dragon .
We’re dealing in very old horror. Two thousand years B.C., the Mesopotamians had a demoness , Lamashtu , who sucked the blood of infants. Generations of storytellers – and rabbinical mythologians – translated Lamashtu into Lilith, Adam’s first wife, the Great Mother who drank the blood of her murdered son, Abel.
Lilith refused to obey Adam; she said, “I’m made from the same dust as you, therefore we’re equal.” So she quit the Garden of Eden, whereupon God turned her into a demon with the head and upper body of a woman, and the tail of a big, fat serpent. All because she didn’t obey her husband? Was God the First Sexist? Discuss.
And - how would you know if you met a lamia ? Ask horror fiction fans and video gamers. The blood-drinking lamia zigzags across European folklore, descended from the mythological Queen of Libya, Lamia. She had an affair with Zeus, and got pregnant. Not a good idea, because Zeus’s wife killed the child, and was always likely to have done so. Mad with grief, Lamia has wandered the earth ever since, killing other women’s children and drinking their blood.
The old storytellers called blood “the red water of life.” Our ancestors made it sacred from the moment they stood upright. Like all great elemental matter it became its own metaphor. The ancient Celts who conquered Europe believed that they hadn’t vanquished an enemy until they had taken his head and drunk his blood. Their wives drank it too, to increase their chances of having male children.
The Bible uses the word “blood” half a hundred times, beginning with God telling Noah in the Book of Genesis how to build a system of values. “And of a certainty for your life’s blood I will demand account, and from every animal I will demand account, and from every man I will demand accounting if he take the life of his fellow man. He who sheds the blood of a man by man his blood will be shed.”
Blood elevated sacrifice. When the sons of Adam made offerings to God, Cain brought only produce from his fields. His brother Abel, though, won greater divine affection by killing animals. In his jealousy Cain slew Abel and became the first murderer. Now comes the vampire part; according to some versions of the story, Cain was condemned to stalk the earth forever, and while doing so drank people’s blood.
Even Homer, the most glorious voice of the classical past, got in on the act. In Book Eleven of The Odyssey , the wandering hero, Odysseus, needed to talk to people who had passed away and were now in Hades, the Underworld. “When Ihad prayed sufficiently to the dead, I cut the throats of two sheepand let the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts came troopingup … brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maidswho had been crossed in love, and brave men who had been killed in battle,with their armor still smirched with blood; they came from every quarterand flitted round the trench with a strange kind of screaming sound thatmade me turn pale with fear.”
Africa, Asia, Latin America – blood seeps like a red tide across the universe of folk belief. Down the centuries, on all continents, travelers heard lurid tales of humans - and bats - who sucked you dry as you slept. Early Christian evangelists ran into the vampire myth all over Europe, and they lumped vampires in with witchcraft – thereby closing an interesting circle, because one of the word roots is the Turkish upir , umpier or uper , meaning witch .
Nor did a growing increase of learning make the vampire go away. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Rome’s inquisitors attacked the belief specifically, because it blasphemed the core of Catholic rite, the sacredness of Christ’s blood in the celebration of the Mass. He said to his apostles at the Last Supper, as he held up a chalice of red wine, “Take this all of you and drink, for this is my blood, of the new and everlasting testament which will be shed for many unto the
We’re dealing in very old horror. Two thousand years B.C., the Mesopotamians had a demoness , Lamashtu , who sucked the blood of infants. Generations of storytellers – and rabbinical mythologians – translated Lamashtu into Lilith, Adam’s first wife, the Great Mother who drank the blood of her murdered son, Abel.
Lilith refused to obey Adam; she said, “I’m made from the same dust as you, therefore we’re equal.” So she quit the Garden of Eden, whereupon God turned her into a demon with the head and upper body of a woman, and the tail of a big, fat serpent. All because she didn’t obey her husband? Was God the First Sexist? Discuss.
And - how would you know if you met a lamia ? Ask horror fiction fans and video gamers. The blood-drinking lamia zigzags across European folklore, descended from the mythological Queen of Libya, Lamia. She had an affair with Zeus, and got pregnant. Not a good idea, because Zeus’s wife killed the child, and was always likely to have done so. Mad with grief, Lamia has wandered the earth ever since, killing other women’s children and drinking their blood.
The old storytellers called blood “the red water of life.” Our ancestors made it sacred from the moment they stood upright. Like all great elemental matter it became its own metaphor. The ancient Celts who conquered Europe believed that they hadn’t vanquished an enemy until they had taken his head and drunk his blood. Their wives drank it too, to increase their chances of having male children.
The Bible uses the word “blood” half a hundred times, beginning with God telling Noah in the Book of Genesis how to build a system of values. “And of a certainty for your life’s blood I will demand account, and from every animal I will demand account, and from every man I will demand accounting if he take the life of his fellow man. He who sheds the blood of a man by man his blood will be shed.”
Blood elevated sacrifice. When the sons of Adam made offerings to God, Cain brought only produce from his fields. His brother Abel, though, won greater divine affection by killing animals. In his jealousy Cain slew Abel and became the first murderer. Now comes the vampire part; according to some versions of the story, Cain was condemned to stalk the earth forever, and while doing so drank people’s blood.
Even Homer, the most glorious voice of the classical past, got in on the act. In Book Eleven of The Odyssey , the wandering hero, Odysseus, needed to talk to people who had passed away and were now in Hades, the Underworld. “When Ihad prayed sufficiently to the dead, I cut the throats of two sheepand let the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts came troopingup … brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maidswho had been crossed in love, and brave men who had been killed in battle,with their armor still smirched with blood; they came from every quarterand flitted round the trench with a strange kind of screaming sound thatmade me turn pale with fear.”
Africa, Asia, Latin America – blood seeps like a red tide across the universe of folk belief. Down the centuries, on all continents, travelers heard lurid tales of humans - and bats - who sucked you dry as you slept. Early Christian evangelists ran into the vampire myth all over Europe, and they lumped vampires in with witchcraft – thereby closing an interesting circle, because one of the word roots is the Turkish upir , umpier or uper , meaning witch .
Nor did a growing increase of learning make the vampire go away. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Rome’s inquisitors attacked the belief specifically, because it blasphemed the core of Catholic rite, the sacredness of Christ’s blood in the celebration of the Mass. He said to his apostles at the Last Supper, as he held up a chalice of red wine, “Take this all of you and drink, for this is my blood, of the new and everlasting testament which will be shed for many unto the
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