Homo defunctus

I have just read an article about Latin becoming a popular language for students in countries like e.g. Germany. I myself enjoyed reading the language when I was much younger and could find time for that pastime, and my rudimentary knowledge of Latin has proved helpful for my interest in magia posthuma. The above text is an example. A definition of vampires as a 'homo defunctus' returning from its sepulchre after death and sucking the blood of humans as well as animals.

The author also tells us that the origin of the word 'vampire' is not certain, and that opinions differ on the matter. Unfortunately, this is more or less still the case.

The text is from the Dissertatio de hominibus post mortem sanguisugis, vulgo sic dictis Vampyren by Christopher Pohl (Leipzig, 1732).

For some examples of Latin in earlier posts see Non dantur Vampyri, Joh. Frid. Glaser's tale of horror, Obsolescit nempe vivus omnis inter mortuos, A.D. 1344 according to Neplach and The shepherd from Blov.

The Evil Dead

I recently mentioned poltergeists as one manifestation of revenants. Here is a description of the 'evil dead' from a paper on Possession phenomena, possession-systems. Some East-Central European examples by Éva Pócs published in Communicating with the Spirits edited by Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs (Central European University Press, Budapest, 2005):

'When we talk about the aggression of the dead against humans naturally we are talking about the "evil" dead: the main form of this aggression is that the dead occupy a part of the human world and bring it under their evil influence. In Medieval Europe folk mythologies were still familiar with the dual nature of the dead: good and evil dead protecting (functioning as guardian spirits) and attacking humans, their own family and community. (---) The appearance of "evil dead" or of hostile ghosts as poltergeists, the abduction of the living during the time of the dead to earthly quasi-other-worlds are phenomena present in a rich cultural variety in contemporary Europe too. Possessing evil house-spirits may be for example the domovoi and kikimora known from modern Russian folk beliefs, and the Romanian moroi (we have similar data on the German goblin): these may appear as noisy ghosts, throwing about things or breaking objects, while the hordes of moroi may appear as havoc causing animals or as fighting cats. In general, however, the category of evil dead is a much broader one than that of the attacking house-spirit/ghost: since the Middle Ages all over Europe in the belief systems of most European peoples, the evil dead are repenting souls who have no status (are not baptized) or could not enter the other world or the purgatory. Such beings are the Hungarian gonoszak, rosszak (evil ones), the Eastern Hungarian and Romanian tisztátalanok (impure ones). According to belief legends, they visit the living especially between Christmas and Epiphany. Besides suspicious noises, clinking, other manifestatioins of the deathly condition replacing the earthly one can be observed when they appear: the force of gravitation is defied, furniture rises, objects fly, head-scarves unfold. Furthermore the spirits cause the illness and death of humans and animals, bother new mothers and steal newborn babies. They can appear as dead but in the form of living people (who bodily possess humans) as well as in animal shape.' (p. 94-5; I have omitted references)

Éva Pócs is Professor at the University of Pécs in Hungary specialising in folk religion, magic, verbal charms, witchcraft, European mythologies and shamanism.

Nicolaus and Nicolas

Nicolaus Equiamicus has been a bit quiet lately, but it's probably because he's been working on another one of his books. He's just announced that next year a new edition of Nicolas Rémy's famous Daemonolatria is published by Ubooks. The above links are in German, but here is the English Wikipedia entry on Remy.

On the trail

Although I have had time to start reading Hagen Schaub's book on the history of vampires, I doubt that I will find time to finish it and write about it for a number of days. Suffice it to say, that it definitely explores some of the avenues that are along the lines of this blog and my own interest in 'living corpses'.

It's curious that a book that needs be must debunk the notion of 'vampire fangs' itself is being sold by showing those teeth on the cover :-)

Nostalgia

I have in my possession an old Danish comic book on ghosts, which is actually a translation of an original comic book from Classics International that published the well-known Illustrated Classics series. Published in 1961, which is a couple of years before I was born, I must have purchased it in some second hand book shop as a child (as a child I spent a lot of my pocket money on second hand books and comics) and for some reason I have kept it ever since.


The title translates as 'Superstition and Ghosts', and it was, of course, issue number 13 in a series on 'The world in text and pictures'. It contains a number of relatively archetypical examples of stories of ghosts and premonition, like e.g. the story of a man giving a girl a ride only to find that she was the ghost of a girl who was killed in a car accident and is buried in the cemetery where he saw her waiting for a bus.

Another example is poltergeist phenomena, which is also reported in some cases of magia posthuma. Like premonition, it is a subject that was of particular interest to those involved in parapsychology, a subject that was in vogue when the comic book was published, and a lot of the contents are concerned with 'telepathy', 'telechinesis' etc.

It's quite curious to be reminded of how popular 'paranormal research' was back then, as no one seems to care about it today. Well, I suppose it should be obvious that it was a dead end like the 'theories' of Von Däniken and others that were also widely studied when I was a child and a young man. I'm sure there are internet groups that cherish these theories and collect 'Forteana', but I'm not going to look for them. Even the subject of vampirism has its cultists, and I don't care to spend any time on them.

But it is very interesting to study how the conception of revenants and related 'supernatural' phenomena have changed over the years, e.g. from the quite corporeal revenants of earlier times to the rather incorporeal 'grey ladies' and onto the pseudo-scientific concepts of parapsychology. Unfortunately, very few books attempt to describe this evolution and explain it in terms of how our world view has changed over e.g. the past milennium.

The old comic book on ghosts isn't very well drawn, and maybe it's just because I read it as a child, but I think it does say something essential about the subject in a way that makes you say: 'What if?'

Click on the two pages from the comic book to see them in a larger format.

Criminalia and Curiosa

The German publisher Festa Verlag has published a number of volumes of curious and horrific tales and events. One of them, Kirchschlagers Criminal- und Curiositäten-Cabinett 2, contains a few pages on Peter Plogojowitz. An excerpt from the book is available.

Blutspuren

In my recent list of new books on vampires, I mentioned Hagen Schaub's Blutspuren: Die Geschichte der Vampire. Auf den Spuren eines Mythos (Leykam Verlag, 272 pages). Today I found time to go to the post office to pick up the copy I had ordered of this book. Never quite knowing what to expect of this kind of book, I have been pleasantly surprised to find that it actually is a book more or less along the lines of my own interest in magia posthuma and vampires. I hope to have more time to look at it sometime this weekend, but I can inform you that Hagen Schaub has studied history, German literary history and geography, and is the co-author of a book on mummies in Austria. But more on the book, when I have had time for a closer look!

Vampire art

Although purely a matter of art, I suppose that some of you might - also in light of recent ponderings of what to do with a lot of money - be interested in this blog post concerning the recent sale of one of Munch's vampire paintings.

What a day for a daydream...

Actually, the question asked by Abebooks - before answering it in bibliophiliac fashion - was:

'We're all counting our pennies pretty carefully right now. In these economically uncertain times, it's tempting to daydream. What if you had unlimited funds? A swimming pool filled with champagne? Pillows stuffed with genuine dodo down? What if you won the lottery, or an eccentric, distant and obscenely wealthy relative left you everything?'

And, apart from trying to save children from famine and supporting various struggling artists or whatever, of course, I would probably take a couple of years off - OK, it's quite hard because there are other things that I feel that I have devoted myself to, but... - to devote myself to travelling to sites relevant to magia posthuma and vampires and exploring the history of this subject, publishing source texts in luxury annotated editions etc., and in cooperation with various like minded people trying to write that elusive book to end all books on the subject...

Bibliophilia

Those of us who are inclined towards bibliophilia will probably be fascinated by this list of rare and expensive books currently for sale on Abebooks. The prices are astronomical - $ 1.800.000 for a book! - so there's no Cosmographia for me.

Those who are inclined towards fictional vampires will be drawn in by this edition of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre with its reference to 'the foul German spectre - the Vampyre', see e.g. James B. Twitchell's The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Duke University Press, 1981), itself a nice book for bibliophiles because of the dust jacket with the two holes punched out to look like the mark of a vampire's bite on the neck of the woman in one Fuseli's Nightmare paintings.

One may wonder what the price would be of an original copy of von Schertz's Magia Posthuma. I know of at most three (3) copies of this book, so it would probably fetch a high price if set for sale on auction, but who knows.

Fortunately, an increasing number of those early books are now available digitally. That's not quite satisfactory for those who like to have a physical copy of the original book, but we are at least allowed the possibility of reading the text. Anyway, the owner of that edition of Jane Eyre which costs $ 122.107,03 probably wouldn't dare to sit comfortably on the settee reading it. He or she would probably rather buy a cheap paperback edition in order not to damage the expensive investment.