I am a fan of vampires. The other night FearNet showed Dracula yet again. Couldn't help but watch. I like vampires - I suspect they would like me (think "all you can eat buffet!") but deep down there is a more than casual attraction.
I'm amazed how few people really understand the horror of being undead. The worst part of being a vampire isn't existing on blood donations, or never seeing the sun, or sleeping in a casket (they even sell those at COSTCO now). The worst, most horrifying part of vampirism is the living forever part. Immortality. Never being able to have non-vampire friends without knowing that you'll outlive them, It's a little like the dark side of pet ownership. You're probably going to last longer than your dog. That's a really tragic thing.
It's funny to me because we seek immortality in so many ways. Our religious institutions (at least many of the Western Christian ones) are based around our hope for "Life Eternal", but that hope assumes that our loved ones will be joining us. What fun would it be by ourselves? In fact, much of our religious mythology revolves around going to heaven to hang out forever with Jesus and our buds...Doesn't that sound ducky?
The scary part of this is that it doesn't seem especially well thought out, since we're so evolutionary in our relationships - and who we love to hang with now, might not be who we'll love to hang with later. Life is dynamic, not static and we change. A lot. Maybe it will be more of a Facebook Friends kind of thing, just a lot of people we sort of like and are cool with, but not in (for the most part) committed relationships with.
(It does not escape me the whole Jesus and drinking blood thing...certainly an archetype for vampiric behavior - but I'll save that for another time).
My reflection for today wasn't so much about the living forever part of being a vampire, as the part of the legend that says a vampire can't enter your residence without being invited. You have to ask them in, for them to be able to cross the threshold. In Dracula, the count says, "Enter freely of your own will...", and the same formula must be used with him.
That struck home in how we also invite evil in - we open ourselves to darkness. It doesn't just come through the window, a mist, a bat or shadows. It must be asked. There must be intention on our part, and a "please some in" thrown somewhere in there. The ways that we invite evil (or the many degrees we might associate with it, like scarcity, meanness, selfishness, negativity, etc., etc.) in varies from person to person - but it always comes. Sometimes cloaked in doubt, right arm drawn up so all you can see are the eyes intensely gazing and focused - looking at you with that piercing stare that says, "You can't hide from me, I know who you are..."
And if we don't invite it in? If we're conscious enough to simply say, "No thanks, I gave at the office..." and slam the door. Evil moves on. That simple. We don't have to feel guilty because we weren't hospitable - there are plenty of other thresholds to be invited across. We can go on and recognize that the power of framing evil is our own power, and within our own realm of controlling our life. The vampires outside, waiting, watching, hoping that we'll reveal a nice juicy vein - will have to drain someone else.
Sometimes, just saying "no thanks" is better than cloves of garlic, or the glimmer of a tarnished silver crucifix. Sometimes, just saying "no thanks" is all that's really needed.
The Etymological Dictionary defines an iconoclast is a “breaker or destroyer of images” from the Late Greek word eikonoklastes. Later, an iconoclast was viewed as “one who attacks orthodox beliefs or institutions.” Today, iconoclasts like perceive things differently than other people - or maybe we just like to be annoying. Either way. This difference in perception plays out in our ideas, worldview and metaphysics - and in how we manage our fears and shadow self. It works well for me.
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