This is one of the flat-out weirdest works I've ever edited; a short work, it treats on poetry and prose related to vampires, details both blood drinking and psychic attack, and altogether appears to endorse the concept that literal vampires- that is, in the strain of Dracula, able to keep a corpse semi-alive or appear in apparitional form- are both real and very dangerous....
This work is one of a number of interesting titles on the subject of vampirism that come in the late premodern period. Many works even from that interesting early 20th century academic era only fixate on vampires as the bloodsuckers of specifically southeastern European lore- this work manages to extend its scope to Asia and Russia as well and includes a number of interesting...
This work is Rydberg's finest- an academic compilation of subjects ranging from a treatment of the burning times, and of religious philosophy (dualism, specifically) to short passages on some cryptids of note, to various meanderings through the high ritual magick and alchemy of the era spoken of. Clearly hostile to Catholic lore, Rydberg manages to choke back his disdain of that...
