Damned Vampires: Third Commandment

Damned Vampires! Gosh Darn vampires!

The Third Commandment is about “taking the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.” This means that vampires shouldn’t be using God’s name as a swear word. Easy, peasy, right? Don’t vampires swear a whole lot? Slow down. There are a couple of things to think about here. If vampires aren’t allowed to enter a Holy house, get near a cross, handle Holy water and all that stuff, then it stands to reason that they also couldn’t say “God” or any variant of this. Mary Janice Davidson’s books leap to mind here, where everyone cringes when Betsey (the only vampire who can), forgets herself and exclaims “God.”

This has to do with the power of the name and it representing the reality of the thing it symbolizes. My cat has a reality, a real physical presence which is represented by her name. When I say “Lola ate her catfood in the kitchen tonight” the proper noun Lola is taking the place – symbolizing – the real cat Lola. She is distinguished by name from every other cat I have ever owned. There is power in the word; it makes the verbal sound represent the physical presence. Cool. When I say the name, she is present in my mind – even if not physically in the room with me. When I say “God,” he is symbolically present to me. Most vampires don’t want “God” physically anywhere around them. Perhaps it raises the whole soul issue, eternal resting place issue?

But then, not all vampires even believe God exists – and there are more and more of these sorts of vamps in our increasingly secular society. In the Reilly season of Buffy the vampires enter a church to find fresh blood and discover that they had been misinformed, they declare that God wasn’t in the house, to paraphrase. They believe this lack of Godly reaction to their presence means that God isn’t real. That the entity/spirit match to the verbal sound “God” is a broken connection. They would then be free to use the Lord’s name to swear, but swearing “God damn slayer!” is really a stupid thing to say if there isn’t a God to do the damning of the slayer? Isn’t it?

Perhaps it is the quality of the novels I read, but there simply isn’t a whole lot of swearing going on. Editors rightly consider it wasted space which someone will have to pay for. And whether or not real vampires swear is up to the real vampire as far as I am concerned.