Chapter 18
Speaking from the Inferno
Out of the depths I have cried unto thee, O Lord. Psalm 130:1
Even I was not prepared for the Grail's “final piece of the puzzle.” I learned that the “Holy Grail of immortality” was actually the bloody chalice of VAMPIRISM! As was mentioned at the beginning of this book, you have no idea what it’s like to awaken to the need for the taste of blood in your mouth.
In a way, I was fortunate. We were the leaders of a large network of covens. These covens were designed to be rings. In our experience, this is the common practice. The outer-most rings were made up of Wiccans, men and women who believed they were practicing “white” or good Witchcraft. Once they came through to the high priesthood, they began to understand the mysteries of Lucifer. The inner rings were involved with Thelema, the religion of Aleister Crowley. Among those innermost rings were select women who were consecrated, dedicated, willing --- even delighted to let me drink their blood.
With enough women to choose from, no one woman would lose enough blood to become seriously threatened. They enjoyed the experience, and I was sustained. Thus, I did not have to go outside our rings to prey upon women for their blood --- at first...
These inner-most rings lived in a world where things were seriously upside-down. Pleasure was pain, and pain was pleasure. Darkness was light, and good was evil. We would attend movies like The Exorcist and The Omen and root for the demons or anti-Christ. This is because I daily worked magic and rituals of pain, power, and perversity to bring forth the Great Beast’s coming.
DARK APOCALYPSE
As this book is being written [1993], another media cycle is glorifying the patron saint of vampirism, Vladislau Basarab --- also known as Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler) or Vlad Dracula. A major film by a “serious” Hollywood director has been released with costly sets, costumes, and special effects, which promises to lure yet another decade of people into these unhallowed cinematic temples.
Every ten years or so, Hollywood can be counted on to resurrect “Dracula” and we have a flurry of films about the Undead. What is Tinseltown trying to sell us? The lie of eternal youth and beauty has never been more seductive, and its cost has never been higher. I know, because I bought that lie --- hook, line, and fang. I learned the unimaginable price which has to be paid.
How did I come to a place where I was willing to forsake all that was normal in humanity for a taste of what I believed would be immortality? I did not wake up one morning as a “vampire-in-training”. As we have seen, it was a gradual process of seduction, and I believed that I was putting together the pieces of an immense and highly secret cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Naturally, the dark forces which manipulated me had no mercy upon me.
From the beginning of the modest evil of Wicca and Spiritism, I had descended --- in a decade --- into a morass of bloody terror from which I doubted I could escape. Most of the time, I did not want to escape. The “meta-chine” within me now ruled me predominantly. Now I stood at a perilous crossroads, and I thirsted for blood.
The vampire cult --- for such it is --- was to be the last and most damnable step in my exploration of Satanism. With odd, malignant serendipity, very soon after my encounter with “Mary of Magdala”, the black, leathery wings of the cultus first brushed against me in an old Russian Orthodox church in downtown Chicago.
I had been brought there by a man who had consecrated me a Gnostic bishop in the old Roman Catholic church, Syrio-Jacobite rite. The Gnostic Catholic church is a mixture of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Aleister Crowley’s Satanism. It was in this church that I eventually made contact with the powers which were to draw me deeper into the vampiric branch of the Brotherhood.
A chief principle of both ancient and modern Gnostics was duality (the absolute need for both good and evil). I was led to believe that Vlad Dracula was a necessary dark “Christ,” an “anti-matter” Christ --- to use terms from modern physics --- to counter-balance the White-Light priesthood of Jesus.
It was vital that I assume the mantle of Dracula's order of the priesthood, just as I thought I had assumed the mantle of Jesus’ priesthood through Catholicism and Orthodoxy. It would be that final missing line of apostolic authority I sought.
Thus, I needed to train and develop for that priesthood as well. I was assigned a mentor who taught me an incredibly twisted form of Christianity. I was told that the Gospel of John was a secret document with incredible “Gnostic secrets” buried within it --- that John the Apostle still walked the earth today as a nearly 2,000-year-old vampire initiated into vampirism by Jesus Himself!
The Johannine apostolate, though rooted in what is today called Freemasonry, supposedly led its devotees ultimately to the sacramental consumption of human blood and organs to sustain life forever.
I was told that the first Nosferatu (the Romanian/Wallachian word for “Undead” or vampire) was Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead by occult power --- naturally in John’s gospel. It was allegedly Jesus' intention that an unbroken line of “apostolic succession” should descend down from John and Lazarus through a hidden priesthood within a priesthood. This was a vampire brotherhood concealed carefully within the ranks of the Latin and Orthodox priesthood down through the centuries, unknown to many of its own priests.
This explained for me the profound difference between John’s gospel and the other three. Why was much emphasis placed in that gospel upon the dead hearing the voice of Christ and rising from the tombs? What was the cryptic ending in which it seemed to say that John would live until the Second Advent? The answer I was given was that the Johannine gospel was a blueprint for living forever through the practice of the “Nosferatic Priesthood” --- vampirism.
THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE
The very cornerstone of the Satanic cult's existence and survival lay in the central ritual of Orthodoxy and Catholicism --- the Eucharist (Mass) or “Divine Liturgy”. I soon learned for myself the vital link between the doctrine of Transubstantiation (that the bread and wine is LITERALLY turned into the Body and Blood of Christ) and the Nosferatu.
I eagerly allowed my body to be gradually transformed through injections of special herbs and drugs, thinking I was following in the footsteps of John the Beloved. Gradually, my appetite for food began to diminish, and my sensitivity to sunlight increased markedly.
Finally, on a special night I was permitted to drink blood from the veins of my mentor. Thus, the “virus” of vampirism was passed to me. I began to crave blood and could eat or drink little else. There, in a darkened windowless chapel lit only with candles and covered with Orthodox icons, I learned the true significance of the “Divine Liturgy.”
Supposedly, for a vampire to survive, he or she must drink a substantial amount of blood each day --- just as humans must eat. Ideally, they must consume an entire body's worth of blood in just a couple of days, or they begin to sicken and starve.
Thus, Jesus’ solution for his vampiric priesthood was supposedly the “magic” of Transubstantiation. It is Catholic and Orthodox doctrine that the entire body of Jesus is contained in the host or wafer. Similarly, the entire blood of Jesus --- the blood of a 33-year-old male adult, some nine pints --- is miraculously contained within the chalice of wine.
Since all members of this Nosferatic priesthood must first be priests of the Catholic or Eastern Orthodox rite, they all had the power to produce in their liturgies every day more than enough sacramental “blood” to slake their thirst. And it was real blood (at least so we believed).
Catholic priests were required by canon law to celebrate the liturgy every day, unless prevented by illness or some serious emergency. Thus, in the sacramental wine-turned-blood, we had a ready-made supply for our needs, without ever having to go out and attack people like fabled vampires of films. The only reason for drinking blood from a living person was either for pleasure, or for initiation into the vampire cult.
Within days, I found myself living almost exclusively off the elements of the communion rite, with more than an occasion use of the blood of my willing coven priestesses for variety. Additionally, I was taught that the special geometries necessary to create a sacred altar-space (coffin) in which to periodically rest and restore my powers.
I was upon this coffin/altar, that the Masses were celebrated, often with me or another entombed within. This was the real reason for relics: bones or other pieces of “saints” bodies in the altar stones of Catholic churches. It was a tradition gleaned from the days when liturgies were commonly celebrated over the body (within the altar) of an “Undead” Nosferatic priest.
I was taught other liturgies --- first and foremost the rite of St. John Chrysostom, used in most Orthodox churches. I also learned more secret ceremonies, such as masses actually dedicated to Vlad Dracula and an entire pantheon of vampiric “saints”. These rites were mirror images of the elaborate ceremonies of Orthodoxy and Catholicism, the only differences being that Dracula and other vampires such as the fabled Lammia, Vrykolak and Lilith were exalted rather than the Virgin Mary and Jesus.
A VISIT FROM DRACULA?
These practices began to spread among our coveners in an ever-widening circle. For the most part, they were more popular among women than men --- perhaps because the men were intimidated at the prospect of losing their sexuality. Sadly, at least two couples' marriages collapsed because the wife chose vampirism over her husband. Such was the voluptuous power of drinking and sharing blood. A couple of the priestesses eventually requested that I formally “initiate” them into the Nosferatic mysteries.
This involved the celebration of a special “Mass of St. Vlad” in which special sacramental rum was used instead of the traditional red wine. It was essentially similar to the Orthodox liturgy, except for obvious differences. The “communion rite” consisted of a blasphemous parody of what happened to Jesus on the cross.
First, I would drink blood from her neck until she nearly fainted from loss of blood. Then, I would open up my own chest and the candidate would drink deeply from my blood. This supposedly transmitted the foreign, demonic “enzyme” into her body which began transforming her into a priestess of the Nosferatu.
The mass would then conclude with setting the sacramental liquor (supposedly transubstantiated into the blood of Dracula himself) aflame. We would call upon Vlad to come and smile upon the creation of this new “child” of his.
It was believed that, after our deaths, both I and the women I initiated, would rise again as pure-bred Nosferatu. We would be immortal beings who would live for centuries, no longer just the human hybrids who were half vampire and half human.
With the last woman we initiated, a frightening and extraordinary event occurred. We drank blood from each other's veins in the customary fashion, but at the conclusion of the ritual, when I had begun the invocation to Vlad, and lit the chalice full of sacramental rum, it flared up brighter than an acetylene torch flame.
There was nothing special about the liquor, it was from the same bottle we always used. However, the flames roared upwards at least three feet from the tip of the goblet! The room was filled with exotic, multicolored flames --- like nothing we had ever seen before.
I could barely finish the invocation. The heat and power in the room became oppressive, we were almost driven to our knees. The chalice began to melt from the intense heat. I could feel the power of Dracula pouring over me like hot, smoking blood.
The woman we were initiating felt it as well. It seemed like a special “benediction” which had never happened before. She was thrilled with the unusual experience. I was shortly to learn just how unusual the entire episode would make my life.
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
Real changes had taken place within me. My normal sexual desire was entirely replaced with a fixation on blood.
As mentioned, I lost all appetite for food, apart from daily communion. I spent much of my time during the day in our candlelit chapel, doing Catholic devotions. Being out in the sun for more than a few minutes resulted in painful burns, and blisters (not previously the case) --- but I developed incredibly good night vision.
I also got much stronger each time I consumed blood. However, I never got the ability to turn into a bat or travel like mist under doorways. I am not certain but that those traits are “Hollywood embellishments.”
When donating blood once, I learned quite by accident that my blood type had changed, which is supposedly impossible.
I became increasingly fascinated with gory horror films of every kind, and would often haunt the darkened theaters for entire days, waiting for the sun to go behind a cloud so that I could go home. It was an increasingly strange existence.
I soon discovered that the communion wine was no longer doing what it was supposed to do. The craving for blood grew more and more real with each passing week. Sometimes I would celebrate Mass more than once a day, just to try and make it through. My fantasies had become entirely violent in nature, and I continually felt compelled to seek out more women than the half-dozen or so witches who were willing to be my “prey.”
It was honestly only my love for my wife which kept me from going out and assaulting women at random. I had never kept secrets form her, and I knew she’d be horrified it she knew I was barely restraining myself from becoming a bloodthirsty sexual predator. I knew our lives would be ruined if I gave in to these powerful lusts and was caught by the law.
Finally, I almost went too far with one of the priestesses. Remarkably, she was enjoying it to no end, but I lost control and drank so much of her blood that she became unconscious. She was so pale and still that I feared I had killed her. Fortunately, she came to and even claimed to have had a mystical experience during her black-out. She left the chapel weakened, without any real notion of what had happened.
I was becoming terrified! My midnight drives through Milwaukee on my newspaper job became increasingly torturous as I would see the occasional prostitute and literally have to fight back an animal urge to wait until she was alone and pull her down the way a lion would attack a gazelle.
I knew it was only a matter of time before I would give in to cravings which now dominated my every waking moment. I would cringe at local newscasts that mentioned girls who were murdered under mysterious unsolved circumstances. I wondered if perhaps I was living a Jekyll-Hyde existence, and that I was actually out there killing by night.
There was never any evidence that such was the case. Praise the Lord! However, my guilt haunted me, yet the MONSTROUS MACHINE within me exulted in the blood-lust. I felt I was trapped in a downward cycle, which could only end in death, madness or prison.
It was at this desperate time that the Lord. Jesus Christ entered my life. The final chapters of this volume will chronicle that fact that Jesus can save to the uttermost even someone as horrendous and wretched as I had become!
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KRAFFT-EBBING & CO. --- A POSTSCRIPT
Although the idea of a vampire sounds totally unbelievable to most people in the 20th century, the fact is, there are such people. I cannot say if they have all the powers and abilities attributed to them by lore. But it is a matter of scientific that there have been, and are currently, many documented cases of human vampires.
These are not people who turn into bats, but rather men (rarely women: they tend to cut themselves and drink their own blood) who are addicted to drinking blood. The famous (some would say in famous) German neurologist and psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebbing (1840-1902) wrote a monumental work on sexual perversion, Psychopathis Sexualis, which contains several case studies of what he called "lust-murders," which were actually cases of vampirism.
These are cases of what is called “clinical vampirism” or “Renfield's Syndrome” (named after the lunatic character in Bram Stoker's Dracula who is a vampire wanna-be serving the count's bidding.)
Yet another clinical writer stresses the fact that vampirism is a clinical phenomenon in which myth, fantasy and reality converge. An actual medical definition would be the following:
Clinical vampirism is named after the mythical vampire, and is recognizable, although rare, clinical entity characterized by periodic compulsive blood drinking, affinity with the dead and uncertain identity. It is hypothetically the expression of an inherited archaic myth, the act of taking blood being a ritual that gives temporary relief.
From ancient times vampirists have given substance to belief in the existence of supernatural vampires...From childhood they [four actual case histories later cited] cut themselves, drank their own, exogenous human or animal blood to relieve craving, dreamed of bloodshed, associated with the dead and had a changing identity. They were intelligent, with no family mental or social pathology....
Vampirism may be a cause of unpredictable repeated assault and murder, and should be looked for in violent criminals who are self-mutilators. No specific treatment is known.
I'm not saying for certain whether the vampirism I experienced was a form of psychosis, or whether it had a supernatural (Satanic) origins. Some of the symptoms (aversion to sunlight, etc.) could have been psychogenic (caused by my mind). However, much of my case is atypical in the psychiatric literature.
All I know is that I was demonized to the gills and getting deadly dangerous to myself, my family, and others --- and that whatever it was, Jesus Christ was the only cure. Praise His wonderful name!
(Order Lucifer Dethroned online at Chick Publications.)
(See the sermonet series Vampires In The Church for more on this subject.)