Carmilla
Written by J. Sheridan LeFanu   
Thursday, 28 August 2008

J. Sheridan LeFanu: Carmilla (1872)

I
An Early Fright

In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvelously cheap, I really don't see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.

My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain.

Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water-lilies.

Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.


Tags:  j. sheridan lefanu carmilla vampire novel literature vampire literature classic literature vampires
Last Updated ( Thursday, 28 August 2008 )
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The Vampire: His Kith and Kin
Written by Montague Summers   
Tuesday, 26 August 2008

The Vampire: His Kith and Kin
By Montague Summers


Montague Summers: Short Bio

Despite his appearance, some people found him sinister, a view he always encouraged. It was always hard to tell how much Summers was putting on a show when in company, particularly in his early life, but he does appear to have been driven by demons, not least of them being those arising from having homosexual tendencies in an intolerant age. And although in everyday life he was kind and considerate, when engaged in academic debate he was furiously intolerant. There were also rumors that in his youth Summers had dabbled in black magic. If true, the only effect seems to have been to turn him completely against such meddling later. He may have been fascinated, even obsessed by witches, vampires and the like but the tone of his writings is consistently hostile towards them.

Montague Summers grew up in a wealthy family living in Clifton, near Bristol. Religion always played a large part in his life. He was raised as an evangelical Anglican but his love of ceremonial and sacraments drew him to the High Church. After graduating in Theology at Oxford he took the first steps towards holy orders at Lichfield Theological College and entered his apprenticeship as a curate in the diocese of Bitton near Bristol. This ended in a cloud of unproven scandal involving choirboys that was to dog him for the rest of his life. A year or so later he converted to Catholicism and was soon claiming to have been ordained a Catholic priest, adopting the title of Reverend. There was some doubt about the legitimacy of his orders though. He was in the habit of celebrating the Mass publicly when travelling abroad, so must have been able to produce some kind of evidence, but at home in England he only performed the sacraments in private. The truth is probably that he was ordained technically but outside the regular procedures of the Church. He therefore appeared on no clergy list in the United Kingdom, was under the authority of no bishop and could not practise publicly without first submitting to such authority.

None of his close friends doubted the sincerity of his religious faith, however, no matter how blasphemous his conversation often seemed. Dame Sybil Thorndike wrote of him: 'I think that because of his profound belief in the tenets of orthodox Catholic Christianity he was able to be in a way almost frivolous in his approach to certain macabre heterodoxies. His humour, his "wicked humour" as some people called it, was most refreshing, so different from the tiresome sentimentalism of so many convinced believers.

For a living, Summers was able to draw on a modest legacy from his father, supplemented by spells of teaching at various schools, including Hertford Grammar, the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Holborn, and Brockley School in south London where he was senior English and Classics Master. He described teaching as: One of the most difficult and depressing of trades, and so in some measure it must have been even well-nigh three hundred years ago when boys were not nearly so stupid as they are today.' In practice though, he was both entertaining and effective as a teacher once he had overcome initial problems with discipline, and was popular with both pupils and colleagues despite making it plain his real interests lay elsewhere.


Tags:  vampire vampires myths legends vampire myth vampire legend vampire literature Montague Summers The Vampire The Vampire: His Kith and Kin Kith and Kin
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Visum et Repertum (1732)
Written by Melissa   
Tuesday, 26 August 2008

Five years after the death of Arnod Paole, seventeen people died in under three months from alleged vampire attacks in the same village and, on December 12th 1731, the Austrian Emperor ordered that an inquiry should be carried out by Regimental Field Surgeon Johannes Fluckinger.

It is difficult to discount this report signed by no less than five Officers in the army of Charles VI, Emperor of Austria as three of them were doctors and they all would have been extremely familiar with corpses, having served in the army that had fought and defeated the Turks between 1714 and 1718. We must remember, however, that the details pertaining to Arnod Paole in this account are secondhand: as this report was written five years after his death following investigation of this fresh outbreak of vampirism in Medvegia. It was supposed that Paole were the original cause of these later events as it was said that he had fed from animals as well as humans:


Tags:  Visum et Repertum Arnod Paole vampire vampires vampire deaths
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Authentic Tantra
Written by ResplendentSeraphim   
Thursday, 13 March 2008

Authentic Tantra: It is Not “Tantric Sex!”

There has been a phenomena in the Occult community that some would call the “Tantra phenomena.”  Articles on subjects such as ‘fulfilling one’s sex life with Tantra,’ ‘sexual spirituality,’ and the very recent ‘tantric vampirism’ have flooded Occult-based websites with great fervor, as a result of this phenomena.  Each article is different, but at least ninety percent of them have one theme in common, that theme being the belief that Tantra focuses solely on sexual practices, whether these practices are spiritual or non-spiritual in nature.   No doubt, this belief in Tantra would lead many people, both occultists and non-occultists alike to consider it little more than glorified sex. 

Unfortunately, what scholars and Tantric practitioners refer to as a popularized belief in Tantra does not represent Tantra at all.  Every authentic Tantra practitioner will tell you these five simple words: Tantra is not about sex. 

Last Updated ( Thursday, 20 March 2008 )
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What is a Real Vampire?
Written by Melissa   
Monday, 04 June 2007

Vampirism is a condition where the individual needs energy, prana, chi to in order to sustain themselves and remain healthy. This effects them, physically and some believe spiritually. The vampiric individual needs to take energy from another person. Some are psychic vampires, they feed from chakras or elemental energies, there are also emotional vampires or empaths, who feed on people's emotions. Sanguine Vampires need to take small amounts of blood from a person to get this energy, which ideally they use a donor for. Psi Vampires also have donors.


Tags:  psi vampires psychic vampires real vampire empaths supernatural powers prana chi chakras sanguine elemental energies hlv vampirism vampyre vampiric spiritually bats immortal emotions hollywood
Last Updated ( Friday, 12 October 2007 )
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