Sinister Visitors

The sage Waldemar writes:

“A contemporary of Brognoli, the priest Coleti, tells us about a woman of his parish who went to him with her husband to seek advice.

“She was a devout and respected woman, but she had been pursued relentlessly day and night for ten years by a spirit suggesting the immoral. Even when she was not asleep it behaved like an incubus with her; in no way whatever was it a dream from which she was suffering.

“However, it was not successful in gaining her consent and she remained unyielding. As such, the exorcist had to do no more than read the Praeceptum Leviticum against the demon and she was freed of it.

“In this case,” Waldemar continues, “we can see that when the consciousness of a disturbed person has gone to the extent of imagining being raped by a demon, that is to say, taken over against her will, this state can be overcome through the expulsion of the lascivious spirit by moral forces not yet totally dominated.

“However, if the incubus (the lascivious ego), the lustful “I” created by that very same fantasy, is strengthened to the end without opposition, the same individual will become the incubus, carrying out as both members of the pair an act of self-copulation. In this case the obsession generally ends in complete dementia.

“Thus, Brognoli tried in vain to liberate a twenty-year-old girl from an incubus in the spring of 1643.

“He said, ‘I went with her confessor to her house. As soon as we entered, the demon, who was dedicated to its task, slipped away. I then questioned the girl, and she told me in full detail what the demon had done with her.

“‘From her story I soon realized that although she denied it, she had nevertheless indirectly given her consent to the demon. When she became aware of its proximity by the dilation and tickling sensation of the affected parts of her body, she did not seek refuge in prayer, nor did she invoke God and the Holy Virgin, nor even her Guardian Angel to help. Instead she would run to her room and lie down on her bed so that the devil could perform his task more comfortably and agreeably.

“‘In conclusion, when I tried to awaken in her a staunch confidence in God in order to liberate her, she remained indifferent and without response. I noticed instead a certain resistance, as if she did not want to be liberated.

“‘I departed after giving some advice to her parents about their daughter’s disciplinary treatment and the body’s containment by fasting and ablutions.’

“But it was not just women who had visitations like this,” says the sage Waldemar. “In Bergamo, Brognoli was taken to a young merchant of about twenty-two years of age who had been weakened to the point of being just skin and bones due to the torment of a succubus.

“A few months before, while lying in his bed, a demon in the form of an extraordinarily beautiful girl with whom he had been in love, appeared before him.

“As he cried out contemplating the figure, she insisted that he keep quiet, assuring him that she really was the same girl and because her mother had beaten her, she had to run away to the home of her beloved.

“He knew that she was not his Theresa but rather a turbulent spirit. However, after talking and embracing, he took her to bed with him.

“Later the figure told him that in fact she was not the girl, but a demon who desired him, one of his devilish egos. That is why she united with him day and night.

“This lasted some months until God liberated him through Brognoli, and he did penance for his sins.”

Clearly and unmistakably, this amazing story demonstrates self-copulation with an ego-devil that assumes the shape of a beloved woman.

Unquestionably, that young man and his ardent imagination and terrible lust had unconsciously used the ideo-plastic faculty to give subtle shape to his beloved.

It is in this way that a succubus ego came into existence, a passionate demon with long hair and a one-track mind.

Obviously, a good part of his consciousness remained bottled up within that feminine devil.

Referring to this matter, Paracelsus says in his book De Origine Morborum Invisibilium, Lib. III:

“Incubi and succubi... are formed of the sperma found in the imagination of those who commit the unnatural sin of Onan [masturbation] in thought and desires. Coming as it does from the imagination alone, it is no true sperma [material], but only corrupted salt (essence). Only a seed that enters the organs which Nature provided for its development can grow into a body. If seed is not planted into the proper soil [nutritious substratum] it will rot. If sperma does not come into the proper matrix it will not produce anything good, but something useless. Therefore the incubi and succubi grown out of corrupted seed, without the natural order of things, are evil and useless...

“This sperma, coming from the imagination, is born in Amor Hereos. This means a kind of love in which a man may imagine a woman, or a woman a man, to perform the connubial act with the image created in the sphere of the mind. From this act results the expulsion of an ethereal fluid, impotent to generate a child, but capable of bringing larvae into existence. Such an imagination is the mother of a luxurious unchastity, which, if continued, renders man impotent and woman sterile, because much of the true creative and formative power is lost by the frequent exercise of such a morbid imagination...”

The larvae-egos of lasciviousness are real, thinking, autonomous entities within which a good percentage of consciousness is imprisoned.

The larvae to which Paracelsus refers are none other than those cultivated forms of thought that owe their energy and existence solely to unnatural imagination.