In a world awash in imagined supernatural phenomena, a truly astonishing number of people seem to have had these sorts of experiences. They seem way more focused on the totally sensationalistic aspects of, well, sex with demons. Of course, the modern Christians freaking out about sex demons probably don’t care much about all that highfalutin’ stuff. One thing became abundantly clear to me when I studied the Italian Renaissance years ago: Italians, if not everyone, knew very well that Satan got shit done. But when their hoped-for result failed to materialize, they often broke the rules by seeking infernal assistance. When Christians have needed stuff in the past, like in that medieval period, they usually did start out by asking nicely in the approved ways. To be sure, Christians have always thought that demons are a lot easier to contact than angels are–or even than their god is. Satan: The Guy To Ask.Ĭhristian leaders’ intense interest in demons–their comings and goings, their physical forms, how they did stuff, what their social lives and culture were like–might have sought to resolve both of those concerns. Indeed, it is the same one Christians fight even today: nothing in the real world supports any of their fanfic. I bet you already know what the biggest one was. However, that problem was not their biggest one. Already, they faced a fool’s errand in trying to make a comprehensive gameworld out of it. They faced a big problem: their religion amounted to fanfic, and not terribly coherent or cohesive fanfic at that. Most Christians consider the definitive statement about angels to come from Matthew 22:30:Īt the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage they will be like the angels in heaven. Sometimes the Bible implies one thing, and sometimes it implies something else entirely. See, the Bible isn’t exactly clear about exactly what angels and demons are like physically–or if they have physicality at all. That’s because, he writes, higher-end Catholic theologians had seriously worried for years about the logistics of demons. Stephens drily notes that the interrogators’ questions likely seemed “probably incomprehensible” to the accused witches. But when Church-aligned interrogators began asking questions of these accused witches, sex came up all the time. When neighbors and other unlearned people accused each other of witchcraft, they didn’t normally bring sex into it. Most remarkably, they almost always thought their infernal partners were fully human–until right after the deed.Īnd for Walter Stephens, one remarkable fact blew out immediately in front of all others: when he examined the transcripts of witchcraft trials from the fifteenth century onward, he noticed that the sex accusations generally originated with very learned, educated, literate interrogators.Īll but exclusively, this term means higher-end priests. Sometimes the people involved claimed to have enjoyed this sex, though often they regretted it. Demonic sex usually figured prominently in to these Christians’ accounts of induction into covens. Christians, mostly women but often men as well, exchanged their bodies for magical powers or for material help in surviving in a harsh, misogynistic culture. These demonic sexytimes antics (MY NEW BAND NAME, FIGHT ME) generally occurred as a transaction. Walter Stephens’ 2003 book Demon Lovers makes crystal-clear one fact above all: for centuries, at least since the 1400s, Christians have either claimed to have had sex with demons or (more often) were tortured into confessing such acts. Christians have fantasized about the subject for many years. The whole notion of sex demons sounds so incredibly titillating and weird, but it isn’t new at all.