Contemporary Myths Demystified for Sedevecantists: Dracula and the Rest

Here in Portugal there are several myths circulating today, posing as substitute religions. Some pray to a Dr. Sousa Martins. Fatimism is also rampant. (The reader might find strange that our blog denounces Fatimism, but we have to dissect the extremist views related to Fatima.) These cults are folk religions and are widely spread in Portugal, although the latter is not limited to Portuguese territory. Then there is the international belief in vampires. Some satanists believe they are vampires and follow the cult of Dracula. The Harry Potter mania and belief in the Da Vinci Code are also contemporary ills. When truth is out of the window, any insanity goes.

Let us start with Dr. Sousa Martins.

Dr José Tomás de Sousa Martins (7 March 1843 – 18 August 1897) was a doctor renowned for his work for the poor in Lisbon, Portugal. After his death, a secular cult arose around his personality in which he is thanked for “miraculous” cures.

Wikipedia

He was never canonized by the Church, yet people regard him as a popular saint and ask for his intercession. He wasn’t even a Catholic, and died an agnostic. There is even a monument dedicated to him in Lisbon, Portugal. Even some wiccans and other witches have adopted his cult. In esoteric shops one can find medals with his face and prayer cards dedicated to him. Selling this stuff generates some pretty profit. Here in Portugal the habit of visiting witches is very popular. Not that I believe that it works, but it’s a mortal sin.

Fatimism is another popular aberration. It involves treating private apparitions on the same footage as public revelation. This belief is more fitting of Mormonism than of Catholicism. People visit Fatima in the same way they frequent witches. They know nothing of Marian dogmas, neglect the Mass and the Sacraments. They neglected Mass and sacraments when they were widely available and now they continue to neglect their novus ordo substitutes. Most fatimist pilgrims march on foot from Lisbon to Fatima, a 90 mi (150 km) road. Most remove their shoes in the end. Others are crawling in circles around the apparition site, some crawl on their knees between the new “basilica” and the apparition site. Yet they don’t care for the Marian dogmas or the Catechism. Fatimism in the international context originates with “Fr.” Nicholas Gruner, a novus ordo priest. He was a Canadian of German descent.  There is also a cult of the new “Sister Lucy”. Not that we do not recommend devotion to Our Lady or reject the Fatima apparition, but we do resent fatimism as a substitute for the catechism. I heartily recommend the Rosary and the Brown Scapular, the full consecration to Our Lady and the Saturdays of reparation. But let the reader understand that there is a substantial amount of folklore built around Fatima here in Portugal. There are some volumes of alleged revelations of Our Lady to Jacinta Marto, circulating without ecclesiacal approval. Nobody really knows whether they are authentic. I wouldn’t bet on it. We are not against Fatima, as some think, but be reasonable, people!

The Da Vinci Code is also a fictitious story, as his author, Dan Brown has meant it to be. He has clearly stated it, yet this doesn’t stop some readers to take the myth literally. The fictitious story goes on saying that Leonardo da Vinci has created thousands of artwork and that’s what the fictitious journalist deciphered to come up with his story. In reality, he made about seventeen but finished only four, so one can hardly make statistics out of those. If even the facts one can easily check do not correspond to reality, how could we accept the  alleged conclusion. Dan Brown demonstrates an utter incompetence of ecclesiology: he identifies the Catholic Church with the  novus ordo sect! So forget about any credibility. Yet this myth, just like fatimism, the cult of Dr. Sousa Martins, and the story of Harry Potter has acquired a life of its own, notwithstanding the declared intention to the contrary of its very author.

The Harry Potter story is the least interesting of all. It’s a hodgepodge of everything, belief in vampires, Wicca and other types of magic. Its author, the freshly shaved Rowling woman has clearly stated her intention to write some fiction, yet some take it dead seriously. Kids still keep sending their applications to Hogwarts Academy!

The most interesting story is that of Dracula. It’s a mixture of several things. But to understand it, we must first clarify the concept of vampire. Where the hell is this coming from? In the good old times there were many people suffering with rabies. Rabies spread through biting, and they usually bit the neck of their fellow humans. The contemporary observer interpreted this as blood sucking, hence the concept of the vampire. Since after the bite, the victim ended up suffering from the same ailment, they came to believe that those bitten by a vampire became vampires themselves. Rabid people tended to avoid society, so they dwelt in desolate places like crypts. Hence, the myth of the vampires sleeping in coffins. They suffered in presence of sunlight, and that’s where the vampire’s vulnerability by sunlight is coming from. They had an aversion of water, that’s why vampires became vulnerable by holy water. Rabid people had aversion to the smell of garlic too, that’s why the myth of the vampires’ vulnerability to garlic. As bats are blood suckers, one understands why Stoker has associated them with vampires. Hence, the idea that vampires can fly. Since they are against God, one understands where the fear of the cross is coming from. Since exorcists prefer to use wooden crosses, it can be seen why they can be killed by wooden stakes. But I confess I have no idea where the myth of their immortality comes from, and sincerely I don’t even care. I refuse to research every BS. Interested parties can do that themselves, but sincerely, I don’t recommend it.

The character of Dracula is as awkward as it gets.  Bram Stoker was utterly incompetent of the history of the region where he places his characters. Vlad the impaler was the ruler of Walachia who lived in the fifteenth century. (Romania as such did not exist at his time. When Bram Stoker, [whose acronym would be BS, how fitting] wrote this, there already was a Romania.) And boy, how surprised Vlad would  be to  find out that some four centuries later the Stoker guy will confection him into something else! He had never had rabies. In the fictitious story his wife has committed suicide while he was waging war against the Turks. The “Orthodox” priest said her soul could not be saved anymore (just like any traditional Catholic sedevacantist priest would have said), hence his hatred of God. That’s why he became a vampire and changed his name to Dracula. (The interesting question is why did Stoker choose him and nobody else? Because he was cruel towards the Turks and impaled all he could lay hands on. Believe it or not, contemporary Turks are still upset with him. But we know that this type of cruelty was the order of the day back then.  Besides, it was the Turks who did the very same thing to everybody else, so Vlad did nothing more than giving them the taste of their own medicine. Yet they are the ones upset! Go figure!) Then Stoker placed Dracula’s personality to Transylvania of the late eighteen hundreds and made him a Hungarian count. Let the reader kindly see that the Stoker guy made an utterly awkward mixture of history (he was incompetent of), myth, facts about rabies and the political situation of the region of the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries! So he mixed all these up, created a one-dimensional projection with them, and hammered a fictitious story out of this projection.

As Rowling, he has clearly stated that he meant this story to be a fiction, yet this didn’t stop anybody to transform it into a religion.

There are several similar occurrences when fictitious story ended up transformed into religion. The most conspicuous is the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith Jr. took his story from the book of Solomon Spalding, which one of his associates stole from the author. He was also a Freemason and an occultist gold digger, so he also made a nice mixture of things. H’s intention was to became greater than “prophet” Mohammad, son of Abdullah, “peace and grace be upon Him”. But to discuss his story, first I must discuss Islam, which is another topic.

Scientology is also based on fiction, but that should be a topic for another article.

And there are more interesting stories I have to tell to my fellow sedevacatists. For example there is the story of Ellen G. White, an Adventist, who unwittingly has contributed to the creation of Watchtower. Hopefully I managed to make the reader interested in comparative religion. If we are sure that we are in the right, there’s no reason to fear. Without understanding religions, we will never understand history, as one of the main forces shaping it is religion.

We, Catholics (traditionalists and sedevacantists, as there is no other kind) must be minimally informed of how others are thinking. Here I can contribute, if there’s enough interest.