Nyx in the House of Night
Page 4
VAMPI(Y)RES TODAY
The profound nature of this final section, as readers will soon learn, is one in which I take especial interest. For over a year now, I have visited, with considerable regularity and enthusiasm, the French Quarter and adjacent areas in New Orleans, Louisiana, and conducted there an ethnographic study. In that time, I have discovered that living amongst the Crescent City are perhaps several dozen extraordinary citizens who, quite vehemently, self-identify as “vampi(y)re.” By this is meant people who consume, or absorb, either human and/or animal blood (sanguinarian), psychic energy (psi-vamp), or both (hybrid), and do so out of a need that they claim derives from the lack of natural energy their bodies produce.
My research in this particular field is ongoing, but some of what I’ve learned is reflected, in various ways, in the title given to this section. The title’s significance is twofold. First, the term “vampi(y)re” is a culmination of the two spellings that remain in regular use today within the community, and it is in the usage of this hybrid term that we may see exemplified the aims of the Voices of the Vampire Community (VVC). The organization’s members represent various associated vampi(y)ric “groups, Houses, Orders, paths, beliefs, and segments of the vampi(y)re community who meet and are able to put aside personal differences to work together to discuss, suggest, implement, and support projects, ideas, and other intellectual works that help to improve the overall community.”
[17]
Second, the title given to this section also pays homage to a compatriot of mine, Joseph Laycock, and his work Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires, which is quickly becoming a canonical work in the field. Laycock contends, and accurately so I think, that the vampi(y)re, as a category of person, has been defined primarily from the outside, in literature, film, and various popular interest groups. It is only now, after some thirty years of progress, that we’ve begun to see the vampi(y)re community “take ownership of the category, redefining it from the inside.”
[18] Under this new definition, the vampi(y)re has transcended myth and the popular imagination, becoming, as Laycock aptly claims, a valid, tangible category of person.
For our purposes here, it is interesting to note that the House of Night’s vampyre society shares many similarities with the real vampi(y)re community. For example, fledgling vampyres in general, and Zoey in particular, begin to experience the “Change,” including a longing for blood, during their teens. This may also be said about the members of the vampi(y)re community whom I’ve studied or read about, for they, too, attest to feeling, just after puberty, the urge to consume either blood or psychic energy. Another example may be derived from the ceremonial speech given by Neferet during Zoey’s first Full Moon Ritual in Marked, in which Neferet says to the fledgling vampyres assembled around her that “[t]his is a time when the veil between the mundane world and the strange and beautiful realms of the Goddess become thin indeed” [italics mine]. Both “veil” and “mundane” are two words that appear frequently in real vampi(y)re discourses. There, the word “veil” generally alludes to “The Black Veil,” which is a sort of vampi(y)re code of ethics that has taken prominence in the community. The word “mundane,” on the other hand, is in the vampi(y)re community a somewhat elitist term.
[19] It refers to most “non-vamps,” or as psychic vampire and author Michelle Belanger defines, “people who are entirely focused on [a] material existence to the exclusion of all things spiritual.”
[20]
In addition, Neferet’s ceremonial speech foregrounds two central themes in both the series and the real vampi(y)re community: ritual and magick. To discuss the role they play among vampi(y)res, I must again turn to my astute colleague Joseph Laycock and his groundbreaking work in the field. Laycock contends that, while “[vampi(y)rism] as a whole is not a religion,” there do exist “several formal groups within the [vampi(y)re] community that have a primary interest in religion, metaphysics, and magic[k] that would qualify them as [New Religious Movements].”
[21] But on the whole, spirituality is, for the members of the vampi(y)re community I’ve documented, an almost exclusively personal venture. It is independent of the community, yet at the same time it is closely linked to the vampi(y)ric experience of the community’s individual members.
I should also add here that Question 155 of the Vampire & Energy Work Research Survey (VEWRS), a survey conducted by the Atlanta Vampire Alliance (AVA) to address questions and concerns about the vampi(y)ric experience and community, included a list of fifty-one religions, as well as Pagan and esoteric traditions. The survey instructed the participants, members of the vampi(y)re community, to check all with which they identified. It is worth noting that among the categories marked most frequently by participants in the survey were Magick, Wicca, Neo-Paganism, Occultism, Christianity, and Shamanism.
[22] Clearly, these results indicate a strong spiritual connection between the real vampi(y)re community and the vampyre society in House of Night, wherein magick and Wicca are also strong components of the vampyric identity.
Moving on from spiritual matters to more physical ones, the harvesting of human blood by the vampyres in the House of Night series is also of particular interest here. This particular ritual between vampyre and donor, which is kept more or less on the sidelines in the House of Night—we do not know, for instance, where the larger vampyre community obtains its blood—proves equally important in the real vampi(y)re community, as well. Here, just as in the House of Night, it operates under similar secretive terms. During the course of my research, I have documented psychic, blood-drinking, and hybrid vampi(y)res, all of whom use their own methods to harvest and consume (or absorb) blood and/or energy. However, in some cases, blood is stored in a similar stylized fashion as what we observe during the Dark Daughters’ ritual led by Aphrodite in Marked.
In the case of blood-drinking vampi(y)res in particular, I have documented direct contact feeding (as we’ve seen in the House of Night series between Zoey and Heath, among others) and the harvesting of human blood into receptacles (similar to the wine goblet used during the ritual in Marked), as well as the use of refrigerated blood for consumption in small quantities. In the case of the latter, I may even claim firsthand experience. Some time ago, one of the participants in my study had, on one instance, offered me a sip of his tea “concoction,” which he on occasion prepared for himself and drank at such times when fresh human blood was not in ready supply. It was not, of course, until after I had sampled the tea that I learned of its other ingredient, much like Zoey and the wine she consumed during her first Dark Daughters ritual (although, unlike Zoey, my response was more one of intrigue than physical ecstasy).
There is one other similarity of note between the vampi(y)re community and the vampyres of the Casts’ creation: the name selection and identity-making we observe in the House of Night series. This, I feel, is one of the more engaging facets of the series. After all, how many of us have dreamed of leaving behind the boring, day-to-day life we know for another, more fantastical one: a life in which we may pick for ourselves a new name and identity, and embrace our individual differences as a means of unity? As impossible as this fantasy may seem, one has only to look to the real vampi(y)re community and its members for inspiration, some of whom, in the New Orleans and Atlanta communities, I have come to know and communicate with on a personal basis, and therefore offer here as examples: Belfazaar Ashantison, Mephistopheles, Jezabel DeLuna, Maven, and Merticus.
What I hope the reader has gained here is a better understanding not just of the distinct histories of the folkloric revenant, the vampire of popular media, and the real vampi(y)re community, but their importance in fully appreciating the House of Night series’ unique and exceptional breed of vampyre. In drawing from older, mythic elements of European revenant folklore along with more recent images of vampires, the Casts have succeeded in creating a modern vampyre—and a modern vampyre society—that has enthralled readers with a thoroughness that even Dr
acula would envy.
JOHN EDGAR BROWNING is a PhD Candidate in English Writing and Culture and teaches English composition and monster theory at Louisiana State University. He is the coauthor and coeditor of six published and forthcoming books, including: with Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart, Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms: Essays on Gender, Race, and Culture (Scarecrow, 2009); with Picart, Dracula in Visual Media: Film, Television, Comic Book and Electronic Game Appearances, 1921–2010 (McFarland, 2010); again with Picart, Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology (Palgrave Macmillan, contracted and forthcoming); Movie Monsters in Print: An Illustrated History (Schiffer Books, expected 2011); with Judith Kerman, The Fantastic in Holocaust Literature (McFarland, contracted and forthcoming); and The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, A Critical Edition (Apocryphile Press, expected 2011). Recent works also include several published and forthcoming book chapters and reviews, journal articles, and encyclopedic entries on Dracula, vampires, and horror in such venues as Film & History; Studies in the Fantastic; Horror Studies; Dead Reckonings: A Review Magazine for the Horror Field; Asian Gothic: Essays on Literature, Film, and Anime (McFarland, 2008); The Encyclopedia of the Vampire (Greenwood, 2010); Schooling Ghouls: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Pedagogy of Horror (accepted and forthcoming); and Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture (Manchester University Press, accepted and forthcoming). He has also served as a manuscript referee for The Journal of Homosexuality (Routledge-Taylor & Francis) and currently sits on the board of directors for the Empowering Spirits Foundation (ESF), a nonprofit civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality through community service activities. Additionally, Browning has spent the last year conducting an ethnographic study of persons living in New Orleans who self-identify as vampire, a project that has become the focal point of his doctoral dissertation. He is indebted to Leah Wilson, a highly qualified and dedicated editor, for her incredibly helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this chapter.
[1] See John Edgar Browning and Caroline Joan (Kay) Picart, Dracula in Visual Media: Film, Television, Comic Book, and Video Game Appearances (2011).
[2] Montague Summers, The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928).
[3] The “dangerous dead” is a phrase Paul Barber uses frequently in his seminal work, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (1988), to describe those who have died then afterwards returned, or will likely return, from the grave to do harm on the living.
[4] Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death.
[5] Barber observes in Vampires, Burial, and Death that the signification of “odor” is not, in the folklore of the revenant, regionally consistent throughout Europe. For example, villagers living in geographically cooler areas (where, unbeknownst to them, cooler soil acted more or less as a preserving agent) naturally concluded that the “unnatural” absence of odor was indicative of vampirism. On the other hand, the presence of odor was interpreted much in the same way by villagers living in geographically warmer areas.
[6] For further discussion on the numerous ways in which to identify and dispose of a revenant, including the “wild signs” produced by the male and female sex organs discussed in detail in regard to the historical case of Peter Plogojowitz, see Barber’s Vampires, Burial, and Death.
[7] Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death.
[8] Ibid.
[9] For further discussion, see Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death.
[10] Michael E. Bell, Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires (2001).
[11] See Barber’s discussion of “apotropaics” and odor.
[12] Randy Page, Galen E. Cole, and Thomas C. Timmreck, Basic Epidemiological Methods and Biostatistics, A Practical Guidebook (1995).
[13] Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death.
[14] David Pirie, The Vampire Cinema (1977).
[15] For a full scientific account of this process, see: Christine Hawkey, “Plasminogen Activator in the Saliva of the Vampire Bat Desmodus Rotundus,” Nature (1966); and Terence Cartwright, “The Plasminogen Activator of Vampire Bat Saliva,” Blood (1974).
[16] A particularly strong example here is Hammer’s Dracula (United Kingdom, 1958), released as Horror of Dracula in the United States.
[17] For more information, see the representative website of the VVC at: http://www.veritasvosliberabit.com/vvc.html.
[18] Joseph Laycock, Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires (2009).
[19] Laycock, Vampires Today.
[20] Michelle Belanger, The Psychic Vampire Codex: A Manual of Magick and Energy Work (2004).
[21] Laycock, Vampires Today. New Religious Movements are defined by religious scholars as religious or spiritual communities or groups of modern origin.
[22] Suscitatio Enterprises, LLC, “Vampirism and Energy Research Study,” http://www.suscitatio.com.
{ By Their Marks You Shall Know Them }
Jana Oliver
WHAT EXACTLY possessed primitive humans to inflict marks on their skin is hard to fathom. Perhaps one of the tribesmen had inadvertently gotten some dirt or ashes in a wound and once it healed, it remained discolored. While sitting around the fire swapping tales, his buddies might have made note of this new thing. With a little experimentation, they realized that if they opened a fresh wound, charred a stick, and buried the black residue inside the slice, the result was a tattoo. Proof that humans are endlessly inventive when they’re bored.
Thousands of years later we have a story about a high school girl who is having a rough day: while Zoey Montgomery is trying to cough her lungs out, her best friend is prattling on about Z’s drunken “almost” boyfriend and a football game. That all becomes irrelevant when Zoey spies the undead guy standing next to her locker. Don’t know about you, but I didn’t have dead guys waiting for me in high school. (Not many of the live ones, either.) There’s no way Zoey can ignore the newcomer’s vivid Mark, the sapphire blue crescent moon tattoo on his forehead, and “the entwining knotwork that framed his equally blue eyes” (Marked).
This dude is a Vampyre Tracker, and he’s not there to compare notes on Zoey’s upcoming geometry test. Instead, he comes equipped with some seriously solemn words for the occasion: “Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night.” After a point of his finger and a totally blinding headache, Zoey no longer needs to fret about her exam. She’s got bigger worries, as that crescent Mark on her forehead announces to the world she is a fledgling vampyre and belongs in a House of Night.
All because of a tattoo.
A SHORT HISTORY OF BODY ART
Different types of body art (tattoos, scarification, piercing, henna, and makeup) play different roles depending on the culture, tribe, and individual. From the simple application of makeup to the painful and permanent scarring created by scarification, the results alter not only the skin but society’s perception of the skin’s owner. Where we in the Western world think nothing of females donning makeup, the act of inserting objects into the skin or having facial tattoos is an entirely different matter. To other cultures, such physical adornments are as common as layering on some foundation and a bit of mascara. Like beauty, tattoos are in the eye of the beholder.
Made by pricking or grooving the skin and adding colored pigment, tattooing has always involved some element of risk even with modern techniques and equipment. The word itself comes from the Tahitian word tatau, which means “to mark.” The earliest evidence of skin art was found on the Iceman, mummified remains discovered along the Italian-Austrian border in 1991. Ötzi, as he is called, carbon dated at about 5,200 years old.
During their mid-eighteenth century voyages to Tahiti, Captain James Cook’s sailors embraced this colorful embellishment, bringing skin art home to European and American societies, where it at first remained primarily confined to the lower classes. Tattoos were considered newsworthy, so expl
orers would bring home indigenous tribesmen, be they Native Americans, Africans, or Polynesians, to be put on display so that citizens could gawk at the “savages’” tattoos.
It wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that European nobility realized they were missing out and began to acquire tattoos themselves. Such notables as King Frederik of Denmark and Czar Nicholas possessed epidermal art. King Edward VII sported a Jerusalem cross in honor of his journey to the Holy Land, and both of his sons (the Duke of Clarence and the future King George V) were tattooed by a Japanese artist. Once royalty took the plunge, it was perfectly acceptable for the upper class to consider adding a mark or two to their own flesh.