The gods which seize (upon man)
Have come forth from the grave;
The evil wind-gusts
Have come forth from the grave;
To demand the payment of rites and the pouring out of libations,
They have come forth from the grave;
All that is evil in their hosts, like a whirlwind
Hath come forth from their graves.
Or again:
The evil Spirit, the evil Demon, the evil Ghost, the evil Devil,
From the earth have come forth;
From the Underworld unto the land they have come forth;
In heaven they are unknown,
On earth they are not understood,
They neither stand nor sit,
Nor eat nor drink.”
Even as the Vampire of Eastern Europe to-day, the Babylonian Ekimmu was the most persistent of haunters and the most difficult to dislodge. If he could find no rest in the Underworld he would speedily return and attach himself to anyone who during life had held the least communication with him. Man’s life was certainly surrounded with dangers when the mere act of sharing just once food, oil, or garments with another person gave the spirit of this individual a claim to consort with his friend, or it might be even the casual acquaintance, who had shown him some slight kindness. The link could be slighter yet than that since in a long and elaborate formula of priestly conjuration, a particularly solemn and ritual incantation for the exorcizing of evil spirits, especially Vampires, it is plainly said that merely to have eaten, to have drunk, to have anointed oneself, or dressed oneself in the society of another was enough to forge an extraordinary spiritual copula. In this imprecatory orison, which assumes a strictly liturgical character, various kinds of vampirish spectres are banned:
Whether thou are a ghost that has come from the earth,
Or a phantom of night that hath no couch,
Or a woman (that hath died) a virgin,
Or a man (that hath died) unmarried,
Or one that lieth dead in the desert,
