According to the Qabalists, Lilith was the first wife of Adam, who used to visit him in his dreams while he was as yet alone in the Garden of Eden, and the Lord God became so perturbed at these goings-on that He created Eve as a counter- attraction.
Witches were the recipients of similar attentions from the Devil.
St.
Theresa of Avila records that the Godhead Itself visited her.
The Virgin Mary received the Holy Ghost.
St.
Anthony was tempted by apparitions of beautiful female demons.
There are many cases on record of whole nunneries being attacked by the Devil, who visited their members.
George Moore, in his exceedingly interesting study of convent life, Sister Theresa, gives an account of an outbreak of “Counterparts” among the younger nuns, in which they formed liaisons with angelic lovers, who were supposed to be the souls of those who were drowned in the Flood.
We read in Genesis and in the Book of Enoch that the Sons of God mated with the daughters of men, and the demonic race was the result.
The folk-lore of every country contains instances of the mating of humans with elementals, usually with disastrous consequences.
Classical literature is full of stories of the visits of gods and goddesses to human kind.
What shall we say of all such stories?
Is there any element in them beyond fairy-tale and wish-fulfilment?
We can readily understand the motive of the nun who, wishing to conceal the identity of her paramour, declares herself to be with child by the Devil.
We can equally understand the psychology of the rest of the convent that take up the story and see the Devil in every corner.
Let me cite certain cases which have come within my personal knowledge and see whether in the light of these we can sift fact from phantasy.
There came to visit me once a young man who was in love with a married woman.
He told me that upon several occasions he had had a very vivid dream of visiting her, and she had simultaneously dreamed of receiving his visit.
He was anxious to perfect the technique of this operation, hence the visit to me.
I am afraid I was unsympathetic, consequently I did not obtain any further information concerning this curious experiment.
An even more curious case came to my knowledge some years ago.
A woman told me that in the days of her youth she had been engaged to marry a man to whom she was very deeply attached, and who was murdered while working as a missionary in West Africa.
Having lost the only man she felt she could love, she consented to marry a second cousin who had long been in love with her, and who was a semi-invalid.
Whenever she had relations with her husband, she always visualised the form of her first lover.
She herself was short, dark and petite.
Her husband, a blood relation, was similar in type to herself, and a weed into the bargain.
But her three sons were tall, upstanding blond men of the nordic type, bearing a strong resemblance to the dead man.
The truth of this story was vouched for to me by a friend of the family.
I have know personally two alleged “changelings.” The male had the pointed ears of Pan, and if anyone was ever a son of the Devil, he was.
The female was a curious and fascinating creature, essentially non-human, and when her child was born it came into the world with no more trouble than a kitten.
Both these beings were conceived when their mothers were under the influence of drink, and both of them were characterised by a marked callousness, which in one case developed into deliberate cruelty.
Although very peculiar to look at, neither of them was in the least defective, both being, in fact, possessed of considerably more than the average share of brains.
Attributing human characteristics, emotions, or form to the divine; embodied divine imagery.
The text describes divine and demonic entities (Godhead, Devil, Lilith) visiting humans in forms that interact sexually or socially, attributing human characteristics to them.
The doctrine and practice by which the etheric or astral double separates from the physical body, at will or involuntarily, to act, travel, or encounter other entities on a plane subtler than the physical — remaining tethered to the body by a silver cord, and capable of returning physical injury (bruises, exhaustion) sustained while thus projected. Distinct from linga_sharira (the static doctrine that a subtle form persists as a template) in describing its active operative use, and from shamanic_journey (a trance-journey framed within a shamanic ritual complex, undertaken to return with knowledge, songs, or a recovered soul) in being a Western-esoteric technical practice with its own physiology of cord-attachment and reciprocal wounding.
The anecdote about the young man visiting a woman in dreams while she simultaneously dreamed of receiving his visit describes a form of astral or etheric projection.
The Hermetic doctrine that a masculine-feminine generative principle operates on every plane of being, not only the biological — present at all times as a structural feature of creation itself. Distinct from divine_marriage (a specific reunification event or symbol) and aeons (paired divine beings arranged in syzygies, not a universal structural claim).
The passage focuses heavily on male-female interactions between humans and spirits (Lilith/Adam, Devil/Witches, Sons of God/daughters of men), highlighting the generative principle.
The doctrine that the divine or a spiritual principle takes on a specific, bounded material or bodily form — descending from an unconditioned state into individual, corporeal existence — as a discrete act rather than a diffuse pervading presence. The Christian Word made flesh, the Hindu avatara, the Egyptian pharaoh as living Horus, the Vajrayana tulku. Distinct from divine_immanence (the general claim that the divine pervades all of creation diffusely, not a specific embodiment-event) and separation_from_source (the felt exile FROM origin, the opposite motion) in describing a specific, individuated descent INTO a particular body or form.
The mention of the Virgin Mary receiving the Holy Ghost and the resulting birth touches on the concept of divine principle taking bodily form.
The state of a person being controlled or inhabited by an external spirit or entity — the entity as subject acting through the person's body, rather than merely troubling them from without. Distinct from haunting (a discarnate soul or place-bound presence that interferes without necessarily entering and controlling a living body) and from spirit_conjuration (an operator deliberately commanding a spirit's appearance, the reverse relation — here the spirit is uninvited and in control, not summoned and subordinated).
The text discusses cases of nuns attacked by the Devil and alleged changelings, implying external entities inhabiting or influencing human bodies and lives.
The doctrine and practice of one person deliberately inflicting harm on another through trained will, mind-power, or occult technique alone, without physical contact — producing exhaustion, illness, breakdown, or death in the victim; recognised cross-culturally as witchcraft, hexing, or the evil eye, and treated in Western esotericism as a genuine occult hazard requiring diagnosis and defence rather than dismissed as superstition. Distinct from magical_will (the general doctrine that trained volition has causal power, of which this is one malevolent application) and from spirit_conjuration (which subordinates an already-existing summoned spirit, rather than directing the operator's own power at a person).
The passage is from a chapter titled 'The Motives Of Psychic Attack' and discusses demonic visitations and attacks on nuns as examples of such phenomena.
The 1 Enoch narrative in which a class of originally-good angelic beings (the Watchers) descends, mates with women, and teaches forbidden arts — the substrate that Gnostic archons inherits and inverts: archons are born malevolent, the Watchers fall through transgression.
The passage explicitly cites Genesis and the Book of Enoch regarding the Sons of God mating with daughters of men, which is the core narrative of the Watchers' descent.