Classical Walpurgis Night

A few winters ago in Mammoth, CA, as our lovers and their best friends skied under a gray and leaky sky, Sweatshirt and I stayed cosy with a bottle of wine and a volume of Goethe and a deck of cards, and the result was this game. It's a variant on seven-card stud, and if Matt Damon knew about "Classical Walpurgis Night," he'd undoubtedly call it "the other last pure game in poker."

Here are the rules I can still remember, suspecting that there were many more:

The deal: same as seven-card stud.

The wilds:

• Vampires (Jacks) are wild, unless a Slayer (Queen) is used in the final five cards, in which case the Vampire is staked and becomes a dead card--i.e., it cannot be used in any hand. Slayers are otherwise played normally.
• Angels (Aces) and Demons (Kings) are also wild, unless their opposites are present (displayed face-up in the draw), in which case both retain their face value without being wild; if an Angel or Demon is hidden until the final five cards are shown, it remains wild and can still tear its opposite from power.

Special rule: "magical preschool" - if a player has five cards consisting of any combination of fives, fours, threes, twos, and Angels, then they all become wild, even if a Demon is present.