ONE FOR THE GIRLS AND ONE FOR THE

BOYS...The Incubus and Succubus:

Feeding the Myth

Snuggle up to the Succubus...

The Succubus and her male counterpart, the Incubus, are originally depicted as ugly, evil demons that seduce people by appearing as beautiful women and handsome men in their dreams.

Like the Vampire, the Succubus and Incubus gain strength by drawing energy from their victims...

Origins in Ancient Egypt?

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Historicising the Succubus

Historian, Charles Moffat

Lilith (Lilitu) was an ancient Sumerian and Mesopotamian (modern day Iraq) fertility goddess. She was a mother goddess, a protector of children, a fierce warrior and an agricultural goddess. She was worshipped by people seeking to have good crops and many children.

But there are other versions of Lilith

But there are other versions of Lilith. For example, in Greece Lilith is the goddess of the black moon (Artemis is

the goddess of the full moon and Hecate is goddess of the crescent moon). In

Greece she was also revered as a fertility goddess, helping to

conceive children and grow crops.

Legends and myths about Lilith originate in ancient Mesopotamia, but persist as far

away as Malayasia. She has many subtle name variants from

region to region.

But not all the legends about her are good. Judeo-Christianity has replaced

the old mythology with a new mythology...

Lilith as SuccubusNo longer is she a goddess, but instead an immortal succubus, the mother of all succubi, a stealer of children and a seductress of men.Lilith makes a very interesting deviation in Judeo-Christianity however. Instead of being a fertility goddess, who helps women conceive children, she has been transformed into a sexual miscreant. Suddenly sex and conception is evil...

We have to remember that the bible (the different versions of it) weren't actually written down until hundreds of years after the death of Christ, and when they were written down, different people (all men) wrote different versions and mass produced them. In Christianity, the version most commonly used is the King James version, a version which religious scholars working for King James wrote.

But other versions tell drastically different stories:

In the Ben-Sira of the llth century (a) version Lilith makes a dramatic appearance, not as a succubus, but as the counterpart to Adam. Lilith and Adam were created together, both made out of clay, at the exact same time.

In Ben-Sira (b), a slightly different version, Adam is created first, and Lilith is created immediately afterwards.

In Ben-Sira (c), Lilith is made of mud instead of clay.

In whatever version you read, the story still finds a way to make women appear inferior...

"Soon, they began to quarrel with each other.

She said to him: I will not lie underneath, and he said: I will not lie underneath but above, for you are meant to lie underneath and I to lie above.

She said to him: We are both equal, because we are both created from the earth.

But they didn’t listen to each other.

When Lilith saw this, she pronounced God’s avowed name and flew into the air...

Immediately, the Almighty sent three angels after her, to bring her back. The Almighty said to Adam: If she decides to return, it is good, but if not, then she must take it upon herself to ensure that a hundred of her children die each day. They went to her and found her in the middle of the Red Sea. And they told her the word of God. But she refused to return. They said to her: We must drown you in the sea. She said: Leave me! I was created for no other purpose than to harm children, eight days for boys and twenty for girls.

When they heard what she said, they pressed her even more. She said: I swear by the name of the living God that I, when I see you or your image on an amulet, will have no power over that particular child.

Adam stood in prayer before his Creator and said: Lord of the World! The woman you have given me has gone away from me.

And she took it upon herself to ensure that, every day, a hundred of her children died. That is why we say that, every day, a hundred of her demons die. That is why we write the names Senoi, Sansenoi and Semangloph on an amulet for small children. And when Lilith sees it, she remembers her promise and the child is saved.”

At this point, the legend of Lilith as the "first Eve" merges with the earlier legend of Sumero-Babylonian origin, dating from around 3,500 BCE, of Lilith as a winged female demon who kills infants and endangers women in childbirth.

In this role, she was one of several mazakim or "harmful spirits" known from incantation formulas preserved in Assyrian, Hebrew, and Canaanite inscriptions intended to protect against them.

As a female demon, she is closely related to Lamashtu whose evilness included killing children, drinking the blood of men, and eating their flesh. Lamashtu also caused pregnant women to miscarry, disturbed sleep and brought nightmares.

In turn, Lamashtu is like another demonized female called Lamia, a Libyan serpent goddess, whose name is probably a Greek variant of Lamashtu.

The Lamia of ancient Greece was similar to Lilith. She was a demon with the head and breasts of a woman, but her scaly body was that of a large, winged serpent.

Once Lamia realized what she had done, she became a raging monster that attacked the young children of others. Romans had their own version, calling her the strix. This was also a type of screech owl known in Roman times. The plural in Latin is strigae which evolved over time into strega, or witch, in Italian.

She was also a night creature preying primarily on the innocent young, because one version of her story had her as a mortal lover of Zeus. Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus, made her insane so that Lamia ate all her children.

The Significance of the Succubus