It is often missed in media and even in the community that the word Upyre besides being a race denotes a kind of witch, a practitioner of magick. The sort of magick implied by the term is that which would now seem fantastical and outside the realm of what is possible. This magick is of a “time out of time” when the sentient races were one with the Gods and forces of nature, long before the idea of the fall and separation from nature was accepted by the world. Magicks such as these are not a matter of formulas, spells and rituals but rather a linking of what is without with what is within and directing both with your will. These are natural abilities of the Upyreshi that, if they are cultivated, show the fact that the Upyreshi are descended from divinity, whether others accept that fact or not. As the public Upyre-vampyre community becomes more solid and less of a subculture of the gothic community, abilities such as these are looked upon as fake or in some way frowned upon.

If we look at the legends of the vampire that are vulgarisms of Upyre lore, we see sympathy with the chthonic elements of nature and an empathy with the “meaner things of life” and the beasts of the night. The chthonic elements of nature are those of fog, storm and the like while the “meaner things of life” are the predators of the world. Are these powers not those credited to native shamans and priests of pagan divinities? Couldn’t the vampire of myth be the memory of a magickian or wizard, a shaman of a particular group of people that stood apart enough from the masses to be seen as monsters by the masses? Much of what has been attached to the vampire of legend is credited still to the Taltos shamans of Hungary which echo the old legends of the Scholomance, to which the legends of the vampire are also attached. The Taltos is seen by his people as a medium between all the realms, but would be seen by the Church and those not of his people as being a witch or perhaps as nonhuman.

The emotions of an Upyre are the weather of his inner world and he knows that to the degree of the force of his will the outer world can be made to reflect the inner world. By understanding his emotions and learning how to harness them, the Upyre can excite the energies of the elements of calm them by the excitation or calming of his own aura. In every Upyre there is an aspect that is bestial, the heritage of what is seen as the draconic source of the Upyre which the Upyre knows as its true self free of the pretense of humanity. By understanding his own Beast, the Upyre can vibrate sympathy or sameness to animals whose beast is similar to the Upyre’s own nature. If the will of an Upyre is strong enough and the rapport between the Upyre and the animal or animals is clear, the animals can be called or directed by the Upyre. These are but two examples of how the legends of the “vampire” have things to teach the Upyre if the Upyre is prepared to look at them in context. Seeing the legends of the undead as a body of talismanic images that disclose a spiritual and magickal tradition point to a culture that birthed those traditions, allowing one to invest in and use those traditions. The culture that birthed these traditions was cast as inhuman by the masses and, rather than being harmed by this imposed label, chose to be empowered by it and be freed from the limitations of what it is to be thought of as human. The Upyreshi never fell and were never cut off from nature; to be Upyre is to be divinity made manifest.