Incubus and Succubus

According to ancient tradition, there are two main classifications of demons that sexually molest humans. These two were said to be differing aspects of the same demon. But it was generally held that the incubi was male whilst the other, much more prolific and dangerous succubus, was female. The name succubus probably comes from the Latin succubare, meaning “to lie under” and it is possible that the demon was a variant of the Greek Mormo, who was sometimes considered to be both female and sexually voracious. Succubi appear to men as beautiful, sensual women, tempting and promising, but they also may be vampires thirsting for human blood.

While those males who consort with a succubus often meet an untimely end, on occasion their interaction with the entity brings about a horde of demonic children, who will one day gather at his deathbed and hail him as their father. The incubi were said to seduce unsuspecting women by appearing to them in the guise of their husbands or lovers, and as one might suspect, the incubi played an important role in the history of the Inquisition.

Even pious nuns appeared before the tribunals, attesting to their affliction by persistent incubi that tried to persuade them to break their vows of chastity. Epidemics of demon possession and erotomania swept such convents as Loudon, Louviers, Auxonne, and Aixen-Provence. In his book Eros and Evil, R. E. L. Masters remarked on the scant amount of records from the Inquisition concerning the experiences of men who succumbed to seductive succubi in contrast to the enormous number of recorded instances in which women yielded to the sexual attentions of the incubi. Both demons (or various aspects of the one demon) had sexual intercourse with men and women as they slept. The succubus in particular drew the seed from sleeping men, sexually exhausting them, and might have even done so to do them harm. Although initially a terror in ancient Rome, the succubus was to assume greater attention in the early Christian period right through to the Middle Ages, when the demon was thought to plague monks in order to distract them from their holy vows. Monks often experienced erotic dreams and nocturnal emissions, which were credited to the attentions of the succubus during the night.

In his Compendium Malificarum, written some time in the 16th century, the Milanese monk and demonologist Francesco Maria Guazzo details succubi in his list of demons that torment the righteous. He states that these dreams are in fact real and the experiences of the monks, in the throes of their eroticism, were due to a completely physical manifestation of the demon whose desire was not only to break their vows of chastity but to do them actual harm. Guazzo was following the categories of demons, which had been established by the Byzantine thinker, Michael Psellus the Younger. It is thought that Psellus was born around 1018 in the city of Nicodema (now Izmit on the Gulf of Astacus) and that, as a child, he had been exposed to both Greek and Roman culture. Although more associated with the Platonist school of thought, Psellus did outline certain categories of demons, one of which was “terrors of the night” which included beings that both extracted semen and drank blood. This would undoubtedly prove the inspiration for Guazzo many centuries later.

In April 1533, according to old church records, an incubus became enraged when he discovered his human mistress in the arms of the son of the tavernkeeper at Schilttach, near Freiburg. In his furious state of mind, the incubus not only set the tavern ablaze, but he burned the entire village to the ground. Church authorities dealt with the problem of how a spirit could develop a corporeal body by advancing such theories as these: incubi fashion temporary bodies out of water vapor or gases; they have no actual physical bodies, but they possess the power to create an illusion of corporeality; they inhabit recently deceased corpses and animate them for the purpose of sexual intercourse with the living; they actually have material bodies that they can manipulate into any shape they desire.

Father Montague Summers theorized that such demons as the incubi might be composed of that same substance known as ectoplasm from which the spirits of the dead draw their temporary body during materialization seances with mediums. He reasoned that such psychic drainage could occur if a frustrated young person encouraged the attentions of an evil entity by fantasizing about erotic materials.

(Sources : Encyclopedia of Unusual & Unexplained Things; and Encyclopedia of the Undead by DR. Bob Curran)

(Pic Sources : http://www.pantheon.org/areas/gallery/folklore/folklore/incubus.html)