Many new to the path laid out in The Testament of Shadows kept by House Rakoczy and the other Houses of Clan Dracul wonder at the need to find the Zmeu or Heart Beast. The Beast is the true self of the individual Upyre regardless of the lineage, family or tribe of the individual, using an earthly animal to embody an unearthly nature. The Beast has three aspects to it: the Daemon, the Mantle and the Quintessence; the Daemon has five parts, the Mantle has four parts and the Quintessence is unitary or singular. The first aspect of the Daemon represents the mind or logic of the Upyre, the second represents the personality or feelings, the emotive perceptions of the Upyre. The third aspect of the Daemon represents the will or personal power of the Upyre, the fourth aspect of the Daemon represents the biology or flesh of the Upyre and the final aspect of the Daemon represent the individual life force of the Upyre. Each part of the Daemon is represented by an animal whose traits and lore best embody the aspects that embody the Daemon of the Upyre. Daemon is a Greek word that means spirit and should not be confused with being a demon or spirit being that is aligned with Tartarus. The Mantle is in a sense the shadow cast by the “light” of the Daemon, i.e., the spirit body or double of the Upyre. The first part of the Mantle represents the darker or the more dense aspects of the Upyre aligned with the umbral sphere of reality. The second part of the Mantle represents the lighter or more fluid aspects of the Upyre aligned with the astral sphere of reality. The astral and umbral spheres combine to form the occult or unseen aspect of reality and, when the animals that go with them are combined, the Upyre comes to its elemental essence.

The elemental essence shows which elements of nature the Upyre best resonates with in terms of air, water, fire, earth, wood, metal, jewel, matter and energy. Like the animals of the Daemon and those of the Mantle, the Upyre can assume the atavism or shape of its elemental essence. The elemental essence or form is a union of the Daemon with the astral and umbral, the occult aspects of the Mantle expressed through and imposed upon the elemental realm of the mundane sphere. By harmonizing the spiritual or Daemon with the occult and the elemental energies, the Upyre is led to its totem which represents the total power of the Upyre, both the internal and the external power that the Upyre resonates with in both the occult and the mundane. It is the totem, often but not always a serpent, that the Upyre shapes into its actual Beast; many see the totem as a multi-headed serpent or dragon with the other animals for its heads and the elemental essence as its venom or blood. By working with the totem once it is realized and using it to express one’s inmost nature, one’s Daemon and Mantle are made to wed and one’s true self is realized in bestial guise, the Quintessence of the Upyre. The Quintessence or Beast is all that came before it and that still functions within it in a singular bestial form, which reflects one’s true self made conscious as an idealized atavism. Beasts of the same kind are known as phenotypes among the lineages of the families in the tribes of the Upyre.

Seeking the Beast is a means of seeking to understand oneself while at the same time learning to set aside human pretense and define oneself as an Upyre. In a sense one is working inward toward the reptilian baseline of the Upyre and then shaping it to reflect one’s eternal essence in the present moment. Besides the need for inhumane self-definition another reason why we seek the Beast is to claim the Upyre birthright of being a Shapechanger, bridging the biological and the elemental, because the Upyre is a divine being of the spiritual realm expressing the spiritual radiance hidden in the material, not escaping it.

In Book 2 of The Testament of Shadows, in the 14^th verse of the Litany of Sebek Khem it states:

“We are blood and flesh of the darkest of nature, the raven, the wolf, and the
serpent. To these do we shift as man does take in his air, for we are one spirit!”

In the raven and wolf we can see exemplars of the umbral and astral aspects of the Mantle, with the serpent showing the totem and air the elemental form of this Mantle, evoking the Daemon or spirit that the Mantle is the spirit form or Double of; all of this points to the blood and flesh of the darkest of nature, the nature of darkness, its quintessence represented by the Beast of the individual Upyre. The Blood of an Upyre has in it a spirit which has a force which has a form and knowing these allow the Upyre to mold its essence as it would will, but first that Beast must be understood and the Upyre must be made consciously aware of it and it brought under the will of the Upyre. It is from the Beast that the Upyre gains its fangs and claws that allow it to serve both its needs and desires as it wills to do. It is through the Beast via exploring its aspects that we find the reality of the saying: “One blood, one race, one people with one destiny this is who we are.” By delving into the Daemon, the Mantle and the Quintessence of the Beast, the Upyre sets itself apart from all other Upyreshi; this action demands that the Upyre find those things that it has it common with other Upyreshi. In coming to know what it has in common with others of its own kind, where it is particular or special is made to stand out. Where the tribe, family and lineage links an Upyre to others, its Beast and the aspects that compose it and how they are expressed belong to that Upyre alone. Yet while that is true, seeking one’s Beast without lust of result but frank honesty can lead one to one’s lineage and thence to one’s family and tribe, because each of the lineages understand and work with their phenotypes differently.

As a mental construct, the Beast can be seen with the Daemon being the id, the Mantle being the true ego versus the human pretense of self-image and the Quintessence as the super ego having power over the id and the ego. As an example of how the Daemon resonates with the id, the aspect of the Daemon that deals with personality and its desires also concerns the Hunger of an Upyre and how it goes about feeding that Hunger. Knowing oneself as a Beast is a way to profile one’s habits, strengths and weaknesses as well as one’s relation to the cycles of nature and the cosmos. Indeed, this is also why Upyreshi rarely let others know their Beast in full and how they understand that Beast. An Upyre with occult skills and knowledge of the Beast in others could conjure and affect that Beast and its aspects, showing how knowledge can be true power and the same is true with understanding of behavior. Any Beast fully realized and made conscious is a power on par with most other Pretenders and spirit beings, with no phenotype being better than any other, or worse for that matter. In mastering the Beast, the Upyre must consume the human pretense that has grown in the Upyre prior to its Awakening, and the defeat of that human pretense is often a part of the Change of that Upyre. The yoga taught by House Rakoczy is meant to harness mind and will to harness and manipulate the Beast to access those abilities native to the Upyre without the constraints of ritual or ceremony.

In mastering the Beast in full, one is able to impose that Beast on one’s own physical form, forcing one’s flesh to mirror one’s true nature. This use of the Beast upon oneself brings the vitality, strength, speed and senses linked to Upyreshi in myth and legend. It is the Beast and mundane conscious self being out of balance that makes the Upyreshi more open to the weaknesses of the sun and so on linked to the Upyreshi. If the true self is fed and kept to its natural cycles the Upyre is vital and the weaknesses of the race can find no room to act. By the Beast consuming the pretense of humanity and the mundane self being wed to the Beast, one is a being of legend.