Interview with John Michael Greer by Kala Ambrose of Explore Your Spirit October 17th, 2009 http://www.examiner.

com/metaphysical-spirituality-in-national/monsters-an-investigators-guide-tomagical-beings-interview-with-john-michael-greer Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings - Part 1 of 3 Kala: Faeries and dragons, vampires and werewolves, mermaids and ghosts want to learn more about them? Delve into the mysteries of the paranormal with my interview here from The Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show as I speak with John Michael Greer, author of Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings for a journey into the reality of monsters. His book is a guide to the strange, spooky, and sometimes sinister world of the creatures who lurk in the shadowy realms around us. John Michael Greer has been a student of monster lore, legends, and the occult since 1975. He is also the author of several books, including Natural Magic, Potions and Powers from the Magical Garden, Circles of Power, Ritual Magic in the Western Tradition, The Druidry Handbook, and Inside a Magical Lodge. Kala: John, welcome to the show. John: Thank you. Its a pleasure to be here. Kala: Its October; its Halloween. Its time to talk about monsters. What do you say? John: Yeah, Thats where we put all of the creepy crawlies that we dont want to think about the rest of the year. Kala: Ive got so many questions about monsters, I hope youre ready. John: I hope I am, too. Kala: Lets run through some that you talk about in the book, and Id like to start with the vampires, because theyre just a classic favorite. John: Everybody starts with the vampire, oh yes. Everyone wants to hear about Count Dracula, you know, or be able to go see an opera dressed in this kind of stuff. So what do you want to know about vampires? Kala: Who are they? Are they here with us now? John: Well, its a complicated question, because the problem that gets in the way of almost everything in the field of monster lore, is that weve all got this media image of what monster, fill in the blank, is. Then theres the actual traditional folk lore, and those are usually very, very far apart. Vampires are probably the poster child for that one because the basic vampire that everyone carries around in their mind, whether its, you know Bela Lugosi playing Dracula or Count Chocula of the Cereal Box, or you know, or Lestat or somebody, or whoever the vampires are; Buffy the vampire slayer, which Ive never actually seen chases down and presumably flies. Weve all got these media vampires in our heads and whats actually going on if you listen to if you actually study the folklore itself is something completely different. In the course of writing the book, one of the things that I was really focused on was actually getting the nitty gritty, not by reading more rehashes of rehashes of rehashes, but actually finding accounts of folklore. I was very fortunate to get several books of vampire folklore from Transylvania. I mean you want to know about Transylvanian vampires, you find out what they say about them in Transylvania, right?

Kala: Right to the source. John: Right. So the vampire in its home territory are not, you know -- a cadaverous looking guy in an opera dress and a cape, with long canines who, you know, who suck into blood or what have you. Vampires are not physical. They can move, they can get into the room through the crack under a door. Kala: So they are a mist? John: They are well, you know, what they are, as near as I can tell is a variety of predatory ghosts. In the traditional occult lore governing death, relating to the whole death and dying process, there is the idea that the physical death of the body is only the first of several transformations that we go through in the course of going into the after life. This is the first death, the death of the body. There is an interval, sometimes very brief and sometimes extended. Then theres whats called the second death, when what the magicians call the etheric body, the body of life force drops away and disintegrates. And its after that, that you go on to the process of after life. Sometimes people get stuck in between those two. Well be talking about the involuntary kind of getting stuck when we deal with ghosts. According to the old folklore, there are people who get stuck there deliberately. Im sure its not too difficult to think of reasons why somebody might not want to deal with whatever theyre looking toward in the after life. Kala: Sure. John: And there are also people who are just so afraid of death and so afraid of letting go and going through that process that they might pursue almost anything to stay in that state just one notch away from physical life. Now according to the folklore, thats what vampires are. Vampires are people who are stuck in that intermediate place and are trying to maintain themselves there by drawing, not blood, but life energy. Now life energy is one of those concepts scientists hated, okay? Theres this whole 300 years of scientific opinion saying this nave idea of a life force these vitalistic ideas are nonsense, which is all very well and good except for the fact that its there. I mean if you practice Chi Gong or any of these Chinese energy exercises, you could feel it with your skin. Its this abstract thing, you know. Acupuncture uses it, yoga uses it, the martial arts use it its a common thing. Its a reality, and its something that complex things can happen to. Its something that people can feed on. Its something that people who are no longer quite living can feed on. So what you get in a vampire traditions, in the traditional folklore, are basically these predatory ghosts who are trying to maintain themselves in existence by draining human life force, not a nice thing to have around, much less romantic than the Vampire Lestat. Kala: It actually sounds more difficult to deal with, as you cant see it. John: It can be. There are ways to do it, because thats a very unnatural place to be to be stuck between worlds like that. All you have to do is disrupt this kind of unnatural precontingent sort of existence. And theyre gone. Theyre off to their second death and get whatevers coming to the after life. Most traditional vampire methods of taking out a vampire are aimed at that. Some of them are very simple. Traditionally, to maintain that state of existence, to keep anchored to the physical world, you have to keep your physical body in one piece. Thats why I mean everyone thinks about hammering a stake through their heart well, thats part of the traditional process. The traditional process puts a stake to the heart, cut off the head, and then burn the body to ashes.

Kala: Oh, so what they are doing is destroying the physical anchor for the etheric energy body. John: Theyre destroying the physical anchor so that the etheric body the body of life force that requires that to stay in contact with the relevant matter breaks apart and up, you know, no more vampires. There are some very simple things. This is going to sound like a joke, okay? Nonetheless, Italy has almost no vampire legends. Garlic we all know that garlic repels vampires, right? Now, interesting this is to a Chinese vampire lore. The Chinese have a rich lore of vampires of their own, which are, if anything nastier than the Western variety and certainly make for really, really harrowing ghost stories. Chinese vampires are also repelled by garlic. Why is this? Well, in magical lore again in the occult lore of plants, what we call magical herbalism or natural magic all of the plants of the onion family, their active ingredient allicin is what its called, its what science calls compound has the function of dispelling, breaking apart, dissolving patterns in the ether, in the flow of life energy. Theres a custom in some areas where there is like nasty magic going around or somebody you really dont like is coming to visit and somebody whos just radiating creepy energy you take half a cut onion and put it in the mantel piece, thats a productive thing. Kala: Interesting. John: So garlic is always a good thing, because garlic will make it very difficult for them to hold that etheric body together, and they risk simply dissolving. Are there any vampires nowadays? I hope not. Again, its not a pleasant thing. My guess and this is something woven, something that Im extracting from the sort of ideas woven into the traditional monster lore is that there were particular practices, or a particular tradition of people who were doing this thing, who were passing it on as what you should do to get ready for death so you can continue to live. Theres a lot of that around the world. The pharaohs used to do a much more gentile and less blood-thirsty version of it. They would have their bodies mummified and preserved and they would have a priests who would make offerings to them, offerings of food and things like that which all contain vital energy, to maintain them in existence beyond the grave. Kala: That was more to serve, though, and to help, right?... John: Exactly, exactly. Certainly it started out that way, and to one extent it simply became a matter of people desperately running away from death, good question. These traditions like this exist all over the world traditions of people, who, for one reason or another, are trying to pull themselves outside of the ordinary cycle of life and death by whatever means. Usually, it adds up to some version of the same means. Mostly well, its rare for it actually to involve attacking other people and draining their life force but, thats kind of a fallback. Kala: Now you say youre not sure if there are vampires today. Let me pose this question to you. Ive read stories that discuss mythology and ancient creatures -- and we are such powerful creators with our thoughts. If when we think of something, we can help give life to it or energy to it by thinking more about it... John: And given the number of people I think I see where this is leading. Kala: You know where Im going, yes. You know, so many people John: Given the number of people who are all obsessive about their being vampires well, well hope not. Garlic might be a good investment. People think of vampires as sexy, I

mean, vampires are as sexy as a blood-sucking leech, okay? They dont look pretty either. Theres this marvelous description from Bulgarian folklore that describes a vampire on the hunt, as looking like a sack of cows hide full of blood with two glowing red eyes. Kala: Okay. But if a person today if they really thought that there was a vampire around them youre saying pretty much, eat some garlic and try to repel them? John: Plenty of garlic in the diet. I mean traditional anti-vampire precautions mostly are illegal these days. You cant go down to the graveyard and open every coffin until you find a body that looks unnaturally preserved then drive a stake through his heart, etc. So youve got some limitations here. Garlic is a good thing to do. The other thing and this is something that I stress in the book if you think there might be a vampire involved, your first job is to rule out other explanations, because if somebody is, you know, pale and has no energy and seems to be wasting away, the first thing they need to find out is somethings wrong with their health. So the first thing to do is get their butt down to a doctor, get a thorough physical and find out if theres some other cause going on. The other thing to look for in a situation like that is well, the term psychic vampire has been used and its not necessarily the best one, but its the word people use so I might as well. There are people, living people -- no fangs and no cape, just ordinary living people who seem to drain energy from others. I think weve probably all met them, just as there are other people who seem to give energy to other people, who are so overflowing with life force that being around them makes you feel more alive. There are people who are drains, and there are some people who do that deliberately. There are some people who thats the way they are, they do it accidentally, and so on. They dont intend to do it but that happens. You want to see if thats involved. Kala: I think you mentioned in your book, that because of burial practices these days and embalming, etc., that it disturbs the etheric field as well. John: Oh, yeah. Well, what they need to do keep their body in a state where the cells even though the body has died, the cells are capable of a kind of slow vestigial life. Vampire cases in Central Europe in the 18th to 19th centuries, they dig up bodies and theyd have them examined by doctors and these bodies, you know, the fingernails will have grown like four inches since the person died, and the hair will have grown, and all this kind of stuff. Theres some cellular life remaining in there maintained by this life energy that the vampires drawing in. But you have to have the body in a condition to sustain some kind of cellular existence. You pump it full of formaldehyde, it dies. Kala: That would do it. John: That would do it, yes. So basically, our embalming technicians and people down at the mortuary, theres our vampires slayers. Buffy should go to work at the funeral home. So, yeah, embalming and, of course, with cremation, thats all she wrote. Both of those are, I mean that vast majority of corpses these days are treated in one or the other way. Kala: So theres no biting and theres no blood going on? Its an energy stealing John: No biting, no blood. What gave rise to that one my hypothesis here if youve ever seen somebody in really deep shock, they look as white as sheet. Now what happens is that the muscular tension of the blood vessels, they just kind of go limp, and so all the blood drops down to the lower end of the body, but theyre going to look absolutely bloodless. So it makes perfect sense that people observing the situation go, Wow, this poor person has been drained of blood. It does seem to be life energy and this is all something that the occult traditions have been studying for years and years and years.

One of the problems about our modern world and our modern belief in progress, or our great mythology of progress that says that were smarter than anybody who lived before us, is that a huge amount this affects everybody, this even affects people in the occult community who should know better, so you get people who dont bother to study 19th century magical texts because, of course, we know better. No, we dont. A lot of the 19th century magical material is light years ahead of current magical books. One of the things that youll find if you read these things are very detailed, very competent analyses of the traditional vampire lore. Everything that Im seeing now is something that was said 100 years ago, 150 years ago, by magicians and occultists in Europe who looked at the vampire phenomenon, researched it and said, Oh, thats whats going on. Here, have some garlic. Kala: Amazing how one book can change peoples thoughts about vampires like that, you know, from all these stories. John: All the stories, yeah. Well, Bram Stokers novel Dracula is the dawn of the modern vampire. Most of what we now think about vampires comes out of Stokers novel. Its a great book. It has very, very little to do with traditional vampire lore. I wont say quite nothing -- he did get the garlic, right, and a few other things, but generally speaking, its a work of fiction. Its a brilliant work of fiction, but you wouldnt just want to use your favorite airplane thriller as a technical manual for how to deal with an airplane, how to take care of the engine or something like that. Equally, you dont read Bram Stoker if you actually want to know about vampires. Thats true, across the board, by the way, with monsters. You name it. If it has any media presence at all, you can just assume that what the media has to say about it is wrong. Start with that and youll actually make far fewer mistakes in dealing with these critters. Kala: Why do you think there is such a fascination and a love for vampires? I mean, most monsters are feared or avoided, but a lot of people really love vampires. John: I just dont get it. Really, I just do not get it. Why, you know, dead things walking around trying to bite you should have the least again, its like getting really gooey about blood-sucking leeches, or bubonic plague. These are not good things to have around and why it should be thatwhy it should be this big emotional rush, I have no clue. It makes no sense to me. Kala: It must be the romance from the books, that sense of mysterious John: Yeah, the book and, you know. Sometimes I worry that its kind of a reflection of our own relationship to our society and our world, because we talked about it in an earlier show theres this concept that we are consumers, okay? And that is a very scary word when you think about it. We dont produce, we dont share, we dont make, we dont create, we dont save, we just consume. Thats what a vampire is. Its the ultimate consumer. Kala: Taking. John: All it does is take and consume. It doesnt create anything, it doesnt do anything, other than just surf, flutter around, and bite people. Maybe its become this kind of metaphor that people are using to try to come to terms with the lifestyles that we make for ourselves, I dont know. Kala: Interesting. John: Thats complete speculation but Ive at least scratched my head about that one, you know why the vampire? I could understand people getting really excited about a

werewolf, for example. Shape shifting always struck me as really cool, but if not, you know, werewolves dont get into the press. Kala: Well, lets talk about the werewolves. John: Lets talk about the werewolves, without hopefully thinking too many Marty Feldman jokes. Now thats one this is another of the places where the Hollywood version misses it and you need to look at being at the quasiphysical. Weve all seen sort of the Wolf Man, the guy who has the ultimate bad hair day, the sprouting fur and Lon Chaney. Thats what Im trying to think of, Lon Chaney, doing the bad hair day routine where he spouts fur and grows teeth physically runs amuck and sort of tearing peoples throats out and so on, and does a kind of big foot routine. Have you ever seen that? He doesnt actually turn into a wolf. He just gets very shaggy and goes around biting people. Kala: Right. John: Werewolf legends are shape shifter legends generally, because exactly what shapes people actually shift into varies from tradition to tradition, culture to culture, continent to continent. We get the following pieces of information out of, say, medieval werewolves. Well, first of all, the werewolf looks like a wolf. It does not look like a guy with a lot of hair glued on. It looks like a wolf, maybe a slightly larger than ordinary wolf, a wolf who you cant really hit effectively with except with very specific kinds of weapons. Try to clobber it with a wooden stick and you dont hit anything. Kala: Now, is that because its an astral body? John: Oh, okay, youre on. Yes. Kala: Okay. John: In fact, what were talking about here let me finish the run through because the one other thing that occurs constantly in the old stories is that while the werewolf is running around baying at the moon and possibly biting people, look under a bush, way over in the corner of this forest, and youre going to find the human body in a deep trance. Shape shifting is a form of projection. This is another bit of magical jargon youll hear a lot of talk about astral projection. In a magical view of things there are many different levels of being. Theres the physical level, which we all more or less know about. There is the astral level, which is the level of dreams, the level of imagination, the level of images, and of certain kinds of non-physical experience. Between them is that etheric level, the level of life force. There are other ones above the astral, but we dont need to go into those right now. So basically, theres astral projection which is tolerably easy, most people learn it in maybe a couple of months to a year of hard work. And then theres etheric projection, where you do the astral projection thing and then you bring some of your own life force into the astral body, because its so much closer to the physical. Etheric projection is much more tangible. Its not just sort of the transparent ghost-like thing that can walk through walls. Its not quite physical, but it can actually be hit and damaged by physical things if they are of a substance that will conduct etheric energy. Etheric energy is a little like electricity. Kala: Yes. Youre creating a double of yourself in a sense. John: Yeah, youre projecting an etheric double, but youre projecting it in the animal form. Youre usually doing it, according to the old folklore, with like a belt of wolf skin. So that gives you the pattern. That gives you the energy pattern to flow into, and you project this

thing from yourself. You build it up, you do it on the night of a full moon when the etheric tides are stronger, so you have as much energy as possible to work with. You transfer your consciousness into it and you go trotting out in the woods to howl. Kala: So thats the connection if I can interrupt for a second that with the full moon, its because of the etheric tides there. Its easier. John: Its because of the etheric tides, yes. One of the things that occultists and magicians have been using for well, time out of mind is you do your rituals by the phases of the moon. When youre at the full moon, or the last three days right before it, the etheric tides are very strong. If you want to manifest something in your life, thats the time you do it, because theres all of this etheric energy, the tides are at their strongest, and anything that you formulate on the astral level, you bring down all the etheric bring it straight down to the material it comes down with a lot more power. If you want to remove something from your life, you do it in the new moon or the last three days, because thats when the etheric tides are weakest, and thats when you can dissolve something and it just goes away. Kala: Now, an accomplished person who is shape shifting, could they become a werewolf anytime, not just during the full moon? John: If they were good at it and if they basically knew how to manage their etheric energy and built up a lot of it in their body by certain exercises, yes, oh yes. Probably the full moon business was part-time werewolf. Hows that for a concept? People who are just doing the experiment, or beginners ... Due to the length of this interview, it is being offered as Part One, Part Two and Part Three. Please continue to the next article: Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings Part Two. For more info: On the Explore Your Spirit with Kala Show, Kala Ambrose speaks with authors, artists, explorers and researchers, delving into topics of ancient mysteries, metaphysical explorations and new discoveries from science and spiritual arenas. Transcribed here is the interview Kala conducted with John Michael Greer about his book: Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings. *Special Thanks to TaDa Transcripts for providing the transcript of this audio interview Continue reading on Examiner.com Monsters: An Investigators Guide to Magical Beings interview with John Michael Greer - National Metaphysical Spirituality | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/metaphysical-spirituality-in-national/monsters-an-investigators-guide-tomagical-beings-interview-with-john-michael-greer#ixzz1Nt0T5J51