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SCIENTIFIC AND ESOTERIC EXPLANATION ON VAMPIRES


(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.
 
 
(All this is detailed in this other article link.)
 
 
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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