Incubi and Succubi

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The Cacodemonic Copulations, an essay written by Phil Hine, offers a brief overview of the history of sex-demons in various cultures before teaching his readers how to commune with them.

The subject of Incubi and Succubi and their visitations is rarely dealt with by modern magical writers, although they have been used time and time again by various hacks of the horror genre. Sex-Demons have been banished – either explained away as hallucination or junked as a product of Christian mastubatory mythos. Any occultists this side of the twentieth-century that do mention them, usually do so in the context of warning against traffick with such entities, believing that the dangers of loss of vitality or obsession is the inevitable result.

One of the few modern magical writers who does look at incubi and succubi (or, succubi and succuboys), is William Burroughs:

…an incubus or succubus can be harmless, or it can be destructive. Like any sexual situation, the danger depends on how you handle it. All sex is potentially dangerous …. Our sexual feelings make us vunerable. How many people have been ruined by a sexual partner? Sex does provide a point of invasion and the succubi and incubi simply makes us intensely aware of this. – from, A Report from the Bunker (V. Bockris.)

In the novel, The Place of Dead Roads, protagonist Kim Carsons enjoys several encounters with sex-demons:

He knew that the horror of these Demon Lovers was a gloomy Christian thing. In Japan there are phantom lovers known as fox maidens, and the man who can get his hands on a fox maiden is considered lucky. He felt sure that there were fox boys as well. Such creatures could assume the form of either sex.

According to Burroughs, peoples attitudes towards these beings may change, but such visitations are probably more frequent than most people suppose. He classes them as a type of familiar (they certainly are!) and notes that, like animal or elemental familiars, they are dependent on a relationship with a human host for their own development. Similar ideas can be found in the Kaula school of Tantrika, where there are rites for contacting such beings. The general approach is that you fuck them and they do you a favour in return. Burroughs speculates on the possibilities of increased frequency of contact between humans and sex-demons:

Sex is physics. If anyone could push a button and receive an incubus or succubus, I believe that most people would prefer a phantom partner than the all-too dreary real thing. – From The Report from the Bunker

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