Predator Of Souls. Alessandro Norsa

in Eighteenth century European literature. The reason for such notoriety resides in some customs that resemble vampires. Above all the method of execution that Vlad III preferred was impalement, which is the practice considered most suitable to destroy vampires. Other convictions, instead, regard its gory operation. Vlad III was in fact likened to those men who were marked by particular wickedness and who, after their death, were said to have transformed into vampires. Tepes, in the end, was decapitated as was done to those who were accused of vampirism and, after the burial, his tomb was opened and looted, which makes one think about the lengths to which the local population would resort. In the course of reading the book we find again these convictions associated with particular exorcist practices developed in an authentic vampire culture which has continued over the centuries.

      THE MANY VAMPIRE ROOTS ALL OVER EUROPE, IN PARTICULAR IN THE BALKAN COUNTRIES

      The legendary and mythological tradition of vampires, disturbing figures, is rich: beyond the Greek and Roman worlds which have conditioned all western culture, they are present also in Arab, Indian, Chinese and Japanese legends.

       In some traditions handed down over time, the vampire is a dead person in flesh and bones who appears to the living in his body and feeds on their blood; in other legends vampires are also the mythological and fiendish spirits that attack the living - and sometimes eat them, or feed on their blood - but that have never been human. In the first case, we will have, for example, that which for Greeks and Romans was called strix (from which the Italian term “strega” [witch in English] is derived) which was not a human person, but a nocturnal demon which came out of the tomb, and was feared because considered capable of attacking babies and feeding on their blood. In the second case, the vampire was a dead human person, a living thing that drank blood, it was a particularly malevolent and blood-thirsty witch. In the third case, vampires are dead human beings who appear in their bodies, which assume a physical and tangible reality and are not a simple image or illusion. It is the image that we have of the classic vampire that comes out of the tomb in its body and which you can not only see, but also touch: or rather, it is very resistant and must be destroyed with drastic measures. We maintain that it is not possible to understand the true nature of this being if we do not fall into that type of thinking “of the origins” that characterised men in the Neolithic period: a world where everything was pervaded by the divine: places, objects, animals, food, rivers, trees and lightning. The divine, under this logic, was not found in an unattainable sky, but here on earth, the place of burial and therefore the home of our ancestors who become in their turn divinities. Starting from these assumptions, there was research for a dimension in which to find an explanation for calamitous events otherwise inexplicable. In an animist logic, therefore, the weakness of the body, not being able to be understood by the medical knowledge which we have today, became the effect of fearful malevolent beings, but not only, they could be the effects also of nightmares, the death of foetuses, convulsions, hysterical crises, depression, distrust, illnesses, pains all over the body, death by suffocation and above all chest tightness with sensations of lack of breath. To be able to carry out so many wicked deeds these entities possessed enormous physical strength and incredible speed of movement, they could hypnotise with their stare and transform themselves into disturbing animals. We will see later the various elements making up the image of vampires which has been traditionally handed down, just like it has been consolidated in nineteenth century literature and in cinema, retracing the origins among the folds of the popular myths and legends. Starting from a reading of the legendary Romanian figures that can be associated with vampires, we will extend our investigation to analogous entities that are found in Eastern Europe. We will then analyse the origins of the myth of Dracula in the myths and symbolic aspects of the animist culture, studying in depth, therefore, the theme of the capacity to transform oneself into a bat and to fly during the night, of the proofs of meetings with the vampire, seducer of young girls, and, finally, of exorcisms as we will see better in the paragraph dedicated to these aspects.

      OF THE ORIGIN OF VAMPIRES IN THE MYSTERIOUS LAND OF ROMANIA WITHOUT IGNORING OTHER IMPORTANT ANALOGIES

      The myth of Dracula was born from the union of various Romanian myths and legends. What do they call vampires in Transylvania? The Australian ethnographer, Agnes Murgoci, documented in Transylvania various types of blood-suckers, like, for example, the Şişcoi (known elsewhere by the name Moroi) and the Vârcolaci (Svârcolaci) and Pricolici called Vrykolakas in Greece. So many different names to describe figures that assume, on the whole, similar characteristics, indicating deteriorating, damaging or deadly action. We will therefore start our voyage in the realm of the vampires through reading the Romanian literature relating to the legends and demonic figures principally of the Strigoi and Moroi, fundamental to understanding that culture in which the myth of the vampire originates. We will let ourselves be led into the land of Dracula by some important local ethnographers such as Romulus Vulcǎnescu and Simeon Florian Marian. To delve into the theme, we will discover the symbolic and anthropological aspects conserved in the myths that we will find, comparing them, also with other analogous supernatural beings present in Central Europe. According to Vulcǎnescu, the Strigoi (a term that derives from the Latin strix and that means strega in Italian [witch in English]) are among the mythical beings that have greater importance in the Romanian demonology tradition. There are two types of Strigoi: the so-called Strigoi vii (living) and the Strigoi mort (dead). While the Strigoi mort, effectively, can well number among the non-dead which, although not sucking people’s blood, commit atrocities of every type, the Stringy vii are living witches and wizards who can occasionally kill but do not have the powers traditionally associated with vampires: they will become vampires, in fact, after their death. As regards Romania, Vulcǎnescu states that there are some precise characteristics that identify a living Strigoi, comparable, therefore, to a witch in flesh and bone. These characteristics are associated with persons really existing and who, by society’s need to find a scapegoat, were identified as witches. The Romanian ethnographer recounts that you can be a Strigoi from birth or become one if, during your life, you convert to the cult of the Devil. The descendants of a Strigoi can be hereditary in the case in which there is found in the genealogy the presence of a Strigoi of a Strigoaice [female Strigoi]. One can discover if a person belongs to this lineage by various means: if, for example, a baby is the seventh child, and is preceded by all male brothers (or all female, according to a Polish tradition), it is born with a part of the placenta on its head and swallows it immediately after being born; if it had an equine foot; or, finally, if its hair is reddish and the base of the spine ends in a tail covered in hair. Some physical characteristics or behaviour also identify a baby Strigoi: he, in fact, has a precocious development, is strong and evil, tortures and kills animals, takes pleasure in being malicious, lies, cheats, steals and swears. As an adult, you can recognise the Strigoi by its generally hairless look, by the bloodshot eyes, by the more pronounced canine teeth and by the coccyx which is longer than normal. From a behavioural point of view, it is marked by the evil actions that it performs. In the female, these beings are called Strigoaice: they have origins completely similar to the Strigoi and the same physical characteristics, but, in their behaviour, they are much more brutal. The people who are identified as witches bringing misfortune can be recognised by some distinctive traits that are found spread all over Europe. The most common physical characteristics that mark them out were the ugly look, sometimes due to the signs of poverty and misery. From the physical aspect point of view there have been merged, from ancient times, characteristics of witches that remain impressed on our minds still today in popular tradition: curved fingernails like wolfs’ claws or the talons of raptors, bad teeth, even though capable of tearing you to pieces with incredible ferocity and, finally, their heads could be bald or have dishevelled hair. Even women who assumed strange behaviour were looked upon with diffidence. Among the characteristics of witches, with the Romans we find those known as nocturnal vampires, the total aversion to light and the exsanguinated pallor of the face, an unequivocal sign of death. According to Festo, Strix (“Strega” in Italian [“witch” in English]) is the name given to evil women also called “volatile” [“flying” in English]. Flight in fact is for Latin authors a common and distinctive element