The First Vampires - How Early Vampirism Impacted Theology, Philosophy & the Occult

Comments · 552

• TH

  @TheEsotericaChannel · 2 years ago · pinned

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• MI

  @michaelmcnally9737 · 2 years ago

  The reality of prematurely buried people waking up and having no choice but to eat their own limbs to survive is more horrifying than any monster I can think of

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• BL

  @BlisaBLisa · 2 years ago

  the livestock becoming infected with vampirism after vampires feed on them and then going on to infect the humans that eat the livestock is SUCH a cool idea idk why ive never seen this in vampire fiction before, esp since vampires feeding on livestock is already a thing in some vampire fiction.

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• AR

  @ArkUmbrae · 2 years ago

  This was a fascinating video, especially to me because I&apos;m from the Western Balkans. It&apos;s one of our few points of pride, the fact that the word &quot;vampire&quot; is the only word that comes from our language that is used world-wide (that language being what we called Serbo-Croatian in Yugoslavia, but now has no common name as 4 countries all claim that their dialect is a different language). The actual word, &quot;vampir&quot; doesn&apos;t really have a clear etymology here, but is definitely related to the old word for &quot;bat&quot;. The word for bat used to be &quot;netopir&quot; (&quot;pir&quot; coming from the verb &quot;piriti&quot;, which essentially means &quot;to glide&quot;, and &quot;neto&quot; possibly coming from the Proto-Slavic word for &quot;night&quot;, so a night-glider), but after the Ottoman period was replaced with &quot;šišmiš&quot; (&quot;šiš&quot; being the Turkish word for the attic, and &quot;miš&quot; meaning mouse, because after all what is a bat if not a rat from above). Variations of the word &quot;netopir&quot; are still used to mean &quot;bat&quot; in Slovene and Czech languages today.<br><br>Another etymology goes back to an Albanian dialect (which itself is a remnant of the old Ilyrian languages, tying it back to the Western Balkans), and their word &quot;dhampir&quot;. &quot;Dham&quot; means &quot;tooth&quot; and &quot;pir&quot; means &quot;drink&quot;, so it would be a creature that drinks through its teeth.<br><br>Another interesting tidbit comes from a Russian variant of the Vampire myth, known as the Wurdalak. It is a typical vampire, just with the caveat that a wurdalak must convert his entire family after his own conversion. But the name comes from &quot;vukodlak&quot;, which is the Western Balkan word for &quot;werewolf&quot; (&quot;vuk&quot; means &quot;wolf&quot;, and &quot;dlaka&quot; means &quot;hair&quot; or &quot;fur&quot;). The early myths of vampire and werewolves have a common origin. Even in Stoker&apos;s &quot;Dracula&quot;, the count can transform into a wolf, a bat, and mist.<br><br>One thing that I though was interesting about this video is that there was no mention of Sava Sevanović, who in these parts is usually referred to as &quot;the first vampire&quot;. His story is a little older than those of Petar Blagojević and Pavle Arnaut (referred to as Peter Plogojowitz and Arnold Paole in this video), but more recent than Jure Grando&apos;s. Not much is really known about Sava, it&apos;s mostly his name that people know now, but I would recommend to everyone to check out the movie &quot;Leptirica&quot;. It is the first horror film made in Yugoslavia, adapted from the book &quot;After Ninety Years&quot; by Milovan Glišić. It&apos;s a story about Sava&apos;s attacks long after his death, and the vampire&apos;s form is more reminiscent of a werewolf (tying back into that piece of trivia). It&apos;s not a great film by any means, but it is the only real vampire film made in the region from where the myth supposedly originates, and is thus an important piece of vampiric history.

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• SA

  @sabrinagranger5468 · 2 years ago

  The fact that this folklore had existed for centuries and, as you said, possibly a millennium before the first written records is so often overlooked but very meaningful.

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• PA

  @palvared4527 · 2 years ago

  In last few years,archeologists found vampire burials in Poland.

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• RY

  @ryanhollist3950 · 2 years ago

  I had never thought of the theological issue of raising the undead as a violation of the Divine power of resurrection. Thank you for your work, I always find it very fascinating and educational.

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• UN

  @Unkn0knPhil0s0pher · 2 years ago

  I’m a firm believer that folk of the vampires was born in Maya regions. The half man half bat Camazotz was talked about in Spanish Catholic circles in the 1500s. The camazotz play a critical role in the mythology of the Popol Vuh as the Xibalba brothers defeat them. They are camazotz statues all over Mexico and Guatemala. There are underground temples where they were worshipped. There are even days in the maya calendar attributed to them. Thanks for the episode. Cheers. ❤

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• CE

  @Cesaryeyo · 2 years ago

  &quot;Everybody had a vampire in this fight&quot; makes me imagine a Pokemon-like tournament where every ideological current sends it&apos;s vampire to fight for supremacy

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• PE

  @PeripheralWisdom · 2 years ago

  Fantastic work, Dr Sledge. Thank you for continuing such divine scholarship to the masses, even despite the tragic recents events in your Detroit religious community. I hope for justice to arrive soon.

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• EL

  @elisuzukovich431 · 2 years ago

  Great episode Dr. Sledge. A note on Serbian and Croatian vampires is that they are deeply rooted in concepts of the &nbsp;living soul (dusha) and the corporeal soul (duh), &nbsp;and are connected to disease and community unrest. &nbsp;The umpyre (one who flies) is formless and seeks form. It is the remanent of the Duh of a corpse that was improperly buried or decomposed (especially on battlefields) that roams the land as a mist looking to regain form, often inhabiting and feeding off of rats, fleas, ticks, flies, &nbsp;and mosquitos. If it finds a cemetery, it will infect a fresh corpse and feed off of it, but also use it to project into the village, to hunt for human and animal hosts. If there is domestic unrest or violence, the umpyre will zero in on that home and exasperate the situation, opening up the family and village as a whole to psychological stress and sickness, which makes it easier for it to feed. The umpyre is the plague bringer and signals worse things to come. The Arnold Paole incidents occurred at a time of great social stress due to a TB epidemic that was raging and the occupation of the Astro-Hungarians.

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• SM

  @SmilefortheJudge · 1 year ago

  You had me at “God forbid the twilight series” hahaha

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