Vampires have always been as independent as alley cats, and often as
scapegoated and reviled (it wasn't so long ago that people used to kill
cats out of superstition. It happened as late as the French Revolution.)
Of course, it could also be possible that Lilith was a vampire all along
(makes sense if Adam was a vampire, too, doesn't it?)
WHODUNNIT?
I'm going to skip ahead to an incident in Genesis where Yahweh tells
Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn son, Isaac, the fruit of his old
age and his pride and joy. Actually, no, he didn't command it. In the
words of the King James Bible, Genesis, Chapter 22, "And it came
to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto
him, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son
Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer
him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will
tell thee of."
Yes, it's God who is doing the tempting. It's still early in the myths
of the Israelites; Satan hasn't yet been recruited to do God's dirty
work. Why the hell is God tempting Abraham to slay Isaac?
THERE IS ONLY ONE ANSWER TO THE RIDDLE...
It isn't because God is testing Abraham's faith. I think it's because
Yahweh is hungry.
In most religions, sacrifices are burnt to the heavens to be received
by the gods who dwell therein (or occasionally to the gods who dwell
in the earth, but Yahweh is a sky deity). The best parts of the animal
are saved for the gods: the tenderest meat from the most beautiful part
of the herd. The blood. All is burnt so that the gods might feast, and
be appeased.
When Jesus (yes, this is jumping ahead about three thousand years)
tells his disciples, "This is my blood, drink this in remembrance
of me," he isn't just suggesting something profoundly intimate
- he is suggesting sacrilege. Blood is reserved for God - drinking the
blood of a slaughtered beast, especially a sacrifice, is completely
against kosher laws. Jesus is the sacrifice, the lamb that is to be
killed instead of Isaac (the Isaac myth is often cited by christians
as a precursor to the crucifixion story). Or humanity. And yet he's
telling mere mortals to drink his holy, reserved blood? Why?
And why would he have to be sacrificed at all?
Because Yahweh is hungry.
This is really the only answer that makes sense. Yahweh in the Bible,
especially the Old Testament, is not the most emotionally stable of
deities, or the most merciful. Certainly not the most humane. He's pretty
bloodthirsty, when it comes down to it - always backing the Israelites
in wars where entire rival tribes get slaughtered in a genocidal holocaust
(I know this is a touchy subject, but let's just say that humans have
been engaging in murder-with-extreme-prejudice since the dawn of time,
and leave it at that). If he is hungry, war and the atrocities of war
are a very efficient way to feed.
Why did Yahweh drive Adam and Eve out of the garden, they who he had
created in his (vampiric) image? Because they wanted to be "as
the gods," as the serpent had promised. They wanted, quite naturally,
being made in God's image, to be God's equals. They wanted gnosis, and
subsequent apotheosis. Yahweh, jealous god that he was, didn't want
that; so he sent the serpent to tempt Eve (who of course would succumb
to curiosity - who wouldn't? "Here's this tree. You can eat of
any fruit from any tree but this one. It represents wisdom." Come
on!) Remember, this is before Satan - Yahweh does his own dirty work.
And so, with a bit of subterfuge, Yahweh prevented Adam and Eve from
getting to the Tree of (eternal) Life, which would have been the next
thing they reached for (funny, he hadn't mentioned that when he talked
about the tree of knowledge). And Adam and Eve were cursed with mortality.
Still vampiric, though.
That does not resolve the matter of who the first immortal vampire
was - I'm holding out for Lilith, myself, it would have been just like
her to have snuck a bite from the Tree of life before she had her first
quarrel with Adam. That would conveniently square with the White Wolf
mythos as well (which has made all sorts of pagan deities into Antediluvians,
but has carefully ignored Yahweh, perhaps because White Wolf wants to
avoid lawsuits). If there are immortals. If the Judeo-Christian myths
should be accepted as the first/most real myths, which I am not sure
I want to buy into.
(By the way, this theory of creation myths certainly points to vampiric
qualities in Jesus, as well, if one follows the Catholic doctrine of
three in one and one in three - which would explain certain miraculous
things like the Resurrection, also gnomic statements like "The
blood is the life." I'm all for making Jesus a vampire deity for
vampires to worship; I think Jesus is a pretty hip role model, especially
as he is painted in the Gospels as opposed to the oral legends of the
Christian denominations. However, I realize that not everybody will
agree with me, and most Christians would be disgusted by this train
of thought. Hey, guys, I'm just following a philosophical argument to
its logical conclusion.)
WHAT IS THE MORAL?
Beware of creation myths that come from cultures that wanted to explain
why herding was better than farming, patriarchy was better than cooperation,
war was better than peace, and my god is bigger than yours, nyah nyah?
Seriously -- what is to learn? A lot. Vampirism is the process of nature
itself -- quite contrary to the view which sees vampires as undead,
unnatural things, vampirism is an embodiment of life's essential symbiosis.
Vampires represent the eternal circle, the cycle of being. They take
life, as all hunters do, when they hunt to kill (and tigers are certainly
part of the web of being; why not vampires?) They live off of the life
of others, symbolizing that no matter how independent we all think we
are, none of us can live without others. To eat, one must be connected
to the world; it is dangerous to be too detached from one's food, because
once one forgets where that food comes from, one eventually forgets
how to feed. On a more human level, the level of day to day vampires,
one can also see the cycle of symbiosis in blood feeding and energy
feeding; it is by feeding that we solitary, lonely people remember that
we must be connected with others, have relationships, normal lives,
humanity. We cannot escape the circle, the symbiosis. We are a part
of it. We embody it. We surrender to it. And what is Deity, if not life
itself, that circle of being which encompasses all things on earth?
I suppose the Christian view would be to call this everything-ness the
Holy spirit, but I've never been one for Christian dogma, so I won't
even try to explore that option.
It doesn't matter if you are an atheist or a deist. What matters is
that you are a vampire, and that you are alive. Heart beating, blood
pulsing, mouth dry with hunger, nerves burning with desire. Embrace
the world. Be a vampire, be proud of yourself, choose what myths make
you happy since it is you who must ultimately shape your own life. (Yes,
even if the myths are those made by White Wolf, which put out its games
in 1992. Wicca was once a young religion/lifestyle too, and look how
much it's grown in the past few decades since it was invented. People
might think you are a flake for believing obviously fabricated myths,
but so what, if they make you happy?) Just do not deny the force within
you. Do not deny the Will that itches to get out of its prison. Do not
deny life. There are few worse sins than to bottle up life in a jar.
~Sarah Dorrance, 1999
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article are entirely those of the author(s), and may not necessarily
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