Category: Vampirismo & Licantropia

A Voyage Into the Levant – Vampirismo e Diari di Viaggio

Excerpted from: A Voyage Into the Levant…(etc) by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. 1718. English edition, London: printed for D. Midwinter, etc. 1741. Volume I, pp. 142-148.

We were present at a very different Scene, and one very barbarous, in the same Island, which happened upon occasion of one of those Corpses, which they fancy come to life again after their interment. The Man whose Story we are going to relate, was a Peasant of Mycone, naturally ill-natur’d and quarrelsom; this is a Circumstance to be taken notice of in such cases: he was murder’d in the fields, no body knew how, or by whom.

Continua a leggere A Voyage Into the Levant – Vampirismo e Diari di Viaggio

Excerpts on Bulgarian Vampire Folklore Belief

By S. G. B. St. Clair and Charles A. Brophy
from “Bulgarian Superstitions,” Twelve Years’ Study of the Eastern Question in Bulgaria London: Chapman and Hall, 1877 pp. 22-43

By far the most curious superstition in Bulgaria is that of the Vampire,* a tradition which is common to all countries of Slavonic origin, but is now to be found in its original loathsomeness only in these provinces. In Dalmatia and Albania, whence the knowledge of this superstition was first imported into Europe, and which were consequently, though wrongly, considered as its mother-countries, the vampire has been disfigured by poetical embellishments, and has become a mere theatrical being–tricked out in all the tinsel of modern fancy.

Continua a leggere Excerpts on Bulgarian Vampire Folklore Belief

Strane sepolture in Italia: Il Mito del Vampiro e la città di Trani (Puglia)

Il mito del vampiro è un tema comune in tutte le civiltà, esso cela dentro di sé una atavica paura dell’uomo, quella della morte e dell’ignoto che nasconde dietro di lei. Per addentrarci nel mondo del “ritornante” e scoprire i suoi segreti, partiremo dall’antico abitato di Trani in Puglia, la cui leggenda vuole  fondato da Tirreno, mitico figlio dell’eroe omerico Diomede.

Continua a leggere Strane sepolture in Italia: Il Mito del Vampiro e la città di Trani (Puglia)

Greek Accounts of the Vrykolakas

by D. Demetracopoulou Lee
from The Journal of American Folklore, No. 54 (1941)

The vrykolakas is one of several non-human beings which people the lives of Greek peasants and bring them fear. I use the term non-human rather than the more common supernatural, because these beings are often the very essence of nature to the extent of being vulnerable through natural means.

Continua a leggere Greek Accounts of the Vrykolakas

Il culto dei Defunti e la ritualistica Magico-Popolare

di Andrea Romanazzi

Il culto dei morti è da sempre elemento fondamentale di tutte le culture sacre subalterne popolari ed eccezionalmente presente in molti aspetti folkloristici attuali. Questa ricerca sull’antropologia del lutto, partendo dall’esame di una tradizione popolare lucana, quella del lamento funebre, presente però anche in altre località italiane, ha lo scopo di individuare un archetipo comune al rituale funebre del cordoglio e alle sue varie manifestazioni, dal lamento funebre al tipico pasto del “consolo”.

Continua a leggere Il culto dei Defunti e la ritualistica Magico-Popolare