Not black, but shades of purple...

You might already know me. I lead several groups and participate in many others, and I'm always around to chat with like minds and maybe give some comfort and companionship. In any case, I'm Sappho Wolf and I'm what you could call an active personality in the real vampire community.

This is the story of how I have arrived at this point without getting into dull Dickensian description or some morass of pointless self-promotion.

Let me begin by saying I was raised in a philosophically open family. My family encouraged me to use my mind and my imagination, to explore and discover. There was no such thing as taboo. Now I can look back and see where the roots of my vampirism are in my own upbringing. I was raised to be open and aware, and so I have continued to be.

My "awakening", as it were, happened on August 6, 1985--the fortieth anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Actually, that was the day when months of self-examination and reflection crystallized for me. I was not yet 14 years old. I hadn't known the words "empathic" or "psionic" and consequently could not have used them to describe what I had been experiencing. I knew I was living with a different and heightened set of senses, and that the whole of me hungered and yearned for something I couldn't identify.

I had come into the sphere of House Maidenfear, a vampire sanctuary, months before through initiated friends that seemed to really understand what I was experiencing. On that day, the puzzle pieces of my thoughts clicked into place. I too was a vampire. I decided that I would never deny that aspect of me--in fact, I could never deny it. I would embrace vampirism and my existence as a vampire.

For the following four years I spent a great deal of time at House Maidenfear, learning and developing my own abilities. My own initiation was in 1989, once I turned 18. However, I had to take the Maidenfear Way and my own life as a vampire on an adventure. I moved away to college, where I studied history and linguistics and became an expert vampire researcher. I was able to enhance that skill in graduate school in Florida. Wherever I went, I made connections with the local vampire communities. I came home to House Maidenfear in 2001 and I was elected to my current station in the Order of Maidenfear in 2003.

I came to call myself Sappho after a thorough reading of her poetry. Her words have such an ability to wrench deep emotional energy that I came to regard her as something of a vampire herself.

I believe that there exists an entity of living energy all around us and in the universe. I mean that this energy is both alive itself and imbues all things with life of one degree or another. A vampire is an adept at energy play, an adept at tapping into this living energy for self-benefit. For some this is achieved through drinking blood, for others it is a matter of psychic living energy. A vampire knows how to take what energy they want and need and use it for their own purposes.

I believe we as vampires are at an exciting time in our history. At no other point in the history of the world have circumstances been so ripe for us to fully express ourselves and be true to what we are. My commitment to the vampire community is to help us achieve our greatest potential.

Well, you can't get much more personal or expressive than by writing a book about yourself and your experiences. I'm the lucky devil that has that chance. A review of my twenty-odd years in the real vampire community transformed into a book proposal which in turn became a contract to write a non-fiction work by a real vampire about real vampires. "Real vampires, no crap!" remains my motto. This isn't some attempt to scandalize the public with sordid tales from the vampire underground. Of course it isn't, because that's not what we are!

Over the years I've met a lot of vampires and gathered a lot of information. On the one hand, I could write the book with what I already have. But this is an ongoing process and a work in progress, and I want to give you online an opportunity to contribute and be recognized.

Here are links to two online forms. The first is for individual vampires to share their thoughts on several questions. The second is for individuals, groups, or services that would like to be listed in a directory in the appendices. All contributors will receive a release form by e-mail.

Questions for Individuals at http://vampform.wufoo.com/forms/vampire-research-project-submission/

Vampire Profiles at http://vampform.wufoo.com/forms/vampire-research-profile-form/

If you prefer something a little more old school, you can contact me by good old snail mail.

Sappho Wolf
c/o Stone Bench Associates LLC
PO Box 45626
Philadelphia, PA 19149-5626

If you have any real interest in getting yourself and your vampirism noticed, this is a great opportunity to contribute to the vampire community. Unlike many other authors who have taken a more distanced approach in writing about vampires, I am part of the community itself and have shared experiences. Should you choose to participate, you have my thanks!

In closing, I would like to leave you with the Creed of the Kindred.

I am vampire.

I kneel before no other creature. I am an intelligent animal who has retained my animal intelligence.

This flesh of mine is a gift in which I revel passion and ecstasy, but my lot in the convoluted universal matrix is to exist as a creature of energy. I thrive on the energy of the cosmos around me. That energy exists in many forms. It exists in lifeblood, in psychic forces, in the angry hurling of lightningbolts from cloud to cloud.

This diversity manifests on the earth in the many different and legitimate breeds of vampire which share the world with mortal humans. Knowing my lineage, I seek to mate my personal energy with that of magic and nature as a vital part of my existence. Pounding surf, rustling crisp leaves, magical ritual-all of these empower me, and I take what is offered or what I have made for myself.

As a vampire, I am a natural being part of the natural universe. I am not confined to this plane or this dimension. I am a cosmic being of fluctuating energy. The matter that makes my flesh and flows through my body drifted down from the stars over millennia. My sight and my vision are necessarily wider and broader. Life, death, what are these to me? They dance as close as hungry lovers. This is no two-sided mortal coin but one great continuum.

The impetus of eternity, then, is the power of the vampire. It is my power, and I claim that power for myself.

Ananke!

Sappho Wolf

The Quadrivium at http://vampirerenaissance.ning.com
Vampires Evolving: The Order of Maidenfear at http://vampiresevolving.ning.com

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All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false in meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.