Deity Of: Vampirism and parasites, the plague and pestilence, lust and obsession, miasma and death rattles, stormy breezes and blizzards, and natural disasters.
Symbols: Ouroboros, the Heart, the Air Triangle, the Squared Circle, the Septagram, and the Inverted Heptagram.
Colors: Blues and teals, desaturated black, white and gray, warm orange and blood red, creepy gold, and deep brown.
Planets: Pluto, Venus, and Mercury.
Dark Element: Pneuma (and thus can be used as a symbol of Air/East).
Tarot: Rale (Herman-Holmes Tarot), The Devil (Rider-Waite Tarot).
Zodiacs: Scorpio and Gemini.
Birthstones: Black Tourmaline and Moonstone.
Holidays: Romania's National Day and Yuletide.
Herbs/Plants: Salvia transsylvanica, Black Magic Colocasia (poisonous!) and deadly nightshade (poisonous!), lilacs, myrrh, Romanian peony (poisonous!), and all herbs and plants corresponding to Pneuma.
Crystals/Gemstones: Lapis lazuli and labradorite, obsidian and carbonado, arsenopyrite and galena, bloodstone and cinnabar, brimstone and orpiment, and smoky quartz and hematite.
Animals: Rats and mice, screech owls and vultures, butterflies and moths, wolves and hellhounds, horses, and vampire bats and hematophagous arthropods.
Affirmation: “Nature, I call unto thee, increase thy thunders and hasten me upon the wings of thy barbarous winds.”
Offerings: Blood and thorns, grave dirt and dead branches, bones of nocturnal animals (collected through vulture culture rather than shooting), desecrated Abrahamic-religion churches, blizzard water and ice rain, and sexual fluids.
When To Work With: Days are Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Times of day are snowstorms, midnight, and the dead hour.
Indomitable Lust and Erotomancy: Sacred sexuality, lechery, obsession, addiction, necrophilia, spectrophilia, la petite mort, fýlokinesis, carnality, ultimate aphrodisiac. Risk: With the living, it may give you STDs; with the dead, it may give you hauntings.
Kismet and Relationship Alchemy: Braiding one's destiny with another's on a soul-deep level, love-me-or-die spells, breaking intimacy barriers consensually. Risk: Even vampires understand consent's role, don't do something until it's given.
Soul Journeying and Transitioning: Dreamwalking, deathwalking, out-of-body experiences, guiding others, Solomonari spells and magic, transcendence. Risk: Possession or total psychic fragmentation may occur and can't ever be taken back.
Torture Methodology and Crudelitas Absoluta: Baneful magic, psychological warfare, psychic vampirism, tormentor intuition and creativity over the matters of torture, torture equipment proficiency. Risk: You might get addicted to their pain.
Shadow Work and Introspection: Exploring sin within oneself, confronting wicked ambition, retrospection, self-reflection, utilizing Orlok as a dark mirror. Risk: Facing the Nosferatu's energy in yourself may justify his methods to you.
Loimókinesis and Sickness Inducement: Epidemic generation, pestikinesis, plagakinesis, infestation and blight spells, microbial communication, unhealing. Risk: You may not be immune to your own diseases and may get yourself sick too.
As with all Holmesian forms, working with Count Orlok will most likely damn your soul. Thus, it is imperative to be reminded of the price you've paid in some way. A witch working with him would need strong wards, clear intentions, and possibly offerings to keep his influence from backfiring. You should also remember not to get scared despite probably facing damnation: it will either prevent you from working with him altogether or it will bring in the wrong kind of energy that will feed on your fear. Let go of any preconceptions of it being "evil" or "bad". Keep it good and be in a great personal space — happy and in a good mood. Be in your good senses.
When you're going to invoke him, it's a good idea to look out for...
The shallow, rasping death rattle in an otherwise profoundly silent room.
The scratching of rats and other rodents in the walls of your house/apartment.
The high-pitched ringing in your ears that you've mistaken as tinnitus.
The indecipherable whispering/ritual chanting that catches your breath.
The beating of your black heart magnified to a drum in your ears.
The crunching of footsteps in the frozen snow during winter/yuletide.
The cloying sweetness of lilacs over cold stone, old blood, and decay.
The dustiness of abandoned places, ranging from castles to your corners.
The loveliness of roses, myrrh, and burnt brown sugar intertwined.
The smokiness of burning cedar or juniper incense that has settled into stone.
The petrichor after it has rained on once-dry grass or after a dry spell.
The muskiness of labdanum for your transition from humanity to divinity.
The damp chill of soil from the grave or the porous texture of ancient bones.
The prickling static before a storm or the electric shock of a first touch.
The sense of connection, penetration, and maybe consensual boundary breakage.
The aching cold in the chest after longing for a beloved that gets worse over time.
The clean, cutting cold of high-altitude wind that breezes into your room.
The smooth, cold surface of a polished standing stone, reminiscent of castles.
The deep blackness of a closed coffin or a shadow that moves against the light.
The impossible depth in a lover's pupil, be it tears of ecstasy or anguish.
The absoluteness of perfect darkness that is not empty but full and pressing.
The gleam of wealth in the dark, ranging from monetary to spiritual value.
The clear, sharp geometry of mountain peaks against the gloomy sky.
The eerieness of fog-laden, labyrinthine, nature trials that make you paranoid.
The ironness of meat and blood, ranging from extra bloody rare to medium rare.
The nuttiness of poppy seeds that guarantee a long, restful sleep.
The tartiness of pomegranate arils that promise that you'll be kept in Hell.
The umaminess of broth from ancient bones that may have been in the ground.
The sacredness of melikraton, a mixture of milk and honey given to appease the dead.
The chalkiness of graveyard dirt that unexplainably ended up in your mouth.
How Does It Heal?: Historically, bloodletting was believed to by rebalancing the body's four humors, which has evolved into therapeutic phlebotomy and works by removing excessive components from the blood, such as iron or red blood cells, which can cause organ damage and dangerous complications like blood clots. Additionally, medicinal leeches are used as natural anticoagulants that prevent blood from clotting and aid localized healing.
How Is It Performed?: If they aren't using leeches, then it is practically the same procedure as donating blood. It involves pre-procedure checks, a simple vein puncture (venipuncture), collecting blood into a special bag (often weighed), and post-procedure rest, aiming to lower red blood cell count or iron levels safely, with the drawn blood discarded. Only certain people are eligible for this, so if you aren’t one of them and want to have it done, just go to Red Cross (unless you're anemic).
Courtesy of the-crooked-library:
Interestingly, despite being gross, very sexualized, and a man from an even older society than the Hutters, Orlok is able to think outside society's bigoted bounds because he exists in opposition to its restrictions. His attitudes are not reflective of whatever people around him would've thought of women, queerness, neurodivergence, etc. Unlike the Abrahamic-god-fearing people that dictate Ellen's daily life, he accepts and desires every aspect of her that is considered sinful — her sexuality, her lack of deference, her eccentricities — and it is this fundamental understanding that she craves. "You could never satisfy me the way he does" was about emotional connection rather than sex — and, of course, Thomas went straight ahead and proved her right. A relationship that is blocking her powers and allows her to be "happy" as long as she acts normal and hides her real self is not a good relationship. It is for all of these reasons that Orlok makes a better consort than Thomas.
When she (Ellen) tries to confide in him (Thomas) a dream about her marrying Death himself, he tells her never to speak of these feelings again. And despite having known her as wife and friend for presumably months or years, he cannot fathom why his bride would recoil at the idea that he cut flowers — these beautiful, sentient things — for her pleasure. But while Eggers knowingly teases patriarchal culture in his Nosferatu, this film isn’t necessarily about subverting to that. Orlok is more than just “the wrong kind of guy”. He is Death himself, an echo of countless works of art where the Grim Reaper was drawn as devouring and desecrating young women with rot and pestilence. It was on his mind while adapting Nosferatu, as well as countless other classic tales such as The Daemon Lover and Wuthering Heights. All of the director’s films to date operate on the idea that we culturally share a kind of subconscious in which both hopes and fears are half-remembered and repeated.
Courtesy of Dante Alighieri:
When they arrive before the precipice, there are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments, there they blaspheme the puissance divine. I understood that unto such a torment the carnal malefactors were condemned, whose reason subjugates to appetite. And as the wings of starlings bear them on in the cold season in large band and full, so doth that blast the spirits maledict; it hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them; no hope doth comfort them for evermore, not of repose, but even of lesser pain. And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays, making in air a long line of themselves, so saw I coming, uttering lamentations, shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress. Whereupon said I: “Master, who are those people, whom the black air so castigates?” “The first of those, of whom intelligence thou fain wouldst have,” then said he unto me, “the empress was of many languages. To sensual vices she was so abandoned, that lustful she made licit in her law.” Helen I saw, and Achilles, who combated with Love.
Courtesy of distort-opia:
Solomonari are people able to control the weather, ride balauri/zmei (a metaphor for taming winds and summoning vântoase — leaving their body at night in a trance and riding up into the sky (OBE)), control and turn into different animals, etc. Initially, Solomonari were more neutral in Romanian folklore, and are theorized to be a later version of ktistai, who were selected from royalty (Orlok is a count, a prince, or a voivode) and might've worshipped Zamolxe, a Geto-Dacian God associated with the sky as well as immortality (Ancient Dacian is what Orlok speaks; Zamolxe is written within Orlok's heptagram sigil; on his coat of arms, sigil, and coffin, there's Dacian wolves as well as balauri). Some Solomonari were believed to be protecting villages from calamity and influenced the weather in order to grow crops more easily. But of course, when Christianity spread in the region, Pagan things were demonized, hence why the Christian Orthodox Abbess we see calls Orlok a “black enchanter”.
Well, you've heard it here, folks. Orlok isn't that evil as people make him out to be, just demonized. Perhaps there was a time when he was revered and befriended, and in return, he helped villages and guided people to the Dacian version of Elysium. If that much is true, he'd be good for beginner witches, especially in these areas: death witches and necromancers, folk practitioners and Pagans, shadow workers and neurodivergent/queer witches, weather witches, and dream witches and oneiromancers. He is a patron for those who find their power in what society has labeled gross/shameful/sinful, and who seek to transform that stigma into a source of profound strength and authenticity. If you plan on working with him, make sure to research Dacian history, Solomonari lore, and the iconography of Death in art, and acknowledge the fact that you're accepting yourself as a damned soul that is going to Hell (most likely the second circle — which isn't too far in) in order to better it for everyone. May your immortal soul be carried on the wings of bliss.
P.S. Many of the reasons to work with him and what he is the deity of overlaps with other Holmesian forms because all Holmesian forms are just different appearances of the same deity. You will also find that there are many other things that he is the deity of and why to work with him, and that this is merely a guideline. And you can decide what to do with this guideline. I'm merely an information provider, not a decision maker, and I encourage people to make the choice for themselves: work with him or not. Just don't worry about your damnation around me.
