Vampires

For a while now, I've had the urge to write about vampires. But then, so has every would-be writer out there. The literature is rife with vampire stories, many of them absolutely atrocious. Of course, if you really want to see bad vampire literature, check out any of the creative writing forums. There's usually a vampire post every few days, and most of them will have your eyes rolling as you think, "oh, please".

If I were to write about vampires, how would I escape the terrible vampire writing that is so prevalent? This is actually quite a daunting task, especially in light of the typical trend towards "good" vampires. You know, the ones that only suck blood of willing victims, or ones that only take their blood from hospitals, or ones that try to get by without drinking blood at all. Part of the reason we see this trend is because historically, vampires have been absolutely evil, and typically only appear in the horror genre. In order to really work with the romantic aspect of the vampire, though, especially if you want to justify your protagonist throwing herself at a vampire, then there has to be some leeway towards goodness. Yet I don't necessarily agree with that trend, because the very concept of a vampire seems to require insurmountable innate evil.

I come to this conclusion because I see vampires through a Catholic lens. Let's see what we can deduce from Catholic teaching applied to some of the common details surrounding vampires. Vampires are undead, drink the blood of the living, and are usually vulnerable to holy relics in some form, sunlight, a stake through the heart, and perhaps even garlic.

Let's look at the undead aspect, of which we first need a good working definition. What does it mean for a creature to be undead? Some might try to describe "undead" as both dead and alive, or neither dead nor alive. In the first case, we see something more akin to one who has died and yet remains supernaturally animated, whereas in the second, one is somehow in a limbo between life and death, with death somehow not complete, but full life somehow incapable of being restored.

Catholic doctrine tells us that the soul is the form of the body. It is the life force, the animating factor. Without the soul, the body is nothing but dust; it is dead. Human beings are a union of body and a spiritual soul; in other words, our animating force is not some material thing, like the souls of plants and animals, which can break down and decay. Our souls are eternal, lasting beyond the death of the body.

With this in mind, we turn to death itself. Death is the complete separation between body and soul, which is obvious since the soul is life force. When the soul leaves, the body cannot be alive. While the soul remains, the body is alive and could potentially be resuscitated. This seems pretty clear-cut. But where could the undead enter? It seems to me that with such a distinction, it makes it hard to argue about a state between life and death, in which life pretty much over but death not quite complete.

What then about the other option? We know from Hebrews that we die once, and after that are judged. What we don't know is exactly what transpires when a soul leaves the body. We know that it goes to Hell if it is in a state of mortal sin, and we know it goes to Heaven if not, maybe via Purgatory. But, given that souls are not spacial entities, what does it necessarily mean for a soul to go to Heaven or to Hell? It is difficult to conceive of these things without any spacial references. Nor do we know how a soul can or cannot interact with the material world once in Heaven or Hell. It certainly seems that entities in Hell have some limited access to the material world. At least, if we believe that the Devil is in Hell, and has been since the rebellion, it seems that he and his legions of fallen angels have some interaction with the material world.

If being undead means having died and then somehow becoming reanimated supernaturally, then it seems that it must follow a procession like this: A person dies, and at the moment of death is judged (his position fixed in eternity), but due to being capable of interacting with the material world, before reaching Hell somehow latches onto his former body and through some supernatural process re-inhabits it. Perhaps the only fictional part of this process is the reestablishment of the soul in the body, which pretty much contradicts Church doctrine.

So which do we pick? Do we suppose some potential interim state between life and death, a point where we can claim that there is no longer life, but death hasn't quite taken complete control, or do we suppose that the soul somehow returns to the body, however imperfectly? The difference, of course, is important in the way that the vampire is ultimately handled. If the former is permitted, then the vampire always stands a chance of redemption, and could potentially be moved by grace. If the latter is to be the case, then vampire is beyond redemption, having already been damned, and yet somehow lingers in the world.

In my humble opinion, the latter seems the easier swallow. We have Biblical evidence of demon possession of living creatures, both human and animal. While there's not anything to say that demons possessed dead or nonliving things, this still gives us the idea that the damned can potentially interact with the world in a more physical sense than just tempting the faithful into sin, and that they can somehow inhabit a material form. It isn't a stretch to apply that to a soul seeking to take back its own decaying body. Whereas to suggest a state between life and death really stretches the notion of the role of the soul as the animating force and the nature of death.

In my next posts, I'll work with the notion that a vampire is a being that died and is attempting to reanimated its former body, and how that works, in a Catholic sense, with some of the other legends surrounding vampires.