Since so many have issue with the concept of the Zmeu or Zulo the Heart Beast being the true self of the Upyre in bestial guise. In revealing it to the House and community I had to draw on my own training and path work. First the term Zmeu or Zulo stems from the language of the Dacians and was grafted into that of Romania and refers to a shapeshifting draconic being that can be good or evil. Years after making this term active in the House I found that the term Zulo
was also used in a role playing game about vampires; this does not make the lore false it only shows that the authors of the game read some of the books that I do. Owing to my training in sorcery, shamanism and the like I used animals to explain the nine traits of the Beast and I broke it down into the Daemon or spirit and the mantle or aura of that spirit. Setting the animal nature aside one can address the Beast this way:
- How does the Beast think, how does it relate to and interact with the mundane world?
- How does the Beast relate emotionally and what drives it, what is its personality?
- How does the Beast express its will and as personal power on a metaphysical level?
- How does the Beast relate to the organic world and its cycles, how do those cycles influence the
Beast for good or ill? - How does the Beast interact with the external energies of life and the energy of other individual
forms of life, sentient and not? - How does the Beast relate to or not with the higher or lighter occult spectrum of reality and how
does it move through it? - How does the Beast relate to or not with the lower or darker occult spectrum of reality and how
does it move through it? - What elements or element of nature best resonates with and embodies one’s Beast, how do those
conditions in nature affect one’s Beast? - Given the Beast’s spiritual nature what is its domain in the world of the spirit and how does that
translate into influence in the mundane world; how or with what divinity does one’s total power
align one’s Beast? - Armed with the nine answers to the questions above what can one say of one’s Beast as a unified
whole, how does one ultimately define it for one’s self as a form of one’s identity?