These successive waves of various Iranian religious beliefs clearly exerted considerable influence upon the Slavs. During the 7th century, it was the Scythians’ and the Sarmatians’ influence. Arriving in the Balkans, the Slavs met with two further Iranian religions beliefs: the Mithraic Mysteries and Manichaeism. By the time Manichaeism came in a second wave, it had mutated to become a sort of Christian heresy with a persistent dualism within it. From it, in Armenia in the 7th century, arose the Christian heretical sect, the Paulicians.
This form of Manichaeism, the Paulicians, developed in Bulgaria into a sect called Bogomilism, and it is Bogomilism which had the most crucial effect upon the Slavs. In fact, it’s Bogomilism that probably gave birth to the vampire cult of the Slavs. As Jan L. Perkowski wrote, “… it is reasonably safe to conclude that Slavic vampirism, in the form in which it penetrated to the West early in the 18th century, evolved in the Balkans, starting in the 9th century, as the result of the confrontation of Slavic paganism, Bogomilism and Orthodox Christianity.”4
It’s crucial to uncover something of the Bogomil doctrines and rituals in our pursuit of the vampire’s origins. D. Obolensky refers to Bogomilism as “a vague dualistic tradition which has left an imprint on south Slavonic folklore and has inspired many Bulgarian popular legends…”5 The Bogomils believed that they alone had no demon inhabiting them, and that all non-Bogomils were inhabited by demons, instructed in vice by demons, lead into wickedness, and that these demons dwelled in the corpses of the non-Bogomils. D. Obolensky also reports that in the Panoplia Dogmetica, two Cappadocian (Anatolian) bishops were accused of being Bogomils because they dug up bodies in the belief that they were possessed of demons and unfit for burial.6
The Bogomils also believed in transmigration of souls, and in an unseen battle between the Force of Destruction and the Force of Creation. They insisted on burying their dead outside of town, and only in the evening after the setting of the sun or early in the morning before sunrise. They – and their ancestor sects – believed in an opposition between two gods (one good and creative, the other evil and destructive), with the evil god harassing man and causing his strength to dwindle. There is the symbolic interaction between water, fire, air, earth; there is the belief that sunrise and sunset are times of transition; and a belief that mankind and meteorological phenomena are affected by each other.
Already we can see striking resemblances between Bogomilism’s practices and those of the Slavic vampire cult.
When Kiev (Russia) officially became Christian in 988, the Bulgarians sent them priests and scribes, among whom were both Bogomils and Bogomil witch-hunters. To have some idea of just how widespread the Bogomil influence was, envisage it as a dark and secret stain spreading west as far as France.
5 Obolensky, Dmitri. The Bogomils. Cambridge: University Press, 1948, p. 267.
6 George, James Michael. The dualistic-gnostic tradition in the Byzantine Commonwealth with special reference to the Paulician and Bogomil movements. Wayne State University: Ph.D. dissertation, 1979, p. 308, 318.