LEGENDS AND MYTHS ABOUT VAMPIRES A vampire is, according to the folklore of various countries, a sinister creature that feeds on blood of living things to stay active.
In some Eastern cultures and American Indians, the vampire is a demonic deity or a lesser god that is part of the pantheon sinister in their mythologies.
in European and Western culture and in our contemporary global culture, the prototype is the most popular vampire of Slavic origin, and is to become a human being after death in an active body or revenants and predator bloodsuckers.
In most cases, vampires are undead evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created through the possession of a corpse by a malevolent spirit or being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends was so common in some areas that were no cases of mass hysteria and even public executions of people suspected of being vampires.
Other names used to name the vampire s are in Castilian brucolaco Vrykolakas Greek, vurdalak (modern Russian), Vrolok (Slovak), or Strigoiul strigoi (modern Romania), vampir (Bulgarian), vukodlak (Serbian), Upior (Polish), upir (Old Russian), Nosferatu (Greek nosophoro (νοσοφορος), carrier disease) vampyrus (Latin) and Kyuuketsuki (吸血鬼) or Kuei-jin in Japanese. In Greece they were called or Vrykolakas Tympaniaios depending on its origin. In medieval English writings in Latin, the vampire was known as "corpse sanguisugus."
FEATURES The following features, only some are essential or common in the general folklore or as part of the beliefs of certain regions, and other invented by novelists and screenwriters film or video game designers:
• humans were fatal, but now they are in an intermediate state between life and death , hence they are called undead revenants or revived. This nature determined his basic point:
1. Among the Slavs, Greeks and peoples of Eastern Europe, was considered a corpse dug vampire if his body seemed swollen and blood coming out (presumably of his victims) of the mouth or nose. Also if they noticed that their nails, hair and teeth were longer than he had been buried and even had a healthier than expected, showing pink skin and few or no signs of decomposition.
2. In Transylvania (Romania) considered that vampires were thin, pale, and had a long sharp claws and long canines (fangs).
3. In Bulgaria can be recognized by having a single hole in the nose.
4. According to some cultures, they are able to transform into insects, bat, rat, wolf or mist. The most mentioned in popular culture is the bat.
• They feed primarily on the blood of their victims but there are also descriptions of cannibals and in some cultures considered that the blood was not the basis of their livelihood, but the "lifeblood" human, or psychic energy.
• Not reflected in the mirror or have a shadow, perhaps as a manifestation of the lack of a soul. This attribute is not universal, as for example the Greek vampire vrykolakas / tympani had both shadow and reflection, but it is very popular thanks to novelists such as Bram Stoker mentioned it in his novel Dracula.
• Do not tolerate garlic. In some traditions, may also be removed with wild roses.
• The vampires demonic nature do not support the Christian symbols and thus can be removed using a Christian cross or holy water and no can cross by land dedicated as a church.
• They are indestructible by conventional means and are extremely strong and fast but they are weakened with water currents.
• Some traditions hold that a vampire can not enter a house unless invited by the owner, but that once he is invited to come and go at will.
• In parts of Eastern Europe, it is believed that the vampire is a being lustful returning to the conjugal bed, leaving his wife pregnant. This relationship was born a child of special features (which vary in each region), which became known as dhampiro.
HUMAN WAYS OF BECOMING A VAMPIRE The popular belief set can distinguish some basic ways for a human being becomes a vampire:
• By predisposition from birth: in Romania had a better chance of be a strigoi, the seventh or twelfth son whose older brothers were all the same sex. Or have a birthmark pronounced as the sacrum, abundant body hair and born hooded head is wrapped in part of the placental membrane, or have eaten part of it.
• For premature or violent death: In ancient Greece as well as between Bulgarians and Slavs, and as in certain African cultures in Indonesia, it was believed that children, adolescents and people in general who had an untimely death or unusual circumstances, suicide or violence, could become vampires.
• Breach of funeral and religious rituals: In Bulgaria and Romania also believed that anyone can become a vampire after his death if it should take to prepare and monitor properly the body does not comply with their homework and do not prevent an animal, especially a dog or cat, even one person to pass on it. This belief is similar to that of the Hindus who believed the spirits or Pitrs found waiting reincarnated vampire can become if no one remembers and performs the funeral rites known as shraadh rigor and are for ease of reincarnation.
• As a curse for criminal and sacrilegious actions: In ancient China it was also believed that certain criminals became vampire tradition similar to that between the Slavs and Greeks who believed that vampires were witches or people who had rebelled against Church while they were alive, selling his soul to the devil and that at death their bodies could be possessed by demons. Ela Christian Europe and especially among the Greek and Slavic peoples, all those who were not buried in consecrated ground (Including suicide and excommunicated) and those who had not received the last rites, had the greatest chance of becoming corporeal vampires spectra
• vampire-bite: By almost all traditions, especially among the Slav, the person who died after being bitten by a vampire would become in turn one. This way is only possible if there is acceptance by the victim.
RITUAL USED TO IDENTIFY A VAMPIRE :
• To locate the grave of a vampire ritual was to lead to a virgin boy on horseback through virgin also a cemetery, the horse would refuse to advance on the grave. Generally required that the horse was black, but in Albania it needed to be white.
• that holes appear on the earth over the grave was taken as a sign of vampirism.
• The suspect exhumation to verify directly if he had the traditional characteristics and destroy.
• Evidence of the activity of a vampire in the town included the death of livestock, family and acquaintances. Some could make their presence evident by small actions such as moving furniture in the house.
PRACTICES PREVENTIVE :
• Among the Celts to bury the body upside down was one of the most widespread, as sickles or scythes placed near the grave to keep the demons possessing the body or to appease the dead and was not rose from his coffin. With the same purpose was used to cut the tendons of the knees.
• In the folklore of modern Greece gets a wax cross and a piece of pottery with the inscription "Jesus Christ conquers" on the chest of the corpse to prevent it from becoming a vampire or vrykolakas.
• In Eastern Europe it was common to introduce a clove of garlic in the mouth, and sometimes in the nine holes Corporal the dead as well as passing through the heart with sharp objects before burials.
• In Saxon regions of Germany, they put a lemon in the mouth of a suspected vampire.
• Europe including seeds or sand spread on the earth from a grave suspected of containing a vampire to keep the vampire occupied all night counting the fallen grains (like Chinese Stories tell that if a vampire was a sack of rice, would have to count all the grains one by one).
• Talismans, substances and protective objects:
1. garlic.
2. sulfur.
3. a crucifix.
4. a rosary.
5. holy water.
6. a branch of wild rose or hawthorn can harm the vampire.
7. in Europe, spread mustard seeds in the roof that keeps you from saying.
DESTRUCTION OF A VAMPIRE:
In the Balkans, there was a vampire hunter who could be a religious or a dhampiro though they were invisible and destroy them. Until the early twentieth century, were offered to travelers who came to visit Eastern Europe in particular, some kits or kits with traditional tools to destroy vampires.
Methods:
• drive a stake through the heart of the bodies suspected of being vampires (South Slavic cultures). The pointing stick used to dig the mouth in Russia and northern Germany, or the stomach in northeastern Serbia.
• Nail head, body or clothes of the vampire to prevent lifting. The gypsies dug iron and steel needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, above the eyes, ears and between the fingers during the funeral.
• The beheading was the preferred method in areas of the West Germanic and Slavic, burying his head with his feet, after the buttocks or away from the body.
• The complete incineration of the body and pour boiling water over the grave were frequent additional measures.
• Especially in recalcitrant cases, is dismembered and burned body parts, mixing the ashes with water and were provided to family members as a cure.
• Repeat the funeral, sprinkling holy water on the corpse, or an exorcism was a frequent in the Balkans.
• Shooting a bullet through the coffin, and place a garlic inside the mouth, were precautions taken in Rumania until as recently as the nineteenth century.
THE VAMPIRE IN ANCIENT :
Initially the majority of mentions of beings with vampiric characteristics in antiquity are part of folklore and of myths in almost all civilizations, from Egypt and Sumer to American Indian cultures.
In Mesopotamia gods were invoked for protection they finished with Utukku beings guilty of diseases and pests, which can be considered as ancestors of the Vampire.
In Ancient Egypt the war goddess Sekhmet and Ra's daughter called the "terrible", hit the earth to punish the men and could only be appeased drunk on a concoction of red blood like drinking.
In the Arab and African folklore mentions the existence of ghouls and vampires, that change shape at will, guls called in Arabic, "Al-Ghul (demon, who became in those having had a violent death.) In one of the tales of The Thousand and One Nights Honor of a Vampire named the protagonist is a Ghul.
In Judaism one of the mythical archetypes is Lilith, Adam's first wife, who was said to have fed on the blood of children surrounded and is inspiring many seductive vamp characters in fiction for his heightened sexual .
the Beatles In India (demons vampires) have an important place in the narrative and, as part of the court of Siva, haunt the places of cremation. Also in the mythologies Buddhist, Hindu and Jain mythology, a preta is a troubled spirit, the soul of a deceased doomed to eternal hunger for nasty substances or blood which makes him dangerous for the living.
In America, the Mapuche Amerindian people have between their beliefs that there is a vampire to be known as the Pihuychen that primarily attack animals but also humans. Also believed in the existence of an aquatic creature known as vampire-wekufe Trelke (leather). Subsequently both beings also form part of the Chilean tradition. The Aztecs believed in a goddess called Cihuateteo fearsome spirits of women dying during childbirth and that caused pests, attacking children and travelers at night especially at intersections. According to the Popol Vuh, the Maya believed that the guardian of Xibalba was a bat called Camazotz human traits that beheaded strangers. A myth of the Shuar people living in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador and Peru said that the "Jencham" as referred to vampire bats that inhabit the caves, arise in men who were thus transformed by their taste in spilling blood.
In Europe, Greek mythology, including the legend of Lamia, daughter of King Belus East and whose children were killed by the goddess Hera to know that Lamia had an affair with Zeus. In revenge, Lamia began to chase every child who was to draw blood to feed. This legend gave rise to the superstition that persisted in rural areas of modern Greece, that Lamia attacked travelers astray, seduced by its beauty. Also among the Greek mythological characters is the Empusa be monster with feet of bronze, daughter of the goddess Hecate, and could become a beautiful woman to seduce men and drink their blood or eat them. In Greece, also believed in the Vrykolakas, who attacked his family after his death. In the legends speak of the Romanian strigoi, deities with female face and body of a bird that absorbed the blood of humans while they slept.
The Romans had the larvae, undead who had not paid their crimes in life, and took revenge of their skeletal and ghostly state absorbing the life of the living. Among the Franks
belief in vampires was so unblemished, but mostly associated with cannibalism that appeared to be common practice, that the Salic Law, enacted in the fifth century fines are provided for those who practice vampirism: "... The woman vampire who devour a man, proving his guilt, to pay a fine of 8000 deniers, or 200 sous."
in Spain are part of the myth creatures like guaxas in Asturias, Cantabria and the guajón Chuchón witches in Galicia, with a single tusk witches sucking the blood of their victims, especially children.
