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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 21257
[Culture]
Date Posted:
10/15/2009
5:50:12 pm EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 2,757
RSS: 18,829
Comments: 13
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Vampires Of New Jersey
Author: Lisa Rose Source: Nj.com
Title: VAMPIRES OF NEW JERSEY
Ra Ubasti strolls down Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair with the elegance of a Victorian courtesan. A black corset cinches her waist into a tiny circle, with a billowy blouse above and skirt below. Rain taps her parasol as she takes slow steps, walking like a bride to the altar.
Brake lights glow as cars crawl by. Pedestrians stall when she captures their gaze. Curious looks escalate to blank stares when Ra smiles, revealing her fangs.
The 27-year-old Jerseyan is a real vampire. She participates in blood rituals with a group called the Court of Lazarus. The court encompasses about 50 citizens, many tied to subgroups called clans.
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Community Thoughts: There are 13 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| For The Record | Oct 17th. at 10:13:57 pm EDT
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R. Cicero (Seattle, Washington) - Email Me
Six puny drops from six different persons is INFINITELY more life threatening than if you were to have a blood orgy and vigorously pump into your butt or otherwise guzzle down a couple gallons of any one person's given blood. If you know anything about statistics or odds, you can grasp the logic--or lack thereof. It takes one puny drop! And you will never know who carries that magic bullet (at least not until it's too late) , because you can never trust what other people believe about their own health. Even stringent testing has a lag factor and potential for inaccuracies. Which is why I choose, regretfully, to use the term 'stupid' to describe such practices. It is off the charts.
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| A Great Disappointment | Oct 17th. at 2:41:21 pm EDT
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R. Cicero (Seattle, Washington) - Email Me
The world is full of contrary people that make very bad health decisions. It's really too bad that these wonderfully colorful personal obsessions with dark romanticism and this literary conception run wild has morphed into this absurd, worrisome state of affairs. The implications are clear. AIDS, Tuberculosis, several strains of Hepatitis, and god knows how many other blood-borne pathogens. I really don't know what to say. Amazingly, some people still 'swing' and have unprotected sex, too, if you can believe that. I simply can not relate to it.
I find it quite troubling, because I completely love and deeply support all of the peripheral 'cosmetic' associations of the goth subcultures. But to take that final step . . . beyond psychically 'vibing' people (which is bad enough) into the ingestion of blood is simply aggressively stupid behavior. It's worthy of condemnation, NOT understanding, by my lights.
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| Value Of "Weird" Or "Ridiculous" Closer To Squat | Oct 17th. at 9:40:15 am EDT
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karrie9 (Kenosha, Wisconsin) - Email Me - Web
"Normal" and "weird" don't hold much value, they don't really tell us who is really more functional or "safe" to have among us but our more reliable tools of evaluation and reality checks assist in that.
That's why there are evaluation tools like ABCDEF [Web LINK] for cults/religions, the power wheels [Web LINK] [Web LINK] for relationship/societal abuse, medical tests for AIDS, legal protocols, and so on. And there are codes of ethics for different situations/needs.
When such things are forgotten, that's when we have tragedies like the WM3 tragedy on top of the murder of 3 younger boys. The young men accused were different...weird and it just snowballed from there. [Web LINK] [Web LINK]
When people put too much faith in normal and weird, to the point that better judgment, assessment, and protocols do not prevail, that's when pet and animal abuse can lead to abuse of anyone who looks weird/Satanic (anyone who wears goth-like clothing, etc.) [Web LINK]
Or how about the many abuses of waging accusation of Satanic Ritual Abuse? [Web LINK]
Our best evaluation tools, codes of ethics, and such don't make things totally predictable and safe but it's better than reacting according to "normal" and "weird."
So, no, drinking blood isn't all that safe even with codes of ethics, frequent medical testing and careful choice of consensual partners. But I know what's far (!) more dangerous and that likes to domino, affecting multiple minority groups/practices/religions/communities -- rule based on normal and witch hunts or marginalization/criminalization based on what's weird/different.
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| Weirdness Is As Weirdness Does | Oct 17th. at 2:40:56 am EDT
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nasionnaich (Stanchfield, Minnesota) - Email Me
So it ain't enough to be ridiculed and hated by certain "Christian" groups because y'all are a pagan or Wiccan...now you have to draw even MORE of it onto ALL pagans and Wiccans by proclaiming that y'all are "vampires".
Bad enough the "Christians" are trying to brain-wash everyone else into believing we all eat babies and slaughter puppies.
Oh, and equating anyone who dares to not automatically approve of every single "pagan" activity, no matter how barmy, with being a "secret xian"? Bad form, just plain bad form. It's exactly the same as all those "xians" saying that YOU are a baby-eating Satanist because YOU do not worship THEIR god.
--nasionnaich (wondering just what the blazes a "xian" is...other than a really lame so-called "insult")
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| Oops! Lost The Rest Of My Comment! Teehee | Oct 16th. at 6:30:47 pm EDT
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Lupus (ewing, New Jersey) - Email Me
Having poked fun with the old saw about skeeters, I must say I can see and accept both positive as well as negative opinions on this subject. On one hand, from a health and well being point of view, drinking another persons blood is, at best, a risky proposition and an open invitation to any number of diseases. This includes people you are well aquainted with, and the idea of drinking a stranger's blood is quite mad. But blood as a foodsource is not all that odd (blood sausage, anyone?) and hey, some of us DO like our steak so rare it's still twitching. The emotional bonding and arousal aspect is off putting for some, perhaps, but apparently very erotic for others. I would include myself in this latter category, in fantasy if not in actual practice. And let's face it; Ra, the young lady photographed for the article, is pretty damned hot with her pointy teeth. I've a few friends, from Philly mostly, who role play in the vampire subculture, and they really aren't all THAT weird (well, maybe a couple of them are) . Maybe Jersey has just jaded me, but I worry less about the people fufilling vampire fantasies than I do about the mentally ill people wandering off site from Trenton Psych down the street from my house. I guess the cliche "Different strokes for different folks" is appropriate here, but my advice is to be VERY careful whose blood you ingest, if you decide to do such things.
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| No Big Deal..... | Oct 16th. at 5:43:50 pm EDT
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Lupus (ewing, New Jersey) - Email Me
Having been born and raised in New Jersey I have to let you all know that the Garden State is absolutely crawling with vampires... sucking blood from the unwary at any time of the day or night....no matter where you go you will be unable to escape them.... they are legion....in fact some people call them our state bird... other people just call them mosquitoes.
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| So | Oct 16th. at 12:44:13 pm EDT
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Zodiac (Waverly, Nebraska) - Email Me
We had Werewolves of London, now we have Vampires of New Jersey.
Reminds me of the South Park "Ungroundable" episode.
Hope they're careful with that blood. Lots of nasty blood borne diseases.
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| Nothing Wrong With Calling Weird... Weird | Oct 16th. at 11:35:25 am EDT
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Finn (San Marcos, Texas) - Email Me
It has become extremely tiresome to hear the accusations of someone being a "secret Christian" fly whenever someone disagrees with or makes a comment about the general weirdness of a certain behavior or lifestyle. Just because I'm a member of a religion which fits the criteria of being "pagan" doesn't mean I have to endorse or even tolerate the behavior of anyone else out of the mainstream. In this case, the vampires of the article aren't even a faith. They are a hedonistic alternative lifestyle, role playing taken to the extreme. They are, simply put, weird. More to the point, the behavior is somewhat foolish in a world full of pathogens carried in the blood.
I would rather they had left the part about many of them being pagans out. The article was about their hobby of pretending to be vampires and drinking each other's blood. That is all well and good. Their being pagan has no bearing on that anymore than the faith of the Christians playing dress-up with fangs does.
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| ... | Oct 16th. at 10:15:04 am EDT
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Draken (Bronx, New York) - Email Me - Web
Ahh yes, we're all supposed to be members of the All-High-And-Mighty Wyccyn Temple of the Fluffbunny (a division of Vatican City's "Make The Pagans Look Bad" department) on this board. Gaia forbid anyone even _DARE_ present a viewpoint Scott Cunningham never mentioned. I know! Let's treat these so-called "vampyres" the way the xians treat US!
Give me a break. All that outburst did was confirm my suspicion that there are xians on this board who pretend to be Pagans in order to troll those of us who take the subject matter at hand seriously.
Forwarding the link to this thread to the Lazarus Yahoo group (which has been VERY active lately) .
Find More info -- HERE
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| Democracy Comes In Different Flavors | Oct 16th. at 9:52:40 am EDT
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karrie9 (Kenosha, Wisconsin) - Email Me - Web
I find the topic more interesting from the perspective of studying small democratic societies that develop codes/rules than from the perspective of "ooooooh, taboo."
People all over the U.S. are popping prescription drugs like it's candy, the war on drugs created a raging parallel illegal economy our government isn't willing to give up, schools help push parents into giving their kids ritalin (to the point that America was swallowing 80% of the worlds ritalin production) , both zero tolerance and decades of No Child Left a Brain have seriously weakened the masses, we have sound cannons and other uber tactics and militarized security being tried out on citizens, and HPV involvement of the cervix and throat became such a problem that HPV immunization is recommended.
But oogie boogie about vampires, some of whom only draw from their husband? (Yeah, yeah, there are always those who think the rules don't apply to them. But that's true all over the U.S. in ways that involve bodily fluids.)
And the lizard lived so what was that...sneaking mention of animal sacrfice in the middle of trying to write intelligently and informatively about a taboo practice?
People are funny monkeys!
So, not interested in becoming a vampire but perspective is a funny thing, you have to admit.
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| And People Think WE'RE Wierd. | Oct 16th. at 9:48:06 am EDT
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Batman (Madison, Wisconsin) - Email Me
Hey - is that like the group of little freaks back in high school that thought they were too cool to hang out with anyone else even though no one else wanted to really hang out with them because they were just to frikkin' wierd? Huh. Ironic. And being pagan and growing as goth and with goth friends, even we didn't take it to the level these emmy-award winners do. WOW. Good luck with that.
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| ... | Oct 15th. at 9:41:18 pm EDT
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Draken (Bronx, New York) - Email Me - Web
Hey, a good article about a much-maligned occult group.
I was at Lazarus in August and I didn't see any media there, and Kitty Hawke (who conducted the ritual mentioned in the article) didn't sacrifice any animals (the lizard she had at the altar was still breathing, I confirmed this after Kitty set it down next to me after the ritual) and she's not "outside" of the court.
Okay, enough nitpicking. The vampires I know would be glad to hear that this article didn't mention "Renfield's Syndrome."
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