Vampires & crosses

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2009/09/vampires-crosses.html
Vampires & crosses

> It's a well-established fact that vampires can't abide crosses. There seems
> to be some confusion, however, as to *why* this is so.
>
> [image: Vampire-cross]<http://slacktivist.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c582a53ef0120a561bda7970b-pi>I should note here, before we go on, that I believe in vampire stories. I
> don't mean that I believe these stories are "literally" true -- they're not
> that *kind* of story. But I believe they are *true* stories -- stories by
> which we tell ourselves true things so that we do not forget them.
>
> Vampire stories tell us, for example, that any of us can have great power
> if only we are willing to prey on others. Feed off the blood of others and
> great power will be yours. This is demonstrably true. It's how the pyramids
> were built. And Standard Oil.
>
> The stories also tell us that there's a downside to this predatory choice.
> You become a creature of the night, unable to stand in the light of day.
>
> And crosses will confound you.
>
> Some mistakenly think that this is because the cross is a holy symbol,
> imbued with religious power. But this is wrong. The symbol, like the thing
> itself, is powerless. And that's the point. That is why vampires can't
> tolerate it.
>
> Most vampires don't believe in the cross, but that hardly matters. It's the
> *idea* of the thing that gives them fits. The cross confronts vampires
> with their opposite -- with the rejection of power and its single-minded
> pursuit. It suggests that *no one* is to be treated as prey -- not even an
> enemy. The idea of the cross, in other words, suggests that vampires have it
> *wrong,* that they have it backwards, in fact, and that those others they
> regard as prey are actually, somehow, winning.
>
> This notion is incomprehensible for vampires. The one thing they're certain
> of, the thing that drives them and tells them who they *are *and how the
> world works and that they've got it all figured out is that the key to
> immortality is in choosing to be the predator rather than the prey. The idea
> that this might be wrong is so befuddling, so contradictory to everything
> they have chosen to be that it forces them to recoil. They can't get past
> it.
>
> It has become fashionable in modern vampire stories to portray these
> monsters as unaffected or somehow immune to the cross. Don't you believe it.
> This confusion arose due to the ridiculous, contradictorily cruciform
> objects being bandied about these days as "crosses." A filigreed gold or
> bejeweled cross refutes itself, denying its own representation of
> powerlessness. Likewise the oxymoronic martial crosses -- a problem since at
> least the time of Constantine -- that attempt to present themselves as
> sanctified symbols of power. Crosses like that aren't the least bit
> disturbing to a vampire -- they merely proclaim vampirism by other means.
> Vampires have been known, in fact, to have such crosses emblazoned on flags,
> or even to have tattoos of them etched into their undead flesh.
>
> So the apparent immunity of modern vampires to such crosses isn't what it
> seems. Sacrificial powerlessness still confounds them, but that idea is no
> longer quite so effectively signified by this particular symbol. I've heard
> rumor of a vampire not so long ago being turned away by one of Margaret
> Bourke-White's photographs of Gandhi at his spinning wheel. Fortunately I
> have not had the occasion, personally, to attempt to repeat this experiment.
>
> As for garlic, well, I'm not really sure what *that* is supposed to tell
> us, but I'm open to theories.
>
> (What brings all this up, by the way, is that I've just finished reading
> Jeff Sharlet's excellent book, *The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at
> the Heart of American Power.* The central figure in that book, Doug Coe,
> is absolutely a vampire.)
>



Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

*“I am not responsible for actions of the imaginary version of me you have
inside your head.”
Attributed to Teresa Nielsen Hayden*

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