All Upyreshi of every tribe, family and lineage or feeding medium live with a Hunger which makes them part of nature, which they must feed to live. The Hunger is not an imbalance to be dealt with or a way to keep an illness under control; the Hunger is not a weakness unless one makes it so. If one does what is required, the Hunger can be a tool and a weapon, but in any case, the Hunger is a reality that every individual Upyre must come to terms with. The Hunger, like the Heart Beast, reflects the being of the individual; the Heart Beast embodies the power of the individual while the Hunger symbolizes what fuels that Hunger. The details of what an Upyre Hungers for from prey can reveal much to an Upyre as to its own nature, strengths and weaknesses. Understanding one’s own Hunger allows one insight into what drives other predators, which is a part of making an Upyre an apex predator above the rest. The Hunger is in a sense the song or sound in the ears of the Beast; focus on the Hunger can draw out the Beast and that which can draw the Beast can be used to calm it.

The Hunger can be visualized much like the Heart Beast and its shape should complement that of the Heart Beast such as if one’s Beast was a wolf one’s Hunger may logically be a stag or other sort of prey animal. Where the Heart Beast is seen as the true self of the Upyre and internal, the Hunger should be seen as external and is what enables the true self. To know the Hunger this way is a kind of reflective atavistic totemism; if one’s Beast or true self is one bestial icon, then what it Hungers for would be reflectively embodied by a proper animal. The Upyre must understand the mindset of the sort of prey it is drawn to, the same with its personality, personal power, body type and life force vibration. With this idea in mind, an Upyre would sense its Hunger as a stag or deer but also a lamb or cow, as would reflect the prey selection of the bestial icon used by the Upyre for its true self. Using this method, one would have a primary prey icon that represents the best type of energy for the Upyre to feed on and others that represent lesser qualities of energy. Humans that are not prey would not manifest a prey vibration, allowing the Upyre to be able to know “people” humans from “prey” humans.

By syncing one’s prey ideal to an animal type, one’s senses can be trained to translate one’s prey vibration into sensory data fitting that animal, such as a scent. The result of this sensory attunement is that, for example, a prey type human would give a deer scent to an Upyre that the Upyre can track. One can also use this reflective totemism in ritual or meditation in preparation to hunt or to draw out both prey and one’s Beast. In some cases, “prey” humans may actually have one’s prey animal as a totem, pointing out the role of tribalism within totemism, with ancient predator and prey relations between groups. This same thread of mystical lore and logic can be applied to one’s natural enemies, with those vibrations being represented by animals that are the foes of one’s own Beast. In some cases, such as that of the wolf, the foe animal may manifest in ways such as another wolf, save of another color such as grey or white. Understanding one’s Beast, one’s prey and one’s foes in sensory data expands one’s awareness and self-knowledge by study of the external. In terms of humans, this thread of lore can be seen in such terms as “a deer in the headlights”, as one example.

The Hunger, once it has been defined as to human traits and embodied as an animal, it becomes more than a way to understand prey; the Hunger becomes a tool and a weapon. By evoking one’s Hunger as a tool, one can gain insight as to the Hungers in others and through that to what drives them. The energies that embody one’s Hunger are tied to the separate energies that embody one’s Beast, so that insight as to one’s Hunger or that of others can lead to the knowledge of the Beast in others. With enough focus, an Upyre can tap into the energies of one’s own Hunger, to tap into and understand the same in others or in the external world, allowing one to find prey or places where one can find energies that would fuel one’s own energies. By evoking one’s Hunger as a weapon, one can use that energy to stimulate the Hunger in others or use them to blend into the herd of humanity, going so far as to create a seeming empathy with humanity. It is believed that in the so-called “burning times” and less obvious attacks on the Upyreshi like the French Revolution, using the Hunger to blend into the herd was used to pass “witch tests”. One can see the Heart Beast as the Yang to the Yin of the energy of the Hunger; as such, one can use one to manipulate the other. One can also see the Heart Beast or Zulo as Ki or personally generated inner power and the Hunger as Chi or externally generated life force that the Beast responds to and is fueled by.

The Hunger represents the passive energies of the world such as latent forces that can be tapped and used to augment the powers of an Upyre. One must work with the energies of one’s Hunger, do what it takes to make those energies serve oneself. The same can be said of the energies that one’s foe animal represents, showing one the presence of hostile beings or magicks and thus lead the Upyre back to their source. Because the energies of the Hunger are Chi, they are affected by the waves of emotion and thought, so that through the energies of one’s Hunger one can gain insight as to the thoughts and emotions of others. The type of emotional or thought based insights one can gain based on one’s Hunger energies will be those that answer to drives and motivations, primal, and may not even be known to the one that has them. Understanding a person in this way allows one to see how to hunt them or how they hunt, allowing one to track them, find them or hide from them. More often, this type of Hunger insight is used to manipulate others or to figure out how and why beings manipulate or interact with others. The energies of and thus the form that embodies one’s Hunger can be synced with the external world, so that to use one is to affect the other; as above so below, as within so without.

The Hunger is rarely overtly dealt with today as it is in this article, but has the same import to an Upyre as the Zulo or Heart Beast does. One can see the Hunger animal as the Yin of external energy and the foe animal as the Yang of external energy, with the understanding that the foe animal can be seen as that which would see the Upyre in some way as target or prey. Part of being a predator is that one is not alone at the top of the food chain; an aspect of not being alone is that other predators may see another as a target or prey. As always, all Upyre knowledge, and thus power, starts with knowledge of oneself and power over oneself. It is by understanding one’s own Hunger and one’s foes, i.e., that which would see oneself as a target as prey, opens one to the knowledge and power of the same outside of oneself in the external world.