Hieronyma and the Incubus - Sleep Paralysis, Sexuality, and Anomalous Entity Encounters
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In the late seventeenth century, an Italian theologian wrote of a woman in Pavia, Italy, who for years was awakened in the night by a soft, seductive voice that later appeared as a small, golden-haired man. Hieronyma felt kisses on her skin, while the voice and man tempted her into sex. Later, an unseen force moved people and objects around the house, or caused them to disappear entirely. Though it sounds like a far-fetched story, it's largely consistent with thousands of other documented cases of what's now called sleep paralysis - and even with cases of alleged alien abduction - and it illustrates the important role of sexuality in all of these experiences.
The Incubus
In the late seventeenth century, the Italian theologian, Friar Ludovico Maria Sinistrari de Ameno, wrote a treatise on demons that incited the sin of fornication by having sex with consenting victims, or by causing them to masturbate. Amongst philosophers of the time, the existence of these demons - called incubi when male and succubi when female - was well established, but little else was known of them.
For the sake of illustration, Sinistrari related the account of Hieronyma of Pavia, Italy, which he learned of while working as a professor at a local Convent beginning in the late 1640s. The manuscript tells us that Hieronyma was well-regarded in her community, and that she lived with her husband, her three-year-old daughter, and a servant girl. One day, she brought some dough to the baker's, but when she returned for the bread, the baker presented her with a Venetian-style cake as well. The baker insisted that it must have been hers since she was his only customer that day, so she took it home and ate it with her family and servant.
The following night, Hieronyma was awakened by a soft, whistling voice in her ear asking her how she liked the cake. She immediately made the sign of the cross and repeated the names of Jesus and Mary, but the voice assured her that it meant her no harm: it was struck by her beauty, and only wanted to please her. As it said this, Hieronyma felt the sensation of someone kissing her cheeks with soft, tender lips. After about half an hour, the feeling stopped and the voice went silent, but the following nights, Hieronyma heard the voice again, begging, moaning, and crying for her love. After several nights of the same seduction, Hieronyma's confessor had her examined by exorcists, who found no signs of demonic possession. Though they blessed the house and bed, and ordered the voice to leave, the experiences continued. Sinistrari claims that exorcists have no power over incubi.
One night, a small, youthful man dressed like a Spanish noble appeared in Hieronyma's room. He had curly golden hair, sea-green eyes, and a gleaming, golden beard. Like the voice, the man begged for Hieronyma's touch and sent her kisses, desperately trying to seduce her. The man appeared quite frequently from then on: when Hieronyma was in bed with her husband, or when she was in the company of others, though no one else could see or hear him but her. Though Sinistrari never says so explicitly, it's implied that Hieronyma is unable to get out of bed, or to wake her husband during her experiences, suggesting that both partners are confined or paralyzed.
The Poltergeist
At some point, Hieronyma began to experience poltergeist activity in her home. A number of jewels, rings, and religious accessories - including a silver cross filled with holy relics - disappeared, some from inside a locked casket. She then began to feel forceful blows from an unseen attacker, though her bruises would vanish a day or two later. Sometimes, when Hieronyma was breastfeeding, her daughter would disappear from her lap, only to be discovered on the roof, or hidden in the house. Plates and pottery were smashed to pieces, and instantly restored to their original condition. One night, after Hieronyma refused the bearded man's advances, he left the room and returned with piles of flag stone, commonly used for roofing in the area. The man stacked the stones into a wall around her bed that reached nearly to the ceiling, and the couple had to have their servant bring a ladder to get them out. The stones were disassembled and stacked in a corner of the house, and vanished after two days.
On a feast day, Hieronyma's husband invited some friends for dinner. Just before the guests sat down to eat, the table suddenly vanished, along with all the food, drinks, and dishes. But as the guests were about to leave, the table returned, loaded with exquisite foods, fine wines, and expensive new dishes. There were even new foods, jugs, and utensils in the kitchen. The guests gorged themselves on the meal, then later, the original contents of the table reappeared, but they were all too full to eat it.
After several months of seduction, Hieronyma visited the body of Bernardino of Feltre, a renowned Franciscan Friar, where she vowed to wear a monk's robe for a year in order to repel her tempter. During the feast of Saint Michael, she went to mass with a large crowd of people. As she stepped onto Church grounds, her robes fell to her feet and blew away in the wind, leaving her completely naked. The clothes, along with the jewelry stolen earlier, reappeared some six months later. According the Sinistrari, the temptation of Hieronyma continued for "many years," and many more devious tricks were played, but the strange man eventually left for good.
Discussion
Hieronyma's case is brought to us by a single source only, so it's impossible to verify that the events happened as reported. At the same time however, it contains a number of elements frequently reported in historical cases of incubi and succubi, as well as in modern cases of sleep paralysis and alien abduction.
The first interesting element in the story is the offer and ingestion of a foreign food item. In another video, we saw that a Swedish farmer in the 18th century was offered food and drink by beings he encountered in a strange red mansion in some alternate reality. In 1961, An American chicken farmer named Joe Simonton saw a round, silvery saucer land in his yard. Its occupants motioned for water, and when Simonton returned with a full jug, they made him four tasteless, buckwheat pancakes and flew away. These offerings may convey a deeper, symbolic meaning as tokens of exchange, agreement, or consent. In the Celtic fairy tradition, it is believed that if you eat the food that fairies offer, you'll be trapped in their world forever. Maybe Hieronyma's decision to eat the cake served as an invitation for the voice to prey on her for as long as it did.
The second interesting element of Hieronyma's case is the presence of a supernatural, sexual tempter. The world's earliest civilizations spoke of similarly entities. The ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians wrote of female demons called Lilītu that caused erotic dreams and night terrors. In the 4th century CE, St. Augustine pronounced that beings like these were undoubtedly real, and known across cultures. Their intentions were sinister: sex was thought to be a way for demons to inhabit human bodies, or for witches to acquire supernatural powers. In the fifteenth-century Malleus Maleficarum, the most influential text on witchcraft for the next 300 years, it was stated that women enslaved themselves to the devil by submitting to sex with him.
Many believed that Incubi could procreate, making hybrid children called cambions, though most theologians believed that Incubi used the sperm stolen from human men to do so. A number of legendary figures in history were said to have been cambions, including the Wizard Merlin of Arthurian lore. Against the intellectual opinion of his time, Sinistrari believed that the incubi and succubi weren't demons, but a species of rational beings with souls like humans' but subtler physical bodies.
In the medical literature, experiences with incubi and succubi are thought to be incidental hallucinations triggered by a neurological condition known as sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is thought to occur when the waking stages of sleep overlap with REM sleep, in which the body is normally chemically paralyzed. The extreme sense of panic resulting from being unable to move causes the victim's subconscious mind to conjure up the sights and sounds of a threatening scenario. The condition is thought to explain not only cases of incubi and succubi, but encounters with other night time spirits in folklore and mythology, as well as alien abductions.
However, some of those suffering from sleep paralysis claim that their experiences bleed over into waking life, as Hieronyma's did, and there is a remarkable similarity in these supposed hallucinations as they occur around the world. In Fiji, the experience is known as Kana tevoro, or being eaten by a demon. In Tibet, the experience is called dip-non, and it's believed that a shadowy, spiritual pollution oppresses the victim's body. In the Swahili culture of southeast Africa, sleep paralysis experiences are known as Jinamizi, which translates to "strangled by a Jinn." The Jinn are a race of supernatural beings mentioned in the Koran, and they're blamed for sleep paralysis experiences in much of the Muslim world as well. Today, many westerners see an old hag, or a black, shadowy humanoid. Folklorist David Hufford has argued that neither one's culture nor one's particular brain state can account for the fact that most people sense the presence of a conscious, supernatural being or figure, and never experience any other threatening scenario, like the walls closing in, or terrorists entering the room.
A number of researchers have also pointed out the intriguing parallels between cases of incubi and succubi and cases of alien abduction. Abductees are frequently visited while paralyzed in their beds, and they're often made to copulate with alien beings and conceive hybrid children. Indologist David Gordon White, as well as Jeffrey Kripal, a scholar of comparative religion, have also noted how the same features appeared in stories from Medieval South Asian Tantric tradition: its practitioners believed that almond-eyed female sky-beings known as yoginis descended to earth in powerful vessels to frighten, abduct, and seduce sleeping men, and even to collect their semen.
Heironyma's case also grew to include poltergeist activity, which many parapsychologists and ghost researchers believe to be an effect of extreme emotional distress, and not the work of an outside spirit. Maybe the voice was responsible for these effects, or maybe they were caused by Hieronyma herself; a physical manifestation of the mental anguish that she suffered.
Summary
The ufologist Jacques Vallée discussed Hieronyma's case in his seminal book, Passport to Magonia, and quoted extensively from the original primary source account, making it accessible to general readers. An english translation of Sinistrari's original manuscript, Daemonialitate, et Incubis et Succubis, can now be found online.
With only one source, the story of Hieronyma is impossible to verify, but it's consistent with centuries of thinking on lilītu, incubi, and other visitors from the spirit world, and also with reports of sleep paralysis and alien abduction documented in the modern day. It's likely that there is some common cause behind all these cases - even a psychic, or psychological one - that links them in a way that we don't yet understand. Whatever Heironyma struggled with, it is still a power beyond our comprehension.
Sources:
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari de Ameno. Demonality, Incubi and Succubi. Translated from the original Latin. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1879. Available online: https://archive.org/stream/demonialityorinc00sinirich?ref=ol#page/n11.
David Gordon White. Kiss of the Yogini: "Tantric Sex" in its South Asian Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber. The Super Natural. New York: Tarcher/ Penguin, 2016.
Jacques Vallée. Passport to Magonia. Brisbane: Daily Grail Publishing, 2014.
Interview with David Hufford:
http://academia.edu/4041334/_From_Sleep_Paralysis_to_Spiritual_Experience_An_Interview_with_David_Hufford_Paranthropology_vol._4_no._3_2013_.
This video uses sound effects downloaded from Windboe Sounds: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kpkJNlUKNWE.
This video uses sound effects downloaded from zapsplat.com: https://zapsplat.com.
This video uses sound effects downloaded from Sound Bible, recorded by snottyboi: http://soundbible.com.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Illustration by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
In the late seventeenth century, an Italian theologian wrote of a woman in Pavia, Italy, who for years was awakened in the night by a soft, seductive voice that later appeared as a small, golden-haired man. Hieronyma felt kisses on her skin, while the voice and man tempted her into sex. Later, an unseen force moved people and objects around the house, or caused them to disappear entirely. Though it sounds like a far-fetched story, it's largely consistent with thousands of other documented cases of what's now called sleep paralysis - and even with cases of alleged alien abduction - and it illustrates the important role of sexuality in all of these experiences.
The Incubus
In the late seventeenth century, the Italian theologian, Friar Ludovico Maria Sinistrari de Ameno, wrote a treatise on demons that incited the sin of fornication by having sex with consenting victims, or by causing them to masturbate. Amongst philosophers of the time, the existence of these demons - called incubi when male and succubi when female - was well established, but little else was known of them.
For the sake of illustration, Sinistrari related the account of Hieronyma of Pavia, Italy, which he learned of while working as a professor at a local Convent beginning in the late 1640s. The manuscript tells us that Hieronyma was well-regarded in her community, and that she lived with her husband, her three-year-old daughter, and a servant girl. One day, she brought some dough to the baker's, but when she returned for the bread, the baker presented her with a Venetian-style cake as well. The baker insisted that it must have been hers since she was his only customer that day, so she took it home and ate it with her family and servant.
The following night, Hieronyma was awakened by a soft, whistling voice in her ear asking her how she liked the cake. She immediately made the sign of the cross and repeated the names of Jesus and Mary, but the voice assured her that it meant her no harm: it was struck by her beauty, and only wanted to please her. As it said this, Hieronyma felt the sensation of someone kissing her cheeks with soft, tender lips. After about half an hour, the feeling stopped and the voice went silent, but the following nights, Hieronyma heard the voice again, begging, moaning, and crying for her love. After several nights of the same seduction, Hieronyma's confessor had her examined by exorcists, who found no signs of demonic possession. Though they blessed the house and bed, and ordered the voice to leave, the experiences continued. Sinistrari claims that exorcists have no power over incubi.
One night, a small, youthful man dressed like a Spanish noble appeared in Hieronyma's room. He had curly golden hair, sea-green eyes, and a gleaming, golden beard. Like the voice, the man begged for Hieronyma's touch and sent her kisses, desperately trying to seduce her. The man appeared quite frequently from then on: when Hieronyma was in bed with her husband, or when she was in the company of others, though no one else could see or hear him but her. Though Sinistrari never says so explicitly, it's implied that Hieronyma is unable to get out of bed, or to wake her husband during her experiences, suggesting that both partners are confined or paralyzed.
The Poltergeist
At some point, Hieronyma began to experience poltergeist activity in her home. A number of jewels, rings, and religious accessories - including a silver cross filled with holy relics - disappeared, some from inside a locked casket. She then began to feel forceful blows from an unseen attacker, though her bruises would vanish a day or two later. Sometimes, when Hieronyma was breastfeeding, her daughter would disappear from her lap, only to be discovered on the roof, or hidden in the house. Plates and pottery were smashed to pieces, and instantly restored to their original condition. One night, after Hieronyma refused the bearded man's advances, he left the room and returned with piles of flag stone, commonly used for roofing in the area. The man stacked the stones into a wall around her bed that reached nearly to the ceiling, and the couple had to have their servant bring a ladder to get them out. The stones were disassembled and stacked in a corner of the house, and vanished after two days.
On a feast day, Hieronyma's husband invited some friends for dinner. Just before the guests sat down to eat, the table suddenly vanished, along with all the food, drinks, and dishes. But as the guests were about to leave, the table returned, loaded with exquisite foods, fine wines, and expensive new dishes. There were even new foods, jugs, and utensils in the kitchen. The guests gorged themselves on the meal, then later, the original contents of the table reappeared, but they were all too full to eat it.
After several months of seduction, Hieronyma visited the body of Bernardino of Feltre, a renowned Franciscan Friar, where she vowed to wear a monk's robe for a year in order to repel her tempter. During the feast of Saint Michael, she went to mass with a large crowd of people. As she stepped onto Church grounds, her robes fell to her feet and blew away in the wind, leaving her completely naked. The clothes, along with the jewelry stolen earlier, reappeared some six months later. According the Sinistrari, the temptation of Hieronyma continued for "many years," and many more devious tricks were played, but the strange man eventually left for good.
Discussion
Hieronyma's case is brought to us by a single source only, so it's impossible to verify that the events happened as reported. At the same time however, it contains a number of elements frequently reported in historical cases of incubi and succubi, as well as in modern cases of sleep paralysis and alien abduction.
The first interesting element in the story is the offer and ingestion of a foreign food item. In another video, we saw that a Swedish farmer in the 18th century was offered food and drink by beings he encountered in a strange red mansion in some alternate reality. In 1961, An American chicken farmer named Joe Simonton saw a round, silvery saucer land in his yard. Its occupants motioned for water, and when Simonton returned with a full jug, they made him four tasteless, buckwheat pancakes and flew away. These offerings may convey a deeper, symbolic meaning as tokens of exchange, agreement, or consent. In the Celtic fairy tradition, it is believed that if you eat the food that fairies offer, you'll be trapped in their world forever. Maybe Hieronyma's decision to eat the cake served as an invitation for the voice to prey on her for as long as it did.
The second interesting element of Hieronyma's case is the presence of a supernatural, sexual tempter. The world's earliest civilizations spoke of similarly entities. The ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians wrote of female demons called Lilītu that caused erotic dreams and night terrors. In the 4th century CE, St. Augustine pronounced that beings like these were undoubtedly real, and known across cultures. Their intentions were sinister: sex was thought to be a way for demons to inhabit human bodies, or for witches to acquire supernatural powers. In the fifteenth-century Malleus Maleficarum, the most influential text on witchcraft for the next 300 years, it was stated that women enslaved themselves to the devil by submitting to sex with him.
Many believed that Incubi could procreate, making hybrid children called cambions, though most theologians believed that Incubi used the sperm stolen from human men to do so. A number of legendary figures in history were said to have been cambions, including the Wizard Merlin of Arthurian lore. Against the intellectual opinion of his time, Sinistrari believed that the incubi and succubi weren't demons, but a species of rational beings with souls like humans' but subtler physical bodies.
In the medical literature, experiences with incubi and succubi are thought to be incidental hallucinations triggered by a neurological condition known as sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is thought to occur when the waking stages of sleep overlap with REM sleep, in which the body is normally chemically paralyzed. The extreme sense of panic resulting from being unable to move causes the victim's subconscious mind to conjure up the sights and sounds of a threatening scenario. The condition is thought to explain not only cases of incubi and succubi, but encounters with other night time spirits in folklore and mythology, as well as alien abductions.
However, some of those suffering from sleep paralysis claim that their experiences bleed over into waking life, as Hieronyma's did, and there is a remarkable similarity in these supposed hallucinations as they occur around the world. In Fiji, the experience is known as Kana tevoro, or being eaten by a demon. In Tibet, the experience is called dip-non, and it's believed that a shadowy, spiritual pollution oppresses the victim's body. In the Swahili culture of southeast Africa, sleep paralysis experiences are known as Jinamizi, which translates to "strangled by a Jinn." The Jinn are a race of supernatural beings mentioned in the Koran, and they're blamed for sleep paralysis experiences in much of the Muslim world as well. Today, many westerners see an old hag, or a black, shadowy humanoid. Folklorist David Hufford has argued that neither one's culture nor one's particular brain state can account for the fact that most people sense the presence of a conscious, supernatural being or figure, and never experience any other threatening scenario, like the walls closing in, or terrorists entering the room.
A number of researchers have also pointed out the intriguing parallels between cases of incubi and succubi and cases of alien abduction. Abductees are frequently visited while paralyzed in their beds, and they're often made to copulate with alien beings and conceive hybrid children. Indologist David Gordon White, as well as Jeffrey Kripal, a scholar of comparative religion, have also noted how the same features appeared in stories from Medieval South Asian Tantric tradition: its practitioners believed that almond-eyed female sky-beings known as yoginis descended to earth in powerful vessels to frighten, abduct, and seduce sleeping men, and even to collect their semen.
Heironyma's case also grew to include poltergeist activity, which many parapsychologists and ghost researchers believe to be an effect of extreme emotional distress, and not the work of an outside spirit. Maybe the voice was responsible for these effects, or maybe they were caused by Hieronyma herself; a physical manifestation of the mental anguish that she suffered.
Summary
The ufologist Jacques Vallée discussed Hieronyma's case in his seminal book, Passport to Magonia, and quoted extensively from the original primary source account, making it accessible to general readers. An english translation of Sinistrari's original manuscript, Daemonialitate, et Incubis et Succubis, can now be found online.
With only one source, the story of Hieronyma is impossible to verify, but it's consistent with centuries of thinking on lilītu, incubi, and other visitors from the spirit world, and also with reports of sleep paralysis and alien abduction documented in the modern day. It's likely that there is some common cause behind all these cases - even a psychic, or psychological one - that links them in a way that we don't yet understand. Whatever Heironyma struggled with, it is still a power beyond our comprehension.
Sources:
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari de Ameno. Demonality, Incubi and Succubi. Translated from the original Latin. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1879. Available online: https://archive.org/stream/demonialityorinc00sinirich?ref=ol#page/n11.
David Gordon White. Kiss of the Yogini: "Tantric Sex" in its South Asian Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Jeffrey Kripal and Whitley Strieber. The Super Natural. New York: Tarcher/ Penguin, 2016.
Jacques Vallée. Passport to Magonia. Brisbane: Daily Grail Publishing, 2014.
Interview with David Hufford:
http://academia.edu/4041334/_From_Sleep_Paralysis_to_Spiritual_Experience_An_Interview_with_David_Hufford_Paranthropology_vol._4_no._3_2013_.
This video uses sound effects downloaded from Windboe Sounds: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kpkJNlUKNWE.
This video uses sound effects downloaded from zapsplat.com: https://zapsplat.com.
This video uses sound effects downloaded from Sound Bible, recorded by snottyboi: http://soundbible.com.
Support new videos on Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=3375417
Think Anomalous is created by Jason Charbonneau. Illustration by Colin Campbell. Music by Josh Chamberland. Animation by Brendan Barr. Sound design by Will Mountain and Josh Chamberland.
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