Who was the first Vampire

Originally posted by bios
Who jumped the gun?

Well I'm agreeing with you aren't I? So it's obviously not you unless I would be so stupid as to contradict myself after a couple of sentences.

Here are some more refrences to Judas and vampires.
So far I would be more inclined to believe that Judas and Dracula were related rather than the same person.

Here it the children of Judas are referred to as vampires.

Children of Judas - An evil clan of vampires found in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, distinguished by their red hair. They are known mainly by oral traditions and are considered the worst of the Balkan undead, the spawn of Judas Iscariot, whose hair was supposedly red. The children of Judas possess the awful power of draining a victim with a single kiss or bite, leaving a scar in the shape of XXX, signifying the thirty pieces of silver given to Judas for betraying Christ.www.izabella-awaken.com...

Now according to Alt.vampyres faq:

[2.05] How does one become a vampyre?
-Suicide
- Possessing red hair. This is from Greek Mythology and probably has some roots in the belief that Judas Iscariot was a redhead.
www.altvampyres.net...

And more on killing ones self and becoming a vampire.

So great is the horror which the act of suicide, although considered admirable in the decadence of Greece and Rome, inspires in every man of sane mind that it, is not at all surprising it should be deemed that the unfortunate wretches who have destroyed themselves become vampires after death. According to the Zoroastrian creed, suicide is a most fearful crime, and is classed among the marg-arzan, the abominable offences. Aristotle in his Ethics, V, xv, terms suicide a sin against the State, and as Cicero tells us Pythagoras forbade men to depart from their guard or sentry-go in life without an order from their commanding-officer, who is God. "Uetatque Pythagoras iniussu imperatoris, id est, dei, de praesidio et statione uitae decedere." (De Senectute, XX, 73). The highest pagan argument against suicide will be found in Plato's Phaedo (61E-62E), but it is drowned in the mighty voice of the great Saint of Hippo, which peals in no unwavering tones down the centuries: "For if it be not lawful for a private man to kill any man, however guilty, unless the law have granted a special allowance for it, theft surely whosoever kills himself is guilty of homicide: and so much the more guilty doth that killing of himself make himself, by how much the more guiltless he was in that cause for which he killed himself. For if the act of Judas be worthily detested, and yet the Truth saith, that by hanging of himself, he did rather augment than expiate the guilt of his wicked treachery, because his despair of God's mercy in his damnable repentance, left no place in his soul for saving repentance; how much more ought he to forbear from being cause of his own death, that hath no guilt in him worthy of such a punishment as death; for Judas in hanging himself, hanged but a wicked man and died guilty, not only of Christ's death, but of his own also; adding the wickedness of being his own death, to that other wickedness of his, for which he died." (De Ciuitate Dei, I, xvii.)
www.sacred-texts.com...

More to come!

i look forward to reading what you two come up with, but at this point I would disagree that Judas was the first ever vampire. Vampire legends are much older than the times of Jesus and females seem to be the original vampires.
this might or might not be of help to you, but it discusses the female prevalence of vampires before the introduction of Vlad the impaler.
altvampyres.com...

Would like to tell you a little about the "vampire disease". This is the disease that the "count" had that led to the legends of his "vampirish" activities.

It was porphyria cutanea tarda as best as the medical professional can tell. Porphyria is one hell of a bizarre blood disorder that is basically degenerative due to the fact that the over-production of porphyrines begin making the blood too "dirty" for the liver to clean. From there the liver starts becoming damaged, and the cycle deepens.

In a normal person, the porphyrines that are produced by the body are adequately excreted through the sweat glands and urine. But in a person suffering from porphyria cutanea tarda, there is such an excess of porphyrines that they begin to "pool" on the skin, in the bones, and saturate the urine - and the body STILL can't excrete the excess, and hence the liver damage.

The symptoms of porphyria are:

* lesions from photosensitivity (nasty bad looking boil thingies) When UV rays hit the "pooled" porphyrines on the skin, the reaction is a large radiation-burn looking lesion.

* red urine - their urine will look like cherry koolaid - that's the porphyrines

* under a black light (or certain other UV radiation) their teeth will be red (porphyrine build-up in the bone)

There is one treatment and one treatment only, unless something has developed in the past five years that I am unaware of:

therapeautic phlebotomies (they bleed you - they take a certain volume of blood on regular intervals and this forces the body to produce new "clean" blood thereby alleviating the symptoms - but there is NO cure)

The vampire legend (according to historians and medical professionals) was said to have arisen because of the bleedings AND the fact that the count came to believe that ingesting new blood alleviated his symptoms. AND, it may have! Since we typically don't see doctors prescribing the drink of human blood for diseases, we have no way of knowing if this would help these afflicted people.



[Edited on 4-12-2004 by Valhall]

hey guys

After some discussion Baked and myself have agreed we have gone off course a little with our research and have decided to throw down some barriers with what we are going to research.

Baked has expertly researched for the last couple of days on the Biblical and historical figure of Judas Iscariot...he has a lot of information and links that are fascinating.

Myself: I am studying Vlad Tepesh, aka Dracula.

We are starting off with basic introductions of each induvidual..then delving into deeper backgrounds, adding links to sources of information and pictures.

Next...deeper backgrounds...solving mysteries along the way...and beginning to unwind the history of Dracula

Last...hopefully proving our damn point without having to pay for a new server for Skeptic cause we have used all the storage space researching! lol

So.....Starting with a little info on Vlad Tepesh....lets sink our teeth into it!

enjoy

Gryff
xx

Ok....as i said in an earlier reply i was going to go into a little background information on Vlad...i have so far collected and compliled a short background history on Vlad and had included links to certain groups and people involved in his early life and later on in his years.

Included is pictures of his family, himself, his home, Castle Bran, and several other important pictures related to his rein and history.

Intro

Vlad Tepes was born in late november/december 1431, in a fortress of Sighisoara in Romania. His father, Vlad Dracul, was the miltary Governor of Transylvania, recently appointed to him by Emperor Sigismund, had also been inducted into the Order of the Dragon about a year before. The order, which could be compared to the Knights of the Hospital of St John or even to the the Teutonic Order of Knights, was a semimilitary and religious society, originally created in 1387 by the Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Barbara Cilli.

In the winter of 1436-1437, Dracul became prince of Wallachia, one of the three Romanian provinces, and took up in the residence at the palace of Tirgoviste, the princely capital. Vlad followed his father and lived for 6yrs at the court. In 1442 for political reasons, Vlad and his younger brother, Radu, were taken hostage by the Sultan Murad II; he was held in Turkey till 1448, while his Radu decided to stay there until 1462. This captivity must have played a seriously large part in Vlad's youth. In 1447, the Turks set him free after informing him of his father's assassination, organised by Vladislav II. He also learned about his older brothers death: Mircea was the oldest legitimate son of Dracul, and how he had been tortured and buried alive by the boyars of Tirgoviste.

Older Years and Military Campaigns

At 17 years old, Vlad began his first military campaign against those who caused him grief and emotional harm in his childhood. Backed with a force of Turkish cavalry and a contingent of troops lent to him by pasha Mustafa Hassan, he began his campaign of seizing the Wallachian throne. But the other claimer to the throne, no other than Vladislav II, defeated him 2 months later.
It was 1456 that Vlad had his next chance at killing his fathers murderers and mortal enemy, he then began his longest reign, 6 years, during which he commited many cruelties, and hence established his controversal reputation.

His first major act of revenge was soley at the boyers of Tirgoviste for the killing of his father and brother. On easter sunday, 1459, he arrested and rounded up the boyers families, Impaling the older ones on stakes while forcing the others to march from the capital to the town of Poenari. This gruelling trek claimed many lives and those who survived the 50 mile treck where not allowed to rest until they arrived destination. Here he forced them to build his beautiful fortress overlooking the Arges River. Many died in the process but they succeded in creating a new nobility and obtaining a fortress for future emergencies.

Below are the links i have used to pull the information i need and also some pictures of Vlad himself and of Castle Bran and of his torture of his victims.

Please...a couple of the pics can look a bit ouchie...dont look to hard or u may have trouble sittin down if u think of it to much lol

Vlad's full biography

Ok....as i said in an earlier reply i was going to go into a little background information on Vlad...i have so far collected and compliled a short background history on Vlad and had included links to certain groups and people involved in his early life and later on in his years.

Included is pictures of his family, himself, his home, Castle Bran, and several other important pictures related to his rein and history.

Intro

Vlad Tepes was born in late november/december 1431, in a fortress of Sighisoara in Romania. His father, Vlad Dracul, was the miltary Governor of Transylvania, recently appointed to him by Emperor Sigismund, had also been inducted into the Order of the Dragon about a year before. The order, which could be compared to the Knights of the Hospital of St John or even to the the Teutonic Order of Knights, was a semimilitary and religious society, originally created in 1387 by the Holy Roman Emperor and his second wife, Barbara Cilli.

In the winter of 1436-1437, Dracul became prince of Wallachia, one of the three Romanian provinces, and took up in the residence at the palace of Tirgoviste, the princely capital. Vlad followed his father and lived for 6yrs at the court. In 1442 for political reasons, Vlad and his younger brother, Radu, were taken hostage by the Sultan Murad II; he was held in Turkey till 1448, while his Radu decided to stay there until 1462. This captivity must have played a seriously large part in Vlad's youth. In 1447, the Turks set him free after informing him of his father's assassination, organised by Vladislav II. He also learned about his older brothers death: Mircea was the oldest legitimate son of Dracul, and how he had been tortured and buried alive by the boyars of Tirgoviste.

Older Years and Military Campaigns

At 17 years old, Vlad began his first military campaign against those who caused him grief and emotional harm in his childhood. Backed with a force of Turkish cavalry and a contingent of troops lent to him by pasha Mustafa Hassan, he began his campaign of seizing the Wallachian throne. But the other claimer to the throne, no other than Vladislav II, defeated him 2 months later.
It was 1456 that Vlad had his next chance at killing his fathers murderers and mortal enemy, he then began his longest reign, 6 years, during which he commited many cruelties, and hence established his controversal reputation.

His first major act of revenge was soley at the boyers of Tirgoviste for the killing of his father and brother. On easter sunday, 1459, he arrested and rounded up the boyers families, Impaling the older ones on stakes while forcing the others to march from the capital to the town of Poenari. This gruelling trek claimed many lives and those who survived the 50 mile treck where not allowed to rest until they arrived destination. Here he forced them to build his beautiful fortress overlooking the Arges River. Many died in the process but they succeded in creating a new nobility and obtaining a fortress for future emergencies.

Below are the links i have used to pull the information i need and also some pictures of Vlad himself and of Castle Bran and of his torture of his victims.

Please...a couple of the pics can look a bit ouchie...dont look to hard or u may have trouble sittin down if u think of it to much lol

Vlad's full biography

My browser hates me so i have to add the links onto a seperate reply!!!!!

Vlad as a young man..probably just after release in Turkey

An older Vlad....circa 1465

Vlad's family tree

Why he is so famous *bit graphic*

And a picture of Castle Bran...nothing like portrayed in Gary Oldman's Dracula

Do you have access to any of the pictures of his other residence ???
ive seen it on a special once and it is now mostly ruins ...

i also saw a special where people went into castle bran to stay and i swear i could feel the malevolence coming from the place right thru the damn T.V. !!!
The people had to stay the night there on a type of fear related show ...did anyone else see this show ????

castle Bran is the only place i can find at the moment...also its 0142hrs here and my eyes are closin lol

heres a lookie




when i find more i willl post ok

Targoviste: princely castle




Poenari castle




here is alink to loads of pics of his works and castles and even his masolueum

Linky

Judas Iscariot

The name Judas "Ioudas" is Greek for Judah which in Hebrew means "praised". Iscariot is also Hebrew, but refers to his place of origin which is believed to be Kerioth or Carioth, a city in the Negev region of Judea. Kerioth was located around fourteen miles south of Hebron and sixteen miles west of the Dead Sea.

Judas was probably best known for his �betrayal� of Christ which led to his arrest and crucifixion. Other than what the Bible tells us in the Gospels, and a mention in Acts, very little is known about this �Apostle�. There is no mention in scripture about how, when, or why Judas was accepted as an apostle. In all the gospels Judas is always listed last and with a tag reminding us about what he did to Jesus.

Judas� �birthplace� distinguishes him from the other Apostles, who were all Galileans. The bible states in John 6: 71-2, that his father is Simon (said by some sources to be Simon Magus and the brother in law of Mary Magdalene) .

�70 Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?
71 He spoke of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve. (KJV)�

Likewise, nothing much is known about his father, Simon, in the bible. However different authors and theologians have other things to say about Judas� life.

According to Ecclesiastical legend, he belonged to the tribe of Reuben. Before he was born his mother Cyborea had a dream that he was destined to murder his father, commit incest with his mother, and sell his God. The attempts made by her and her husband to avert this curse simply led to its accomplishment. At his birth Judas was enclosed in a chest and flung into the sea; picked up on a foreign shore, he was educated at the court until a murder committed in. a moment of passion compelled his flight. Coming to Judaea, he entered the service of Pontius Pilate as page, and during this period committed the first two of the crimes which had been expressly foretold. Learning the secret of his birth, he, full of remorse, sought the prophet, who, he had heard, had power on earth to forgive sins.
He was accepted as a disciple and promoted to a position of trust, where avarice, the only vice in which he had hitherto been unpractised, gradually took possession of his soul, and led to the complete fulfilment of his evil destiny. This Judas legend, as given by Jacobus de Voragine, obtained no small popularity; and it is to be found in various shapes in every important literature of Europe.
87.1911encyclopedia.org...

In this work by Rev. Louise Banner Welch, he gives more detail on Judas including linking him to be the nephew of Joseph Caiaphas and Zacchaeus. According to this author Judas was a Cainite (decendent of Cain who murderd his brother Abel and was cursed to walk the earth untill the end of time).

Judas Iscariot was nephew to Joseph Caiaphas and to Zacchaeus. Caiaphas (Haifa) was son-in-law to High Priest Annas, and his brother Simon Kephera (Maggid) was married to the sister of Zachaeus's wife. (James, ANT, 161) Cainites used two books, one called Generations and the other called the Gospel of Judas. (Schneemelcher, NTA, II, 24) Although rejecting the God of Moses, they supported Moses' decision to limit the priesthood to descendants of Aaron (which they were). They sought a higher god, for they thought the God of the Book of Genesis was inferior to the serpent in power. Blood sacrifice such as Cain's sacrifice of Abel was necessary to reach the higher god. At some point, Judas believed Jesus to be the higher God he had sought, the reincarnation of Seth. (Hastings, DOB, IV, 470). Judas had once been a demon-possessed, biting child, and Jesus had healed him. (McBirnie, STA, 240)
www.bible-luke.com...

Further on down the page in the same chapter it states:

Jesus healed Judas of biting others during a fit similar to epilepsy. (McBirnie, STA, 240) On the night that Judas betrayed him, (Hastings, DOB, II, 776) Jesus was asking, "Do you betray me with a bite or a kiss?"
www.bible-luke.com...

More on the basic facts about Judas Iscariot can be found at this LINK

Listed with Gnostic texts is the
Gospel of Judas Which tells a different story than the other gospells that made it in to the Bibles New Testament.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Nothing I'm posting at this time is my belief on the subject. These are thoughts, Ideas, and other writings that show a "not so known" Judas Iscariot. Time and research will tell what and who he was aside from whats known from the Bible.

I will try to add more to this tomorrow or maybe even later if I get some more energy.

[Edited on 14-4-2004 by baked]

Next we are looking into the atrocities of Vlad Tepesh, how he became to be known as Vlad the Impaler and why he seemed to enjoy his victims torture so much.

Using real life accounts and written details and some links and pictures i hope to paint a picture of the more sadistic side of Vlad.

The Atrocities of Vlad Tepes

More than anything, the history of Dracula is full of inhuman cruelty. Impalement was Vlad III's preferred method of torture and execution. Impalement was is one of the most gruesome ways of dying imaginable, as it was typically slow and painful

Vlad usually had a horse tied to each of the victims legs, who then pulled them taught away from the body...more than likely breaking or tearing muscles and sinews along the way. The end of the stake was usually oiled and not that sharp so the intended victim did not die from shock to early. Normally the stake was inserted through the buttocks and often forced throught the body until in emerged from the mouth or possible the chest cavity. Infants were sometimes impaled on the stake forced through their mother's chests. The records indicate that victims were sometimes impaled so that they hung upside down on the stake.

One area of life that Vlad Tepes enjoyed was Art, and to be truthful, it showed in his battle strategies and torture routines. Vlad often had the stakes arranged in various geometric patterns. The most common pattern was a ring of concentric circles in the outskirts of a city that was his target. The height of the spear also indicated the rank of the victim, the higher the spike, the higher in society the victim was.
The decaying corpses were often left up for months, it was once reported than an invading Turkish amry turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. In 1461, Mohammad II, the conqueror od Constantinople, a man not noted for his squeamishness, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of twenty thousand impaled Turkish prisoners outside of the city of Tirgoviste. This gruesome site is remembered in history as "the Forest of the Impaled".

Below is a varity of links detailing accounts of Vlad's atrocities and varied accounts of violence and torture throughout his lifetime.

Some of the details can be quite graphic so theres ur warning!!

Ancedotes










Thats all i have...if u do a google search then u will find more on Vlads history

Gryff

Good post Gryff!

The decaying corpses were often left up for months, it was once reported than an invading Turkish amry turned back in fright when it encountered thousands of rotting corpses impaled on the banks of the Danube. In 1461, Mohammad II, the conqueror od Constantinople, a man not noted for his squeamishness, returned to Constantinople after being sickened by the sight of twenty thousand impaled Turkish prisoners outside of the city of Tirgoviste. This gruesome site is remembered in history as "the Forest of the Impaled

It was probably the smell factor befor the fear factor. Who knows tho. Mideval psyops?

Was thinking was there any symbolic reason why he spiked them in a circle or pattern -was there a reference to anything religious or was it just down right nastyness and shock value

I always thought Lilith, Adam's first wife, was the first vampire. Wasn't she cursed to feed off the children of Adam?

Well modern vampires appeared during the middle ages in eastern Europe. Stories came from small towns about the dead rising and walking at night searching for young virgin blood. Their was one account made in Germany about a young male drinking the body of a dead female. People claimed it worse the work of the devil and witches were seen to have put spells of the dead,etc.

Here is some background info on the Order of the Dragon...the 'cult' that Vlad II and his son 'Dracula' are initiated into.

The Order of the Dragon

The order of the Dragon (German "Drachenorden" and Latin "Societatis draconistrarum") was an institution similar to other chivalric orders of the time. Modled on the Order of St George, founded in 1318. It was created in 1408 by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, while he was still king of Hungary, and his queen Barbara Cilli, mainly for the purpose of gaining protection for the royal family. According to its statute, which survives in a copy dated 1707, the Order also required its initiates to defend the Cross and do battle against its enemies, mostly the Turks. The original Order was made of twenty four members of nobility, including such notable figures as King Alfonso of Aragon and Naples, and Stefan Lazarevic of Serbia.

In 1431, Sigismund summoned to the city of Nuremberg a number of princes and vassals that he considered useful for both political and military alliances. His main objective was to initiate the group into the Order of the Dragon. One of these was Vlad ,father of Vlad the Impaler, a claimant for the throne of the principality of Wallachia ,now part of modern Romania, who was at the time serving in Sighisoara as frontier commander guarding the mountain passes from Transylvania into Wallachia from enemy incursion. While at Nuremberg, Vlad also received Sigismund's pledge to support his claim to the throne of Wallachia. But it would be another five years before that ambition could be realized.

Below are some more links with the Order of the Dragon in detail....most have pictures and go into a little more back ground than i have...but the Order isnt one of my main areas so just added loads of links for info and some pics.

Order

dracopedia

Link

The Order of the Dragon adopted as its symbol in 1408 the image of a circular dragon with its tail coiled around its neck On its back, from the base of its neck to its tail, was the red cross of St George on the background of a silver field With the expansion of the Order, other symbols were adopted, all variations on the theme of dragon and cross For example, one class of the Order used a dragon being strangled with a cross draped across its back; another presents a cross perpendicular to a coiled-up dragon with an inscription "O quam misericors est Deus" vertical and "Justus et paciens" horizontal Other emblems of the Order included a necklace and a seal, each with a variant form of the dragon motif

The Order of the Dragon adopted as its symbol in 1408 the image of a circular dragon with its tail coiled around its neck On its back, from the base of its neck to its tail, was the red cross of St George on the background of a silver field With the expansion of the Order

This got me thinking why did they use the cross of St George we all know he slayed a dragon. Could he have been part of the Order or killed a member of the Order I could be grasping at straws but it might be worth a look into St george ??

Kein was belived to be the first vampire. It was said that Kein made 6 or 7 vampires that is what we call 2nd generation, then they made 13 children and they fightet to b rulers then they killed the whole 2nd generation. Kein became so angry at his children that he gave them the curse that they couldnt walk in daylight and they needed blood to survive
but he also gave them a blessing that was eternal life and some special powers, most likely as speed, livitation exc.....
some belive that judas was 4-7 generations of vampires from kein.
Dracula was belived to be a 4-5 generationed vampire.