“This cup of blessing we venerate, is it not a sharing of Christ’s blood? This bread that we break, is it not a sharing of Christ’s body” (1 Corinthian 10.16).
Fog. Castles. Howling wolves. Creatures that are centuries old. What more could you ask for at the start of October?
This week we’re going to talk about the 19th century novel Dracula, written by Bram Stoker. While I’m trying to keep them out of other posts this season, this week there will be spoilers. Because, if you don’t know the secret about the mysterious Count that Jonathan Harker has been called upon to visit, well…it’s probably time you make his acquaintance.
Dracula is the template for the modern vampire story. Some of the mythology of these undead creatures of the night was forged in Stoker’s novel. It’s story and its characters have been adapted in various media more than five-hundred times—from the stage, to screen, video games, and music to name a few.
I first read the book back in the early nineties, right before Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation came to the big screen. Last year was the first time I’d picked it up since that first read, and I’d forgotten how good, and engrossing a book it is. And as a piece of literature, it’s rife with themes of sexuality, xenophobia, colonialism, and much more.
But let’s stick to the basics for this week. Our antagonist, the mysterious Romanian gentlemen in his gothic castle, is a creature that feeds upon living beings, specifically human blood. The very idea touches upon a taboo that’s echoed in the Torah with the proclamation that blood is life, and it should never been consumed from any creature.
The other core piece of the novel is the weakness Dracula has against the symbols of Christianity. A cross or crucifix is not only painful by sight but can inflict wounds upon the vampire’s skin. The blessed host from the altar is just as destructive.
Which is interesting when you think about what that host and its companion cup represent.
Depending on your own theological understanding, the elements of Communion are either the real thing or a symbol of the reality of Jesus’ own body. Either way, the language doesn’t change whether you’re in a spire-high cathedral or a one-room country congregation. Week after week, year after year, the same words are said again and again: take and drink, this is my blood.
Sure, there’s a distinct difference in the sacred ritual of Communion and the violence of a vampire’s feeding. One is based upon a moment in history when the other is fiction born out of folktales and superstitions. But it makes you think about why, in legend and story, a faith with a liturgy of what its early critics claimed was cannibalism clashes with the creatures of the night.
Vampirism, least in Stoker’s novel, is a lonesome existence. Our antagonist lives in near solitude inside a castle that no one in the nearby village goes near. International travel is quite difficult—imagine spending weeks inside a box dependent upon minions to get you to your destination. And, of course, the socially limiting reality that anyone around you will, eventually, end up as dinner. The curse for taking and drinking the blood of another is isolation.
Communion, as its name suggests, is very much the opposite (or is supposed to be). Jesus’ act, reenacted again and again over the centuries, is a unifying one. Its purpose, amongst many, is to provide a moment where differences are normalized, where economic and social hierarchies are leveled, and where all who come, even if for just a few brief minutes, sit together.
It’s perhaps why, in story, the symbols of Christian faith are repulsive and harmful to Dracula and other vampires: they embody a life that they are denied. Consider if you were consigned to a life of loneliness, one that forced you into separation from the rest of humanity: would there be anything you’d want less contact with than an icon of community?
Mind you, how these symbols still hold that kind of power over these monsters is surprising. Far too often in history, even to this present moment the cross, the cup, and the faith they represent have been used as tools of division.
But, perhaps, this attests to something within them that, even if we humans forget, the children of the night do not. That behind the admonition to take and drink is one whose love was so great that the icons he left us with carry within them something our human failings cannot dull. Maybe, abused and misused as they’ve become, the one who held bread and cup on a spring evening shines through, revealing a place to which all can come.
And find the One who says take and drink.
Beloved One, bring us together at your table.