#soucouyant

[caribbeangirlfolkloring]

The night-soil men can see a bird walking in trees. It isn’t a bird. It is a woman who has removed her skin and is on her way to drink the blood of her secret enemies. It is a woman who has left her skin in a corner of a house made out of wood. It is a woman who is reasonable and admires honeybees in the hibiscus.

Jamaica Kincaid, from At the Bottom of the River

[allmythologies]

day 30 of horror mythology: soucouyant

soucouyant appear as a reclusive old woman by day. by night, she strips off her wrinkled skin and puts it in a mortar. in form of a fireball, she flies across the dark sky in search of a victim. the soucouyant can enter the home of her victim through any sized hole such as cracks and keyholes. soucouyants suck humans' blood from their arms, necks, legs and other soft regions while they sleep, leaving black and blue marks on the body in the morning. if the soucouyant draws too much blood, it is believed that the victim will either die and become a soucouyant or perish entirely, leaving her killer to assume her skin.

[gennsoup]

She tells me now that she doesn't understand that thing called memory. She doesn't understand its essence of dynamic, and why, especially, it never seems to abide by the rules of time or space or individual consciousness.

David Chariandy, Soucouyant

[briefbestiary]

A burning being with some vampiric traits. As an additional note, if one manages to find her skin and rub it with salt or hot peppers, she can be killed as this will prevent her from reentering her skin.

[thegenxorcist]

Soucouyant

The Soucouyant is a creature of Caribbean folklore that has been passed down through generations and remains an urban legend in many parts of the Caribbean. Originating in countries such as Dominica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guadeloupe, the Soucouyant is described as a supernatural creature that takes the form of a vampire-like being with an insatiable thirst for human blood. In this blog post, we will explore the mysterious and fascinating Soucouyant and its connection to urban legend...

Soucouyant: The Vampire-Like Folklore of the Caribbean

[petewentzisblack1312]

can you weebs start romanticizing caribbean creole culture please. thank you.

[candela888]

After much research I have decided that vampiric entities in the Americas come in three different types, based on region. If u have any questions feel free to ask.

Vampiric entities of Mexico & Southwest USA:

Ojai vampire

Chupacabra (dog-like variety)

Tlahuelpuchi

Lechuza

Vampiro de Belen

Cihuateteo

Witch-like or animalistic. Tend to feed on defenseless children or animals. Many can shapeshift, usually into animals like wolves or owls.

Vampiric entities of South America:

Pishtaco

Abchanchu

Peuchen

Chonchon

Capelobo

Patasola

Tunda

Boraro

Animalistic and monstrous, many of these are barely even humanoid, usually horiffic to look at. Tend to go after adults, and are usually malicious. Many have backwards feet.

Vampiric entities of the Atlantic Coast:

New England Vampire panic

NYC vampire sightings

Hag, Ole-Higue, & Boo Hag

Chupacabra (alien variety)

Vampiro de Moca

Loogaroo/Rougarou

Soucouyant

Asema

New Orleans vampire sightings

Jacques St. Germain

Almost always humanoid, usually undead, sometimes witch-like, tend to attack people of all ages.

[annabelle--cane]

latest report on my vampire movie journey: byzantium 2012. I saw this one in 2015 or 2016 and, though I couldn't remember much of the plot, there were a few visual images that stayed with me, so I thought I'd give it another go now that I am older and wiser. overall I felt like the performances and cinematography were great, though it was a bit heavy handed and sensationalist with its treatment of sex work. it's doing a similar thing to bit 2019 with its use of vampirism as power and the idea of women reconstructing hierarchies of control in the process of rejecting patriarchy, and imo it does it a little more gracefully by connecting those hierarchies to motherhood rather that consciously political female separatism.

my real qualm is what the hell they were doing with soucriant folklore? I make no claims to be an expert on this but I've read a few novels by authors from the francophone caribbean that involved soucriants/soucouyants/soucougnans and they are simply not anything like what is presented in this movie. my best guess is they wanted to do that artsy genre film thing and avoid saying vampire but fucking. say oupire. why invoke afrocaribbean syncretic folklore when your movie has fuck all to do with the caribbean and your brotherhood of vampires is explicitly a hoity toity white boys' club? truly perplexing creative decision there.

[uzumaki-rebellion]

Final thoughts...

I have decided that Nicki is a soucouyant. She carries all the traits of one and since she's from Trinidad and Tobogo originally, it all makes sense as to why she acts the way she does. Her die-hard fans are douens, and again, if you know about island folklore from that part of the world, it all comes together.

And that my friends, is my last words about that woman and her stans.

[caribbeangirlfolkloring]

[devilsskettle]

I wanted to read about the soucouyant. I wanted to write about her, I still do. What do I want to write? Just a book, probably, another tooth for the UL’s mouth. Something that explores the meaning of the old woman whose only interaction with other people was consumption. The soucouyant who is not content with her self. She is a double danger — there is the danger of meeting her, and the danger of becoming her. Does the nightmare of her belong to everyone, or just to me?

White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi

[gennsoup]

"No, child . . . That won't make me happy. Justice don't never make anyone happy. Is just justice."

David Chariandy, Soucouyant

[courferrevevo]

Interview With the Vampire, S2E7 “I could not prevent it”

As always, the soucouyant seemed more lonely than bad. Maybe that was her trick, her ability to make it so you couldn’t decide if she was a monster. Still, I wondered if the salt and pepper were really necessary—they seemed too cruel when it would be easier to despatch her by blowing out her flame before it grew, or by holding a mirror up to her wrinkled face and saying, “I don’t believe in you.” But then, maybe “I don’t believe in you” is the cruellest way to kill a monster.

White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

[drsilverfish]

Dean’s Soul in the Bardo -   The Art of Dying 1x06 The Winchesters

Catching up British-time, so a bit late to the party as usual, and coming to it fresh, as I like to do, without jumping into the time-line first. 

Screeches a bit because I am overwhelmed.

This episode suggests that, on one level, we can read every character in The Winchesters as manifestations of Dean’s consciousness, as he hovers in the “bardo”, the liminal realm in Tibetan Buddhism, between death and reincarnation. 

Mary - the leader and hunter who wants to get out of hunting; John - filled with wounded rage, Daddy-issues and violence; Carlos - the fabulous bisexual who dares to get into therapy and to go after the men he wants; Lata - the abused child who manages to chose love over violence - ALL OF THESE ARE ASPECTS OF DEAN WINCHESTER’S being, his experience/ soul/ desires <sobs a little because it’s beautiful>. 

Now I’m back on my meta, I’ve previously mused on The Winchesters as a reparative narrative told by Holy Ghost Dean Winchester; a counter-point to the traumatic narrative of Supernatural.

1x06 The Art of Dying offers further illumination and elaboration on that concept, namely:

The episode title, “The Art of Dying” is a George Harrison song, the right time-period for The Winchesters (1970), from his album All Things Must Pass. 

The Beatles, in keeping with the hippie counterculturalism of the time, were interested in Eastern spirituality, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism, and this Harrison song was inspired by his reading of Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead (1964). 

Harrison’s lyrics are about the religious philosophy of perfecting the soul through cycles of reincarnation:

“There'll come a time when all of us must leave here There's nothing Sister Mary can do, will keep me here with you As nothing in this life that I've been trying Can equal or surpass the Art of Dying....

There'll come a time when most of us return here Brought back by our desire to be a perfect entity Living through a million years of crying Until you realize the Art of Dying “

A theme which fits well with the Ouroboros (serpent swallowing it’s own tail as it ascends) narrative of latter-day Supernatural, which drew on Jung and esoteric alchemy to manifest the Winchesters’ journey as the journey of the soul towards God.  

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is the Bardo Thodol, which means “liberation through hearing in the intermediate state”. It is a 14thC esoteric text (or possibly older but that’s when the written text we have dates from).

John, Mary, Lata and Losy all struggle with pain, parent-induced and violence-induced and hunting-induced trauma, but they are able to communicate their feelings to one another in a way which is strikingly and remarkably different from the enormous struggles with emotional articulation which animated Supernatural, which we watched Dean suffer with throught his life. 

So we can read The Winchesters as Dean’s revelatory hallucinations in the liminal state between death and liberation (or rebirth) - his revelatory sexual and emotional healing soul-dreams (in which, and what could be more Freudian, he returns to the scene of his parents).

And look, Lata is teaching John, who surived being possessed by the vengeful spirit of abused-as-a-child and violently out-of-control Mac, how to meditate and achieve higher consciousness (with an image of a globe in the background):

And isn’t it interesting that the rare type of vampire which Mac’s vengeful spirit first possesses is called a “soucouyant”, which means (incongrously, one would think) “carefree” in French. But not so incongruous if The Winchesters is about the journey of Dean’s soul to liberation, to bliss, to being “carefree”...

[separatist-apologist]

In celebration of your new fic today, I send you options for a Wikipedia entry!

Vampire-like creatures from around the world!

Mapuche culture in Chile!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piuch%C3%A9n

Colombian/Afro-Colombian Pacific Coast!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunda

The Fiend, a Russian Folk tale!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fiend

And I’m from Louisiana so you get the Loogaroo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soucouyant

(I will also be checking out the podcast!!! Thank you!!! I’m familiar with how Romans besmirched Cleopatra, but I love talking about it. I’m not surprised about Elizabeth, and I look forward to learning more about her!)

Your Wikipedia Anon

I fell asleep before I saw this, so there was no wikipedia article. I've been rewatching the Lizzie Bennet diaries, too- does anyone remember that? Lizzie JUST got to Collins and Collins.

I think I'd choose the Mapuche culture in Chile followed by Colombian/Afro-Colombian Pacific Coast- these are usually the two categories I prefer in my wikipedia article-ing. For some reason I am REALLY into geography when I'm on wikipedia.

[snuffalufagus]

not to hv my tumblr card revoked but honestly werewolves n vampires dont appeal to me ni l'un ni l'autre in the slightest idk myb im just caribbean n a scaredy cat n ive had enough stories growing up during black outs abt soucouyant n la djablesse n douen n the tall guy at cross roads etc etc