Alessandro Norsa
Predator Of Souls

Alessandro Norsa

PREDATOR OF SOULS

Journey in the land of the vampires

Compiled by signor Alessandro Norsa and accompagned on location by most highly praised advisors

Original title: Il ritorno del non morto. Viaggio nel regno dei vampiri

Translation: Peter Fogg

TEKTIME 2017

Thanks for the kind cooperation from:

Prof. Rudolf M. Dinu, Direttore Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica – Venezia [Director of the Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanities Research – Venice]

Dr Mihai Stan, Istituto Romeno di Cultura e Ricerca Umanistica – Venezia [Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanities Research – Venice]

Prof. Tudor Sălăgean, Direttore Muzeul Etnografic al Transilvanei – Cluj-Napoca (Romania) [Director of the Ethnographic Museum at Cluj-Napoca (Romania)]

Prof. Ion Toşa, Historian at the Muzeul Etnografic Transilvanei – Cluj-Napoca (Romania) [Transylvanian Ethnographic Museum at Cluj-Napoca (Romania)]

Prof. Alberto Borghini, Direttore Centro di Documentazione della Tradizione Orale [Director of the Oral Tradition Documentation Centre] Piazza al Serchio (CTDO) engaged in the construction of a national folklore archive and Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Polytechnic University – Turin

The Romanian advisers: Mocan Lena Zamfira (Zalau – Salaj), Florea Cosmi (Runcu Salvei) and Pivasu Lucia (Braşov).

Particular thanks go to my friends Aldo Ridolfi, who, with the greatest patience and painstaking thoroughness helped to edit the text, Gigi Speri, who with shrewd graphics expertise gave form to the book and Simona Strugar, valuable contributor, to whom goes all my gratitude for the translation of the Romanian texts and for having given me the possibility to get to know and appreciate the culture of her country, as well as providing me with valuable suggestions on reading about the myths of Transylvania.

Original title: Alessandro Norsa: Il ritorno del non morto.

Viaggio nel Regno dei Vampiri. Liberamente: March 2016 ©. English version: The predator of souls. Journey in the land of the vampires, March 2017 ©.

https://www.facebook.com/Il-ritorno-del-non-morto-218253505241025/

e-mail: norsaalessandro@yahoo.it Publisher: Tektime – www.traduzionelibri.it Translation: Peter Fogg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, including by any mechanical or electronic system, without the written permission of the editor, except for brief passages taken for the purposes of review.

Edizioni LiberAmente [Editions]

Psychology and Anthropology Series

- Alessandro Norsa. Nell’antro della strega [In the witches’ cave]. La magia in Italia tra racconti popolari e ricerca etnografica [Magic in Italy from popular stories to ethnographic research]. 2015

- Alessandro Norsa. Nel sabba delle streghe sotto il Noce di Benevento [In the witches’ Sabbath under the walnut tree of Benevento]. 2016

- Alessandro Norsa. Il predatore di anime [The predator of souls]. Viaggio nella terra dei vampiri [Journey in the land of the vampires]. 2016

Fiction and Poetry Series

- Aldo Ridolfi. Novelle e racconti [Short stories and tales]. 2015

- Simona Strugar. Solstizio [24th June]. 2016

PREFACE

This brief but rich - and interesting - work by Alessandro Norsa, which is about vampirism and what we can call its “surroundings”, also makes use of some interviews made by the Author himself in Romania.

For our part, we limit ourselves to emphasise certain points. The first, among those we wish to recall, regards the practice of covering up mirrors on the occasion of a death:

On the death of a family member the mirrors in the house are covered because otherwise the soul, being reflected, remains imprisoned between the walls of the house,

The old lady Florea tells us. Thus, in turn, the youngest Lena says:

(...) the mirrors and any other reflective surface are covered to avoid the spirit (i.e. of the dead person) remaining a prisoner in the house.

Beyond the euphemistic “explanation” (the soul of the dead would remain “imprisoned” inside the house), we are confronted - it seems to me fair to support) - by one of the practices of “expelling” the deceased from the domestic space.

And, naturally, we are confronted by the basic themes of the reflected image.

It is relevant, along an “analogous” line, what Lucia (about 50 years old), from the area of Braşov, refers to when she tells us inter alia:

At midnight... I don’t know at what time of the year... Perhaps when a person has died...’ I switched off the lights, looked in the mirror and saw the vampire in the mirror... Meaning that the dead person had not been happy in their life...

Therefore, cover the mirror when someone dies so that the dead person is not reflected... if they are reflected it would be a vampire...

And she added:

(...) The vampire would be the spirit of the dead person when he or she was not happy in their life... when a dead person is not happy it is very bad...

Previously she had said:

When someone dies, a husband, brother, sister, someone in the family... a baby... it is customary to cover the mirrors with a dark cloth and to light the candles.... you cover the mirrors because they say that it brings bad luck... if you don’t cover the mirrors, the dead person is reflected in the mirror - for three days the spirit remains in the house - it goes out and remains near the house for forty days and after forty days it disappears - it goes away into its own world...

It would seem to be understood that if you do not cover the mirrors the dead person who was not happy in life, being reflected, remains in the house as a vampire - as a vampire reflection - and “that is very bad”. The fear, essentially, is of the vampire-reflection - and that this vampire-reflection (“if it is reflected it would be the vampire”) remains in the house; etc. Hence the “necessity” - it is revealed - to cover the mirrors in an event of a death so that the spirit of the dead person does not remain “a prisoner in the house” (a “euphemistic image”). Coming back to Lena, the woman tells also of a girl who was transformed into a toad by the effect of a spell the girl requested from the witch herself. Here is what happened:

(...) my mother told me about an engagement opposed by the boy’s mother. The girl went to a witch who put a spell on her. Every night the girl changed into a toad to enter her fiancé’s house. The boy’s mother, often finding that big, croaking and squirming animal under her feet, wanted to kill it, and, one day, achieved her intention. In that moment, the boy died (...).

It is a matter here of a narrative outline - of an “eventuality” that one encounters frequently also in Italian folklore: a witch changes herself into an animal or an object, which it then hit, and the witch ends up, therefore, maimed in a “corresponding” part of her body. Just because it has to do with a transformation into a toad, I report that this attestation comes from Garfagnana (Cogna), in the province of Lucca [Central Italy]:

A young man from Villa Collemandina was returning home after having been at his fiancée’s. It was the middle of the night, and to see he had a torch made of straw. At a certain point, he stumbled on something soft; he stopped, and in the faint light of the flame saw a large toad; annoyed, he thrust the torch towards the poor animal and gave it a good scorching. The next day he met a friend, whose face was disfigured by a horrible wound. “What’s happened to you?” - he asked him - ”Ah!, after having ruined me in this way you also ask me what happened to me?!” - “But what are you saying?” Could it have been me that burned you?” - “Yes, it was really you, last night! That toad that you met, it was really me”.

Consider, moreover, as an example, the following tale, heard in Piedmont, relating to the connection between “brambles” and witch (masca):

There was between Castiglion Tinella and Valdivilla nearby on a bend a short-cut called “the goat’s short-cut”. And it was near this short-cut that everyone who passed by saw the masks. On this road, there were always some brambles which blocked the road. One day someone says: “I want to see properly”. Take this scythe and cut it down”. Having reached the place, he hits him and suddenly hears someone say: “Hit him again” But the man did not hit him a second time. At a later stage, they learned that there was someone with his arm torn off.

On the bramble hit by the scythe, it is obvious that the arm cut off by the masca “matches”. Another point that I intend to touch upon is that relating to “conviction that girls with blue eyes have the power to put the “evil eye” on someone, without - “sometimes” - “doing it on purpose” (and it’s still Lena talking). However, regardless of other types of “explanation”, I would not rule out the fact that also in this case we are faced with an emergence of the colour, light blue/blue/deep blue, inasmuch as the colour of the negative.

Dealing now with the account of Alessandro Norsa, the Author highlights how the negative beings assembled “circling around in the air” (p. ex 9) For my part, I would take this opportunity to underline how the “circle/curve/spiral” element may be considered as a characteristic of such a being (and we have seen how the “curve” intervenes in the Piedmont attestation (referred to above). As far as concerns - finally - the practice of placing a spindle on the tomb of the deceased (Norsa, p. ex 10), I would not be out of place in recalling the tale, which one comes across widely, at least in Italian folklore, relating to the woman who, for a bet, goes into the cemetery at night, carrying out the gesture, in fact, to place a fuse on the tomb.

For the rest, it would perhaps be right to assume that also on the basis of accounts relating to the “fuse bet” - so to speak - an analogous meaning: an analogous “basic value“ remains valid, at least at that time.

Alberto Borghini, 14.03.2015

TO THE GRACIOUS READER

Who of you has not heard talk of Dracula and the vampires? These names are so popular as to become part of our common cultural heritage. For three hundred years, in fact, at least once in a century the world is completely prey to a vampire fashion: in the first half of the sixteenth century it was the time of the so-called “vampire plague”, towards the end of the nineteenth century / the beginning of the twentieth century the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker reawakened interest and even today (in the feast of Halloween and the television saga Twilight) we see a new wave of interest. The books already written follow roughly the same script with very few variations. Notwithstanding the mention initially made, the sense of this book, as already widely explored by other authors, is not that of dwelling on the famous Stoker novel, nor even going into the making of the horror film. We will try instead to understand the origin of the story between the leaves of the ancient myths, above all those coming from Romania and the Balkans, because it is from there that the image of the vampire that we all have in mind is formed. To enter further into the matter we have started our research with the reading of old Romanian texts on ethnography and mythology, to then go directly to Transylvania among the villages and the people, searching for directions in the traces of Dracula. It is therefore a journey into the past to understand where the image and the characteristics were born of the vampire, which is well-known to us, as well as to learn about the place from which it originates.

INTRODUCTION: OR, RATHER, WHERE THE INTENTION OF THE STUDY IS EXPLAINED

Let us close our eyes for a moment and try to imagine ourselves as Dracula. How do we imagine him? Probably tall, old and dressed in black. The aquiline face, the thin nose with a pronounced bump and strangely arched nostrils. The noble and wide forehead, the hair shaved at the temples, but full on top. The eyebrows thick - they almost join up over the nose. The mouth, for what emerges under the moustache, is stiff and with an almost cruel profile. The teeth, white and strangely pointed, emerge from the lips, whose bright colour reveals an amazing vitality for a man of his age. The ears are pale, and pointed; the chin wide and strong, the cheeks firm, even though hollowed. The whole face is suffused by an incredible pallor.

This is the sinister figure of Dracula which, in a detailed and incisive manner, is described by Stoker in his novel. Like an expert folklore student, Stoker merges into one personage mythological figures from various traditions: above all those relating to the Irish folklore heritage mixed with myths and legends from other countries, particularly from Romania. For example, the characteristics of the particular eyebrows just observed we find again in some disturbing mythological figures from Eastern Europe, as we shall see, while the pallor is typical of the wandering ghosts, the souls of the dead. But let us turn again to the novel to touch on other elements that can be useful to us. Dracula is noble. He has fascinating manners and speaks various languages. But he does not have servants, he does not go to worldly receptions, he does not indulge in the earthly pleasures of good food or beautiful women. He has magic abilities and knows the language of animals so well that he can command them. He has the icy skin of the dead, his image does not reflect in the mirror, he possesses enormous physical strength and incredible speed of movement, he can hypnotise you with his stare, transform himself into a dog, a wolf or a bat. He sleeps during the day and at that time he looks dead, even if he is concious of what is happening around him. But why have these become the coordinates on which we orientate our knowledge of Dracula? Essentially you need the creative genius of the famous Irish novelist who, in an astute way, to greater convince the reader, made the presence of Dracula realistic, associating it with a personage really identifiable in history: the ferocious Wallachian Voivoda Vlad III who lived from 1431 to 1476, son of Vlad II called Dracul. This chief ruthless enemy of the Turks, inheriting his nickname from his father and became known also as Dracula, a name that in Romanian means the devil, the suffix “ul” corresponds to the definite article, which, in that language, is put at the end of the word.

It should be underlined that from a historical point of view Vlad III, also called Tepes (Å£eapa in Romanian means stake or pole), has never been associated with vampirism. There were however some coincidences that could have effectively lead to the comparison with that Romanian prince so present in Eighteenth century European literature. The reason for such notoriety resides in some customs that resemble vampires. Above all the method of execution that Vlad III preferred was impalement, which is the practice considered most suitable to destroy vampires. Other convictions, instead, regard its gory operation. Vlad III was in fact likened to those men who were marked by particular wickedness and who, after their death, were said to have transformed into vampires. Tepes, in the end, was decapitated as was done to those who were accused of vampirism and, after the burial, his tomb was opened and looted, which makes one think about the lengths to which the local population would resort. In the course of reading the book we find again these convictions associated with particular exorcist practices developed in an authentic vampire culture which has continued over the centuries.