Letter from Castle Dracula The newsbullettin of The Transylvanian Society of Dracula December 2001

December has always been a magical month, hasn’t it; it was in December that our society came into being ten years ago, as an interface between Count Dracula and the world.

The philosophers will tell you that the Good cannot be evinced without the Evil. The great fresco on the outer wall of monastery Voronet, in Bucovina, Romania, "The Last Judgement", makes room for both Heaven and Hell. Understanding the dark side of our mind has been our constant, scholarly aim.

Founded by reputed scholars and endorsed as a valid source of debate & information by fellows of academies, university professors, researchers, writers and by the romantics of the world, TSD started to probe the yet un-mapped territories of our psyche, of our preoccupation with fearful taboos, unveiling awesome secrets and unanswerables. There is so much more to conquer, to shed light on, but the pace of discoveries is alert and we thank you - scholars of the world, romantics - for your contributions and incessant curiosity.

Our thanks also extend to the sometime unorthodox press that created awareness of our existence and work.

There are close to 1,000 TSD members around the world and chapters in several countries, along Information Points in several more (Count Dracula Consulates and Embassies). TSD is proud to have enabled contacts among universities, research centres and independent researchers. TSD is also proud of the academic quality of its chapter presidents, ambassadors and consuls. Not to mention the pride we take in the knights of The Order of Transylvanian Knights - administrated by this society.

Dracula has always been a good pretext to see a country with a story in mind, and we know that Romania has many friends from among those who followed the initiation tours of the society. These tours contain the disclosures made at the TSD’s yearly symposiums, seminars, colloquiums.

?How much do we know, ten years apart? (We could have known more, were it not for the effort to dispel a "scholarly" mess - the confusion created between a historical category, prince Vlad the Impaler-Dracula, and a supernatural one - the vampire-count Dracula).

?A lot more, yet not enough. The study of the vampire resulted in awesome discoveries of the nature of our own past and present, definitely of the future as well. The extensions of the research met us with another dimension which, increasingly, turns from virtual into real.

?The traditions, the ancient wisdom encoded into superstitions are now measured with our coarse, primitive gear and yield paradoxical results - still covered up, still shyly exposed, for fear of ridicule. More results came from comparing European/American folklore with the Far-Eastern similar categories (missing still: the African).

?With every other colloquium, seminar, symposium or congress, we get closer to the meaning of the taboos and to that ineffable reality we all have intimations of, instinctively. Everything points to the extraordinary importance of Life, the one we seldom think of, pay attention to, the life whose mystery we try to unlock through the backdoor, through studies of the shadows of the dead.

There is an ocean of promising discoveries stretching all around us, a long-awaited fusion of realms and worlds, the very fabrics we are made of.

Welcome to the treasures of information stored by the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, by its chapters and their publications, by the initiation tours of the society!

On the occasion of its Tenth Anniversary, TSD greets the sister organizations, societies, clubs around the world, and bids its members, its nobles - many happy returns of this Anniversary ("Time is on my side" - C.D.), the boldness to doubt and the courage to believe.

 

TSD/December 1991 / December 2001