by Del Howison
But if you are like most folks, this is probably not your life. More likely, you have been out in the world like a normal person, dating here and there, laughing and going out with friends and then, smack!, you meet and are now dating your vampire. What are you after? Is this the gateway to a long-term relationship, or is it just a fling?
If you believe you are opening the doorway to a long-term relationship, what if your friends cannot stand your vampire? You are going to have to decide what is important to you. Are your friends usually right on with their observations? How close are these friends? Will they stick around even if they don’t like your other half? True friends would do that, but true friends would also let you know what they think. Are they your friends because you all usually think alike? If that is the case, then maybe you’d better think again about your new date. Maybe you have been smitten and really can’t trust your emotions at the moment.
Your friends can provide the barometer that may be much needed here. Listen hard and really consider what they have to say. Then make your decision. You may lose friends, or you may lose a vampire. But the bottom line is that you have to ask yourself those questions and really listen to your own inner voice.
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Who Was Van Helsing?
Bram Stoker’s vampire hunter, Abraham Van Helsing, is based on a real-life crusader against vampire kind, a Dutch physician named Michiel Van Rotmensen.
After the stalemate at the Battle of Eylau, Napoleon began to recruit vampires into his army in secret as an attempt to bolster the strength of his forces. When Napoleon sent in his army to dissolve Koninkrijk, Holland, a handful of vampires entered with the military and remained in the country long after the Battle of Leipzig had forced Napoleon’s withdrawal. One of these vampires, a venerable Tombeur, went on a rampage of sorts. Rather than killing his victims, as his Tombeur brethren tended to do, he seduced, turned, and abandoned over a hundred Dutch women within the course of a year before being apprehended and executed by a Bulgarian sâbotnichav expatriate with father issues.
Each of these women seemed to have been selected based a combination of extraordinary physical beauty and zealous piety, uncommon among their liberal Calvinist kin. One of these women, Lijsje, was the wife of Johannes de Vries, a doctor from Maastricht. His scientific pragmatism contrasted strongly with his wife’s religious fervor, but when his beloved became mysteriously ill with a malady he could not diagnose, and subsequently underwent a fearsome metamorphosis into an utterly different creature, he found his lack of faith and his sanity challenged.
Lijsje recovered from her illness, and evidenced a newfound strength and vitality after her convalescence had ended. She was suddenly extremely sensitive to daylight, and was in a near comatose state from dawn until dusk. More startling for Dr. de Vries were her changes in temperament: Lijsje had transformed from a meek and obedient wife to an aggressive, shameless woman, almost fearsome in the passion of her newly awakened sexual appetites. His love for his wife caused him to turn a blind eye as best he could, but he could not ignore her sudden nocturnal meanderings.
Concerned that his wife’s indiscretions meant she had brazenly taken a lover, he chose to follow her. That first evening, he spotted his wife following a young French nobleman through Maastricht. He lost track of her briefly as she wound through the darkened streets and then eventually found her eviscerating the nobleman in a filthy alley off of Bonnefanten Street. Something in him snapped, and he found himself confronted with the truth of his wife’s new nature. In a fit of rage and grief, he beheaded his wife and then burned her corpse to ashes.
He pled his case to the police, turning himself in and offering the truth of his actions. His words were met with mockery and derision, and he was accused of murdering both his wife and the French marquis. He escaped his captors amid an enormous amount of carnage and took a blood vow to avenge his wife.
He changed his name to Michiel Van Rotmensen and took off across the globe in search of knowledge of the origins and weaknesses of vampires. Consulting the Bibliothèque de Paris, and libraries in Mosul, Athens, Lisbon, and the Vatican, he gathered as much information about vampires as possible and set out on a crusade, not for understanding, but for the sole sake of the destruction of every vampire he could locate. Van Rotmensen became the most infamous and most successful hunters of the nineteenth century, and is credited (or reviled) for being responsible for the destruction of over a thousand vampires.
One of his disciples, Bernard Desmarais, was one of the first physicians to publicly acknowledge the existence of a medical origin for the vampiric condition. He put this hypothesis toward an unsuccessful quest to eradicate the pathogen on a biological level.
Does He Like the Chase? Should I Play Hard to Get?
Thou art to me a delicious torment.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The important thing here is to decide just exactly what “the chase” actually is to a vampire. A vampire is predatory by nature. How much effort does he need to expend to have a relationship, and why would he expend that effort? How is the chase different from the hunt? How do you differentiate or distinguish yourself as being one and not the other?
Your vampire, we are assuming, has existed for decades, possibly centuries. Along with all of that time comes boredom. Everybody he knew, everybody he has ever loved or cared for, has died. He is alone. He realizes that to start another relationship is to start the clock ticking again and that the person in the relationship with him will inevitably pass away. Why should he invest himself in what will inevitably be a gut-wrenching, heart-churning failure? You are mortal, and time is a commodity you embrace. For him, time is his own personal Hell, condemning him to a lonely, ultimately futile forever.
Both vampires and humans do derive pleasure from romantic and sexual pursuit, though the term should be considered more literally here than it is when it is used to reference human-human relations. The chase, both in love and in feeding, is integral to the well-being of a vampire’s psyche. They are simply hardwired for predation. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans of vampires have shown that there is increased activity in their brain’s subcortex and that their acid-sensing ion channel protein is also inhibited, explaining, in part, their near-complete fearlessness. (Luckily, for the rest of us, as a vampire ages, their prefrontal cortex evolves to compensate for their augmented aggressive tendencies.) This fearlessness relates directly to the role of hunter that is deeply ingrained in their nature, amplified by the sexual arousal that they feel during the process of the hunt and the act of feeding. The adrenaline and euphoria that the hunt provides offset the emotional and psychological repercussions of their inability to process solar radiation.
If you allow him to chase you, you run the risk that your vampire will try to hunt you instead, and just as vampires are natural predators, humans are natural targets. It has been hypothesized that human beings have not yet evidenced the evolutionary anti-predator adaptations necessary to combat vampires. In fact, humans can develop a psychological addiction to the sensation of the oxytocin release triggered by vampire saliva, making many humans not simply easy targets, but willing ones.
Your job, and it is a huge undertaking, is to keep him focused on you as a mate an not as prey. You must occupy him at all times when he might be alone, when his mind might wander, without causing him to grow tired of you or think of you as an annoyance, lest you become possibly nothing more than his next TV dinner. We reiterate here what we said before: Do not speak of time or ages. Relate nothing to a beginning and an ending. He must feel that everything in your relationship is happening here and now. He cannot be allowed to pause to become nostalgic or to have a moment to peer into the future.
To be successful in achieving a true relationship, you must convince him that you are worth the time spent. You must use every charm you have to stir him. You must make his sexuality bloom, his romantic emotions blossom, and his fear of failure wilt (but make sure that is the only thing you make wil
t).
But there is no romantic “chase” for him here. That is a misnomer. The only chase is yours. It is the chase to make him sit up and take notice of you and want to spend time with you and embrace you. While it’s tempting to play hard to get, and it does have its benefits initially, we believe that it is detrimental to a serious relationship in the long run. The rewards of a relationship based on trust as opposed to teasing are immeasurable and form the foundation of a love that is equal parts friendship and passion. However, this is nearly impossible to accomplish with a vampire. Be warned: One misstep and you may feel the slice of skin as two teeth puncture your lovely porcelain neck!
Bewitchings: Adding a Little Oomph
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.
—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
What do you do when you’ve given it your all and you just can’t seem to turn the corner with your vampire? You know he is enticed. You can feel a spark heating up the ember of love in your heart. But things just aren’t going your way. What can you do? What are your alternatives? Do you attempt any attraction and binding spells?
While fear and loathing have permeated mankind’s view of vampires throughout the ages, a great deal of folklore has surfaced regarding ways to attract vampires through supernatural means. Recorded accounts of these attraction potions go as far back as the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews at the dawn of civilization. Ancient Romani oral tradition provides instructions for assembling a love potion for men or women who wish to attract vampires, and similar love potions exist in the lore of the many cultures.
Historians have hypothesized that these potions and fetishes were used by those who sincerely wished to attract a vampire’s attention for romance, but that they were also widely utilized by vampire hunters to lure their prey into complex traps.
From the predynastic age of Egypt through the Ptolemaic dynasty, specific types of scepters were carved with intricate symbols of attraction, power, and entreaty in order to extend invitation to—and placate—the blood-drinkers. During Japans Nara period, white sandalwood was pounded with dried blood and formed into an incense to beckon the Kyuuketsuki (Japanese vampires), and in the Philippines, duhat (plum) and yantok (a vine much like rattan that carries a fruit) were marinated in a mixture of blood, ginger, mansanitas (a Philippine tree) bark, and makahiya leaves to form an offering for the predatory Mandurugo (a demon that appears as a beautiful woman during the day to attract young men). During the seventeenth century, Vinaigre des Quatre Voleurs, or Four Thieves Vinegar, came into use in France. It was believed for many years that Four Thieves, in addition to its use for attracting vampires, was utilized as a means of warding off the plague.
In fact, modern historians have discovered that la peste, or the plague, was not an actual reference to the plague as we commonly understand it, but was a euphemism for a vampiric incursion into Western Europe. These historians found that there were two variations of Four Thieves vinegar that were employed: one to ward off vampires and another to compel them to compliance. The methods utilized to attract vampires were not limited to the use of potions; many occultists through the centuries have developed rituals of summoning and binding that were intended to lure and trap vampires. The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe performed elaborate rituals to seduce vampires into their service, and it is rumored that Sir Francis Dashwood, 15th Baron le Despencer, was not merely a devil-worshiping English politician, but a very old, very powerful vampire who sat at the crown of the strongest and most populous vampire clans of England and Ireland. Ruthless, power-hungry, and domineering, Sir Dashwood regularly employed ceremonial magic to enthrall, enslave, and exploit his own kind.
The current general consensus regarding potions for attracting vampires is that you should not force the relationship if both partners are not into it. If you really feel that the two of you belong together, and you are determined on this course of action, then give the ol’ love spell a try. The worst it could do is backfire horribly.
To cast a traditional basic love spell, gather the following items:
• A quill
• A piece of parchment
• Oil of ylang ylang, patchouli, litsea cubeba, and palmarosa
• A plain envelope
• A handful of rose petals
• Two red candles
• A pomegranate
• Black cord
On the night of the new moon, anoint the candles with the oil mixture, and then place one on each side of the area in which you are doing the work. Light them. Halve the pomegranate and squeeze the juice out of the seeds and into a shallow receptacle. Prick your finger, and mix your blood with the pomegranate juice. Using this mixture as an ink, write the name of the vampire you desire on the parchment with the quill. Alternatively, you can write out the qualities of the type of vampire you’d like to attract. Be very, very specific.
Anoint the parchment with the oil mixture. Not too much—you don’t want the ink to run. With your right hand, grasp the rose petals and squeeze them tightly. Focus your mind on drawing your beloved to you. When you believe you have transferred enough energy to the flower petals, fold them into the parchment. Place the parchment in between the halves of the pomegranate, and bind the halves together with the black cord. Finally, seal it shut with the wax from the red candles.
Under the moonless sky, bury the pomegranate in a place where you can be sure it will not be disturbed—by you or anyone else. If it is opened, the spell will be broken and any love will evaporate immediately. Take care to be patient—events will unfold in their own perfect time.
Because of the reputation that these tactics have for being employed by those with sinister ulterior motives, vampires on the whole have a very negative opinion of bewitchments in general. No one is fond of the notion of having their emotions manipulated or being controlled by another, regardless of who casts the spell. You must tread very lightly if you chose this route to your relationship.
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An Ol’ Southern Vampire Lure
In the Southern United States during the late eighteenth century, a variant of the traditional honey-jar spell that was used to attract the amorous attentions of vampires was passed around the rural swamps via oral tradition. It was called the Bocal de Sang, or the Blood Jar. The roots of this “spell” are said to lie in Creole Hoodoo, and it was employed most often by women who wanted to give birth to an aubépine: a half-vampire/half-human with extraordinary strength, agility, and the unique ability to detect full-blooded vampires on sight. Trained from birth to be consummate vampire hunters, the aubépines were enlisted to guard the settlements from the depredations of their vampire kin.
To prepare the Bocal de Sang, equal parts blackstrap molasses and honey are poured into a Mason jar until it is about half full. Menstrual blood mixed with red wine, cloves, cinnamon sticks, apple blossom, black cohosh root, a pair of Adam and Eve roots, red rose petals, deer’s tongue, anise, sassafras, and crushed red pepper are added to this mix.
The spell caster must locate the vampire she is attempting to seduce, and while he is in her sight, she must let her own blood into the jar until it is full while concentrating on drawing out the vampire’s desire. The final act involves taking dust from his footprint and burning it in a mix of patchouli root and Spanish moss until it becomes like pitch, and topping the jar off with the ashes and dirt before sealing the jar with black tallow wax. The jar is thrown into the swamps at midnight on the night of the last quarter moon, and within a fortnight, the vampire will be spellbound.
Part III
Romancing & Bedding a Vampire:
The Art of Eternal Seduction
Vamp on Top?
Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.
—Mark Twain
Vampires are e
xtremely sexual creatures by nature, and they are hard-wired to be very bold in their pursuit of love and pleasure. The ideas of vampires and sexuality are inextricably intertwined, and vampires themselves have become symbols of libidinousness, sexual liberation, and the complexities of power exchange and sensual abandon.
Sex: What’s in it for a vampire? Vampires are creatures of passion, both in and out of the bedroom. They are extremely sexual creatures, down to their core DNA, and even their blood and saliva is capable, on its own, of bestowing sensual pleasure. Throughout time, the human response to the vampires feeding process and vampire’s inherent sexuality has been a discomfiting mingling of fear and arousal. Feeding and sex are the two primary pleasures for a vampire. Both are enlivening, invigorating, and provide a sense of satiety and satisfaction. It brings back, even for a fleeting moment, the sensation of something they once had but can never obtain again: the vitality and vigor of human life. Both feeding and sex are games of control and release, and both provide the same euphoria and satisfaction.
It is about control. Sex is the one thing that can damn near dominate anybody, of any sex or any nationality, and power is the number one aphrodisiac for a vampire of either gender. It’s about control. Domination is power and power, to the vampire, is survival.
In all of this passion, there is not much room for love. There is a place for romance, because romance is a manufactured commodity. But love, real, true love, is something over which no one has any control. In all likelihood, the love a vampire feels for you, if he or she feels any at all, will be fleeting. If your primary goal is to enter a relationship with power, passion, politics, and domination at its core, then romancing a vampire is right for you. If that’s the game you want to play, then you’ve come to the right place. But if not, get out now.
