[Seelenbräute und Vampirismus]
[Two articles combined as one.]
Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl[1]
[Begin: Seelenbräute und Vampirismus. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 6, no. 38 (November 1895), 785-796]
A vampire is a spirit which possesses a person and saps the life force of the person whom it possesses, draining their nerves and ultimately driving them into madness and death. But what is meant by “spirit”? You don’t have to think of a ghost which walks around outside of man and propels in the air. The word “spirit” in German means so many different things that one has the choice to understand what one wants by it. There is still the declaration: “Who still believes in ghosts and spirits these days?” — and yet we are all spirits ourselves in a material visible shell, because a person without a spirit is a corpse, even if he has a good appetite, but spiritually dead. By “spirit” we (my teachers and I) understand a unity of will and idea; in other words, a willpower enlivened by thought and made self-conscious.
Thought arises from feeling (desire) and from these two the power which creates forms (concepts, images and also “fixed ideas” in the human soul); whether this is done intentionally and consciously, or unintentionally and instinctively, the result is the same. The materialist “is bereft from speaking a great word” when he says that spirits only exist in our imagination, but he imagines that the creations of imagination are nothing and that he would have destroyed the world of spirits with his oracle-speech. And yet imagination is a force which produces actual substantial phenomena in our minds, and forms them in our souls—so that they are as essential to our inner perception as an external thing is to our physical senses. The more powerful the imagination, the more powerfully do the ideas projected in the mirror of the soul appear objectively before inner perception; be it through the inner sight or the inner feeling; and under certain circumstances, known to every metaphysician, especially in the case of weak-nerved and mediumistic persons, the figures thus formed can become externally objectively visible and tangible not only to the one who created them, but even to all those present; which is sufficiently established by the already well-known so-called “ghost or spirit materializations.”
But it would be a great mistake to believe that no external influences are at work in the creation of such “spirits.” A seed, be it physical or psychological, does not develop and grow without an influx of nourishment and stimulation from outside; water and earth bring nourishment to the plant, and light and heat stimulate it to grow until that from the tender germs finally becomes a tree to which the skeptic who does not believe in trees can cling. Likewise, through the thought which arises from the sensation, corresponding ideas are attracted from the “astral plane” (world of thoughts), enter the mind of man, reach his consciousness, and the thought can finally become a “fixed idea,” over which reason loses its dominion, and which takes possession of the whole inner being of man. Lovers and fools and fanatics of all kinds could tell of it if they had sense enough to see their own condition.
The lover is in love with the idea he has of the object of his love; he creates for himself an image of his beloved in his soul, and this image is created and nurtured by his sense perceptions, by the sight of his beloved and the sound of her voice. Another creates the object of his worship in his imagination without external help, but he attracts through his desire corresponding influences, larvae, beasts, monsters of all kinds, ghosts and devils from the underworld.
A thought which has come into existence in me is not a physical thing distinct from me, and yet that thought is not “I,” nor am I the thought, but it is a part of my being, arising out of my will and imagination, and insofar as this being, or this “spirit,” has become self-aware within me and is distinct from my own self, it is my other, my false self, alter ego, “dual,” or whatever you like to call it; it is a thought born in me and of myself, “incarnate” in me, animated by my will, a part of my nature which lives of and in me and can die in me or outlive me.
Man is a “materialized” spirit sprung from will and idea. He is a composite of a sum of powers and qualities which constitute his ever-changing personality. If there arises in him a fixed idea which prevails over his reason, we have a special group of qualities in this sum, an individualized idea within this product of idea, a will made antithetical within the will from which it is born, a “ghost” in spirit. Thus, out of the various feelings, sensations, desires and instincts of man arise various ideas, thoughts and spirits, which attain an individual consciousness in him and can become his false “life,” just as the many people on earth are only the false “I” of the Deity, are self-confident, individual, physical manifestations in the all-self-consciousness of the one World soul. If the human being dies, his composition dissolves back into its respective components, the True in him goes into the Truth, the characteristics which he borrowed from nature are not annihilated but return to nature again and are attracted and used again by other corresponding organisms, in order that they regain consciousness and enter the cycle of life. This is true not only with its physical constituents, but is also the case with its psychic components; everything returns back to its origin in the end; the body to matter, the mind to spirit, and the passions to the source from which they emerged.
So it is, for instance, the sex instinct in man is not a man and also not a ghost flying around in the air, but a form of will in nature, which exists in people and animals as the sex drive and can become so powerful in man that it has dominion over his reason. It is then a natural force personified in man, a spirit which has come into being in him, a false ego which impels him to all sorts of unreasonable actions and which imagination can give any arbitrary form. When the human being dies, this force of nature, which manifests itself in him as a sex drive and which we call kāma, does not cease to exist; if it finds favorable soil elsewhere, it nourishes and develops the psychic germs located there and reappears in other people and animals as their sex drive on the stage of their existence. In this way, the passion which inspired and possessed a living person to love can affect or possess another person even after death. It is not the deceased person who poses as the “soul bridegroom,” but rather the psychic energy which the deceased left behind and which the possessed person shapes and dresses according to the fashioned and clothed interplay of his imagination. The dead person knows nothing about it. It is the same among the living. Only a very ignorant man today doubts that the sensations of one can produce the same sensations in another “and influence the thoughts of one” or the other without the former being who just died being aware of it. If a person dies who has activated a certain kind of kāmic energy during his life, it continues to exist as a force of nature, just as heat leaving the body continues to exist as heat and warms other bodies. The death penalty is also an error of ignorance if one thinks it has rendered harmless, a harmful influence previously set in motion. One destroys the form, the tool, but not the driving spirit. Such forces of nature or “spirits” have no individual consciousness, no judgment or ability to think. They are influences, which attain individual consciousness first in the person in whom they become evident and attain it again through the same person.
Among these “spirits” which a perverted sex drive can bring into being in man are the “incubi” and “succubi” of the metaphysicians of the Middle Ages, which correspond to our modern “soul brides” and “soul bridegrooms,” namely by a “Incubus” a feminine form (Elemental) created in the imagination of a sensual human being, and under a “succubus” a masculine form sprung from the female imagination.
{R.H.—Although the above is how the original German text would be translated, Dr. Hartmann did not give the standard interpretation of incubus and succubus. Further on in this article he gives the story of the woman, of who’s male lover died, was, through her imagination, the originator of the incubus. See further on, below: “the young woman was attacked by an incubus” and “The incubus was created by the imagination of that woman herself.” A standard English translation would be, where the gender is now correct based on the metaphysicians during the Middle Ages: “namely, by an “incubus” is meant a male form (elemental) created in the imagination of a sensual human being, and by a “succubus” a feminine form sprung from the female imagination.” Thus, we can see occult conditions such as this require close understanding due to a complexity as to the causes and not superficial observations.}
{Continuing the translation:} In India they are called “mohinīs” and “piśācas,” and Theophrastus Paracelsus calls them “phantasms, dragons, monsters,” etc. They are really existing beings, created by the person concerned and nourished by spiritual influences, they are states of mind of those affected by them and prove their existence only too clearly by the disruption of the nervous system and the decay of the physical forces which they cause. That the ignorant and unwilling to know, will answer scholarly arrogance only exclaims “superstition”!, and thinks he has explained everything with it, is irrelevant. It is the most convenient way of making one’s mark among the ignorant, and of getting rid of questions about things one does not understand. Vampirism is a tiresome fact that cannot be abolished by denial. Those who are impressionable are vampirized and drained not only by influences emanating from the remains of the dead, but also by their living fellows; mentally, morally and physically. In the physical as well as in the psychic world, one tries to eke out an existence at the expense of the other, whether this is done consciously and intentionally, or unintentionally, instinctively. The thoughts of one affect the other without the other knowing their origin, and if the thoughts which called into existence the people who came before us could not affect us, there would be none in the world at all Progress. The spirit of Goethe or Shakespeare still lives and works today, even if the personality has long since dissolved into its elements, and no one will imagine this spirit as a specter flying about the world. The ideas which great minds call forth nourish the germs in the hearts of those susceptible to great ideas, and the same is the case with the passions. Man is an embodied spiritual force; he disappears from the phenomenal world, but the power remains. It is like a cloud in the firmament that comes and goes, but the air and water that formed it persist and bring forth new cloud formations.
Those who have studied the literature of the occult and metaphysics will not be short of material for reflection on vampirism. In Professor Perty’s book “Mystical Appearances in Nature,”[2] in Kiesewetter’s writings,[3] in the “Kloster” etc. there are a number of events described in relation to the vampirism of the dead and that of the living, which can be cited here, I prefer however, to speak based on personal experience.
In G … . lives a woman with whom a young man was in love. But as he was a drunkard and vagabond, she spurned him, although she felt a great affection for him, and married someone else. Out of his injured vanity, the young man shot himself dead and soon afterwards the young woman was attacked by an incubus, which visited her at night and had sex with her. She could not see the “spirit” but could feel it and felt the same as if a living person were with her. These visits were very repetitive, especially in the absence of her husband, and shattered her nerves, so that the husband finally felt compelled to seek medical advice. Through an increase in moral power, the woman was healed.[4]
(Conclusion follows.)
[Begin: Seelenbräute und Vampirismus. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 6, no. 39 (December 1895), 868-881]
(Conclusion.)
According to the theory of a certain class of spiritualists, the specter (the astral body) of the suicide would be the cause of this phenomenon. Thus, after discarding his material body, the suicidal person went personally to his former lover to have fun with her. But those who know the laws of the spirit see things quite differently. The incubus was created by the imagination of that woman herself; the love for this suicide which still remained in her heart formed the seed from which the incubus grew, and the nourishment which it received for its growth consisted in the influence which the passion aroused by the suicide during life exercised on her mind. From her own inner desire grew the idea in question, clothed by her memory in the form of the spurned lover, and became her “other self,” which became objective and tangible to her. However, the fact that the closeness of this woman had a very depressing influence on sensitive people suggests that the power which fed this vampire really came from the remains of a suicide. Not only did she harbor suicidal thoughts in herself, but many of her visitors, although unaware of the whole matter, were infected by her presence with a bad temper and suicidal thoughts, which often lasted for weeks.
Similar cases are by no means uncommon, but the action of these vampires differs in different persons according to their nature. Some would like to get rid of these influences but do not have the moral strength to hold these influences at bay; others welcome them and find their greatest pleasure in associating with these invisible “husbands” and “wives.” Still, the victim of such vampires becomes debilitated by the continual excitement of his or her nerves, sensitive, irritable, prone to tears, suffering from prostration despite the greatly increased appetite, and not only becomes vampirized herself but also vampirizes others, depriving those near her with part of their life force. I know of various old ladies who seem to keep themselves alive only because they constantly have young maids around them, from whose “life magnetism” they feed upon, and quite a few such maids become victims of such without knowing the vampires, and succumb to wasting away and pulmonary tuberculosis.
If you don’t know much about what’s going on in the world, you might think that cases of vampirism, incubi and succubi are rare things that only happen very occasionally; but anyone who has paid any attention to these things knows they are amazingly numerous. Among spiritualists there are thousands who are possessed by a vampire whom they take to be their soul bride or groom, and even those who associate with embodied manifestations of this kind are common. There are men and women who tell with delight the pleasure they get from associating with their “dual,” and old women who think they are offering themselves selflessly to him by having sex with him because they think such that their “spiritual progress” would be promoted. It seems there is no limit to human folly. Some are content to dream of their “dual,” others feel his presence and touch, and still others see him while fully conscious and enjoy the amusements of married life without sharing the material inconveniences thereof.
The fact that an incubus or succubus can, under certain circumstances, assume a corporeal, visible and tangible form is no secret to the metaphysician who knows the laws of nature with which we are concerned. Schiller described such a case in his “Bride of Corinth,”[5] Washington Irwing relates a similar one; the literature of occultism and spiritualism abound with such facts, and the history of the Middle Ages furnishes innumerable examples. It goes without saying, however, that one cannot make all this immediately understandable to everyone, and that the “how” and “why” cannot be explained in a few words, especially to a scholar burdened with prejudices; because such persons do not yet have the rudiments of understanding these laws of nature. Eduard von Hartmann says in his brochure about spiritism: “The public has a right to know what these things are about.” Come on! these things had been preached and explained for a long time, but not understood by the public. We would therefore like to turn the sentence around and say: “The metaphysicians have a right to demand that the public wanting to be scientific, should learn to think for themselves and to understand the explanations given.” Those who know nothing about the beginnings of metaphysics are similar to the position of a farmer who imagines he knows that there are horses hidden in the moving locomotive which cause its movement. In order to convince such a peasant, one would first have to explain to him the construction of the locomotive and the effect of steam power; for which he would neither understand nor have the patience to listen to the explanation. In order to explain the laws of “materialization” to the physicist, who knows nothing about metaphysics and is looking for everything on the wrong path, he would first have to learn to understand the actual nature of “matter” and the occult constitution of man. In the living human being there is no impassable gulf between spirit and matter. Spirit, soul and body are connected by intermediate links; the higher acts on the lower, the spirit on the mind, the mind on the body; the spiritual finally finds its expression in the material, which is a symbol of the spiritual. The key to this enigma lies in knowing the properties of the “astral body” or that part of the human organism which the Indian calls “liṅga śarīra”[6] but which is still a terra incognita for all European science, about which our philosophers are still puzzled. You can rack your brains for a long time without getting to the bottom of the matter, if you don’t want to know anything about the old Indian sages, who have long since described all this scientifically. But the public has the right to demand that our physicians and doctors, if they want to preserve the aura of omniscience any longer, step out of their swamp and instead of being satisfied with mere “observation,” should get to know the psychological causes, from which most physical diseases arise.
There is no external phenomenon without an higher cause. No spirit comes out of man which has not first entered into him. Without form and shape there is no light which builds up and embodies the plant. Without reason and without form no psychic influences can enter the unguarded mind of man, come to consciousness in him, and take shape and form in him. Such figures can appear objectively and physically so that they can be perceived by everyone with all five senses; the organ involved is the spleen, the occult function of which, like that of the pineal gland, is unknown to current official medical science. Anyone, like the author, who has seen such materializations dozens of times, touched them and spoken to them, is no longer interested in the well-known alleged “unmasking of fraudsters,” all the less so as such “unmaskers” are usually present to expose nothing more than their own ignorance.
The “soul brides” and “soul bridegrooms” referred to here are therefore not persons existing in the hereafter, but the consciously or unconsciously created products of one’s own desires and ideas, but nurtured by the influences pouring out of the supersensible world. An ancient Egyptian proverb says: “As it is below, so it is above, and there is nothing so insignificant in the world than that which it does not depend on some superior; so that when what is below stirs, what is above stirs towards it,” and in the Bhagavad Gītā it says: “He who offers himself to the gods [devas] goes to the gods [devas]; whoever sacrifices himself to the demons [elementals] enters into the demons [elementals].”
But what are these demonic influences and what are the demons?
In the physical world we perceive various forces in which there is no known kind of consciousness; heat, light, electricity, etc. belong there. On the psychic level, on the other hand, there are similar forces in which consciousness is present. Desire (Kāma) belongs there, which reveals itself in humans and animals as this or that passion, depending on their nature. A man developing a certain amount of any passion thereby, creates a focus of kāmic energy, much as a flame creates an accumulation of heat, and this in turn radiates out to other people. Such centers of power of demonic desires constitute the demonic influences, and the demons themselves are organisms in which these influences are embodied and typified. Just as on the astral plane every form corresponds to the character it represents, there, an ugly passion cannot but present itself as an ugly form, and if our spiritualists could see in their true form the soul brides and bridegrooms for whom they are so excited, they would turn away in horror and disgust. It is not about “deceased persons” but about their kāmic remains. The warmth which a dead man has lost is no longer the man, and the wrong forms of will and mental images which he has produced and which have been separated from him no longer belong to him, but are the rubbish which he left behind, upon which the demons fatten themselves.
But of such demons, beings half animal and half devil, there are very many different kinds, which, though not perceived by the physical senses, are nevertheless present; even if the supposedly “enlightened” cannot know anything about them, since they themselves have been possessed by the spirit of self-conceit and have become identified with it, and therefore see nothing at all with the spiritual eye but their own self and its chimera.
Unconcerned with the circumstances which oppressed or rejoiced him on earth, man’s spirit rests in Devachan[7]; but the passions, animal instincts, and base intellectual powers which he has left behind in the world of desires persist until their activity is exhausted. This sum of desires constitutes his kāmic remains left behind. They represent an energy on the astral plane [desire plane] which is attracted to where it finds organisms conforming to its own nature, just as the magnet attracts iron. Such a sum of energy is called an “Elemental.” It is devoid of reason, understanding and judgment. But when it enters a person’s sphere of consciousness, it participates in his consciousness and is a part of his consciousness. She is in him and he is in her.
In a letter from an adept He says: “Every outgoing thought of a person enters another world (world of thoughts) and demands an individual existence there, in that it is associated, so to speak, with an elemental, i.e., with one of the semi-intellectual forces which exist there. Such a thought (spirit) lives on as an active mind, a creature which the mind has produced, and the duration of its existence depends on its inherent energy. A good thought lives on as a beneficent force, an evil thought as a devilish force, and man thus constantly populates his own spiritual sphere with the products of his desires, instincts, and fantasies, which in turn affect other minds as the case may be, to the degree of their receptivity.”
Ideas are things which actually exist, whether their creator is dead or alive. Every sum of thoughts animated by the will, be they good or bad, represents a star in the firmament of thought, sending out its rays to receptive souls. The slumbering impulse in the mind is awakened by the influences corresponding to its qualities, the seed grows and unfolds and a second ego arises, which according to its origin can be an angel or a devil. In order to recognize such a “spirit” one must not consult the appearance but one’s own conscience.
One of the greatest gifts of the spirit is being able to discern between spirits. Anyone who does not have this power and gives himself over to influences he does not know is in great danger. Anyone who wants to get very close to the spirits and have association with her should have a pure heart in which nothing is impure. Through his higher self-consciousness he should form a circle around himself, into which no impure thought can penetrate. Then the eternal truth will be reflected in his soul, and he will recognize in himself the image of God, who is the Lord of all Spirits.
The spirit of truth in the heart fills man with strength, but the spirits of lies feed on his life. Whoever lives in the consciousness of the truth lives in his true Self, he is independent and free; but whoever indulges in fantasies and fantasies expresses himself; he loses himself in the moonlight of his imagination and scatters in space the strength which has been given him for his inner growth. To enter into Oneself and to know Oneself in the sunlight of wisdom is better than all theories and science whose end is the gratification of curiosity. The pure Human Soul is the true Bride and the spirit of wisdom which enlightens her is the Bridegroom. Through this alone arises the true union from which the Son of Light is born in man.
Notes
[1] Soul Brides and Vampirism [Seelenbräute und Vampirismus. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 6, no. 38 (November 1895), 785-796; Seelenbräute und Vampirismus. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Lotusblüten 6, no. 39 (December 1895), 868-881] {These articles were reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl, ©2025}
[2] {R.H.—Die mystischen Erscheinungen der menschlichen Natur. Dargestellt und gedeutet von Maximilian Perty. [The Mystical Phenomena of Human Nature. Shown and interpreted by Maximilian Perty] Leipzig, C. F. Winter, 1872.}
[3] {R.H.—Carl Kiesewetter wrote many articles for Dr. Wilhelm Hubbe-Schleiden’s journal, Sphinx.}
[4] {This would indicate the incubus was an elemental generated either from the earthbound, former lover who died and was at his command, or due to her imagination, generated an elemental}
[5] {R.H.—I do not know of Schiller writing anything with a similar title. However, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published a poem titled: Die Braut von Korinth [The Bride of Corinth] which is most fitting of Goethe’s topics of authorship.}
[6] {R.H.—The esoteric metaphysicians of India considered this the body through which the life principle or prāṇa pulsates. In early, Blavatsky-era theosophical literature, the term “astral body” applied to the body of the life principle (prāṇa). This body is called the liṅga-śarīra or model-body, because it is a duplicate of the physical body. In later theosophical teaching, the “astral body” applied to the body of desire or kāma-rūpa. As long as the student knows this, then there is understanding and can wade through the various theosophical writings with ease, as the word “astral” simply means “of, connected to, or resembling the stars.”
[7] {R.H.—From the Tibetan (bDe ba can), this is the Buddhist higher heaven realm experienced by the deceased during the latter period between incarnations. It is also an illusory realm.}