Incubus (demon)

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Incubus , watercolor (1870)

As Incubus , plural Incubi also Inkubus , plural incubi (from latin: incubare for, lying on top ', hatching'), is in the mythology a male Alb (Elf) , a nightmares causative nocturnal daemon , a wood spirit or Sylvan designated who mates with a sleeping woman at night without her noticing anything. In addition, the incubus is considered to be the representative of Satan, who is responsible for dragging the souls of sinners into hell after their death. The female counterpart is called Succubus (also succubus or Sukkuba , plural: Succubes , from Latin: succumbere , lying below). A succubus steals the sleeping man's semen unnoticed.

Origin and description

Depiction of Lilith , queen of the night , British Museum

The oldest mention of demons of this kind comes from Mesopotamia , under the names Lilu and Lilutu or Ardat Lili and Irdu Lili, as demons that appear in sleep in the form of erotic dreams. This notion can also be found in Jewish and Christian mythology (see Lilith ).

They feed on the life energy of sleeping people with whom they mate at night. If an incubus or succubus mates with a person, the person does not wake up during the act and can only remember the nightly visit in the form of a dream .

In Christianity , nocturnal sinful dreams or associated ejaculations were often explained by visiting an incubus or succubus. In this way one could not be held responsible for sin because one fell victim to a supernatural power.

However, in the course of early modern was witch-hunting of sexual intercourse with the Devil ( Devil Paramour ) accused the defendants consciously desired act and thus was a sign of the fall of God and devotion to the devil. The devil took the form of a succubus in witch masters , while he appeared as an incubus in witches . Such erotic dreams were allegedly caused, especially in women, by so-called witch ointments with psychoactive ingredients.

It was also a widespread theory that a - in itself sexless - demon or lover first slept with a man in the form of a succubus and then turned into an incubus in order to fertilize a woman with the man's semen; he himself is bodiless and thus incapable of procreation. The result of this unwanted fling was the changeling .

The Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825) depicted Incubi iconographically for the first time in many pictures and graphics . Füssli's most famous work, Der Nachtmahr , exists in different versions.

In Faust I , Goethe had Doctor Faust, who appeared as a poodle, force Mephistopheles, who appeared as a poodle, to show himself in his true form and finally called an Incubus: “Incubus! Incubus! Come over and finish it off! ". By the way, Lilith appears later on the ascent in the Harz Mountains .

In the Jungian doctrine of archetypes , the succubus is the dark female aspect of the man that belongs to the complex of the anima conception.

James Allan Cheyne , in a study, interprets symptoms of sleep paralysis in relation to traditional ideas about an incubus.

Movie

Succubus, wood carving (16th century) in a Cambridge inn

See also

literature

  • Siegmund Hurwitz: Lilith. The First Eve. Historical and psychological aspects of the dark feminine. Daimon Verlag, Einsiedeln 1992, ISBN 3-85630-522-X .
  • Carl Gustav Jung : C.-G.-Jung paperback edition. Volume 16: Archetypes (= dtv 35175). Edited by Lorenz Jung. 16th edition. Deutsche Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-423-35175-1 .
  • Raphael Patai: The Hebrew Goddess. 3rd enlarged edition. Wayne State University Press, Detroit MI 1991, ISBN 0-8143-2271-9 , p. 221.

Web links

Wiktionary: Incubus  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Succubus  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Incubus  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Succubus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ First study room scene , verse 1290
  2. ↑ Verse 4118
  3. ^ J. Cheyne: Sleep Paralysis and the Structure of Waking-Nightmare Hallucinations . In: Dreaming . 13, No. 3, 2003, pp. 163-179. doi : 10.1023 / A: 1025373412722 .
  4. ↑ Chef loves a succubus! (The Succubus) at Fernsehserien.de