Vampires – Myth Or Reality? Part 4
End of persecutions of suspected witches
Robert Mandrou stated that the persecutions of suspected witches ended because people soon realized that the popular public scandals were demonstrations of the famous diabolical possessions. The Ursuline nuns of London in 1633 and the Louviers in 1643 confirmed the magical phenomenon of diabolical possession when they approached their confessors in their possessed state. During the Hadsburg Empire in the 18th century, there was an active campaign to stop persecution because of the series of vampire scandals. The new, exciting forms of magic and its power presented the people in that period both potential and realized harm. The realization contributed to restructuring of beliefs pertaining witchcraft and pushed some reforms about judicial criteria that would lead to persecution of witches.
Bram Stoker and Dracula
Bram Stoker was a writer for short stories and novel with an Irish descent. He became popular with his published Gothic novel in 1897 titled as Dracula. Bram Stoker could be a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) or the Golden Dawn. Bram Stoker was Arthur Machen associate and friend. Arthur Machen was a writer and a Welsh magician who wrote the novels about the Dragon significance and the Twllyth Teg or Fairies of Wales. Stoker was also a friend of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn members Aleister Crowley and MacGregor Mathers. Machen and his friend oscar Wilde were also members of the Golden Dawn. Four people left the Golden Dawn and formed themselves another group named OTO. The four were known as the breakaway group of the Golden Dawn.
The founders of the Golden Dawn designed the order to live as a Hermetic society, a school, and the repository of knowledge for magic and occult science. Columbus was one of the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or HOGD in 1977 in Georgia. Dr. Israel Regardie was the teacher and guide of the order. The members dedicated themselves to the spiritual, psychic, and the spiritual evolution of man and the world. The design of the system of the Golden Dawn’s magic was to teach the abstract esoteric philosophies and the ceremonial magic applications. The order’s curriculum speaks of the teachings of the Greek, Gnostic, Egyptian, Rosicrucian, Masonic, and the Judio-Christians.
The order dedicated and focused its study to astrology, inner alchemy, Qabalah, divination, Enochian magic, skrying, and the Egyptian magic. The order maintains several temples worldwide. It is a very private form of order that access to membership is possible only through invitation. It is also a nonprofit organization created to preserve the body of knowledge of the Western Esoteric Tradition or Hermitism. The Golden Dawn was a Hermetic order that later became the OTO.
The OTO was a breakaway group led by Crowley. Crowley personally performed the magic rituals dedicated to the religious rites of the ancient mass of the vampires. The OTO’s English name is Order of the Oriental Templars, which some people sometimes call as the Order of the Temple of the East. The order dedicated itself to preserving and securing the freedom of a person to advance in light, wisdom, and knowledge through beauty, wit, and courage for universal goodwill. The OTO maintained several headquarters across the world.
The Euro-Americans were all familiar with the word vampire and its association with the name of the Count Dracula. The Dracula was one of the best selling novels of all time written by Bram Stoker. The most significant discovery of other authors writing and analyzing Bram Stoker’s Dracula were his unpublished journals and diaries written during the creation of his vampire masterpiece. This implied that the novel was both the works of Stoker’s creative imagination or fiction and extensive research on the Transylvanian vampire.
The results of the research contributed much to the definite and descriptive geographical as well as historical framework of the novel’s settings. The literary world considered Dracula as a classic novel with hundred-year endurance. Stoker wrote the novel in 1893 and published in 1897. However, almost all stories related to vampire had the same Transylvanian settings.
