Shirikodama

Miguel Conner on The Vampire Myth: From Lilith to Wetiko

Aeon Byte Gnostic RadioOct 22, 2026

Gnostic author Miguel Conner traces the vampire myth from the Mesopotamian night demon Lilith through Slavic heretic-revenants, colonial bloodsucker legends, and Bram Stoker's Dracula to Jack D. Forbes' concept of Wetiko, the 'cannibal psychosis' of greed. He argues that every age invents a vampire that mirrors its own fears, whether death, outsiders, disease, desire, or consumption. Using Jungian archetypes and Gnostic cosmology, he presents the vampire as the shadow made flesh and asks whether the parasitic forces feeding on humanity are outside us or within us.