Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Vampirism: Christianity And The Consumption Of Blood

Associated with Christianity because of several popular stories and tropes involving crucifixes, holy water, and Satan, standard vampires steal the life-energy of their victims by drinking/eating their blood, often directly from their neck, killing them.  Even though hypothetically taking the energy of another being could take alternate forms that do not involve teeth going into skin to find blood vessels, conventional vampirism has an explicit connection to blood.  This makes the storytelling links between vampirism and Christianity even stronger.  It is the taking and swallowing of blood from a victim that makes a typical vampire beyond the taking of life outside the parameters of justice.

Aside from the murder itself (Exodus 21:12-14), as well as the sorcery (explicitly demonic in origin in many stories and another capital sin according to Exodus 22:18 and more) and potential kidnapping before the murder (Exodus 21:16), the very intentional consumption of blood in itself also violates Yahweh's moral nature as well.  Exile/ostracization is the penalty for the eating of blood (Leviticus 17:14), as opposed to execution.  First, God says that he will cut a consumer of blood off from his people (17:10), and then the text says that people themselves should "cut off" anyone who eats blood from their community (17:14).

Life is in the blood, Leviticus 17 emphasizes, as without blood, a creature like a human is to die, and it is the blood of animals that once made a passing atonement for human sin. As such, vampires, logically possible (they do not contact logical axioms) but not necessarily something that would actually walk Earth even if Satan exists, are uniquely antithetical to Christian morality. Indeed, the only thing a real vampire would be able to do to make their moral status worse is some other capital or extreme sin, like rape or tortures beyond or outside of the very limited confines of Mosaic Law. Consuming blood makes them more than just typical human murderers or sorcerers.

Without actually killing someone by direct means, exiling those who consume blood as Leviticus 17:14 prescribes remains a serious penalty.  Depending upon the circumstances, exile would be an indirect form of capital punishment, an exclusion from living in a given area that could soon lead to an exclusion from life itself.  So serious is eating blood that this is a food-related command that does not hinge on the type of creature being eaten.  Regardless of which animal--including humans--blood comes from, it is never to be ingested (clearly, though, there would be a difference between accidentally eating small amounts of blood in meat and intentionally consuming blood out of apathy or emotionalism).

Whether sorcery is involved or not, someone could not get to the point of actually eating the blood of a person without possibly having committed at least one or two capital sins already and being deserving of premature death, but the archetype of a vampire that derives a cursed state with superhuman abilities from demonic power is often guilty of more than one capital sin.  A true or wishful vampire would be an individual intending or acting deeply contrary to Mosaic Law and Yahweh's nature that is revealed by it.  Specifically because of how it feeds on blood, and human blood at that, an archetypal vampire tramples upon what the Biblical Yahweh says is the sacred nature of blood.  It can be spilled, and the meat of certain animal bodies can be eaten, but to purposefully consume blood is to disregard life itself.

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