|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:03 am
 |
|
|
 |
My opinions don't count for much on this guild, but I'll post them anyway, because the OP asked me to. ^_^
Psy vamps? They want my energy, they'd godsdamn (yay for fluffy terms) well better ask for it first. And asssuming I had surplus, I can't see what's wrong in giving it to them. People who steal energy from others because they're too lazy to get it theirselves are, as Tea put it, "the scum of the earth." Then again, I'd say "scum of the planes," because I believe in astral projection, but whatever.
Sanguine (bloodsuckers)? No real opinion. I like the taste of my own blood, but I don't go around trying to get some from everyone else. Think of the AIDS, for gods' sake! ^_^
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 10:10 am
|
|
|
|
reagun ban EmeraldLadder reagun ban EmeraldLadder Also maybe you could also argue that "Spiritual Parasites" lack some kind of energy and need to make up for it somehow. And a rapist lacks sex so goes out and gets some.
And besides, isn't rape is more of a control thing then it is a lack of sex? o.O Do you get what we're saying here? Parasites don't need what they steal, they want it.
Contested.
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary Main Entry: par·a·site Pronunciation: 'per-&-"sIt, 'pa-r&- Function: noun Etymology: Middle French, from Latin parasitus, from Greek parasitos, from para- + sitos grain, food 1 : a person who exploits the hospitality of the rich and earns welcome by flattery. 2 : an organism living in, with, or on another organism in parasitism. 3 : something that resembles a biological parasite in dependence on something else for existence or support without making a useful or adequate return.
Based on entry number 3, we see that a parasite is dependent on its host. Therefore if energy vampires are parasites, they do need the energy they steal. Whether or not that fact makes the practice less abhorrent is a matter of opinion. |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 1:54 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:34 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 1:00 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 1:37 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 2:44 pm
|
|
|
|
Huh.
Well, I had hoped that my first post might be more theoretic as per a request from TeaDidiKai, but this discussion is just too much for me to resist. I got steeped in this stuff through most of my youth, so seeing this brings me to feel like I have something of an obligation to comment.
First, I simply don't believe the "psi vamp" and "sang vamp" thing as given. I've met many people who claim to be of these camps. I'm sure there are exceptions, but every single one of them that I've spoken with have been entirely driven by a need to be special. They seem to be more comfortable living in a fictional world in which they can feel drawn to the mystique of being "vampires" instead of having to confront their real feelings of inadequacy that dominate their lives outside their "dark" fantasy.
I should note, by the way, that virtually all these people will post things on their websites like "Darkness Against Child Abuse" or "Darkness Against Drunk Driving." Anton LaVey coined this kind of behavior as "Taking the Devil's name without playing the Devil's game." Many of these people seem to want to take on the magical idea of being "dark creatures of the night" but still want to "wear the good guy badge" as LaVey says. They want people to still see them as ethically acceptable. They'll talk about how it's important to "get donors" (for blood or psychic energy, either way) rather than just taking. This is just further indication that their primary motive isn't actually alignment with the vampiric aesthetic but is instead a desire to be accepted as special and relevant - to be admired.
The "sang vamps" are, in my opinion, just clueless. I mean no offense to people who read this who adhere to this belief, but I do disagree with the lifestyle. There's no medical reason a human being needs to drink blood, and it can in fact bring some truly nasty diseases with it. I honestly think it's just based on pure fiction.
"Psi vamps" might have more of a case, but I don't think so. I've done a great deal of study into the nature of energy systems and psychic energy itself. What I've determined so far is that the "needs" of a given person in terms of energy have more to do with the person's state of mind than with anything inherent to their "soul" or body. (See, for example, "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart, which gives a synthesis of parapsychology and physics that doesn't do the all-too-common mistelling of quantum physics based on confusing the terms "observation" and "measurement.") So again, it is my opinion that even if some "psi vamps" actually do need energy because of "chakra imbalances" or whathaveyou, those energetic problems come from their decision to be "psi vamps" and not because of something inherent to who they are.
Here, however, I have to admit that there are three kinds of psychic vampire, and in saying "psi vamp" I'm referring to just one of them. By "psi vamp" I mean the kind of person who thinks that they need to take psychic energy from others in order to function in their lifestyle. This is a little bit circular because often their lifestyle is self-defined as "being a psi vamp," so really I'm saying that a "psi vamp" is someone who thinks they're a "psi vamp."
The second kind of psychic vampire comes from what I believe the origin of the term was: The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey. LaVey defined a psychic vampire to be someone who uses emotional coersion to make others feel obliged to "help" him or her. These people tend to be perpetual "victims" who can't ever seem to get a good break in life - and if you don't help them, then obviously you're making it worse for them! I believe LaVey used the term "psychic" to refer to the psyche, or the mind. A better term might be "mental vampire" or "emotional vampire." (Or "inconsiderate @$$" if you prefer. wink )
The third kind of psychic vampire are those who term themselves Vampires (capitalization intended) from the Temple of the Vampire. I distinguish these ones from the first sort only because they have a much clearer definition of what being a Vampire is. To them, a Vampire must:
want to live forever;
be willing to view him- or herself as a predator of humans;
put their money where their mouth is, so to speak;
keep an open but critical mind regarding the paranormal;
take "Lifeforce" (their term for psychic energy) from humans; and
commune with their gods, whom they view as Vampires who have survived physical death through the practice of Vampirism.
Regarding the Temple (as opposed to Vampirism the religion), I don't think that arguments about it being a money-making scam hold water. This is for two reasons. First, they could make quite a bit more money by changing their business practices, and they're very aware of this. (I've spoken with a number of their administrators. I used to dabble in this stuff, so I feel justified in claiming to have something of an inside perspective on it - much to Tea's dismay. wink ) They could get much, much more for their books in royalties and the like if they went through a major publisher and let their books get sold in places like Barnes & Noble. They could also do much better, financially speaking, if they had more of an all-embracing perspective for their membership since active membership with the Temple involves monthly dues. But instead of letting in anyone with a vampiric aesthetic, they explicitly ban "sang vamps" and often kick people out whom they consider eccessively incompetent or sycophantic - traits that should be irrelevant to an organization whose supposed sole intention is to make money.
Second, for it to be a scam requires that people be tricked out of their money, which means they have to get less than their money's worth. That is a qualitative judgment, but most people in the Temple whom I've spoken with indicate that they are absolutely delighted by what the Temple has given them, and that they would gladly pay a hundred times what they did for what they got. The Temple is obviously a business before it's a religious institution, but that doesn't invalidate the religion. It just means the leadership isn't hypocritical. (Many Vampires are also Satanists in the LaVey sense.)
Arguments that the Temple is a cult and brainwashes its members also don't work simply because of what it means to be a cult. The Temple demands that its members question everything claimed. They tell members to experiment with taking "Lifeforce," communing with their "Undead Gods," and inducing out-of-body experiences. Every member is expected to challenge, question and doubt the Temple's claims unless and until he or she personally validates the authenticity and practical usefulness of the Temple's claims. Applications for advancement that involve any kind of faith are denied.
Brainwashing cults are typified by an insistance that their members simply trust the leadership, and that those with doubt simply are not "pure" in some fashion. There is an attempt to use peer pressure to cause people to act as though they believe in the cult's claims, and then because of cognitive dissonance those new members come to adamantly believe the cult's doctrines and trust the leadership.
I certainly make no claim that the Temple is perfect. I'd like to point out that I'm not a member and I disagree with quite a few of their practices and ideas. I simply want to do my part to make sure that any criticisms of the Temple (or any other organization for that matter!) are well-informed.
Besides, attacking the beliefs of the Vampires of the Temple based on the Temple's financial policies doesn't make much sense. That is in a way akin to claiming that Wicca is an invalid religion because it didn't exist a hundred years ago.
Now, regarding real vampirism:
I'm not an expert, but I think that the historical myth of vampires actually comes from two distinct sources:
misunderstandings about the nature of a corpse's decomposition after death, and
hypnagogic and hypnapompic imagery.
I understand that there was a book written on the former, but I unfortunately don't have the reference handy. Historically there was a fear that if the body was not buried quickly after death, it might come back. (I think the reason this was considered frightening was because of the second point, which I'll detail below.) This belief was based in part on the process of rigor mortis - the stiffness of a stiff. Muscles will contract during the decomposition process, causing the body to flail around sometimes. There were historical confusions about the body suddenly sitting up during funerals and moaning. (The moans would come from gasses appearing in the body due to bacterial activity and then getting squeezed out because of these sudden contractions.)
This was also responsible for the idea that vampires get killed by stakes through the heart. The point wasn't that it had to go through the heart. The idea was that a long stake would pin the body to the ground inside the casket. This was considered necessary because at times after moaning was heard, people would dig the bodies back up and find that they had rolled around inside (due to rigor mortis). Furthermore, their teeth and nails would appear longer because the flesh would recede from dehydration, giving the impression of fangs and talons that had grown after death - assumedly to hunt the living.
This gets complicated by past tendencies for people to bury bodies too shallowly in the earth without caskets. It was deep enough that humans wouldn't smell the rotting bodies, but dogs and other animals often could. They would dig down into the earth and pull up a leg or an arm but couldn't get the rest to come out, so people would show up the next day to see earth overturned and a hand outside as though the body had tried to crawl out of the earth. Chunks missing from the hand could be interpreted as the undead corpse not caring about physical damage as it claws out of its grave.
I think this is why we have the requirement that bodies be buried a full six feet under the ground now - and in caskets.
As for the second point: Hypnagogic imagery is the collection of images you experience while you're falling asleep. Hypnapompic imagery is the same for while you're waking up. These form the real "Twilight Zone." These states - especially the hypnapompic one - appear to be responsible for a staggering number of reports of alien abduction, out-of-body experiences, the "hag" phenomenon, and bedside visitations by dead relatives or friends. Work with lucid dream induction can actually generate many of these experiences. (See for example the work of Dr. Stephen LaBerge at The Lucidity Institute.)
Back in the dark ages or further back, before the idea of science was even thought of, dreams were viewed as being relevant messages from the gods (or from God, depending on what time period and culture you're referring to). They were not seen as being generated by a hidden part of the mind since the very idea of the subconscious had not yet been popularly formed.
So, if someone just lost a loved one and buried them, that loved one is likely to be on the person's mind while they're falling asleep. This will tend to guide hypnagogic imagery towards the sleeper's mental image of the dearly departed. However, during the hypnagogic state you are not wholly disconnected from your surroundings. Frequently, attempts to induce lucid dreams through the hypnagogic state will give the impression of "rolling out of the physical body" and beginning the dream in a dream-version of your bedroom. (There are various reasons to believe that this is a dream-image and not the actual physical world, as Dr. LaBerge discusses.)
Therefore, when this person experiences hypnagogic imagery of their loved one that they're not making themselves, they will tend to think that this is a message from the gods (or God) and focus attentively for news of the recently deceased. That act of concentration will tend to induce a semi-lucid state in which the imagery takes a life within the physical bedroom. The person will be aware that their loved one is dead - but will see them there in the room.
This is naturally likely to be frightening. And as dream states respond to the emotional tone of the dreamer, it becomes a nightmare.
So all this past imagery about corpses growing teeth and claws and crawling their way out of graves comes to mind, and the newly dead are seen as having returned to eat the living.
Combine this with noticing the next day that the corpse has thrashed around in the grave and may well have a hand outside, and you have full-blown terror in the walking dead. Others might start fearing the return of the newly dead, causing them to also engage similar hypnagogic imagery and verifying the tales of the vampire or walking corpse who actively attempts to harm the living.
So what do you do in a case like this? Obviously you do something to the corpse to keep it from coming back. You bury it face-down in crossroads to keep it from figuring out how to get back to your town. You drive a stake through it into the ground to make it harder to get up. You burn the body so that there's nothing left with which the undead can attack. And you pray to your gods (or to God) for protection from these dark forces.
I think the reference to blood came from magical thinking about blood being associated with living energy. People may have speculated that those who had just died didn't want to stay dead and therefore tried to take the life-essence of others to remain in the physical world instead of moving on to the afterlife. So the idea of "drinking blood" probably came from this archaic tendency to associate blood with life. Over time this association may have entered people's experiences, since when they go into these waking hypnagogic nightmares they may well think, "He's a vampire here to drink my blood!" And behold, as dreams are very suggestive, it becomes so.
This explains the myth of vampires coming out only at night (when people fall asleep), of shapeshifting (as hypnagogic imagery is wont to do), and any number of other supposed powers available to them. Dreams have a remarkable ability to be strange but still appear very real.
This would also explain why ancient peoples had a very real fear of the undead but there have been no known reports of vampires that have been anything more than delusion.
Mind, this is just my hypothesis mixed with some things I've heard from a number of different sources. Perhaps there's more to the myth than I've outlined here. But I think this is interesting enough.
I hope this has been helpful!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 2:56 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 3:16 pm
|
|
|
|
missmagpie Morphenius Extremely interesting and intelligent speech Um. Welcome to the guild. mrgreen
biggrin
Thanks! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 6:11 pm
|
|
|
|
Morphenius missmagpie Morphenius Extremely interesting and intelligent speech Um. Welcome to the guild. mrgreen Thanks! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 7:23 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 14, 2006 11:19 pm
|
|
|
|
TeaDidikai Morphenius I used to dabble in this stuff, so I feel justified in claiming to have something of an inside perspective on it - much to Tea's dismay. wink Yeah. Morphenius- everyone. Everyone- Morphenius. Welcome to the party Hun.
Why thank you! biggrin |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 2:04 pm
|
|
|
|
Absolutely brilliant post. Having a lot of hands-on experience with this subject, I definitely agree that there are two types of psychic vampires.
Socio-emotional vampire - This is the person that intentionally draws energy for their own purposes, not necessarily out of need. This doesn't have to be in the direct sense of "manipulate energy and pull it in towards your own energetic systems," rather it is much more common to see it, as Morphenius put it perfectly, via emotional coercion. Charismatic people who draw large crowds (think powerful yet corrupt historical leaders), those tho mislead people for their own ways, and others who employ this sort of Machiavellian behavior are all examples of this.
With that said, there is also a more physical explanation for "energy draining." Psychic energy (psi, chi, ki, prana etc.) follows many of the basic rules of other forms of energy. One major attribute I've noticed is how energy flows based on potentials. It's like osmotic pressure: if you have more of a substance on one side of a gradient than the other, it will flow out of no reason other than entropic balance. If there is a deficit in psychic energy in a given system, energy will flow into it from its surroundings.
I've been on both sides of this, so I know it definitely works. It's not really what I would call vampirism, and once the offending person is notified ("You're taking my energy again!") they usually make a conscious effort to stop. Also, I would not qualify it as true vampirism, because EVERYTHING around that person is being drawn from, it's just that streams and trees don't complain.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Oct 22, 2006 9:59 am
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:44 am
|
|
|
|
Defenestrated23 Absolutely brilliant post.
Thank you!
Defenestrated23 Psychic energy (psi, chi, ki, prana etc.) follows many of the basic rules of other forms of energy.
I'm afraid I don't hold the same opinion.
The use of the term "energy" to describe what we're getting at here is really unfortunate. Energy is the ability to do work. Work is force applied over a distance. These are very tangible and measurable attributes of the physical world, whereas "psychic energy" doesn't come up in this sense most of the time. What people call "psychic energy" doesn't consistently lend itself to measurable telekinesis. What bits of telekinesis have been scientifically observed (cf. The Conscious Universe and The Field) seem to alter probabilities rather than actually exhibit force-across-distance.
(Not to say that's impossible, mind. I'm only pointing out that the term "energy" here isn't really appropriate.)
I'm coming to suspect that there is actually no such thing as "psychic energy." I think that "psychic energy," regardless of name, may actually be a reification of the act of organizing things in meaningful patterns. In other words, vis vitalis is actually an act of intelligence rather than a physical or semi-physical substance.
This isn't so unusual. There is no such thing as "government," for instance, apart from the process of people interacting in a particular way. Yet we still talk about what the government should do about political issues and how international policy has to do with how different governments interact. "Government," thus, is a reification.
Similarly, ideas do not exist. There are only thought processes. We view thoughts as things contained in our minds, but were the thinking process to cease the ideas would no longer exist. This is typical of reifications. Yet we still have a very strong sense that we think with these things called thoughts, and that we share thoughts with one another like we share food or tools.
It's clear that there is an organizing principle to the universe. You don't need to believe in God or divine intention to observe this phenomenon. For whatever reason, matter tends to clump together. For whatever reason, life formed and continues to survive by adaptation. For whatever reason, the course of time has resulted in the existence of human beings who exhibit great patterning skills and develop tremendous technology which continues to organize the physical world into meaningful patterns.
Certain groups have referred to this ordering principle as "extropy," meaning to refer to the opposite of entropy. The basic point is that however it works, intelligence has tended to trump chaos throughout history, and it appears that this trend will continue on into the future since order begets order.
I claim that what people are describing when referring to "Lifeforce," "psychic energy," "ki" or whathaveyou is actually extropy.
Various parapsychological experiments done in the latter half of the 20th century (cf. The Field as above) seem to indicate that minds with more "order" seem to influence those with less "order." For instance, people just sitting there staring at a wall can be powerfully affected by someone who intently focuses on influencing their health "psychically." Yet all it takes to deflect this effect is to imagine a shield around you that doesn't let psychic "attack" in.
It would appear that people who are practiced at meditation tend to have stronger psychic abilities than those who are not as practiced. This is evidenced, for instance, in the practices of the Ki Society. This organization maintains and demonstrates that it is possible to "throw" someone simply by causing their mind to align with yours. Speaking from personal experience, I can testify that with repeatable success the feeling is that of falling down and then wondering why you chose to lay down. The development of this skill is based on the process of learning to focus your mind and "feel" the mind of the person who is attacking you.
This same organization speaks of "ki," obviously, but the way they use ki seems to indicate that they are actually causing the other person's mind to become organized the same way as the Aikido practitioner's.
Further evidence of this phenomenon can be found in the common basic energy development techniques employed by most forms of paganism I've encountered. The basic idea is that by focusing your mind on one part of your body, you can cause "energy" to "go there." But when you're focusing your mind, you're organizing it. By paying attention to a particular part of your body or the environment around you you're simply organizing your mind around that part of your surroundings.
Mind you, this does not dismiss or trivialize magical efforts done through "energy." However, if this is accurate, the use of the metaphor of entropy as a substance that flows from one point to another can lead to a number of fallacies.
For instance, this whole idea that it's possible to vampirize psychic energy from other people would be simply absurd. You are responsible for your own internal organization, and the degree to which you learn to become ordered is the degree to which you learn to have a "reservoir of magical energy." The same is true of others. You can cause someone of a weaker mind to align their pattern with yours - but even then, the reason their mind is weaker is because they aren't paying attention. In a sense, they're choosing to be controlled by failing to take control of themselves.
But at no point is there a "currency of life" being moved from one place to another. Extropy isn't conserved like energy in physics is. Order begets order.
Hence the ritual portion of magical acts. Ritual organizes the mind.
I would propose that the reason your "osmotic pressure" technique appears to work is because you expect it to. What I've been saying here is that there is no "psychic energy," but instead there are just minds and how minds influence the world around them. Minds have the ability to self-organize in all kinds of interesting patterns and influence physical sensation to very strong degrees. Psychosomatic illness and the placebo effect both demonstrate this quite clearly. So what I suspect is going on is that you expect to get a certain type of sensation as a "flow of energy," and since this "energy" is a reification anyway you can certainly convince yourself that you're having a vivid experience of "osmotic flow of psychic energy."
Furthermore, whether other beings experience this "osmotic vampirism" (or any other form of "psi vamping" for that matter) seems to depend on two factors:
If they expect it, they tend to experience it. Again, this is likely due to internal organization. This is especially clear as per the fact that people who are not aware of the "vampirism" tend not to experience anything out of the ordinary.
They may still experience something due to the documented ability for the mind of one person to affect the body of another telekinetically. This, however, can be shielded by the "victim" simply imagining that they're shielded (ibid.).
Now, here I have to insert a caveat about "aura perception." I simply don't know what that's about. It could disprove my above point, it could be how some people see others' body images, it could be synesthesia, or it could be the perception of magnetic fields. I simply don't know. If I could do it myself or knew how those who can do it learn how to, I might have some handle on it. But for now I have to flag this as an area that may be relevant to my point but of which I'm totally ignorant. sweatdrop |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
