Safe Blood Play

    I would like to speak to speak about a subject that many of us have had difficulty with and that is safe blood play. How do we handle the bloodlust we experience? Some of us have this bloodlust and we must all take care in how we handle it. First most vamps do not even require or want the blood energy. For those that do, consuming too much of the blood energy is not good for you. It takes small amounts to satisfy the deep hunger. Blood is energy. You can use a lancet device or some other stainless steel device with perhaps peroxide for sterilization and then make small incisions somewhere on the body. This is one way to approach safe blood play. Amounts vary. For some it does not take much, it just depends on how strong the bloodlust is running. Some need just a few drops every so often. Others say more of it and more often.

    If there is an open wound in the mouth, don't ingest another's blood. This is a good guide to go by. Your stomach acid will kill most things, but there is always a risk in anything, so great care should be taken here. There are too many ills that blood can give, most notably Aids, which has killed to many. The virus scourge is among us and we must take care or we would be fools like so many. Blood play is indeed a sensual experience between two consenting donors. It has always been so in my experience and I believe most will enjoy it much more this way. Love is important in most safe blood play for many and in order to accept another's blood. Then there is combining the blood fetish with other energy sources such as the life force or pranic energy from sex, makes for a great energy transfer.

    Vampires have unique powers, empathy and magic being among the strongest. The blood, the life force we crave is the power within it. Through the years, many vampires learn a control to handle the bloodlust. Yes we drink of the blood of others but do not require it for life and some do not care for it at all. One learns to control this craving to a certain degree. By ingesting to much blood, one could get throat infections, and also become very nauseated. Consuming large amounts of blood, could cause you to become sick and vomit because blood is a natural emetic.

    Each Vampire is different on the amounts they consume. In small doses, as I imagine is true with blood, there is a need to feed more frequently. But a strong and well learned psy-vamp has a unique advantage over a blood vamp, they can feed on an unlimited supply at one sitting without any real harm. All vampires are psy- vamps to a degree, they use their mind and body energies to manipulate the life energy they absorb from others to fill the energy deficit that all vamps have. This often includes controlling humans and reading minds, and using the emotional energy to gain the energy needs of life.

    Most vampires have these abilities, so they could all be referred to as psy-vamps to some extent as few actually drink blood and those that do seem to psionically absorb the life force and energy within the blood. Psy-vamps seem to become a little more energized by draining/contact, but they experience none of the benefits of the blood or sickness as well. Feed well and be safe about it..

In the faith..

Damien Daville

Sexuality and the Vampyre

Essential to understanding the appeal of the vampyre is it's sexual nature. While it frequently has been pointed out that traditional vampyres to not engage in in "normal" sexual activity, the vampyre is not necessarily asexual. As twentieth-century scholars turned their attention to the vampyre, both in folklore and in literature, underlying sexual themes quickly became evident.

The sexual nature of vampyrism formed an underlying theme in Bram Stoker's Dracula, but it was disguised in such a way that it was hidden from the literary censors of the day, the consciousness of the public, and probably from the awareness (as many critics argued), of author Bram Stoker himself. Carol Fry, for example, suggested that vampyrism was in fact a form of "surrogate sexual intercourse."

The sexual nature of vampyrism manifested initially in Dracula during Jonathan Harker's encounter with the three vampyre brides residing in Castle Dracula. Harker confronted them as extremely appealing objects but who embody an element of danger. Harker noted, "I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with their red lips" (Chapter 3). Stoker went on to describe the three as sensual predators and their vampyre's bite as a kiss. One of the women anticipated the object of their desire, "He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all." And as they approached, Harker waited in delightful anticipations.

Attention in the novel then switched to the two "good" women, Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray. Lucy, as the subject of attention of three men, reveled in their obvious desire of her before she choose Arthur Holmwood, the future Lord Godalming, as her betrothed. Mina, on the contrary, was in love with Jonathan and pined in loneliness while he was lost in the wilds of Transylvania. While preparing for her wedding, however, Lucy was distracted by the presence of Dracula. While on a seaside vacation in Whitby, Lucy began sleepwalking. One evening, Lucy was discovered by Mina in her nightclothes across the river. As Mina approached, she could see a figure bending over Lucy. Dracula left as Mina approached, but she found Lucy with her lips parted and breathing heavily. Thus began Lucy's slow transformation from the virtuous and proper, if somewhat frivolous, young lady, into what Judith Weisman termed a "sexual monster." By day she was faint and listless, but by night she took on a most unladylike voluptuousness. Shortly before her death, she asked Arthur to kiss her, and when he leaned toward her, she attempted to bite him.

Stoker's understanding, however unconscious, of the sexual nature of the vampyre attack became most clear in the blood transfusions that were given to Lucy in the attempt to save her life. Arthur, who never was able to consummate his love for Lucy, suggested that in the sharing of blood he had, in the eyes of God, married her. The older and wiser Abraham Van Helsing rejected the idea, given the sexual connotation for himself and the others that had also given her blood. But by this time, the sexual interest of Dracula in women was firmly established and led directly to the most sexual scene in the book.

Having given Lucy her peace (and, by implications, returned her virtue) in the act of staking and decapitating her, the men called together by Van Helsing to rid the world of Dracula, were slow to awaken to his real target- Mina. When they finally became aware of this, they rushed to Mina's bedroom. There, the found Dracula sitting on her bed, forcing her to drink from a cut in his chest. Dracula turned angrily to those who had interrupted him. "His eyes flamed red with devilish passion..." Once Dracula was driven away and Mina came to her senses, she realized that she had been violated. She declared herself unclean and vowed that she would "kiss" her husband no more.

While overt sexual activity was not present in Dracula, sexual themes were manifest in the vampyre literature of the previous century. the original vampyre poem written by Goethe, "The Bride of Corinth," drew upon the story from ancient Greece concerning a young woman who had died a virgin. She returned from the dead to her parents' home to have sexual experiences with a young man staying temporarily in the guest room. The strong sexual relationship at the heart of Samual Taylor Coleridge's "Christabel" was expanded in "Carmilla <carmilla.html>," the popular vampyre story be Sheridan Le Fanu.

In the story, Carmilla Karnstien moved into the castle home of Laura, her proposed victim. She did not immediately attack Laura, but proceeded to build a relationship more befitting a lover. Laura experienced the same positive and negative feelings that Harker had felt toward the three women in Castle Dracula. As she put it:

Now the truth is, I felt unaccountable toward the beautiful stranger. I did feel, as she said, "drawn towards her," but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging.

Carmilla went about her assault upon Laura while seducing her cooperation. She would draw Laura to her with pretty words and embraces and gently press her lips to Laura's cheek. She would take Laura's hand while at the same time locking her gaze on her eyes and breathing with such passion that it embarrassed the naive Laura. So attracted was Laura to Carmilla, that only slowly did she come to the realization that her lovely friend was a vampyre.

The sexual vampyre is also apparent in folklore. While there is little evidence that Stoker was intimately aware of eastern European vampyric lore, he could have found considerable evidence of the vampyre's sexual nature- particularly in the folklore of the Gypsies and their neighbors, the southern Slavs. For example, corpses dug up as suspected vampyres occasionally were reported to have an erection. Gypsies though of the vampyre as a sexual entity. The male vampyre was believed to have such an intense sexual drive that his sexual need alone was sufficient to bring him back from the grave. His first act usually was a return to his widow, whom he engaged in sexual intercourse. Nightly visits could ensue and continue over a period of time, with the wife becoming exhausted and emaciated. In more than a few cases, the widow was known to become pregnant and bear a child by her vampyre husband. The resulting child, called a dhampir, was a highly valued personage deemed to have unusual powers to diagnose vampyrism and destroy vampyres attacking the community.

In some cases the vampyre would return to a woman with whom he had been in love, but with whom he had never consummated that love. The woman would the be invited to return with him to the grave where they could share their love through eternity. The idea of the dead returning to claim a living lover was a popular topic in European folklore. By far the most famous literary piece illustrating the theme was Gottfried August Bugar's ballad "Lenore," known in English by Sir Walter Scott's translation.

The folklore of Russia also described the vampyre as a sexual being. Among the ways in which it made itself known was to appear in a village as a handsome young stranger. Circulating among the young people in the evening, the vampyre lured unsuspecting women to their doom. Ressuain admonitions for young people to listen to their elders and stay close to home are reminiscent of the ancient Greek story of Apollonius, who saved one of his students from the allure of the lamiai, whom he was about to marry.

The langsuyar of Malaysia was also a sexual being. A female vampyre, she was often pictured as a desirable young woman who could marry and bear children. Langsuyars were believed to be able to live somewhat normally in a village for many years, revealed only by their inadvertent involvement in an activity that disclosed their identity.

The Sensuous Vampyre On Stage And Screen

Carol Fry, author of the article, "Fictional conventions and sexuality in Dracula," has properly pointed out that Dracula was in part a stereotypical character of popular 19th century literature, the rake. The rake appeared in stories to torment and distress the pure women of proper society. The rake was to some extent the male counterpart of the vamp; however, the consequences of falling victim to a seductive male were far more serious for a woman than they were for a man victimized by a seductive woman. The man who loved and left was thought to have left behind a tainted woman. Just as a state of "Moral depravity" contaminated the fallen woman, so vampyrism infected the one bitten. The vampyre's victim became like him and preyed on others. The fallen woman might become a vamp, professional or not, who in turn led men to engage in her immoral ways.

Once brought to the stage, Dracula's rakish nature nature was heightened. No longer hovering in the background as in the novel, he was invited into the living rooms of his intended victims. In this seemingly safe setting, he went about his nefarious business, though what he actually did had to be construed from the dialogue of those who would kill him. Only after the play was brought to the screen, and the public reacted to Bela Lugosi, did some understanding of the romantic appeal of this supposed monster become evident to a widespread audience. However, not until the 1950s would the vampyre, in the person of Christopher Lee's Dracula, be given a set of fangs and allowed to bite his victims on screen.

Interestingly, the obvious sexuality of the vampyre was first portrayed on screen by a female vampyre. In retrospect, the scene in Dracula's Daughter (1936) in which the female vampyre seduced the young model was far more charged with sexuality than any played by Lugosi. A quarter of a century later, Roger Vadim brought an overtly sensual vampyre to the screen in his version of "Carmilla <carmilla.html>," Blood and Roses (1960). In 1967 French director Jean Rollin produced the first of a series of semi pornographic features, Le Viol du Vampire (released in English as The Vampire's Rape). The story centered around two women who believed that they were cursed by a vampyre to follow his bloodsucking life. The sexuality of "Carmilla <carmilla.html>" was even more graphically pictured in The Vampire Lovers, Hammer Films' 1970 production, in which the unclad Carmilla and Laura romped freely around their bedroom.

From these and similar early soft-core productions, two quite different sets of vampyre films developed. On the one hand were pornographic vampyre films that featured nudity and sex. Amongst the earliest was Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) (1969), in which Count Alucard kidnapped naked virgins to fulfill his sexual and vampyric needs. Spanish director Jesus Franco produced La Countess aux Seins Nus (1973) (released in video in the United States as Erotikill), in which Countess Irena Karnstein (a character derived from Carmilla) killed her victims in an act of fellation. (These scenes were cut from the American version.) The trend toward pornographic vampyre movies culminated in 1979 with Dracula Sucks (also released as Lust at First Bite), a remake of Dracula, that closely followed the 1931 movies. It starred Jamie Gillis as Dracula. More recent sexually explicit vampyre movies include Dracula Exotica (1981), also starring Gillis; Gayracula (1983), a homosexual film; Sexandroide 1987; Out for Blood (1990); Princess of the Night (1990); and Wanda Does Transylvania (1990). Most of these were shot in both hard-core and soft-core.

The Vampyre In Love

The pornographic vampyre movies were relatively few in number and poorly distributed. Of far more importance in redefining the contemporary vampyre were the novels and films that transformed the evil monster of previous generations into a romantic lover. The new vampyre hero owed much to Chelsea Quinn Yarbo's St. Germain. In a series of novels beginning with Hotel Transylvania (1978), St. Germain emerged not as a monster, but as a man of moral worth, extraordinary intellect, and captivating sensuality. He even occasionally fell in love. He was unable to have ordinary sexual relations because he could not have an erection. However, his bite conveyed an intense experience of sexual bliss that women found to be a more than adequate alternative.

At the time Yarbo was finishing Hotel Transylvania, a new stage production of Dracula, The Vampire Play in Three Acts had become a hit on Broadway. the play was the first dramatic production of Dracula to reintroduce the scene in which Dracula forced Mina to drink his blood. The scene, a rape like experience in the novel, had been transformed into one of seduction. In 1979 the larger populace was introduced to this more sensual Dracula when Frank Langella recreated his stage role for the motion picture screen. He presented Dracula as not only a suave foreign nobleman, but as a debonair, attractive male who drew his victims to him by the sheer power of his sexual presence. the scenes in which Lucy, over the objections of her elders, rushed to Carfax to join her lover and drink his blood completed a transformation of Dracula from mere monster into a hero who lived up to the movie's billing: "Throughout history he has filled the hearts of men with terror, and the hearts of women with desire."

Langella's Dracula directly informed the more recent production of Bram Stoker's Dracula under the writing and direction of Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola not only brought the vampyre into proper society but turned him into a handsome young man who, with his money and foreign elegance, was able to seduce the betrothed Mina from her wimpish fiancé. He returned the final blood drinking scene to her bedroom, revealed Dracula at his most human, and made their lovemaking the sensual climax of the movie's love story subplot, which Coppola had added to explain Dracula's otherwise irrational acts against the British family he had assaulted.

The transformation of the vampyre into a hero lover was a primary element in the overall permeation of the vampyre myth into the culture of late 20th century America (which included the emergence of the vampyre in humor and the vampyre as moral example). As such, the contemporary vampyre has had to deal with a variety of sexual patterns. Television detective Nick Knight developed an ongoing relationship with a researcher who was trying to cure him. Mara McCunniff, the centuries old vampyre of Traci Briery's The Vampire Memoirs, was overtaken by her sexual urges for three days each month at the time of the full moon. In Domination, Michael Cecilone placed his vampyres in the world of sadomasochism. Lori Herter's romance novels elevated the vampyre as the object of female fantasies.

The response to the conscious development of the Vampyre as a sexual being has almost guaranteed future exploration in fictional works. Prisoners of the Night, a periodical of Vampyre fiction that appears annually, has focused on sexuality in several issues. Editor Mary Ann B. McKinnon has added an impetus to exploring the theme in her fanzine, Good Guys Wear Fangs, which covers good-guy vampyres, most of them romantic heroes. Such sexualizing of the Vampyre, while departing from the common image of the Vampyre as mere monster, has not been foreign to the creature itself. From the beginning, seductive sexuality has existed as an element of the literary, Vampyre commingling with that of the monstrous, and goes far to explain the vampyres appeal relative to it's monstrous cousins.

Much of the above source information (with amendments) was taken from J. Gordon Melton's "The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead" Copyright © 1994

Putting Your Vampyric life together

or

"How to be a whole, happy, well adjusted Vampyre"

by Lady CG

So you've discovered you're a vampyre, and right now it feels like it sucks to be you. Every older vampyre like myself, still remembers what it felt like to be the "newly awakened", and you're right... it can suck. You're hungry, you're depressed, and you want to rebel against your parents and the world in general. (And it’s not a feeling restricted ONLY to youth... we older folks just rebel against different things, since our parents shouldn't be the problem once we get out on our own). You don’t fit in with most circles of normal peers, light hurts your eyes, and people say you're weird.... You feel like a complete outcast, or maybe you just feel like you don't fit in anywhere.... Life hurts a lot, and frequently.

I'm here to tell you that it doesnt' have to be like that. I'm here to tell you... it gets better.

Its really a matter of pulling it all together.

If you've been a vampyre for any length of time you already know what it takes to just survive. You've probably learned that donors are tough to find, but there are feeding alternatives. You've most likely come to realize (since you're reading this) that you are incredibly unlike others around you, but you are NOT alone. You've faced the fact that your family and friends may never understand what you are, but you've likely learned that discretion is the better part of valor... and you can KIND of appear to at LEAST not stand out ALL the time.... and thanks to boards like ours, you don’t have to be alone. It’s a good start.

But it’s not enough to SURVIVE... Vampyres CAN thrive!

Yes... it can be tough to be a vampyre... or Therian, or any kind of otherkin. But what you learn, as you get older, is that each species has gifts that were given to us to make our lives easier, and keep us on top things.

Lets start with feeding....

Yes we need to feed. Its a fact. If you call yourself a vampyre and you DON'T need to feed in some way or another, then you're fooling yourself... you're NOT a vampyre, if you do not need to feed. And needing to feed starts to feel like the be all and end all that your life revolves around... where will I find my next donor? What if I can't find a donor? We all know there are alternatives. We mix our fruity sweet red wine (3 parts) to fresh or frozen blood (one part) and drink our bloodwine to keep us sane... We drag our steaks over the grill just long enough to warm the blood inside, and gulp them down 3 times a week if necessary. It'll get you through the night, though we all know it’s not what we crave. Donors! ah Sweet donors. But they are few and far between, and competition for the ones available, can be disconcerting.... We all know the problems.

One of the things I've learned is that to stay fed, one should be prepared to rely on ALL the above AND a bit of psi vamping.

Being a well adjusted vamp relies on a steady supply of food... which for us, means blood / energy. A mature vampyre realizes that it’s just not always possible to have a donor, but that doesn’t mean we can go without feeding when one isn’t available. My advice is to learn what works for you and be diligent about using your back up methods. An unfed vamp is a sick vamp, and usually an unstable one. Don’t do it to yourself... feed frequently and realize... people cannot go without food... and YOU cannot go without blood / energy. Don't try. It’s the equivalent of a human starving themselves. "But I crave blood from a DONOR... NOT animal blood!" I hear it ALL the time. Yes, I know. I understand.... but you need to feed even when you don’t have a donor. Maturity is realizing that feeding is inevitable and other sources of food HAVE to be in your back up plan. You don't like animal blood? Too bad quit bitching and starve quietly. Blood is available, even if you don’t like the source. It’s like a starving human refusing to eat cause he / she doesn’t like what’s on their plate.

That said... nature has given us certain advantages with which to attract a donor...

"Venus flytrap syndrome"

We are the bright and the enigmatic... we are the "beautiful people". Vampyric charm is a gift, a rather effective one, at that.

Vampyres are some of the most charming people on the planet, when we are not feeling sorry for our lot in life. We can smile and the masses fall at our feet. The opposite sex or the same sex... whatever you're into. If you turn a well tuned vamp charm on your intended donor / mate/ victim/ friends the effect can be amazing.

"Well yes, CG.... I know I can turn on the charm and get my own way... but is it ethical?" I can only speak for myself here... but I'm of the opinion that we have our gifts for a reason. Why throw away our most effective coping mechanism, based on ethics? And what’s wrong with using charm to get what we want, anyway? I mean... whose stupid idea is THAT? I believe it’s much better to attract your flies with honey than to repel them with vinegar and starve.

Besides.... honing this skill makes life SO much easier! Pay attention. Don't be afraid to turn on the charm. Vampiric charm can be overwhelming... so you'll need to experiment: it’s one of the best tools in our arsenal but it’s NOT the only one.

Energy manipulation is another gift that helps make our lives easier.

If you're a vampyre, and you haven’t tried out your magikal abilities, then you are missing out on one of the truly rewarding gifts of being a vampyre. We have amazing abilities to work "magick. Like all abilities, its a gift that needs to be honed to a skill, but it’s a skill that comes easily to us.

Don't overlook it. For those who are skeptical of all magickal working I have this to say:

Magick is not what people once thought it to be. It doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with being good or evil or even religion, any more than a mathematical calculation does. Magic is NOT religion. It is Science. And, as such is governed by laws and principals... cause and effect. It’s the art of manipulating energy. Period. You can prove it too yourself easily: Buy or borrow a "plasma ball". Sit in front of it, a foot or two away and  concentrate on building a colored energy ball in your hands, rather like picturing yourself building a snowball only you're building it out of energy. Picture the energy flowing from your hands and becoming a solid ball between your palms. Picture the colors swirling in the ball. When you feel the ball is solid, throw it at the plasma ball. The plasma ball reacts to energy. If you do it right (might take a try or two, but its easy to master...) the plasma ball will react, even when the energy ball is thrown from across the room.

It’s a gift, folks. Magick is a skill worth having. It can make your like SO much easier in ways I can't begin to describe in this short article.

Like magick, intuition is also our friend. Vampiric intuition is among the best i know of... excepting, perhaps, some types of  Therians, who seem to be especially instinctive in a very real and very feral way. Use it. Learn to rely on it. It can and will save you, if you ever need it to. As vamps we are aware that there are more things out there, than those who live the more mundane world will EVER realize! Vampiric intuition is another developable skill. As you get older and more practiced you'll learn to throw out your intuition like a net. It can tell you if other vampyres are around, if there are people in your vicinity that would make donors, if there is danger nearby. It will help you get that job you want (combined with vamp charm), or pick up the object of your present interest at a bar. So learn to meditate and learn to use this gift to best advantage! After all... there comes a time when we come to realize that as vampyres, we have a LOT more control of our lives and surroundings, then most of us realize and once we stop fighting our nature and learn to integrate it into our lives we can live very satisfying and fruitful existences...

But... that’s the problem, isn't it: that tendency of ours to fight our nature.

Ok... so we're night people and we're often forced into a diurnal existence.... There comes a time when we can stop fighting what we are and order our lives to our liking. We all grow up and leave home (hopefully). Once that happens you have, essentially, the ability to control your own destiny. Hate the light? Get a night job. Don’t say "I can't!" you can. Anyone can! You just have to stop telling yourself you can't. You don't want to keep your vamp life a secret? Find a mate you can confide in. "But my lover wouldn’t understand!" then find another lover. You have ALL the skills necessary to change anything about your life you don't like. Use charm, use magick, use intuition.... MAKE your like be what you want it to be. You just need to realize that YOU CAN!

As Vampyres we overlook / ignore/ get to lazy/ forget that we are given our gifts to compensate for the difficulty of being who we are. It’s not wrong to properly use our gifts to make us the healthy, happy, well adjusted creatures we are capable of being. I know we tend to fall into depression and we have dark moods... but Vamps are among the most resilient people I know! We're stronger physically than most normal humans... We're attractive in ways other species would royally envy if they knew about it! We're often physically attractive and tend to become more and more attractive as we get older. We have the ability to order our world around us to our liking using energy manipulation... In reality, we have it all going for us, once we accept our gifts and learn to take advantage of them.

So... next time the road to being an older vamp gets you down... next time 2nd stage changes become so painful that you don’t think you can bear another day of the physical discomforts, the next time you get depressed enough to want to commit suicide...

REMEMBER: You are in the process of developing into one of the most powerful and seductive creatures on our planet, and believe me.... the end justifies the means. Learn to use and enjoy the gifts that make being a vampyre one of the most exciting lives imaginable.

Vampyres were not meant to just "Survive".... WE are capable of being able to really THRIVE!

Carpe Noctum!

Lady CG