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Full Name:	Incubus
Date of Birth:	1990
Place of Birth:	Calabasas, California, USA

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Incubus extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (August 2009)

An incubus (plural incubi) is a demon in male form supposed to lie upon sleepers, especially women, in order to have sexual intercourse with them, according to a number of mythological and legendary traditions. Its female counterpart is the succubus. An incubus may pursue sexual relations with a woman in order to father a child, as in the legend of Merlin.¹ Some sources indicate that it may be identified by its unnaturally cold sexual organ.² Religious tradition holds that repeated intercourse with an incubus or succubus may result in the deterioration of health, or even death.³

Medieval legend claims that demons, both male and female, sexually prey on human beings. They generally prey upon the victim when they are sleeping, though it has been reported that females have been attacked while fully lucid.

The incubus is sometimes confused with the legendary "Old Hag" syndrome. The Old Hag episode, however, is usually restricted to an unpleasant feeling of great pressure on the chest and not a ghostly sexual encounter.

Contents 1 Origins 1.1 Ancient and religious descriptions 1.2 Regional variations 2 See also 3 Notes

Origins

A number of secular explanations have been offered for the origin of the incubus legends. They involve the medieval preoccupation with sin, especially sexual sins of women. Victims may have been experiencing waking dreams or sleep paralysis. Also, nocturnal arousal, orgasm or nocturnal emission could be explained by the idea of creatures causing an otherwise guilt-producing and self-conscious behavior.⁴ Alternately, the influence of incubi could also have been invoked to explain otherwise "unexplainable" pregnancies out of wedlock.

Purported victims of incubi could have been the victims of sexual assault by a real person. Rapists may have attributed the rapes of sleeping women to demons in order to escape punishment. A friend or relative may have assaulted the victim in her sleep. The victims and, in some cases the clergy,⁵ may have found it easier to explain the attack as supernatural rather than confront the idea that the attack came from someone in a position of trust.

Ancient and religious descriptions

One of the earliest mentions of an incubus comes from Mesopotamia on the Sumerian kings' list, ca. 2400, where the hero Gilgamesh's father is listed as Lilu (Lila).⁶ It is said that Lilu disturbs and seduces women in their sleep, while Lilitu, a female demon, appears to men in their erotic dreams.⁷ Two other corresponding demons appear as well: Ardat lili, who visits men by night and begets ghostly children from them, and Irdu lili, who is known as a male counterpart to Ardat lili and visits women by night and begets from them. These demons were originally storm demons, but they eventually became regarded as night demons due to mistaken etymology.⁸ Also considered to be vampires which is another form of a demon that is said to drink blood from its victims.

Debate about the demons began early in the Christen tradition. St. Augustine touch on the topic in De civitate dei (The City of God) admitting that there were too many incubi attacks to deny them stated, "There is, too, a very general rumor, which many have verified by their own experience, or which trustworthy persons who have heard the experience of others corroborate, that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called incubi, had often made wicked assaults upon women." ⁹ However, despite this affirmation questions continued about the reproductive capabilities of the demons. Thomas Aquinas 800 years later would lend himself to the ongoing discussion stating, “Still if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from the seed of men taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a woman, and afterwards of a man; just as they take the seed of other things for other generating purposes .” ¹⁰ Thus it became generally accepted that incubi and succubi were the same demon able to transform between one another.¹¹ A succubus would be able to sleep with a man and collect his sperm, and then transform into an incubus and use that seed on women. Their offspring were thought to be supernatural in many cases, even if the sperm and egg were originally came from humans.⁴

Though many tales claim that the incubus is bisexual,¹² others indicate that it is strictly heterosexual and finds attacking a male victim either unpleasant or detrimental.¹³ There are also numerous stories involving the attempted exorcism of incubi or succubi who have taken refuge in, respectively, the bodies of men or women.

Incubi are sometimes said to be able to conceive children. The half-human offspring of such a union is sometimes referred to as a cambion. The most famous legend of such a case includes that of Merlin, the famous wizard from Arthurian legend.⁵

According to the Malleus Maleficarum, exorcism is one of the five ways to overcome the attacks of Incubi, the others being Sacramental Confession, the Sign of the Cross (or recital of the Angelic Salutation), moving the afflicted to another location, and by excommunication of the attacking entity, "which is perhaps the same as exorcism." ¹⁴ On the other hand, the Franciscan friar Ludovico Maria Sinistrari stated that incubi "do not obey exorcists, have no dread of exorcisms, show no reverence for holy things, at the approach of which they are not in the least overawed."⁵

Regional variations

There are a number of variations on the incubus theme around the world. The alp of Teutonic or German folklore is one of the better known. In Zanzibar, Popo Bawa primarily attacks men and generally behind closed doors.¹⁵ El Trauco, according to the traditional mythology of the Chiloé Province of Chile, is a hideous deformed dwarf who lulls nubile young women and seduces them. El Trauco is said to be responsible for unwanted pregnancies, especially in unmarried women.¹⁶ Perhaps another variation of this conception is el "Tintín" in Ecuador, a dwarf who is fond of abundant haired women and seduces them at night by playing the guitar outside their windows; a myth that researchers believe was created during the Colonial period of time to explain pregnancies in women who never left their houses without a chaperone, very likely covering incest or sexual abuse by one of the family's friends¹⁷. In Hungary, a lidérc can be a Satanic lover that flies at night and appears as a fiery light (an ignis fatuus or will o' the wisp) or, in its more benign form as a featherless chicken.¹⁸

In Brazil and the rain forests of the Amazon Basin, the Boto is a combination of siren and incubus, a very charming and beautiful man who seduces young women and takes them into the river.¹⁹ It is said to be responsible for disappearances and unwanted pregnancies,²⁰ and it can never be seen by daylight, because it metamorphoses into that kind of river dolphin during those hours. According to legend the boto always wears a hat to disguise the breathing hole at the top of its head.²¹

The Southern African incubus demon is the Tikoloshe. Chaste women place their beds upon bricks to deter the rather short fellows from attaining their sleeping forms. They also share the hole in the head detail and water dwelling habits of the Boto.

See also

Look up incubus in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Incubo

• Classification of demons
• Christian demonology
• Demon
• Demonology
• Krampus
• Lilith
• Trauco
• List of fictional demons
• List of theological demons
• Night terror
• Sexuality in Christian demonology
• La Bestia in Calore
• Species (alien species)
• Species II
• Breeders
• Deadly Blessing
• The Beast Within
• Ink (film)

Notes