The Curse Must Pass Away
The Healing Power of the Archetypal Myth of the Vampire and the Vampire-Slayer

A Basic Primer to the Hunting and Slaying of the Undead
For Modern People Who Suffer from their Predations

By Robin Artisson
Copyright © 2008


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“The one thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach… was all the damn vampires.”

-Grandpa, from The Lost Boys




Introduction

Wholeness and the reparation of the world is one hammer-fall and one hawthorn stake away. With dawn approaching, and the sky turning grey-white, the fiends of darkness hiss and fall back as the vampire-slayer raises a torch and his hammer to destroy their lairs. The curse represented by the undead blights a land and the flesh of people, but the hunter and slayer comes, wielding ancient rites and weapons against this wickedness, for the good of all whose sleep has become fearful in recent nights. The archetypal story/myth of the vampire and the vampire slayer is good ground for stories and movies, but it is based on something far older and far more mystical. It can be used, in that way that myths are used, to access the power of its ancient source, the ancient and needful archetypal activity of exorcism and reparation through the power of the cross, flame, hammer, and stake.

This treatise is about destroying the undead. It is about understanding the reality of the undead and the sacred struggle that exists- needfully- between those who hunt the night and those who seek to make the night safe again. Before we can get to the reality of the undead and the origin of the vampire myth, we have to talk about myth itself- so sit back and consider the power and magic of myth, before you head into the heart of darkness and study the reality of the vampire myth. You will need to understand how extraordinary force is accessed through the dimension of myth before you can wield the power you will need to bring the undead to rest. You will need to understand the science of qualified dualism and the need for wisdom found in those who overcome the great perceptual divide between "spirit" and "matter" which taints this world with its own vampiric imbalance.

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The Magic of Myth

The more I study mythology and folklore, the more I come to the same conclusion that people from every age of this world have come to: myths are the most precious treasures bequeathed to us by generations long past. It has become very fashionable to look down on mythology and other narratives that feature elements that are seen as “supernatural” or which border on the “irrational” as though they represent failings of human reason in the face of the unknown, but it is my opinion that the true “failing” is found in people who cannot think multi-dimensionally about the things they experience.

Myth and legend are natural parts of the human experience; every culture has created vibrant and artistic stories that express many layers of human insight and need- and despite what the materialists and atheists of our modern day must declare- in line with their own dogmas- the myth-creating and preserving aspect of the human mind is not simple matter of primitive people grasping at straws. Myths offer us many gifts- a chance not only to have a dim insight into the minds of our predecessors, but a chance to “recreate” in ourselves states of mind and experience that were commonplace to those who came before us.

One may wonder at the value of such a “recreation”- and I would say that there are many reasons why a modern person would wish to undertake such a mental adventure. But today, I wish to sit and write about a specific reason. After a long time spent exploring the deep places in me through the vehicle of myth, I have concluded that an extraordinary capacity for psychic healing is to be found behind the door of myth. This treatise is about using a special myth- the myth of the Vampire and the Vampire-Slayer- for the purposes of personal inner healing and transformation. But more than that, this work is about how myth mediates to us great and ancient powers that we can ally with for the improvement of our lives in many ways.

If one lives a life that engages the themes of religion or spirituality in any form, then the strange and alluring presence of myth always hovers near you. Whatever your religion or spiritual path, myths act as channels for your spiritual understanding of the world; they are narratives that place the events of this world into a sacred context.

This statement, of course, could only be made in our modern world: for the ancients, the idea of a “spiritual understanding” was probably non-existent. Spirit and matter, for the distant ancestors, were by no means separate things, and thus, there were not different “types” of understanding. It would be better to say that, for the ancestors, matter was spiritual, and spiritual realities and material realities could not be meaningfully separated. The story of the “separation” between spirit and matter- and indeed, even the fact that two labels like “spirit” and “matter” must now necessarily exist, is a long story which is also the story of the loss of the most profound wisdom in this world.

It is my feeling that we have to deal with the dark realities of spirituality in the modern day; if we are religious or spiritual people, we must suffer under the yoke of lame cultural understandings that force us to label ourselves “religious” or “spiritual”. In the ages preceding Christianity, there was no need for a person who believed in the Gods of their people to label themselves as “religious”- religion was a seamless part of cultural life. It did not stand out, in need of some special label.

If all events, places, persons, and ideas partook of some spiritual reality, then there was no need to call one’s activities “spiritual”- all activities were already spiritual. There was a great “range” of spiritual activity for the ancients, precisely because all activity was spiritual. Not all spiritual powers or activities were desirable for human beings, but even the darker and more dangerous spiritual powers were a necessary part of life, on the larger scale. A wise human being was one who could embrace the necessity of all things while carefully steering clear of those sacred powers that were not useful to his life or community. Sometimes, those powers had to be propitiated; sometimes luck could prevail on him. Either way, this vision of life was holistic and balanced. It did not set men and women at conflict within themselves or against this world. This is the science and perspective of "qualified dualism".

People enjoy shaking their heads at ancient peoples who had Gods and Goddesses that presided over activities like war, sexuality, prostitution, intoxication and other activities that we fashionably look down our modern noses at, but such ancient realities only prove that the ancestors understood that “spiritual reality” was not separable from anything. We live in a world where the average religious Westerner will declare that his “God” is the god of all people, of all things, but somehow, that god’s power, his will, presence, and approval flees from certain situations, people and activities.


The “God” of the West has become nothing more than a reflection of mainstream morality. He’s present when people are praying and being kind, but angrily withdrawn when people are having affairs or fighting wars with one another. In another showcase of the un-wisdom of the West, our two greatest pastimes- reinforced by the media and politicians- are sexuality and warfare. The same men who attend church weekly and claim to uphold “love thy neighbor as you love yourself” vote to authorize wars, and restrict the freedoms of other people. The same men who bash homosexuals with full biblical approval still love their pornographic magazines and strip-clubs. There is an unrecoverable distance between spirit and matter, or should I say, between “God and worldly life” that is the true failing, the true torment that will never be resolved. It will also be the death of us all.

A better and wiser understanding of either “God” or the divine world is found in the grit and dirt of human life, as well as in the clean and beautiful aspects of life. Ancient myths-with their oftentimes-strange turns of event, disturbing characters, and surprising savagery- offer us an invitation to reconsider what we think we know about how this world works. They offer us a new way to understand what “spiritual” means, which is (as I have often pointed out) a very old way, in many cases.

The fact that myths offer us alternative perspectives on what we today call “spiritual life” or “spiritual understanding” is enough to credit them with an inestimable value. They truly need no further defense; but I can still go further. Myths are the wind in the sails of the souls of modern religious people. They are the seed-beds of beautiful art from every religious tradition, and their symbols (particularly the symbols of the most popular modern myths) pulse with power that excites the imagination of people who are in the “mythical stream” represented by those symbols. Even if the myths belong to religions whose evolution has led to the dismal depths of dualistic conflict, intolerance, and nonsense, the symbols still maintain an ancient and holy power, and it extends a hold over people. And when people “enter into” the mythical space to which their minds and souls are most closely attuned, they discover great peace there.

It is as if myths are offering us a chance to forget all that we think we know, and become someone and something else. They offer us a chance to take part, directly, in the mysteries to which they point. And I think that this practice- this use of myth- has enormous potential power for attaining many practical ends.

You’ve already seen it; my guess is that 99% of my readers here will have experienced it, on some level. When you “live a myth”, you are a different person, a person bolstered and soothed by the allied power of the myth. You are given a comfort that cannot be matched in the uncertain world outside of the myth. Take, for instance, the dominant myth of the Christ: many who live this myth are placed within a context of sacred direction: they are walking in the footsteps of the man-god whose kindly and sometimes strange teachings give them a comprehensive moral understanding for how to deal with people and situations in life. In the death and resurrection of the man-god, they have a sacred context for understanding and experiencing their own deaths, and the hope for life beyond. As they walk through their human lives, imitating the man-god, loving him, searching his words for meaning, they feel protected and stable, for they are moving in the direction that the chief power of the universe desires all people to move in.

From top to bottom, the Christ myth is magical for those who truly engage it; they become enflamed with the austere simplicity of it, but also the hidden subtlety of it. They feel like they are stronger for it, and indeed, they are- for those who live within the space of a myth draw upon the transpersonal resources that the myth gives them access to. Some encounter the emotional force of these boundless resources and have no choice but to call that encounter “God”. Others give this sacred encounter many other names, but then, a “rose by any other name” (they say) “will smell as sweet”.


What does not smell so sweet is the unfortunate tendency of some modern people who, when faced with the uncertainties of this world (and when conditioned properly by generations of fearful and not overly-intelligent people who went before them) decide that their positive emotional reaction to their particular myth endows it with a special status among all world myths, and begin to demand total submission to it from other people. Not willing to believe that other myths could energize other people with the same intensity of joy, peace, and understanding as their own myth, they set out on the path of the ugliest conquest this world has ever known: the destruction of other myths.

Such absolutism of spirit is a commonplace event in this world, and a sad degeneration from earlier, wiser times in which people accepted and understood the reality of many myths- and that other human beings could engage the transpersonal resources of this universe through different myths and be just as successful as any other person with respect to these mysterious relationships. The ultimate expression of this ancient and natural tolerance was, of course, polytheism- but I sometimes jokingly refer to the reality of “polymythism” as an alternative view on this matter.

I see a world of many different people and peoples- then and now- and I see that they all still maintain their own sacred myths, stories, and narratives. I see this as a beautiful and necessary thing. I lament that any myth should have evolved that contained within it some command to dismantle the myths of others. I trust the intelligence of my reading audience to understand the danger of such a thing, and to understand that it is an anomaly in the history of human myth-living. But it is an anomaly whose danger should concern us all.



Engaging and Integrating Myth

Now, I have soothed my own heart which leads me to repeat such warnings when I write. I will return to the reality of living myths now. A myth offers a person a chance to access something extraordinary, but it makes demands before it doles out its transformative power. Chiefly, a myth or a series of myths demands that a person immerse themselves in the mythical space completely- this cannot be stated enough. If one reads a myth as though it were just a “story” or some made-up nonsense, they will get nothing from it, beyond (perhaps) the most shallow of knowledge of the narrative events or characters.

The myth demands that we lay aside our preconceived notions- including all of our wonderful modern epistemological notions- about how the world “works”. It’s difficult, but necessary. Of course, the activity of engaging myth doesn’t mean that we have to abandon our modern learning and presuppositions about life; but for the time that we engage the myth, we have to symbolically go “naked”, stripped of our modern defense mechanisms and understandings regarding the “rational” working of things or the “logical” way things have to be.

We have to be willing to let the myth teach us, and it cannot teach a mind that is already full to the brim. Truly, we have to go with the same open-minded innocence as a child; a mythical figure who is prominent in most Western religious thinking today even said that the “kingdom of heaven belonged to such as little children”- and urged his apostles and disciples to become “childlike” in that special way that leads to perfect trust and a willingness to engage the world with fluid intelligence.

A myth will not yield up its deepest gifts to those who cannot move within it fully. However, another important question arises at this point: when we laid aside our notions, our beliefs, and even ourselves, at times, and have passed through the transformation offered by the myth, how do we exit the mythical space and reenter into the world of ordinary life? How can we reenter the world, taking with us the gifts won from the myth, and pick up again all of the things we laid aside to have the experience? Will the act of “picking up” all of those things somehow destroy or obscure the power we received from the myth?

The answer lies in the term “reintegration”. The truth of the matter is disturbing- if one truly actualizes the message and transformation of a myth, then no- you cannot simply “pick up where you left off”- you will be forever changed. Yes, you can re-engage all of those assumptions you had before your mythical journey, and you can go on living in the world just as you did before, but you won’t be the same person. You may not be able to keep acting or believing as you did before; what were great truths to you before may seem shallow or false. One must reintegrate into life, transformed by the myth, and thus, neither the “everyday life” nor the person, nor the myth will ever be the same again.

Some things will remain the same. Others will be altered beyond recognition. New difficulties that didn’t exist before may rear their heads; old difficulties may be banished. There is a risk either way; but the possibility of drawing upon resources, insights, and powers from beyond the self is more than enough justification for whatever difficulties one may encounter.


Very religious people in our modern world are good examples of the difficulties found when one lives a myth and attempts to integrate the mythical life with the “everyday” life. There is no doubt that people who actualize powerful myths in their day to day life have good benefits, but they must daily face a world (a world largely created by and ruled by people who aren’t inclined to spiritual endeavor) which often acts contrary to the peace and insight granted to them. They must face a storm of doubts and attacks on the beauty and power of myth itself by a skeptical world, and religious people often cannot separate themselves from the myth that gives their life such meaning and power.

And to be honest, perhaps they shouldn’t be seeking ways to separate themselves. The level of integration must be decided by each person, and wisely conditioned by the needs of their lives and families. It is enough to point out that this modern world has become hostile to the life that myth typically calls people to, but the power of myth is precisely what this world needs to heal itself and live in balance. So, a tightrope must be walked. As the Epic of Gilgamesh poignantly states, we must “treasure the dream, whatever the terror.”

The bald fact is simple: some people- myself included- could not be who they are without the myths that they treasure; they could not have the strength they have, nor offer the gifts they offer to others, without the insights and strength they draw from these things. When it comes to essential personhood, there are some things that cannot be bargained away.

But this is no invitation to become rigid. If true myths teach us anything, they demonstrate the fluidity of life- life is water, not stone- and they show us that this reality works in very mysterious ways. There is always room for transformation and always the possibility that things may take unexpected turns.



The Emergence of a Modern Myth: The Vampire

Myths are born in many eras. Not all myths have to go back to ancient Greece or Germania; the myth-creating and perpetuating mechanisms of the human mind are fresh in every age, and always in operation. What is different in the modern day as opposed to ancient days is the distortion between experience and the production of myth. Today, modern skeptical and atheistic/scientific dogmas are well in place that force human beings to put walls between what they experience internally and what they express. In a sense, we can’t be honest to what we feel and experience deeply without worrying about whether or not we are “hallucinating” or “mentally ill” or “just being superstitious”.

We cannot suggest, within ourselves and to others, that perhaps a wind-spirit blew down our favorite tree without wondering at all the scientific myths that explain wind and weather in purely physical terms, without any need for silly things like “spirits”. We may be concerned about how others will take our suggestion that a spiritual power interacted with us; we may doubt ourselves, and wonder if we aren’t a bit mad.

Whatever value “scientific explanations” may have, they do tend to affect the inner lives of human beings with the same impact that a grenade or a bomb might have on the outer life: they lay waste to the imagination and to intuition, scattering it haphazardly all about. Something that is naturally whole and precious can be blasted into bits by the “new spiritual imperialism” represented by so-called rational discourse and logical exploration. Perhaps life would be easier if the inner regions of the human mind and soul obeyed the simple, finite rules of logic and reason; that being as it may, it will never work out this way.

Neither the religion of “one god and love” nor the religion of empiricism has succeeded in their promises of a “better world” or an enlightened, stable world. They have made their own impact, their own changes, but the basic reality of humanity- a reality composed of boundless depths of imagination, desire, and emotion- will forever rule this world. This is not a territory that any religion or organized school of thought will ever conquer.

Because of our well-ingrained lack of imagination and trust for our deepest selves, transformative and honest myths will not emerge today like they did in ancient times. In earlier times, sacred stories emerged from the energized imaginations of human beings who didn’t have walls between themselves and the sacred inner regions. Those stories survived to become myths, eventually- so long as those stories were in harmony with larger, archetypical patterns embedded in the metaphysical structure of the world and the human soul.

For all this, the modern world has given us a few real myths. And those myths have survived for the same reasons: because they reflect mythical patterns that either existed earlier and were forgotten, or they reflect realities that are truly transpersonal.

Aside from hating the term “myth”, and being taught that it means “a made up story”, we have found other ways to label myth: we prefer words like “folklore” or “folktales” or “fairy tales”. But the lasting folktales and the lasting fairy-stories that we all know are drawing their immortality from deeper themes, themes that are as normal and natural to us as our hands or our eyes. These same stories, themes, and patterns proliferate in many ways: they emerge in our movies, in our books, and in our video games.


I’d like to focus now on a very popular modern myth, born in folklore and folk-history stretching back to the time of ancient Rome, and even before: the myth of the vampire. We all have ideas in our heads about what vampires are; they have been a cultural icon and a constant fixture in horror movies and literature for quite a long time. There are many ancient accounts and legends of predatory, vampiric creatures that would seem to be antecedents of the modern vampire.

Nigel Jackson, in his excellent book “The Compleat Vampyre: Vampyre Shamans, Werewolves, Witchery, and the Dark Mythology of the Undead” has done a superb job tracing the figure of the vampire back to its ultimate roots: to Pagan Gods and the practices of human shamans who were believed by their people to command darker and dangerous powers, to become literally “undead”- neither living nor dead- by straddling the world between the living and the dead through shamanic trance-journeys, and to have the power to shape-shift into various creatures.

But as Jackson points out, and as any student of human supernaturalism knows, human shamans in the past (like now) were not the only beings with such powers inhabiting the world. Human societies have always believed in the existence of dangerous and predatory spirits that can shape-shift, and who preyed on human communities in the dark of night. There are no doubt many fine explanations for why humans universally believed in predatory spirits and monsters, and why they believed in the “restless dead” or the undead- but for the purpose of the present work, I will leave behind the rationalistic tendencies of the West and suggest that the ancient and modern people who believed such things believed them because they experienced them- or experienced a complex of things, including mysterious subjective experiences and the conditioning of traditional oral culture that led them to believe in them.

No ancient person who believed in many Gods or spirits would have any trouble believing that some spirits were dangerous or predatory. Modern tribal people alive today won’t hesitate to tell you that dangerous or evil spirits exist, and have caused them and their people great trouble in the past. No modern religious person who believes that “demons” stalk the world looking to steal souls can really claim that folk-beliefs in “vampires” are absurd and dismiss them without looking rather foolish.

The belief in vampires by modern people in Europe- including people in the last four centuries- is a complex phenomenon, but the phenomenon has a clear relationship to ancient myths that were common to human societies in Europe just centuries before. If the modern “folklore” about vampires has survived and even proliferated in the modern world, I contend it is because an earlier, deeper, and very powerful mythical pattern lies beneath it. An entire book could be written on this topic, but for now, I must only address the most obvious features of this thesis.

Since time immemorial in Europe, as with many other places in the world, myths have presented the world as a complex web-work of forces, in which powerful beings- often called Gods- had to struggle with other powerful beings and forces to preserve the world from destruction. The Gods in all Indo-European myths, from India, Greece, and Rome to Germania and the Celtic countries, represent creators and preservers of the world-order. Their enemies, whether called “giants”, “titans”, “fomorians” or “asuras” represent the counter-forces of chaos that seek to upset the world-order and destroy it. The struggle between order and chaos is a constant fixture in Indo-European mythology, and in a modern form, the struggle between “good and evil”- the constant fixture of modern religion and modern fiction- is only an echo of it.

Several features emerge in the ancient myths, regarding the Gods and their chaotic enemies: the Gods are associated, typically, with the sky and the bright worlds above; the light of the sun and the cycle of the sun through the sky- making a circle and depicted as a spinning four-armed cross- are powerful symbols of order and blessing, and evil or chaotic powers cannot resist these things. The chaotic beings inhabit worlds of darkness, “worlds of darkness, demon haunted worlds” as the Upanishads call them- and are often associated with the Underworld or the “outer worlds”, the regions that are outside of the boundaries of the ordered world.

In all of Europe, the chief God who fights and destroys evil spirits, giants, and monsters is a God associated with the sky, and the lightning and thunder (hence, fire) that blasts out of the sky at times. In all Indo-European myths, that God’s chief weapon is a hammer- the Thunder-Weapon that gives him enormous strength and power, and makes him champion monster-slayer. He is called, in places Zeus, slayer of titans, ruler of the sky and the cosmos-order; further north the role of this thundering sky God is given to Thorr, slayer of giants and the world-dragon, or Perun and Perkunas, Thorr’s Slavic cognates. In Vedic India he was Indra Parjanya, wielder of the Vajra (the thunder weapon) and killer of dragons and monsters. This figure continually emerges as champion of the Gods- and therefore, champion of order and life over chaos and death.

These themes continually emerge, even in later folklore, as we shall see. But first, I must return to the figure of the vampire and point out that the mythology of the vampire and vampire-slaying hearkens back to the theme of the Gods slaying giants or monsters.




Today, we have very sexy vampires. Thanks largely to Anne Rice, most people are fascinated with the idea of a very sexualized vampire-figure; vampires are nearly always depicted in modern fiction as young, beautiful, possessed of great sexual power, and even noble at times, in a tragic and immortal sort of way. They embody the deepest wishes of so many people in today’s world: eternal youth and eternal sexual power.

However, the traditional folklore of vampires stands in stark contrast to this modern depiction. Vampires in Eastern European folklore are anything but sexy: they are cadaverous, grotesque, monstrous, and sickening. They may even be depicted as mindless- quite a distance from the suave “Count Draculas” that we have seen in our movies! Even Bram Stoker, the man who gave the vampire figure its great welcome into the western literary tradition, channeled some of this gritty reality of vampirism in his own main vampire character. Dracula, in Stoker’s novel, is not sexy: he is tall, cadaverously pale, has long protruding fangs, hair all over his palms, and foul breath.

The novel Dracula depicts a foreign monster coming from distant, wild Eastern Europe and invading London- the heart of civilization- and then invading the lives of two innocent young girls, Lucy and Mina. His presence is a violation of their innocence and their wishes; he intrudes and forces himself on them. He is not a seducer; he is an intruder who can force his will with supernatural power onto whomever he wishes. He violates the sanctity of homes, bedrooms, and the purity of innocent flesh. To the proper Victorians and all their prudish boundaries, that was the true horror of Dracula. The Victorian fear of the “savage world” outside of civilized England is also reflected in Dracula.

Today, even Dracula has gone down the road of the “sexy” vampire in our fiction. But in traditional cultures, especially in Eastern Europe, the un-dead represent something very un-sexy: they represent disease. The vampire appears and preys on human communities, stealing life-force from people at night, while they sleep, inflicting them with a wasting sickness that claims their lives, eventually. The vampire is blood-soaked, horrid, and usually thin and wasted themselves. They slink about in the darkness, invading into the village or town- which represents order- from the “outside”, from the chaotic world of uncertainty represented by the grave, hell or the underworld, or the forests and wilderness. They invade and they prey and they kill.

They are a curse on the town or village that they prey on; as further evidence of this, vampire attacks often include more than just wasting diseases inflicted on their victims: crop failures, the deaths and waning of farm animals, and other familiar-sounding disasters follow in the wake of vampires. The strength of the land and the village or town ebbs away in more than one way, thanks to the predatory supernatural power of the vampire.

It is very clear (at least to me and weirdoes like me) that the vampire in folklore is another mythical/folkloric emergence of the underlying ancient belief in evil spirits who forever threaten the order of the world and the order of human communities. Most folk-beliefs in vampires state that a sufficiently wicked person can become a vampire upon their deaths- and again, this fits in with the mythical pattern I discussed before.

For in the myths of ancient Europe, the “chaotic powers” faced by the Gods were not just “evil powers out there”- human nature itself contained dangerous powers within it. In a sense, the struggle of the Gods over the order of the world was reflected into each human being as a struggle of the altruistic and noble parts of human nature struggling with the savage, selfish, and predatory powers within each of us. For the good of a family or community, each person had a duty to defeat and hold in check the dangerous powers in their own nature, and those who failed- who became murderers or rapists or otherwise harmful to their families or communities, had to be driven out, expelled, or killed for the good of the whole.

Thus, a “wicked person”- a person given over wholly to the worst powers in their own nature, was an obvious danger, even in death: their unbalanced, wicked spirit would never be able to join the ancestors or move into the worlds of the Gods; it would remain earthbound or lost, angry or savage, now released from whatever tiny vestige of human social conditioning it once had. It could and would become a malevolent spiritual threat. And most believed that it would return to torment its former community or family, inflicting a whole range of possible ailments on them.




The Great Reparation: When You Have Vampires That Need Killing

When vampiric attacks began, when the curse came, the sickness came, people in Europe- as in other parts of the world- turned to specialists who could drive them away or destroy them. Vampire slayers were often common people who knew the traditional folk-cures, remedies, and wisdom that allowed them to undertake various ordinary and extraordinary feats to bring the vampire to destruction, or put the situation to right.

This, of course, flies back to the most primal and universal of human institutions: the tribal shaman, who was often called upon to drive away or destroy evil spirits that tormented his or her community. Whether the returned spirit of a wicked dead person, or some other monstrous threat, shamans have done exorcisms and magical rituals to combat evil since time immemorial. It is important to understand that any evil spiritual power that causes the quality of life in any society to decline- whether by killing people or causing diseases or wasting crops and herds of animals, can be described as “vampiric”- the nature of predation is thus; the predator draws his life and survival from the loss of life on the part of other living beings.

Through Pagan times in Europe, into Christian times, communities have always maintained their own traditions for combating evil, for keeping evil away from their boundaries, and for the destruction of malevolent spirits or monsters. Much of folklore is concerned with these “cures” and “wards” and “protections”. The fairy-faith of Celtic countries (for instance) still contains countless warding and protecting charms and incantations and other things people can do to be safe from the strange activities and predations of fairies; the reality is not so different in all parts of Europe, and the rest of the world.

The figure of the “vampire hunter” or the undead slayer emerges in the folklore of Europe, cutting a definite and powerful figure. Today, that archetypal figure has become immortalized in mental iconography by Abraham Van Helsing, Stoker’s heroic and eccentric metaphysician and vampire slayer. But behind Van Helsing stands a long historical tradition of men and women who wielded charms and spells against the undead, or against evil spiritual threats, and who undertook, at times, to do the operation called in Eastern Europe the “Great Reparation”- the uncovering of a vampire in its resting place and its destruction following a specific ritual.

Now that Hollywood is done with us, we all know the story of how vampire slaying works. We all know that vampires are terrified of crosses and holy water; we know that they fear fire. We know that sunlight will destroy them. We know that they are repelled by garlic. We understand that the best way to destroy these monsters is to seek out where they are sleeping during the day, expose them, and drive a wooden stake through their hearts, and then decapitate them, if necessary.

Interestingly, the historical “Great Reparation” ritual in which vampires were uncovered and destroyed in Eastern Europe agrees in many ways with these otherwise overdone Hollywood staples. The vampire’s grave was discovered by leading horses to the cemetery, and watching carefully for which grave the horse would not step over. At other times, graves that showed signs of disturbance were suspect; and sometimes the vampire was “seen” by a victim or a witness, and identified as a recently dead member of the community- and thus, their grave was the obvious place to look.

The body from these suspect graves was dug up, and a wooden stake- normally of oak or whitethorn- was driven through the heart or chest of the corpse, before the head was removed. Proper prayers and rituals to re-sanctify the ground and grave were done, and sometimes, the whole unholy mess was reburied, or burned. The procedure varied certainly from place to place, but certain factors remain the same:

1. Like the tribal shaman of old, the religious authorities of modern societies (in this case Christian) are invoked to bring aid. Holy symbols and blessed water repel these creatures, like any other “evil”.

2. The vampire rests during the day; night is the only time it can attack or cause harm. The grave or burial site is therefore sought as the most likely place of the residence of the evil power.

3. The body of a suspected vampire must be transfixed with a stake of a certain wood- normally hawthorn.

4. Decapitation and burning often figure into final disposal.


Before I discuss these four points, I’d like to point out that the ritual process of destroying possible vampires was called a “reparation”- a restoration to a condition of goodness or wholeness, or a making of amends.

When you look at the earliest mythical basis for the “struggle between chaos and order” and the struggle between “good and evil”, You notice that cycles of activity and passivity alternate between the two sides in the myths. In the “creation” myths of many Indo-Europeans, the Godly forces are passive, while the chaotic forces are actively in the position of rulership of the unformed cosmos. Then, the Godly forces become active and forge a world-order, a formed cosmos, and set it to existence amid the chaos, and become protectors of it. From that point, the ordered world sits passively while the chaotic forces from the outside actively seek to “break in” and invade it, and cause a disharmony, an imbalance, or a sickness within. From that point, the Godly forces must become active and destroy the invader, restoring the harmony of the order.

The Gods, in their myths, undertake a “reparation” each time they fight and defeat their enemies, who are the enemies of the world-order (though humorously, the chaotic powers on the “outside” might consider their attempts to upset the order foisted on them as their own “reparation”). What the myths are ultimately saying, it seems, is that “harmony” is a tension-filled state in which the precarious balance and safety of the world-order exists alongside the chaotic powers arranged around it, and that harmony must be maintained by vigilance and effort on the part of both Gods (in the myths) and human beings, who in historical time have done many things to protect their communities from the powers “outside”- whether those powers be evil spirits or other, more worldly threats.

When the harmony of the order is lost, when sufficient chaotic force has invaded, then an imbalance exists that drains life away, causes things to falter and wane. It is the imbalance itself, deep in the metaphysical fabric of things, that causes the weakening, and it must be addressed- it must be repaired, and harmony restored. This can take many forms- it can take the form of Gods smiting evil powers, or of a vampire-slayer destroying a vampire, or even a wife restoring harmony to her marriage by expelling a threat to her relationship with her husband (to use a true microcosmic example). When the human body is invaded by a bacteria or a virus that causes it to weaken, the body itself undertakes a natural “great reparation” attempt, to repel the invader or destroy it, to restore harmony.

For human beings to stand in the role of a “Reparationist” (on any level, including that of an undead-slayer, or a tribal shaman who fights witches or evil spirits) is for humans to stand within the space of a timeless mythical activity. Humans in this role are fulfilling an archetypal duty, and fulfilling, in the human microcosm, the very activity that makes the harmony of the world and the health of communities and families possible.



The Tools of the Trade are Older than you Know

We know that vampires- not just in Hollywood, but in folklore- are especially repelled by religious symbols, such as the cross, holy water, icons, and the like. We know that they fear fire and that it can destroy them. We know that they are repelled by garlic. But what most people don’t consider is that, like all things found in enduring patterns of folklore, these “tools of the vampire killing trade” are held firmly in the human imagination as having power because they stretch back to ancient mythologies.

The cross deserves first mention. The cross is likely the oldest human religious symbol, and most of the smart bets I know think that the origin of the cross was nowhere else but in the sky: the solar cross which traced the quarters of the heavens as the sun went whirling by. The sun is now (and always was) a symbol of life, of hope and warmth and the source of the energy for all life on earth. No ancient society that I am aware of ever failed to deify the sun in some form or fashion. The equal-armed cross, which is the ancient and primal form of the cross, is a symbol of the sun. It is also a symbol of the supreme life-giving power, placing it at odds with the powers that tend to darkness and death.




The swastika is another ancient form of the solar cross, or the “sky wheel”, and even the word “svastika” in Sanskrit means “it is well” or “all is well”. The spinning and circular solar force, in some way, represents the power of the Gods of the Pagan world more than any other complex of symbolism. And it is absolutely no surprise that the God of the modern Christian religion has an affinity to these ancient themes: power above, the sky, light, and a cross. Of course, the Christian or Roman Cross has an ominous problem. While it is still technically a cross, one of its arms is longer than the other three- and this presents an issue.

The longest arm of the Roman or Christian cross touches the earth, and the other three are further away from the earth- a symbol of heaven-centered devotion and of “turning away” from the earth and earthly reality. It is an imbalanced symbol and therefore does not mediate the same sort of power and balance that the equal-armed cross, representing wholeness and equal connection to all things, represents. Bear in mind what I said at the beginning of this treatise regarding the holistic understandings held by the ancients- while wicked or chaotic powers had to be resisted, they were still necessary to the upholding of the needed tension to create harmony. This will be something I return to in a while.

The spinning sky-wheel/cross or solar cross was associated in ancient Heathenry with the God Thorr, the killer of monsters and giants- the God who wielded the thunder-weapon which was a hammer. Like Zeus, hurling lightning and making thunder and killing titans, Thorr was a fierce and fiery opponent of evil. And it is this fiery nature of sky and thunder Gods that I need to point out here, and make the connection between “sky fire” (lightning) and the fact that evil spirits and vampires are destroyed by and fearful of fire.

To these evil things, the controlled fire is a primordial symbol of the power wielded by the Gods. Fire consumes and purifies- it destroys disease-ridden corpses and purifies things ritually. The heat kills impurity. It casts light and warmth, keeping away cold and its power to lower human resistance to disease and sickness. It cooks food, making it safe to eat; controlled fire held back the dark ring of night and all the predators it concealed from the most primal of human social groupings. Fire is the eternal symbol of protection. And thus it only makes sense that the hammer of the ancient Thunder-God, so associated with lightning and fire, would be the weapon held by the vampire-slayer who undertakes the “great reparation”, when he uses a hammer to strike a stake through the heart of a vampire.

The holy water wielded is in reality “water of fire”- whereas water becomes holy in the Christian religion with the fire of prayer being cast upon it, in ancient times, water could be impregnated with the power of fire by dropping burning coals into it, making it sacred and repellent to the undead and to evil. Even today, before baptisms in the Catholic church, a candle is lit and lowered into the baptismal font and extinguished in the water, to pass that power to the water.




In the world of herbs, garlic ranks highest among those that are naturally anti-bacterial and nourishing to human beings who are ill, or who are in danger of becoming ill. Garlic- whose name comes from the Anglo-Saxon Garleac (meaning “spear leek” or “spear plant”) is not just nourishing; it was considered a martial herb- an herb related to the god Mars- because of its offensive and defensive powers to preserve people from the spirits of sickness and drive them away. The “spear” of the spear-leak hearkens back to the spear held originally by Tiwaz,- the Germanic God associated with Mars by the Romans- who was, like Thorr, a sky God, a defender of the order of the world against evil, chaotic forces. In Eastern and Southern Europe especially, garlic was a needful staple of diet and traditional medicine. In such countries, the garlic plant represented everything that was inimical to evil powers.

The stake driven into vampire-corpses was said to be made of certain woods- and more underlying symbolism can be found in these facts. The fact that the stake often had to be made from the thorn tree- hawthorn (also called maythorn or whitethorn) is very salient. The thorn tree was the tree associated in ancient myths with the “world hedge”, the boundary-line between the ordered world of life and the chaotic worlds beyond. It was also believed to be a sacred tree to the Thunder Gods- Thorr and Perun- because of its thorns. Thorns have a long and complex symbolic history, but they have always been symbols of protection. They protect the plants or trees that grow them, and in Germanic Runelore, the Thorn Rune, Thurisaz, is the symbol of the strength and power of the Thunder God, Thorr.

The stake of thorn-wood is often believed to need to pierce the heart of the vampire, but there is more to this than meets the eye: the fact is that the whitethorn stake is driven into the chest of a corpse during the “great reparation” not to destroy the heart, but to symbolically “transfix” or “stake” the corpse to the earth below. While it is true that the heart would naturally likely be destroyed by such an act, the ancient origin of the act comes from a ritual to stop the body from getting up and leaving its gravesite by tacking it to the ground. This also binds the body and soul to the earth itself, imprisoning it, and stopping it from wandering.

In “evil averting” symbolism, another famous thorny plant emerges commonly- the Rose. Roses are more than just beautiful plants; they partake of the power of the “thorn” as much (or perhaps more) than the hawthorn tree. An equal-armed cross made from good thorny rose stalks is by far one of the most powerful evil-averting charms to come down to us from the annals of folklore, and such a charm mediates to us some of the most primal of protective powers. The equal-armed rose cross has to be bound with red thread, and to make it even more powerful, it can be surrounded by a ring of thorny rose-stalk. Hung above the doors or windows and entrances to homes and other places, evil cannot pass through or near.

Removing the head or heart from a suspected vampire-corpse is an interesting point as far as the beliefs of ancient Europe are concerned. Both the head and the heart have been seen, at various times and in various places all over the world, as the seat of a man or woman’s personal power or spirit. Headhunting cults, whether in ancient times, or now, still ascribe to the head many magical or supernatural powers, and the heads of powerful enemies are sought as being talismanic in nature. The heart still maintains a certain respect as the center of spiritual life- in Christianity, it is the “sacred heart” of Jesus that receives so much veneration, not his head.

But the destruction of the head or heart, or both, represents a final disruption of the “cosmos” that is an organism. The two most vital centers of power- including the likely homes of the connection between the physical organism and whatever mysteries are connected to it in the form of spirit are destroyed ritually in the great reparation to make the task final.



Your Curse Must Pass Away: Becoming a Vampire Slayer

We have discussed many topics of historical and mythological importance. I have suggested many perspectives that I find valuable, and which you may agree with or not. But the ultimate goal of this treatise was more than just presenting historical information about mythology and vampire legends and folklore. The goal of this work was to show how the myth of the vampire and the vampire slayer could be used for no less a purpose than the transformation and healing of the people in the world- and by “people” I mean all of us: you and me alike- who are suffering from a curse brought on by vampiric powers.

This is where I take the myth of the vampire and the slaying of evil powers and turn it to the service of the inner life of each person. I do not think that I am degrading the mythological underpinnings of the “great reparation” by doing so; I am turning the force of the archetypal task of slaying evil towards a place that badly needs it: the human psyche.

I began this treatise by talking about the importance of living myths, or at least, what benefit could be had by allowing oneself to enter into certain myths and receiving the extraordinary resources that are available through them. Different myths certainly give different gifts, but most myths have, running through them, a current that leads from a broken state to a whole state- whether depicted as the restoration of the world after a disaster, or the restoration of a fairy-tale couple (think the prince and princess) after the incursion of some villain’s plots or the defeat of some monstrous threat. Most myths deal with adversity and the overcoming of dangerous forces so that some evolutionary or positive, needful change occurs on the parts of the characters or the “land” that they inhabit.

By engaging myths that deal with this pattern (and there are many) one can, I believe, find a way to overcome personal and internal adversity and move from a state of brokenness to wholeness within the psyche.


As strange as it may sound, I think most people are cursed, in the truest and most authentic sense of the word. We don’t need evil sorcerers or witches around to curse us: we all, through life’s many vicissitudes, fall under the influence of malign powers (whether seen or unseen) and we all run foul of devastating chains of circumstance that harm us. We all fall ill in many ways, physically and psychically, and as a person who works in the field of psychotherapy, I believe I have only seen the tip of the iceberg of human suffering- and incidentally, of the suffering of the world- for it is my further belief that each human is not only an inseparable part of the world, but a reflection, in microcosm, of the world.

We spend a lot of time watching the news today and seeing the failures of the world- the many problems- from the greed that leads to wars and the hate that leads to genocide, to the stupidity and avarice that leads to environmental destruction, but few stop to consider that each human body and mind is a world also, and sickness in the world is mirrored by sickness within us, and vice versa. The same sorts of hate that lay waste to nations under the boots of armies lay waste to families as their members scream at one another in rage or sometimes kill one another or abuse one another. The same sort of powers that motivate the exploitation of human populations, natural resources, and animal populations appears in our families as sexual exploitation and abuse. The deep apathy and aimlessness that drags down societies also brings low people in depression.

When the vampire attacked a region, or a village, or a country, it cursed the land and the people, and began to drain their lives away in more than one way. Sometimes, in some modern myths, the vampire is a lord- a person of power, who rules over his people in an exploitive, tyrannical manner, and so the curse there is even stronger; the sovereign power that reigns over a land and which is intended to be its just defender has become a monster and the people all suffer.

The connection of the vampire with the idea of both “sickness” and “curse” is important to my understanding. The man or woman who destroys the vampire is the ultimate healer: he or she is the healer who lifts the sickness and the hero who lifts the curse- a healer-magician of types, using ancient powers and rituals and blessed tools against monsters. This is why, I think, Van Helsing was depicted by Bram Stoker as a Doctor-Metaphysician, both medical doctor and occultist.

The vampire-slayer myth is very heroic: the vampire-slayer is the ultimate protector of the life of his people, of the harmony of the world, against truly dark forces. The vampire-slayer strikes out at the monster for the best possible reasons: because he is upholding what the universe itself reveals in the deepest mythical patterns: the struggle of order against chaos. The vampire-slayer is truly “righteous” because he is fulfilling a role that upholds the “right order” of the cosmos. He strikes out with fire and stake and hammer at creatures who victimize the helpless and the innocent, and in a symbolic way, his triumph is a triumph we all desire over whatever powers are victimizing us in our own individual lives.

And this is the invitation of the vampire myth: you are invited to come inside and defeat the monsters that are preying on you in your own life, following an ancient tradition of rightness and sacredness, thus restoring the order of your life and healing yourself. The “village” or the “land” that is besieged by “vampires”- themselves representative of the predatory and harmful powers that are unresolved in your psyche- is nothing other than your mind and body. And the very best parts of you- the parts that both suffer, but are aligned with the conscious purposes of salvation for yourself and your own wellness- these become the basis for your identity as the vampire-slayer that you must become when you enter into the dark space of this mythical story.


It is a well-established perspective in the psychological world that repressed, unconscious material can be dangerous or deadly to us. We all must encounter trauma and danger and pain in life, and early on, we all try to deal with it and create coping strategies for it, in whatever way we can. Most of us succeed relatively well. But many of us fail to fully and healthily integrate the memories and impacts of those things we encounter earlier in life, and instead repress them.

This dark, repressed material takes up residence in the unconscious realms of the psyche, where it gathers power. It is easy to see the unconscious regions of the psyche as being cognate to the “realms of chaos” outside of the day-lit order of the conscious regions upon which your outer personality is established. Eventually, from the dark places within you, actual creatures and monsters- unresolved forces of psychic tension and repressed material- will begin to invade. If you have the proper coping mechanisms in place, you may defeat or integrate them. If you do not, you will either suffer mental trauma, or (after they have feasted for a while) they will return to their dark caves and grow stronger. After a long enough time of such imbalance, your psychic health will fail. Anxiety, depression, rage, anger, paranoia, all of these symptoms can easily be explained by unresolved psychic tension and the effort to cover up realities that cannot be borne easily by the conscious personality.

Of course, it is all a bit more complex than this, but the gist lies here: we all have monsters; we all have issues; we all have the true “psychic vampires” inside us. We go through life hearing other people being described as “psychic vampires” without ever realizing that the real psychic vampires are much closer to home, in each of us. And what these destabilizing forces represent within us are the same things that the forces of chaos that struggle against the Gods represent outside of us, out in the cosmos and on the borders of order.

You already know how this story has to work: harmony is lost when chaotic forces invade order; the vampire comes and inaugurates a reign of terror over a place. Life begins to fail; suffering begins. Vigor and life-force is lost; people begin to waste away, the light is going dim. The people who are preyed upon cannot ignore the vampire or the vampires; if they do, they only proliferate and get stronger, and cause more suffering. Unresolved mental issues, a life spent in denial and ignorance of the inner realities of one’s psychic life, can only do the same.

But without the vampire slayer, the poor villagers can hardly face the monstrous threat of the undead. They cannot use their usual tactics of defense and attack against the vampires, because vampires are undead- neither alive nor dead; they rise above the dualistic “either/or” dichotomy that all of the other threats in human life can usually be met with- the vampire requires a special attack, a special understanding, a special approach which only the vampire-killing specialist can bring to bear on account of his or her training and mystical expertise.

What is interesting is the notion of the “hero from among the people”- there is a great literary and historical tradition of the avenging or protecting hero who arises from among his or her people at their great time of need, and this connects well with the vampire-slayer who begins life as a commoner, a villager, and turns to the trade of slaying the undead after they or their loved ones fall victim to the monster.

The curse of the vampire is the entry of imbalance and disease into the order of the village or land; and for us, this curse isn’t just an event in a story or a myth- it can be seen in your own life. You can see it on the news, you can see it in your family, you can see it in the lives of other people, and you can see it in your dreams, in your depression, in your restless sleep, in all of your inner conflicts. Entering into this myth requires that you undergo an epistemological shift. The myth is powerful- it is dark, tragic, bloody, and heroic. But it will not take you along on its adventure until you give up your usual way of relating to your problems, and first accept the terrible idea that you are cursed. And vampires are responsible. Vampires are real; they aren’t myths; they aren’t fake; they are draining your life every night- and the life of your people (your family, your friends, and all the people who depend on you or love you).

These vampires don’t have to be fiends sleeping in coffins in the graveyard down the street from your house. It is far more terrifying, from one perspective, to realize that they are fiends sleeping in the dark ground of the graveyard of your subconscious mind. They don’t have to come and attack you at night in your bedroom by climbing through your window: they come and attack you at night when you lie down alone, and when all of the distractions of the business of your day are gone, leaving you alone on the dreary borders between consciousness and unconsciousness. They ravish you in nightmares and leave you weak and listless the next day; they cause you to be weak and lose vigor for your life. Nothing you try to do seems to be rid of them, and ignoring them only assures that their reign of terror will continue unchecked.

And these vampires, like all vampires, are shape-shifters. They can appear to be something you are most terrified of, or something that is alluring to you. They can shift their shape into any nightmare or dream. During the glaring light of day, they are hard or impossible to see, but you dread the “night of the self” in which they can roam safely and terrorize at will.

And from the moment of despair comes the call to the hero and his or her emergence- the vampire-slayer, the reparationist whose sacred task and duty it is to restore the harmony of the land and the people. He or she comes forth- the very best and conscious parts of yourself- to do battle with the undead, armed with the instruments of the reparation, and with a hard and dangerous task ahead of them. If they fail, the land will perish under a tide of undead darkness. If they succeed, all will be set right. The slayer of vampires may come from humble origins among the common people; he or she may not be especially brave or wise, but they are called by Fate to a great vocation and a perilous task. They will have to find their quality and prove themselves, and the entire world relies on them finding the strength to do so.

The struggle of slayer and undead has to continue forever, for the tension that harmony relies on is not a matter of one “side” obliterating the other- it is a matter of ongoing vigilance and struggle between two equilibrated sides. The mythical narrative begins- the undead have established their dark kingdom and daily drain life away; harmony is lost and the redressing of the balance must come under the hammer of the slayer, so that a new season of harmony can be restored. It is not truly the killing of vampires that is the slayer’s deepest duty, as much as fulfilling the role of a slayer, which is an eternal role and task. Without it, harmony in this world could not exist.




A Modern Ballad of Vampire Slaying

I believe that any internal conflict can be cast in terms of the vampire and vampire-slayer myth, and either alleviated or fully overcome. However, for this process to work, you must suspend your modern ideas and beliefs, and let yourself enter into a world of supernatural powers and ancient rites where vampires are very real, and you are a literal vampire-hunter and slayer. There is no shining beacon of “reason” in that world; all is possible, all is dangerous and beautiful at the same time, and the foes of the world can never be predicted.

This entire process is like an intense form of spiritual role-playing, and the process can take weeks or months. In the same way a follower of the Christ-myth may engage the symbols and themes completely- by giving his or her full belief to them- you must do the same.

Vampires are real; they are dark and malevolent spiritual entities that reside in the dark places of the world and in the deep minds of human beings, and invade people’s lives and sleep at night, draining life from them. They torment people in a variety of ways. And there is a way to lay them to rest, healing people; and in healing people, in a way, the world is healed.

I don’t suggest that you dress like a modern day Van Helsing, acquire hawthorn stakes and rose-crosses and drive around, telling people you are hunting vampires. You will likely be apprehended and locked away should you try such a thing. But the “props” of the myth- the sacred and powerful tools of the great reparation, can be collected by you and used for the ritual “entry” into the mythical space of the vampire slaying quest. It’s just a good idea to keep rose-crosses over the doors of your home at any rate; don’t let yourself only make and use such powerful charms only when your life is finally brought to darkness and despair by negative forces.

Collecting the tools you’ll need is a symbolic act, of taking up the role of the Vampire-Slayer. It helps to establish firmly in your mind the reality of what you are doing, and the very instruments themselves are mystically repellent to the dangerous forces that exist in this world- both within you and without you. So having them around can’t hurt. Once you have gathered your tools and put aside the silly materialistic modern theories regarding “mental health”, and re-mythologized your understanding of the mystical nature of the psyche and the powers that surge through it, you are ready to begin.

To facilitate the final part of this treatise, that of “engaging the narrative” of the Vampire-slayer myth, I am going to turn to a surprising modern expression of the myth. Pop culture creates many interesting expressions of ancient wisdom, ancient myth-patterns and stories, and the vampire emerges in the same way, in many places. You may already have a favorite vampire story, and in most ways your favorite story is probably already fully archetypically sound. But the world of modern “progressive metal” music has given us (some years back) a vampire-slayer story that was so good, I chose it to demonstrate the healing power-potential of this myth.

My first college roommate turned me on to a progressive metal band called “Helstar”. Their album, which had been released a few years before that time, was called “Nosferatu”, and had a vampiric theme running through all its songs. One song from that album recently caught my attention, while I was driving along the other day thinking about the process of engaging myths. The song is called “The Curse Has Passed Away” and it became the inspiration for this present work, up to and including the title of this treatise.

It is truly a fabulous, atmospheric song, chock full of every essential element of the vampire myth, and describing, in perfect detail, the entire process of true psychotherapeutic healing utilizing personal insight and existential bravery. I will use this song’s lyrics to demonstrate the rich reality of the vampire-myth, and show how it can be used for some pretty powerful “personal and private” psychotherapy, which might be well suited for people who can be as eccentric as I am, most of the time. The lyrics establish all the needed principles and understandings for modern vampire-slayers who are stepping up to do battle with the dark forces that have laid their precious land, people, and villages so low.

The lyrics from the song “The Curse Has Passed Away” are given before each of the following four sections.



The First Act: Seeking Redemption

“I am covered in much shame,
As I watch my neighbors die;
I am but to blame-
Now I pay the price.
Dear Lord hear me call!
May you forgive me all my sins;
How I need your redemption
To bring this curse to its end…”



* * *

The song begins with the lament of a common man, a villager who is ashamed that he stood by while his neighbors were killed by a vampire who is preying on their area. He has made the decision to step up and become a vampire slayer, and he does so in a very special manner: he takes responsibility for his moral failings, and seeks for redemption from a power greater than himself.

He says he is “covered in much shame” and that he is “to blame” for the sad state that things have gotten into. Some might say that he is being too hard on himself, but I disagree; what he is doing is a powerful move towards gaining the strength he needs to undertake the great reparation. When we ignore our duties to our own minds and bodies, we do become partially responsible for the sad state of affairs that we finally descend into. Like the nascent vampire hunter-slayer, we “pay the price”. There is an old saying which I love which goes “We must all fear evil men- but what we must fear, most of all, is the indifference of good men.” Another saying mentions that evil’s triumph needs nothing more than the failure of good men to act.

This portion of the lyrics also reminds me of a controversial organization called “Alcoholic’s Anonymous”. Most of you know about A.A. but few people who aren’t members really understand the psychological basis upon which it hinges. As part of my work, I’ve had the task of working with recovering addicts and alcoholics, and have read the A.A. literature. More importantly, I have read what the great founding father of systems theory-based therapy, Gregory Bateson, had to say about Alcoholics Anonymous when he studied their “twelve steps” to recovery.

The very first steps in Alcoholics Anonymous require an alcoholic- or an addict- to fully admit that their lives are firmly out of their control. They are asked to look and realize that their addiction cannot be defeated by any personal resource or power that they have in their command. This experience is had by addicts and alcoholics who hit what they call “rock bottom”- and are forced to realize that they are slaves to their addiction and cannot save themselves. Alcoholics Anonymous then re-orients the suffering addict to what they call a “higher power”- not the Christian God, but whatever Higher Power one believes in or “god” as one conceives of him/her/it, and asks them to give their lives and trust over to the higher power that alone can restore them to sanity.

Some people don’t like this kind of thinking. They hate to think that thousands upon thousands of men and women are being taught that they don’t have what it takes to beat addiction. But this ego-centered pride is precisely the issue with alcoholics and addicts- they are suffering because they firmly believe that they either don’t have a problem, or that “they” can handle it. But if they could handle it, why haven’t they yet? Why can’t they beat their addiction, even though they may have tried dozens of times?

In the nadir of despair, the addict or alcoholic finally breaks free of the slavery to the prideful self, and realizes that no resource that the limited ego possesses is alone sufficient to battle addiction. Transpersonal resources from something higher than ego must be channeled, invoked, and called upon for aid.

Gregory Bateson, in his book “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”, believed that this was a profound epistemological shift for an addict to undergo, and furthermore, it was a shift from an inadequate epistemology to a more adequate one, in the life of the addict. He believed that it was a great example of a second-order cybernetic change which was needful for many alcoholics to recover.

What the alcoholic calls out for, when seeking the transpersonal resources of the “higher power”- whatever they visualize that higher power to be- is what the soon-to-be vampire slayer is calling out for when he calls out for redemption. His shameful, scared self cannot stand up alone to the fiend that is his nemesis. A higher power must infuse the shell of the ego and transform it into a Godly instrument of reparation. Then and only then does the slayer have the extraordinary courage and drive that he needs to fulfill his quest and overcome a supernatural evil.

Interestingly enough, later steps in the Alcoholics Anonymous program require the alcoholic to make what is called a “fearless and searching moral inventory” of their lives; they must admit, fully admit and take responsibility, for the many failings and wrongs they’ve done to others. Again, this is not humbling or punishment- it is a route to a needed peace.

One is not truly free of the past, nor set on the path of healing, until one becomes honest with themselves and admits their wrongs- wrongs to this self, the world, and others. The past can’t be changed, but a better future can be reached when the shackles of the past are broken. And breaking these shackles begins when the guilt or shame of these shackles is splintered and neutralized by self-confession and acceptance. Nothing that is kept locked in denial or ignorance can ever be “forgiven” or “redeemed”. But anything that is brought into the light of acceptance and responsibility can be washed clean. The power trapped in the denial must be released, to flow on to rightness.

The vampire slayer admits his guilt, his shame, and begs for redemption in the beginning of our song, thus beginning the process of freedom from his past and the darkness that holds him trapped, and receives the emotional and spiritual reinforcement of his “Lord”- his higher power as it were- and gains the needed transpersonal strength he needs to begin his quest to “bring this curse to its end”.



The Second Act: Halls of Darkness

“Now I stand before his evil lair,
Anticipating the night to fade;
It shall be done, I cannot turn back now!
My people his victims in hell, they'll not stay!

As I crawl through these halls of darkness
My life keeps flashing before my eyes;
With God in my heart and stake in my hands,
Will I seal his fate?
Ahead the mystery lies-

Someone hear my cries!
The sickness must die.
I can only pray the curse will pass away...”

* * *

The vampire slayer has set out, well armed and equipped with the instruments of the reparation, and arrived at the lair of the vampire. He has approached in stealth through the dangerous night, but now bides his time for the sun to get closer to coming up and for the night to fade. The vampire slayer knows that he is always disadvantaged in battle against a vampire because these creatures are more subtle and strong than most people give them credit for, outside of their supernatural powers.

The forces inside your psyche that have inflicted the strain and curse on you are far more subtle and a part of your psychic being than you imagine. On equal footing, they will win most fights. What makes you able to overcome them is the fact that you move with the righteousness and blessing of the higher divine world- the transpersonal forces of redeeming order- and the fact that you allow nature itself and good sense to become your ally.

The slayer knows that he will need the sun to be on his side when he faces the vampire, for vampires, creatures of disorder and darkness, cannot bear the light of the sun. The sun that gives so much life freely is the antithesis of the life-taking undead, and it gives strength to the vampire slayer while taking strength away from vampires. So, our slayer in this story waits till dawn is approaching before he begins his assault. There is no reason to fight harder when you can fight smarter- vampires can seldom be defeated by brute force alone. Strategy is required.

It is better to strike at them when they are getting weak or when they are weakest- which means dawn or daytime. The deepest, darkest part of the night is not a vampire slayer’s friend in his task, and nor is it a friend to any person whose psyche is tormented by the vampires within. It is the time of nightmares, of loneliness, and of torturous restlessness.

The slayer must have resolve, just as the slayer in this song has- he cannot turn back. Without that resolve, no victory over these wicked powers is possible. This is not just a matter of competition or professional pride; the slayer in the song says “It shall be done I cannot turn back now- my people his victims in hell, they’ll not stay!”

The victims of his vampire curse have become tormented undead themselves, and are now figuratively speaking “in hell”- in lasting torment. The same is true for your own internal victims- those parts of yourself, those portions of your personality, mind, and soul that have been dragged down by the enemy or enemies inside. Once you begin your assault on these powers that have enslaved you, there is no turning back or those portions of you will be lost forever, and you will forever remain in a broken, diseased, and cursed state.

It sounds hard, but nothing else will provide the motivation you need to rouse the energy and power it takes to drive the stake into the heart of your internal vampires and demons. You cannot let this be a “leave now, try again later” game. You’ll withdraw every time. You must make it into a “win or die” game. Your mental health and wholeness is on the line. Let the stress and tension of it turn into strength for your arm.

When the time comes, you must go deep into yourself, into the corridors of mind and memory, the “halls of darkness” that our vampire slayer wanders through, searching for the inner lair of the enemy. As he wanders, he reports that his “life keeps flashing before his eyes”- and naturally it would, for when you descend into the deep places of the mind, memories and long-repressed material keeps emerging in strange and sometimes disturbing ways.

He has come there with “God in his heart and stake in his hand”- thus, he has covered the aims of redemption and the needs of the transpersonal realm, and the aims of practicality by equipping himself correctly. Neither faith alone, nor weapons alone would have been enough; neither can be neglected. Both are needed. You cannot face your own inner conflicts without ordinary preparations as well as extraordinary ones.

He asks an important question now, in the song: “Will I seal his fate? Ahead the mystery lies…” The vampire slayer does not know how this will turn out. He is not there with certainty as his ally; he is there because he has no other choice but to go. He is a slayer; he must try. He is facing the real mystery: what happens when a person finally gives up on shame, fear, guilt, and reaches outside of themselves for aid from the highest powers, and casts themselves into the maw of personal darkness to do battle with the true enemy?

Is the slayer called to fulfill an archetypal role and win an archetypal victory? Or is he fated to be another victim with a tragic story, just a smaller part of some greater story? No one knows, but still, no choice is had because the slayer is moving in an archetypal corridor of activity which is greater than himself. He is there in the heart of darkness as an act of faith in the greater role to which he is fatefully appointed.

All he can do is cry out that the “sickness must die”- something many people have called out in hope and despair as their own internal conflicts and illnesses consumed them, and they wished for healing. They, like the vampire slayer, can only pray that their curse will pass away.



The Third Act: Plunging the Stake

“Now I face my feudal tyrant;
I see his eyes watch the rising sun;
A look of triumph turns to hate!
As I plunge the stake my revenge is done.

Someone hear my cries!
The sickness has died.
I could only pray the curse would pass away…”

* * *

At the heart of darkness, the lair of the vampire, our hero faces his “feudal tyrant”- the ruler of his lands had become a vampire and began to torment his own people. Having one’s own mind consumed with issues, problems, and repressed psychic monstrosities is like that: slowly, something dark and unstoppable undermines a person’s ability to exercise self-sovereignty and a natural force inside the mind that should be harmoniously integrated instead exerts harmful force upon the vulnerable insides of the self.

After a while, it is clear that “you” are no longer in charge of your own life and mind anymore. Your position of peace and harmonious centrality of existence within the structure you call “self” is now interrupted; you might as well be a stranger in your own head, a victim of your own devices, though for the purposes of accessing this myth to heal them, they will become vampires, and you the hawthorn-stake wielding slayer.

Our hero faces his “feudal tyrant” and calls him so- he identifies the enemy, and verifies that identity through facing him, eye to eye. We must identify the problems that hide in ourselves, the dark knots of repressed psychic force that have taken so much strength and power from the fertile depths in which we buried them. If we know the name of evil, it loses power. To know the name of anything, its true identity, steals power from it. When unbalanced powers are “known”, the key to their balance is simultaneously and intuitively known by the clear-thinking man or woman.

The heart of the entire drama climaxes at this point: the vampire-slayer sees the vampire-lord as it realizes its defeat is upon it: the once smug and triumphant monster now has the light of the rising sun pouring onto him.

The fact that the light is his defeat is a powerful statement. In this myth, it is the light of the sun that lays the vampire lord down, stealing his power so that our hero can “plunge the stake”- make the willful and conscious act that pins the vampire’s power to the dark ground of being, trapping it forever. But it is the light that shines on the vampire that turns its look of triumph into a look of hate- and the central key is given to us here.

In Buddhist insight meditation, a powerful process of spontaneous psychotherapy naturally occurs to experienced practitioners. This process of healing and transformation is affected by sitting back and relaxing, and allowing information and impressions and visions from the deepest regions of the mind to spontaneously arise in the conscious mindstream. The meditator is trained to have no reaction to these things- no desire for them nor aversion for them, just to detachedly apply calm and cool awareness to them, seeing them non-judgmentally for what they are: mere accumulations of psychic force, karmically created, and burning themselves out now that the light of awareness has come upon them.

Like John Snelling says in his book “Buddhism”, the mental formations- even the deep, dark, shameful and sad ones- are like dew drops that naturally fade in the constant warm light of the sun. The awareness, full honest awareness, is the sunlight of the mind, which can (with enough time) cause any deep and dark mental formation within to lose its power and fade naturally. This quality of awareness is not one that most people can develop or maintain- which is why the vampire slayer again calls upon transpersonal resources and relies on resolve, faith, and righteousness to give him the strength he’ll need to pass through such sore tests. He cannot fail! The sun, if it shines strongly and correctly down on the heart of darkness, will naturally fade it away, stealing its power.

So many professionals think that bringing people to “insight” about why they may be depressed or anxious will somehow automatically cure them. There are flaws to this thinking- a person who understands the basis of their depression may still not be able to stop being depressed. The complex of images, ideas, and memories that form the basis of any depression are not there to be merely understood; they must be transformed. And they aren’t transformed simply by knowing their name or where they are- they are transformed through observation, through the constant light of honest awareness, and full acceptance.

It is not realistic to think that you will “explode” your enemy and that will be it. You will paralyze it with the gaze of unflinching and perfect awareness, full acceptance, and you will pin it down with an act of conscious (even vengeful) will, to seal it done.

Do you have the courage to give the very last things in the universe that you want to see or experience the full gaze of your acceptance and unflinching, perfect awareness? For very long periods of time? You would be honest if you said “no”. But you must do it. This is what the God in your heart can help you do- and if you fail, all is lost. There is no more room for excuses- only courage and steel resolve.

It takes courage to get to the inner lair. But once that courage is had, the vampire or vampires inside cannot stand the sun of awareness and honest clarity that you bring with you. Only one thing remains, once the deadly light of your awareness invades on their dark dens- to snatch them before they slink away weakly and run them through with your will. They will be neutralized, no longer able to make plunder of your nights.



The Fourth Act: A Look of Peace Not Seen Before

“His body crumbled into dust,
Then passed before my sight;
Remaining only his cloak,
And ring by its side.
A look of peace not seen before
Upon his face I saw last;
Now I've freed their souls…
The undead shall come to rest!

Night has lost its fears.
I hope and pray the curse will pass away.”

* * *

What the vampire slayer experiences last is a wonder: the powerful vampire lord’s body crumbles away, passing before his sight into nothing but a pile of dust, and leaving behind artifacts of the mortal life that it once led before it became a monster. How powerful! The basic elements of the vampire-lord were not evil; earth is just earth. What was evil, what was destructive was the warped and chaotic force inside the nature of the vampire. That was the real intrusion, woven fatefully by goodness knows what tragedy or ancient legacy.

But the vampire is defeated, and resolved back to the neutral, harmless elements from which it was constituted. The deepest and darkest enemies inside you are not alien beings. Even a creature from the dark side, from the world of chaos or hell, is not “alien” to this reality; heaven and hell are as natural as the earth and the lands of men. Every being plays a role, a needful role- including these dark, twisted forces that have cursed you and cast your inner life down into darkness.

Here, in the real chamber of the mystery, the heart of darkness, the vampire slayer’s quest reaches its first respite, its first end, before he must take up the mantle again to go out and seek to bring reparation to other imbalances. The struggle between vampire and slayer, like the struggle between the chaotic forces and the Gods of ancient mythologies, is a neverending struggle, a struggle that (ironically) maintains the harmony of things within the arcs of its perpetual exchange.

The vampire slayer saw something very unexpected here at the end- the vampire lord’s face was not raging hatefully all the way into dust; at the end of its existence, the vampiric force departed, and it is revealed that the formerly human feudal lord was also a victim of the vampire- and he too is then released, and has a look of peace on his face at last.

The enemies inside us which torment us and harrow us in our sleep are not aliens; they are part of us. They would be our friends and allies were it not for the chaotic quality of the force that now acts upon them, and which needs addressing and reparation. When we resolve our internal enemies, lay to rest the vampires that prey upon us, we not only receive back, in a resolved and neutral/harmonious state the primal elemental power that these psychic structures are comprised of (the dust) but we release a more conscious part of ourselves that can now be at rest and go on strengthening us, instead of stealing our strength.

There is no dualistic foolishness here- nothing ‘evil’ inside you is being utterly destroyed and chopped away; chaotic forces are being resolved and forcibly transformed into a new existence, which is in fact a regenerated form of their older, harmonious existence that was warped by the needful intrusion from the dark outside and from the twists of fate. Things will be new again, now.

All of our “people” are released from hell; their souls are saved. The fragmented parts of us, once stolen by darkness, can reintegrate into wholeness and our whole psychic being can be regenerated. The destruction of the chief vampire releases all of the poor victims from his power- they too now revert to their original harmonious state. The undead have come to rest. The land is healed.

“Night has lost its fears”- when the vampire slayer emerges back into daylight from the dark and evil lair- which no longer seems so dark and evil- a new, regenerated era has begun. People can sleep safely now, free from nightmares and the curse of the vampire. The land will blossom and fruit. The fears that followed you into your nights, the repressed creatures who invaded your nights, bringing depression and anxiety and terrible dreams, they have gone from darkness to light under the sun and your hammer and stake.

The fear that you once knew in the night has faded like a dewdrop in the sun, and your strength will return, for that is the way of things. The curse has ended.

* * *

Now your myth must be written, the story of how you hunted and slew the vampire. You know what needs to be done and what needs to be understood. You know the needful items and instruments, the mental attitudes, the mythical underpinnings behind it all. You know what accepting the role of the vampire slayer means, and you know what it takes to give oneself to a myth, to live it. Bring the threads together. Spirit and matter are not different- no great division exists between them. Your story, your myth, is a spiritual power, a real power that can and will change things. It needs your belief.

You can have faith that the role of vampire-slayer is no mere fantasy, but an ages-old human vocation. It still maintains all the power of the men and women who have worked so hard to keep the human world safe and balanced- by taking on that role, you gain the blessings of that ancient tradition.

So let your quest and your story begin. If needs be, write out your story, and close your eyes every night and live it out in your head- make it a song, a poem, or a longer work like a story or a novella. You know what must happen; you know how to bring about the great reparation. Maybe you won’t tell your story; maybe you’ll prefer to keep it inside yourself, but you must live it just as vividly. Refer back to this treatise for guidance, and one night, sometime before dawn when you are coursing through your visualization, (for this is the proper time to make the strongest attempts, as you well know) and when you are moving through the sea of emotion invoked by the hunt for your vampire, you will see your victory and meet with the peace you seek.