Updates + Musings

Wow, it's been a really long time since I posted an entry here.

I'm still trying to figure out what I am, but I don't get those insanely intense bouts of "hunger" anymore. I realized that part of my problem probably comes from what an iradologist called "delicate blood glucose" levels. So, if I eat protein, eat regularly, and don't eat too many simple carbs, my symptoms of what seems to be pranna hunger don't get too bad.

On the other hand, I do think I energy feed, but probably not as frequently as a pure psychic vampire would. I had an aura photo taken at one of the psychic fairs and showed it to a few self-professed vampires who agreed with me that it doesn't look like the aura of a classic psychic vampire. Maybe I'm some kind of otherkin that has a vampiric side or maybe I'm just a human who has a vampiric side. I don't feel non-human, but some of my dreams of what could be an early incarnation on this Earth are a little unusual. I won't go into that because it's complicated and just speculation.

One of the ideas I keep turning around in my mind is that I might be some kind of succubus. This doesn't mean I'm some gorgeous seductress who has sex with every guy around or that I often and easily slip into other people's dreams to have metaphysical intercourse with them and drain them of life energy. (I only wish I could, because the few times I have dreamt of doing something like that, the energy rush was fantastic.) What being a succubus means to me is that I dreamwalk and feed in dreams sometimes, that I'm somewhat empathic and can probably turn that to a sort of "reverse empathy" where I turn up other people's emotions, that I can feed on sexually charged energy, and that when I do feed on sexually charged energy it dosn't seem to hurt the other person.

I had a dream back in college, where I was lucid and talking with a dream guide. At the time, I was getting frustrated with all my dreams of being a vampire and wanted to know why I kept dreaming of this. I asked him, "Am I a human pretending to be a vampire or a vampire pretending to be a human pretending to be a vampire? Who am I? What am I? Who am I? What am I? Who am I? What am I?"

The dream guide responded with "Inanna-Lamia-Inanna-Lamia-Inanna-Lamia".

I then woke and thought that was a very weird answer. I didn't know what I meant, but I remembered it.

I've never thought or felt I was a goddess. I've never thought or felt I was some kind of supernatural creature. I've tried to find links between the Sumerian goddess Inanna and the Greek and later English idea of the Lamia, though, and I've found some.

In another dream from around the same time, I dreamt that Lamia was a sort of immortal muse who inspired Keats and Yeats. Keats wrote "Lamia" and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", both of which are about vampiric figures. In the letters at the end of my book on his poetry there are also references to discussions about strange, otherworldly beings. Yeats, who lived later, also wrote about this idea of a dark, vampiric muse. I don't think I knew this when I had this dream.

I look back at the ancient vampiric, succubus/incubus demons of Sumerian myth and see parallels with modern vampires and with the Leanana Sidhe. There are also linguistic and symbolic connections from the Sumerian/Akkadian "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke", "lili", "lilu", "lilitu", "ardat-lili" and "irdu-lili" to the Hebrew Lilith and lilim and then to the Greek "Lamia and lamiae. On a webpage I found today it says:

"Another Lilith-prototype, Lilitu, is a star actress, of first rate, in the corpus of Babylonian spells, where she appears as a lust demoness. The incurable patients, which get wasted with no remedy, are called in these spells the bridegrooms of Lilitu, and they recall to us the victims of vampyrism, which, under the stress of her parasitic kisses, languish slowly, until they join their lover in the bosom of death. "

This description sounds to me much like dark muses who were thought to both inspire and drain Romantic poets. From a cached page called "Angels and Daimons" comes this description:

"For the poet, the daimon is his or her Muse, who is at the very least a mixed blessing. Keats painted portraits of his Muse in Lamia and The Belle Dame sans Merci: white-skinned, cold, irresistibly alluring figures who seduce the poet, drain him like a vampire for their own purposes, and leave him "alone and palely loitering". For, once she is awakened, the Muse will drive relentlessly to become the centre of the personality, casting aside whatever we think of as ourselves. The rewards in terms of achievement can be enormous, but they are also dangerous; and everyday life, with its little comforts and satisfactions, can be a casualty. As the late Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, writes feelingly in Winter Pollen (1994), the Muse "from earliest times came to the poet as a god, took possession of him, delivered the poem, then left him." It was axiomatic, he says, that she lived her own life separate from the poet's everyday personality; that she was entirely outside his control; and that she was, above all, supernatural."

I read somewhere that the lilim of Jewish folklore are supposed to latch onto their human lovers so strongly that it takes a writ of divorce to be freed of them. That reminded me of how I felt I had a metaphysical link to and kept dreaming of my own ex-boyfriend long after we'd broken up. I felt like I still had a "right" to dreamwalk to him and feed off him if I could. It wasn't until after he told me he'd remarried, that my link to him finally seemed to be more or less severed. Was I feeding from him like a succubus when I dreamt of him? I don't know, but it seems possible.

I posted the following to my Meetup group's list. It's long, but it describes how I felt like I was energy feeding last Halloween day. It also shows why I think I might be something like a succubus.

The whole weekend at Blood Moon I barely slept and didn't eat that much, but I was still buzzing like I was on caffeine much of the time. I attribute this to the many otherkin in the house, as well as to the natural energy of the lake and surrounding environment. I didn't start to feel a normal food hunger level until the 2nd day I was in LA for the Twilight gathering. Then, after staying up most of the night with a bunch of vampires at the event, I was hungry again in the morning and went out and bought a juice drink for breakfast.

The driver of the van that took me back to the airport that day threw out my drink as I got into his van. I couldn't really blame him for wanting to protect the interior, but I had hoped a juice drink with protein in it would help control my other hunger. The driver and I talked pleasantly together for much of the trip, but after we picked up another passenger, the driver asked what kind of group the event I'd gone to had been for. I told him "Vampire". This didn't immediately end our conversation, but it did stop shortly thereafter.

I started to feel really hungry then. I ate some chocolate I had in my purse, but still felt hungry and felt like I was drawing energy off the driver. He got quiet and so did I. I tried not to pull energy off him, but I felt like I couldn't control it. My head felt weird, not quite a headache, but almost. Then I noticed the driver kept brushing the top of his head with his hand, like maybe his head felt weird too. Finally we got to the airport, I paid him his tip and left.

At the airport I still felt hungry, so I ate a double bacon cheeseburger and some orange juice. I still felt hungry after that.

On the plane I sat behind a young couple. I noticed the man lean into the woman's neck as he talked to her and I decided to try to sense his energy the way I'd sensed [the guy's] at Rune's energy perception meet-up. [That guy] had "tasted" to me of vanilla ice-cream. The man in front of me reminded me at first of strawberry whip cream, either strawberry and vanilla or cherry and vanilla. I focussed on the vanilla and this "scent" became stronger. Since I was still hungry and wanted to test if I might be some kind of succubus, I focussed my thoughts on the man and tried to arouse and intensify his amorous feelings toward his girlfriend. It seemed to work, though it's possible he and she would've behaved as they did whether I'd willed it or not.

I kept thinking toward him thoughts like: "She smells good. She's warm and soft. Think of how her skin smells. Think of the taste of her skin. Think of her kissing your neck. You want to kiss her skin. Think of how warm and soft her body feels against yours...." I did this for almost the whole flight back to Reno, including thoughts of them touching each other under the blanket across their laps. They never saw me looking at them and never noticed me, but I saw him nuzzle her neck repeatedly and both of them whisper into each other's ear. At the end of he flight he stood and raised his eyebrows at her to indicate amorous thoughts of more things he'd like to do with her when they were alone together. Both of them seemed happy.

For myself, I enjoyed the display and felt the spark of amorous feelings within myself as I obsevred the couple. I no longer felt hungry, tired or headachy when we landed. I also had plenty of energy to drive home to Sacramento and to stay up and watch a couple of scary TV shows before going to sleep.

Of course, I don't know if the couple would've behaved as they did had I not been trying to project amorous thoughts toward them. I don't know if the driver of the van was feeling weird because I was feeding off his energy. Two days later, while I was writing in my journal in the cafe at Borders, I don't know if I was the cause of one man falling asleep with his finger poised over the page of his book, then staring accusingly at me and following me out to my car when I left. I can't prove any of this, but to me it seems like more than just coincidence.

- Persephone

I'm still Fucking Hungry, but food doesn't help

I'm either Fucking crazy delusional or I'm a vampire that doesn't know how to feed.

I had cereal for breakfast, but I was still "hungry". I had cottage cheese and yogurt with live cultures, but I was still "hungry". I had a bottle of pomegranite juice, but I was still "hungry". I had a roast beef sandwich and a lemonade, but I was still "hungry. I hung out at the East/West Books Healing Arts Fair, but I was still "hungry". I took the dogs to the river for a couple of hours, but I was still "hungry". I ate a stir fry dinner of beef and vegitables, 2 small apples and some gummie bears, but I'm still Hungry!

It's not PMS because it's after my period. I keep thinking, "I'm hungry", but eating food doesn't make this feeling go away. In fact, when I got half-way through my sandwich, I wanted to put it away because I didn't want it anymore. But I made myself eat it anyway. Then I felt kind of sick to my stomach, but I still felt like I was sort of "hungry" too.

I'm irritable. I have a small headache that comes and goes. I feel like I want to scream. I thought that if I went to the river, I could pick up some ambient energy there that would make this damned distracting "hunger" go away. But it didn't go away.

It's been over 2 weeks this time around. I've lost track of exactly how long I've been feeling this way this time around. Maybe it's been almost a month? I think it started getting worse when I couldn't get my co-worker into sexually themed conversations, first because we had a new girl in the lab, then because he was on vacation for a week, and then because I just couldn't get the right time and setting to do that with him like I'm used to doing.

I wonder if taking St. John's Wort would help? I haven't wanted to take it because I'm not feeling depressed and I wanted to feel my authentic feelings, rather than muted ones. St. John's Wort isn't like perscription antidepressants and doesn't mute emotions as much as they do, but it's still got a traditional reputation for dispelling "evil spirits", so I was afraid it might mess with my psychic abilites or ability to sense energy.

Maybe drinking alcohol would mute this "hunger"? But I don't want to get into the habit of drinking every evening just so I won't feel like a hungry vampire. It might not even work. And it might keep me from being able to dream-walk if I need to do that.

I wish I could dream-walk at will and feed off someone of my choosing. When I dream of feeding off someone, that's usually when I seem to get the most energy and the hunger goes away for a couple of days at least, but usually longer. If I could choose who to feed off tonight, I think I'd try to feed off my ex-boyfriend. Maybe then he'd believe me about this vampire stuff, but probably he still wouldn't.

This is a pretty elaborate self-delusion, if that's what it is. Why would anyone want, even subconsciously, to feel irritable, headachy and weirdly "hungry" day after day with little relief. Then too, even feeling like this, I have to try to act normal. I don't get any positive reaction from telling my co-workers that I'm feeling hungry and irritable and distracted, or from "losing it" and snapping at one of them. I've only admitted to feeling like this to a couple of vampires online, and never to any of them in person.

I've actually been trying to maintain my status in the group and on the boards as a "normal human". I don't want to start calling myself a vampire. I don't want to call myself a vampire, but eventually I might have to.

- Persephone

"On the Cusp" ???

Some excepts from my diary this week:

Sept. 9, Sunday, 8:30 pm - 2 Readings about Vampires -

I went to the Holistic Living Expo today and ended up having readings by 2 women who believe in and aren't freaked out by vampires....

...when I asked the 1st woman why 2 vampires [who I've met recently] said I didn't feel like a vampire, but didn't exactly feel like a normal human either, she said that's because I'm "on the cusp" and I could go either way. But they'd all been "on the cusp" at one time too.

Sept. 12, Weds. 7:50 pm - Calling? -

I was hungry at work. When I came home, I took a shower and a nap. Just now and pretty much the whole time I was asleep, I felt like I was connected to others, especially to the people in my group and other vampires. I feel like there's this deep connection or wordless communication, maybe like I'm calling to whoever is meant to "hear" this call and respond to it. This is not something I'm doing consciously, but I feel it intensely, on a non-verbal, spiritual level. My dreams felt like there was this "calling" in them too. I feel like something is trying to communicate with me, but whatever I'm getting is not on the verbal or symbolic level that I'm used to getting.

Sept. 14, Friday, 5 pm - Hunger? -

My throat's been bothering me alot lately. I don't know if it's allegies of what. When I got those 2 Reiki sessions, the practitioner said it felt like a throbbing energy in my throat. It could be just from sinus drainage, but in the last month, I often feel like I have this weird hunger that's centered in my throat instead of in my stomach. Maybe it's not hunger at all, but it feels like a hunger that food does little to abate. I'm eating normally, but I still feel this "hunger" that makes me tense and irritable.

I don't really know how to energy-feed and I'm not going to blood-feed..., so I don't really know what to do about it, except try to eat healthy, get enough sleep, go out to the river once in a while, and just keep track of how I'm feeling and anything that seems to help.

I was so incredibly "hungry" and irritable yesterday that I had to go straight to the river after work and sit and lie there for an hour and a half. [I hadn't been to the river in over a month.] It was almost instinctual how I took a sheet from the back seat and headed straight to a quiet, secluded spot right next to the water. I sat there cross-legged with my eyes closed for a long time, then lay curled up on the sheet with my head on my purse for a while, sat cross-legged for a while longer, then walked a little on the paths, while eating wild rose hips and blackberries.

I won't call myself a vampire, but I feel more and more like I could be one sometimes. At one point while I was seated on the damp sheet on the wet sand, a heavy, middle-aged man in a red shirt was in his boat in front of me, trying to start his engine. I just wanted to suck in and feed on his energy if I could have. I felt like a hungry vampire, and I wondered if I felt like a hungry vampire to him.

I really don't try to feed on people energy unless it's ambient and maybe I can breathe in some of it. It's hard, because I don't see energy and usually I can't feel it much either. I sort of don't want to practice energy-feeding techniques, partly just because I'm lazy, partly because I don't want to start thinking I'm a vampire if I'm not one, and partly because I think that if I really needed to feed on energy my body (or energy body or whatever) would know how to do it instinctually. I don't know if I really have a need to energy-feed or if this is all a psychosomatic product of an over-active imagination. I'm still trying to figure out what's real and what's not....

The head organizer of my vampire meetup group posted another event to the board late last night. I read it at work today. It's for a blood-feeding gathering in January, and it sounds really freaky, scary and "deep", as my co-worker would say. My first impression on reading about it was that I want to go. My second thought was that I shouldn't want to go, that this is too intense and serious and it should scare me alot more than it does. I thought, I don't belong there, because this is an event for real blood-drinking vampires, not for currious and interested "normals". He posted that this event is usually just for vampires only, but he was going to allow otherkin and "normals" from our group, as long as they're very open-minded....

I'm intrigued and excited by the idea of going. A part of me fantasizes about it, but my rational side tells me I should rein that side in. Things could really get out of control in such an environment....What if I go to such an event, thinking I can stay in control of myself and find myself "vamping out" or virtually vamping out? By "Virtually vamping out", I mean that I might be so attracted by the sight, smell and idea of drinking blood that my heart rate goes up, my breathing gets fast and shallow, my eyes dialate, my senses get distorted and overly focused, and I think all of this is because I'm a real vampire, rather than just because I'm working myself up psychosomatically to feel like I'm one.

Another woman in the group and I both say we're not vampires, but we both get "blood cravings" occationally. She writes about it like it's perfectly normal to get blood cravings when she feels jealous or powerless in her life. I keep thinking my own weird hunger-like feelings, "blood cravings", thoughts that I want blood, or apparent symptoms are absolutely not normal. They don't really prove anything either, though, because they could all be psychosomatic.

- I bought a small black onyx pendant and black onyx ring today at East/West Books, because I read that onyx helps pull in energy for healing or for whatever one needs it for. I thought that I really seem to need energy and I don't seem to be able to pull it in on my own very well, so maybe the onyx stones will help me....

I stopped by to see Mom today and she pissed me off, which is another reason why I bought the jewelry. I'd told her I'd gone out to a nightclub with some friends. She said my going out to a nightclub was "garbage" and I shouldn't waste my money on going to a nightclub when I can't even pay my bills. However, she's wasting her money on sending me the local newspaper and some woman's magazine, neither of which I want. She says I need to read these things so I know what's going on in the world. I told her there are only so many hours in the day, and I've decided not to spend them on reading the newpaper and magazines right now. It's like every time I find some interest in my life that makes me happy, she has to knock it down and say it's a waste of my time, money or thoughts. She doesn't know anything about the vampire stuff. But she still wants to critisize and control me, even when she doesn't even know what I'm really doing.

- Persephone

I HATE this weird hunger!

I was not quite 16 when I first dreamt of a particular vampire who I've always felt was real. Not long ago I ask about him of a psychic I trust (without using the V-word). She said he was like a spirit guide, but also someone I knew in a past life and connected to someone I'd meet in this life. She said I'd recognize this person because he'd feel the same as the man in my dream, even though he wouldn't look the same.

I've always known the feel of vampires in my dreams. Rarely, I thought I could recognized them in waking life, but I'd always told myself I couldn't be sure and it was probably just my imagination. Now I know better. I've met self-professed vampires and they do have that feel to them sometimes. I seem to feel it from those who call themselves "sang", but not from those who call themselves "psi". Being able to sense vampires is sometimes called a beacon effect, especially when the person who's sensing them is an awakening or partially awakened vampire. (When a full vampire senses other vampires it's sometimes called vampdar, like vampire-radar.)

So anyway, I've had repeated periods in my life (when I was perhaps reading too much vampire fiction, watching too much vampire TV shows or reading and posting on real vampire forums), periods when I start to feel like I might be a vampire myself. I hate the weird and extremely uncomfortable hunger-like feelings that accompany these periods. It's like a cross between hunger and PMS, and it really makes you want to snap at people. You have no patience. Your muscles are tense. You try to eat as you normally would, but you either still feel hungry after you eat, or you take a few bites and then don't really want the food. In the past when I've started to feel like this, I've always been able to make it go away, to repress it perhaps and shove it back down into it's little box in my subconscious, to be forgotten until it decides to pop up again later.

Sometimes it's abated when I go out into nature for awhile, when I have a conversation with someone who's emotionally stirred up, or when I have a dream of vampirically feeding off someone. Last February, when I was feeling like this, I was sitting in a lecture at a small psychic fair and trying to breathe in energy from the people around me. A woman in front of me acted uncomfortable, moved her chair a few inches away from me, then got up and moved to the other side of the room. I wondered if I'd given her the sensation I call the "creepy-crawlies". I wondered if she's been able to tell that I was trying to feed off her energy, and had moved away from me in response. The next day, I asked a woman who was like a psychic why I'd been dreaming of being a vampire or being told I was a vampire. She gave me a vague answer that didn't really feel right to me, yet when she specifically said I was not a psychic vampire that feeds off people, I was satisfied with that part of her answer and the feeling that I might be one went away again for about a month.

Everytime I've felt like this, I convince myself that it's not real, it's all in my head, I have an overactive imagination and I'm creating psychosomatic symptoms.

Now I'm feeling like this again and I'm still trying to tell myself and my online vampire friends that it's probably just in my head, it's the heat, not getting enough sleep and not eating right that's doing this to me. Today I said in chat on a vampire board that it was just because my energy was low. But later, I thought that explanation didn't really explain it all away. Yeah, so my energy was low for whatever reason. But normal people don't feel like they're hungry for something besides food or get a prickly chill-like feeling along their skin when their energy is low. They don't feel like they want to snap at people or that every cell in their body is screaming when their energy is low. When normal people have low energy, they just get tired, then they eat food or sleep, and then they feel better.

All of this begs the question then, what am I? I know one vampire who says I'm a normal human, but two others who say I don't feel like a vampire and I don't exactly feel like a normal human either, and still another (who knows me only from online and in chat) who says he's always thought I did "feel" like a vampire. Meanwhile, I keep saying I'm not one, I don't want to be one, and the thought of actually being one makes me feel sick to my stomach.

The thing is, though, that sick-to-my-stomach feeling I had last week when I thought I might actually be a vampire is very much like the feeling I get just before I get fired from a job or a relationship falls apart. And it's a feeling that's almost always right.

My online vampire friend says I sound like I don't want to be labeled and that I shouldn't worry about the label, but just be what I am. That's very kind advice and I thank him for it, but it's not really that simple, is it? Right now I'm trying to say to myself and to the people on my vampire boards, that I'm not really a vampire, but there's some part of me that's like a vampire. There's still that part of me that senses energy sometimes and seems to feed off it sometimes. There's still that part of me the enjoys dreaming of feeding off people. There's still that part of me that is more attracted than I should be to someone's blood when they have a cut and show it to me. I've never "vamped-out", as the vampires call it, but I do still feel an abnormal attraction to blood.

The picture at the top of this page of a starving tiger symbolizes how this hunger feels inside me. That picture reminds me of a dream I had in which a starving cougar was trapped in the same kind of small cage. Since I consider Cougar to be one of my totem or power animals, it was significant that She was trapped and starving inside a cage. I knew she needed fresh meat and to be able to run and hunt freely. I thought She represented some side of myself that was being caged and repressed and was thus starving. I first dreamt of Courgar around the same time that I was first dreaming of being a vampire. Maybe, then, she represents a vampiric aspect of my nature, my vampire side even, and now She's demanding to be let loose.

- Persephone

Vampires are Interesting People

I know I won't keep up this blog, because I never do, but I wanted to post about some of the more interesting things that have been going on in my life lately.

Just over two years ago, being bored and unsatisfied with my life, I decided to do a Google search on "real vampires" and found there were a great many sites on the web about this subject. At first, the knowledge that there were so many sites by, for and about self-professed vampires scared me a little. Then I thought that if I'm scared of something, I should really check it out more. I started to read and post at real vampire forums, not claiming to be one myself, but admitting to an interest in the subject that went beyond simple curiosity. I discovered that the people who claim to be vampires, in general, do not seem to be freaks or crazies, just people with some unusual abilities and symptoms.

For two years I read and posted at a couple of forums sporadically, getting to know some of these people pretty well from their posts and becoming rather fond of some of them. Not long ago, I decided that I wanted to meet some real vampires in person, rather than see them only as a part of this distant online community. I posted my interest in the subject at meetup.com and within a couple months I went to my first vampire meet-up.

It's one thing to secretly believe that vampires could be real. (I've thought this since I was 16, because of some unusual dreams and experiences I had.) It's another level of paradigme shifting to start having conversations with self-professed vampires online. But it's a whole new level of blowing apart one's paradigme of Reality to actually meet real vampires face to face, to hear their stories and issues, and to experience the weird energy and "coincidences" that one can notice around them.

Now, I have to state quite emphaticaly that real vampires are not like the creatures in legends, books and movies. I'm talking about living people here, not monsters or supernatural beings. By and large, they age the same, get sick the same, go to jobs the same, and have the same kinds of financial and family issues that the rest of us have. Their main distinction is that, while they have to deal with all the same stuff as the rest of us, they also have to deal with a metaphysical energy imbalance that requires them to take in energy from outside sources besides regular food. They also tend to have more psychic and metaphysical abilities than normal people do, which is part of what makes them so intereting.

I've met more than half a dozen real vampires lately, and count some of them among my friends now. I hope and expect to meet still more in the future. Knowing real vampires, the fictional ones don't seem nearly as interesting anymore. Also, I don't really feel like I need to prove vampires are real to other people. That would be like trying to prove a psychic friend is really psychic or a Wiccan friend is really a witch. They just are what they are, and you accept them as themselves. Knowing them does make life seem more interesting, though.

- Persephone