The myth developed for various reasons. In most cultures, it starteded with "the chewing dead" phenomenon. When some bodies are exumeded, any shroud that covers their face appears to have been chewed. It's actually caused by natural byproducts of decomposition. Other factors in the myth are thing like "growing hair/fingernails" when in reality it's the rest of the body that is shrinking rather than the hair growing.
So that's where the animated dead body part comes from. The whole eating the victims life force (in this case blood) is hardly new and completely explainable in the human psyche. We have no naturual predator but evolution says that we must have dangers and thus we are afraid of spiders and fictional predators.
They are works of fiction, that is based off of the imaginations (often pretty lackluster) of the authors.
Game of Thrones has a much more enthralling 'history' yet is a work of fiction, none of the events actually happened including fire breathing dragons roaming the earth.....
The same goes for Vampire diaries and Twilight, they are just there to entertain you, not to teach you. They do neither for me...
Re: Please the current moon phase? By: AwakeTooLong / Knowledgeable
Post # 15 May 16, 2014
Because people are afraid of everything that goes bump in the night, and are always imagining new ways to explain it.
Vampires began as an explanation for medical issues, such as tuberculosis, where individuals would cough up blood and the like. The corpses of those who died this way often had blood on their lips when they were found. If they were exhumed, they would appear to have grown claws or fangs as gums and tissue shrank away from fingernails and teeth. This decomposition would also make the skull look more monstrous, and otherwise result in the corpse appearing quite frightening.
It was assumed, with the blood on the mouth of such individuals, that they were rising from the dead to attack the living. This was often used to explain away various mysteries, and took on a life of its own when real-life serial killers and the like became entwined in the mythology of vampires.
You end up hearing of things like Nosferatu and other such myths. Eventually, in the romance era of literature, we see Bram Stoker create Dracula - the first such version of vampires that made them quite popular. After this we see more and more such fiction about them, including the more modern renditions.
Sadly, people just still can't tell the difference between fiction and real life.
You also have people discussing "psychic vampires" and "spiritual vampires" and so on and so forth. This is also a relatively new idea, rooted in the idea of consuming another's energy. Some go so far as to believe they need to do this to sustain their own well being.
To my experience, this is never really a defined truth and more of a placebo effect.
Re: Please the current moon phase? By: IrisMoon / Beginner
Post # 17 May 16, 2014
For figuring out the moon phases and upcoming full moons, I like to use a program on my computer called Lunabar. It is a great tool for those who practice magick and for Pagans who follow the astrological dates for the quarter Sabbats. Oh and it is free!
