Spotlight: The Vampire - An Anti Christ
As cold as a vampire’s demeanour
This will be the first entry in what I hope will become a bestiary of sorts. Something readers can quickly reference to help understand my symbolic perspective of popular images, creatures, and devices that are ingrained in our collective archetypal stories. My aim in providing these entries is to avoid overburdening the reader in the future with tangential, albeit important, symbolic interpretations when using them to serve a larger elucidation.
Many of the ruminations here were inspired by both Jonathan and Matthieu Pageau, which I would be loathe to not mention.
The vampire
One of the most common creatures in European folklore is that of the vampire. Pallid, chill, and grim, these ruthless, cold-hearted demons of the night have both inspired and frightened countless mortals, feeding on our collective imagination for centuries. Indeed, stories of the vampire persist well into today, with one of the most successful franchises of the 21st century, Twilight, captivating the minds of an entire generation of young women. The allure of the ever-suave vampire is yet to lose its seemingly immortal lustre. We all know his traits, his appearance, how he behaves, and even how to thwart him, but could there be a deeper meaning behind the fangs of the vampire’s courtly smile? What, precisely, does he represent? And what can we today, so far removed from Slavic peasantry, learn from him? Let’s bite into it.
I have recently been reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the preeminent story of vampirism that has influenced more tales of the vampire than almost any other, and its template is exceedingly rich. We borrow much from Stoker’s Dracula, so much so that our most common image of the vampire is an almost carbon copy of his titular Count Dracula. But that is not all, the eccentric and learned professor Van Helsing has his origin in Stoker’s epistolic legend, and so too does the portrayal of the vampire’s domain with its ruined austere castle, and lavish elegance. But Bram Stoker was far from the first to write about such a creature, nor did he invent its more macabre qualities. The image of a nocturnal undead fiend draining life from innocent children, virgins, and travellers each night and returning to its grave at dawn extends far back even into antiquity. Before Stoker’s Dracula, there was John Polidori’s Der Vampyr, which tells the story of the man Aubrey and his travels across Europe with the nobleman Lord Ruthven, a vampire and bloodsucking seducer; before that came Lord Byron’s The Giaour, and John Stagg’s poem The Vampyre. Before these literary tellings were the folk tales of the upiór and strzyga of Slavic folklore, undying demons that drank blood and ate children. Some maintain that the legends of such creatures relate all the way back to the strix of ancient Greece and Rome, witches who would morph into birds and feast on blood. However, despite their commonality, the further back one goes, the further removed one is from our modern and most prevalent conceptions of the seminal vampire. As such, this is the form of the fiend that we will be focused on. For, after my own explorations into the legends of the vampire, it is my belief that this alluring and beguiling spirit, rich in wealth and power, is in large part a rendering of an anti-Christ figure—that creature which heralds humanity’s enthrallment. And there may be some use in knowing how to identify its mark.
The mark of the beast
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man. - Dracula
The many vampiric tropes associated with the Count and his ilk are the keys we will use to help decipher the strange symbolic patterns that share striking similarities with those of an antichrist figure. Here we’ll investigate them one by one to make sense of both malevolencies.
One of the most popular motifs associated with the vampire is having to “let him in”, to willingly open the door and give permission to cross the threshold, thus allowing, on some level, the vampire to influence you. In Dracula, this trope is reversed but the effect is the same. It’s an interesting idea. Why would such a powerful entity require consent before it could begin its mesmerizing manipulations? Here we can learn something from the biblical account of Cain and Abel.
One chapter in the book of Genesis tells of two brothers: Cain, the elder and a farmer, and Abel, the young shepherd. In short, both brothers sacrifice to God; however, God prefers the sacrifices of Abel over Cain’s. Cain becomes wroth. He then goes on to slay his brother in cold blood, but before this fratricide takes place the Lord appears before Cain and chastises him:
“Sin is crouching at your door. Its desire is toward you, but you must rule over it.”
The idea is simple, sin is a spirit unto that of a creature or a despotic mode of being. It first exists outside of us, but has a lust to dominate and enter into us. God tells Cain that, were he to exercise some wisdom and caution, he could rule over sin. Instead, Cain opened the door and willingly embraced the lurking spirit beyond, letting it have its way with him. And so, what follows is the murder of Abel and the receiving of the Mark of Cain. So, how is this related to the vampire? The vampire also lurks just beyond your threshold, and it craves your essence - obvious enough. But this also gives reason for the vampire’s seductive nature. It doesn’t merely wish to take you, it wants you to give yourself over to it. He does not want you dead, for what good are you then? He wants you enthralled. So he marks you with his fangs and makes you subservient.
This mark and subservience directly relate to another common vampiric motif that existed well before the infamous Count Dracula: debonair aristocracy. The vampire is often depicted as a wealthy lord, a baron, or a count. But why? Let’s consider the role of an aristocrat, especially during the time that many of these stories were first told. A nobleman is, in theory, supposed to rule over his demesne in requited fashion. He would grant fiefs and lands to his vassals, provide security to his serfs and subjects, maintain law and order, and administer justice when needed. In return, vassals and subjects would swear fealty, contribute taxes, provide military service, and work the land. There were to be hierarchical, reciprocal feudal obligations, where the top and bottom served each other in their respective measure. The vampire breaks this agreement. It is a creature of total control; it obsesses over amassing more for itself. In Dracula, the lands around Castle Dracula are empty and poorly maintained. Those who remain live in constant fear and dread, rarely leaving the confines of their homes. Over the long bloody history of the Carpathian Mountains, most of its life has now been sucked out. The wealth, as the journalling Jonathan Harker comes to find, is stored in abundance high up in Dracula’s quarters. Despite the rundown nature of the castle, it is filled with opulence. It is a total inversion of the deal. The vampire has not lifted up and doled out, but simply amassed and consumed. Likewise, this is how the vampire treats its victims. It lords over their will, drains them of their blood, and becomes bloated and swollen with the essence of its thralls. A covert master and lord of inversion.
An interesting aside, The Count, the number-loving vampire from Sesame Street, was also inspired by this obsession with accumulation. Both in Slavic and Chinese folklore, one way to outwit the vampire is to leave rice strewn about outside your door. The vampire, thought to be an arithomaniac, would compulsively count and steal every single grain, even unto the rising of the sun.
Furthering this covert inversion, most people are aware that the vampire can only operate at night. The light of the revealing sun is fatal to him. This is linked to the vampire’s trait of being unable to see its own reflection in a mirror. The vampire, as an inverted lord, gives off a “false” light. By not being able to see his reflection, he is unable to see the faults in his own being. Much like Lucifer, the angel of light, the vampire is too proud to address or attend to its fallen nature. This robs the vampire of the opportunity to repent or, in other words, renew himself. And just as total control is one fang of this parasitic monster, lack of renewal is the other.
Renew a right spirit
Because the vampire cannot “renew” itself, it’s stuck in a purgatory of undeath. This is also why the vampire cannot sleep. Sleep is the way in which we renew our bodies each day. During sleep, our bodies repair and refresh, and our minds empty their contents into our dreams. As for the spiritual element of humanity, this is also why items such as holy water, or consecrated wafers woefully afflict the vampire. These are the sacraments used to renew and refresh our spiritual selves. What’s more, they are given freely to be consumed. We eat to renew ourselves. And eating, like sleeping, is something vampires cannot do (this also relates to garlic, a food that quickly changes the aroma of the air). The vampire must find other ways to maintain its handsome facade and false veneer of life. This brings us to the most well-known characteristic of the vampire: the drinking of blood.
Blood is the water of being. It is the most innate symbol of life itself. As the vampire is not fully dead, it is still dependent upon this potent source of life to nourish its longevity. As the vampire is not fully alive, it cannot produce its own lifeblood. And so, the vampire is reliant on someone else’s essence to prolong his existence, just as the robber baron grows fat off the sweat of another. Both the vampire’s lust for control and its parasitic bloodsucking are rooted in the very same idea: the dark desire of domination. The creature of sin, lurking at the door. So, how does this all relate to the image of an anti Christ?
Rising from the crypt
I have been so long master that I would be master still, or at least that none other should be master of me. - Dracula
Dracula was heavily inspired by the real-life Wallachian ruler Vlad Dracul III, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler. In Romanian, ‘Dracul’ means devil, sharing the Latin root ‘Draco’, meaning dragon. Dracula therefore means son of the devil in the Romanian tongue of Dracula’s homeland. We will not divulge the gruesome history of Vlad the Impaler here, but no doubt many of you are aware of it. Son of the devil; indeed, what all vampires truly are. In the book of Revelation, the “real” antichrist is a servant of the beast, depicted as a dragon with many heads. Those who willingly serve the antichrist are given the mark of the beast - a branding of complete control. Without this mark, people will not be able to buy, sell, or participate in society. It is a system of total reckoning. In the biblical account, the mark is not a bite on the neck, but rather a number printed on the hand or forehead. The number, of course, is 666. A number not of God, but of a man.
In biblical cosmology, 666 has many connotations; too many to go over here. But there are some worth taking note of:
The 6th day of creation is not only the day mankind was born but also the last day of creation before God’s rest.
Before the world was flooded, Noah had lived to be 600.
Every year, Solomon, the last king of a unified Israel, would receive 666 talents of gold.
Nebuchadnezzar’s golden statue was 60 cubits high and 6 cubits wide.
It goes on, but this is enough to make the point. Biblically speaking, 6 is the number of completion, a final sum; something that precedes a renewal. Be it before God’s rest, before the washing of the world, the last time Israel would be unified, or at the height of arrogance and pillaging before 7 years of roving exile, 6 is the number of totality. But without the room for renewal, that space where the infinite rests with all of its opportunities of revitalization, it is no more than tyranny. A false perfection. When a man imposes his dark desire for a system of total domination he becomes a bloodsucking parasite, squeezing the life of all those who are under him. This is the parity between an antichrist and a vampire.
Where a Christ figure walks with the lowly, the vampire broods on high; where Christ’s example inspires disciples of good work, the vampire possesses a legion of thralls; where Christ offers his body and blood for washing and renewal, a vampire usurps it unto himself; where Christ marries the faithful as his bride, the vampire seduces; where Christ rises from the grave in the morning, the vampire descends into his coffin; where Christ is resurrected to life eternal, the vampire is in a stasis of death until he is finally undone forever; where the vampire lurks, Christ summons:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. - Revelation 3:20
It is our duty to remain ever vigilant at the door. The secret to defeating this modern rendering of the antichrist, this vampire, is to do what Cain failed to do. To look in the mirror and allow ourselves to be renewed, born again each day. Not obsessing over control, or exerting our own desires upon others, but to instead master our own selves. We can freely choose to offer ourselves up, humbly, to the infinite waters that ever lift us higher onto a sea of revitalizing, unending possibilities, where there is only too much to count.
Stake your claim
And so, the folklore of the vampire is no more than that very story we’ve been retelling since our furthest origin. Why do we continue to retell it? Because vampires still lurk outside our doors to this day. Look around, and you may begin to see his bite marks in many places. Those who usurp, who take all for themselves, who unnaturally extend their power into the world, who claim their false systems of perfection to be a guiding light, who seductively cajole you into taking their brand and making you their own, still dwell in their high castles. They may cloak themselves in darkness, and elude you with smoke and mirrors, but you will know them by their fruits, you will see them burn in the light; and you always have the power to renew your will and keep it for your own.
Thanks for reading,
Sam