English
We have an ancient way to deal with the darkness, destruction, and wild passion that shadows the bright path of those who bask untroubled in the Light. We all know it’s there, the domain of the Shadow. But it takes a real monster – a werewolf, perhaps, or a vampire – to identify with the darkness, to seek to become one with it.
The myth shapes the impulse, and so the pathology of the conditioned mind readily follows the imagery at hand which is most resonant with the inner chaos experienced.
The 1998 edition of Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary tells us that the vampire is “a blood-sucking ghost; a soul of a dead person superstitiously believed to come from the grave and wander about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep, thus causing their death.”
The vampire has traditionally been understood as a mythical creature, a human being who has been dead and buried; who yet returns, revivified and intact, to travel about at night, attacking people and drinking the blood required to lend animation to its undead corpse. Legends from all over the world report fantastical creatures of a similar inclination, with regional variations.
Legends of vampire-like creatures are found in places as diverse as Greece and Scotland, Mexico, Brazil and China. While the Brazilian vampire might slip silently through the night on plush slippers, the Chinese vampire was more likely to practice funerary feng-shui by drawing down the power of the moon and stabbing victims with dagger-like porcelain nails.