The legend of the origin of vampires

The earliest origin of vampires is said to be the biblical Cain.

According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden and went to the wilderness and had many children. Cain is the eldest and the third human in the world. He was a farmer and lived with his brother as a shepherd. On one occasion, the two of them offered sacrifices to Emperor Xiangshang as usual, and the younger brother offered rich meat, and Cain's green vegetables and turnips naturally aroused God's displeasure. Cain thus murdered his brother, and the next day God asked Cain where his brother was, and he argued that he did not know. God was angry, "Cunning, your brother's unjust spirit cries out to me about your atrocities, but you don't know. So you have to accept my punishment!" Cain begged for mercy from Emperor Xiangshang, but God said, "No, I will not kill you, and I know that you will be spurned in the future. So I'll give you a different mark, so that you will let others know that you don't deserve to be killed, and that you are just being tortured as much as possible.

In the millennia of hidden vampire legends, Cain's curse was to live forever by sucking the blood of the living, and to suffer from this curse for generations. And God made his mark visible to everyone, which is different from what is written in the Bible. Later in the book, he is paired with Satan's lover Lilith (first appearing in Sumerian mythology, the first wife of Lilith in the Old Testament of Judaism, who left the Garden of Eden because she was dissatisfied with God), said that Lilith was a powerful witch, and taught Cain how to use blood to produce liliang for his own use. Because of this, some people believe that Lilith is the real first vampire.

Driven by loneliness, Cain created the second generation of vampires. And they have 13 offspring. This third generation is the survivor of Noah's flood, who founded 13 great clans and later rebelled and destroyed the second generation of vampires.

In response to the hostile situation, several vampire clans (around the sixth to eighth generations) had to form alliances, resulting in the Camarilla Alliance. It is an alliance of seven clans. It is also the largest alliance to date. When the Secret Party was founded, it established six strict traditions that the vampires of later generations in the alliance were required to follow forever. The supreme purpose of the entire precept tradition is to stipulate that vampires must be hidden in human society. Identities must never be revealed, lest it lead to a crisis in the survival of vampires, which is the origin of the "escapism" commandment.

God Jesus was betrayed for money by the thirteenth disciple, Judas. Dying on the cross, he uttered the word zuihou to his followers on his deathbed, and in the near future he will be resurrected again. Guide believers to the light.

There is a demon perched in a bag of silver coins obtained by Judas who rebelled against God, which is made up of the accumulation of sins in the hearts of human beings, Judas unknowingly walked into the woods on the way to avoid the believers, and when he rested under the tree, he couldn't help but open the money bag, his evil heart awakened the demon, and the demon flew out of the money bag. Seeing Judas's embarrassed appearance, he felt very ridiculous, and asked Judas: Do you regret it?

Judas, full of dissatisfaction, said to the devil, "I regret that I did not kill those foolish believers, which is why I am so miserable now."

The demon was very pleased when he heard this: Will you make a pact with me?

Judas asked the devil very carefully: What kind of contract is it?

The devil stretched out his hand: as long as you have the heart to kill those believers in God, I can help you fulfill your wish. ()

Judas asks: There are no other conditions?

The demon smiled and said, "There is nothing else."

Judas immediately agreed.

Judas used his own blood to write a pact with the devil under the tree on the bark-stripped pole.

Just as I was about to finish writing, there was a deep sigh from the sky. The demon and Judas looked up to find a holy and majestic angel above them.

The angel held the sword of light in his hand and solemnly said, "Judas, you have betrayed the Son of God, and you will be punished by God." You will ...... for the rest of your life

Before the angel could finish speaking, a sharp arrow pierced the angel's chest, which was a dark arrow put by the demon, and the angel who fell from the sky was obtained by the demon, and the demon immediately sucked the angel's blood dry, and then the demon got the angel's beautiful face and immortal life, and the demon who got carried away said to Judas: I don't need you anymore, I have the life force of an angel.

When Judas found out that he had been deceived, he cursed and said, "I will not let you be so complacent, you want everything that an angel has—liliang, life, beauty, but you have forgotten that I have an unfinished covenant with you."

The demon realized that something was wrong and wanted to stop it, but he had just sucked the angel's blood and was unable to move his limbs.

Judas saw that the demon was restrained, and hurriedly wrote on the contract: ()

You have liliang that is countless times stronger than humans, but you have to suck blood every day to live.

You have a beautiful face, but as soon as you suck blood, you will become ugly again.

You have immortal life, but as long as you nail a stump stained with my blood into your heart, you will die.

Your liliang, life, beauty comes from the darkness, and when you appear in the light, it is when everything comes to naught

The history of the vampire legend

In the 8th century, fueled by the Enlightenment, reason triumphed and superstitions suffered a serious setback. The superstition of vampires alone is rampant. This trend of superstition has become a social phenomenon, affecting all regions and causing concern among the highest authorities, including civilian, military, and religious authorities. ()

In the first half of the 18th century, vampire superstitions became popular

Faced with incidents everywhere, the authorities had to take measures to maintain public order.

In 1710, East Prussia suffered greatly from the plague. In view of this, the authorities set out to investigate the superstitions of vampires that had been denounced, and even opened all the graves in a cemetery to reveal the culprit of the disaster, which everyone assumed to be vampires. So in places like Austria, Serbia, Prussia, Poland, Moravia, and Russia, the talk of the streets is all about vampires. Two of the most sensational of these are the cases. One was a Hungarian farmer named Pierre Plogojowitz. He is said to have turned into a vampire after his death in 1725 and caused eight people to die in the small village of Kizilova. The other was also a farmer named Arnold Paole. In 1726 he fell from a cart loaded with hay and became a vampire after his death. Paola is charged with causing a large number of deaths of people and animals in the Serbian village of Medwegya. The first case has an official report, written in German. Deposited in the Vienna Archives. According to Professor Antoine Faivre, who discovered the manuscript, there is a word "vanpir" in the report, which is the first time the term vampire has been used in literature.

The case of Opal. More striking than Progojovic, who was once a sensation. A formal investigation into the case began in December 1731 by the military physician Fluckinger, entitled "What I Saw and What I Found." It was then handed over to several officers of the Heiduques Company. and other doctors were attached to the military court in Belgrade. Seen and Found was published in 1732 and reprinted several times. It aroused great interest among the ruling classes of Western Europe. Emperor Charles IV of Austria paid close attention to the developments in Progojovic's case, and King Louis XV of France asked Duke Richelieu to write a detailed report on the official results of the investigation.

The European media also took a lot of time to write about Progojovic and Paol.

LeGlaneur is a French-Dutch magazine that is popular in Versailles in Paris. The issue, published on March 3, 1732, gave a detailed account of the Opalé case. The word "vampyre" is used in the text for the first time in French. An article in the London Journal on March 11 of the same year also used the word "vampire".

In the wake of these two and other similar cases, many Westerners have begun to study the issue of vampire superstitions. He wrote a series of treatises and articles, which also provoked countless controversies and polemics in the literary and artistic circles and universities.

The Treatise of Doctors, Clergy and Philosophers

Until then, the various theories about vampires were mainly based on oral legends, stories passed down from generation to generation, and various rumors or pure nonsense. Although the 18th century was dominated by rationalism. However, there are some rich and profound works, written by famous doctors and clergy, who have documented, even written, and analysed the phenomena of vampire superstition.

In 1679, the first treatise was published in Leipzig, Germany, under the title History and Philosophy of the Phenomenon of the Chewing of the Dead, by Philip Rohr. He explained the phenomenon of the dead chewing in the grave as demonic possession. ()

In the 18th century, some people shared Rahr's supernatural views, while others refuted them in the name of reason, attributing these phenomena to superstition and ignorance. The book sparked a fierce debate between the two factions.

In addition, Reinft's "Corpse Chewed at Will" in the grave became famous after it was published in Leipzig in 1728. In the book, Lineft refutes Rohr's argument, arguing that even if a dead man can affect a living person, it is impossible for him to appear in front of the living, and the devil cannot enter the body of a dead person.

In the aftermath of the Paaule incident, many treatises emerged, two of which are worth mentioning: Christian Stock's On the Vampire Body (1732) and Johann Heinrich Zopf's On the Vampire of Serbia (1733).

The church inadvertently justified vampire superstitions

In the face of such a large number of "scientific" treatises, the Church could not remain silent.

One of the most famous works of the time was written by a clergyman, Dom Augustin Calmet, abbot of the Senones monastery, known for his commentaries on the Bible. His book, entitled On the Possessed Spirits, Excommunicated Men, Vampires, or the Living in Hungary, Moriva, and Elsewhere, was published in Paris in two volumes in 1746. Dean Calme's original intention was to refute vampire superstitions, but because of the abundance of examples of such superstitions, the book is merely anecdotal and not a full-fledged and rigorous work. Still, many historians, sociologists, and anthropologists are still interested in his book. In addition, some clergy in positions of power in the Church often mention rumors about vampires when promoting the views of the Church. Giuseppe Davanzati was the Archbishop of Florence, Italy, who wrote On Vampires, published in 1774. The most important example is Pope Benedict XIV, formerly known as Prospero Lambertini. When his Blessed and Blessed Saints were republished in 1749, the fourth volume devoted some space to vampires, trying to deny their existence on the grounds of reason.

In France, the authors of the Encyclopedia were annoyed by rumors of vampires. The philosopher Voltaire was outraged in his Philosophical Dictionary published in 1787, while the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau denounced vampire superstition in a letter to the Archbishop of Paris. The Enlightenment was at its climax, and they were surprised that vampire superstitions were still spreading.

Western publications discuss vampire superstitions, and there are two credits:

First, such superstitions, which used to be the hearsay of travelers or diplomats, are now widely known.

Second, everyone accepted the name "vampire".

In the past, there were many words for "possessed ghosts" or vampires, but from 1732, after the Paorle Incident, the term "vampire" was used instead. The word "vampyr", "vampyre", "wampire" and other spellings are equivalent to the Latin word "vampirus". (To be continued.) )