Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;
There from thy daughter, sister, wife
At midnight drain the stream of life...
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave
Go - and with the ghouls and afreets rave,
Till these in horror shrink away
From spectre more accursed than they!

~ from "The Giaour" by George Gordon Lord Byron, first published in The Unbeliever, London, 1813

Header: A ring with a quote from this poem from Mostly Making Memories on Etsy

Jeudi: Curios

Garnets are one of my favorite semi-precious stones, and not just because I was born in January. For centuries, garnets have had a connection to friendship and keeping friends close even when they are physically separated. While we don't think much about something like that in our "I'll text you when I get to the far side of the globe" world, only a few short decades ago such things were a lot more dear. Then too, there's the fact that the deep, rich red of a garnet always puts me in mind of the Holidays.

Garnets are ruled by the planet Mars and are therefore considered masculine and projective. For all these reasons, garnets have been and still are used for protective purposes. In times gone by, garnets were thought to repel stinging and biting creatures and anklets were made of garnets for those who had to tread on dangerous ground, particularly where scorpions or snakes might lie in wait. The stones were also thought to drive off supernatural creatures, especially those like vampires that struck at night. Wearing a garnet necklace to bed was always advisable and Jewish mothers might include a garnet or two in the charm above their baby's bed to ward against the viscous appetites of Lamia.

According to Scott Cunningham, garnets can serve a similar purpose in our modern age. Charged and worn, garnets can strengthen the personal aura and repel negative energies and intents. Because garnets have always thought to guard against theft, wearing them may help keep would-be muggers out of your personal space.

In Medieval medicine garnets, worn or crushed and drunk in wine, were thought to regulate the blood. They have been used in "New Age" medicine to help relieve swelling and rashes.

My favorite application for garnets, however, returns to the issue of keeping friendships. If you must part with a close friend, make them a gift of something with a garnet in or on it before you go. The stone, again treated with intention, will continue your mutual affection and ensure that somehow, someway, you will be together again. This is a sentiment that the Victorians seem to have understood judging from this enchanting gold locket set with pearls and garnets. A votre sante ~

Header: Chimeres by Pascal A.J.D. Bouvert via Old Paint

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

In the early modern age, what we would now term vampires were virtually unknown. The pale, handsome, aristocrat with a hunger for human blood that exploded onto the archetypal playing field when Bram Stoker's Dracula made it big would have been completely foreign to those born prior to the Victorian era. Mention of that sparkly guy in that other book would probably have encouraged the same people to commit you.

What our ancestors may, or may not, have called vampires were far more akin to what we would now call ghouls or even zombies.They were usually envisioned as disheveled denizens of the churchyard who rose at night, hair flowing, breath foul and long, broken fingernails caked with mud. Unlike our later-day bloodsuckers, these original vampires usually had it in for their own families as well. Eschewing lovely, languid young women, they went for their mothers, wives, brothers and children. They weren't above disemboweling the family livestock, either.

An excellent example of this proto-vampire - the type that still roams the forests of the occasional rustic locale - can be found in this excerpt from Puritan Henry More's pamphlet An Antidote Against Atheism. Published in London in 1653, the pamphlet tells a series of grizzly, and allegedly true, tales of the supernatural that are quite literally meant to frighten the unbelieving back to church. Here, the story of a German man named Johannes Contius:

Immediately after the burial of this Contius, a citizen and alderman in Silesia near Poland, stories began to circulate of the appearance of a phantom which spoke to people in the voice of the man. Remarkable tales were told of the consumption of milk from jugs and bowls, of milk being turned to blood, of old men being strangled, children taken out of cradles, altar cloths being soiled with blood and poultry killed and eaten. 

Eventually it was decided to disinter the body of the alderman. It was found that all the bodies buried near that of Contius had become putrefied and rotten, but his skin was tender and florid, his joints by no means stiff and when a staff was put between his fingers, they closed around it and held it fast in their grip. He could open and shut his eyes, and when a vein in his leg was punctured the blood sprang out. This happened after the body had been in the grave for some six months.

Great difficulty was experienced when the body was cut up and dismembered by order of the authorities. But when the task was completed and the remains consigned to the flames, the specter ceased to molest the family or interfere with their slumbers or health.

Not only was this grandfather of the Dracula archetype more loathsome, but it took a good deal more effort to kill him as well. Vendredi heureux ~

Header: Death on a Pale Horse by Albert Pinkham Ryder via Wikimedia