Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

While enjoying a new book I received recently, The Joy of Sexus: Lust, Love & Longing in the Ancient World by Vicki Leon - which I cannot recommend enough - I came across a nice little tidbit to round out the discussions of the last few Fridays. Evidently calling up the dark creatures of the underworld to inflame lust is a very ancient practice indeed.

In the chapter "Love Dilemmas & Lust at the Crossroads," Ms. Leon offers a few extant "love spells" that are intended either to draw in an unsuspecting individual or to do harm to a lost lover. In the case I've chosen today, Ms. Leon notes that a woman named Sophia had a mad lust for another woman, Gorgonia, and her remedy for satiation of that lust has survived into modern times.

Ms. Leon notes that an "elaborate erotic spell" was written down by Sophia, and quotes a portion of it in the book. As you'll note, the spell is full of netherworld imagery including reference to those untiring servants of fate, the Erinyes, and Cerberus, the three-headed bitch of Hades. I will use Ms. Leon's quote directly:

Fundament of the gloomy darkness, jagged-tooth dog, covered with coiling snakes, turning three heads, traveler in the recesses of the underworld, spirit-driver, with the Erinyes [the Furies] savage with their stinging whips, holy serpents, maenads, frightful maidens, come to my wroth incantations. Before I persuade by force this one and you, render him immediately a fire-breathing demon. Listen and do everything quickly, in no way opposing me in the performance of this action, for you are the governors of the earth. [Three lines of magical gibberish follow.] By means of the corpse-daemon inflame the heart, the liver, the spirit of Gorgonia, whom Nilogenia bore, with love and affection for Sophia, whom Isara bore. Constrain Gorgonia to cast herself into the bath-house for the sake of Sophia; and you, become a bath-room. Burn, set on fire, inflame her soul, heart, liver, spirit with love for Sophia.

That's powerful stuff and sounds very much like a modern love song with a twist. Sophia is mad with love for Gorgonia and will call up the demons of Hades to achieve her fantasy. One wonders what outcome may have materialized from so much psychic melodrama.

Header: A Greek Woman by Lawrence Alma-Tadema c 1869 via Wikimedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

The slightly more creepy and definitely less written about sister of the incubus we discussed last week is, of course, the succubus. She is discussed in the largely Medieval literature as appearing to men in the guise of the most beautiful woman on earth. In fact, when the curtain is pulled back - or the exorcist has had his way - her true form materializes. She is either a grizzled hag in Satan's service or a corpse reanimated by the power of a demon.

According to Genevieve and Tom Morgan in their 1996 publication The Devil succubus means "to lie under" just as incubus means "to lie upon." One has to imagine that the reference is to the human attacked by the demon as succubi were said to straddle men in their sleep and ride them as if they were horses. The poor man would wake up, sweaty and exhausted, only to have to return to his bed and similar treatment the next night. Some authorities postulate that this is the origin of our modern "nightmare" but there is much to debate there.

In general, succubi are and were considered by demonologists to be the daughters of the first wife of Adam: Lilith. These bad girls, sometimes known as lilin, were difficult to exorcise but seemingly not quite as difficult as those nasty incubi for reasons we will discuss in a minute.

The succubi, hag or corpse, were intent on stealing the seed of human men and using it for nepharious, demonic intents. In fact, Francis Barrett, writing in his Celestial Intelligencer in 1801, posits the following origin of succubi:

... the nymphs of the wood were preferred before the others in beauty... and at length [they] began wedlocks with men, feigning that, by these copulations, they should obtain an immortal soul for them and their offspring.

In Barrett's supposition, the dryads of Greek mythology were nothing more than lovely demons who, in mating with mortal men hoped to gain everlasting life by almost literally sucking the soul from them.

Barrett's latter-day ideology aside, it probably comes as no surprise that monks and priests were favorite targets of these wood nymphs com demons. Hermits were particularly juicy prey and Saints Anthony, Hilary and Hippolytus all wrote of their encounters with the gorgeous flesh of tempting succubi. While Anthony and Hippolytus speak only of one succubus at a time, Hilary notes that he often found himself "encircled by naked women. Hippolytus' tormenter, when cloaked in the saint's chasuble, collapsed to the floor as old bones. In later writings, church fathers such as St. Augustine and St. Jerome wagged their fingers at hermits who welcomed the attentions of their demonic lovers. Augustine even mentions one monk who was so consumed with his succubus that he literally died of exhaustion due to his near perpetual fornication with her. Or it.

The overall tone of these writings, however, was that men were far more steadfast at rejecting the attention of succubi than women were with incubi. This was thought to be true to such a degree that St. Jerome claimed authoritatively that incubi outnumbered succubi 9 to 1. Quite a margin if you think about it.

Header: The Temptation of St. Anthony by Alexandre Louis Leloir via 1st Art Gallery

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

The cousin or, perhaps more correctly evil step-brother, of the dream lover that we talked about last Friday is the incubus. Known of old as a demon to be feared and especially battled against, the incubus was envisioned as a sometimes handsome but in true form grotesque creature who either raped women or enticed them into sexual liaisons in the very dead of night. This demon is generally thought of in our modern, scientific world as a result of psychiatric disease brought on by the overly repressed cultures of Medieval Europe and Puritanical New England, to name two. In fact, the incubus may be a much older presence than a passing glance would have us believe.

Certain scholars, including those who study such diverse histories as Hebrew beliefs and Arthurian legends, access that the original incubus may have been one of that famous trio of Sumerian demons that included the previously discusses Ardat-Lili. The lili, a male demon, was said to trouble women's sleep, bring them erotic dreams and, in some cases, sire children of a changeling nature upon them. This would make the lili/human hybrid at least somewhat akin to a fairy child.

Fast forward to those days of Medieval tension and the stories of incubi accosting women - particularly innocent maidens and sequestered Brides of Christ - abound. In this period, incubi were said to be clever shapeshifters who could take on the appearance of anyone their chosen female prey might be attracted to. Demons, having no particular corporeal restraints, could pass as smoke or mist under a door or through the cracks in a wooden or stone wall and materialize on the other side. No woman, it seemed, was safe; but the incubi had their favorites.

Nuns were a decidedly popular conquest and, in the reverse, incubi were usually blamed for any convent indiscretions. Until well into the Gothic period, the accusation that an incubus, and not a human man, had gotten a nun pregnant was taken almost for granted.

When one Archbishop Sylvanus, who was the particular confessor of a large convent of Dominican nuns in what is now Bavaria, was accused of sexual assault by one of the good sisters - a particularly young and pretty good sister it is said - he simply turned up his silk-gloved hands. It could not be me, he protested; I would never break my vow of chastity. Surely Sister so-and-so (needless to say her name does not appear in the record) was visited by an incubus who had taken my form. What other explanation could their be? The 15th century inquisitors before whom Sylvanus appeared nodded thoughtful and then agreed with him. Case closed.

Telling an honest (or dishonest, in the case of the aforementioned Bishop) man from an incubus was surprisingly simple. When the list is ticked off, in fact, it is a little surprising that these demons troubled themselves with a disguise. The incubus had an unholy odor, either of sulfur, the barnyard or the rotting corpse that he had picked up as a skin. He had the power to paralyze anyone near his chosen victim, putting them into a trance-like sleep so that, even if the person in question lay right next to the woman, they would not be disturbed from their slumber. Worst of all, the incubus - regardless of what form he took - was said to be endowed with a huge, ice-cold member that was sometimes reported to be two or even three-pronged.

Anomolies of birth were often whispered to have been the result of rutting with an incubus. Woe to the woman who gave birth to an unfortunately harelipped, club-footed or otherwise "different" child; twins or children with red hair were also said to be the sons or daughters of incubi. The wizard Merlin is told to have been such a one and even in the Romantic era certain unkind types talked of George Gordon Byron, who had a club-foot, being the son of an incubus.

With all this, there were some ladies who willingly welcomed the incubus as a steady lover. Franciscan Ludovico Sinistrari, operating in the late 17th century and author of Demoniality, became somewhat of an expert on incubi and ways to exorcise them from the lives of such deluded women. He noted that these demons were particularly difficult to clear out as they "have no dread of exorcisms, show no reverence for holy things [and]... sometimes even laugh at exorcists." He goes on to give the example of a wife and mother so infatuated with her demon lover that she hardly blinked when, in retaliation to Sinistrari's exorcism attempts, the incubus built a wall of roofing tiles around her bed so tall that she needed a ladder to climb in and out.

A troublesome situation indeed... Next Friday, the yang to the the incubus' ying: the succubus.

Header: Incubus by Charles Walker c 1870 via Wikipedia

Vendredi: Chthonian Histories

The realms of the underworld and sexuality intertwine and weave a tangled web that continues to burrow into our psyche like the persistent and arrogant roots of the weeping willow will do into the foundation of a home. It's a slow process that moves in mere fractions of an inch but, if left unchecked, it just may drive one mad.

And speaking of madness, let us take the next few weeks to discuss some strange, and very chthonian, bedfellows of old: the incubus, the succubus, and their cousin and today's topic, the dream lover.

One of the best illustrations of the dream lover - who is by no means a dream and is often a shape shifter or revenant in the literature - comes from that old '80s favorite, the movie Excalibur. Early on Queen Igraine, that Dark Ages sex kitten who flairs the passions of Uther Pendragon, believes she has been visited by her husband one night while he is supposed to be away fighting Uther's hordes. To Igraine's horror, she discovers that her husband was in fact killed in battle the very night he crawled into their bed. Who then made love to her? As we all know, Uther wearing a magickal skin placed over him by the wizard Merlin.

Such protestations of women - that their far away husband appeared to them in the flesh and impregnated them - pepper the history of the witch craze. Most of these unfortunates were accused of adultery or, worse still, welcoming a demon into their beds. But once in a while the tribunals were kind and the dream lover was awarded his do: the paternity of the woman's child.

This latter is the case in a curious story written in 1698 by Professor Johann Klein of the University of Rostock. The story centers around a gentlewoman named Lucile or Lucienne de Montleon. Madame de Montleon lived in the French speaking province of Switzerland and her husband, Seigneur Jerome Auguste de Montleon had been away at war for some four years when Madame suddenly turned up pregnant.

As Madame fretted over this situation, word came to her chateau that her husband was dead. Fainting away, Lucile spent the rest of her confinement in bed. She did manage to bring forth a strapping son within the year and, pulling herself up by her corsets straps, presented him to the city council as her husband's son and heir. Her claim as far as the unusual timing of the birth was simple: her husband had made her pregnant in a dream. When she received push-back on her claim - there were doubtless others who would have liked nothing better than to take over the Seigneur's land and income - Madame asked that the matter be heard in court.

The initial findings of the local judges did not go as Madame had hoped. Most called her an adulteress and two labeled her mad. Apparently unshakeable in her resolve, Madame de Montleon appealed her case to the Parlement of Grenoble. There not only two midwives but a doctor from the local University testified in Lucile's favor. They unanimously told the court that impregnations via dream were as common as flowers in spring among the peasant classes. Just because they were rarely heard of among the gentry, didn't mean that they weren't possible among the gentry.

The Parlement, taking all testimony into consideration, found in favor of Lucile de Montleon. Her son, whose name the good doctor does not share with us, was named so heir to the Seigneur.

What Johann Klein does share is a rather blue denouement to this already colorful story. According to Klein the case became something of an international sensation, to the point that the faculty of law at the Sorbonne in Paris looked over all the evidence and testimony reviewed by their colleagues in Grenoble. They concluded, as men often will, that the Parlement was simply helping a lady out of a difficult situation. After all, what educated man, or right thinking woman, could every believe in a dream lover...

Header: The Lunatic of Etretat by Hugues Merle c 1874 via Old Paint