Can you briefly describe your concept of vampirism?
I live the vampirism of the Sahjaza dynasty started in the mid-seventies in the United States, in Washington State by our Goddess Matriarch Rosemary Sahjaza. A path that offers spirituality as a process and path as much as a mystical one to experience the ecstatic process and sip the “Blood”. It might seem a little complicated, but it is as natural as an ancient forest whose treetops are so tall and dense that inside there is only an infinite greenish light (like an emerald stone) that darkens and darkens as our vision extends into its depths.
For us the mystique of Sahjaza and also of the Strigoi Circle called Vampyrism is something that is born simply with us and perhaps with allegories like “Graça” or “Good Fortune” often used by the Italian Nicolò Machiavelli which is very appropriate. You do not learn it, you do not accept it, you become it only if you improve it together with the kindred and those of the “Blood”. In the best Socratic, Platonic or Aristotelian sense I can compare it to a demonic inheritance. Peter Lamborn Wilson (AKA: Hakim Bey) comments in Shower of Stars: Dream and Book, on how shamanic origins in Middle Eastern Sufism and the Asian plains or even in Tantrism were something frequent, long before scholars established and deduced their own metrics to the theme.
Our active focus consists mainly in Contemplation (a dry and explosive way for some alchemists compared to meditation) and in aesthetics (in the sense of awe, as used in philosophy) and in the way in which it feeds on the life force of what Mírcea Eliade called non-ordinary reality. There is a meander (such as that described by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, in the mysterious Via del Serpente) and something artistic in it, which makes the gaze shining, and brings it closer to the verticality and vertigo of the so-called clear vision or adamantine gaze as proposed in his works by my dear brother Thomas Karlsson. We are nourished by “Blood” but nothing born can offer us such nourishment. It is very similar to what the Norsemen call Oðrerir (Odhrerir) and some alchemists such as Michael Scott or the author of Le Tombeau de la Pauvetré would describe it as an Elixir Rubeus. And if on the one hand we take it on the other we offer something that will fill such a void that it is nothing but insufficiency in the face of something that vibrates more intensely and dryly like a Vampyro or a Vampyra.
Our “Blood” comes from the atmosphere, the environment or the people and what it offers, delivers and fills the empty space with what has been taken and what will come from there. Unlike the tone of the “dark night of the soul” and a certain gnostic refinement, often used by occultists when it comes to vampirism, we have a more rooted origin in paganism and in the plurality of a nocturnal and primordial shamanism. Let’s take a look at “Beleza”, but in the sense closest to the “Sublime” used by the great Umberto Eco in the work História da Beleza. What is rare, nourishing and good for each of us, what glitters, warms, nourishes is naturally ephemeral because it clashes with the scandalous, raw and unbalanced tone that is life in these postmodern times. Yes, I know that I write a lot and I don’t know how to express much of what I live and what I love. But I think none of this is strange or perhaps perverse for a DJ who experiences trance during his djing, a model whose gaze plunges into himself while photographed, a guitarist soloing in the middle of a big festival. … the more they reveal themselves the more they hide … the more they define or reveal themselves, the more they run away in this wild garden … perhaps like Lilith wrapped in the wings of an owl.
2 – What is Rede Vamp
Rede Rede Vamp is the nickname of Vampyrica Network in English sounds like Vamp or even Vampyric Network is a digital platform born 20 years ago from my work dedicated to bringing together people who live the fashionista side of vamp cultural production as well as those who live or crave a vision of the world into a vampire mystical or spirituality. Currently it offers well over 900 articles, a few hundred podcasts and videos focused on the contents of the Community Vamp, born above all in Brazil, has spread through South America and has also reached Portugal. Of course, we are one of the many branches that make up the international vamp community and all its ethos and practices. We organize annual events such as Carmilla Dark Gala Night in the beautiful Hasbaya Mansion, a place with over 150 years of history. A grand dinner and ballroom for immortals from all over the world. We organize Fangxtasy and Rede Vamp Nights, periodic parties in night clubs such as the Madame Underground Club in Sao Paulo. And then a black limousine drives through haunted places and stages of suffocating love stories. In addition to the evenings, we offer book presentations and photographic safaris in the historic center and in the forbidden places of our city. But the Vamp Network is even more, much more.
3 – In addition to being a great populariser in the esoteric field of LHP, you are also an artist, would you like to tell us about your career?
I like to see myself as a creator of worlds and someone who walks in these realities. It has always been a principle in my life and has irremediably made me a person obsessed and persecuted by “Art”. And art has something apotropaic and demonic, it teaches the courage to see landscapes and understand what happens in their innermost layers. A bit like the Goblins who dance in the void and celebrate their moment in the universe. “Art” has educated me to think about what we do which will always be inferior to what we idealize and therefore it is better to stick to what we do. When I was a teenager, when I read Lords of Left-Hand Path by the brilliant Dr. Stephen Flowers where he explained to LHP how Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, I felt I was on the right track. It goes without saying that whoever presents himself as a Vampyro and hasn’t hidden him from the world for two decades is something that is antinomic and that expresses with a certain elegance (and a certain clandestinely acceptable extravagance) the forces, symbols and allegories of the “Other Side”, ” in this Wild Pagan Garden which is our world.
In part, I am an underground and alternative DJ who performs themed events with atmospheres and artistic interactions that in different layers and shades refer to the Vamp aesthetic. For loving everything I do too much I’m certainly well-intentioned to have a guaranteed place in hell (laughs). I am also an illustrator who has participated in fanzines since the nineties and then became a professional in the advertising industry and I lived well with this job which allowed me to pay the bills. Already in 2007, an album by Therion called Gothic Kabbalah introduced me to the theme of Adulrunas by Johaness Bureus (Sweden, 17th century) and this led me to encounter the works of his lyricist, the good doctor Thomas Karlsson. And for many years the Adulrunas have become one of the focuses of my illustrated dream practices and diaries, which today are part of the pages of the Peruvian version of the book Adulrunas and Uthark (Editorial Manus Sinistra). And since 2014 I have become a very active writer with 10 books published in Brazil and some of them also in English that have circulated a lot all over the world. With the arrival of the pandemic in March 2020 I became VJ and set designer for my online DJing and for many themed parties.
Another interesting thing to mention is that in a theatrical presentation I have already shared the stage with the iconic character Zé do Caixão and his daughter Liz Vamp. And I also played some characters like The Phantom of the Opera and the Vampire Lestat along with my wife Xendra Sahjaza. Another performance is developed in the video Inês The Dead Queen by the band Wolfheart and the Ravens. We recently participated in the horror film “Almas que Dançam no Escuro” by director Marcos de Brito which is an adaptation of his book “Palavras Interrompidas” and which is participating in some festivals in Italy and Spain. On October 31, 2021 I participated in England as vocalist / narrator on the album Vampyric Ritual Chamber Music by Columbarium Station. An exquisite work of the multi-instrumental musician Fabio Hattock, who is a member of the Strigoi Circle and together for 7 years we have ritualized and established this very special work of art dedicated to the Vampyrica Worldview. The album will be available on Bandcamp. It is very exciting for me to experience the “other side” of music creation after being an amateur music journalist for two decades. In the past I have recorded the backing vocals for the Brazilian band Tuatha de Danan and I have also acted for Ciberpajé’s Post Human Tantra.
4 – What is “Vox Vampirica”?
If the Rede Vamp expresses itself, crystallizes and shows itself as a vision that, just like a network, involves everything related to the “Blood” allowing it to thrive and be safeguarded to strengthen itself, Vox Vampyrica is the voice that expresses a vocation, a primordial howl in front of an automated, medicalized and excessively Germanic-Protestant world of gaseous and generally utilitarian relationships. The Vox Vampyrica is like a roar that brings visions, ideas and words of power that shock people who think alike, and the “Blood” and show them that they are not alone in the way they feel and see the world. . It’s a nice way to talk about this podcast that I created in 2006 in my room, when podcasts were still something of a quirk in Brazil. It thrived, became a studio-recorded podcast, became a weekly web radio show, and even had a long season as an FM radio show in Portugal at Antena Minho, on the SOS Heavy Metal Radio Show. And today is a bi-weekly podcast distributed by Spotify to our subscribers. 16 years of its history are celebrated in 2021 and more than 550 editions have been completed. Its focus is on the vampire universe, philosophy, chronicle, and offers an hour of abstraction and good conversation for like-minded people and “Blood”.
5 – You joined the “Global United Nightside” platform, how do you conceive this “union in diversity” of individuals who are part of the various LHP currents?
5 – You have joined the “Global United Nightside” platform, how do you conceive that I was one of the first signatories of Global United Nightside because, first of all, diversity and plurality are our strengths if we think well and embrace more variables and indicators broad and global. At the same time, we are quantitatively few compared, for example, to the Abrahamic religions and we are a potential target for the most fanatical confessions of these religions. We know that the most fanatical groups calling for brutality and terrorism are dissonant parts of the Abrahamic religions themselves but can inflict structural damage on pagans, the LHP and the occult as a whole. Not only these, but media hysteria like Satanic panic also serves institutions, brands and governments for periodic bonfires of small brands, publishers and entrepreneurs. In short, it is admirable and necessary to have among us a movement and a culture that fosters dialogue, support and mutual assistance from all of us to face scenarios that put our freedom of thought, expression and our own religiosity in spirituality and mysticism. Is there a “union in diversity” of individuals who are part of the various LHP currents?
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