Deeper Mysteries

By Deacon Gray 2008

"All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil." - Benjamin Disraeli

Often people come to this community looking for the dark mysteries, the romance, hidden underworld of the vampire. Often they come with notions of groups like "The Illuminati" or the dark worlds of Cthulhu both with their secret societies and whole eons of hidden truths.

But the real question, or the basic thing that so many want to know is are there any real Deeper Mysteries out there? If you are looking for the kind that you can find in the books and novels the answer is…YES, well to some extent. (This is where all my critics get ready for crucify me.)

By this I don’t mean that there is an Under-verse, or some kind of dark shadowy organization that holds the keys to all knowledge in the community that is pieced off a little at a time to those who are deemed worthy. In fact it has never been that easy…but I feel I need to back up a moment.

This community, for what it is worth, started in very small groups, not at all connected on the broad spectrum like you see today. Believe what, and who you will but there have been over time groups of vampires, much as we accept them today, for a very long time. Their believes and organizations have changed but some basics remain the same.

For us, like all of the newly re-emerging communities (Pagan, Gay and Lesbian, Druids, BDSM…) the 60s and more so the 70s were amazing times. Suddenly we could start to creep out of the dark a little and start showing our heads, but like all those communities we have gone through various levels of growing pains. Not all of us could come out as quickly as others.

While Gays and Lesbians fought the good fight, the Pagan and yes Vampire communities were dealing with the ridiculous "Satanic Scare" of the period. Task forces were put together, and Occult Studies advisors went to police stations after every crime that had even an inkling of other than standard accepted faiths. If a Pagan group held a ceremony in a national park and some one left behind too much stuff, you would have it roped off as a possible crime scene.

For this reason most of the vampire and a large part of the pagan community went to ground. It took time, a lot of muscle in the media to get people to finally start to realize that just because some one studied Wicca or Satanism, did not mean they were out eating babies, raping virgins, and doing their best to make "Rosemary’s Baby" a reality. Yet, we had to do a lot to get people to this realization.

We had to become PTA Pagans in order to find our place and peacefully reside in the communities we lived in and yet still hold true to our beliefs and ourselves. We took on a new set of talking points that mostly seemed to say "We are no different than you, we just have a different faith…like the Muslims."

But, that’s not really true in my view, not for Pagans and not for vampires. Vampire groups mostly stayed underground, but they did exist. Like the Pagan community there are various beliefs both metaphysical and spiritual that they took with them, and to some extent a lot of those remain hidden from the majority even today. The press is still there to remain in that PTA Pagan mentality, but more and more people are looking past those things that we are supposed to just accept, and we start looking for more meaning, more things that are distinctly Vampire.

What exactly does all this mean? Where, you might be asking does this take us in regards to the "Deeper Mysteries"? Well that is were things always get tricky. The community is riddled with role playing, with fantasy fiction romantic ideas, and gothic genre overtones that we as a whole don’t really buy into.

Things that have existed quickly can get lumped in with things that never could. For example are there Old Vampire Ways and Traditions. Actually yes…

When the community was never overt until recently and a lot of their practices and beliefs have never really been made all that public. Even today we see that with some groups out there, they try very hard to not be directly in the vampire community’s eye, they nearly completely avoid the mainstream. They do have long traditions, paths for growth, and set organizational paths, and yes Deeper Mysteries that they selves hold true regardless of how much others scoff at them.

While most of the community flounders around looking for social acceptance, respect, and standing, others could care less about it, care less to the extent that they don’t bother with the community much at all other than for a little entertainment now and again.

This community is, in my view, mostly about social intercourse. People trying there best to find love, or gain standing, be popular, or feel like they are apart of something special and new. Very little, it seems is about really learning about what themselves or personal growth past the growth of ego. Other vampiric communities are out there, but it is sometimes hard to figure out their motivations. We have to always be on guard because with the knowledge that many have of the hunger we hold for such things, the temptation to use as to exploit the community, and as a marketing tool toward the community becomes all too real.

There are Deeper Mysteries out there, perhaps there is no Vampire God, with his holy blood bible waiting to be found, but there are always concept’s, philosophies, belief’s and so forth that we can explore. Perhaps in exploring the Deeper Mysteries of the past, we can come to a better understanding, and growth for our own futures.