[j--y--r] at [minerva.cis.yale.edu] (John P. Raynor) wrote:
>Actually, the "Incubus" and the "Succubus" are two alternate forms of the
>very SAME infernal spirit.  The succubus "collects" suitable genetic
>material (to put it rather euphemistically), adopts a male form (thus
>"becoming" an incubus) and "deposits" it elsewhere.  I believe there is a
>passage describing this process in the Malleus, but I don't have a copy of
>the book with me at the moment, so I can't be absolutely sure.  I'm sure
>that the medieval demonologists who came up with this unpleasent idea were
>merely expressing their deep-rooted horror regarding illicit (and rather
>disturbingly ambiguous) sex, but if you're feeling creative, its easy to
>envision a "Secret Diabolical Breeding Program"

It seems to have been an attempt at a "scientific" explanation of succubi/incubi: the devil/demons weren't allowed by theology to create life, so they had to come up with a way for them to get good sperm or their livelihood would start to dry up. So to speak.

Anyway, this is from the _Compendium_ Maleficarum, not the Malleus, which probably has equally fun passages:

   For demons can assume the bodies of dead men, or make for themselves
   out of air a palpable body like that of flesh, and to these they can
   impart motion and heat at their will. They can therefore create the
   appearance of sex which is not naturally present, and show themselves
   to men in a feminine form, and to women in a masculine form, and lie
   with each accordingly: and they can also produce semen which they have
   brought from elsewhere, and imitate the natural ejaculation of it.

   I add that a child can be born of such copulation with an Incubus devil.
   To make this clear, it must be known that the devil can collect semen from
   another place, as from a man's vain dreams, and by his speed and
   experience of physical laws can prserve that semen in its fertilising
   warmth, however subtle and airy and volatile it be, and inject it into
   a woman's womb at the moment when she is most disposed to conceive,
   making it appear to be done in the natural way, and so mingling it with
   the woman's ova. Yet it is true that the devils cannot, as animals do,
   procreate children by virtue of their own strength and substance: for
   neither between themselves have they any propagation of their own kind,
   nor are they endowed with any semen which can in the least degree prove
   fertile. And how should they have semen of their own, since semen is a
   vital part of the corporeal substance, and (according to Symposianus in
   his _Problems_) a secretion from well-digested food; whereas devils
   are substances without corporeal bodies? We say, then that a child can
   be born from the copulation of an Incubus with a woman, but that the
   father of such a child is not the demon but that man whose semen the demon
   has misused. There are countless examples told by many authors (Jornandus,
   _de rebus Gothicis_, and Luitprand) that the Huns were descended from the
   union of Fauns with Gothic witches. Chieza (_Hist. Peru, II, 27) writes
   that in Spanish America a demon named Corocoton lies with women and that
   there are born children with two horns. The Japanese claim that their
   Shaka is of the same sort. Nora re there wanting those who place
   Luther in this class. And not ten years ago a woman was punished in the
   chief city of Brabant because she had been brought to bed by a demon.

This is from Francesco Maria Guazzo's _Compendium Maleficarum_, published in 1595, as translated by the Rev. Montague Summers; I have heard that he took liberties with parts of the translations, but any time I've had the opportunity to check with other translations, it is pretty much the same. Regardless, Summers is an interesting character because, while he did the translation in 1929, he did so out of the belief that this was true and useful information necessary for the work of modern Christian demonologists.

Put that in your adventure and fight it.

Jerry