Scientific Alternate Explanations
Victims may have been experiencing waking dreams or sleep paralysis. Nocturnal arousal or nocturnal emission could be explained away by creatures causing otherwise guilt-producing behavior. Then again, victims of incubi could well have been the victims of real sexual assault. Rapists may have attributed the rapes of sleeping women to demons in order to escape punishment. A friend or relative is at the top of the list in such cases and would be kept secret by the intervention of 'spirits.' The victims and, in some cases, the magistrates, may have found it easier to explain the attack as supernatural rather than confront the idea that the attack came from someone in a position of trust.
Read more about this topic: Incubus
Famous quotes containing the words scientific, alternate and/or explanations:
“I hate Science. It denies a man’s responsibility for his own deeds, abolishes the brotherhood that springs from God’s fatherhood. It is a hectoring, dictating expertise, which makes the least lovable of the Church Fathers seem liberal by contrast. It is far easier for a Hitler or a Stalin to find a mock- scientific excuse for persecution than it was for Dominic to find a mock-Christian one.”
—Basil Bunting (1900–1985)
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—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Young children constantly invent new explanations to account for complex processes. And since their inventions change from week to week, furnishing the “correct” explanation is not quite so important as conveying a willingness to discuss the subject. Become an “askable parent.””
—Ruth Formanek (20th century)