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Whether intentional or not, the fact that the Twilight vampires have their own unique lore serves as a brilliant reminder that nothing is ever as it seems.  We live with a false sense of security that if we stay inside certain known and familiar lines, and if everyone and everything in our world stay inside the same lines, then we can never be hurt, disappointed, surprised or humiliated.  If we establish these boundaries for our lives and our belief systems, then we can comfortably and safely sit back and conclude that we have everything “figured out.”  What a relief.   But in that instant, a trap door opens in the illusion of those safe and familiar boundaries, and we fall through to the other side, outside everything we imagined we knew.

Similarly, the totally new mythology for the Twilight vampires turns traditional vampire lore on its head.  In fact, some people have dismissed and/or criticized Ms. Meyer’s work on this basis.  The new lore, though, reminds us that we become complacent and arrogant about what we think we know.  Vampires do not even exist, for Pete’s sake, but we hear the collective gasps and the questions of “how dare she??” demanded from people who claim to be vampire “purists” and “experts” – we hold such a high premium on what is known and familiar that we actually dismiss or judge a fun new twist on imaginary and mythical creatures.[1]  All of this simply illustrates how powerful the temptation is to compartmentalize and categorize things into “known” (safe and non-threatening) and “unknown” (threatening, therefore flawed).

We spend our entire lives cataloguing people and experiences by whether they fit within our known boundaries of safety and familiarity.  The myth, though, is that there are boundaries separating us at all.  (See the link for “Duality vs. Oneness.”) The totally new vampire lore reminds us that just when we become too comfortable in the illusion that we know everything or have everything figured out (about anything, including imaginary creatures), the myth of that illusion will be exposed, and the truth will be totally different from anything we ever expected or imagined.  Such is life and all things in it.


[1] Ms. Meyer further explores this in her novella The Second Short Life of Bree Tanner, available at  http://www.amazon.com.

Bree and the other newborn vampires, like us, believe that vampires are not supposed to be free to walk in the daylight hours without burning to death.  They believe, like us, that vampires are supposed to sleep all day underground or in small confined spaces.   The novella exposes, however, that all of those myths have been created over the centuries by people not understanding what they were witnessing (spectacular sparkling versus bursts of flames and thus the need to stay out of the daylight hours, for example) and the fact that other vampires have used the mythology against the newborns to assert power and dominion over their behavior and loyalty through fear.

2 Responses to “Steph’s New Vampire Lore”

  1. Sue Schwass says:

    Hi Jennie,
    The only comment I have her is that perhaps we try hard to keep things the way we think they are because if “vampires” are not what we think they are then maybe We have to change.

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