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FOOTNOTE TO“LIVING VAMPIRES AND VAMPIRISM OF THE GRAVE IN OUR SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS”

[The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 7(55), April, 1884, p. 159]

[This essay is by Dr. Fortin, President, Theosophical Society of the Occultists of France. It is almost certain that it was translated from the original French by H. P. B. herself. Mention having been made by the author of the “principles which constitute the animal soul (Kama Rupa),” the following footnote, signed Translator, has been appended to his words:]

That which remains, after the separation of the higher principles from the lower ones by the process of dying is complete, consists of the fourth principle and lower parts of the fifth. This,––the animal soul—has still a more or less indistinct consciousness of its own, and its actions resemble those of a person walking in his sleep. It has also a remnant of will, in a more or less latent condition. But as the higher principles have left this, will is no more guided by any moral considerations and cannot exert itself in any other way than by following its attractions. Its lower passions, animal desires and material attractions, still remain, and in proportion as they have been more or less developed, nursed or fortified, during earth life, in the same proportion will they act more or less powerfully after the death of the physical body. Nothing likes to starve:—each body as well as each principle has a powerful attraction and craving for those elements which are necessary for its subsistence. The principles of lust, gluttony, envy, avarice, revenge, intemperance, etc., will rush blindly to the place to which they are attracted and where their craving can

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be temporarily gratified;––either directly as in the case of vampires by imbibing the emanations of fresh blood, or indirectly by establishing magnetic relations with sensitive persons (mediums), whose inclinations correspond with their own.
If there is still a magnetic relation existing between the vampire (elementary) and its buried physical body, it will return to the grave. If there is no such relation, it will follow other attractions.
It craves for a body, and if it cannot find a human body, it may be attracted to that of an animal. The gospel account of the swine into which Jesus drove the “evil spirits” may be a fable in its historical application, but it is a truth, not only a possibility, with reference to many such parallel cases.

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