Let’s say I’m Jewish, and I know a vampire is after me. If I run into a church, can he get me? It’s the place, not the belief of the people in it, right? So if I’m an atheist and I’m in a Buddist Temple, would I be similarly safe from your average cross-hating vamp?
But is the vampire Jewish?
I’m afraid it’s going to depend on who’s writing the story you’re in.
Some writers believe Vampires die if they bite a Jew.
Depends, really. There’s lot of different ways the “vampires are stopped by holy items” myth works. In some cases, it’s the holiness of the object/ground that works, so you’d be fine in any church that had the backing of a deity (which would provide useful tests for a god, come to think of it). Sometimes, like you say, it’s believe in that symbol that’s needed, so anything could be a holy weapon, as long as you thought it was (which is presumably why vampires don’t like mental asylums).
In the case of holy ground, it’s probably safer than using a cross or any holy symbol, because it works in both situations - the ground has been blessed, and it’s been blessed by someone who believes.
OTOH it might just be a quality of the symbol; in the case of silver and werewolves, or iron and elves/fairies/magic in general. In which case, you can’t really say whether consecrated ground would work or not.
A church is perfect protection against vampires. But then, so is the corner drug store.
Reminds me of the part in the movie The Mummy where the weasely guy has the mummy coming for him and he pulls out a ring full of religious symbols and frantically starts running through them trying to find one that would ward the mummy off.
This has been used as a decent plot device. E.g. Faithless guy holds up cross and vampire ignores it. Later faithless guy holds up cross and finds faith at that moment at which point the vampire is turned.
I have to admit, the resolution of that scene always struck me as unexpectedly clever; the best kind of movie clever. It made sense (if you squint) yet wasn’t predictable.
What was the resolution?
Kind of a side question, but isn’t holy water supposed to be dangerous to vampires too? Could someone drink holy water and have blood piousness to vampires?
Good question. Some religious institutions hold that when you add normal water to holy water, it doesn’t “water down” the holiness, but instead all of that water becomes holy. So I suppose just drinking one glass of holy water would ensure you holy blood for life.
I’m sure that it doesn’t count, though; Catholics believe they eat the body and blood of Christ, and I don’t think they believe they retain any holiness themselves from that. Maybe the innate sinfulness of the body counteracts it.
The weaselly Beni is running through various holy symbols and chants, trying to ward off the reanimated and approaching Imhotep when he gets to a Star of David and recites something in Hebrew. Imhotep recognizes this immediately as “the language of the slaves” and realized Beni could be useful to him. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that both Beni and Imhotep (who’d been a member of the ancient Egyptian elite) would be fluent in Hebrew, let alone the versions each knows would be mutually understandable, but I thought it was a clever enough and in a movie about mummies, I was willing to let my disbelief remain suspended. Imhotep could’ve just magically understood and spoke English, but that fact that the filmmakers made a real effort to respect the language issue impressed me.
So the state of being a vampire is inherently sinful, regardless of the person’s beliefs in life? Heh, imagine an atheist vampire trying to explain why a cross hurts him…
Oy! Hef you got de wrung vempire!
I read a book in which:
[spoiler]there was a new kind of vampire that attacked traditional vampires.
The resolution was that an ancient vampire that had developed tolerance for silver took a large dose of a silver compound just before being drained by the new vampire, which duly expired from silver poisoning. :eek: [/spoiler]
I can dig up the book + author if anyone’s interested (the author did several vampire stories)
Revenant Threshold and The Sonoran Lizard King are right. Different writers have different interpretations of how the holy item and consecrated ground thing works.
Some say that the item or area is protected by a manifestation of the deities’ power. A synagogue, church, mosque, lamasery etc will keep out vampires regardless of what the humans inside believe.
Some say that the effect is based on the belief of the human. The film Fright Night, among other, uses this interpretation. Somebody tries to ward off a vampire with a large elaborate cross. The vampire walks up, crushes the cross and says “It only works if you believe.”. Later, the same vampire is driven off when somebody who does believe presents the tiny cross he always wears.
Some writers say that the effect is based on the belief of the vampire. A vampire who had been Catholic would be kept at bay by saints medals, images of the virgin Mary, and crosses. A vampire who had been an atheist would be unaffected. JayJay has quoted Roman Polanski’s version of what happens when you try to drive off a Jewish vampire with a cross.
The Discworld books have a version of this, too. In those, the holy symbol/sunlight/garlic averting properties are just in the mind of the vampire; one of them tries hard to train himself and his family to not be hurt by these things (by using flash cards of holy symbols, for one thing). As long as the vampire thinks it works against it, then it’ll work.
For sure you’re not safe in General Questions.
Moved to MPSIMS.
samclem
I’ve had another thought. I’m not sure if it’s just Buffy TVS, but sometimes a vampire can’t enter a building unless it gets invited. So that’d provide another edge for consecrated ground over symbols.
The idea that vampires need to be invited in predates Buffy by several centuries at least. However, just what kind of buildings they can and can’t enter uninvited varies. They were generally believed to be able to freely enter cemeteries, despite their being consecrated ground.
Doc, that’s part of the irony in the vampire / nosferatu mythos. A vampire must avoid holy sites and symbols – yet generally must sleep in consecrated ground from a graveyard. This point had been well established by the time Bram Stoker got his hands on the mythos.