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"Space
Alien" Daemonialitas
Excerpt from:
Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore and Parallel Worlds
1969
by Jacques Vallee
ISBN 0-8092-3796-2
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When
folklore becomes degraded to a minor literary form, as the fairy-faith
was degraded to the fairy tales we know today, it naturally loses
much of its content: precisely those "adult" details that cannot
be allowed to remain in children's books. The direct result of the
censorship of spicy details in these marvelous stories is that they
really become mere occasions for amazement. The Villas-Boas case
[the well documented Brazilian "UFO abduction" case wherein farmer
Antonio Villas-Boas was allegedly taken on board a UFO craft, given
an aphrodisiac liquid to drink then made to copulate twice with
an attractive red-haired, pointy-breasted "space alien" female who
made odd animal-like grunting noises during the act. We certainly
hope it was as good for him as it apparently was for her.] is
hardly appropriate for nursery-school reading, but to eliminate
the little lady from the story would turn it into a tale without
deep symbolic or psychological value. The sexual context is precisely
what gives such accounts their literary influence. It is what provides
impact to the fairy-faith.
Without
the sexual context -- without the stories of changelings, human
midwives, intermarriage with the Gentry, of which we never hear
in modern fairy tales -- it is doubtful that the tradition about
fairies would have survived through the ages. Nor is that true only
of fairies: the most remarkable cases of sexual contact with non-humans
are not found in spicy saucer books, nor in fairy legends; they
rest, safely stored away, in the archives of the Catholic Church.
To find them, one must first learn Latin and gain entrance into
the few libraries where these unique records are preserved. But
the accounts one finds there make the Villas-Boas case pale by comparison,
as I believe the reader will agree before the end of this chapter.
Let us
first establish clearly that the belief in the possibility of intermarriage
between man and the non-human races we are studying is a corollary
to the apparitions in all historical contexts. This is so obvious
in biblical stories that I hardly need elaborate. The sex of the
angels is not the most difficult -- on the contrary, it is the clearest
-- of all theological questions. In Anatole France's Revolt of
the Angels it is Arcade, one of the celestial beings, who says:
"There's
nothing like having sound references. In order to assure yourself
that I am not deceiving you, Maurice, on this subject of the amorous
embraces of angels and women, look up Justin, Apologies I and
II; Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book I, Chapter 111;
Athenagoras, Concerning the Resurrection; Lactantius, Book 11,
Chapter XV; Tertullian, On the Veil of the Virgins; Marcus of
Ephesus in Psellus; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, Book V,
Chapter IV; Saint Ambrose, in his book on Noah and the Ark, Chapter
V; Saint Augustine in his City of God, Book XV, Chapter XXIII;
Father Meldonat, the Jesuit, Treatise on Demons, page 248..."
Thus
spoke Arcade, his guardian angel, to poor Maurice, as be tried to
apologize for having stolen his mistress, pretty Madam Gilberte.
And he added shamelessly, "It was bound to be so; all the other
angels in revolt would have done as I did with Gilberte." "Women,"
saith the Apostle, "should pray with their heads covered, because
of the angels."
This
is clear enough. But fairies and elves? Are they subject to such
carnal desires? Consider the following facts.
In the
Preface of the Saga of Hrolf, Torfeus, a seventeenth- century Danish
historian, records statements made about the elves by Einard Cusmond,
the Icelandic scholar:
"I am convinced
they really do exist, and they are creatures of God; that they
get married like we do, and have children of either sex: we have
a proof of this in what we know of the love of some of their women
with simple mortals."
William
Grant Stewart, in The Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements
of the Highlanders of Scotland, devotes the second part of his discussion
to fairies. In a chapter entitled "Of the Passions and Propensities
of the Fairies," he has this to say on sexual intercourse with them:
"The fairies
are remarkable for the amorousness of their dispositions, and
are not very backward in forming attachments and connections with
the people that cannot with propriety be called their own species."
This
is a beautiful example of convoluted phraseology. Stewart is less
obviously embarrassed when he reports that such events no longer
seem to take place between men and fairies:
"We owe
it, in justice to both the human and the fairy communities of
the present day, to say, that such intercourse as that described
to have taken place betwixt them is now extremely rare; with the
single exception of a good old shoemaker, now or lately living
in the village of Tomantoul, who confesses having had some dalliances
with a 'lanan-shi' in his younger days, we do not know personally
any one who has carried matters this length."
If Stewart
came back today, he would have to revise this statement after reading
UFO material. Kirk stated the case more clearly when be said: "In
our Scotland there are numerous and beautiful creatures of that
aerial order, who frequently assign meetings to lascivious young
men as succubi, or as joyous mistresses and prostitutes, who are
called Leannain Sith or familiar spirits." I hardly need to remind
the reader of the importance of such "familiar spirits" in medieval
occultism, particularly in Rosicrucian theories. Nor do I need to
mention the number of accused witches who were condemned to death
on the evidence that they had such familiar spirits.
There
is no gap between the fairy-faith and ufology regarding the sexual
question. This is apparent from the study made by Wentz, who records,
for example, the following story:
"My grandmother
Catherine MacInnis used to tell about a man named Laughlin, whom
she knew, being in love with a fairy-woman. The fairy-woman made
it a point to see Laughlin every night, and he being worn out
with her began to fear her. Things got so bad at last that be
decided to go to America to escape the fairy- woman. As soon as
the plan was fixed and he was about to emigrate, women who were
milking at sunset out in the meadows heard very audibly the fairy-woman
singing this song:
"What
will the brown-haired woman do When Lachie is on the billows?"
"Lachie
emigrated to Cape Breton, landing at Pictu, Nova Scotia; and in
his first letter home to his friends be stated that the same fairy-woman
was haunting him there in America."
The comments
by Wentz on this case are extremely important:
"To discover
a tale so rare and curious as this ...is certainly of all our
evidence highly interesting. And aside from its high literary
value, it proves conclusively that the fairy-women who entice
mortals to their love in modern times are much the same, if not
the same, as the succubi of middle-age mystics."
This
allows us to return to the religious records mentioned above, one
of which offers one of the most remarkable cases of apparition I
have ever come across. It is difficult to believe that stories exist
that surpass, for their amazing contents or shocking features, some
of the reports we have already studied, such as the Hills case or
the Villas-Boas report. But, remarkable as they are, these latter
two accounts refer only to one aspect of the total phenomenon; they
can be interpreted only after being placed within the continuum
of hundreds of lesser- known cases, which provide the necessary
background. The following case stands alone, and it is unique in
that it relates the apparition of an incubus with the poltergeist
phenomenon.
The authority
upon which the case rests is that of Fr. Ludovicus Maria Sinistrari
de Ameno, who reports and discusses it in his manuscript De Daemonialitate,
et Incubis, et Succubis, written in the second half of the seventeenth
century. Who is Fr. Sinistrari? A theologian-scholar born in Ameno,
Italy, on February 26, 1622, he studied in Pavia and entered the
Franciscan Order in 1647. He devoted his life to teaching philosophy
and theology to numerous students attracted to Pavia by his fame
as an eminent scholar. He also served as Councilor to the Supreme
Tribunal of the Inquisition and as Theologian attached to the Archbishop
of Milan. In 1688, be supervised the compilation of the statutes
of the Franciscan Order. He died in 1701.
Among
other books, Fr. Sinistrari published a treatise called De Delictis
et Poenis, which is an exhaustive compilation "tractatus absolutissimus"
of all the crimes and sins imaginable. In short, Fr. Sinistrari
was one of the highest authorities on human psychology and religious
law to serve the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century. Compared
to his De Daemonialitate, Playboy is a rather innocent gathering
of mild reveries. The good father writes:
"About
twenty-five years ago while I was a professor of Sacred Theology
at the Holy Cross Convent in Pavia, there lived in that city a
married woman of excellent morality. All who knew her, and particularly
the clergy, had nothing but the highest praises for her. Her name
was Hieronyma, and she lived in the St. Michael Parish.
"One
day, Hieronyma prepared some bread and brought it to the baker's
to have it baked. He brought it back to her, and at the same time
be brought her a large pancake of a very peculiar shape, made
with butter and Venetian pastes, such as they use to make cakes
in that city. She refused it, saying she bad not prepared anything
like it.
"But,"
said the baker, "I have not had any bread to bake today but yours.
The pancake must come from your house too; your memory probably
fails you."
"The
good lady allowed herself to be convinced; she took the pancake
and ate it with her husband, her three-year-old daughter, and
a servant girl.
"During
the following night, while she was in bed with her husband and
both were asleep, she found herself awakened by an extremely fine
voice, somewhat like a high-pitched whistling sound. It was softly
saying in her ear some very clear words: 'How did you like the
cake?' In fear, our good lady began to use the sign of the cross
and to invoke in succession the names of Jesus and Mary.
"'Fear
naught,' said the voice. 'I mean no harm to you. On the contrary,
there is nothing I would not do in order to please you. I am in
love with your beauty, and my greatest desire is to enjoy your
embraces.'
"At
the same time, she felt that someone was kissing her cheeks, but
so softly and gently that she might have thought it was only the
finest cotton down touching her. She resisted, without answering
anything, only repeating many times the names of Jesus and Mary
and making the sign of the cross. The temptation lasted thus about
half an hour, after which time the tempter went away.
"In
the morning, the lady went to her confessor, a wise and knowledgeable
man, who confirmed her in the ways of the faith and appealed to
her to continue her strong resistance, and to use some holy relics.
"The
following nights: similar temptations, with words and kisses of
the same kind; similar opposition, too, from the lady. However,
as she was tired of such lasting trials, she took the advice of
her confessor and other serious men and asked to be examined by
trained exorcists to decide whether or not she was possessed.
The exorcists found nothing in her to indicate the presence of
the evil spirit. They blessed the house, the bedroom, the bed,
and gave the incubus orders to discontinue his importunities.
All was in vain: he went on tempting her, pretending he was dying
with love, and crying, moaning, in order to invoke the lady's
pity. With God's help, she remained unmoved.
"Then
the incubus used a different approach: he appeared to her in the
figure of a young boy or small man with golden, curling hair,
with a blond beard gleaming like gold and sea-green eyes. To add
to his power of seduction, he was elegantly dressed in Spanish
vestments. Besides, he kept appearing to her even when she was
in company; he would complain, as lovers do; he would send her
kisses. In a word, he used all the means of seduction to obtain
her favors. Only she saw and heard him; to all others, there was
nothing.
"This
excellent woman had kept her unwavering determination for several
months when the incubus had recourse to a new kind of persecution.
"First,
he took from her a silver cross full of holy relics and a blessed
wax or papal lamb of Pope Pius V, which she always had on her.
Then, rings and other jewels of gold and silver followed. He stole
them without touching the locks of the casket in which they were
enclosed. Then he began to strike her cruelly, and after each
series of blows one could see on her face, arm, or other areas
of her body bruises and marks, which lasted one or two days, then
vanished suddenly, quite unlike natural bruises, which go away
by degrees.
"Sometimes,
as she suckled her daughter, he took the child from her knees
and carried her to the roof, placing her at the edge of the gutter.
Or else he would hide her, but without ever causing her harm.
"He
would also upset the household, sometimes breaking to pieces the
plates and earthenware. But in the blink of an eye he also restored
them to their original state.
"One
night, as she lay in bed with her husband, the incubus, appearing
to her under his usual form, energetically demanded that she give
herself up. She refused, as usual. Furious, the incubus went away,
and a short time later he returned with an enormous load of those
flat stones that inhabitants of Genoa, and of Liguria in general,
use to cover their houses. With these stones be built around the
bed such a high wall that it reached almost to the ceiling, and
the couple had to send for a ladder in order to come out. This
wall was built without lime. It was pulled down and the stones
were stored in a corner, where they were exposed to everyone's
sight. But after two days they vanished.
"On
the day of St. Stephen, the lady's husband had invited several
military friends to dine with him. To honor his guests he had
prepared a respectable dinner. While they were washing their hands
according to the custom -- bop! -- suddenly the table vanished,
along with the dishes, the cauldrons, the plates, and all the
earthenware in the kitchen, the jugs, the bottles, the glasses
too. You can imagine the amazement, the surprise, of the guests.
There were eight of them, among them a Spanish infantry captain
who told them:
"'Do
not be afraid. It is only a trick. But there used to be a table
here, and it must still be here. I am going to find it.' Having
said that, be went around the room with outstretched hands, attempting
to seize the table. But after he had made many turns, seeing he
was only touching air, the others laughed at him. And since dinner
time had passed, everyone took his coat and started for home.
They had already reached the door with the husband, who was politely
accompanying them, when they beard a great noise in the dining
room. They stopped to find out what it was, and the servant girl
ran and told them the kitchen was full of new plates loaded with
food, and the table bad come back in the dining room.
"The
table was now covered with napkins, dishes, glasses, and silverware
that were not the original ones. And there were all kinds of precious
cups full with rare wines. In the kitchen, too, there were new
jugs and utensils; they bad never been seen there before. The
guests, however, were hungry, and they ate this strange meal,
which they found very much to their taste. After dinner, as they
were talking by the fireplace, everything vanished, and the old
table came back with the untouched dishes on it.
"But,
oddly enough, no one was hungry any longer, so that nobody wanted
to have supper after such a magnificent dinner -- which shows
that the dishes which had been substituted for the original ones
were real and not imaginary.
"This
persecution had been going on for several months, the lady consulted
the Blessed Bernardino of Felter, whose body is the object of
veneration in St. James Church, some distance outside the city
walls. And at the same time, she vowed to wear for a whole year
a gray monk's gown, with a rope as a belt, like those used by
the minor brothers in the order to which Bernardino belonged.
She hoped, through his intercession, that she would be freed from
the persecutions of the incubus.
"Indeed,
on September 28 -- which is the Vigil of the Dedication of Archangel
St. Michael and the Feast of the Blessed Bernardino -- she took
the votive dress. The next morning was the Feast of St. Michael.
Our afflicted lady went to the church of that saint, which was,
as I have said, her own parish. It was about ten o'clock, and
a very large crowd was going to mass. Now, the poor woman had
no sooner put her foot on the church ground than all of a sudden
her vestments and ornaments fell to the ground and were carried
away by the wind, leaving her as naked as the hand. Very fortunately,
it so happened that among the crowd were two knights of mature
age who saw the thing and hurriedly removed their coats, to hide
as well as they could that woman's nudity. And having put her
in a coach, they drove her home. As for the vestments and jewels
stolen by the incubus, be returned them six months later.
"To
make a long story short, although there are many other tricks
that this incubus played on her, and some amazing ones, suffice
it to say that he kept tempting her for many years. But, at last,
perceiving he was wasting his efforts, he discontinued these unusual
and bothersome vexations."
As a
theologian, Fr. Sinistrari was as puzzled by such reports as most
modern students of UFO lore are by the Villas-Boas case. Observing
that the fundamental texts of the Church gave no clear opinion on
such cases, Sinistrari wondered bow they should be judged by religious
law. A great part of his manuscript is devoted to a detailed examination
of this question. The lady in the above example did not allow the
incubus to have intercourse with her. But there are numerous other
cases in the records of the Church (especially in witch trials)
in which there was intercourse. From the Church's point of view,
says Fr. Sinistrari, there are several problems. First, how is such
intercourse physically possible? Second, how does demoniality differ
from bestiality? Third, what sin is committed by those who engage
in such intercourse? Fourth, what should their punishment be?
The earliest
author who uses the word "demonialitas" is J. Caramuel, in his Theologia
Fundamentalis. Before him, no one made a distinction between demoniality
and bestiality. All the moralists, following St. Thomas Aquinas,
understood by bestiality "any kind of carnal intercourse with an
object of a different species." Thus Caietan in his commentary on
St. Thomas places intercourse with the demon in the class of bestiality,
and so does Sylvester when he defines luxuria, and Bonacina in De
Matrimonio, question 4.
There
is here a fine point of theology, which Sinistrari debates with
obvious authority. He concludes that St. Thomas never meant intercourse
with demons to fall within his definition of bestiality. By "different
species," Sinistrari says, the saint can only mean species of living
being, and this hardly applies to the devil. Similarly, if a man
copulates with a corpse, this is not bestiality, especially according
to the Thomist doctrine that denies the corpse the nature of the
human body. The same would be true for a man who copulates with
the corpse of an animal. Throughout this discussion, the great intelligence
and obvious knowledge of human psychology of the author is remarkable.
It is quite fascinating to follow Fr. Sinistrari's thoughts in an
area that is directly relevant to UFO reports. And relevant it is
indeed; for Villas-Boas or Betty and Barney Hill would certainly
have had a hard time before the Inquisitors if they had lived in
the seventeenth century.
[Benoit
de Berne, at age seventy-five, confessed he had had intercourse
for forty years with a succubus named Hermeline. He was burned
alive. In passing, let us remark that the most eminent of our
scientists choose, with Condon, to ignore such reports, which
they label "crackpot" material. Yet, a few centuries earlier,
the best minds saw in similar accounts an occasion to increase
their knowledge of human nature and did not feel it was beneath
their dignity as philosophers to spend considerable time in this
study. If, as a twentieth-century scientist, I need an apology
to write the present book, this should be as good a precedent
as any.]
The act
of love, writes Sinistrari, has for an object human generation.
Unnatural germination, that is, intercourse that cannot be followed
by generation, constitutes a separate type of sin against nature.
But it is the subject of that germination that distinguishes the
various sins under that type. If demoniality and bestiality were
in the same category, a man who had copulated with a demon could
simply tell his confessor: "I have committed the sin of bestiality."
And yet he obviously has not committed that sin.
Considerable
problems arose, however, when one had to identify the physical process
of intercourse with demons. This is clearly a most difficult point
(as difficult as that of identifying the physical nature of flying
saucers!), and Sinistrari gives a remarkable discussion of it. Pointing
out that the main object of the discussion is to determine the degree
of punishment these sins deserve, be tries to list all the different
ways in which the sin of demoniality can be committed. First he
remarks:
"There
are quite a few people, over-inflated with their little knowledge,
who dare deny what the wisest authors have written, and what everyday
experience demonstrates: namely, that the demon, either incubus
or succubus, has carnal union not only with men and women but
also with animals."
Sinistrari
does not deny that some young women often have visions and imagine
that they have attended a sabbat. Similarly, ordinary erotic dreams
have been classified by the Church quite separately from the question
we are studying. Sinistrari does not mean such psychological phenomena
when he speaks of demoniality; he refers to actual physical intercourse,
such as the basic texts on witchcraft discuss. Thus in the Compendium
Maleficarum, Gnaccius gives eighteen case histories of witches who
have had carnal contact with demons. All cases are vouched for by
scholars whose testimony is above question. Besides, St. Augustine
himself says in no uncertain terms:
"It is
a widespread opinion, confirmed by direct or indirect testimony
of trustworthy persons, that the Sylvans and Fauns, commonly called
Incubi, have often tormented women, solicited and obtained intercourse
with them. There are even Demons, which are called Duses [i.e.,
lutins] by the Gauls, who are quite frequently using such impure
practices: this is vouched for by so numerous and so high authorities
that it would be impudent to deny it. "Now, the devil makes use
of two ways in these carnal contacts. One he uses with sorcerers
and witches; the other with men and women perfectly foreign to
witchcraft."
This
is a point of paramount importance. What Sinistrari is saying is
that two kinds of people may come in contact with the beings be
calls demons: those who have made a formal pact with them -- and
he gives the details of the process for making this pact -- and
those who simply happen to be "contacted" by them. The implications
of this fundamental statement to occultism for the interpretation
of the fairy-faith and of modern UFO stories should be obvious to
the reader.
The devil
does not have a body. Then, how does he manage to have intercourse
with men and women? How can women have children from such unions
if they specifically express the desire? All the theologians answer
that the devil borrows the corpse of a human being, either male
or female, or else he forms with other materials a new body for
this purpose. Indeed, we find here the same theory as that expressed
by one of the Gentry and quoted by Wentz: "We can make the old young,
the big small, the small big."
The devil
then is said to proceed in one of two ways. Either he first takes
the form of a female succubus and then has intercourse with a man.
Or else, the succubus induces lascivious dreams in a sleeping man
and makes use of the resulting "pollution" to allow the devil to
perform the second part of the operation. This is the theory taught
by Gnaccius, who gives a great number of examples. Likewise, Hector
Boethius, in Historia Scotorum, documents the case of a young Scot
who, for several months, was visited in his bedroom, the windows
and doors of which were closed, by a succubus of the most ravishing
beauty. She did everything she could to obtain intercourse with
him, but be did not yield to her caresses and entreaties.
One point
intrigued Sinistrari greatly: such demons do not obey the exorcists.
They have no fear of relics and other holy objects, and thus they
do not fall into the same category as the devils by which people
are possessed, as the story quoted above certainly shows. But then,
are they really creatures of the devil? Should not we place them
in a separate category, with the fairies and the Elementals they
so closely resemble? And then, if such creatures have their own
bodies, does the traditional theory that incubi and succubi are
demons who have borrowed human corpses hold? Could it explain how
children are born from such unions? What are the physical characters
of such children? If we admit that the UFO reports we have quoted
earlier in this chapter indicate the phenomenon has genetic contents,
then the above questions are fundamental, and it is important to
see bow Sinistrari understood them. Therefore, I give in the following
a complete translation of his discussion of the matter.
"To theologians
and philosophers, it is a fact, that from the copulation of humans
(man or woman) with the demon, human beings are sometimes born.
It is by this process that Antichrist must be born, according
to a number of doctors: Bellarmin, Suarez, Maluenda, etc.
[Le
Brun's comment throws more light: 'If the body of these children
is thus different from the bodies of other children, their soul
will certainly have qualities that will not be common to others:
that is why Cardinal Bellarmin thinks Antichrist will be born
of a woman having had intercourse with an incubus.']
"Besides,
they observe that as the result of a quite natural cause, the
children generated in this manner by the incubi are tall, very
strong, very daring, very magnificent and very wicked...
Maluenda
confirms what has been said above, proving by the testimony of various
classical authors that it is to such unions that the following owe
their birth:
"Romulus
and Remus, according to Livy and Plutarch.
"Servius-Tullius,
sixth king of the Romans, according to Denys of Halicarnassus
and Pliny.
"Plato
the philosopher, according to Diogenes Laertius and St. Jerome.
"Alexander
the Great, according to Plutarch and Quinte-Curce.
"Seleucus,
king of Syria, according to Justin and Applian.
"Scipio
the African, according to Livy.
"The
Emperor Caesar Augustus, according to Suetonius.
"Aristomenes
of Messenia, the illustrious Greek general, according to Strabo
and Pausanias.
"Let
us add the English Merlin or Melchin, born of an incubus and a
nun, the daughter of Charlemagne.
"And
finally, as writes Cocleus, quoted by Maluenda, that damned heresiarch
whose name is Martin Luther.
However,
in spite of all the respect I owe so many great doctors, I do not
see how their opinion can stand examination. Indeed, as Percrius
observes very well in Commentary on Genesis, Chapter Six, all the
strength, all the power of the human sperm, comes from spirits that
evaporate and vanish as soon as they issue from the genital cavities
where they were warmly stored. The physicians agree on this. Therefore,
it is not possible for the demon to keep the sperm he has received
in a sufficient state of integrity to produce generation; for, no
matter what the vessel where he could attempt to keep it is, this
vessel would have to have a temperature equal to the natural temperature
of human genital organs, which is found nowhere but in those same
organs. Now, in a vessel where the warmth is not natural, but artificial,
spirits are resolved, and no generation is possible. A second objection
is that generation is a vital act through which man, from his own
substance, introduces sperm through the use of natural organs, into
a place proper for generation. To the contrary, in the special case
we are now considering, the introduction of the sperm cannot be
a vital act of the generating man, since it is not by him that it
is introduced into the matrix. And, for the same reason, it cannot
be said that the man to whom the sperm belonged has engendered the
fetus that is procreated. Neither can we consider the incubus as
the father, since the sperm is not of his own substance. Thus here
is a child who is born and has no father -- which is absurd. Third
objection: when the father engenders naturally, there is a concourse
of two causalities: a material one, for he provides the sperm that
is the material of generation; and an efficient one, for be is the
main agent in the generation, according to the common opinion of
philosophers. But, in our case, the man who does nothing but provide
the sperm simply gives material, without any action tending toward
generation. Therefore be could not be regarded as the child's father,
and this is contrary to the notion that the child engendered by
an incubus is not his child, but the child of the man whose sperm
was borrowed by the incubus....
We also
read in the Scriptures (Genesis 6:4) that giants were born as a
result of intercourse between the sons of God and the daughters
of Man: this is the very letter of the sacred text. Now, these giants
were men of tall stature, as it is said in Baruch 3:26, and far
superior to other men. Besides their monstrous size, they called
attention by their strength, their plunders, their tyranny. And
it is to the crimes of these giants that we must attribute the main
and primary cause of the Flood, according to Cornelius a Lapide
in his Commentary on Genesis.
Some
state that under the name of sons of God we must understand the
sons of Seth, and, under that of daughters of men, the daughters
of Cain, because the former practiced piety, religion, and all other
virtues while the latter, the children of Cain, did exactly the
opposite. But, with all the respect we owe Chrysostom, Cyril, and
others who share this view, it will be recognized it is in disagreement
with the obvious meaning of the text. What do the Scriptures say?
That from the conjunction of the above were born men of monstrous
corporeal proportions. Therefore, these giants did not exist previously,
and if their birth was the result of that union, it is not admissible
to attribute it to the intercourse between the sons of Seth and
the daughters of Cain who, of ordinary size themselves, could have
children only of ordinary size.
Consequently,
if the intercourse in question has given birth to beings of monstrous
proportions, we must see there not the ordinary intercourse of men
with women but the operation of the incubi who, owing to their nature,
can very well be called sons of God. This opinion is that of the
Platonist philosophers and of Francois George of Venice, and it
is not in contradiction with that of Josephus the historian, Philo,
St. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, according
to whom these incubi could be angels who had allowed themselves
to commit the sin of luxury with women. Indeed, as we shall show,
there is nothing there but a single opinion under a double appearance.
What
we have here is a complete theory of contact between our race and
another race, non-human, different in physical nature, but biologically
compatible with us. Angels, demons, fairies, creatures from heaven,
hell, or Magonia: they inspire our strangest dreams, shape our destinies,
steal our desires......
But
who are they?