#1324: Inanna Arthen

Inanna Arthen is, according to her bio, a “trained psychic and professional Tarot reader, Inanna has taught classes in psychic development, meditation and ‘practical magick working,’ and has extensive knowledge and experience of every branch of paranormal phenomena.” That’s not a good start for making inquiries into anything having to do with reality, and Arthen’s attempts to carry out such inquiries are … well, in fact, somewhat novel.

Arthen is most famous for her claims that vampires are real, a claim that initially brought her some underground fame through this article in 1987. Vampires are beings who “appear on the surface to be somewhat eccentric members of society, yet their outward idiosyncrasies only hint at how different they are from those around them.” In fact, “[a] vampire is a person born with an extraordinary capacity to absorb, channel, transform, and manipulate ‘pranic energy’ or life force.” For the most part, then, vampires feed off of your life energy, though they sometimes drink blood as well: “Only real vampires can directly absorb the pranic energy in fresh blood, and for this reason some real vampires are attracted to blood and find different means of obtaining it.” You identify them “by a certain quality to the energy,” and by the fact that they are night people: they have excellent night vision, but are sensitive to sunlight and frequently experience digestive trouble.

Unfortunately, most vampires are unaware of their own true natures. “Evolved” vampires may, however, “become extraordinary magicians and healers,” and according to Arthen pagan magickal people like herself should work to identify vampires and help them evolve. So there you go.

Diagnosis: Her career seems to be primarily based on writing fiction. Some of it she apparently – rather randomly – designates as “non-fiction” because she is a loon.