Vampires Through the Ages (3 page)

Such early manifestations suggest that Lilith was initially seen as a vague sort of female spirit, and that it wasn't until she merged with the tales of the Lamashtu that she took on more vampiric qualities. Even then she wasn't viewed as the singular figure we see later on, but rather as a class of
liltu
that were minor owl spirits that attacked humans. As the legend grew, so too did the evils she was said to commit, including being the bearer of storms and disease. Yet it wouldn't be until the Middle Ages that she emerged in the role she became best known for when she began appearing in the rabbinic traditions of the eighth and tenth centuries, most notably in an anonymous medieval text known as the
Alphabet of Ben Sira
.

In this work the author writes that Lilith was the first wife of Adam, but after refusing to take on a subservient role she runs off. When God hears of her rebellion, he becomes angry and sends three angels in pursuit who eventually catch up to her while she is escaping across the Red Sea. Yet despite all their threats, Lilith still refuses to return and submit to Adam. In the end, the angels consent to let her live, but with the warning that each day God would destroy one hundred of her offspring as punishment for her defiance, and from that moment on in the mind of medieval scholars and rabbis, the war between Lilith and man had begun.

As the mythology and superstitions of the Jews interacted and influenced other cultures with which they came in contact, the legend of Lilith underwent an additional series of changes. For instance, in Christian lands during the Middle Ages, Lilith was the wife of Asmodeus, king of the demons, the nine hells, and who represented the sin of lust to the church. The pairing of these two monsters seemed inevitable, and as their story grew the two were said to live in a separate world where they continually created demonic offspring to plague humanity. Many unexplained disasters and calamities were blamed on them, including everything from making men impotent to turning wine sour.

It is also during this period that Lilith takes on her most seductive qualities and was said to always travel with cohorts of succubi to do her bidding. Although Lilith came to be blamed for everything Western patriarchal structures feared the most, including the power of seduction, procreation, and the displacement of gender roles, something far deeper resided in her legends. What revolted the early Hebrews the most was that Lilith was a blood drinker, and for the tribes of Israel no taboo was greater in the eyes of God than to consume the blood of another.

Savage Gods from the East

Even though it might be easy to jump to the conclusion that the precursor to the modern vampire resulted solely from the lands of Mesopotamia, evidence in fact points to the theory that it developed simultaneously from several early sources. While the ancient priests of Babylon were busy exorcising the night demons that plagued their cities, far to the east, in the mist-filled valleys of the Indus River, which borders the western portion of the Indian subcontinent, men were bowing before the blood-drenched altars of strange and fearsome gods. Little is known of the blood cults that originated from the region other than the dark gods they worshiped appeared to demand more than mere obedience; they also wanted human blood.

Wall paintings and carved figures dating back to 3000 BCE have been discovered depicting blood gods with green faces; pale blue bodies; and large, bloodstained fangs. One of the earliest works includes a painting of the Nepalese Lord of Death, who appears standing atop a pile of human bones with massive fangs and a cup of blood shaped from a human skull. Later religious texts would also come to incorporate a belief in blood gods within their pages, including one of the most famous: the
Bardo Thodol
, or
Tibetan Book of the Dead
. Not only does this funerary text describe the passage of the soul after death through the nether regions to rebirth, it also lists as many as fifty-eight wrathful deities known for their blood-drinking appetites.

As worship of the blood gods flourished throughout the river valleys, they eventually spread north to the mountain passes of Tibet and south into the steamy jungles of India, where both the number of blood gods and their power over men grew to new heights. One of the more horrid incarnations to take hold was the Hindu goddess of death and destruction known as Kali, who in many ways came to closely epitomize the image of the female vampire more than any other. Like many of her godly contemporaries, Kali was a spectacle straight from man's darkest nightmares with sharp, bloodstained fangs, a garland of human skulls, and four arms—each bearing a sword or cleaver. Her temples were often located on cremation grounds throughout India, and stories of her taste for blood state that it was so great she once slit her own throat in order to drink the blood that poured from it. Her most memorable tale centers around a battle between herself and the goddess Durga on one side and an unbeatable demon named Raktabija on the other. What made the demon such a dangerous foe was that each time his blood spilled upon the ground he rejuvenated himself. All day long the three battled, with neither Kali nor Durga able to beat the demon. Finally, in a flash of inspiration, Kali gained the upper hand by springing upon the demon and drinking all of his blood. Without his ability to refresh himself, the demon was quickly subdued.

Not only was the goddess Kali responsible for numerous tales of violence and bloodlust, but also for one of the most infamous blood cults the world has ever seen. Beginning sometime in the seventeenth century and continuing into the nineteenth century, a group emerged from the shadows known as the Thuggees, from which we get the English word
thug
. This band of assassins was accused of murdering tens of thousands in the name of Kali before being stamped out by the British in the 1830s. Although many of their practices remain a mystery today, their name continues to live on in legends and through movies like
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
, where they appear as bloodthirsty bad guys.

Members of the clandestine cult are said to have operated in groups posing as common travelers who joined merchant caravans as they passed through remote areas between towns and cities. Once the caravan came to a halt for the night and all its members were asleep, the thugs silently crept from their bedrolls and strangled everyone in the party. The caravan's goods would be looted and all traces that it ever existed destroyed while the bodies of their victims were drained of blood and roasted on a spit before an idol of Kali. In some stories the thugs even drank the blood in order to obtain special occult powers from it.

In 1822, a former British officer named William Sleeman was appointed by Governor General William Bentinck to investigate claims of caravans disappearing in the wilderness. Over the next ten years, Sleeman's police force uncovered evidence of the thugs and eventually tracked down and captured as many as 3,700 cultists, putting an end to their bloody reign once and for all. Many confessed to their deeds and were hanged, while many more were imprisoned for life. Critics of the British crackdown claim that the thugs only existed in the minds of fearful Hindu peasants and that it was nothing more than a modern-day witch hunt. Others contend that the thugs did indeed exist and may even continue their bloody worship of Kali in remote parts of India today.

Similar beliefs in blood gods existed in other parts of the world as well. Egyptians enlisted into their pantheon of gods a particularly brutal warrior goddess named Sekhmet, whose ferocity and bloodlust were matched by no other. Known by a host of monikers, all gruesome of course, including the Scarlet Lady and the Mistress of Slaughter, Sekhmet was often represented as having the head of a lion and the body of a woman. So great was her thirst for blood that she prowled the fields of battle like a lion, drinking the blood and eating the flesh of those who fell in combat. In one of her most celebrated tales, referred to as
The Revenge of Ra
, the sun god Ra creates Sekhmet to punish his rebellious humans for plotting against him. After setting her loose upon the world, Sekhmet quickly devours most of mankind, but when Ra orders her to stop before there are no subjects left, Sekhmet refuses. Fearing her bloodlust has become too powerful, Ra devises a plan to save what was left of humanity. His first step is to turn the waters of the Nile River red so that, mistaking it for blood, Sekhmet will drink from it. Once she begins drinking greedily from the waters, Ra then changes it into beer, causing Sekhmet to become intoxicated and fall into a deep sleep. When she finally wakes from her drunken slumber, she has entirely forgotten her thirst for blood and mankind is spared from annihilation.

Sekhmet's tale was more than just a bedtime story used by the ancient Egyptians to scare small children, however; it was linked to the natural flood cycles of the Nile River, the lifeblood of the land itself. Each year the Nile is inundated with sand and silt from connecting rivers farther upstream, turning the waters blood red and bringing life-giving nutrients to the farmlands that border its course. To celebrate the event, the Egyptians held a yearly festival in which they drank red-colored alcohol in imitation of Sekhmet. Worship of the violent goddess eventually reached its zenith during the reign of Amenemhat I, from 1991 to 1962 BCE, when followers of Sekhmet attained ruling authority over Egypt, and the center of government shifted from its previous location to the headquarters of the cult in Itjtawy.

Monsters of the
Western World

Even from the far-flung coasts of ancient Greece we find early references, in its literature, to various gods, spirits, and other monsters that fed upon the blood of humans. One such creature was Empusa, the daughter of the goddess Hecate, who took the form of a demonic bronze-footed monster that could change into a beautiful woman and feast upon the blood of young men while they slept. Even more feared were creatures known as
striges
, who like the
lilith
of distant Babylon were winged night creatures that either had the bodies of crows and the heads of women or were women who could change into birds of prey at will. In this guise they flew into homes at night where no barrier or lock could keep them out and fed off the blood of sleeping infants and men. It is also said they were particularly fond of human liver and other various internal organs, which they ate with great relish.

The Roman poet Ovid later proposed a number of theories for their origins, including the idea that the creatures were born naturally to their state, that they were once women cursed by the gods to become these monsters, or that they were witches who took on the form through magic spells. The latter of the three explanations would go on to be used by the Orthodox Church to describe blood-drinking witches in league with the devil, who also came to be called
striges
.

Another vampire-like creature that inhabited the rocky Greek isles were female death spirits called
keres
, which were released upon the world when the first woman, Pandora, opened a jar (later mistranslated as “box”) containing all the evils to plague mankind. These were terrifying spirits described as dark women dressed in bloodstained garments with gnashing teeth and long talons that hovered over battlefields and drank the blood of the dying and wounded. In what remains of the Hesiodic poem
The Shield of Hercules
, we get a firsthand look at these evil death spirits:

… dusky Fates [keres], gnashing their white fangs, lowering, grim, bloody, and unapproachable, struggled for those who were falling, for they all were longing to drink dark blood. So soon as they caught a man overthrown or falling newly wounded, one of them would clasp her great claws about him, and his soul would go down to Hades to chilly Tartarus. And when they had satisfied their souls with human blood, they would cast that one behind them, and rush back again into the tumult and the fray.
(Hesiod 1914, 237–9)

Thousands of these vicious spirits were thought to haunt battlefields, fighting among one another over the bodies of the dying like ghastly scavengers. Some stories even include mention of the Olympian gods themselves standing next to their favorite heroes, beating off these clawing death spirits during important battles.

A final vampire-like creature of the early Greeks is the
lamia
, which makes her appearance in the works of such early writers as Aristophanes and Aristotle. Lamia was said to be the daughter of King Belus of Libya and the secret lover of Zeus, king of the gods and ruler of Mount Olympus. When Hera, Zeus's jealous wife, discovered the affair, she immediately flew into a rage and slew all of Lamia's children. Driven mad with grief, Lamia found she could not directly strike back at Hera, so she chose the next best thing and began her revenge by preying upon the infants of mankind instead. From her sprang a race of female vampires that had the torsos of women and the lower bodies of serpents. These creatures were called
lamiae
and were feared not only as child killers but also for their power to transform into beautiful maidens and seduce young men into their bedchambers, where they slowly drank their blood.

In a famous story told by Philostratus in the
Life of Apollonius
, a young man named Menipus falls in love with an exotic woman he meets traveling on the road one day. After a brief flirtation, she convinces him to return to her house in Corinth where the two young lovers begin an amorous affair. The young man's teacher, Apollonius, however, sees through the disguise of the creature and warns the young pupil that he has been enchanted by a lamia. When Apollonius later confronts the creature, she admits to the deception and brags that each time she lay with him she drank a little more of his blood. The story then ends with the monster vanishing and the young man saved from an awful fate. The tale later inspired the English romantic poet John Keats to write his famous poem “Lamia”—only this time the foolish young man perishes from the creature's feeding.