Sexuality in Christian demonology: Encyclopedia II - Sexuality in Christian demonology - The sexuality of demons

Sexuality in Christian demonology - The sexuality of demons

To Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Jews there were male and female demons (Jewish demons were mostly male, but Lilith was female). In Christian demonology and theology, although the belief in incubi and succubi is accepted, the matter of the sexuality of the demons is not so easy.

Gregory of Nyssa (4th century), as well as Ludovico Maria Sinistrari (17th century), believed in male and female demons.

Authors who believed in demons of opposite sex assigned them a heterosexual tendency, even adult men seducing adolescent boys by means of pederasty; the only demon with a bisexual tendency, and solely for some demonologists, was Asmodai.

But most demonologists did not recognise that there were female demons. As they always referred to demons as "he" (or equivalent) in all Indo-European languages it may be assumed that they believed only in male demons. This patriarchal mentality that banished completely the idea of female supernatural beings in Heaven and Hell led to another conclusion. As incubi and succubi existed for Christian authorities, demons, including the Devil, could take the shape of a man or a woman to act as an incubus or a succubus. Thus, they were attributing to all demons what today is known as a bisexual tendency.

It is licit to think which conception should be more appropriate: demons of both sexes with a heterosexual tendency or male demons with a bisexual tendency. Perhaps, being that Christianity attributes the agency of some (not all) temptation to sins to demons, and all non-heterosexual tendencies are considered "sins" by it, demons should be of both sexes and their tendency bisexual, and there should be even homosexual demons of both sexes, but nobody considered this possibility for them.

Other conceptions posit that beings of spiritual substance are gender-transcendent or otherwise non-gendered; the experience of a demon as having gender and directional sexual tendencies would be the result of the purposes of the demon in tempting, deceiving, or otherwise harming human targets. It is of note that although God is predominantly experienced and self-revealed as male in the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian New Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures and their Greek translation - the Septuagint - contain feminine allusions to God (e.g., "El Shaddia" referring to breast, hence a nuturing image; "Lady Wisdom," often paralleled to the Word of John 1, whose incarnated form is Jesus; the Holy Spirit has feminine references, etc.). The notion that God is then gender-transcendent but self-revealed as male for puproses of revelation could also carry over to angels and demons.

By supporting the idea that demons could rape women and sexual relationships with them were painful, Nicholas Remy assigned a sadistic tendency to their sexuality, meanwhile most demonologists considered it pleasing.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The sexuality of demons", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki