The Upyreshi as a race know that the enemies of the Dark Lord are also the foes of the race birthed by the God. The main foes of the Dark Lord and thus the Upyreshi are Enki the lord of light and order and his Elder Gods and Helel and his demons. Among the Elder Gods is Shamash the god represented by the sun, known to the Egyptians as Ra but is by any name the force of light. In legend it is said that Enki set Shamash against the Upyreshi and all else spawned of Asiz the Dark Lord. In legendary or occultic terms it is from Shamash that the weaknesses of the Upyreshi flow though some of them are clearly examples of evolution and adaptation. The conflation of the Roman sun god and the Jewish Rabbi is why it is thought that the crucifix is a ward against the Upyreshi by the Church of Rome as well as the Coptic Church which conflates the Rabbi, Ra and Osiris in the form of a bastardized Horus, i.e., non-Jewish Jesus under the sign of an ankh. The actual faith of the Rabbi has nothing to do with the sun or solar symbolism because the God of the Jews and thus the Rabbi logically is linked astrologically with Saturn.

It is not all light that harms the Upyreshi; though the race needs little light it is the light of the sun or ultraviolet light that causes damage. The particular light points to the fact that evidence suggests some link between the Upyreshi and fungus as is found in swamps and marshes or that the race came from creatures infected by a fungus. This same thread of lore evokes the link between the pineal gland and mushrooms of a particular type long thought to be the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, before the apple was adopted by the Church, because said mushroom expanded consciousness. In the ultraviolet light we have a particular type of radiation which attacks the biology of the Upyreshi by heating up the gases inside the body and drying out the body rather than burning the body with fire or reducing it to ash. The radiation of the sun also disrupts the aura or personal radiation of the individual Upyre, which is why if the race must be active by day it is weaker and the damage greater to it if the Upyre uses its powers by day. Symbols invested in by people bolster the aura of those that use them, making the aura of such people closed to the influence of others, Upyreshi or not. The disruption of the aura is also the reason for the warding effect of moving water, just as it disrupts magick or the flow of electrical energy and this, too, is a part of the Curse of Shamash.

Garlic, if harvested at a time of year when its allium is strong, will act as a toxin to some types of Upyreshi but not all, just as roses will negatively affect some but not all Upyreshi. Things like herbs having an ill effect show that Upyreshi are part of nature because all nature is balanced; it is simple, for every strength there is a weakness. Gold and iron when mixed are toxic to the flesh of an Upyre and gold is disruptive to the auric field of an Upyre, besides the link between the metal and the sun. Shamash shows the “light” of Enki in the world; it is the burning eye of the lord of law and order and so it rules these things that hinder the Upyreshi. This does not mean that the Upyreshi cannot use logic to overcome these works of “light”; indeed, with common sense an Upyre need not be troubled by them. Keeping fed and use of lore allows the Upyreshi to move and live freely by night or day. Just as Man can grow in the “grace” of the light so can the Upyreshi grow in the same of darkness and thus overcome the Curse of Shamash.

Beside those things that are traditional weaknesses of the Upyreshi, the Curse also concerns things like the counting need that is linked to the race in legend which many Upyreshi exhibit. The counting need, if noticed in the Upyre’s unawakened state, is usually linked to behavior disorders which the human world system uses to drug young Upyreshi and human young alike. One of the most profound manifestations of the Curse is the impulse many Upyreshi have to see humans as normal and themselves as not normal. The energy of the Elders tends to polarize and contrast, creating an air of guilt and contest where there is none, using the emotions to affect the mind and the world through the mind. This influence of the Elder Gods can impose empathy in Upyreshi for humans or a longing to be human or a need to define themselves by the limited scope of human standards as to emotional norms, social interaction and even the human idea as to what an Upyre or a vampire is. This is not to blame the Curse for all of an Upyre’s issues; it is merely a natural influence that the Upyre must come to terms and deal with.

The best way to deal with the less concrete and more intimate aspects of the Curse of Shamash is to sort out one’s own definitions of those things that many Upyreshi look to human media for and compare themselves to. This is an example of an Upyre “growing in the grace of darkness” as talked about in The Testament of Shadows, defining and making them solely within the scope of an inhuman paradigm. Doing this makes even the Curse of Shamash serve the cause of an Upyre as a goad for evolution and a limit to be overcome. If the Curse is the natural influence of the Elder Gods on the Upyre then the means to deal with the Curse must be the influence of the Old Ones on the Upyre. By building one’s link to the Old Ones, drawing on the fact that the Upyreshi are descended from them, the influence of the Elder Gods is lessened on that Upyre. It is important to understand that growing in one’s essence from the Old Ones does not mean attacking the Elder Gods because to fight them is to feed into the polarizing nature of the Elder Gods.

Even at their strongest, the Upyreshi will never be at ease in the light of day because the Upyreshi are creatures of darkness by nature. Being of darkness is not a part of the Curse but rather a part of what it is to be Upyre and to seek to the light beyond reason is to defame what it is to be an Upyre. The Upyre will always gain more through building personal power aligned with the race’s nature than it will through fighting the influence of the light, which is just as natural as the influence of darkness. Build the darkness and the influence of the light will retreat, not through conflict, but rather through individual empowerment and harmony with one’s chosen paradigm. Curses of this type are only as strong as the individuals that they apply to allow them to be, in part natural law and in part struggle between visions of reality. Neither vision of reality is more “right” than the other and each seems a horror to the other, a profanation of and to each other, yet they are parts of a whole. Understanding the whole allows one to partake in one’s portion without taking from any other’s portion. Upyreshi are microcosms of the cosmos; every individual of the race has in it the totality of the race. Keeping these facts in mind is all one needs for the breaking of the Curse of Shamash if one builds one’s power as an Upyre. The key to the chains of light and law are within the darkness that is the nature of the Upyre.