According to physics' laws vampires cannot exist

Physics scientists Costas J. Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi have discovered a mathematical theory that proves that vampires, zombies, ghosts and such things can't possibly exists in this current universe.

Their theory is based on the reduction to the absurd. In short, they prooved that, according to mathematical calculations, the way the vampire population would increase as time passed by, would dramatically reduce the human population to almost zero in a matter of months...

They also try to proove why is it a nonsense believing that ghosts can go through walls.

You can find the paper here: "Cinema Fiction vs Physics Reality" (PDF).

Of course, this had to upset vampire fans an believers. So, different opinions had to rise eventually as the paper came out.

A "counter-opinion" has been released based on a "vampire-slayer" perspective (involving mathematics and such): "Math proves that the Buffy universe harbors no more than 512 vampires".

Javier Pazos has given another opinion to refute this paper in his blog: Ghosts, Vampires and Zombies. A good one that presents the humourous side of this matter.

As for me I think these scientists are missing the simple fact that justify the mere existence of "paranormal effects": THEY ARE MEANT TO CONTRADICT PHYSICS!!!
Or else... they wouldn't be "paranormal" and "behind human understanding".

And since even physics change over time to reveal strange and bizarre theories such as quantum mechanics that contradict the common sense, why should we trust that there are such things as "the-ones-that-cannot-exist"?

A mistery unveiled

The author of the horror thriller "Heart-Shaped Box" was finnaly uncovered as the older son of the famous Stephen King - Joseph Hillstrom King...

The identity of "Joe Hill" has been kept a mistery for quite a long until his novel became a huge success...

Read it all here: "Secret of horror writer's lineage broken".

Dante's Inferno - "The Divine Comedy"

A few months ago I found a book from Matthew Pearl called "The Dante Club" while wandering around my usual book store.

I thought «well, that's something different... maybe I'll enjoy this 'Dante's Hell'-like murdering stuff somewhat»...
I was bored about the type of books I usually find and I kind of liked it! A little bit too "literary" and not very easy to read but enjoyable.

Anyway... this isn't supposed to be a book review so I'm missing the subject.

Although I haven't finished reading it yet I was rather curious about the contents of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy", wich is used as a reference for the book's gruesome murders.
Since I even read a bit of Sir Thomas More "Utopia" («De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia» in it's original Italian (?) title) no harm would be done to make some research about Dante's "Divine Comedy".

Dante's "Divine Comedy" was originally written in Italian, in the Middle Ages (between 1308 and 1321).
It is composed of 3 canticles, each one with 33 cantos:

• Inferno (Hell), which represents Sin
• Purgatorio (Purgatory) , which represents Penitence
• Paradiso (Paradise), which represents Salvation

The hero in the book - Dante himself - travels through those three realms of the dead with 2 guides:

• Latin poet Virgil - author of the Aeneid - guides him through Hell and the Purgatory
• Beatrice Portinari - Dante's childhood love - is his guide through Paradise (as Virgil, being a pagan, cannot enter Paradise). She is also the personification of beatific love.

The poem starts in Good Friday (1300) with Dante close to suicide (as most interpretations state) and surrounded by the beasts of sin - lion, leopard and she-wolf - when Virgil came to him.

Hell
"Abandon all hope, you who enter here"

In the shores of the Acheron, before entering the gates of Hell, he finds souls that are not in Hell nor in Heaven - the Opportunists (people who did nothing in life) and the Outcasts - stinged by wasps and hornets (that symbolize the sting of the conscience), and surrounded by maggots who drink their blood (symbolizing the pestilence of sin).

The souls in Hell are those who justify their sins and have knowledge of the Past and the Future but not of the Present - therefore... they know nothing as time stops after Judgement Day.

Hell has 9 concentric circles, each one being successively more evil than the outer one.

The innermost circle is where Satan is. Each circle has it's punishment.

Satan is in the center of Hell, with a black, a red and a yellow face chewing traitors - Brutus, Cassius and Judas Iscariot - a giant beast deep covered in ice, weeping and beating its wings trying to escape - but instead ensuring its imprisonment.

The 9 Circles Of Hell

1. «Limbo» - home of the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans - which only sinned for not recognizing Christ.
2. Souls possessed by lust are punished here being blown about to and fro by a violent storm (symbolizing e power of lust to blow one about needlessly and aimlessly).
3. Here the gluttons are guarded by Cerberus, forced to lie in the mud in the violent rain eating their excrements.
4. In this circle are punished the avaricious and the prodigal, whose concern for material goods deviated from the desired mean. They are guarded by Plutus, pushing heavy weights against each other over and over again.
5. Here those consumed by wrath fight each other in the muddy river Styx, while the ones who are consumed by sloth lie beneath the water.
6. The Heretics are here, trapped in flaming tombs.
7. Here, the Minotaur guard the violent. It is divided in 3 rings:
1. The Centaurs, commanded by Chiron, patrol the river of boiling blood (Phlegethon) in which are submersed the violent against people and property
2. The people who commited suicide are thorny trees in this circle torn at by the Harpies. The profligates - who destroyed their lives by destroying money and property - are chased by raging dogs.
3. Here are the blasphemers, the sodomites and the usurers, in a desert of flaming sand in a rain of fiery flakes.
8. «Malebolge» - The punished here are the fraudulent, divided into 10 ditches:
1. Panderers and seducers - whipped by deamons walking in opposite directions
2. Flatterers are steeped in human excrement
3. Those who committed simony are placed head-first in holes in the rock, with flames burning on the soles of their feet
4. Sorcerers and false prophets have their heads twisted around on their bodies backward, so they can only see what is behind them
5. Corrupt politicians (barrators) are immersed in a lake of boiling pitch, guarded by devils, the Malebranche
6. the Hypocrites walk along wearing gold-gilded lead cloaks
7. Thieves, guarded by Cacus, are pursued and bitten by snakes, which makes them resurrecte after being turned to ashes, mutate into new creatures, or become that chase the other thieves
8. Fraudulent advisors are encased in individual flames
9. A sword-wielding devil hacks at the sowers of discord, as wounds heal the devil tears apart their bodies again
10. Groups of various sorts of falsifiers (alchemists, counterfeiters, perjurers, and impersonators) are afflicted with different types of diseases
9. Traitors are frozen in a lake of ice - Cocytus. The circle is divided into 4 concentric zones:
1. Caïna, named for Cain, is home to traitors to their kindred
2. Antenora is named for Antenor of Troy, traitors to political entities, such as party, city, or country, are located here
3. Ptolomæa is probably named for Ptolemy, the captain of Jericho, who invited Simon Maccabaeus and his sons to a banquet and there killed them. Traitors to their guests are punished here
4. Judecca is for traitors to their lords and benefactors. All of the sinners punished within are completely encapsulated in ice, distorted to all conceivable positions

Purgatory
"... wash you those wounds within"

Mount Purgatory is located on an island guarded by Cato.
On the slopes of the mountain are (from the bottom to the top):

1. the excommunicates - waiting for a period 30 times as long as their contumacy
2. Those who only repented shortly before death
3. Those who suffered violent deaths due to sinful lifes

The Purgatory has 7 terraces - purging each one of the 7 deadly sins - which function as a honors system, leading souls to ascend into God and Heaven:

1. «Pride» - purged by carrying giant stones unable to stand straight (symbolyzing the weight of pride on the soul).
2. «Envy» - purged by sewing the eyes shut and wearing cloth indistinguishable from the ground - God is a falconer who teachs the blinded souls not to envy others
3. «Wrath» - purged by walking around in acrid smoke - symbol of how this sin blind the vision.
4. «Sloth» - purged by continuously running - thus being zealous in their desire for petinence
5. «Avarice» - purged by laying face down on the ground unable to move - representing excessive concern for earthly things
6. «Glutony» - purged by abstinence from any food or drink. They are forced to pass by cascades of cool water without being able to drink.
7. «Lust» - purged by burning in a wall of flames, being purified by the fire

At the summit there's the Garden of Eden, that returns one to the innocence that existed before the sin of Adam and Eve.
Dante meets Beatrice here, as Virgil vanishes because his pagan nature does not allow him to enter Heaven.

He drinks from Lethe - which causes the soul to forget past sins - and from Eunoë - renews the memories good deeds.

Paradiso
The 9 spheres of Heaven are concentrical and respect a certain hierachy of Love.
Although all levels are accessible to all the souls, there are different states of spiritual development that restricts what each soul can experience - determined by only the soul's proximity to God.

1. «Moon» - home of the souls that abandoned their sacred vows.
2. «Mercury» - home for those who did good for fame
3. «Venus» - home for those who did good for love
4. «Sun» - home of the souls of the wise
5. «Mars» - home of the souls who fought for Christianity. They form a huge cross.
6. «Jupiter» - home of those who personified justice
7. «Saturn» - home of the contemplative, such as monks
8. «Fixed Stars» - home of the blessed, where Dante is tested on faith, hope and love.
9. «Primum Mobile» - the home of the angels

Beatrice leaves Dante, who is allowed to see Jesus and Mary. From here he ascends to something out of physical existence, where he faces God - 3 circles representing The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit - and gathers the understanding of the Divine and of human nature.

If you would like to know more about this work and all its significance in politics, arts and moral values, the best article I found was on Wikipedia.

There is a very good description and a English translation of the work in this site - "The Inferno of Dante Alighieri", A Rhymed Translation by Seth Zimmerman.

The Italian text and its translation into English, along with an deep analysis of the work's symbolism can be found in the Princeton Dante Project.

The Dartmouth Dante Project features several commentaries in Italian, Latin and English ,from 1322 to 2000.

A diagram of the punishments and circles of the inferno can be found here: The Inferno.

A picture gallery inspired by Dante: An Artist's Journey Through The Divine Comedy.

A stake through Milosevic's heart

The latest edition of the "Sunday Herald" features a rather bizarre story.

It seems that Serbian vampire hunters had made a "vampire killing" ritual on the former dictator Milosevic dead body to prevent him form returning from the dead.


You can read it all about this crazy event here: Vampire slayer impales Milosevic to stop return.

Maybe we should do it to all of those who were on "death row"... Just in case...

Porphyria

Today I watched an episode of the "CSI: Las Vegas" series. It was about a woman who used her dog to kill runners in the area she lived. At first our "anti-hero" Gill Grissom thought that she was doing it to sell their organs... Turned out she made "milkshakes" with them!

You may wonder "What does that got to do with the por...err...something you wrote on the title?"...
Well, Porphyria is an hereditary kind of digestive disorder (which she had...), more acurately called abhnormalitie, that is sometimes associated with vampirism... The symptons are awesomely similar! So she had to absorve human proteins to "remain a human" (or else... she would look like a monster).

From the site of the "National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse (NDDIC)":

"Porphyria is a group of different disorders caused by abnormalities in the chemical steps leading to the production of heme, a substance that is important in the body. [...] Multiple enzymes are needed for the body to produce heme. If any one of the enzymes is abnormal, the process cannot continue and the intermediate products, porphyrin or its precursors, may build up and be excreted in the urine and stool."


The disease has different groups separated based on the effects it has in the body. So, as stated in the NDDIC Site:

"The cutaneous porphyrias affect the skin." (people can't stay exposed to the sun or else they'll get blisters and such) and "The acute porphyrias affect the nervous system" (which carries along all the nasty pains we have when we are in an nervous breakdown: pains in the chest and several muscles, paralysis, vomiting, constipation, personality changes, mental disorders, etc...).


It's an hereditary disease than can be passed by only one of the progenitors (autosomal dominant gene) or both (autosomal recessive gene).

As for the whys... The same site says the following:
"Attacks of porphyria can develop over hours or days and last for days or weeks. Porphyria can be triggered by drugs (barbiturates, tranquilizers, birth control pills, sedatives), chemicals, fasting, smoking, drinking alcohol, infections, emotional and physical stress, menstrual hormones, and exposure to the sun.".

The great variety of symptoms an the fact that they are common to other variety of diseases make it's diagnosis difficult and very complex.
Porphyria can be treated directly with heme, by medicines or drawing blood.

Lycantrophy

Psychological Aspect:

1.) A patient reports in a moment of clarity or looking back the he sometimes feels as an animal or has felt like one.
2.) A patient behaves in a manner that resembles animal behaviour, for example crying, grumbling or creeping.

My Article:

Under the terms of clinical Lycanthropy it is essentially a person going through a state of behavior that causes them to act like or think they are animals, a brain scan was conducted on a few people and it was shown that parts of the brain produced unusual activity and the subjects in question reported their bodies were changing shape and that there belief of these incidents were very genuine in their mind.

It's also been noted that body shape distortions are not unknown in mental and neurological illness but it is however a mystery as to why people do not report their body feels like it's changing in odd ways but rather they profess that they are indeed changing into a specific animal. Typically lycanthropy has been thought of a human changing to wolf but it appears that only a minority of lycanthropy cases are in relevance to canine (more prominent in Northern Asia & Europe,) and that there are cases of people proclaiming to be changing into horses, cats (England,) birds, hyenas (Africa,) tigers (southern Asia & Japan) and more. It has also been noted that in early 2004 there is a list of over thirty published cases of lycanthropy.

There should be no real surprise that such a syndrome is present in modern society because many cultures all over the world in their early states of development there was rituals & myths that had strong notions of spiritual connections, reincarnation, transformation, and other relations with animals and perhaps it is in our world of psychoanalysis that we dismiss the possibilities of our connection with nature and our primal instincts. There have also been cases of 'feral children' that depict children actually being brought up by animals and many have been reliably documented in modern times, there is also a psychiatrist by the name of Lucien Malson whom collected over fifty cases of lycanthropy in his book "Wolf Children and the Problem of Human Nature" which was published in 1964 and notions beliefs about lycanthropy may branch from some unusual maternal relationship between humans and animals.

©Erych Dietrich Müller

Vampire or Vampyre?

The word Vampire (Vampir, Vampyre) has oblique origins, but researchers and scholars for the most part agree that it can be traced to the Slavic Tongue. There have been continuos debates however, as to its etymological sources. The word may have come from the Lithuanian wempti ("to drink"), or from the root pi ("to drink"), with the prefix va or av. Other suggested roots have included the Turkish uber ("witch"), and the Serbo-Croation pirati ("to blow"). Associated forms developed from the Serbo-Croation term, such as Vampir, Upyr in the Russian, Upior in the Polish, and Upir in the Byelorussian. Some scholars prefer the concept that upir is older than vampir, an eastern Slavic name that spread westward into the Balkans, where it was adopted by the southern Slavs and received vigorous circulation. The word vampire (or vampyre) arrived in the English language with two 1732 publications: the March translation of a report by the investigators looking into the case of Arnold Paole of Meduegna and the May release of the article "Poltitical Vampires."

Vampyre is a variant spelling of vampire that endured into the nine-teenth century, and as you have witnesses through out the net, it is still exercised by many today. "Vampyre" is closely connected to the Latin Vampyrus, to john Polidori's title for his short story " The Vampyre" (1819), and to the works of experts of previous centuries, including Zopfus, Rohl, and Ranft. As the word Vampire came into more common usage with the translation of such Eastern European names as upior, upyr, vampir, and vapir into English, vampyre became less common.

Through out the Vampire Community, you will come across spelling variations of "vampire". Some feel that "vampyre"is superior to "vampire" because it has a more aristocratic flair with a dark, elder essence. Sometimes the simplistic reason for use of "vampyre" is the admiration of how it appears, nothing more. But often, I find that those who expend "vampyre" are dismissed as a real vampire, and looked upon as a role player. This assumption is made because many role players have adapted the spelling of "vampyre" when referencing to their characters of the game. Others flavor "vampire" over "vampyre" because it is more modern, or because it differentiates "vampyre"(immortalmyths) from "real vampires" (human blood & energy drinkers). Many writers prefer"vampyre"or"vampyr" for their literary creations, using it to differentiate their undead from either the fanciful cinematic variety or a more violent species of vampire. In the end, it is up to the individual of how they would like to interpret either spelling, since one meaning for either "vampire" or "vampyre" is not set in stone.

© Darkness Embraced