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Vampire myths go back thousands of years and occur in almost every
culture around the world. Their variety is almost endless; from
red eyed monsters with green or pink hair in China to the Greek
Lamia which has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of
a winged serpent; from vampire foxes in Japan to a head with trailing
entrails known as the Penanggalang in Malaysia. However, the vampires
we are familiar with today, although mutated by fiction and film,
are largely based on Eastern European myths.
The vampire myths of Europe originated in the far East, and were
transported from places like China, Tibet and India with the trade
caravans along the silk route to the Mediterranean. Here they spread
out along the Black Sea coast to Greece, the Balkans and of course
the Carpathian mountains, including Hungary and Transylvania.
Our modern concept of the vampire still retains threads, such
as blood drinking, return from death, preying on humans at night,
etc in common with the Eastern European myths. However many things
we are familiar with; the wearing of evening clothes, capes with
tall collars, turning into bats, etc are much more recent inventions.
On the other hand, many features of the old myths such as the placing
of millet or poppy seeds at the gravesite in order to keep the vampire
occupied all night counting seeds rather than preying on relatives,
have all but disappeared from modern fiction and film. Even among
the Eastern European countries there is a large variety of vampires.
ROMANIA
Romania is surrounded by Slavic countries, so it isn't surprising
that their vampires are variants of the Slavic vampire. They are
called Strigoi based on the Roman term strix for screech owl which
also came to mean demon or witch.There are different types of strigoi:
strigoi vii are live witches who will become vampires after death.
They can send out their soul at night to meet with other witches
or with Strigoi mort who are dead vampires.
The strigoi mort are the reanimated bodies which return to suck
the blood of family, livestock, and neighbours.A person born with
a caul, tail, born out of wedlock, or one who died an unnatural
death, or died before baptism, was doomed to become a vampire. As
was the seventh child of the same sex in a family, the child of
a pregnant woman who didn't eat salt or was looked at by a vampire,
or a witch. And naturally, being bitten by vampire, meant certain
condemnation to a vampiric existence after death.The Vircolac which
is sometimes mentioned in folklore was more closely related to a
mythological wolf that could devour the sun and moon and later became
connected with werewolves rather than vampires. The person afflicted
with lycanthropy could turn into a dog, pig, or wolf.The vampire
was usually first noticed when it attacked family and livestock,
or threw things around in the house.
Vampires, along with witches, were believed to be most active on
the Eve of St George's Day (April 22 Julian, May 4 Gregorian calendar),
the night when all forms of evil were supposed to be abroad. St
Georges Day is still celebrated in Europe.A vampire in the grave
could be told by holes in the earth, an undecomposed corpse with
a red face, or having one foot in the corner of the coffin. Living
vampires were found by distributing garlic in church and seeing
who didn't eat it. Graves were often opened three years after death
of a child, five years after the death of a young person, or seven
years after the death of an adult to check for vampirism.Measures
to prevent a person becoming a vampire included, removing the caul
from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat any of
it, careful preparation of dead bodies, including preventing animals
from passing over the corpse, placing a thorny branch of wild rose
in the grave, and placing garlic on windows and rubbing it on cattle,
especially on St George's & St Andrew's days.
To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body followed
by decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the 19th century
people were shooting a bullet through the coffin. For resistant
cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with
water, and given to family members as a cure.
VAMPIRES and BATS
Romania is surrounded by Slavic countries, so it isn't surprising
that their vampires are variants of the Slavic vampire. They are
called Strigoi based on the Roman term strix for screech owl which
also came to mean demon or witch.There are different types of strigoi:
strigoi vii are live witches who will become vampires after death.
They can send out their soul at night to meet with other witches
or with Strigoi mort who are dead vampires. The strigoi mort are
the reanimated bodies which return to suck the blood of family,
livestock, and neighbours.A person born with a caul, tail, born
out of wedlock, or one who died an unnatural death, or died before
baptism, was doomed to become a vampire. As was the seventh child
of the same sex in a family, the child of a pregnant woman who didn't
eat salt or was looked at by a vampire, or a witch. And naturally,
being bitten by vampire, meant certain condemnation to a vampiric
existence after death.The Vircolac which is sometimes mentioned
in folklore was more closely related to a mythological wolf that
could devour the sun and moon and later became connected with werewolves
rather than vampires. The person afflicted with lycanthropy could
turn into a dog, pig, or wolf.The vampire was usually first noticed
when it attacked family and livestock, or threw things around in
the house.
Vampires, along with witches, were believed to be most active on
the Eve of St George's Day (April 22 Julian, May 4 Gregorian calendar),
the night when all forms of evil were supposed to be abroad. St
Georges Day is still celebrated in Europe.A vampire in the grave
could be told by holes in the earth, an undecomposed corpse with
a red face, or having one foot in the corner of the coffin. Living
vampires were found by distributing garlic in church and seeing
who didn't eat it. Graves were often opened three years after death
of a child, five years after the death of a young person, or seven
years after the death of an adult to check for vampirism.Measures
to prevent a person becoming a vampire included, removing the caul
from a newborn and destroying it before the baby could eat any of
it, careful preparation of dead bodies, including preventing animals
from passing over the corpse, placing a thorny branch of wild rose
in the grave, and placing garlic on windows and rubbing it on cattle,
especially on St George's & St Andrew's days.
To destroy a vampire, a stake was driven through the body followed
by decapitation and placing garlic in the mouth. By the 19th century
people were shooting a bullet through the coffin. For resistant
cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with
water, and given to family members as a cure.
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