Names Banished Beneath the Sea - On Revenant Returns, and Fears of Adversarial Immortality

By David Metcalfe

“A human being is experienced as a power, and power reveals itself to the human being. We have seen how in certain respects a dead person as compared to a living person experienced an increase in power. The dead person possessed knowledge of the future, which the living (using dead magic) could gain access to and utilize. The living corpse, the revenant in particular, has command of monstrous physical forces. A revenant could shift its physical location in a way that a living person could not, and it also had the ability to transform its shape.”

- from Barbarian Rites, by Hanz-Peter HasenFrantz (trans. by Michael Moynihan)

The internet is an immortality machine without the need for Kurzweil’s Singularity. All you need is a name on which to hang a thin frame of philosophy, a single photograph of emotional resonance, and you can affect a return. A physical site of personal importance is even more potent, a grave on which the living can focus their intentions, gifts, talismans and memories. Dead heroes return in the lives of their attentive lovers, and when a society wishes to forget, to forgo such revenant returns, it seeks ways to blot out the names, the memories, and most importantly the body of the deceased so no return can be made.

The body of Rudolph Hess, a close companion of Hitler, was recently exhumed from its resting place in a Bavarian cemetery, cremated, and scattered in an effort to take power away from his enduring image as a hero of nascent Neo-Nazis. According to the New York Daily News, Roland Schoeffel, deputy mayor of Wunsiedel where Hess was buried, said “Now, hopefully we can put it all behind us, we hope the phantom has left.” His tombstone, where someone had scratched “I Dared” was also removed.

Yes, it’s the 21st century, and we no longer hang apotropaic charms on our doorway, or conduct ritual mutilation, to keep the dead down (at least most don’t admit to doing so.) Fears of their return, however, are no less prevalent, and precautions are taken despite our wish to evolve away from our shadowy unconscious. We know that whether or not the dead themselves come back, their memories festering in the minds of admirers can bring them back as an impetus for actions that carry on the goals they had in life.

Ἀποκάλυψις - Apocalypsis - Thoughts on Chelsea Wolfe's Upcoming Album

by David Metcalfe

The funeral for the recording industry is going quite well. With pyres lit across the fields, from tech savvy dance halls to the tattered fringes of ghostland, we all stand in joyous expectation as the façade falls down. Behind the veil of conflagration, Chelsea Wolfe’s voice echoes through lurking atmospherics, monastic guitar riffs, invoking goetic memories of past performers and present players. Such a lovely voice to sing the dirges of the day when music dies, and ars musica is called back from the grave.

We’ve stepped out of the mediated séance parlor of the late 20^th century, with its pantomime passion for theatrical display and sleight of hand, songs are starting to sound real again. Artists are taking back the techniques stolen by corporations and conmen. If we are beginning to once more see true poesis, soon we’ll see true gods.

Wolfe’s latest expression, Ἀποκάλυψις, her second album released through Pendu Sound Recordings, leaves trite table tipping to lesser musicians in favor of summoning spirits on dead urban hillsides beneath the sidereal spin of unseen forces and the city’s dim lights. Mystery returns full force, gaining ground against the ill bent representations and mock revelations of pastiche plaguing the industrialized music scene.

Lord Shiva, King of Ghosts

by David Metcalfe

"This particular time is most inauspicious; at this time the horrible ghosts and constant companions of the lord of the ghosts are visible. Lord Shiva, king of ghosts, sitting on the back of his bull carrier, travels, accompanied by ghosts who follow him for their welfare."

- Bhagavata Purana

The media is calling them 'flash mobs', but from what I've read of recent incidents there's no real connection to the internet, just a roaming group of 20 or so teens willing to beat and rob whatever mark they set up.

This weekend 4 people were assaulted and robbed near Northwestern University, an upscale neighborhood in downtown Chicago, where violence isn't the norm. One of the victims was a 68 year old man. According to Crane's Chicago Business this is a new development in a series of group related crimes in the area. The end of 2010 saw nearby Michigan avenue, a popular shopping area in the city, hit with a rash of shop lifting carried out by teens in organized groups.

Cranes states that, "in January, 11 teens, reportedly coordinating their actions via text message, stole some $5,000 worth of merchandise from North Face, Filene's Basement and AX Armani Exchange stores. According to a Chicago Sun-Times report, one of the teens yelled “Snatch!” to initiate the shoplifting. Another shouted, “Meet you on the Red Line!”

The Basic Principles of True and Lasting Success - An Inquiry into the Psychical World of Napoleon Hill

by David Metcalfe

"......there is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought -- especially the so-called "prosperity" psychology, "will-power building" metaphysics and systems of "high-pressure" salesmanship -- black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its name may be changed, its nature remains the same."

- Manly P. Hall, Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, 1969

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill is perhaps the most popular success book available. As an integral part of the contemporary corporate mythos, it's a primer for the 'culture of success' that runs bloody and gorged with oxygen through economically fevered executive minds of the managerial class. Published in 1937 it has remained on Business Week's best seller list for over 70 years. In the 2007 list Business Week has it placed alongside contemporary selections such as Freakonomics, The World is Flat, and The Tao of Warren Buffett.

Have you ever read this book? Am I alone in my mystification with it?

I'd heard it mentioned so many times by key note speakers at corporate conferences, referenced in business literature, heralded by executives offering me advice on my career, that it never occurred to me to actually look at the book itself. When I did I was quite surprised with what it advised.

Researching William Walker Atkinson, whose prolific pseudonymous publications popularized Mind Science, Telepathy, Hermeticism and American Yoga in the early 20th century, lead me to reconsider my preconceptions of works like Hill's. It also became impossible to ignore the strange imaginative associations that a head full of esoterica and alchemy will import to titles from other success literature I ran into like The Richest Man in Babylon, The 48 Laws of Power, and The Master Key. Further peaking my interest, even an innocuous title such as The Greatest Salesman in the World, by Og Mandino, contains a frame story based in some nebulous Middle Eastern city with a main character named Hafid who discovers the 10 sacred scrolls of success.

This all seemed kind of odd to me, I can't really picture any of the executives I know being particularly taken by orientalist mystique. Some of these success books were looking remarkably similar to 18th century narrative grimoires like Treasure of the Old Man of the Pyramids.

And then I actually opened the 25 cent copy of Think and Grow Rich I'd picked up at a library sale while collecting New Thought material...

Chapter 11 - The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
THE meaning of the word "transmute" is, in simple language, "the changing, or transferring of one element, or form of energy, into another." The emotion of sex brings into being a state of mind. Because of ignorance on the subject, this state of mind is generally associated with the physical, and because of improper influences, to which most people have been subjected, in acquiring knowledge of sex, things essentially physical have highly biased the mind. The emotion of sex has back of it the possibility of three constructive potentialities, they are:-- 1. The perpetuation of mankind. 2. The maintenance of health, (as a therapeutic agency, it has no equal). 3. The transformation of mediocrity into genius through transmutation.

This wasn't what I was expecting from an exegesis on Hill's maxim "whatever the human mind can conceive, the human mind can achieve."

Nor was I expecting to find...

Chapter 14 - The Sixth Sense, The Door to the Temple of Wisdom the 13th Step Towards Riches
THE "thirteenth" principle is known as the SIXTH SENSE, through which Infinite Intelligence may, and will communicate voluntarily, without any effort from, or demands by, the individual. This principle is the apex of the philosophy. It can be assimilated, understood, and applied ONLY by first mastering the other twelve principles. The SIXTH SENSE is that portion of the subconscious mind which has been referred to as the Creative Imagination. It has also been referred to as the "receiving set" through which ideas, plans, and thoughts flash into the mind. The "flashes" are sometimes called "hunches" or "inspirations." The sixth sense defies description! It cannot be described to a person who has not mastered the other principles of this philosophy, because such a person has no knowledge, and no experience with which the sixth sense may be compared. Understanding of the sixth sense comes only by meditation through mind development from within. The sixth sense probably is the medium of contact between the finite mind of man and Infinite Intelligence, and for this reason, it is a mixture of both the mental and the spiritual. It is believed to be the point at which the mind of man contacts the Universal Mind.

I'd really like to know how unwitting executives who buy this book approach these final chapters. With a 70 year run, and several million copies in circulation, there are a lot of potential clairvoyant sex magicians out there.

Amondawa - Timeless and Without Rapture

by David Metcalfe

A recent article on the BBC News website details the investigation of an Amazonian tribe called the Amondawa who don't make any linguistic distinctions between time and space. Lacking temporal concepts applied to space, as the article points out, makes statements like "study through the night" linguistically impossible. This is in some ways an expression of the awareness engendered by taboo as discussed in a previous essay on Modern Mythology, Where Nature Lies Naked Awaiting the Hunt. Writing on the day of Harold Camping's predictions of immanent Rapture the power of language to control the cultural narrative is rarely so pointed.
For the Amondawa the concept of a Rapture would be impossible to express. There can be no rectification of time and space, spirit and matter, eternity and finitude, when the two are not separated in the first place.

As Chris Sinha, a professor of psychology of language at the University of Portsmouth, describes in the article, "What we don't find is a notion of time as being independent of the events which are occurring; they don't have a notion of time which is something the events occur in." A simple linguistic lack completely reconfigures the possibilities of the cultural narrative. Lacking a word for time the Amondawa cannot anticipate an End of Time, and by not relating temporal and spacial concepts through a division they cannot have an End of Days.

Atlantean Hermeneutics - A Review of Jocelyn Godwin's Atlantis & the Cycles of Time

by David Metcalfe

“Yea, on all the divisions of the earth have there been great cities and nations, and men and women of great learning. And as oft as they are raised up in light, so are they again cast down in darkness, because of the great desire of the spirits of the dead to return back to the earth.”
- Oahspe, Kosmon Bible (1882)

When straight history doesn’t provide the right set and setting to explain archetypal interplays of force visionaries seek elsewhere to embody their ideals. Atlantis has been a rich receptical for such ruminations since Plato first penned the Timaeus. His enduring image of that fallen civilization “between the Pillars of Heracles” has become the perfect place for all our Golden Age dreams to foment. In Jocelyn Godwin’s latest book from Inner Traditions, Atlantis and the Cycles of Time, the eminent scholar of esotericism examines the continuing fascination of this myth and the surprising effect it has had on the Western world’s intellectual history.

Godwin gives us more than just an extensive survey of various theories of Atlantis. Through examining the numerous alternatives to the Atlantean question we find an in depth study of amateur archaeology, occult politics, trance channeling and the interstices of mythopoeia and culture. Notably absent are the more reasoned Atlantean musings of philosophers such as Francis Bacon in his political allegory New Atlantis. In Atlantis and the Cycles of Time we find a feast of error prone visionary fruit from the investigations of thinkers often radically separated from the mainline historical narrative.

Castings by Fern Knight – Arcana & Archetypes

Our past lingers at the edge of cultural consciousness; tracing through music, poetry, literature and art it draws us back to mysteries, moving us deeper into understanding. While technology pushes to the forefront, these lingering lines are kept alive by artists who pursue the trail where ever they find it. Margaret Ayre of Fern Knight is well versed in the visions of mythography, and Fern Knight’s latest release, Castings, presents a suite of songs centered on the Tarot and the archetypal imagery of it's arcana.

“The tarot pack used by modern cartomanciennes at Paris and elsewhere, for fortune-telling, is called by them “Livre de Thot.” Thoth was the Egyptian Mercury, said to be one of the early kings, and the inventor of the hieroglyphic system and its attendant mysticism.”

- Vide Henri Delange, Le Monde Occulte, fourth edition, p. 26

Tarot can be seen as a reflection of the Game of Life, each card a Key to a deeper understanding of the movement of the universal Mystery into concrete forms and situations. For centuries it has proven a vital enigma, giving rise to complex interpretations that use its basic substructure to formulate visions of the intricate operations of existence.

Nuclear Power in the Kali Yuga

by David Metcalfe

"...The fact of the release of nuclear energy, overwhelming and intoxicating though it was, began to seem less tremendous. Was it not simply the first act, even a mere prelude, in a series of fantastic events which, having afforded us access to the heart of the atom, would lead us on to overthrow, one by one, the many other strongholds which science is already besieging? The vitalization of matter by the creation of super-molecules. The re-modeling of the human organism by means of hormones. Control of heredity and sex by the manipulation of genes and chromosomes. The readjustment and internal liberation of our souls by direct action upon springs gradually brought to light by psycho-analysis. The arousing and harnessing of the unfathomable intellectual and effective powers still latent in the human mass. . . . Is not every kind of effect produced by a suitable arrangement of matter? And have we not reason to hope that in the end we shall be able to arrange every kind of matter, following the results we have obtained in the nuclear field?”

- from Some Reflections on the Spiritual Repercussions of the Atom Bomb, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Having been well cured in the after glow of the first nuclear tests at Trinity, it’s rare today to find those who fully appreciate the weight of those discoveries. In Teilhard De Chardin’s analysis, written in 1946 shortly after the terrible events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Humanity has discovered a sure sign of it’s unlimited potential. Rather than an end point, he sees the atomic bomb as just the beginning of a new stage of evolution in which Humanity is crowned with the glory of knowledge and comes full face with the roots of existence.

We know today that this discovery is not so easily contained, and the myth of atomic power has a much darker protagonist than the glowing god of progress that was first envisioned. Each of the categories that he discusses are attended by an endless stream of seemingly insurmountable ethical questions within the present state of society. The science of genetics is in the hands of corporations, pharmaceutical companies and a limping Academy, the issues that surround disposal of nuclear waste have stopped development of any far reaching use of nuclear power, and the reactors that have been built are currently decaying under a lapsed economy that cannot support heavy infrastructure maintenance.

The dangers of our ignorance have most recently been shown in the ongoing tragedy of the reactor meltdowns occurring in Japan. We face an aging population of scientists who have the skills and knowledge that have maintained these reactors up to this point. The physicists, metallurgists and chemists who designed, built and maintain these sites are getting older, or have already passed on, and due to the focus of the Academy on providing ‘thought leaders’ and technicians who are ready to ‘face the future,’ we have left behind much of the knowledge necessary to keep up with what we have.

Some foresaw the tragic potential in this exploration of the inner sanctum of Nature. Writing in the 1950′s the anonymous alchemist Fulcanelli discusses a less democratically optimistic view of these advances:

Self-Immolation and the Heart of Revolution - Awakening Out of the Dream

By David Metcalfe
“The heart of revolutionary faith, like any faith, is fire: ordinary material transformed into extraordinary form, quantities of warmth suddenly changing the quality of substance. If we do not know what fire is, we know what it does. It burns. It destroys life; but it also supports it as a sort of heat, light and – above all- fascination.”

- James Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, Origins of the Revolutionary Faith

In November, 1990 a man set himself on fire in front of the U.S. capitol, the news reports from the time say that the reasons for the man’s act were unknown, no riots were forthcoming. Last year the cultural shifts in Egypt, Yemen and Algeria proved a different outcome in light of similar self-immolation. As individuals express their anger, alienation and rejection in self willed conflagration it is igniting their communities into violent uprisings shaking the foundations of global culture.

Our media reports the bare essentials of the acts: lost job, police harassment, oppressive officials; editorials pontificate on the meaning, craft clumsy hagiographies of the individuals involved. The past month there have been reports of self immolation attempts stretching across North Africa, through the Middle East, Central Asia and into China; riots and revolutions erupting in the wake of these incendiary public sacrifices. More than the descriptions, the very flesh on fire is enough to break open the tension flowing through the lives of the worlds hopeful and disaffected.

“It is necessary to seize the suitable moment…with the smallest spark a great fire can be ignited…”

- Sylvain Marechal, Voyages of Pythagoras (1799)

As I’m writing this a young man sits in protest in a Palestinian Mosque, part of the March 15 Youth Coalition who set up tents in the Bethlehem municipality to demand a new Palestinian national council and a unified Palestine. He is threatening to set himself on fire if the Coalition’s demands are not taken seriously. Unlike the young gunmen we have seen emerge in the United States, whose outward acts of inflamed anxiety cause communities to hold vigils and encourage greater controls, these self sacrificial immolations “change the quality of the substance,” of the estrangement, isolation and abuse, to open up the opportunity for cultural change.

Fire is a fluid element, summoned with self sacrifice it rushes through communal streams of thought, transforming dormant discontent and revolutionary potential into active heat. Death comes on as a cold reminder, when someone opens fire in a crowded room the sacrifice opens the void of our own mortality. Invoking fire, invoking change in such an act of stunning self willed abrogation, calls to the very essence of action, of life, inseminating the communal psyche with a heaving need to move and react.

“It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

- Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International, at a Human Rights Day ceremony on 10th December 1961

Two years after Beneson spoke Thích Quảng Đức was guided by two Buddhist monks into the street in front of the Cambodian embassy in South Vietnam. As he stood patiently, one of the monks placed a cushion the ground, Duc sat down, drawing himself into the traditional lotus position he offered a prayer to Amitabha Buddha as the other attendant monk poured gasoline over him, and then he lit himself on fire. His austere immovability as the flames erupted around him proved his protest against the Diệm regime’s treatment of Buddhists in South Vietnam.

During a vigil candles are held to remember the dead, when human beings themselves become candles we are called to remember the living and rethink the ineffable community that binds us together. In 2006 a member of the Chicago jazz and improvisational scene, Malachai Richter, set himself on fire in protest of U.S. military actions in the Middle East. In an explanatory note he posted online he says “Maybe some will be scared enough to wake from their walking dream state - am I therefore a martyr or terrorist? I would prefer to be thought of as a 'spiritual warrior'. “

For all intents he was an ordinary man, who he describes in his self written obituary as:

“A lover of literature, even more than music, he had always dreamed of being a writer. The handwritten manuscript of his 'fictional autobiography', titled "Farewell Tour", was under consideration by publishers. It had a general theme of shared universal aloneness, and was controversial for seeming to endorse suicide after the age of fifty. His favorite classic authors were Proust and Shakespeare. The metaphor for his life was winning the lottery, but losing the ticket. In the end, the loneliness was overwhelming. He was deeply appreciative for everything that had been given to him, but acutely aware that the greater the present, the higher the price. He was a member of Mensa, and Alcoholics Anonymous since 1990. For him, sobriety was virtually getting a second chance at life. He practiced a personal and private spirituality, seeking to connect across the illusion that separates us from each other. Reportedly, his last words were "rosebud... oops"…and the epitaph that he chose is “I dreamt that I was dreaming.”

In the fire all of that changed, from a guy you might run into at a jazz set, into a signpost for society and a condemnation of our inability to embrace each other. He left a simple note near where he lit himself on fire, a reminder for when the flames died down. It was a brief commandment for the governing powers of the world in hopes that life would prevail through the pain: “Thou shalt not kill.”

***

David Metcalfe is an independent researcher and artist focusing on the interstices of art, culture, and consciousness. He is author of “Of Dice and Divinity – Some Thoughts on Gambling and the Western Tradition,” forthcoming in The Immanence of Myth.

Writing and scrawling regularly for The Eyeless Owl, his illustrations were brought to life in the animated collaborative grotesquery A Serious Enquiry Into the Vulgar Notion of Nature featured at select venues in downtown Chicago during the Spring and Fall of 2010. He also co-hosts The Art of Transformations study group with support from the International Alchemy Guild.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

The Long War – Conflict, Crisis & Militant Myths

“Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.

You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howls my heart nigh mad with rejoicing. ”

Verse 1 – Sestina Altaforte, by Ezra Pound

Riots in Egypt, riots in Bahrain, riots in Greece, and now war in Libya, the breaching beast of globalization will have no bloodless birth. Conflict is the price of emergent paradigms; whether it’s polemical rants or missile strikes, a new world is no easy child to bear.

With the shooting in Arizona we saw the power of words and images to create an atmosphere where a subtle spark in the mind of the right individual can lead them to wing off in a violent purgation of their inner demons. Take that to the level of an entire society, and we see the roots of global conflict.

The conflict currently raging in the Middle East and Northern Africa are logical proofs for the powerful marriage of λόγος (logos) and τέχνη (tekhne), language and art, rhetoric and artifice. Communications spurred by technical proficiency engage directly with the immediate mind of individuals and cultures, allowing for slow seeding with the social equivalent of SEO. Produce a cultural script with the proper terms, and then bring it to life by working those terms into the narrative of your choosing. Or use preexisting cultural scripts and reformat the keywords to fit your meaning, repeat across all mediated outlets and let simmer until it starts to spark.

Myth draws out images from the ever present plenum, the chaotic matrix where all possibility resides. Myth sculpts raw energy into motivating forces that act on the culture to produce tangible results. Sound, narrative and image reproduce the potential for action and build guidelines for actualization. When this is used for militant ends we “see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing ; And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson.”

We write our wars against the standards of the divinized rights of humanity, but the underlying truth still shows up the artificial script. A Κρίσις (Krisis) is the ‘turning point in a disease’, pointing to a trial that separates the healthy from the unhealthy, the gold from the dross, sometimes it’s even rendered as ‘judgement’. A crisis in society marks the point at which the social infrastructure is tested, Violent lesions break out on the surface, the poison pushes out through the skin.

Last night I met three kids from the Navy, barely 18, it was 4am and they were wandering the streets waiting for a 6:30 train. They had taken two trains, and traveled for at least 3 hours to go dancing at a local club. As I walked past them and down the street I noticed the headlines and realized that “Gadhafi Vows to Defeat Western Forces” and “Gadhafi warns of ‘long-drawn war’ after airstrikes” meant that these kids might not have very many opportunities to dance in the coming years. Last night may be one of the last good memories they have of quiet suburban streets and the minor inconvenience of public transit.

Here is where the myths steps forward, to reenact the event in light of some broader narrative that reads “crimson” in place of pain. Stories clad in symbols rewrite the horror, and pave the way for the true long war, the continuous conflict raging since the first stone was set and civilization rose out of the crisis of nature ravaged by an orgy of technical hubris. The news writes ‘raining missles’ and authorizes a vision that keeps corpses in the background, and the light opens on our sons and daughters dancing to a song of war, awaiting the spark of life in their eyes to dim as “the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,”

“I tell you that I find no such savor in eating butter and sleeping, as when I hear cried "On them!" and from both sides hear horses neighing through their head-guards, and hear shouted "To aid! To aid!" and see the dead with lance truncheons, the pennants still on them, piercing their sides.

Barons! put in pawn castles, and towns, and cities before anyone makes war on us.

Papiol, be glad to go speedily to "Yea and Nay", and tell him there's too much peace about.”

- Be'm platz lo gais temps de pascor, by Bertran de Born (trans. Ezra Pound)

***

David Metcalfe is an independent researcher and artist focusing on the interstices of art, culture, and consciousness. He is author of “Of Dice and Divinity – Some Thoughts on Gambling and the Western Tradition,” forthcoming in The Immanence of Myth.

Writing and scrawling regularly for The Eyeless Owl, his illustrations were brought to life in the animated collaborative grotesquery A Serious Enquiry Into the Vulgar Notion of Nature featured at select venues in downtown Chicago during the Spring and Fall of 2010. He also co-hosts The Art of Transformations study group with support from the International Alchemy Guild.

-

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

Archetypal Emergence & Liquid Dreams

With all this talk of vampires it seems fitting to present an interview I did with a behavioral hypnotist I know who also happens to be a noted vampirologist. In 1977 Martin Riccardo founded the Vampire Studies Society in Chicago, and began publishing The Journal of Vampirism, one of the first journals to focus specifically on the archetype of the vampire.

Through correspondence with various scholars, aficionados, and practicing vampires, Martin amassed an unwieldy amount of materials on vampirism. After conducting a five-year survey of people's dreams and fantasies about vampires Martin wrote Liquid Dreams of Vampires, detailing the mythology of the vampire, and the emergence of this archetype in the collective unconsciousness.


In Liquid Dreams of Vampires you investigate dreams that people experience that involve vampires, how often did this archetype emerge in people that wouldn't normally be thinking about vampires?

In the 1990s, a woman wrote me a letter that contained the following passage:

"I know there is a fascination lately about vampires, a lot of people have it. But I've been having these dreams, dreams of myself killing like a vampire, dreams of vampires coming to me and giving me their Dark Gift. Now, I know I'm not the only one who has has these before, but you have to understand that I'm not that kind of person, never before have I had these visions of killing, or I should say drinking blood. It's honestly been driving me crazy lately, I don't want these feelings."

I have found that vampires appear in dreams of people who do and people who do not have an interest in them. This comes as no surprise since the vampire is a blatent archetype of the dark repressed urges in humanity.

In many ways the vampire image is an expression of violence, sexuality, death, and many dark passions. It is in dreams that the primal and primitive human drives of the Jungian Shadow or the Freudian Id can find an outlet in the form of the vampire. While the conscious self often chooses not to acknowledge the inner darker aspects of one's own human nature, they become unleashed as vampires in the subconscious playground of dreams.

Was there a common significance that you found when someone was dreaming of vampires? An event or emotion that preceded the dream?

While there is no specific circumstances that always trigger a vampire dream, my research has indicated that they often occur after a person has had a strong reaction to a movie, novel, or something similar. This effect is common to all types of dreams, not just vampire dreams. The emotional connection that people feel to certain characters or situations in film or fiction then carries over into their dream life. It can relate to the fear they experienced, the anger they felt, the attraction they felt toward a character, or many other feelings.

At any particular period in time, many vampire dreams will be an offshoot of the most popular novels, movies, or television shows of that time. However, I have found that one particular film has had a strong effect through several generations. Many people have told me that the 1931 movie Dracula, featuring Bela Lugosi as the Count, had a powerful effect on them when they watched it, and they often had vampire dreams afterwards. While the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker received some acclaim, it was actually this 1931 Universal film that made the vampire into a worldwide sensation. Lugosi's commanding and otherworldly presence in the film seems to evoke a response in people to this day.

Were those who identify as vampires more likely to have dreams about vampires?

Certainly. I believe that some dreams are an outlet for wish fulfillment. The same would apply to those who identify with astronauts, cowboys, or rock stars. Those who told me that they felt they were vampiric in some way usually had vampire dreams of some kind.

How has working so closely with the vampire archetype affected your life?

While I have enjoyed my activities of writing, researching, collecting, and lecturing, I can't say that vampires have had a huge effect on my actual lifestyle. It's always nice to share information with those who are interested in the subject, and I can't say that I've have any major unpleasant experience with the public at large.

However, I do suspect there are those who feel the subject is unwholesome. I often get calls from libraries about the possibility of doing a lecture. Libraries are a perfect place for this since vampires are quite significant in folklore, literature, and popular culture. Occasionally the librarian who called me will call back saying that their superior would not approve the lecture. While I don't get the reasons directly, I sometimes learn from indirect sources that the authority feels the subject of vampires might have a bad effect on a library audience. I not sure exactly what they feel might happen. Perhaps the forces of darkness might possess some of those listening. Perhaps some would choose to convert to the vampire lifestyle. Others might simply go stark raving mad as they heard me talking. For some libraries, it just isn't worth taking the risk.

What do you think of the comparison of unethical corporations to vampires? Insulting to vampires?

In the 1990s my friend Gordon Melton got a poster of President Bill Clinton as a vampire biting into the neck of the Statue of Liberty. Years later he picked up a tee shirt with Presdent Bush as a vampire biting the Statue of Liberty. Just recently I saw a cartoon image on the Internet of guess who? It was President Obama as a vampire biting the Statue of Liberty. Demonizing someone you don't like as a vampire is almost as common as painting on a Hitler mustache, and it shows the same lack of creativity.

It's like the joke--Why won't a vampire bite a lawyer? Professional courtesy.

Do you have any thoughts on the recent resurgence of popularity in the vampire myth? What social factors do you think are at play?

There are a variety of reasons that vampires have surged in popularity. One reason is that since the 1970s there has been a deliberate attempt to focus on the sensual and romantic appeal of the vampire. Another factor is that while novels in general have become more and more sexually explicit, many vampire novels, including the Anne Rice and Twilight novels, have been distinctly nonsexual. The intimacy of blood has replaced sexual intimacy, and this has touched a chord for millions of readers who find this more appealing.

What is different with today's positive portrayal of the vampire in books/movies like Twilight different from the more anti-heroic elements found in prior depictions?

For centuries, the vampire of folklore and literature was always pure evil. By the twentieth century, some vampires, such as Barnabas in the Dark Shadows television series, developed some sympathetic qualities, making them a kind of antihero. It was the comic book character Vampirella, who first appeared in 1969, that may have been the first true vampire hero or heroine in fiction. The kind of handsome, conflicted, and brooding male vampire that we find in Twilight and Vampire Diaries has now become the standard for the good vampire who is focused on protecting his mortal female love interest.

Are there any historical antecedents to the "good" vampire?

Not that I can think of.

What is guided visualization?

Guided visualization is simply the process of directing someone into a mental fantasy as you are talking to them, and it usually includes some relaxation techniques. I have used this in some of my workshops to allow people to experience what it might be like to encounter a vampire or to be a vampire.

Do you think that your guided visualization techniques could be used to help people experience other archetypal forms?

This is commonly done in guided visualizations by some people. It is considered a way to get in touch with various aspects of yourself and the universe, especially higher levels.

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David Metcalfe is an independent researcher and artist focusing on the interstices of art, culture, and consciousness. He is author of “Of Dice and Divinity – Some Thoughts on Gambling and the Western Tradition,” forthcoming in The Immanence of Myth. Writing and scrawling regularly for The Eyeless Owl, his illustrations were brought to life in the animated collaborative grotesquery A Serious Enquiry Into the Vulgar Notion of Nature featured at select venues in downtown Chicago during the Spring and Fall of 2010. The Long Now Foundation has made the unlikely decision to include one of his illustrations in their 10,000 year library vault. He also co-hosts The Art of Transformations study group with support from the International Alchemy Guild.

Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth, published by Weaponized in July 2011.

Where Nature Lies Naked Awaiting The Hunt

By David Metcalfe

It is a mark of Western society to relish our supposed developments, be they technological, psycho-spiritual, social, or really whatever area we put our mingling little minds to that produces a new color, shape or sound. We often miss the fact that what we truly excel at is the ability to create myths that cover our co-opting and rebranding of traditional elements, and the naiveté to clap with delight when shown the same things in different packaging.

Our view of the ancient world is skewed by an Academy that very rarely accepts the reality of the subjects that they delve into, whether it's Christian scholars discussing the 'literary' quality of 4th century liturgy, or Classicists debating if Parmenides really meant it when says of people:

"Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts; they are carried along deaf and blind alike, dazed, beasts without judgment, convinced that to be and not to be are the same and not the same, and that the road of all things is a backward-turning one."

In his book The Dark Places of Wisdom, Peter Kingsley astutely points out that the reason the Academy is free to debate this is that Parmenides was describing them.

The discovery of a sunken Roman ship 40 years ago yielded samples of ancient pills, and after waiting with bated breath for DNA analysis on the contents, scientists in charge of the project produce the stunning and superficial observation that:

"The DNA tests confirm that medicines written about in ancient texts were actually used..."

In a time when the illiteracy rate included nearly 75% of the population, and paper actually required manual labor to make, it would seem to be a given that medical texts would not be flights of fancy. In our culture's self aggrandizing narrative scholars are free to drift about in a hazy world of unreality, never recognizing the fact that what they are writing about, and studying, is an indulgent product of their own minds. If they read Parmenides with greater clarity they might learn something.

We also relish our freedoms, freedom to choose this or that brand of toothpaste, freedom to "program or be programmed", but rarely do we recognize the freedom of limitations. A recent post on the blog Cryptoforest contained an interesting quotation from Ettore Biocca's book Yanoama which contains Helena Valero's account of witnessing an Indian community in the Venezuelan Amazon:

"The next morning, all the men who had come to prepare the curare had painted themselves black with coal on the face, on the body, on the legs, because they said curare is useful for war. They didn't eat that day: they said that the woman who stayed to watch must not bathe, because the poison would no longer kill animals or men. Pregnant woman must not be present because, they said, the babies whom they carried in their stomachs make water on the poison and the poison becomes weak. They do not begin preparing the poison too soon, because at that time the deer is still walking about in the wood and urinating: the deer urinates a long way off, but for them he urinates on the poison and makes it weak. Towards six o'clock in the morning Rohariwe and the others went into the forest to gather other plants, especially the plant ashukamakei, which is used to make the poison more sticky; it is a plant with long leaves."

Wilfried Houjebek, the author of Cryptoforest, wonders how Western scientists can decode the hidden chemical knowledge that these folks obviously have. With processes cloaked in 'taboos' the Western mind, especially the Western scientific mind, finds it difficult to decypher exactly what is going on amidst this seemingly incongruous series of restrictions. What is missing is the realization that these restrictions are actually evidence of a wider sense of consciousness.

Imagine you are going on a hunt, what mindstate makes you a more effective hunter? One focused solely on the step by step process leading up to the kill, or an all encompassing vision that is cultivated daily through being aware of something as innocuous as a deer pissing in the distance? What better way to foster that kind of thinking than to encode it in every activity leading up to the hunt, even the preparation of the poisons that will tip your arrows.

It would surprise most people to realize that this thought process is at the very heart of our Western traditions, but it has been lost amidst our ill conceived social myths. In an essay on the ways of knowing in the Hermetic tradition Peter Kingsley quotes the following passage from the Hermetica:

"Now be completely present, give me your whole attention, with all the understanding that you are capable of, with all the subtlety you can muster. For the teaching about divinity requires a divine concentration of consciousness if it's to be understood. It's just like a torrential river, plunging headlong down fro the heights so violently that with its rapidity and speed it outstrips the attention not only of whoever is listening, but also of whoever is speaking."

This Divine Consciousness is what is being cultivated in the poison making process. The restrictions placed on the participants actions are opening them to a wider sense of the world around them. For the price of missing a night of relaxation they are given the opportunity to find enough to eat for their people. This is access to a world without ‘literary’ litanies or clever debates, where knowledge is exchanged through enigmas and Nature lies naked and awaiting the hunt.

Note: Thanks to Ishtar who runs Ishtar's Gate for directing me to the Washington Post article on the DNA analysis of ancient medicine

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David Metcalfe is an antiquarian and artist focusing on the interstices of art, culture, and consciousness. He is author of “Of Dice and Divinity – Some Thoughts on Gambling and the Western Tradition,” forthcoming in The Immanence of Myth. Writing and scrawling regularly for The Eyeless Owl, his illustrations were brought to life in the animated collaborative grotesquery A Serious Enquiry Into the Vulgar Notion of Nature featured at select venues in downtown Chicago during the Spring and Fall of 2010. The Long Now Foundation has made the unlikely decision to include one of his illustrations in their 10,000 year library vault. He also co-hosts The Art of Transformations study group with support from the International Alchemy Guild.


Pre-order a copy of The Immanence of Myth now.