(To write this article I relied heavily on the
research carried out by David Pratt, which article you can read here.)
The vampire in past centuries was
been considered as a dead person who came out of his grave to feed on the vital
essence of living beings (usually in the form of blood) in order to maintain
his existence.
And this belief was developed by
the testimonies of people who claimed to have seen individuals who had died and
whose appearance is said to have caused death or serious illness in those who
perceived them, and also because when the graves of these individuals were
exhumed, it was discovered that the corpses were still in good condition and
not in a state of putrefaction as normally happens. And in this other article I
give you several examples of those stories (see link).
But while the idea of buried human
corpses coming back to life, leaving their graves to vampirize people, and then
returning to their graves, is highly fanciful. Instead what about the claim
that the corpses of the alleged vampires, when unearthed often appeared to
still be fresh?
As reportedly, the bodies of
corpses accused of being vampires were flexible, robust and reddened, blood was
often seen draining from their mouth and nose, and their hair seemed to have
continued to grow and they also appeared to have grown new nails and new skin.
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION
Critics have argued that what were once regarded as signs of vampirism
are in fact the results of normal changes undergone by decomposing corpses.
When the heart stops beating, the blood settles into whatever parts of
the body are closest to the ground. Most of the skin pales and starts to look
waxy, while the parts of the body where the blood settles turn pink or purple-red
after about 10 hours. As the body cools, the muscles relax, but then the entire
body becomes rigid as rigor mortis sets in (it was first documented
scientifically in 1811). After one to three days, the body relaxes again as the
muscle fibres decompose. As bacteria multiply in the body, putrefaction gathers
pace and a foul odor develops.
The mouth and nose redden from decomposing lungs. The face becomes
swollen and discoloured, and the skin marbles in shades of green and black.
Bacteria in the intestines produce gases that bloat the body to nearly twice
its normal size and eventually turn the skin mostly black. The build-up of
pressure forces blood and other dark liquids to issue from the nose and ears.
The bloating makes the tongue and eyes protrude and the lips curl back
to reveal the teeth and gums, while the breasts and genitals expand to a
grotesque size. The internal organs break open, liquefy, and leak from all the
body orifices. Skin peels away, revealing new skin beneath it. Hair stops
growing and falls out. The nails also stop growing, and often drop off, leaving
fresh skin underneath, which eventually putrefies.
The smiling face of a partially
decomposed corpse
Sceptics argue that a corpse exhumed when its lips are curled back might
seem to have an animalistic smile. The red stuff around the mouth and a coffin
filled with liquid would seem sinister, especially if mixed with runny blood.
When the nails fall off and the skin peels away, the dermis and nail beds
emerging underneath could be interpreted as new skin and nails.
As the skin and gums lose fluids and contract, the roots of the hair,
nails, and teeth (even teeth that were concealed in the jaw) are exposed, which
could produce the illusion that the hair, nails, and teeth have grown. The
disappearance of stiffness in a corpse’s limbs could give the impression that
it had regained the ability to move around. Bloating makes a corpse looks
plump, well fed and ruddy, and can cause an elderly person to look younger. If
it causes the body to shift its position in a coffin, this could be mistaken
for evidence that it is getting in and out. A stiffened, often enlarged penis
could be interpreted as proof of an ongoing interest in sex.
The staking of a swollen, decomposing body would cause the emission of a
large quantity of blood, while the escaping gases might cause a groan-like
sound. The hesitation of animals (such as a horse or goose) to walk over the
graves of suspected vampires could be explained by the stench emitted from a
shallow grave, especially since animals have a better sense of smell than
humans.
"The vampire" engraving by R. de Moraine,
published in Paul Féval’s book The Secret
Courts (1864)
The old belief that a corpse should fully decompose after 40 days has no
scientific standing. It can take several months or even years for a corpse to
decompose to skeletal remains. Moreover, certain soil or coffin conditions may
preserve bodies well beyond the expected timeframe. There are corpses today
that have reportedly lasted hundreds of years with few signs of necrosis.
Construction workers unearthed a corpse in the Chinese city of Nanjing that was
500 years old yet still had supple skin and flexible joints.
A man whose coffin washed into a Kentucky river in a 1927 flood looked
as if he’d been buried very recently but proved to have died 113 years earlier.
The body of Medgar Evers, a civil-rights leader who was murdered in 1963, was
exhumed three decades later to examine the bullet holes. When the casket was
opened everyone was shocked to find that the person looked as though he had
died only the day before.
In 1789 in the vault of a monastic chapel in Toulouse, some bodies were
found to be perfectly whole and resembled living people although they had been
interred for nearly two centuries. The bodies were ranged around the wall,
still wearing the garments in which they had been buried. Strangely, when the
bodies interred on the opposite side of the chapel were examined a few days
later, they were found to have crumbled away.
Other events once interpreted as evidence of vampirism include a series
of deaths in the family of a suspected vampire or in the community where he had
lived. Why the dead would want to wreak havoc on their former loved ones is
unclear; one theory was that the corpse had been taken over by demons or even
the devil himself. During cholera epidemics in the 19th century, there were
cases of people being burned alive by their neighbours on suspicion of being
vampires.
In the late 18th and 19th centuries there was a widespread belief in
vampires in parts of New England, particularly in Rhode Island and Eastern
Connecticut. There are instances of families digging up loved ones and removing
their hearts in the belief that the deceased was a vampire who was responsible
for sickness and death in the family. The deadly disease of tuberculosis (or
‘consumption’ as it used to be known) was believed to be caused by nightly
visitations by a dead family member who had died of tuberculosis. Symptoms
included emaciation, an increasingly pale skin, crimson cheeks, and the
appearance of blood in the sputum and on the lips.
In 1896, the New York World reported that belief in vampires was
alive and well in Rhode Island. Near Newport, six separate incidents were
documented that involved exhuming a recently deceased person, removing the
heart, and burning it. This generally occurred when several members of the same
family appeared to die from a similar wasting disease. People in that area at
that time believed that a vampire fed first on those it was close to before
moving on to other people, so it seemed that a family member who died first and
became a vampire was now victimizing its kin.
One of the most famous incidents took place in Exeter, Rhode Island, in
1892. The wife of George Brown died, followed by his eldest daughter. One of
his sons, Edwin, then grew ill but moved away, and then another daughter,
Mercy, died. When Edwin returned, he again became ill, so George exhumed the
bodies of his wife and daughters. The wife and first daughter had decomposed,
but Mercy’s body – buried for three months – was fresh and turned sideways in
the coffin, and blood dripped from her mouth. They cut her heart out, burned it
and dissolved the ashes in a medicine for Edwin to drink. However, he also died
and Mercy Brown became known as Exeter’s vampire.
Like tuberculosis, the pneumonic form of bubonic plague was associated
with the breakdown of lung tissue which would cause blood to appear at the
lips. Rabies, too, has been linked with vampire folklore. Rabies sufferers are
hypersensitive to odors and light; hypersexual; experience enormous thirst; do
not like to see themselves in mirrors; their muscle spasms can cause bared
teeth; they may froth bloody fluid at the mouth; they can engage in ferocious,
aggressive behavior; and they can infect others through a bite, because the
virus is transmitted through saliva. Parallels have been found between the
outbreak of rabies in certain regions and the increased popularity of vampire
tales.
(The Science
of Vampires, Katherine Ramsland, New York: Berkley Boulevard Books, 2002,
p.13-17, excerpts)
~ * ~
Materialistically
minded people may choose to explain all
vampire stories entirely by diseases and biological phenomena, and attribute
anything that they cannot be explained by this way to superstition and
imagination.
But to deny
the occurrence of ghostly apparitions and attacks, they would have to discard
an immense list of testimonies that have happened in all times and in all parts
of the world. On the other hand, those who recognize the reality of the hidden
world have at their disposal a greater variety of additional explanations to
clarify this phenomenon.
ESOTERIC EXPLANATION
In general, the explanations
given by the different schools of occultism are similar, but it is in the
theosophical teaching where I have found the most profound explanations on this
subject, and what theosophy teaches is that our physical body is only the
visible part of a more complex structure.
In summary,
we have seven bodies: three are immortal and four are mortal, and that is why
these four lower bodies must be rebuilt with each new reincarnation. And our
septenary composition is:
The physical body dies when the
silver cord is broken and then the consciousness of the human is transferred to
his astral body, and normally he remains sleeping on the astral plane until his
vital body "runs out of battery", and then the energy body and the
astral body also disintegrate, and the consciousness of the human is
transferred to his desire body.
Then normally the human remains
sleeping on the kamic plane until he has freed himself sufficiently from his
earthly attachments so that then all the good part that constitutes him can
ascend to the mental plane, while the bad part that constitutes him remains
floating on the kamic plane, where it will gradually disintegrate, and that
shell is called a kama-rupa or an elementary.
The cremation of the physical
body allows purify the astral body, but if the physical body is buried, then
its astral counterpart will be floating around its grave.
And Blavatsky explaining what
happens after:
« In cases of persons in whom matter
does not predominate over spirit and wickedness not so great as to destroy
spirituality, if left alone, their astral soul will disengage itself by gradual
efforts, and, when the last link is broken, it finds itself separated forever
from its earthly body. Equal magnetic polarity will violently repulse the
ethereal man from the decaying organic mass.
But
sometimes it will be only half-way out, when the corpse, which presents the
appearance of death, is buried. In such cases the terrified astral soul
violently reenters its casket; and then, one of two things happens:
-
either the unhappy
victim will writhe in the agonizing torture of suffocation,
-
or if he had been
grossly material, in particular cases he becomes a vampire.
The
bicorporeal life begins; and these unfortunate buried cataleptics sustain their
miserable lives by having their astral bodies rob the life-blood from living
persons.
The ethereal
form can go wherever it pleases; and so long as it does not break the link
which attaches it to the body, it is at liberty to wander about, either visible
or invisible, and feed on human victims.
The vampire
transmits through a mysterious and invisible cord of connection, which perhaps,
some day may be explained, the results of the suction to the material body
which lies inert at the bottom of the tomb, aiding it, in a manner, to
perpetuate the state of catalepsy. »
(Isis
Unveiled I, chapter 12)
It should be
noted that in the late 19th century, estimates of the number of people who
appeared to have already passed away, but later they woke up to discover horrified that they had been buried alive, in England
and Wales ranged from 800 to 2700 per year.
The vast
majority ended up dying of suffocation, but a few became an astral specter that
began to vampirize the people around them in order to continue to exist even in
that horrible way.
And Colonel
Olcott made the following comments about that energy cord that connects the
astral body with the physical body:
« That there
is such a tie or astral current, along which nutriment in the etherealized
condition may be transmitted from the one to the other, seems probable, if not
certain, from well known data.
For example, many frequenters of mediumistic séances have seen liquids
drunk by a “materialized form” – glasses of wine or beer, glasses of water or
grog, etc – which disappeared from the glass in full view and were passed into
the stomach of the medium, sitting at a distance in his cabinet.
Ink or aniline liquids have been thrown upon the projected form, and
found later staining the medium’s person. (I speak, of course, only of cases
where the non-identity of the form and the medium was clearly proven.) Solid
food has also been eaten by the form in full sight of the witnesses, and
similarly disappeared. »
(Theosophist, April 1891)
Olcott mentions a well-attested case in which a yogi or fakir in Lahore
was buried for six weeks and then resuscitated:
« It is,
therefore, possible that an apparently dead man may be buried for an indefinite
time without extinction of life, if the person be all the time in that state of
human hibernation known as samadhi – a state when the lungs need no air,
because respiration is suspended, and the heart propels no blood through the
arteries, because the human clock is stopped.
The vampire’s body may, therefore lie fresh and rosy in the grave, so
long as it can draw to itself nutriment to counteract the waste by chemical and
subtler actions which operate upon the tissues, even in samadhi. »
(Ibid)
It may seem very surprising to
some ones that the physical body can be kept in a state of suspension for such
a long time, but Blavatsky pointed out that masters can perform this impressive
procedure, and in a letter she wrote to Mrs. Mary Hollis Billings, Blavatsky
gave several details on that subject:
« K.H. or Koot-Hoomi is now gone to sleep for three months to prepare during this samadhi
or continuous trance state for his initiation, the last but one, when he will become one of the highest adepts.
Poor K.H. his body is now lying
cold and stiff in a separate square building of stone with no windows or doors
in it, the entrance to which is effected through an underground passage from a
door in Toong-ting (reliquary, a room situated in every Thaten
(temple) or Lamisery; and his Spirit is quite free.
An adept might lie so for years,
when his body was carefully prepared for it beforehand by mesmeric passes etc.
It is a beautiful spot where he is now in the square tower. The Himalayas on
the right and a lovely lake near the lamisery. His Chohan (his spiritual master) takes care of his body and
Morya also goes occasionally to visit him. It is an awful mystery that state of
cataleptic sleep for such a length of time. »
(The Theosophical Forum, May 1936)
What a
highly evolved human can do at a higher level, a dark human but under certain
circumstances can mimic in a degraded state, since while a Master feeds
directly on life energy and is subsequently able to return to revive his
physical body, on the other hand the astral spectrum needs to vampirize people
and he cannot revive his physical body, but only prevent his corpse from
decomposing and thus he can continue to exist in that form.
And the
reason why these vampires are particularly looking for blood is because blood
is the body's fluid that best allows energy nutrients to be transmitted, as
Blavatsky pointed out:
«
The
circulation of life (prana) in the body is through the blood. It is the vital
principle in us and is closely related to the astral body and the desire body.
And that is why the blood and its emanations exert a particular attraction on
the evil entities of the astral world. »
(CW
12:699, 4:265)
CONCLUSION
These cases
are very rare and they correspond to the vampire stories when these stories are
true and they are stripped of all the fantasy and exaggerations that people
have created around them.
It seems
that the connection with his physical body is what facilitates the astral
spectrum to be able to materialize in the physical plane, since in all the
historical accounts that speak of vampirism, it is mentioned that when the
corpse was stabbed with a stake in the heart, or that he was beheaded, or that
he was burned (that is, the silver cord was definitely broken), the vampire
stopped appearing (that is, the astral spectrum could no longer materialize).
And
esotericism explains that a disembodied human, even without that connection
with his physical corpse, can materialize his astral counterpart, but it is
much more difficult to achieve it.
Now, this
does not mean that all corpses that have not decomposed are vampires, since as
we saw above, there are other reasons that can preserve a physical body; and
surely many of the people who were accused of being vampires, they were unfairly
accused due to lack of knowledge.
But while
the detractors are right that many of the beliefs about vampires are due to
ignorance, fear, imagination and superstition. They also show a lot of
blindness by wanting systematically, and even I would say almost fanatically, to catalog
all these stories as "pure lies", only because these individuals do
not dare to want to analyze this matter in greater depth and they prefer the
easy way to reject everything that does not correspond to what they believe and
accept as real.
But that is
not ethic to want to discard the numerous testimonies that have been throughout
the centuries and in all parts of the world, simply assuring that all those
people were lying or seeing hallucinations. While the explanation given by
esotericism has a lot of consistency and the only thing that puzzles is that esotericism
explains it with aspects that science does not yet know.
But is that a sufficient reason to repudiate the
explanation given by esotericism?
Has science already discovered all the mysteries that
nature hides in order to be able to affirm with complete certainty that what
esotericism says are lies?
It would be very arrogant and ignorant the individual
who ensures that.
And esotericism goes even further and explains that
these astral specters connected with their corpses are only a particular type
of vampires, but in reality there are other types of vampires which no longer
materialize, but still rob people of their vitality, and these others are known
as "energy vampires" that I will detail them in other chapters.
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