Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow

I just posted about these books to my ile mailing list (an ile is a household in Lucumi (Santeria).  The one I belong to meets at my padrino’s (godfather’s) house).  They are new additions to the bookstore here at Persephone’s Haven.
I just finished the first one, Working for the Devil.  The main character, Dante Valentine, is a necromancer who works with Anubis and the Egyptian pantheon.  During the course of the novel she travels to Nuevo Rio, where there are many shamans practicing Santeria and Voudon.  In one scene, she sees a woman has a drawn a veve (a voudon symbol) in the street.  She describes how the chicken that the woman sacrifices keeps twitching after its dead, and as the blood pours onto the veve, Dante feels the rush of power flowing in.  A few moments later, she sees someone resembling Baron Samedi (one of the voudon loa (spirits)) coming through the crowd, but she leaves the area after that.

I haven’t yet read the other books in the series, so I don’t know how much these traditions come into her story lines, but I was quite interested with her treatment of them in this book.  If anyone else here has read any of them, please let me know what you think.

BB,

Vivienne

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new non-fiction vampire books in the PH Amazon Store

The bibliography of The Science of Vampires had so many fascinating books listed that I’ve started searching for them at Amazon and uploading them according to category. I’ve just added a whole bunch to the “non-fiction: vampires” section. I can’t vouch for all of these, because I haven’t read most of them, and they look like they come from many different view points. I have read Skal’s Monster Show, and absolutely loved it, so I’m looking forward to reading his treatments of the vampire archetype, Hollywood Gothic and Encounters with the Undead.

I found Liquid Dreams of Vampires quite interesting, and while Vampires Among Us is definitely one to be taken with a grain of salt, when it was first published I don’t think there was anything else like it, and I was happy to get it, and found it fascinating reading.

I would love to hear from anyone who has read some of the others on this list, and get your opinions. I would be happy to post any reviews you might want to write. You can leave comments on this post, or send me an email and I can upload a file.

There are several other non-fiction books from Ramsland’s list that I want to add to the AStore, but they will probably be scattered across categories, so next I will get up some of the fiction; I had more that I’ve been reading recently that I need to add, as well, so I’ll post here when I get some more of those up.

Happy reading!

BB,

Vivienne

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Vampire Awakening and Turning: is it Even Possible to be Turned Into a Vampire?

I’ve got a new article uploaded to Article Base on the topic of February’s vampire meet up. It can be found here.

Please let me know what you think. I encourage you to leave comments here and at Article Base on the article. I’m looking forward to having a great discussion about all these ideas at the meet up.

BB,
Vivienne

The Science of Vampires – review

Lady Amethyst of Nephilim United and the Sanford Vampire Meet Up loaned me this book as a resource for the February meet up, which will be discussing vampire Awakening and whether Turning is possible (see my previous post for details).

The Science of Vampires, by Katherine Ramsland, Ph. D. covers a wide range of topics: fictional vampire characteristics, psychological illnesses and serial killers, vampire spirituality, the vampire subculture, the physical basis for bliss and the nature of evil.

Ramsland first discusses fictional vampires and how modern science might explain their abilities, using Dracula as a jumping off point.  She points out how tuberculosis and decomposition might have once been mistaken for vampirism, and then goes into the cellular process of aging, and the properties of blood.

She goes next into how literary vampires have evolved in popular culture, discussing the many paradigms and types of vampires and vampire mythology that have blossomed over the last century.  From this she leaps to quantum physics, psychology, psychic research, and a description of porphyria (an illness that has many symptoms in common with traditional vampire weaknesses, such as heightened sensitivity to the sun).

Next Ramsland discusses the bliss of a vampiric embrace in terms of certain brain functions, techniques such as hypnosis, meditation and trance, drugs such as DMT and LSD, and brain chemicals like endorphins (”inner morphine.”)  In this same section she discusses the possible results of being “embraced,” or how a normal human might be “Turned” into a vampire.  She suggests DNA and genetic mutation, viruses, and pathogens.

Next she goes into what I find to be the most disturbing sections of the book — a discussion of Vampire Personality Disorder, Renfield’s Syndrome, and a list of serial killers who may have fit these profiles.  She chooses to follow this up with an explanation of how forensics and profiling might solve a “vampire” killing, but she uses as her example fictional vampire qualities.  In other words, if Dracula really existed and really had the abilities he had, how might a CSI lab examine the crime scene, analyze the forensics, and profile the killer?  I find it unfortunate that she chooses to confuse real life serial killers with an aberrant psychological disorder, with fictional or literary vampires as if they really existed and a CSI lab would be faced with really trying to figure out what was going on.  I would have found it much more responsible if she had discussed how these forensic labs and profilers dealt with the actual crimes committed by the real life murderers.

Even worse, Ramsland then chooses to describe vampire hunters, and how to kill a (literary) vampire.  I call these portions of the book the most disturbing, because I have no doubt there are confused individuals out there who will be unable to draw the distinction between the “fictional” or literary vampires she discusses, the real-life serial killers she catalogs with legitimate psychological peculiarities, and the modern vampire subculture.  Oh, she throws a few lines in each time she begins to discuss the latter, stressing that they are not psychologically disturbed nor serial killers, but there are disturbed individuals out there who consider themselves to be self-appointed “vampire hunters,” and have attacked members of said vampire subculture.  I can easily imagine such disturbed individuals taking Ramsland’s discussions of literary vampires and the detection of their “crimes” as “real,” equating them with the real-life serial killers she also discusses in such close proximity, and from there making the leap that members of the  vampire subculture, are both “real” literary vampires and serial killers — especially since Ramsland jumps back and forth so frequently and freely between these three types in her explanations of various topics.

I was further disappointed that she chose to follow these sections with a discussion of psychic vampires and vampirism as a spiritual movement, while blending this with a discussion on the nature of evil and  an analysis of Dracula as a dark shaman and alchemist.  This unfortunately adds further credence to the idea that vampirism as a spiritual path is inextricably linked to the nature of evil.

Ramsland saves her “hook” for last — her discussion of vampires and sex is the next to last chapter of the book.  She goes briefly into a discussion of whether vampires can breed with humans when she mentions the dhampir in the vampire hunter section (supposedly the offspring of a vampire and a human), but not until this chapter does she get into the mechanics and hydraulics of sex.  She talks about the different vampire paradigms in various novels and explains whether their physiology would render them impotent, sterile, or capable of having sex and reproducing.

In this chapter she also discusses the attraction the vampire archetype has for the homosexual community, another so-called “deviant” or “outsider” community supposedly drawn to the similar status of vampires, who are seen as sexually uninhibited and similarly unbound by society’s sexual mores.  She follows this up with a discussion of AIDs (a very real problem for sanguine vampires) and the cross over of the vampire subculture with the S&M/bondage subculture, including the shared attraction for dominance and submission role playing.

Ramsland closes by equating the dark allure of the mystery of the vampire, and its ever shifting and elusive nature, to the dark matter of the Universe that scientists are still struggling to explain.  A bit of a stretch, but I like her poetic turn of mind when she makes such comparisons throughout the book, and her ability to think outside the box.

All in all, The Science of Vampires is extremely well researched.  Ramsland does a pretty good job of keeping a wide variety of seemingly unrelated topics well organized, and she has a lot of fascinating information that should appeal both to fans of vampire fiction and to members of the vampire subculture alike.  I do believe she tried to be responsible in her presentation of real vampires amongst discussions of evil, serial killers, and literary vampires. If you can overlook the dangerous potential that certain unbalanced individuals might get them all confused, you should find a lot of very useful information, as well as many resources for further research in her well-cited text and extensive bibliography.

If any of you have read this book I would be very interested in hearing your take on it, and whether your opinions jive with mine.  Please do leave comments on this post and let me know what you think.

BB,

Vivienne

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Sanford Vampire and Shadowlore February Meetup – “Being and Becoming”

Hello again everyone, and welcome to 2009!

Hope your year is going well so far.  I’m diving right in with new avenues of magickal research, so I hope to do a lot more blogging here to talk about my new discoveries and make recommendations for books, podcasts, websites, and other resources.  I’m also hoping to start a Persephone’s Haven podcast.  I figure I’ll be able to get more teaching done, and more in-depth reviews, in an audio format than I’ll have the time and energy to write, though editing a podcast will take a lot of time too.  I’ll give it a shot.  If there is any particular topic you would like information about, please let me know (you can post a comment here or email me).  If enough people are interested in doing so, I can set up a regular Talk-Shoe conference call so we can all talk together about any particular topic and post it here as a resource.

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I’m working on a new article for Article Base, on whether it’s possible to be Turned into a vampire.  That’s the topic for our next vampire meet up, the first Friday in February.  I’ll post the meeting notice and the Talk Shoe conference call information in my next post.

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Nephilim United is in the process of finishing our first video in our educational how-to craft series, carving realistic foam tombstones.  The video is in the editing process right now, but as soon as it is up and available for sale I will post here and let you know.

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I’m probably going to be replenishing my stock of tarot decks and maybe buying some new books for my eBay store; in the meantime I need to get some more of Carla’s belly dance costumes up, and the t-shirts and spaghetti-strap tanks similar to the tote bags with her art work.  I’ve got lots of my used books to get up, too.  Too much to do, too little time!  But I’ll get things up here and there.  If there is a particular deck or book you are interested in, please let me know.  You can post a comment here or email me.

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I’m going to be receiving my Warriors soon (in Lucumi).  Then I’m going to receive Ayao sometime later this year.  Don’t forget to check out my godfather’s books in the a-store (my Padrino is Ocha’ni Lele).

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I’ve been on a crazy puzzle phase lately.  I’ve loved crosswords and other puzzles since I was a kid, but the last few months I’ve been voraciously consuming puzzle books!  That seems to be petering out a bit now, as I get more into some new craft projects.

I just finished crocheting a queen-size afghan for my parents and gave it to them for their Christmas wedding anniversary.  The last few years I have been on an afghan kick, each one a year-long project.  Now I’m interested in doing smaller, more challenging knit and crochet projects again, so I’ve gotten lots of patterns for various kinds of bags, and have been making pouches, iPod sleeves, and so forth for carrying all my different accessories.  I want to do a laptop bag next.  I’ve also started latching a rug, and at the same time I bought that from Herrschners, I also bought a needlepoint pillow kit that will go very nicely with the finished rug.

Maybe once I get my own necessities made, I will make some bags in goth colors to put up for sale at eBay.  If there is any particular kind of bag or item that you think would be popular or particularly useful, please let me know.  I won’t be able to mass produce anything, but I figure I can put up the occasional one-of-a-kind hand-made item for sale.

Okay, enough of the general update stuff.  I’ll get the vampire meet up notice up next and go from there, giving more details on my research and what I’ve been reading.

Happy 2009!  Happy Obama Presidency!

BB,

Vivienne