In truly understanding the CastleVania saga and the battles between the forces of good and evil (as well as observing the popularity of modern-day vampire multimedia like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and movie Blade), one must also understand its roots in myth and history. The following are noteworthy entries from Matthew Bunson’s scholarly The Vampire Encyclopedia, published in 1993.

 

VAMPIRES

One of the most unique beings in the world, surviving from the darkest times in history, existing for millennia among mortals, feeding on them and using them to create more of its own kind in order to ensure the continuation of the species, perhaps in preparation for a final struggle between the living and the undead. The vampire is a very personal entity, with highly defined traits and characteristics, well known throughout the world. All people share traditions and knowledge about the vampire’s appearance, activities, and powers. The vampire has been developed in literary and cinematic treatments evolving over the centuries into a glamorous being, but its roots in folklore remain primitive and bestial.

The word vampire (vampir, vampyre) has hazy origins, although scholars generally agree that it can be traced to the Slavic languages, with debates continuing as to its etymological sources. The word may have come from the Lithuaniam 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-Croatian pirati ("to blow"). Cognate forms developed, so that there can be found in Serbo-Croatian the term 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 vampye) 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 "Political Vampires."

It is as difficult to define a vampire as it is to trace the origins of its name. For example, Webster’s International Dictionary defines a vampire as "a bloodsucking ghost or reanimated body of a dead person, believed to come from the grave and wander about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep..." This definition does not include psychic or astral vampires or those peculiar species that are nonhuman. A broad definition was humbly offered by Brian Frost in The Monster with a Thousand Faces (1989), proposing that a vampire is "fundamentally a parasitic force or being, malevolent and self-seeking by nature, whose paramount desire is to absorb the life-force or to ingest the vital fluids of a living organism in order to sate its perverse hunger and to perpetuate its unnatural existence."

There are as many theories about the home of the undead as there are species. Many regions and countries have been suggested over the years as the cradle of vampirism. Some vampirologists hold Egypt to be their birthplace; others believe it to be India, China, Russia, Mesopotamia, and, of course, Romania (or Transylvania). The Transylvanian theory stems largely from the worldwide success of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and its setting of the dread vampire cult of Count Dracula in the "Land Beyond the Forest." Because of the novel, stage versions, and film adaptions, many people readily state their opinion that the thirsty bloodsucker began in Romania—after all, don’t all vampires sound like Bela Lugosi?—even if evidence to support this is limited.

Religious or semidivine bloodsuckers were an integral part of the ancient cults and were potent elements in formative religions and pantheons in the old and new worlds where divine approbation, blood, and the earth that gave life and food were inextricably linked. The survival of the vampire concept in the ancient world and beyond was probaby a result of these ties to nature and the soil. By custom, it emerged from the ground, and was often limited by natural forces—the sun, water, and fire—but it could also control parts of nature—wind, rain, clouds, and even animals. For centuries, the vampire dominated the superstitions and fears of peasants as well as Church leaders and "learned" men steeped in the pseudoscience of their time, chained by rigid theological doctrine and folk belief.

The discovery of the vampire as a suitable motif for literary creations by the members of the Romantic movement released by the undead from the boundaries of their primitive and essentially rural environment. Still rooted in the age-old terrors of death, blood, and the grave, the vampire began suddenly to function in the social, intellectual, and even political world. It has since proven remarkably adaptable to the demands of new generations, each of whom see in it something compelling, alluring, and desirable.

Where once the vampire was the corporeal embodiment of satanic activity in the world, today it is the reflection of the contemporary society’s morbid preoccupations with aging and death. The undead serve as cultural metaphors of elusive immortality and victory over life. The vampire has achieved eternal life without the attainment of spiritual perfection or salvation. Here are being who have conquered death, who have turned the tables on the suffering of daily living, and who have come to function outside the boundaries of society. For them actions have no moral limitations imposed from without, and there is no personal responsibility for deeds, regardless of how objectionable. They are sensual, irresistable, and immune to the horrifying aspects of the twentieth century: violence, drugs, AIDS, disease, famine, and financial and social chaos. Being a vampire signifies membership in this most select body of beings the world has ever known, a belonging best described by Robert Aickman in his 1975 "Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal": "How I rejoice when I think about the new life which spreads before me into infinity, the new ocean which already laps at my feet, the new vessel with the purple sail and the read oars upon which I shall at any moment embark! ... Soon, soon, new force will be mine, fire that is inconceivable..."

 

VAMPYRE

A variant spelling of vampire that endured into the nineteenth century and is seen periodically even today. "Vampyre" is quite acceptable, in some ways perhaps superior to "vampire," as its use is more 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 Zopfius, 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. It is certainly more exotic, echoing faintly the dark origins of the word. Some 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 the bloodsucker.

 

DRACULA

The character of Dracula as he was first presented in Bram Stoker’s great 1897 novel, Dracula, and in the subsequent creations of modern authors. Count Dracula of Bistritz is one of the major figures in horror, the prototypical bloodsucker—a villain of incalculable ego with an utterly evil and diabolical disposition—who dominated the pages of the novel despite his infrequent appearances after the early chapters. The inheritor of the "best" qualities of the literary vampires Lord Ruthven, Varney, and Azzo, with the sensuality of Carmilla, the Count represents the undeniable attraction of evil and is a classic demonstration of sexual symbolism in the literature of the repressed Victorian age.

His allure remains despite the passage of time or the seemingly unappealing characteristics given to him by Stoker. He was portrayed as being dressed completely in black, with a strong face, thin nose, heavy mustache, sharp teeth, pointed ears, hairy palms, long nails, synonymous with the attributions of all undead in the contemporary imagination. He casts no shadow, has the strength of twenty men, grows younger on the blood of his victims, controls the elements (such as fog, thunder, and rain), controls many animals (including the owl, bat, moth, fox, wolf, and rat), and can travel on moon rays as elemental dust or as a mist. Despite these impressive abilities, he is quite limited. Only with an invitation can he enter an abode, he cannot pass running water save at high or low tides, can shape-shift or transform only at noon or at sunset except when he is in his coffin, and must sleep in a coffin filled with his native soil. Dracula also recoils before the cross, garlic, or the holy water.

Destroyed in the last pages of Dracula, the count proved such an intriguing (and profitable) character that a resurrection of some kind was inevitable; but only a few of the numerous novels featuring Dracula are viewed to be of any lasting significance. The most interesting of these present the original tale from his perspective or give him a kind of "historical lineage." Among such works are the writings of Raymond Rudorff, Peter Tremayne, Fred Saberhagen, Jeanne Kalogridis, as well as Jeanne Youngson’s "Count Dracula and the Unicorn" (1978).

 

TRANSYLVANIA

Known in the Romanian as "Transilvania" or "Ardeal" and in the Hungarian as "Erdely," one of the main regions of Romania, with Wallachia and Moldavia, although much of its history was dominated by Hungary. Transylvania (which translates as "Land Beyond the Forest") was virtually unknown in the West in the centuries prior to the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). In conducting research for his novel, Stoker received folkloric information on Romania from Arminius Vambery and found in Transylvania a land rich in superstitions and ideally suited as the home of his major character. His knowledge was enhanced as well by the book The Land Beyond the Forest (1885) by Emily Gerard.

Thanks to Dracula, the complex political struggles of Transylvania have been neglected by the West in favor of the vampire myth. The public association of Transylvania with the abode of the undead is complete. It is now a common caricature, in fact, that all vampires speak with a Transylvanian accent, the result of Bela Lugosi’s thick pronunciation. He spoke with a Hungarian, not a Romanian, accent, but movie audiences did not know the difference. Although Count Dracula never lived, Transylvania was ruled by bloody historical figures, such as Prince Vlad Dracula III / Vlad Tepes ("Vlad the Impaler," b.1431 ; d.1476). Elizabeth Bathory (b.1560 ; d.1614) was another individual who perpetuated the aura of vampirism in the area. The region has been used in such movies as Transylvania 6-5000 (1985), Transylvania Twist (1989), and the many film versions of the novel, particularly Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) though absent from the most recent Wes Craven Presents : Dracula 2000.