#((Lore has them too but deeply repressed cause he doesn't want to be on the same level as the lowly organic animals))

[hextiger]

More Research Excerpts

This time it's Der Alptraum in Beziehung zu gewissen Formen mittelalterlichen Aberglaubens. (English: The Nightmare in Relation to Certain Forms of Medieval Superstition).

You can find the PDF here via Project Gutenberg, but it's in German.

For context though: this appeared in 1902 in a magazine published by Sigmund Freud. That fact is very much apparent throughout.

Introduction

"My focus is not on the historical side but the deepest psychological meaning" phrases that clue you in that there's a lot of nonsense coming

Nowadays the word "Weib" really just reads as "woman (derogatory)"

Dream and Belief

"the breath soul and the shadow soul" I'm sorry what. What! Shadow soul?????

"Freud's discovery of psychoanalysis" I don't know that I'd call it a discovery rather than "wholesale invention" or maybe "ass-pull" but sure

You can at times REALLY tell this is influenced by Freud. Example: "The more people have a certain type of dream the more likely it is that its' subliminal content is of a sexual nature" good (?) news for all the people who dream about their teeth falling out

Something something dreaming of your dead mother or father something something oedipus complex repressed in childhood

You can really tell this was written in the early 20th century. Take me back to the 18th/19th century weirdness please

"In a court in 1516 the jury of Trojes admonished the caterpillars who had devastated some distracts on punishment of curse and excommunication to leave within a certain number of days" I have SO MANY questions

The source for the above is "Cesaresco. Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs, P. 183" which I now have to read

Nightmares

"It is generally known that nightmares have a greater influence on the fantasy of waking life than any other dream" my dude you JUST went on for a whole chapter abt sex dreams so like are you sure

"I have added that the repression of female masochistic sexual urges is more suited to the creation of the typical nightmare than that of the male one, a view that Adler agrees with" I just wanna read abt weird hairy creatures sitting on people's chests, not this nonsense

Ok HERE'S something interesting. Dude's talking about how nightmares express deeply repressed wishes like yes. This I can vibe with

"Digestive problems do not explain the appearance of beautiful women from keyholes" sure but if that were a thing I'd sure as hell take the digestive problems

Incubus and Incubation

"In the middle ages the belief was generally that there were evil spirits whose sole function was to have [...] intercourse with sleeping people" HE JUST SAYS THIS. WITHOUT A SOURCE

"A favorite form that incubi took was that of clergy. Hieronmyus reports the story of a young lady who called for help against an incubus which her friends found under their beds in the form of the bishop Sylvanus. The reputation of the bishop would have suffered if he had been unable to convince them that the incubus had taken his form"

People at the time reacted by saying "Oh an excellent example for the wizardry of Sylvanus" so I don't think this bishop was believed

Anyway I WISH that had been an incubus but it really sounds like it was just a creepy old dude

Sir why do you keep randomly throwing untranslated French quotes in this German text

Oh hey another mention of people who were supposedly children of incubi. This time it's Alexander the Great, Caesar, Martin Luther, Plato, all of the Huns and everyone who lived on Cyprus

You're right, it would be unnecessary to linger on how snakes are phallic symbols thank you for not doing that

"The belief that the soul leaves the sleeper in the form of a snake which escapes through the mouth" UM HOLD ON

I checked the source and yeah, that sure is a thing

This one's from Thorpe. Northern Mythology, 1851, Vol I. P. 289f https://archive.org/details/northernmytholog01thoruoft/page/n309/mode/2up

The Vampire

"The wish for reunion, which has its origin in the living person, is here partially projected on the dead" FINALLY some good content

"Widows can get pregnant by their vampiric husbands visiting" uhuh sure

"After the transformation into a vampire is complete it can be discovered by finding the unburied body with red cheeks, tightskin, full blood vessels, warm blood, grown hair and nails and open left eye"

May have found another source on alps here. Features slut-shaming of sphinxes as far as I can tell

"The Wallachian myth wherein dead redheaded men appear in the form of frogs, bugs etc. and drink the blood of pretty girls"

So depending on which church you were a part of before committing heresy you'd either become a werewolf (roman-catholic) or a vampire (greek)

"Like the vampire the Alp can be the soul of a dead person and suck the blood of sleeping people" whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhy do I only read this now

The Werwolf

Apollo's apparently associated with wolves, which I did not know

Oh yeah I forgot about the part of werewolf lore that's like "Yeah they turn their human skin inside-out cause the other side is a wolf pelt"

If you're born on christmas day you're apparently destined to become a werewolf as punishment for your parent daring to deliver on the same day as Mary

"The seventh son is destined to become a werewolf, the seventh daughter a mare" mmmmmmmmm there's Something here I may be able to use

Quick gallows, wow what's that? Oh. Oh it's a gallows where the person has their hands bound behind their back, is pulled up by their bound hands on a pulley and then dropped from great height??????? That's uh. That doesn't sound like a good experience

Armenian werewolves are women who sinned and were thus punished by having to live for seven years as a werewolf.

There's also a creature that's somewhat between werewolf and vampire which, apparently sucks blood from the soles of the feet of people walking by

Very rough translation but "One has to burn the werewolf because otherwise he will rise from his grave a few days later. In ravenous hunger he will eat the flesh from his own hands and feet and when he has nothing else on his body to consume he will burrow out from his grave at midnight, fall into the herds and steal the animals or even go into houses, lay down by the sleeping and suck their blood from them" this is good, actually

I cannot stress enough how openly freudian this thing is

Werewolves can apparently also leave behind their bodies and wander about at night

Devilworship

"Belief in devils can be traced back to an oedipus complex" ok. sure

Apparently the devil used to be a close parallel to jesus. The whole deal: twelve apostles, went to hell and was reborn, hot bod

The devil had his own bible which was written down in Bohemia and is now in a library in Stockholm k so who's down for a trip to Stockholm after [waves hands] all this is done

"One of the later bynames of the devil was Grendel (english Grant)"

The devil is canonically bisexual and bigender

He can only impregnate folks if he previously acts as a succubus

....Merlin was a son of the devil? He was born because the devil was imitating God? His purpose was to defeat Jesus? Is this what Fate Grand Order is about

"if a woman sleeps alone the devil sleeps with her" well good for her

The devil has a second face on his butt that looks like a beautiful woman's face. He sits the wrong way around in chairs. His genitals are on his back

The Witch Epidemic

Witches like to eat babies, especially unbaptized ones

Witches apparently sometimes turned men into horses to ride to sabbath??? rad

Or they rode the devil himself in form of a horse or goat. sure

Why would witches have stigmata. I want to know, but not enough to check the source that's cited for this

The roman-catholic church is at fault for witchcraft

Apparently 40 year old witches turn into Drude which are also similar to alps

In Conclusion

This entire thing was a trip but I cannot recommend reading it or a translation. It's far too Freudian for my tastes. At least there's a little bit here that I can use for A Pale Imitation and its potential sequels.

#Mu speaks #hey did you know #The next thing I'm researching is philosophy #which should be fun #And then some more on mares and stuff which I'm also looking forward to