The Meaning of Vampires
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.ย. 2024
- The Vampire is issued from ancient legends, though it has taken up a certain niche among modern monsters since Bram Stoker's Dracula. I look at the coherence of its modern appearance as a dark version of hierarchy.
Check out the song "On Extremism" by 2mørVs
• Video
Upcoming events.
thesymbolicwor...
My links:
Support this channel: thesymbolicwor...
patreon: / pageauvideos
subscribestar: www.subscribes...
paypal: www.paypal.me/J...
website: www.thesymbolic...
facebook: / thesymbolicworld
twitter: / pageaujonathan
Bitchute: www.bitchute.c...
Dtube: steemit.com/@s...
The unofficial facebook discussion group:
/ 1989208418065298
My new opening was designed by Omid Pakbin
omidpakbin.com/
The outro to my videos was written by Matthew Wilkinson
My website designers, Anomalist Design: www.anomalistd...
The music at the opening is Russian Eastern Overture, by Rimsky Korsakov.
“You can take cocaine.”
-Jonathan Pageau, 2019
😂
I am surprised Jonathan didnt explore the religious aspects of the Vampire also, but maybe he felt they were too well understood. But Bram Stoker's Dracula came on the scene at exactly a time when many in society felt they didn't need religion. The vampire is an antichrist in this aspect. Whereas Christ gives his blood and life for the salvation and life of his people, the vampire feeds on the unwary. Whereas Christ is the bridegroom who sanctified his bride the Church, the vampire is the seducer who ruins the life and soul of his victims. Christ went to his death and harrowed Hell for the souls of his people but the vampire enslaves souls to extend his life.....
I would love to know more, maybe it's time to bring back this type of vampire... back to its roots
Jillian Hamblet the falls in line with Dracula. The process in which Dracula (Bram Stoker’s) made a vampire was very clearly a Satanic communion. There’s also allusions in the same story that Dracula learned from Satan himself at the Scholomance.
Can a good man enjoy a drug fuelled rave?
Got to it before me, good post. I liked the 1930s Dracula it has faith, and in the movie the ones who are the *Skeptics* end up falling into these pit falls both literally in the movie and the spiritual aspect behind it.
Well said.
What you posted is how I've long understood vampires.
The scary thing is how our current culture has romanticized vampires
I’m surprised you didn’t talk at all about vampires needing to be invited into the home in order to cross the threshold.
Yes. The victim must exercise free will. Take a part in its own destruction
@@skdewolf7606 Same said of the Illuminati / Satanists
maritimedragon of course much in the way the media and Hollywood through film and entertainment tell us exactly what they are doing. We are complicit in the exploitation and therefore the (what I believe) evil powers behind it operate with impunity to destroy and undermine compassion and basic human morality
@@skdewolf7606 👍👏👏👏👏👏
Lucy in Dracula never invited Dracula in. (Jonathan was invited in)
Garlic has a lot of symbolism associated with it. My fathers side is Russian Orthodox and whenever we went to my grandmother's house for a big meal there was always garlic in salt on the center of the table and shed tell us it "keeps away the evil spirits."
There's a lot of history if garlic being used medicinally or believed to either give strength or keep evil spirits away, which, in a different time might all mean the exact same thing to people.
It seems somewhat associated to positive aspects of nature and fertility. Since the victims are typically female, this might be a hint.
All that said, though, garlic was used as a mosquito repellent. It actually works if you rub it on your skin. It could be as simple as connecting protection from blood sucking insects that brought disease and death to blood sucking vampires which brought other types of "disease".
I did some scouring about, as I remembered that garlic could be used to treat blemishes because of its antibacterial properties. So, I also thought it may be good at getting rid of paracites and turns out, it really is. And apparently this was known, as it was prescribed to treat paracites by the likes of Hippocrates. What I found extrordinarily interesting though, was this: "According to experts at Kew Gardens, England's royal botanical center of excellence, the people of ancient India valued the therapeutic properties of garlic and also thought it to be an aphrodisiac. The upper classes avoided garlic because they despised its strong odor...""
So, garlic is this thing that heals, but it's unpleasant to deal with. And it's not some kind of noble unpleasantness, like salt, which though it burns in a wound was valuable before industrialisation, tastes good in a different way than garlic does-it's more refined and less harsh-and even looks pure and crystalline. Garlic just stinks. And it makes you stinky. Kind of like a person without the luxury of regular baths. And it grows under the ground. Kind of like a political revolution.
•www.worldhealth.net/news/garlic-may-be-better-removing-parasites-drugs/
•www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265853.php#history
The history of the vampire is interesting. They become parasites. I always thought the part that is human. Makes the vampire and the werewolf both more monster.
/cough.
I am a lawyer in real life, and we are often times associated vampires in modern society due to the way that people experience us.
A few comments:
1. Why do you have to invite a vampire into a house? I can't influence a client unless they surrender their will to my counsel. A home is a metaphor for the sacred self, the container of the guarded thing that is not supposed to be corrupted by an outside influence. Remember, I'm being invited in to address something beyond a lay person's comprehension, so they have to completely accept my will over them for me to do my job. That's dangerous to do (for both parties), and creates the possibility of overriding the client's will in a bad way. The shelves are groaning under the weight of works addressing these ethical issues within the legal community, and an entire set of rituals exist to try to control it.
2. About the hyper-rationality, that is a real problem. Lawyers are notoriously hyper-rational, and prone to reducing the experience of reality down to something mechanical. A court room is in many ways a temple-like structure, but missing a god, instead worshiping the ceaseless mechanics of a legal system. I think its why we have such high rates of substance abuse and depression. It's funny to think about the rice example, but it's surprisingly good commentary about this annoying penchant. We can be consumed by intellectualism. If you're going to abuse a power relationship, the easiest way to do that is by narcissistic rationalizations derived from your belief in your own cleverness. Even in the best of cases, hyper-rationality often creates a sense with clients that we are disconnected from humanity, from the relationship, and focused more on processing them through a system.
But yes, stories are not just stories.
Anthony D what do you call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
Jk
I have friends and family that are attorneys, and I love and appreciate/enjoy them all, but I've never met one that talks like you. You sound more like a psychologist. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on other subjects.
It's interesting, but I have also notice high up business leaders tended to have a association with Vampires.
My girlfriend is Romanian and strongly believes in using garlic as part of a cleansing ritual to be performed in the house every week to two weeks ideally. It isn’t the primary cleansing method as burning sage and walking and wafting it around the house fills that spot but, she does believe in placing garlic over the windows and doors inside and around the house as well as rubbing it on the window panes once she’s closed the windows. Apparently it’s vital to move the air around in the house too. Although Romanian she’s not a believer in vampires but, she does have strong beliefs about ghosts/spirits and the negative intentions of others and definitely witches. The latter being a person of concealed intention but who really wishes to do harm to another supernaturally via curses and dream invasion etc... From what she’s told me the garlic not only helps clean the house but also creates some protection or barrier from the harmful wishes of external entities which, I guess is very similar to vampire folklore.
Garlic was an important medicine and food purifier in the middle ages. The University of Nottingham discovered a cure for antibiotic resistant staph infection from a medieval textbook. The recipe was garlic and other allieae soaked in white wine for a couple of weeks. In fact if you get a cut of burn, crushing and packing some garlic under the bandage will work as a better antiseptic and heal the wound faster than neosporin or other modern medications. The downsides are that it will sting for a moment, and that you'll smell like garlic. Symbolically, perhaps it's that the vampire is an addict, or the vampirism is the disease itself, so it is repulsed by the medicine. So since the vampire is the corrupt hierarchy, the cure is to kill the corrupt hierarchy.
Garlic works amazing on a toothache caused by bacterial infection and inflammation and even an abscess. It burns like crazy and may cause blisters if overused. But, if your stuck in the middle of no where ( in my case the Dominican Republic at the time) , it is a lifesaver.
Also worth mentioning is that Dracula means dragon. To have a Count Dracula means that you are ruled over by a dragon, that a monster of the margins has moved to the top of your heirarchy. It would be like the dwarves of Erebor staying and serving Smaug, while he slowly eats them.
It also more or less represents the devil who is described as a dragon who’s arrogance out ways his desire for God’s love or mutual benefit. The Devil like a Vampire lives off selfish desire and a hunger for life that will never be satisfied, and Dracul means both “ Son of the Devil” and “ Son of the Dragon”
It seems there is a strong association between garlic and the "working classes" so to speak, as it was a common food and usually composed slave's and soldier's rations, while also being a cheap seasoning for the poor.
It was also used as a means for phisical protection as a strong smell which repels bugs and sometimes even predatorial animals (a worthy detail when considering the predatorial nature of vampires).
and most interesting, aristocracies had a certain disgust for garlic, most of the time for being the food of commoners.
So i would suggest that garlic would possibly be another weakness of the vampire's prideful nature, as aristocracies rejected the idea of lowering themselves to eating commoners food.
I heard a fancy chef put down garlic as, “good for little old ladies.” Peasants use it in every meal in many ways places.That connects with the idea of peasants versus vampiric aristocracy.
Garlic is generally used in Slavic folklore against all manner of evil spirits, vampires included. And yes, its strong, purifying odor is what keeps vampires at bay; it is common to have tinctures made of garlic when you're ill in Slavic countries, as it was considered a powerful curative herb.
Do you know who hate garlic? Vampires and Protestants.
Lol. I told this to a Greek Gyro chef. She laughed.
here's an angle:
they drink blood and get an amazing high
their victim's blood is 'better' when the victim is in a state of terror just before their blood is consumed - adrenaline
it's a drug for the rulers of this world...they know what they are and like to tell us in their own special way
adrenochrome is litterally a drug, which elites like Jeffery Epstein, Jimmy Savile, and some figure in the pizzagate scandal are thought to have partaken of. though you have to take it intravenously.
Yes Vampirism is a real practice! People like VLAD DRACULA 🧛♂️ 🦇 ⚰️ exist! 👹
This is so much more insightful than most of the literary theory I'm working my way through to try and understand a modern Gothic novel I'm translating for my MA dissertation. If only I could cite this video, but it'll never be accepted, though it's as thorough as anything I'm reading 😅 Anyway thanks a ton for helping our understanding, Jonathan, this one goes deep.
Thank you for this sharing, I just discovered this video. There are other aspects I suggest you to explore : shame, isolation, rejection, loneliness.
What the humanity can't stand to see, what the humanity tries to conceal, they reject in fear and hate. That's also the theme of the Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein and how many more...
Vampire is loneliness. Anyone they would bond with is going to die, unless immortality is granted. Immortality as a curse. Watchin the world changing over centuries without being allowed to be part of it. No wonder why the vampire is a metaphor dear to many misfits, bullied, outcasts, "alternative people". They can't fit in, and therefore, they are rejected by the mainstream world as too "odd" and different.They end up rejecting themselves, isolating themselves, in order to survive and to protect themselves from the mainstream world, the eyes of the human kind, in the full light of the sun. Excruciating loneliness.
This perpetual pain, inherent to their nature of "living corpses", is shown and explained beautifully in some movies like Nosferatu (1979) : "Time is an abyss... profound as a thousand nights... Centuries come and go... To be unable to grow old is terrible... Death is not the worst... Can you imagine enduring centuries, experiencing each day the same futilities...", "The absence of love is the most abject pain".
I recommand also Interview with the Vampire, as Louis is the perfect symbol of this curse of loneliness and repulsion toward his vampiric nature. And the suffering of Claudia, the child that can't grow up to be the woman she longs to be.
The vampire reflects the monstruous aspect of the human kind (I think again about the Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein as perfect examples). The beautiful and socially accepted has everything. The odd and the ugly is condemned to live in darkness.
"I'm done with man" (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 1994).
Great video, Jonathan. Thank you! I see an interesting analogy between what you said about “the brain eating the body” and Gad Saad's notion of “idea pathogens”, i.e. ideas (memes) that bind the person to act in their service, thereby eating the person from the inside out (so to speak), as in the case of ideologically possessed people.
Just a thought: There is Dracula and vampires, vampires only can do you harm when you invite them in. Which I always found fascinating, it is like when you want to stay out of evil’s way don’t invite them in. It is in a way like organized crime works. As long as you don’t get involved chances are you will not be harmed. But as soon as you do one favor, invite them in, like delivering a package for money, they’ll suck you dry or you become a vampire yourself.
This does not answer your garlic question, but I thought it might add an extra perspective.
Love your content! Love your online lectures, it opened new perspectives on the world for me! I hope to see more content of you in the future!
Kind regards
Garlic is a natural antibiotic, healing, and also a repellent as the body sweats it out. That would be my guess.
Another fun fact:
"Despite being called the Age of Enlightenment, during which most folkloric legends were quelled, the belief in vampires increased dramatically, resulting in what could only be called a mass hysteria throughout most of Europe."
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_folklore_by_region#Medieval_and_early_modern_Europe]
So, a period of exulting logic and reason brings about a mass hysteria around the figure of the vampire. #SymbolismHappens
Garlic comes from the local villages around Bram's Castle in Romania, the place that inspired Stocker to write Dracula. There's a lot o folk histories in that area about bad creatures that comes at night to do evil and you must protect your windows with garlics
Looking good Pageau, keep up the good work!
I’ve been thinking about this last week, such incredible timing! I’ll finally understand the metaphysics of Arararagi!
Cool now I appreciate the Halloween decoration on my door a lot more.
Vampires hate garlic because they're plainly carnivores, and don't respect vegetables.
It's obvious.
(har har)
Garlic in olden times was considered a purifying agent. It would be a standard ration for any knight in the middle ages because of this. Chewing is said to keep away tooth rot, and keep you strong and healthy, and there is some truth to it a believe. Its probably got something to do with that. I don't imagine that people before science know why chewing garlic kept your teeth from falling out, just that people who really liked garlic didn't lose teeth as often. Same as salt, putting on meat keeps it from spoiling, they didn't know why, but it does. even a fool with no education can tell that the rot in your mouth, or on your steak are pretty much the same, and that garlic and salt stops them.
my grandparents raised me to eat garlic heavy foods, and to gargle salty warm water for sore throats, but were old mountain people and didn't get the concept of brushing teeth. And they kept all their teeth in good shape up until their 40's with out much of a problem. When they switched to modern diets thanks to my mother, their teeth fell out because they still didn't brush. my sisters teeth on the other hand started rotting and falling out before she was 25, because she didn't do the old mountain folk stuff (garlic was important and onions eaten raw with meals, almost no sweats, and lots of whisky), and didn't brush either. That's not proof, but it is a case study of one family. :P
Salt is AMAZING for oral health. Folk wisdom is often surprisingly accurate. Garlic kills the bacteria that eats sugar and causes cavities. Your grandparents knew what was up!
Hi Jonathan, thanks so much for all this great content - it's always packed with info and also entertainment. The garlic thing I've never figured out either, but as a little boy (I'm 43 now) I heard many old people carrying on about garlic for just about any ailment. Turns out they were right in a sense as people are returning to old natural remedies, and garlic is in my opinion one of the best and most accessible earthly wonder-cures for plenty things. Most of those people lived well into their 90s, just btw.
This is so far the only parallel I found that fits, though a bit weak-ish for my preference.
My old neighbour in the 60s said garlic purified the blood, as well as boosting the immune system, maybe that's the connection
this was such an interesting topic that you actually inspired me to write a short essay today. Thank you! :)
Surprised you didn't touch on the anti-eucharistic nature of the vampire: while Christ lets you drink His blood so that you receive eternal life, a vampire drinks your blood to give himself eternal life.
Aint we vampires for drinking the blood of Christ?
Haniel Lucas The all-powerful freely gave the true fountain of immortality.
From the helpless, the vampires of the world _steal_ a false immortality.
@@Hanipingo more or less. Saving the damned.
However, during the last supper, god asked you to symbolically eat his body and drink his blood.
During which, men heard this and said, this speech is shocking! Then stormed out. Jesus didn't mean to drink his blood literally, for drinking blood is written in the bible as a sin. Jesus would know this.
I believe, at that time, jesus was trying to get you to think beyond the literal, and enter you into the metaphysical.
I could be wrong.
@@mlight8443 ok but consider this. Why would He tell them that, that "if you do not eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man you have no life in you," mean it symbolically, and then not tell them so? If He meant it symbolically, wouldn't He tell them, so they would stay and learn more from Him?
But He doesn't do that, He actually uses a more physical, more violent verb, meaning something more like "gnaw on" the flesh, and then asks His disciples if they're going to leave too. I think this shows He means it very literally. He's so serious about it that He's willing to let His closest followers leave over that issue.
@@iphidamasfilms1245 the following verses, he does. He even asks his disciples that stayed if they would like to leave as well.
John 6:60 before and after. Hes describing himself as the mana from heaven. He has come down as bread from heaven, his words are life. Eat of him.
He is speaking as if he were the bread from heaven you were eat of him. His disciples said his words were of everlasting life.
He didnt mean eat him literally, why would he mean that literally?
I'm thinking the garlic is because it's a natural anti-bacterial, so there is this peasant understanding that it's a purifying element. The same with silver.
Garlic also keeps away mosquitoes.
True. The superstition of garlic as a natural defense against the supernatural is older than the vampire story.
It's clearly a relic of previous incarnations of similar superstitions
Ultimately in the past sickness was correlated with supernatural possession so garlic became a symbol of spiritual purity by virtue of its curative properties. However it was intended as a purification of possession.
So it's very interesting how he reflected the story of the vampire back onto the self and made it personal. Especially interesting in relation to garlic, bc garlic is something you would consume personally to protect against spirits so it almost seems as though garlic is a reference to self vampirism. Bc it's not like garlic is going to defend against an external evil hierarchy. But rather a symbolic consumption to remove personal vampiric possession.
You could make a similar case for silver cutlery. Cutlery may seem like a weird connection, but silver in the past would've of course been most commonly encountered as cutlery. So the association of silver with cutlery would've been more apparent in the past. Cutlery is very familial and somewhat representative of one's dwelling. Each member gets their own. Dinner is also a kind if reunion or meeting between all the inhabitants of a dwelling to work out problems. So perhaps in reference to different strati of existence. Personal, familial, societal etc. But it might be a stretch. Silver is also of course indicative of capital, no matter the level, so implying a type of investment.
Garlic, honey, mustard, the Mustard seed. SULPHUR. Garlic, onions, broccoli, cruciferous, crucifix, SULFUR. Onion domed churches and mosques. The builders knew, and left us clues. SOUL FIRE. Sulphur is soul food. Garlic a symbol of sulphur. SULFUR on silver. Your soul is served, but does it serve you or the vampire? You decide. Eat more sulfur. light the soul fire. BECOME THE LIGHT
Silver's healing properties and werewolves (pack mentality) is interesting, madness/sickness (toxoplasmosis anyone) and moon cycles. How does one manage their shadow and the collective shadow
Gratias y Merci
Garlic is high in Sulphur. A necessary element utilized in the body (especially joints) and we produce less as we age.
I read in a book about vampire lore that garlic would be carried with someone who was going to visit a place where people were being embalmed or to a cemetery. It was said to absorb and contain the stink of death, and thus its essence. They would deposit the garlic on the street when they left and leave it to rot.
Apply the same principle to the undead.
Very interesting ! About garlic, the Bataks thought it has the power to find lost souls. Also, people suffering from Porphyria see their sunlight sensibility increased if they eat garlic.
I'm reading Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (which is absolutely great) and what you said about vampires makes a lot of sense in regards to that story.
Garlic helps with sickness, so it helps to reject parasites, vampires being parasitic as you said in the one way relationship in the heirachy, so I would assume it has to do with that relationship?
This element of the aristocracy is very nice to think about, however my question would be what element of the foreign that is strewn throughout Dracula would have to play in that scenario? The notion of a parasitic aristocrat makes sense on Dracula's native land, but he moved to England and began practicing his vampirism there. A far fetch idea is that it was a way of criticizing the aristocracy of the east vs. the seemingly nicer English ones?
It would be interesting to hear you talk about the 'brothers' devil/satan/lucifer/light-bearer/illusion and christ/jesus/truth. I would be interested to hear a symbolic discussion on this. It would also be interesting because nothing can exist without it's opposite, so there is actually PURPOSE and therefore value to having lucifer exist. Yin yang - both point to the Way.
I wouldn't say that's true.
Ah, I have had a kind of theory about garlic for a while after reading Bram Stoker.
It`s to do with the biology of predator/prey behaviour. It is known that predators experience a thrill in the act of killing/domination. Vampires are predators upon anyone who submits to them. There is an idea of the `smell of fear`. Whether it is definititively smell or an embodied instinctual response, the connection occurred to me that anything with an incredibly pungent strong smell that permeates the body and sweat would act to mask the sensory signals given off by the prey being.
Joke:
Use garlic,
vampires don't know if they should count it as one clove or many uncertainly numbered parts.
And just imagine the confusion if you mince the garlic!
The superstition of garlic as a natural defense against the supernatural is much older than the vampire story.
It's clearly a relic of previous incarnations of similar superstitions
Ultimately in the past sickness was correlated with supernatural possession so garlic became a symbol of spiritual purity by virtue of its curative properties.
It's very interesting how you reflected the story of the vampire back onto the self and made it personal. That's very interesting in relation to garlic, bc garlic is something you would consume personally to protect against spirits so it almost seems as though garlic is a reference to self vampirism. Bc it's not like garlic is going to defend against an external evil hierarchy. But rather something you symbolically consume to remove vampiric possession.
You could make a similar case for silver cutlery. As silver would've of course been most commonly encountered as cutlery in the past. Cutlery is very familial and somewhat representative of one's dwelling. Each member gets their own. Dinner is also a kind if reunion or meeting between all the inhabitants of a dwelling. So perhaps in reference to different strati of existence. Personal, familial, societal etc
Garlic (etymologically): “gar” means “spear” (-lic is just from laec, our leek). So possibly it is the idea of “gar/spear” which would be thought of as the same symbol as the stake to run through the evil, like Moses snake on the stick.
As a verb, of “gar” means to “gore”, to run through, to pierce, to stab.
As a noun, gore has a sense of something’s triangularity.
Both the Cross and the Trinity are implied in the root meanings of the word garlic.
I always thought the idea of the vampire is a reaction to the plagues and the importance of hygiene - garlic, sunlight, fire, , even water (holy water included), etc. And the victims as the living dead. The blood sucking part is also true as rats and mosquitos are quick to spread disease.
Buddhist monasteries historically have forbidden the nearby cooking of garlic as the strong smell would distract the mind of the meditator.
If the Vampire’s compartment is the brain/mind, wouldn’t nearby garlic be a powerful deterrent?
That’s Hinduism
Interesting view, garlic does pull the attention to the body, your mouth waters, stomach growls, it pulls power from the intellect/upper 'chakras', to one of the most animalistic parts of the being, the hunger center, which is the house of manifested reality 'ego' in the chakra system.
Girls don’t like bad breath
@@Martin-cp5bb LOL. THOTS P A T R O L L E D
Hey Jonathan, I think I can help you out on the garlic example. My family has an issue with high cholesterol, and what many people do who suffer with blood related issues is to include garlic into their diet. Garlic is a natural blood thiner, its helps hemoglobins flow. If I was a person in a village who was suffering from a blood related illness and the only person who did not die or get sick was obsessed with garlic; well it may make scents why they would think a vampire would be causing the pandemic and that garlic wards them away.
Awesome video bro. It gives me cool ideas for story telling. Man love the supernatural knowledge
"Our goal is the happiness of the whole world." Garlic is a bitter herb, and something people feel differently about.
"Purity and Danger : An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo" is a 1966 book by the anthropologist and cultural theorist Mary Douglas. VERY precious insights.
About garlic : it's local and cheap, white and dull looking (apples are also very common but pretty looking, juicy, sweet, tempting) not a fruit nor a vegetable but a plain bulb, it's used in daily cooking by the "peasants", it's very ordinary and is strong in taste (can spice up bland, poor food), it stinks when dried and when cut and when cooked and then you breath itself stinks afterwards : to them it smells like common people and poverty.
It seems pretty crude or vulgar to them (like scaring away a food gourmet with cheese in tube for exemple..."My eyes! My eyes!" hihi).
Mortal aristocracy might prefer more refined food for their delicate and elaborate palate (Lestat with blood in a glass : "Pretend it's wine !"), meals in fine plates with attraying textures and scent...a smell that also won't follow them everywhere they go (remember the time when men also wore makeup, wigs and heels, what a shoking thing it would have been to have a garlic breath pass through those ladylike painted lips and offend such noble powdery noses, after all the effort they had to put into masking the scent of their own sweat and filth with chic perfumes :/ )
Maybe the vampires are repulsed by it also because it's about earthly, living, breathing people, the rythm of the passing seasons , the crops/plants growing and harvests, community, the cycle of life itself (they themselves are stuck in time, won't share, change or evolve, alone in their rejection of mortality and renouncing the pleasures of the flesh and of enjoying life to its fullest because it was damn short in those days), a realm they don't belong to anymore.
Living is inseperable with the act of consomption : food will also enventually quickly decay, decompose, get moldy, attract insects, flies, worms...like a mortal's body, a vampire's would go straight to dry ashes state if destroyed, no lasting gross bloated intermediate state for them).
Food gets chewed (mouth open...), digested, expulsed, it gets stuck in between the teeth, the digestive tract produces noises, gas, matter. Meanwhile a vampire's meal is pretty "clean" and whithout real bodily aftermath : teeth in artery, sucks, swallows, just leaves marks on skin (empty pierced beer can style). Beyond the swallowing there is intergration of the blood by the body and...that's it. What goes in doesn't come out. At all.
To vampires, garlic could then embody the two possible endings for living creatures/plants : die, decompose and nourish the earth (which will nourish the soil for others to come) OR get killed, eaten and then pooped (manure style). Being immortal means you are not a prey and will never become worm food, you are the pure superior being and predator that will become ashes, if ever, rather than helping plants grow in the future :
they are grandiose and to them closer to statues than to us, flabby mortals, and it requires some humility to accept our own demise.
Planting garlic with other crops is thought to keep pests away, so garlic for vampires seems likely to be pointing at their parasitic nature. I was waiting for you to tell us how Twilight-type vampires came to be. Maybe they just shouldn't count as vampires, though.
Stephanie Meyers Twilight (and the rest of the trilogy) contains some really wholesome themes.
Edward literally stalked, is obsessive over Bella and straight up is a predator towards her. But he also removed himself from her life / restrained himself many times and flat out told her to leave him alone because he's dangerous. Bella still chose to stay with him even when she probably shouldn't have.
There's a line in the book, which is also in the bible.
"And the Lion layed down with the Lamb" "the lion fell in love with the lamb" etc
Which symbolizes trust. (Even though its pretty difficult to trust something that can easily eat you. Lol)
Garlic helps clean the blood by increasing blood flow. Also, Romanians love garlic. That’s all I can think of.
Speak for yourself, I hate garlic.
@@Stormvermin-bx1lh You have broken the stereotype. Wait, that's an illegal move.
@@LD-2401 oh, no
@ M H
I agree with garlic supposedly cleaning the blood.
The vampire myth equates fairly closely to human behavior now defined as Malignant Narcissism.
Hello Jonathan, I always enjoy your videos and I wait patiently for them, I have a different view of what vampires are, I hope you can see this comment and tell me what you think.
I think vampirism is trying to show us the dangers of a hedonistic life, a conscious one, a creature that became a hedonist and he knows that he did so, and so it can't see itself in the mirror out of shame, he pursues women constantly, and sometimes wishes death on itself. I've been creating this idea for a while now, there was always a sexual input in the whole vampire thing, and it escalated through time. The sight of a true hierarchy of competence, one mostly devoid of tricks and pleasures such as a symbol of the Church, or a cleansing agent such as garlic (My dad always ate raw garlic a teeth a day, seems to help our bodies a lot) terrifies them in an almost childish way.
There's a movie from Galicia, Spain, called Herrementari; a retelling of the story of the encounter between a blacksmith and the Devil; and they throw coins at him to torture him, since he can't stop counting them, I guess it might be the same idea behind, they're incredibly aware of who they are, but they can't escape their faith because they embrace it.
Much love from Argentina man, love your vids.
Interesting.
I read the Vampire Chronicles (book) and got the distinct impression it had something to do with homosexuality.
Men who don't reproduce sexually, who are alone, for whom the rhythms of the human lifespan ( stuck in an eternal adolescence) do not apply.
Women used not for reproduction but as a source of food - like their mother would have been.
For me, this idea is full of implications.
@Chibi
Hey, Chibi,
If you see this comment, please met me know what is the name of the icon of your profile.
Thank you !
I think the idea of sexual depravity works well with Johnathan's idea of a parasitic hierarchy. A sexually degenerate society is one of broken families, men of weak resolve, single mothers desperate for help from above, children raised without fathers in poverty leading to lives of crime and drug addiction, and increased abortions as the value of life and the sanctity of marital relations is eroded. All this contributes to a need for government that manages more and more of our lives and the worse the problems gets, the more funding is justified to combat them. A vampiric hierarchy is one which promotes the vices as a means of acquiring more power and legitimacy in the eyes of its subject population.
@@nateaggieGreat response. Isnt this exactly what the "left" is promoting right now? Amercia appears to be at the pinnacle of Satanism and degeneracy.
Garlic has many antimicrobial properties that could be thought to purify the blood. It also has some mosquito repelling ability due to the high content of sulfur compounds. So the thought maybe that if it repels insect blood suckers it can repel vampires as well. Burning Sulfur is also associated with hell which maybe what the vampire ultimately fears? (Reaching a bit there)
Perhaps garlic is said to defeat vampires because it something "earthy," whereas vampires are these stuffy, victorian era dressed intellectual monsters. Or because of the idea that something so humble and small like a garlic could overwhelm the vampire displaces them from being thought as the worst type/class of monster, which they probably aren't. In a sense then, the simple garlic, within reach and not so strange should remind us of the vampires place among the hierarchy of evil beings, that there are far worse evils and that this one is quite defeatable without more "drastic" measures.
thank you for the insights, Love your channel. I've seen this as a teaching myth about sexual predators or toxic relationships. losing your life force to feed another's ego. i think that's why modern Vampires are sexualized, the age disparity between Edward and Bella. you are mentally trapped in time of an unhealthy sexual event. They don't come into your life unless invited. and the same with taking employment you allow the relationship as an employee. whatever the relationship the sign that it is toxic is that the 'vampire' can't see its self, or is not self-aware. garlic is a mosquito repellent. I like the "corporation" image, it adds to the Vampire's existing longe before and after you. And the wooden stake (traditions, preindustrial, nature, form the earth) kills it as opposed to metal.
While J would point out the dangers of relying on origins for meaning, originally the stake was for when you figure out which corpse is walking the night, you go back by day and stake it down. It keeps it in its proper place.
You are the Garlic of the Earth. Now go out there and get 'em!
Great video. Thoughts -
1. The vampire is an anti-Christ. He takes others’ blood into himself while Christ gives His own blood for others.
2. Counting - brings up David’s sin in taking a census.
3. Garlic - possible - something unpleasant/ugly turns away death - a picture of Christ turning away the wrath of God from us (like the blood of the Passover lamb turning away the angel of death).
I’ve heard of garlic being used to deter ticks and mosquitos because, supposedly, they dislike the taste. Don’t know for sure if this is true tho!
Garlic is a common, peasant spice. The aristocracy sought to distinguish itself by eating only rare and fine spice. To eat garlic is to commune with the lower class and/or render oneself impervious to the arrogance of the upper class.
There are a lot of great comments on the symbolism of garlic, and how it opposes the symbolism of the vampire (it comes from below, it distracts, the mind, it repels instead of seducing, it kills parasites), so I thought I would just throw another spin to it.
The description of a modern vampire (white skin, dark, thick hair or no hair at all, pointy ears, missing nose, eyelids and/or lips, sensitivity to sunlight) do match the symptoms of a variant of Porphyria, a hereditary disease which affects the breakdown of red blood cells. In fact, it is likely than Stoker inspired himself in the accounts of the epoch (along with the unsustained claims that sufferers from porphyria would try to alleviate their symptoms by consuming blood) to create his Dracula.
The aversion to garlic, nevertheless, comes from way before Stoker's dramatic spin of the vampire (folkloric vampires could walk in the sunlight, and/or were more closely associated to demons, shapeshifters, and revenants). It comes as an interesting coincidence, then, that garlic can aggravate the symptoms of porphyria:
"The classical aversion of the vampire to garlic may be accounted for by the ability of certain compounds of this bulbous plant to induce the heme degrading enzyme heme oxygenase-1, thereby further exacerbating the anemia."
[academic.oup.com/qjmed/article/107/11/945/2890493]
So, there you go. Ancient symbolism that fits a peculiar symptom of a disease. #SymbolismHappens
In Bram Stoker’s novel, sunlight doesn’t kill Dracula; it only weakens his powers.
He’s able to go out during the day, if he so chooses.
@@JP-sd7di Indeed; the "native soil" thing was also a curious interpretation by Stoker -as several traditions bind the vampires / demons to the specific places they appear.
What I really missed was Jonathan explaining the "not being able to cross running water / salt water" thing (both representing chaos, reinforcing the idea of the vampire as a Monster of the Intellect). And there is also his hint to the Vampire as being the coinflip of the zombie: what implications does this have on society at large?
I really think the topic can be further explored; turned into something like the "Zombies, Postmodernism and Art" talk that Jonathan gave at Furman.
What about the stake to the heart? I feel like it is probably something obvious but you always seem to have an interesting take on things.
i've heard garlic is good against creatures like mosquitoes and ticks, so blood-sucking insects basically. this is also just a personal interpretation, but one that might be interesting and that i want to share. garlic tends to be purely white (sometimes white and purple), and while it looks like one whole bulb on the outside, when you open it or break into it, it is actually multiple cloves brought together. i feel like this could be significant, perhaps (if this isn't too extreme) a representation of the Church or a family unit, where one whole is made up of multiple smaller components.
Garlic makes sense because garlic was associated with the lower class, it was used as a common seasoning and medicine and it grows underground in a homely vegetable garden adding to the earth symbolism.
I haven't seen this yet, and maybe I'm too late, but I've noticed that garlic makes a pretty good preservative. It's like it wards of rot in food, and therefore like it's warding of death/decay. If you observe this, it seems pretty simple that garlic would ward off vampires.
I don't get the can't cross running water or not being allowed inside without invitation stuff. I guess living water is kind of pure in a sense. Early Christians preferred baptizing in living water, right? Needing an invitation inside... I can only see that as the vampire being a mockery of order, an inversion of hierarchy as you said.
(Did you go over those things and I wasn't paying attention?)
@Jonathan Pageau Your garlic question is answered in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
I see it as a metaphor for certain personalities. People who take whatever they can get and disregard others.
Maybe garlic represents the simple joys of life? Strong flavor, to me, has always represented a certain sensual joy (like the Israelites of the Exodus looking back longingly to the garlic and spices of Egypt). Maybe the simple joys of others are repellent to that which takes the life of others for its own? Seems to me that "vampiristic" people have no joy or life of their own. Always taking, never satisfied, and the joy of others is both craved and hated by them.
(Ironically the longer that person lives off of others, the longer they're doomed to the dark mockery of a quality life.)
Excellent!
😁👍👏👏👏👏
That is so true of the " energy " or spiritual vampires who come into a person's life, bringing chaos in their wake and leaving you feeling drained
*The Vampire* 🧛♂️ 🧛♀️
0:51 A Parasite, coming from below, feeding on the living
1:47 Count Dracula
3:13 That which is above, feeds on what is below, but there is a normal exchange
5:09 Vampire= The Aristocrat who feeds and doesn’t give enough back (The Marxist Villain)
6:00 Working Yourself To Death. You can feed on yourself, like a Vampire. If you take from your body and not give back to your possibilities
8:32 The Vampire manifests the Sin of the Elite.
10:01 Imagine The Vampire as "A False Light" "A Dark Hierarchy" that which doesn't have a reflection, but burns in the light.
11:50 Garlic?
12:35 Next Video: Goblins
Please note that the Goblins video is for patrons only.
Vampire is from Serbian mythology, and in Serbian culture garlic is almost sacred, because garlic is good for your health and if you eat lots of garlic you will be healthy. Diseases were usually attributed to evil spirits, and in order to keep the evil spirits away you should eat healthy food, thus the garlic kept evil spirits away.
Garlic and onions have antiseptic properties and have been used in topical ointments for millennia. Garlic has been thought to ward off evil spirits since ancient times, so perhaps the vampire myth simply inherited this bit as it faded from other legends.
Even today, garlic is a common ingredient in traditional Romanian cuisine. You can't have your ciorba de burta (a creamy, sour, beef intestine soup) without a little garlic sauce! Everyone has and uses garlic. Yes, it is also considered important for health and is considered to be of some benefit for protection against evil spirits but not superior to Christian (Orthodox) sacraments and holy objects (crosses, holy water, icons, etc.).
One interesting thing to me is that Romanians use iron to deal with the "restless" dead - not silver. I mean that the practice of iron is still used in some communities, today. The silver "bullet" seems an unnecessary eccentricity.
It's also interesting to me is that the modern vampire, mostly, is immune to the power of God. Nevertheless, actual demons and the Devil are not so lucky. Fortunately, of course, for us.
Behind the image of the vampire is a cruel, eccentric, self-serving, and sinful pageant of aristocracy, feudalism, and outrageous privilege. It seems also to be an image of the Satanic order and economy. Of course, it is evil. But it provides for insight...
Sadly, more dream of being vampires than saints. Especially sad when it is possible to be a saint and impossible to be a vampire.
PS I lived in Romania for a decade as an American ex-pat tech entrepreneur and it was a vivid experience to say the least.
In the ancient times people used garlic as a necklace to keep away plague and the necklaces symbolically represent a line that separates the body and the brain.
Garlic has antibiotic, anti-fungal, and other purifying properties. It is also used as an insect repellent which could correspond to the repelling of similarly parasitic vampires.
That is a very good analysis, thanks a lot. I have got a hypothesis for the garlic: maybe it's because in the lower class peoples got, in the early time of the myth, a big felthy smell of that. This can be related with the tendance that had the higher class of this time to think that the smell was the sanity of someone. We can refer to the way of life o for exemple the french nobility in the 18th century, in versaille the parfume was very used. Maybe the garlic was a refulsived to the nobility and after that to the bourgeoisy who take the way of life of nobility.
I hope that you anderstand clearly, my english is not very good.
Thanks a lot for this video!
>Eastern European
>>hoard of gold
>>>afraid of crosses
What did they actually mean???
Garlic is often associated with simple down to earth peasant foods.
Are Vampires an extension or derivation of the Faust legend as developed by Goethe?
I always understood it as a possession by one's shadow.
My grandparents always ate a clove of raw garlic in the morning. They said it cleans the blood!
Ethan A. Hayes's quora answer might hold the missing piece of the garlic puzzle:
"Garlic is strong, cheap, and common.
The vampire hates garlic for it represents what is lost to him - the common life.
He is damned, trapped between life and death, undead. Garlic, that humble vegetable, serves man in a way that symbolically opposes the vampire’s design. No man is too poor to buy garlic, but despite that, it is one of the strongest vegetables. For by garlic the life of man is given strength, even in poverty and weakness."
This seems to tie very well with the notion of the ill-functioning sucking hierarchy. It also came to me that this inverted hierarchy manifests in the image of pointed teeth as an upside down mountain.
To finish the picture, I am tempted to speculate that this strength of garlic lies in its manifesting some of the pattern of self sacrifice on a physical level in the form of its radiating smell - it literally gives itself off to surrounding, which is the opposite of vampire's accumulating for himself. This also fits perfectly with the ultimate Biblical version of those patterns as Christ and anti-Christ as @j.h.9376 pointed.
The way it was told to me was that vampires are repelled by nature in general, not just garlic. Since garlic grows in garbage it wasn't to difficult for a peasant family to cultivate in addition to whatever else they were doing.
The idea that garlic is a peasant's food likely is a modern invention. I used to study herbs and plant lore and never saw that in an old book. Garlic is used in Italian and French cooking and they are very proud of their cuisine. Garlic had to be sort of forced on the USA as it was not a standard in English cooking and the founding stock of the USA was Englsh. Even in the 60s and 70s food pundits were educating people to the pleasures of garlic.
The character of Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be a worthy subject of analysis good sir.
My take on the garlic question.
in Biblical Hebrew the 1st mention of a concept of man having a spirit was the word nephesh which means the throat upper chest region of the body where the "life force/spirit was held
garlic has a strong smell which vampires can't stand
the strong smell represents a strong spirit that radiates outwardly do to its strength
And so vampires hate a strong spirit
And this is why a necklace was made out of the garlic and worn around the nephesh to symbolize a strong spirit.
Garlic is typically used in cuisine around the Mediterranean sea, the early Christian world. Also garlic helps against musquitos as it changes the flavour of blood. It is also said that garlic is healthy for your cardiovascular system, as it 'purifies the blood' so to say.
Also consider that a werewolf is a creature, which can defeat a vampire. Werewolf is a person taken over by his wrath who has lost control and became like an animal. You can think of it like an angry mob overthrowing the government in their anger, crushing and destroying things on their way.
Yes, garlic is a blood purifier also Bram Stoker was an initiate of the Golden Dawn…
Zombies kinda represent a lower class version of the vampire.
Rotten nasty corpse in tattered clothes as opposed to pale cold corpse in finery
Mindless devouring vs tactful blood drinking
Attack in hoards like a lower class revolt or revolution vs attack individually
People absentmindedly going through the motions are often likened to zombies.
If you want to to read about the t
Symbolism of Dracula, read the intro of Dracula by Oxford Press.
Yay! Count Von Count refrence!
Maybe the garlic is significant because it's peasant food. A strong earthy root. If you eat enough garlic, the smell exudes from your pores - a reminder to the mind of the body! If anything could symbolize the vitality and strength of the non-aristocratic class, I think garlic would be it.
Vampires (Wąpierze) come from Polish medieval superstitions actually. They were people who weren't buried according to the traditions and they would come back and punish people for not honoring the dead.
I'm a little late to the party, but I see garlic in a way similar to other commenters and I see it as related to light and a wooden stake through the heart. There is the term "garlic eaters" for common folks, and as others mentioned it is strongly associated with the common man. Vampires by their aristocratic nature do not want to associate with common folks, and to that point they spend all of their time inside, out of the light. To go into the light outside is something associated with the common working man (pale whiteness was seen as attractive in this time because you were privileged enough to be able to stay out of the sun). This is why a common working man's tool, the wooden stake, through the heart will end the vampire's life. So to wear garlic is to be part of the common man that the vampire finds repulsive.
Here's my theory about garlic. First I have to say that there is nothing wrong with being neurotic, in and of itself. But being excessively neurotic can be emotionally draining on the people around you. I'm sure we can thank neurotic people of the past for how comfortable our life is because they helped eliminate annoyances that other people would ignore and tolerate. One thing I have noticed is all the people in my life that drain energy instead of sharing it have all been neurotic. Another thing I have noticed is that everybody who claims to be allergic or sensitive to garlic has also been excessively neurotic. Garlic is very good for you, and the chances of it having a negative effect on you are very low. But, when a person gets too neurotic, then every time they experience some discomfort, they examine what they've done recently and try to eliminate potential causes of discomfort. Garlic has a strong taste and the memory of eating it makes an impression on the neurotic person trying to explain an upset stomach on any random day. So many good people tell me that garlic aids in digestion and has a lot of health benefits. When somebody tells me that garlic upsets their stomach, I get a little suspicious of them after years of experience. I could see some folk wisdom surviving in the collective consciousness that says if somebody is afraid of garlic, you should beware their potential as an emotional parasite.
In roumanian tradition when we make the commemoration of the dead at the church we bring different foods and one of them it is jelly of pork with much garlic and I think here is the clue.
The smell of garlic it is very powrful and "Chase away" all demons
Maybe they don’t have a reflection because they are the reflection
Great vid as always! So you're basically saying vampires are like the Mafia... I smell an anime plot lol. What do you think of the theory that vampires and zombies both came out of the aftermath of the Black Plague? The victims would wander the streets as "the walking dead"
Edit: also garlic is traditionally used for cleansing and fighting disease as you mentioned
This video appears to me in the perfect moment
Re: Garlic. Mosquitos. They drink blood. They are repelled by GARLIC. It was transferred to the Vampire mythology that since they drink blood, they would also be repelled by garlic, like mosquitos. Right?
Garlic as a purification and repellent of parasites has already been pointed out. It may be also connected to the "holy moly" which Hermes gave to Odysseus as a ward against enchantment. (In the house of Circe, who may have also dined upon men, after revealing their swinish nature.) And finally, a new thought after listening to this video: sweaty, garlic-eating, unwashed peasants have often been highly repellent to the more parasitical type of aristocrat.
Stake through the heart and decapitation as the means of dissoluting the undead.
The motivation and appetite (the heart and the stomach) immobilised and the mouth and brain, the means by which the body's desires are satiated are separated.
The symbolic dissolution of motivation from reason is the destruction of the subtle body via its physical manifestation.
John the Baptist and Salome.
Characteristics of garlic: pungent, comes from the ground, self-replicates, makes for bad breath, (and less obviously) anti-microbial, aids in sleep, promotes vitality, repels parasites (like mosquitoes).
In Dracula, the hunter Van Hellsing said that to kill a vampire the creature needed its head cut off and its mouth stuffed with garlic..
Vampires are seductive ("sweet breathed"), yet are dead (coffins are filled with earth for them to hide during the day), reproduce through biting (self replication using mouth), are parasites/viruses, and are awake when they should be asleep. On top of this they have no reflection.
Vampires act in a way that defies the natural order but can only do so unless it is brought to the attention of others or themselves. Garlic acts as a negation of the vampire by simultaneously: blocking the vampire's ability to seduce and reproduce (physically blocking mouth and taking away their "sweet breath"), confronting them, like a mirror, with their true nature (dead, pungent) and cleansing them of their unnaturalness (kills the virus, causes them to sleep instead of being constantly awake, revitalizes so they do not hunger).
Not sure if this is legit or even on the right track but I think it comes close-ish... maybe.
On garlic: Vampires become by feasting on live blood. And because of this cannibalism, they die to achieve immortality. The undead does not have a heart. And garlic heals the heart, a lot of restorative effects. Vamps are afraid of garlic for it will restore them they're humanity. My 2 cents