There remain two even more awful but happily very rare possibilities
to be mentioned before this part of our subject is completed, and
though they differ very widely in many ways we may yet perhaps group
them together, since they have in common the qualities of unearthly
horror and of extreme rarity--the latter arising from the fact that
they are really relics of earlier races. We of the fifth root race
ought to have evolved beyond the possibility of meeting such a ghastly
fate as is indicated by either of the two headings of this
sub-section, and we have so nearly done it that these creatures are
commonly regarded as mere mediæval fables; yet there _are_ examples to
be found occasionally even now, though chiefly in countries where
there is a considerable strain of fourth-race blood, such as Russia or
Hungary. The popular legends about them are probably often
considerably exaggerated, but there is nevertheless a terribly serious
sub-stratum of truth beneath the eerie stories which pass from mouth
to mouth among the peasantry of Central Europe. The general
characteristics of such tales are too well known to need more than a
passing reference; a fairly typical specimen of the vampire story,
though it does not profess to be more than the merest fiction, is
Sheridan le Fanu's _Carmilla_, while a very remarkable account of an
unusual form of this creature is to be found in _Isis Unveiled_, vol.
i., p. 454. All readers of Theosophical literature are familiar with
the idea that it is possible for a man to live a life so absolutely
degraded and selfish, so utterly wicked and brutal, that the whole of
his lower Manas may become entirely immeshed in Kâma, and finally
separated from its spiritual source in the higher Ego. Some students
even seem to think that such an occurrence is quite a common one, and
that we may meet scores of such "soulless men," as they have been
called, in the street every day of our lives, but this, happily, is
untrue. To attain the appalling preeminence in evil which thus
involves the entire loss of a personality and the weakening of the
developing individuality behind, a man must stifle every gleam of
unselfishness or spirituality, and must have absolutely no redeeming
point whatever; and when we remember how often, even in the worst of
villains, there is to be found something not wholly bad, we shall
realize that the abandoned personalities must always be a very small
minority. Still, comparatively few though they be, they do exist, and
it is from their ranks that the still rarer vampire is drawn. The lost
entity would very soon after death find himself unable to stay in
Kâmaloka, and would be irresistibly drawn in full consciousness into
"his own place," the mysterious eighth sphere, there slowly to
disintegrate after experiences best left undescribed. If, however, he
perishes by suicide or sudden death, he may under certain
circumstances, especially if he knows something of black magic, hold
himself back from that awful fate by a death in life scarcely less
awful--the ghastly existence of the vampire. Since the eighth sphere
cannot claim him until after the death of the body, he preserves it in
a kind of cataleptic trance by the horrible expedient of the
transfusion into it of blood drawn from other human beings by his
semi-materialized Kâmarûpa, and thus postpones his final destiny by
the commission of wholesale murder. As popular "superstition" again
quite rightly supposes, the easiest and most effectual remedy in such
a case is to exhume and burn the body, thus depriving the creature of
his _point d'appui_. When the grave is opened the body usually appears
quite fresh and healthy, and the coffin is not infrequently filled
with blood. Of course in countries where cremation is the custom
vampirism of this sort is impossible.
The Werewolf, though equally horrible, is the product of a somewhat
different Karma, and indeed ought perhaps to have found a place under
the first instead of the second division of the human inhabitants of
Kâmaloka, since it is always during a man's lifetime that he first
manifests under this form. It invariably implies some knowledge of
magical arts--sufficient at any rate to be able to project the astral
body. When a perfectly cruel and brutal man does this, there are
certain circumstances under which the body may be seized upon by other
astral entities and materialized, not into the human form, but into
that of some wild animal--usually the wolf; and in that condition it
will range the surrounding country killing other animals, and even
human beings, thus satisfying not only its own craving for blood, but
that of the fiends who drive it on. In this case, as so often with the
ordinary astral body, any wound inflicted upon the animal
materialization will be reproduced upon the human physical body by the
extraordinary phenomenon of repercussion; though after the death of
that physical body the Kâmarûpa, which will probably continue to
appear in the same form, will be less vulnerable. It will then,
however, he also less dangerous, as unless it can find a suitable
medium it will be unable to materialize fully.
It has been the fashion of this century to scoff at what are called
the foolish superstitions of the ignorant peasantry; but, as in the
above cases, so in many others the occult student finds on careful
examination that obscure or forgotten truths of nature lie behind what
at first sight appears mere nonsense, and he learns to be cautious in
rejecting as well as cautious in accepting. Intending explorers of the
astral plane need have little fear of encountering the very unpleasant
creatures described under this head, for, as before stated, they are
even now extremely rare, and as time goes on their number will happily
steadily diminish. In any case their manifestations are usually
restricted to the immediate neighbourhood of their physical bodies, as
might be supposed from their extremely material nature.