Finding the Real Vampires

Novelists and screenwriters thoroughly enjoy titillating their audiences with the undead. The vampire is one of the most popular of these creatures. Often portrayed as pigment defective with overly red lips and eyes, these creatures feed off the blood of their victims. It’s great entertainment. But these modern depictions have distorted the original idea of the vampire as a human archetype.

An archetype is basically the generic description of a particular type of person. For example, calling someone a “Mother Theresa” is to use the self-sacrificing nature of the original Mother Theresa as an archetype. Calling someone a “Judas” is to accuse that person of betraying a good friend for minor financial benefits while the Judas of the Gospels is the archetype. Many of the monsters today’s artists frighten us with began their lives as archetypes. The vampire is such an archetype.

Although many historians trace the first vampire to Vlad the Impaler it is more accurate to say that the character Dracula may have been inspired by this historical and blood-thirsty ruler. It’s more probable to conclude that Bram Stoker took the archetype of the vampire, found a historical reference to the name “Dracula”, and created a story that he hoped would scare the pants off the reader. By looking at the qualities of the literary vampire, one can then identify the characteristics of the archetypal human vampire.’

Literary vampires feed off of the life’s blood of their victims. True vampires are those that suck the energy of those closest to them. They take no independent initiative unto themselves but use guilt or a sense of duty to emotionally and spiritually exhaust the one who befriends them. Their lives are full of drama and they expect their friends to take responsibility for all the chaos that they, themselves, create. In a marriage, the vampire-victim relationship literally sucks the life out of the spouse until they are just a shadow of their former selves. If there is a separation or divorce, the vampires tend to stalk the spouse because they have become dependent on the spouse’s energy. If the ex-spouse is able to get completely away, the vampire will quickly marry again and start feeding off the new spouse.

Literary vampires must remain in the dark. When exposed to the light they dissolve into dust. The human vampire also lives in the dark. They protect themselves with lies and deceit. They are experts at mental gymnastics and make sure that those around them are too confused to find the truth inside the maze of deception. Often, the victims begin to question their own sanity rather than the honesty of the vampire because all of reality has been twisted until it is unrecognizable. If the victim can gather the strength to confront the vampire with rationality and truth the vampire will often leave because the light of truth shows the vampires just how hollow they are and they can’t face that.

This is also why the literary vampire cannot see his own reflection. Selfish and predatory, the human vampire will do everything possible not to have to do any soul searching. Within the vampire’s soul is a hole so big that the vampire would have to deal with childhood issues that are too painful to revisit. If they are revisited and dealt with the vampire then has to deal with all the pain that the vampire, himself, has caused over the years. That’s a lot of work. Most vampires find it easier to continue being vampires than doing any true healing.

The quickest way to destroy a literary vampire is by putting a wooden stake through the heart. Throughout mythology, wood is often symbolic of the better qualities of mankind. Carpenters, then, are people who are known for promoting the goodness of Man. This is why the stake must be of wood. The heart, of course, is where true love resides. So, for the human vampire, it is only true love for a truly good person that can destroy the predatory nature of the vampire. It is love, alone, that will give the vampire the incentive to actually look in that mirror and make the changes necessary to nurture, rather than destroy, the object of that love.

Bram Stoker did a pretty good job of portraying all the particulars of the original archetype of the vampire. Writers today, in an effort to be new and improved, often forget that the most frightening monsters are the ones that live right next door. Perhaps the old archetype will find a way back into the vampire stories one day. And,as a result, they can help each and every one of us identify the real vampires in our lives. Because, really, that’s what archetypes are for.