I came across the Temple of the Vampire <http://pw1.netcom.com/~temple/>
through Gairovald's Nemesis Grotto <http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/5380/>.
The following is excerpted from <http://pw1.netcom.com/~temple/truth.html>:
The Dayside
The Dayside of the Vampire's personality is that of the skeptical materialist
who approaches life with a no-nonsense perspective. The key word here is
doubt.
We laugh in scorn at the humans who find themselves believing in the
superstitious nonsense which our kind created for their control. The earthly
Vampire is dedicated to personal material mastery of life. While this seldom
entails the seeking of monetary wealth to the exclusion of personal pleasure,
the Religion of the Rulers tends to lead one toward material success as a
natural consequence of respecting the realities of the world as it is.
Neither
is this pursuit unbalanced by ignoring the social values of achieving and
maintaining successful personal relationships. The Dayside Vampire feels and
exhibits an essential joy in living itself.
The Nightside
In ritual and other magical acts, the Vampire exhibits the Nightside of his
personality. The key word here is belief. The Vampire learns to slip in and
out of belief systems as they serve him, and absolute belief in magic is only
engaged in when magic is actually used. The many traditional powers of the
Vampire (to include shapeshifting, flying, mesmeric power, superhuman
strength
and physical immortality) are accepted as real first within the Nightside of
the Vampire's mind. Here, from the Will's connection to the Powers of
Darkness,
the fantasies of power become realities. These realities are manifested
through
what are called out-of-body lucid dreams and are approached by the sincere
and
dedicated application of the Teachings of the Temple.
The Twilight
By developing and maintaining the opposing Dayside and Nightside perspectives
appropriately, the Vampire produces a powerful stress or tension between the
worlds of truth and fantasy. The result is a growing capacity to cause change
in the material world by magical means such that the dreams of the Night
leave
footprints in the Day. This condition we call the Twilight. It is to see with
the vision of the Dragon Within and to walk across the Crack between the
Worlds.
The experience of the Twilight is the capstone of the Vampiric Condition
and is
the highest form of personal experience to be achieved through the
application
of the Temple Teachings.
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/