``Where the
Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be;
even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' Ignatius of
Antioch, 1st c. A.D
Obsession, Oppression, and Possession
1 Peter 5:8
"Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil,
as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour."
Aside from normal, everyday temptations, the ways in which the devils
torment us are two: from without and from within. When they torment us
from without, from outside the body, it's called "obsession" or
"oppression," depending on the
phenomena involved; when they torment us from within the body,
it's called "possession."
Obsession
Sometimes demons, including Satan himself, and the souls of damned
humans go beyond merely tempting a
person, and wage a more intense assault. This sort of assault can
happen to those who give the Devil an "entree" into their lives by
willfully engaging in sin, playing with heresy, becoming inordinately
interested in the occult ("occult" meaning "hidden" and referring to
those things naturally veiled from us) and delving into
things like communing with the dead (such as through seances or using
Ouija boards), divination (such as using Tarot cards in an inordinate
manner), and so forth. The
present-day ghost-hunting craze carries with it a huge risk in that
demons very often masquerade as ghosts
-- as humans who've died bodily
and whose spirits either are attached to a certain place for
purgatorial purposes, or who've otherwise been allowed by God to visit
the living for some cause.
This sort of attack can also be endured by one who has been cursed by
another, for ex.
by Satanists and others who engage in magick by calling on demons to
attain power. Of course, those who cast spells and issue curses can be
hired. This is a serious problem in Mexico, with their adivinos and brujos. Contact with cursed objects
can also be a factor.
Certain forms of mental illness can be caused by or attract the
demonic. When demons see weakness, they attack, and some of our
mentally ill are victims of the diabolical.
You may well
find that as you grow in
virtue and holiness, you'll be subject to this sort of demonic attack
-- for
ex., the most
blasphemous thoughts might come to you while praying. Or maybe you'll
be
tormented by certain lustful, blasphemous, or otherwise painful
thoughts, seemingly out of nowhere, on a
regular basis, but most especially when you're engaged in prayer, are
at the Mass, etc. Depression, a sense of isolation, feeling a loss of
hope, sensing a dark presence -- all of these
can be (but are not necessarily) examples of "obsession."
Oppression
Oppression is a
much more obvious type of attack, with the same causes and victims as
obsession, and can take the form not only of things that could be
explained naturally by the skeptical-minded -- all of the
things that go with obsession, such as illnesses,
unexplainable pain, what appears to be incessant, incredibly "bad
luck," etc., but also phenomena those same skeptics can't easily
explain at all. Paranormal phenomena that are often popularly
attributed to
"poltergeists" ("noisy spirits") are common -- objects moving
apparently by themselves or flying around the room, unexplained noises
and voices, levitations, faucets and electrical appliances turning on
and off with no apparent cause, demons visually manifesting, often taking the
form of dark "clouds" -- a
darkness so dark it's beyond black.
And there can also be outright
physical assaults, often extremely violent. The sort of things that can
happen during such cases are often the sorts of things seen during
incidents of demonic infestation of a home or other place that might
have a reputation for being "haunted." St. Gregory of Tours (539-594)
wrote of such a case in "The Four Books of the Miracles of St. Martin,"
Book 3; Chap 37:
At this time
when a certain woman remained alone at the loom when the others had
gone, a most frightful phantom appeared as she sat, and laid hold of
the woman and began to drag her off. She screamed and wept since she
saw there was no one to help, but still tried to make a courageous
resistance. After two or three hours the other women returned and found
her lying on the ground half dead and unable to speak. Still she made
signs with her hand, but they did not understand and she continued
speechless. The phantom which had appeared to her attacked so many
persons in that house that they left it and went elsewhere. In two or
three months' time the woman came to the church and had the merit to
recover her speech. And so she told with her own lips what she endured.
Sometimes
demonic attacks can take on a sexual nature. Demons called "incubi"
("incubus" in the singular) and "succubi"
("succubus" in the singular) attack women and
men respectively, typically during sleep. Incubi and succubi are, in
medieval thought, seen to be the same demons, able to change shape as
needed, depending on the sex of their victims.
In Book XV, Chapter XXIII of "City of God," St. Augustine relates
incubi with sylvans and fauns and asserts that experiences of them are
so numerous it'd be brazen to deny their existence:
[T]he same
trustworthy Scripture testifies that angels have appeared to men in
such bodies as could not only be seen, but also touched. There is, too,
a very general rumor, which many have verified by their own experience,
or which trustworthy persons who have heard the experience of others
corroborate, that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called "incubi,"
had often made wicked assaults upon women, and satisfied their lust
upon them; and that certain devils, called Duses by the Gauls, are
constantly attempting and effecting this impurity is so generally
affirmed, that it were impudent to deny it.1
Because those
who are on the path to holiness are often subject to demonic assaults,
even some of our great Saints have been victims of obsession and
oppression. The Evil
One can't stand to see people
growing
ever closer to God and will sometimes assault them in horrible ways in
an attempt to get them to give in to despair. Some of the greatest
Saints
-- and, undoubtedly, untold numbers of Saints who are unknown to us and
not canonized
-- have been molested in this way. Padre Pio, St. Antony of the Desert
(about whose struggles with the devil you
can read here), Mother Teresa of Calcutta
on her deathbed, St. John Vianney (the "Curé of Ars"), St. Gemma
Galgani, and many other
of the greatest of our Saints suffered incredible, often physically
violent, and, to the average
person, horribly frightening torments. St. Paul himself was afflicted
by the demonic, and writes about it in his letter to the Corinthians,
found in II Corinthians 12:7-10:
And lest the
greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given me a
sting of my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me. For which
thing thrice I besought the Lord, that it might depart from me.
And he said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made
perfect in infirmity.
Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of
Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my
infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in
distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I powerful.
Padre Pio's
assaults were brutal. In a letter to Padre Agostino on February 13,
1913, he recounted:
Now twenty-two
days have passed since Jesus allowed the devils to vent their anger on
me. My Father, my whole body is bruised from the beatings that I have
received to the present time by our enemies. Several times, they have
even torn off my shirt so that they could strike my exposed flesh.
But these great
Saints prevailed. With Christ, the Devil is already defeated and is
nothing to be truly afraid of.
Another phenomenon that can possibly be attributed to demons in many
cases is that
of so-called "alien abduction." People who endure these experiences
describe them in a similar way, with these beings usually coming to
them at night, when they are in bed. They are taken from their beds and
into what seems to be a "spaceship." There, they undergo painful
physical examinations of a mostly sexual nature, often having ova
and sperm taken from them. They're often forced to have sexual
relations with
these beings, with other creatures that appear to be hybrids of these
alleged "aliens" and humans, and with other humans who've been
"abducted." The experiences are terrifying,
and they're often experienced repeatedly throughout an "abductee's"
life.
Sometimes the "abductions" are not directly remembered, but are
recalled
in dreams, under hypnosis, or when triggered by some stimulus when
awake, such as the sight of something resembling depictions of aliens,
or bright lights at night, etc. But those "abductees" who don't
directly remember still have a sense that something horrific has
happenened to them, something they can't put their finger on, something
that's causing great suffering, even to the point of enduring
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They'll often find strange scars and
marks on their bodies and will have "lost time."
Other "abductees" do directly remember their experiences, and what they
remember is nightmarish. They feel paralyzed, unable to not just move,
but even speak. Communication with their "abductors" is accomplished
through telepathy -- i.e., mind to mind, without talking. To look into
the eyes of these alleged "aliens" is described as feeling one is
losing one's soul. These creatures are sensed as being sinister
-- at least at first, and this is the frightening part: a few
"abductees," even though terrified, become acclimated to these
"abductions"
and then "evangelize" about the "aliens." Whitley Strieber, the writer
of "Communion" and "Transformation" is one such person. Some quotes
from those books which I've lifted from an article written by Paul
Schroeder, for UFO Digest:
"I became
entirely given over to extreme dread. The fear was so powerful
that it seemed to make my personality; completely evaporate...
'Whitley' ceased to exist. What was left was a body and; a state
of raw fear so great that it swept about me like a thick,
suffocating; curtain, turning paralysis into a condition that
seemed close to death...I died and a wild animal appeared in my
place." -- Whitley Streiber, Communion, p. 25-26
"Increasingly I felt as if I were entering a struggle that
might even be more than life and death. It might be a struggle for my
soul, my essence, or whatever part of me might have reference to the
eternal. There are worse things than death, I suspected... so far
the word demon had never been spoken among the scientists and
doctors who were working with me...Alone at night I worried about
the legendary cunning of demons... At the very least I was going stark,
raving mad." -- Whitley Streiber, Transformation, p.
44-45
"I wondered if I might not be in the grip of demons, if they
were not making me suffer for their own purposes, or simply for their
enjoyment." -- Whitley Streiber, Transformation, p. 172
"I felt an absolutely indescribable sense of menace. It was
hell on earth to be there [in the presence of the entities], and
yet I couldn't move, couldn't cry out, couldn't get away. I'd lay
as still as death, suffering inner agonies. Whatever was there seemed
so monstrously ugly, so filthy and dark and sinister. Of course
they were demons. They had to be. And they were here and I
couldn't get away." -- Whitley Streiber, Transformation, p.
181.
In spite of all
that, Strieber concludes they are aliens and goes on to say, my
emphasis in italics:
Why were my
visitors so secretive, hiding themselves behind my consciousness.
I could only conclude that they were using me and did not want me
to know why... What if they were dangerous? Then I was terribly
dangerous because I was playing a
role in acclimatizing people to them." -- Whitley
Streiber, Transformation, p. 96
And we are being acclimatized to them.
Consider the prevalence of so-called "extraterrestrials" in our
culture. Think of how they're
presented to us. Loveable "E.T." befriending a child. The incessant
"ancient alien" nonsense on the History Channel (of all places!).
People spotting what they think are "alien spacecraft" in our night
skies and finding it cool rather than ominous.
But here's the thing: account after account of these incidents indicate
that these potential sorts of demonic attacks posing as "alien
abductions" can be stopped on a dime
by the "abductee" calling on the Holy Name of Jesus. If you're
suffering through this sort of not
uncommon experience, know what
it quite possibly is -- demonic in nature -- and call on the most Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ to make it
stop.
Possession
Demonic
possession is what happens when one or more demons enter into and at
least periodically exert control over the body. They cannot possess the soul unless the
soul is freely given to the
Evil One; only the body is
overtaken. It may be that no obvious "symptoms" are present in terms of
what is easily visible; the victim may appear entirely normal. But it
many cases, the subject may have periods of a loss of control over his
own body and exhibit such things as disgust for and outrage at holy
people and holy objects, unnatural changes to the voice, the making of
animal sounds such as growling, levitation, knowledge of things he
can't naturally have knowledge of, such as languages he's never spoken
or even been exposed to, knowledge of the sins and secrets of others,
etc. Incredibly abnormal strength is another typical symptom of demonic
possession, as was the case of the man described in Mark 5:2-5:
[Jesus] met him
out of the monuments a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling
in the tombs, and no man now could bind him, not even with chains. For
having been often bound with fetters and chains, he had burst the
chains, and broken the fetters in pieces, and no one could tame him.
And he was always day and night in the monuments and in the mountains,
crying and cutting himself with stones.
Demonic
possession has been treated in books and film many times, with "The
Exorcist," made in 1973 and based loosely on a true story, being the
most famous of the movies to deal with the subject. Fr. Gabriele
Amorth, one of the more widely known exorcists today, has said it's his
favorite movie -- an accurate depiction of what possession is like --
minus the head-spinning bit, of course. To see what demonic possession
is like,
watch that movie (without your young children!).
But in addition to that very obvious and dramatic sort of demonic
possession, there is the even more frightening phenomenon of those who
are "perfectly possessed," people whose bodies have not only been overtaken
by the Evil One or his minions, but who've consciously, of their own
free will, given power over their souls
to him. They typically appear generally normal to the eye, but the
sensitive can detect an "otherwordly" quality to them, a darkness about
them, a coldness, a lack of true charity and true warmth. They may not
be even able to name what is wrong, but just have a sense of
trepidation or fear, or experience an inner "chill" when encountering
the perfectly possessed.
The perfectly possessed are typically Satanists and people who make
pacts with the Devil in exchange for earthly power. Stories of such
deals with the Devil abound, from Faust of German legend to the story
of bluesman Robert Johnson "selling his soul" to the devil in exchange
for guitar virtuosity, at a crossroads in Rosedale, Mississippi. But
for all the legends, there are those who actually do make a pact with
the Evil One for some form of temporal success or
another (note that one can't truly "sell one's soul"; one's soul isn't
one's to sell. But one can give away power over one's soul).
As with true magic (the art of performing actions beyond the power of
man with the aid of powers other than the Divine), these pacts with the
devil may well work! Satan is the Prince of this world (e.g.,
John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11) and does
have power that is passively
allowed to him by God for a time. Don't doubt that for a minute! Look
around you and see the evidence of what spirit dominates this world,
what allows for the fact that 1% controls almost all of the
world's wealth and media, the power of the "banksters," the oily,
power-mad types who end up
in Congress and the Oval Office, the "stars" who make filth, the
thugs with "hot chicks" hanging on their arms.
Those who enter
into
such pacts will to give up their immortal souls for a bit of temporary, temporal power and
"success" as the world defines it. They may, if the demons find something
useful in them, become "stars" or "winning"
politicians, they might get
the "hot blonde girls" of their dreams, but
they will, in a few short
years -- a period of time that is extremely short when contrasted with eternity -- be sent to Hell, where
despair permeates every nook and cranny and cannot be escaped. There
will be no respite, not for a second. There will be nothing but eternal
pain, most importantly the pain of being without God and all He is and
all whom He's saved. There will be no Love, no Truth, no Life, no
Light, no Goodness, no Beauty, no sweetness, no joy, no laughter, no
communion
with Him and with others, no eternity shared with loved ones. Just a
bleak and heavy oppression, at the very
least, for which there is no cure. Ever.
And in the end, is the meek who shall inherit the earth.
Sacred Scripture describes Hell as a place of fire and torment, but even if -- and this is a hypothetical, conditional statement
-- even if there are no fire
and positive torments, but "merely" an "absence of the Good," imagine
sitting inside a tiny room of a cave, a room just big enough to hold
your body, the interior of which no light touches, where the darkness
is so profound you can almost feel it on your skin. No one you love is
around or will ever be
around. There are no beautiful sounds, no music, no laughter. There are
no lovely smells, nothing pleasant to the touch. There is nothing. Just
you and a darkness so black it feels physically oppressive. Imagine
being in that room for an entire day. Then for a week. Then for a
month, a year, 10 years, 50 years. Then for ever. Even if Hell is "just" a
cutting off from God with no fiery torments, that absence of all Good,
of all Light, it is plenty Hell enough. I make this point to let those
who don't believe in the classical fire and brimstone depictions of
Hell know that even Hell as it can be imagined in the most "positive"
or lenient way is a place you don't want to even visit, let alone spend
eternity.
There are those who don't believe in Hell, or who believe that Hell
contains but a few, or who think that Hell is more like Purgatory --
that
it may have souls now, but will eventually be emptied. This is against
the teachings of Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and it
must be
understood that people send themselves there by the choices they make.
They are never
sent there out of simple ignorance. Further, there really are truly
wicked
people in the world. I think that the innocent-minded sometimes have an
inordinately "soft" view of people, projecting their own innocence onto
others. "How bad can a person
be to suffer eternal
torments? I just can't imagine that anyone
could warrant such a
punishment!" The innocent can often be naive -- though it's not so at all so that "innocence" and
"naivete" must go together -- and while that sort of ignorance and
psychological projection have a sweetness about them, it's dangerous.
It's
dangerous in terms of personal safety, and it's dangerous in terms of
how such soft-hearted souls can too easily think that everyone is
basically good and, so, can't deserve going to Hell, thereby leading
them to embrace heresy. Let me tell you
a few stories to make those innocent but ignorant-of-evil people more
aware. I warn you that the
following stories
will be very difficult to read! They're extremely brutal and ugly. But they
are true.
BEGIN
WARNING:
Skip the text between this point and the "End Warning"
notation if you're sensitive to reading about violence. And be warned that it isn't a typical
sort of violence that will be described, but the most gruesome
sort!
The first is
about a little girl I read about many, many years ago
but whom I just cannot forget. I'm a "True Crime" buff, and have read
many stories about the evils man is capable of, but something about
this particular story struck me to the core. I don't know why, but this
little girl has become, for me, a reminder of why Hell exists. This
little girl was a little black child, a baby,
and her name was Onowanique. One day, she wouldn't stop crying, so her
parents
murdered her. And then they cut her up into pieces. Her little hands
and little feet were found on top of the stove, cooked in a frying pan,
in order to be fed
to the
dogs. Her sweet little head was found in a blender.2
The second story
is about the murder of Kelly Ann Bates. Her mother described meeting
the
man who'd become Kelly's boyfriend and murderer with these words: "As
soon
as I saw Smith the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I tried
everything I could to get Kelly Anne away from him." 3
That
boyfriend, whose full name was James Patterson Smith, murdered Kelly in
a crime so gruesome
that the jury who heard the case was provided with counseling to help
them deal with what they'd seen and heard. Mr. Patterson starved Kelly
until she'd lost almost 45 pounds; scalded her; burned her; broke her
arm; stabbed her repeatedly, including inside her mouth; crushed her
hands; mutilated her ears, nose, mouth, and genitalia; partially
scalped her; gouged out her eyes and then later stabbed her through the
empty eye sockets; beat her in the head; and, finally, drowned her, the
coup that, mercifully, killed her. Her
eyes had been gouged out at least 5 days and up to three weeks before
her death. This murder wasn't the result of a single act of passion; it
was an ongoing bout of hideous torture that lasted for weeks and maybe
months.
The third story
is about an
Australian man named Peter Scully, who moved from "Oz" to the
Philippines in order to
escape authorities who wanted him for fraud. In the Philippines,
he began making films for view on "The Dark Web," a "level" of the
internet that is only accessibly by using certain software. He is
infamous for two films, "Daisy's Destruction" and "Dafu Love." I will
tell you about the latter.
Those who've seen the video say it begins in a house that is mostly
empty but for three men, one of whom is Scully. Two women show up with
five babies, all of them under the age of one. The poor innocents are
molested and raped, and then a woman hands Scully a chisel, which he
drives into one
of the babies' heads with the help of a hammer. After this, a chainsaw
comes out and a baby is dismembered. While alive, while screaming. The
child's remains
are thrown outside, where a dog is visible. The remaining babies are
whipped and bitten, and then two are used as if they were pillows in a
pillow fight, being slammed against each other until their skulls break
open.
The last child is murdered by being stabbed repeatedly, in the belly,
with scissors. Then they stab the scissors into the child's eyes, after
which he quickly dies.
Not only were there five adults, who somehow found each other, engaging
in these unspeakable atrocities together, but there was a network of
God knows how many people on "The Deep Web," a group that spanned the
globe,
who paid to watch their handiwork. There is a market out there for this
sort of abomination.
What does a man like Peter Scully look like? Does he have cloven
hooves instead of feet? Does the foul stench of sulfur emanate from his
person? Does he look menacing, perhaps covered in tattoos, someone
who'd undergone body modifications such as tongue-splitting, or
forehead
implants
to mimic horns? No. He looks like this:
He looks like a
High School Biology teacher. Or maybe an accountant, possibly your
next-door
neighbor who'd let you borrow his lawnmower when yours breaks down. Or,
if Peter Scully isn't enough, read the sentencing report for Ian
Watkins, the Welsh rock star pedophile, and the young mothers he
got to do his bidding using their own babies (be warned: it is
exceedingly horrific and graphic). Still think there's no good reason
for Hell to exist? Still think that at least some people do not
willingly choose to go there?
END WARNING
And what about those who've committed so many murders that it all seems
too
abstract to truly fathom? Men like Stalin, who killed between 56 and 62
million, including the millions who died during the Holodomor, a
man-made famine, orchestrated by functionary Lazar Kaganovich, that had
its Ukrainian sufferers resorting to cannibalism in order to survive?
What about those who
died under Hitler's regime? What of the 2 million Irish who suffered
and died during the Potato Famine, all because of British policy
decisions? Consider Pol Pot, under whose rule, one fourth of all
Cambodians died. Or Mao Tse-Tung, whose "Great Leap Forward" killed 45
million in just 4 years. Consider the Allied bombing of Dresden during
World War II, which created a fiery Hell on earth endured by
already-starving, innocent civilians.
Consider the people who work behind the scenes, manipulating our
economy and playing with our currencies for their benefit (learn about
them on these pages: The Money Masters;
Money, Banking, and the Federal
Reserve; The
Creature from Jeckyll Island). Think of the almost two and a half trillion dollars missing from the
Pentagon, revealed to the world the very day before 9-11 and then
promptly forgotten during the chaos that ensued from the attacks. Think
of the billionaires who don't mind destroying entire nations so they
can
exploit immigrant laborers as indentured servants, or destroying entire
economies so they can profit from the chaos while millions are
financially ruined.
Think of the people who've worked to redefine marriage and promote
abortion. Think of the hypocritical groups who work to protect Israel
as a nation for Jews alone while doing all they can to allow Muslims to
take over Christian Europe. Consider those who've changed the popular
definition
of art to include vials of urine containing Crucifixes, vats of
chemicals holding rotting sharks, and cans of excrement.
The spirit of those who commit the vile acts described above is
Satanic. That is what Satan
is about. He is the Beatitudes turned upside-down, ugliness, pain,
suffering, and death. And for those who don't believe in Hell, in spite
of Christ
Himself speaking of it, would you
allow into Heaven those who'd willingly commit such acts and not repent
of them? Do they belong in a place where your hopefully saved
dead
family members dwell? Would you want your children around them even
after
bodily death? How can they
enter into Heaven, a place of perfect Beauty,
Goodness, and Love if they not only refuse Christ's grace, but act in
such Satanic ways and refuse to repent of them? These people willingly
choose their behaviors; they
choose to reject God, and in rejecting God, they, themselves,
choose Hell.
Evil is around us. And the personification of evil wants us to reject
God and follow him, as his fellow rebel angels did. There is a battle
for
souls going on right now, and you're a part of it whether you want to
be or not, whether you believe you are or not. You have a decision to
make: God or Satan?
Please note: Just as it is a mistake to ignore the reality of the
demonic, it's also a mistake to overstate the influence of demons,
thereby risking lapsing into a paranoid, schizotypal view of things. A
rule: never attribute to the praeternatural what can be explained by
the natural. If you're "seeing demons" everywhere, you're likely in
need
of psychiatric help. Another rule to mind is to not pay too much mind
to the demonic; to look too intently at evil is to risk becoming evil
oneself. This is especially important when relating the realities of
evil to children: while the truth about the demonic and of Hell needs
to be made clear to them, be mindful of their often wild imaginations,
capacity for nightmares, and possible inordinate fears. Treat the
demonic as real, but as something Christ has already conquered, and
nothing at all to fear if we stay close to Him and His Church. Speak of
demons as if they're mischievous, foolish monkeys that can't get at us
because Christ won't let them. And, of course, teach them their
catechism, and teach them how to use sacramentals.
1 In this section
of "The City of God," St. Augustine is writing about these verses from
chapter 6 of Genesis: "And after that men began to be multiplied upon
the earth, and daughters were born to them, The sons of God seeing the
daughters of men, that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all
which they chose. And God said: My spirit shall not remain in man for
ever, because he is flesh, and his days shall be a hundred and twenty
years. Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after
the sons of God went in to the daughters of men, and they brought forth
children, these are the mighty men of old, men of renown."
Both he and
St. Thomas Aquinas assert that it was not "angels" that interbred with
"the daughters of men," but that the
phrase "sons of God" refers to the sons of the righteous Seth, while
"daughters of men" refers to the offspring of the evil Cain.
Nonetheless, St. Thomas Aquinas devotes thought to the question of
whether children can be born of the sexual union of a woman and an
incubus. He concludes that it is possible, but only indirectly, "Still
if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed
of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from the seed of men
taken for the purpose; as when the demon assumes first the form of a
woman, and afterwards of a man; just as they take the seed of other
things for other generating purposes, as Augustine says (De Trin. ii.),
so that the person born is not the child of a demon, but of a man."
In other words, a demon may take the shape of a succubus, retrieve
sperm from a man, then take the shape of an incubus and deposit it into
a woman.