Daniel Collins - Vampire course, various texts

Vucinich
The hearth of the home was connected to magic from the old days when it was used as a place of sacrifice and religious shrine.Traditionally, the hearth linked the living family with the descendants and the members still unborn. Nearly all customs and religious practices too place in front of the fireplace. The hearth disappeared with the Communist laws that made the peasants get stoves to replace them. The stoves were more sanitary and better for the health of people in the house, but they could not be used to conduct the same rites, so many customs were lost with the use of stove over hearth 11. The personal religious practices of the family were a combination of pagan and Christian. The rites and the rituals were often pagan and related to family health, livestock breeding and harvesting. The Serbian Orthodox church represented for them little more than the rites for birth, marriage, death, and its position as a pillar of nationalism. Few knew anything about the history of the church or its teachings. Most family members spent no more than a couple days a year at church and many no more than a dozen or so in their lives. The head of the household led the prayers for health and so on, which were spontaneous and sincere 13.
Foster
Groups of people live by a cognitive understanding that forms their social, political, economic world. It is rational because it makes sense to the group. Irrational ideas can only be considered to be the result of coming to a different idea within the group than that which ordinarily governs the group 1. The peasant views his life in a mindset of Limited Goods - like the land there is only so much and never enough. In order for one person to improve, he must do it at the expense of another 2. Goods are ever depleting too because of the increase in population and lack of change in farming techniques. Wealth is only inherited, it cannot be grown 3. Friendship, love and affection are limited in a peasant lifestyle. Children fuss and are envious of newborns because the older children lose the attention and the milk from mother - they also lose the nutrition from breast milk and may have a protein deficient diet thereafter 3. Health preoccupations are common in peasant societies. Scientific medicine is not common and folk remedies are no match 4. Blood is often seen as a Limited Good and cannot be restored if lost 4. Masculinity is a also a Limited Good as is machismo - as a man you attack another man by attacking their self worth as a man and can retorted with the same or by a knife if the honor is hurt 4. People who feel threatened within the scope of Limited Good react to threats by either forging bonds with those close to them or through extreme individualism 5. Peasant societies almost always choose the later. In order to come together, they must have a strong leader democratically chosen and delegate authority - however peasant societies are unable to delegate power well. The gathering of power is also seen as a threat to the powers outside the community that govern the peasants 5. There is a system of Mutual Distrust that comes out of the hierarchy and governs peasants within the community. Individuality exists as a family, not a person since the family in a peasant community is more able to take care of itself than in a fishing and hunting community 5. The peasant is expected to exist in the status quo. They are expected to not increase their wealth or become more prosperous and all members of the community understand each others' levels of wealth at all times 6. In order to maintain this system there is a series of rewards and punishments for not adhering to the unwritten law 6. The jealousy and envy of a peasant that feels that another has gained or that they have lost can be shown overtly or hidden 6. The self-correcting mechanisms of this system exist on three levels: 1 Individual and family, 2 informal and 3 institutional 6. On the individual level the ways to avoid sanction are to keep added wealth secret or to not fall behind. If one gains in wealth it is common to try to show that it is not a threat to the community by using it through ritual expenditures. The way to power in a peasant community is not to gain leadership positions or to compete for wealth, but to remain as inconspicuous in position and behavior as possible 6. An ideal man will not take on a leadership position because it leads to not being ideal 7. One may go out of their way to deny doing well as an attempt to keep another from envying him 7. Complimenting a fellow villager is a an attack - it is stating that they are rising above the dead-level that keeps everyone the same and secure. It is suggesting that the person is subject to further attack and sanctions 7. If a peasant should seek to rise above the village standard the sanctions will ensue: these may be gossip slander backbiting, character assassination, witchcraft, threat of witchcraft and sometimes violence 7. The sanctions are usually informal, but they can be institutionalized 7. If a family does well, they will offset the threat they hold to the community by spending lavishly on public funtions like weddings, funerals, and festivals. They redistribute so that they lower the standard so everyone remains a have-not, but everyone is richer in community experience 8. In order to get ahead it must involve outside sources - seasonal emigration to work is the most common. It is still envied, but not seen as a threat 8. The accumulation of wealth even by these means is often considered to have been the work of fate or the devil providing a found treasure for a pact - the treasure tales are a way to explain the accumulation of sudden wealth in a community 8. The person who receives help from a wealthy patron outside the community is seen envied, but the advantages he receives are not. This shows that the accumulation of wealth even from outside the community is seen as luck, fate and favor of deities, but not as a function of hard work, thrift, and energy 8. Hard work is not seen as a way to move from a landworker to a landowner. The only way to get rich in agriculture is to get out of agriculture 9. The tendency to see these communities as cooperatives is common, but really they are larger individualized communities. The Mutual Suspicion cast against community members inhibits cooperation and results in reciprical obligations more than community 9. If should seek out a cooperative endeavor he sets himself up for sanctions for expoliting friends and neighbors and to the works of a less skilled or less moral peasant 9. Hard work is not only seen as a fool for trying to gain against the system, but the man who gambles and simply tries to put himself in a greater luck position is seen as the wiser 9. This is perhaps why the lottery is so popular in third -world countries. The way out through hard work is blocked, but by risking a bit to win a boon, no matter the odds, he is putting himself in a better to position to be lucky and is working toward success 9.
Rheubottom
Children are taught from an early age to be wary. To trust or to be too greedy lead to harm 5. There is great theft and anything not guarded or locked down is stolen. The people learn to protect oneself at an early age 5. All members of an extended family show the same level of wealth. if one shows too much they make themselves a potential victim from jealousy 6. If someone come calling to borrow something or ask of money the host will show them great hospitality, but will boast of how poor they are and try to show that they have no money 6. All household items and practices are under the additional protection of the household saint and spells cast to protect. However all of these are only useful under certain proscribed conditions - like being under the roof of the house or being hidden or with the certain fasts and prays said according to the tradition 6. Success is the result of luck, not of hard work 7. Luck is had by those who have it. Unlucky doesn't exist, but the absence of luck does. Taking from the lucky by a person who is without luck at that moment is to simply make things more equal in the universe 7. Unusual success is undeserved and is the cause of evil especially if it is quickly given. Success may be had over the course of several generations, but not by one 7. Those that are rather unfortunate are thought to be so as the result of a great sin that is being enacted against the family for 100 years. So to see one who is unfortunate is to see one who has sinned and so to make their lot worse by harassment is but to further the wishes of god trying to punish for sins 8. Evil is then said to reside in the households where there is great fortune or misfortune. It is either there causing great success or there causing strife. Success is also gained by stealing someones magic and luck as seen in fertility or infertility in a family 8. Those who have must guard against those who are jealous and without. Those who are without must try to get back that which they assume must have been stolen or kept rightly from them and given to another family 8. The evil eye is the potential for evil. It is caused in children when they are weaned and then cry and the mother relents and gives in from her resoluteness and feeds the child 8. You never know who possess the evil eye, but those with it are said to know they have it. Things of value are kept from their view so it cannot be stolen. That is a boundary is kept secure against the possibility of the evil eye finding it 9. Women are said to be prone to attack by the evil eye because they are weak and selfish and prone to creature comforts 9. A woman needs to be tamed by a man in order to root out the selfish and to instill the good hardworking characteristics they should have 9. A woman that does not act appropriately is because she has a bad husband or father and they are the ones who are shamed as the woman is powerless against her instinct 9. There is a fear in this society that families separate and are not unified because women cause this rift. All they want is to stay by the fire and not work in the fields and so they are jealous of those older women that are allowed to 10. If a man is weak he will give into his wife's pestering over the inequality of the work and separate off from the family and then she is able to stay at home with her children 10. This separation weakens the family as there are fewer caretakers at home for children, fewer men in the field, a split of the inheritance and so on - all caused by women 10. The evil eye in some children can cause illness and death 11. Evil can come from within - the case of the trusted family member or outside - one who crosses the border and steals from them 11.
Klanaczay
There is s connection between the attempt to abolish witch hunts in Hungary in the 18th century and related scandals concerning vampires 1. About half of all the witch hunts in Hungary resulted in the death of the accused 2. The prevalence of witch hunts had been a problem in much of Europe and had reached high numbers in Germany, France and Scandinavia. Official decrees outlawing the witch hunts eventually quelled the numbers. Maria Teresa in Hungary was moved to do so, not as a result of the numbers of witch hunts, but because there was a rising numbers of vampire related issues coming out of Moravia 2. Maria Teresa enacted decrees against all sorts of hunts against those with magic (even the dead) 3. MT used ENlightenment ideas of rational thought to support her cause for ending the witch hunts 3. The people eventually took relief from the ending of the trials, but it took time 4. MT's ending of the trials came also with influence from her closest advisors. Van Swietan, her court doctor and closest advisors wrote a treatise on vampires and states that all this comes out of ignorance and much that was once miraculous is shown to have natural causes and that people had always used this against the people 5. The vampire synthesizes beliefs from central and Balkan europe from 5 different types of magical beliefs: revenants, stryx - who came in the night and sucked blood of children, alps - who press on people during the nights, witches - who came to life after death, werewolves - men turned to wolves come to devour men 6. These accounts started to mulitply in the 17the centruy after teh first clear case in Silesia in 1591, Bohemia in 1618, Poland 1624 6. Most of these cases involve people coming back from the grave after an unusual circumstances like suicide or dying unbaptised or haveing been excommunicated 6. They come back and cause trouble until they are exumed and stuck through the body with a pole, or beheaded or the heart taken out and burned from their undecayed bodies 7. The accounts are rather sketchy as they come down from chronicles and do not tell specifically about either the deceased or teh victim 7. Although the folklore is basically Greek or Slavic European understanding of the phenomenon came though the events from the Hungarian region 7. The most famous chronicler of these events wrote about them i Hungary and Hungarian used the Serbian or Balkan word upir and the world came to know the word vampire 8. The interest in vampires became greater in Europe even though the witch burnings were still going on in greater numbers. In Western Europe there had been a decline in witch burnings for some time and so the Eastern threat of vampires caught people's interest 8. For the religious, vampires brought a new trouble since they represented some of the same traits as their saints - resurrection. The incorruption of the human body after death, radiating a light and growing hair and fingernails had been a sign of saintliness and so vampires were a negative reflection of the saints 8. The bloodsucking phenomenon also shows a reflection of the specific life-giving traits from Christ, especially in the medieval era 9. Some considered this a superstition and one to be rooted out by education to the ignorant and so gave the upper classes a greater task 9. In 1752 Pope Benedict XIV spoke of the 'vanity of the vampire beliefs' when speaking of saints. In the early part of the 18th century there was a lot of new literature about the occult and such as a sort of counter culture to the rationalist thinkers and the end of the 18th century saw a number of new types of healing that involved mesmerizing and hypnotizing 9. Other authors at this time started to write about the types of energy that existed in the human body even after death - ideas that had been around since Plato 10. Others wrote about the body and the soul or nightmares and fears plauguing people and doing them harm 10. All of this shows that as soon as the vampire became a part of the public consciousness it was a topic upon which people were attracted and continued to be as it became a topic for literature 10. It was at this time that the vampire in literature gained the trait of sexuality and the vampire's bite became the kiss of death as questions of the history of sexuality started to be asked 10. In 1770s the term bloodsucker and the mythical vampire of Eastern Europe came to be used as a metaphoric social term for tax collectors and the like 12.