We are considering the idea of vampires and evil, tossing in the first of the Ten Commandments handed down by God/Jehovah, which are meant to guide folks away from sin – with the idea that sin prevents humans from contact with God, and hence sinners, such as vampires, are inherently evil if they sin.

For those readers who are unfamiliar, these Commandments (found in Exodus) were given to Moses after the Jews began to create themselves Idols after Moses, at God’s behest, led them out of slavery in Egypt. The Commandments begin: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; Do not have any other Gods before me.

How does that relate to vampires? I guess it depends upon which religion they embraced while they were still human – and this also relates to what symbols (link to religion section here) work to drive them away from potential victims, or to destroy them. Any religion which goes back to the moment when the Jewish people passed through the red-sea belongs to this Commandment. For this “is” the “Lord our God” who “brought us out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” And the first commandment is binding upon them: “Have no other Gods before me.”

But doesn’t this binding break when the human dies? (Yes, I will keep coming back to this question, having to do with souls, intention, and belief.)

Okay. What does “have no other Gods before me” mean? It hinges upon the usage of “before.” It is not used here as a time element, it does not say that they shouldn’t have had Gods before him, but here it is a location element: there should be no other Gods between the person and God. He wants to be held close to them.

Of course there is a caveat here. Elsewhere the Bible states that God can’t stand any sin, and that no sinner can enter heaven/His presence. But this is commandment is about intention, and even vampires can intend to hold God close. So, do vampires have Gods? Do they worship? I can’t answer for real vampires, but I can recall few vampires worshiping any God in any of the literature or stories I’ve read. Most don’t worship the small case god that would imply some sort of idol, nor do they worship the large case God of religions. By and large they make the same choices they made when they lived as humans before dying. They worship life. For the blood is the life.