Tempted by Lilith

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Temptation 

New work! I actually drew this a few months ago, I’m just slow with uploading :’D Like most of my art from this year, this one was also a huge experiment. It kept changing many times as I’ve pushed myself to try new things because of my wrist issues, but it was a very exciting journey nonetheless. I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I loved painting it!

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Let’s talk healing in “Nosferatu” (2024), because “plague” is obviously a major theme here. Robert Eggers is also tapping hard into “the threat of female sexuality” and the figure of "sick woman" as one of the principal ways in which female sexuality manifests as a contagious disease from the “Dracula” novel. It’s Ellen sexual awakening that unleashes Orlok into the world, after all. All of this is metaphorical about Victorian views of sex, and female sexuality.

Ellen is the one who curses Orlok to become a strigoi, when she brings him back from the dead; and Orlok also curses her to “melancholy” and “hysteria”, in return (her mediumship medicalized by Victorian society). They curse each other with disease during the prologue of the film.

“You are my affliction.”

"He is my shame! He is my melancholy!"

Professor Von Franz physically examines Ellen, as her trance is beginning.

"You [Dr. Sievers] have bled her to decrease the congestion? [...] And her menstruations are also? [Liberal]. Too much blood. Too much."

He determines she has “too much blood”: in connection to “Humorism” (or “humoral theory”) with possible origins in Ancient Egyptian medicine, and then used by Ancient Greeks and Romans. Hippocrates suggested that humors are the vital bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. This belief was common during Middle-ages in Europe, and also connected to Paracelsus (mentioned in the film, too).

Ellen having “too much blood” means she has a sanguine temperament (not a melancholic temperament); it was believed that, when in good health, “sanguines” are cheerful and loving; but when there’s an imbalance, they are “hysterical”, which is what Victorian doctors also diagnose Ellen as (“hysteria”). The treatment is bloodletting (bleed the patient, drain their blood; a practice still used in the early 19th century), to remove the excessive blood; which is what Von Franz also advices in Ellen's case. “Congestion”, in the medical sense of this time period, means “containing an unnatural accumulation of fluid”, in Ellen’s case it’s blood.

“Şolomonari... And their codex of secrets."

When searching Herr Knock’s office alongside Dr. Sievers, Von Franz finds symbols he recognizes as Şolomonari (from Romanian folklore), and discovers a book, which he identifies as the Şolomonari codex of secrets.

Later, Von Franz reveals to Dr. Sievers and Harding: “our Nosferatu is of an especial malignancy. He is an arch-enchanter, Solomonari, Satan's own learned disciple.” Here, Von Franz is telling the audience the codex belongs to Orlok. In Romanian folklore, to be a Şolomonar, one has to study at the Scholomance, a school located in the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania. The course lasts 7 or 9 years, and their final assignment is the copying of one's entire knowledge of humanity into a "Şolomonar's book"; this codex doesn’t merely belongs to Orlok’s, he wrote it himself.

Which is the same as Count Dracula in the novel (Orlok book counterpart); and like in the novel it’s Van Helsing/Von Franz who reveals that Dracula/Orlok studied at the Scholomance/is a Şolomonar: “learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due”; which is what the Old Abbess tells Thomas: “A black enchanter he was in life. Şolomonari. The Devil preserved his soul that his corpse may walk again in blaspheme.”

Orlok has no Satanic symbols on his sigil and coat of arms, because he’s, in fact, a Pagan worshiper of the Dacian god Zalmoxis (because Robert Eggers is following an academic thesis that links the Şolomonari with Zalmoxis worship) but Paganism was demonized by Christianity and their followers labeled as “devil worshippers”. And Von Franz, student of the occult or not, is a man of his time.

In this book there are the instructions in how a Şolomonar can break free from his own Nosferatu curse (which can happen as a colateral of their learning of the secrets of immortality): “and so the maiden fair did offer up her love unto the beast, and with him lay in close embrace until first cock crow, her willing sacrifice thus broke the curse and freed them from the plague of Nosferatu.” It speaks of a young woman in love ("offer up her love") with the strigoi ("the beast"), who sacrifices herself, of her own free will ("her willing sacrifice"), to break the curse. This is Orlok’s cure.

Moving forward; we have Ellen’s possession scene. Von Franz validating Ellen’s nature (ending her doubts), and then the “vampire hunters” go to Grünewald Manor to destroy Orlok’s lair, while Ellen fulfills her covenant with him (“be one with [him] ever-eternally”). Once Thomas and Dr. Sievers discover the truth, they are both outraged because it’s “not moral”.

And Von Franz tells them "She wills it! Your wife wills it!" as in it's Ellen's desire, this is what Ellen wants. And Orlok himself “can't resist her blood!” Which comes full circle with his diagnose of Ellen as having “too much blood”, and being a sanguine temperament. The cure for which is being drained of blood. And what this, actually, means is “Orlok cannot resist Ellen, herself”, like Friedrich and Anna Harding (the parallel and opposite couple to them). What Von Franz is saying is here: this is what both Ellen and Orlok want.

In another post I already did an essay on the “Leptirica” (1973) inspiration in “Nosferatu” (confirmed by Robert Eggers), where I ask the question: who is Nosferatu in this story? Orlok or Ellen? And the answer is both.