New Disease: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Superbugs

By Mr. VI

Not to worry you, but you're going to die. If it's not old age that gets you, it's probably going to be some mutated form of the primordial killer – as much an apparent monster as Godzilla, rising up from the depths to cause chaos and destruction in your life.

Unless you're extraordinarily unusual, or a little bit morbid, you don't like to think about it much. After all, there is so much to see and do in life that thinking about it and can be a little distracting, can't it?

But vast amounts of future tech notwithstanding, you're not going to be rejuvenated, or immortal any time soon. Of course, even if the future tech arrives, initially it'll probably belong to this sinister lizardy Methuselah-types like Rupert Murdoch due to the billions of dollars they have in their bank accounts.

The fact is, the majority of the world still doesn't have access to decent healthcare – and those that do tend to live in the richer nations. In the UK there is state healthcare, but in America? Staying healthy is the province of those who can afford it. Now, imagine all those folks in countries which we laughably call the Third World or the developing world.

Imagine what happens when they get ill, and what they do when it comes time to die. Technology and medical care and such may have advanced way beyond the four humours – rationalism may be slowly doing away with snake oil sales but what good is that if you can't get your hands on what you need?

What stories do they tell themselves to make sense out of death and dying? Are they that different to the ones we tell ourselves when disease strikes, seemingly out of the blue?

A Few thoughts on last night's Supernatural

By Wes Unruh

I hated Supernatural when it started out. Well, not hated.. I'd wander out of the room, though... at least until the first appearance of the Trickster in "tall tales" during Season 2.. After a while, however, I started studying what Eric Kripke was doing in the subtext - the larger themes began to emerge - and what has unfolded is an elegant and entertaining conundrum, at the heart of it a question - is this world of ours devoid of gods and magic?

Sure, that's high-minded and melodramatic. Melodrama is fun. It establishes an ironic detachment between audience and stage where identity seepage can occur, few could be so daft as to allow that seepage to possess them so fully that they act out in violent, irrational ways, though there is always someone willing to believe, and map, the worst possible scenario onto their surroundings, and take up the mantle of hunter in a deeply misguided way (see nunez, brea - two real-world cases which would not have been out of place during Season 5 of Supernatural).

Last night's episode, 'the french mistake' (clearly a reference to Blazing Saddles) firmly planted Supernatural into a twilight space where fans, narratives, and producers can freely decontextualize all elements of the show into personal discursive narratives. Seriously... @MishaCollins (and the rest of the writing and production team) accomplished a nice cross-world paradigm shift in how identity actors public self can seep through narrative space. Utilizing himself as caricature, he timed his first tweet in the show with an east coast live tweet on twitter, and his second tweet in the show to the west coast airing. Breaking the frame in a way that they hinted at in Season 5 - this episode went all the way over into what Misha ultimately called "a parallel universe devoid of magic."

If you haven't seen this episode, you should. Of course, you'll need to watch every episode since Season 3 started for it to make any sense... and you'll come back and thank me once you've finished.


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

Lilith: The Original Vampire

By James Curcio
There is going to be a lot of information for you to delve into on Lilith in the forthcoming Immanence of Myth anthology, as well as a fictional portrayal of her - or someone who thinks she is the present incarnation of Lilith, anyway - in Party At The World's End. (To be released 2014)

Here is a little from the section on Lilith in Immanence of Myth, to get us started:

Lilith begins not as a Goddess, but as a demon, a malevolent force that you can hear when the wind howls in the desert, carrying with it the sharp sting of sand. The distinction between Demon and God is somewhat in the eye of the beholder; it isn't so much a matter of power as of function. Demons are that which is cast out, at the same time divine themselves. I'd like to point attention to the way that Lilith represents forces that are cast out of the social sphere, a force that must be banished to make domesticity possible, at least when conducted within the confines of the paradigm of marriage-as-ownership. From within that circle, she would certainly look frightful. Consider that, moving forward.       She appears in the screenplay I working on concurrently (and collaboratively) with this project. Or, at least, we find there a woman who believes she is the modern incarnation of Lilith. When she has led a number of would be initiates (nubile girls themselves) to a hot tub with her, she reveals this, explaining,

Women told tales of me...I would steal the men away from them. I would devour their children. I was an abomination. I lived inside mirrors to seduce the vanity of nubile girls. Can you imagine?

Lilith concept drawing for Party At The World's End

    Lilith, the first Eve, is first recognized by her defiant nature; she is another anti-patriarchal, anti-authoritative symbol. At least, this is the form we encounter her in as she left Babylon with the Jewish exile.       So on the one hand we have Lilith as a spirit of the desert, a creature that could slip into your house and devour your children. This is how she would be presented to women, a bogeyman to keep them in place. Of course, this fear tactic isn't often capitulated consciously; it is something that all the members of a cultural domain participate in unconsciously.      On the other, there is this idea of her as the seductress, luring men away from their societal commitment to the “good mother.” This is an element which some superficially similar symbols, such as Kali, lacks. Without needing to return to textual source, it's easy enough to typify “this sort” of woman. She has the audacity to do what she wants, and it very well might not be what you or the society wants. There is something impetuous and child-like about her, which can manifest as a resolute defiance when placed within the context of a system of rules. So long as she's cast in the role of villain, this arouses the suspicion and fear of the wives of men, and their shameful observance to whichever force is the stronger.

No, not quite. 

    This is an important point: Lilith often appears in a different guise to men than women. Of course, there are personal and cultural factors. To women, especially within sexually restrictive cultures, we see more of the “devourer of children,” aspect. To men, she appears as the seductress, the dark anima. The kind of girl that you don't take home to mother. But in either case she represents a direct threat to the established social order, especially the order of marriage and monogamy. She is an enemy of stasis, of duty and societal bonds. In modern contexts, the threat posed to women is re-enforced by the ad and fashion industries efforts to increases competition and insecurity, as well as the conflict of the myths of domesticity, “slut shaming,” and so on. In a softer, more romanticized form, it is not surprising that Lilith has re-appeared as a potent symbol in bi-, lesbian, and polyamorous communities, especially amongst those who might have some derision towards “breeders.” However, Lilith is not simply a symbol of liberation. She also represents a point of contention between personal senses of restriction and freedom.  

However, there is a thread I didn't have a chance to cover in either of those books, and I thought it would be interesting to delve into another element of this symbol. Despite many modern vampire myths fixating their origin story the idea of the Brother's myth, either Cain and Able or Osiris and Set, or some cases Judas being the first vampire (not the least of which being the White Wolf: Vampire / World of Darkness setting), it is actually more likely that we can find the very first origins of this story coming from two sources. And one of these, you guessed it, is from ancient Babylon and Sumeria, in the complex of demons called the Lilim, Lilitu, or Lilith, the queen of them all. Though we may not expect to see Lilith popping up in True Blood lore anytime soon--though I wouldn't rule it out--you can't really look at the romanticization of the vampire without her. (This is a process which we all pray can't be taken any further than the glittering-in-the-sun Twilight vampires.)
[Editors note: Season 5 of TrueBlood focused heavily on Lilith! Go figure.]

More Lilith...

Though historical records are scarce on this account, there is a fair amount of research, "Lilith: The First Eve" being a paramount source, that the succubi myth originated with Lilith as well, and in all of these complexes you have the core idea of vampirism: whether through blood, or another vital essence such as semen or breath itself, these beings, or this force, sustains itself through feeding off our own. Definitely check out that book if this is a subject that interest you ("Lilith: The First Eve.") 
Let's not forget, of course, that at the most basic level all life sustains itself off of other life, and the only way to cut yourself out of this web entirely is to slit your own throat here and now. 

But that's not what Lilith is really about, is it? That's not what the vampire myth is about, either. At least not since the 19th century. No, we don't actually care that vampires must "feed" off blood. The vampire myth transformed from fear to lust, from terror to sexual desire, because the feeding that we're actually talking about is sexual. When you tell a lover "I'm hungry for you," you aren't telling them that you plan on feasting on their flesh. (Unless you're from New Guinea.) And what you're talking about can't simply be reduced to carnal desire, although it certainly informs that. It has to do with that unnameable chemistry, that almost uncontrollable pull that attracts two (or more) people. Joseph Campbell recognized that demons, angels, gods and goddesses are all symbols referring to the forces that we experience. To a great extent, these are psychological forces. Then Lilith represents, among other things, that hunger, that attraction, which says, "to hell with the details. I want you now." 

[Take a Trip with us. Mythos Media.]

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.

***

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.

Vampire Sun, Werewolf Moon (pt. 2)

By Wes Unruh

It's VD day, which has come a long way since Lupercalia's formalized whipping ceremonies to make certain the women would be fertile for fall deliveries. Now VD means Valentine's Day, Venereal Disease, and Vampire Diaries, apparently concurrently if the commercials I saw during station breaks on Supernatural are any indication. Irreducible forms of sexual archetypal anxieties been with us forever - literally to pre-literate times and (as if as in a full eclipse) it has been overlayed by VD in the CW's programming. Here's the concise description given in wikipedia of the Lupercalia:

"...the Luperci cut thongs from the skins of the victims, which were called februa, dressed themselves in the skins of the sacrificed goats, in imitation of Lupercus, and ran round the walls of the old Palatine city, the line of which was marked with stones, with the thongs in their hands in two bands, striking the people who crowded near. Girls and young women would line up on their route to receive lashes from these whips. This was supposed to ensure fertility, prevent sterility in women and ease the pains of childbirth."

Who knows how long this had been going on; certainly as far back as the founding of Rome. This kept going until the vampire pope completely lost his shit and deliberately forced it to be enfolded into the purification of the Virgin aka Candlemas. Still, a good deal of the naked flogging is alive and well on V-Day if you go to the right shows. That aside, in part one of this post I labeled vampires and werewolves as lunar and solar inversions of the hero. Of course, labeling vampire solar and werewolf lunar then implies there are other planetary attributes which could manifest archetypes. One can find that the whole planetary array of these forms occurs in Buffy, Supernatural, and True Blood: fairies as Uranian, elves/aliens as Venusian, angelic or dragon forms as Mercurial, demonic or sadistic archetypes from Saturn, etc. - and while these other planetary presences are not always explicit, they are discursive gaps awaiting narration. However, barring the inner planets which perform slow, intricate dances across the night sky (if/when you can see the sky) the planets themselves are not nearly as visible as the sun and the moon - and likewise the impact of vampire and werewolf archetypes economically trumps all other mythic forms.

Secondly, at least as far as the werewolf is concerned, the linkage to the lunar cycle is a very modern invention. Frank Hamel's book Human Animals, published in 1915, relates a good number of 'wer-wolf' tales from the past four hundred or so years and the moon is incidental. The first (and now lost) filmic portrayal of The Werewolf (1913) was more firmly rooted in colonialist fears of vengeance by witchcraft. It wasn't until Werewolf of London (1935) that lunar light and werewolf bite came together to create the first filmic 'bipedal werewolf' - all of the modern tropes of the werewolf were present. And this 'bipedal werewolf' runs naked through the streets looking more like a man wearing goatskins than the traditional origins would have us believe. I'm making the case that Lupercalia is part of the essential mythic strand that generated the werewolf, even more-so than the lunar connection - that the full werewolf form of Twilight's wolves comes from a different folklore than the bipedal werewolf descended from ancient shepherds who were imitating Pan. The werewolf Lon Chaney portrays is almost identical to the Teen Wolf (1985) Michael J. Fox portrayed, a satyr more than a wolf, pure sexual Id run rampant upon transformation.


Now, just as the first filmic appearance of a werewolf's transformation is lost, so too is the first filmic appearance of Count Dracula in Dracula's Death (1923). I can't presume to know the elements in place in a lost film made in a language I don't speak, but in both Nosferatu (1922) and again explicitly with Dracula (1931) the vampire is clearly shown to be destroyed by sunlight - the vampire's position as an inversion of the solar hero seems always to be clear, it was for the 'children of the night' to be entrained into signifying the lunar, a position that didn't fully coalesce until Lon Chaney materialized them in The Wolf Man (1941) and its sequels. The first meeting of the werewolf and the vampire is in House of Dracula (1931) and it is on this tenuous strand that countless reoccurring forms continue to overlap.

But perhaps there's something more going on underneath - this solar, lunar inversion is a clue - the vampire and the werewolf come from the same space, a shadowy understanding of superstitions and an overlay on demonized and outmoded beliefs. It is a long way from House of Dracula to True Blood, both in terms of geographic setting and temporal space, but also in terms of how the idea of the world these entities require to exist has evolved. In True Blood, the vampire elite rule through an elaborate global empire, a regime based on bloodlines, secret allegiances, and brutal violence carried out by vampire assassins and the occasional pack of nazi werewolf henchmen. Unpacking all the new mythographic materials layered into the last few seasons of True Blood will keep some lucky television studies scholar occupied for the next decade.

Where there is an empire, there are the voiceless and often faceless victims of power. Especially in True Blood both vampire and werewolf elite are able to murder with impunity, protected by the invisible empire. In Blade II the vampire elite control the world in ways that go far beyond that, where farming blood is true industrial production. This is a far cry from the fate of the Werewolf of London, as a sole victim murdered was enough to unwind the sole villain into an act of suicidal self-sabotage.

Now the normalized narratives are strewn through with the unacknowledged/unacknowledgable, there only to be consumed in service to the true rulers of the regime. Constantly the theme in these inversionary archetypal tropes is one of social acknowledgment - either as a lover or acknowledgment of hunger - here vampire treads close to zombie perhaps, the starved vampire, strung-out and scrambling through sewers like del Toro's vision in Blade II, contrast the vampire Illuminati bloodlines that orchestrate a vast world government behind the scenes. These archetypal signifiers now carry so much cultural currency that they appeal to the weakest, the unacknowledged, who see themselves as that nameless, voiceless victim and long to be the empowered. Then there are those local news organizations who are willing to exploit those caught up in the glamour of their own fetish and report on it as spectacle:

(more to come)



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