The medieval att.i.tudes on incubi and succubi were influenced by Macrobius' fourth-century Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, which went through dozens of editions before the European Enlightenment. Macrobius described phantoms which went through dozens of editions before the European Enlightenment. Macrobius described phantoms (phantasma) (phantasma) seen 'in the moment between wakefulness and slumber'. The dreamer 'imagines' the phantoms as predatory. Macrobius had a sceptical side which his medieval readers tended to ignore. seen 'in the moment between wakefulness and slumber'. The dreamer 'imagines' the phantoms as predatory. Macrobius had a sceptical side which his medieval readers tended to ignore.

Obsession with demons began to reach a crescendo when, in his famous Bull of 1484, Pope Innocent VIII declared, It has come to Our ears that members of both s.e.xes do not avoid to have intercourse with evil angels, incubi, and succubi, and that by their sorceries, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurations, they suffocate, extinguish, and cause to perish the births of women as well as generate numerous other calamities. With this Bull, Innocent initiated the systematic accusation, torture and execution of countless 'witches' all over Europe. They were guilty of what Augustine had described as 'a criminal tampering with the unseen world'. Despite the evenhanded 'members of both s.e.xes' in the language of the Bull, unsurprisingly it was mainly girls and women who were so persecuted.

Many leading Protestants of the following centuries, their differences with the Catholic Church notwithstanding, adopted nearly identical views. Even humanists such as Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More believed in witches. "The giving up of witchcraft,' said John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, 'is in effect the giving up of the Bible.' William Blackstone, the celebrated jurist, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765), a.s.serted: (1765), a.s.serted: To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of G.o.d in various pa.s.sages of both the Old and New Testament.

Innocent commended 'Our dear sons Henry Kramer and James Sprenger' who 'have been by Letters Apostolic delegated as Inquisitors of these heretical [de]pravities'. If 'the abominations and enormities in question remain unpunished,' the souls of mult.i.tudes face eternal d.a.m.nation.

The Pope appointed Kramer and Sprenger to write a comprehensive a.n.a.lysis, using the full academic armoury of the late fifteenth century. With exhaustive citations of scripture and of ancient and modern scholars, they produced the Malleus Malefi-carum, Malleus Malefi-carum, the 'Hammer of Witches', aptly described as one of the most terrifying doc.u.ments in human history. Thomas Ady, in the 'Hammer of Witches', aptly described as one of the most terrifying doc.u.ments in human history. Thomas Ady, in A Candle in the Dark, A Candle in the Dark, condemned it as 'villainous Doctrines Inventions', 'horrible lyes and impossibilities', serving to hide 'their unparalleled cruelty from the ears of the world'. What the condemned it as 'villainous Doctrines Inventions', 'horrible lyes and impossibilities', serving to hide 'their unparalleled cruelty from the ears of the world'. What the Malleus Malleus comes down to, pretty much, is that if you're accused of witchcraft, you're a witch. Torture is an unfailing means to demonstrate the validity of the accusation. There are no rights of the defendant. There is no opportunity to confront the accusers. Little attention is given to the possibility that accusations might be made for impious purposes - jealousy, say, or revenge, or the greed of the inquisitors who routinely confiscated for their own private benefit the property of the accused. This technical manual for torturers also includes methods of punishment tailored to release demons from the victim's body before the process kills her. The comes down to, pretty much, is that if you're accused of witchcraft, you're a witch. Torture is an unfailing means to demonstrate the validity of the accusation. There are no rights of the defendant. There is no opportunity to confront the accusers. Little attention is given to the possibility that accusations might be made for impious purposes - jealousy, say, or revenge, or the greed of the inquisitors who routinely confiscated for their own private benefit the property of the accused. This technical manual for torturers also includes methods of punishment tailored to release demons from the victim's body before the process kills her. The Malleus Malleus in hand, the Pope's encouragement guaranteed, Inquisitors began springing up all over Europe. in hand, the Pope's encouragement guaranteed, Inquisitors began springing up all over Europe.

It quickly became an expense account scam. All costs of investigation, trial and execution were borne by the accused or her relatives, down toper diem toper diem for the private detectives hired to spy on her, wine for her guards, banquets for her judges, the travel expenses of a messenger sent to fetch a more experienced torturer from another city, and the f.a.ggots, tar and hangman's rope. Then there was a bonus to the members of the tribunal for each witch burned. The convicted witch's remaining property, if any, was divided between Church and State. As this legally and morally sanctioned ma.s.s murder and theft became inst.i.tutionalized, as a vast bureaucracy arose to serve it, attention was turned from poor hags and crones to the middle cla.s.s and well-to-do of both s.e.xes. for the private detectives hired to spy on her, wine for her guards, banquets for her judges, the travel expenses of a messenger sent to fetch a more experienced torturer from another city, and the f.a.ggots, tar and hangman's rope. Then there was a bonus to the members of the tribunal for each witch burned. The convicted witch's remaining property, if any, was divided between Church and State. As this legally and morally sanctioned ma.s.s murder and theft became inst.i.tutionalized, as a vast bureaucracy arose to serve it, attention was turned from poor hags and crones to the middle cla.s.s and well-to-do of both s.e.xes.

The more who, under torture, confessed to witchcraft, the harder it was to maintain that the whole business was mere fantasy. Since each 'witch' was made to implicate others, the numbers grew exponentially. These const.i.tuted 'frightful proofs that the Devil is still alive', as it was later put in America in the Salem witch trials. In a credulous age, the most fantastic testimony was soberly accepted that tens of thousands of witches had gathered for a Sabbath in public squares in France, or that 12,000 of them darkened the skies as they flew to Newfoundland. The Bible had counselled, 'Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.' Legions of women were burned to death.* And the most horrendous tortures were routinely applied to every defendant, young or old, after the instruments of torture were first blessed by the priests. Innocent himself died in 1492, following unsuccessful attempts to keep him alive by transfusion (which resulted in the deaths of three boys) and by suckling at the breast of a nursing mother. He was mourned by his mistress and their children.

[* This mode of execution was adopted by the Holy Inquisition apparently to guarantee literal accord with a well-intentioned sentence of canon law (Council of Tours, 1163): The Church abhors bloodshed.']

In Britain witch-finders, also called 'p.r.i.c.kers', were employed, receiving a handsome bounty for each girl or woman they turned over for execution. They had no incentive to be cautious in their accusations. Typically they looked for 'devil's marks' scars or birthmarks or nevi that when p.r.i.c.ked with a pin neither hurt nor bled. A simple sleight of hand often gave the appearance that the pin penetrated deep into the witch's flesh. When no visible marks were apparent, 'invisible marks' sufficed. Upon the gallows, one mid-seventeenth-century p.r.i.c.ker 'confessed he had been the death of above 220 women in England and Scotland, for the gain of twenty shillings apiece'.*

[* In the murky territory of bounty hunters and paid informers, vile corruption is often the rule - worldwide and through all of human history. To take an example almost at random, in 1994, for a fee, a group of postal inspectors from Cleveland, USA, agreed to go underground and ferret out wrongdoers; they then contrived criminal cases against 32 innocent postal workers.]

In the witch trials, mitigating evidence or defence witnesses were inadmissible. In any case, it was nearly impossible to provide compelling alibis for accused witches: the rules of evidence had a special character. For example, in more than one case a husband attested that his wife was asleep in his arms at the very moment she was accused of frolicking with the devil at a witch's Sabbath; but the archbishop patiently explained that a demon had taken the place of the wife. The husbands were not to imagine that their powers of perception could exceed Satan's powers of deception. The beautiful young women were perforce consigned to the flames.

There were strong erotic and misogynistic elements, as might be expected in a s.e.xually repressed, male-dominated society with inquisitors drawn from the cla.s.s of nominally celibate priests. The trials paid close attention to the quality and quant.i.ty of o.r.g.a.s.m in the supposed copulations of defendants with demons or the Devil (although Augustine had been certain 'we cannot call the Devil a fornicator'), and to the nature of the Devil's 'member' (cold, by all reports). 'Devil's marks' were found 'generally on the b.r.e.a.s.t.s or private parts' according to Ludovico Sinistrari's 1700 book. As a result pubic hair was shaved, and the genitalia were carefully inspected by the exclusively male inquisitors. In the immolation of the 20-year-old Joan of Arc, after her dress had caught fire the Hangman of Rouen slaked the flames so onlookers could view 'all the secrets which can or should be in a woman'.

The chronicle of those who were consumed by fire in the single German city of Wiirzburg in the single year 1598 penetrates the statistics and lets us confront a little of the human reality: The steward of the senate, named Gering; old Mrs Kanzler; the tailor's fat wife; the woman cook of Mr Mengerdorf; a stranger; a strange woman; Baunach, a senator, the fattest citizen in Wiirtzburg; the old smith of the court; an old woman; a little girl, nine or ten years old; a younger girl, her little sister; the mother of the two little aforementioned girls; Liebler's daughter; Goebel's child, the most beautiful girl in Wiirtzburg; a student who knew many languages; two boys from the Minster, each twelve years old; Stepper's little daughter; the woman who kept the bridge gate; an old woman; the little son of the town council bailiff; the wife of Knertz, the butcher; the infant daughter of Dr Schultz; a blind girl; Schwartz, canon at Hach...

On and on it goes. Some were given special humane attention: 'The little daughter of Valkenberger was privately executed and burned.' There were twenty-eight public immolations, each with four to six victims on average, in that small city in a single year. This was a microcosm of what was happening all across Europe. No one knows how many were killed altogether - perhaps hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. Those responsible for prosecuting, torturing, judging, burning and justifying were selfless. Just ask them.

They could not be mistaken. The confessions of witchcraft could not be based on hallucinations, say, or attempts to satisfy the inquisitors and stop the torture. In such a case, explained the witch judge Pierre de Lancre (in his 1612 book, Description of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels), Description of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels), the Catholic Church would be committing a great crime by burning witches. Those who raise such possibilities are thus attacking the Church and the Catholic Church would be committing a great crime by burning witches. Those who raise such possibilities are thus attacking the Church and ipso facto ipso facto committing a mortal sin. Critics of witch-burning were punished and, in some cases, themselves burnt. The inquisitors and torturers were doing G.o.d's work. They were saving souls. They were foiling demons. committing a mortal sin. Critics of witch-burning were punished and, in some cases, themselves burnt. The inquisitors and torturers were doing G.o.d's work. They were saving souls. They were foiling demons.

Witchcraft of course was not the only offence that merited torture and burning at the stake. Heresy was a still more serious crime, and both Catholics and Protestants punished it ruthlessly. In the sixteenth century the scholar William Tyndale had the temerity to contemplate translating the New Testament into English. But if people could actually read the Bible in their own language instead of arcane Latin, they could form their own, independent religious views. They might conceive of their own private unintermediated line to G.o.d. This was a challenge to the job security of Roman Catholic priests. When Tyndale tried to publish his translation, he was hounded and pursued all over Europe. Eventually he was captured, garrotted, and then, for good measure, burned at the stake. His copies of the New Testament (which a century later became the basis of the exquisite King James translation) were then hunted down house-to-house by armed posses - Christians piously defending Christianity by preventing other Christians from knowing the words of Christ. Such a cast of mind, such a climate of absolute confidence that knowledge should be rewarded by torture and death were unlikely to help those accused of witchcraft.

Burning witches is a feature of Western civilization that has, with occasional political exceptions, declined since the sixteenth century. In the last judicial execution of witches in England, a woman and her nine-year-old daughter were hanged. Their crime was raising a rain storm by taking their stockings off. In our time, witches and djinns are found as regular fare in children's entertainment, exorcism of demons is still practised by the Roman Catholic and other Churches, and the proponents of one cult still denounce as sorcery the cultic practices of another. We still use the word 'pandemonium' (literally, all demons). A crazed and violent person is still said to be demonic. (Not until the eighteenth century was mental illness no longer generally ascribed to supernatural causes; even insomnia had been considered a punishment inflicted by demons.) More than half of Americans tell pollsters they 'believe' in the Devil's existence, and ten per cent have communicated with him, as Martin Luther reported he did regularly. In a 1992 'spiritual warfare manual' called Prepare for War, Prepare for War, Rebecca Brown informs us that abortion and s.e.x outside of marriage 'will almost always result in demonic infestation'; that meditation, yoga and martial arts are designed so unsuspecting Christians will be seduced into worshipping demons; and that 'rock music didn't "just happen", it was a carefully masterminded plan by none other than Satan himself. Sometimes 'your loved ones are demonically bound and blinded'. Demonology is today still part and parcel of many earnest faiths. Rebecca Brown informs us that abortion and s.e.x outside of marriage 'will almost always result in demonic infestation'; that meditation, yoga and martial arts are designed so unsuspecting Christians will be seduced into worshipping demons; and that 'rock music didn't "just happen", it was a carefully masterminded plan by none other than Satan himself. Sometimes 'your loved ones are demonically bound and blinded'. Demonology is today still part and parcel of many earnest faiths.

And what is it that demons do? In the Malleus, Malleus, Kramer and Sprenger reveal that 'devils... busy themselves by interfering with the process of normal copulation and conception, by obtaining human s.e.m.e.n, and themselves transferring it'. Demonic artificial insemination in the Middle Ages goes back at least to St Thomas Aquinas, who tells us in Kramer and Sprenger reveal that 'devils... busy themselves by interfering with the process of normal copulation and conception, by obtaining human s.e.m.e.n, and themselves transferring it'. Demonic artificial insemination in the Middle Ages goes back at least to St Thomas Aquinas, who tells us in On the Trinity On the Trinity that 'demons can transfer the s.e.m.e.n which they have collected and inject it into the bodies of others'. His contemporary, St Bonaventura, spells it out in a little more detail: succubi 'yield to males and receive their s.e.m.e.n; by cunning skills, the demons preserve its potency, and afterwards, with the permission of G.o.d, they become incubi and pour it out into female repositories'. The products of these demon-mediated unions are also, when they grow up, visited by demons. A multi-generational trans-species s.e.xual bond is forged. And these creatures, we recall, are well known to fly; indeed they inhabit the upper air. that 'demons can transfer the s.e.m.e.n which they have collected and inject it into the bodies of others'. His contemporary, St Bonaventura, spells it out in a little more detail: succubi 'yield to males and receive their s.e.m.e.n; by cunning skills, the demons preserve its potency, and afterwards, with the permission of G.o.d, they become incubi and pour it out into female repositories'. The products of these demon-mediated unions are also, when they grow up, visited by demons. A multi-generational trans-species s.e.xual bond is forged. And these creatures, we recall, are well known to fly; indeed they inhabit the upper air.

There is no s.p.a.ceship in these stories. But most of the central elements of the alien abduction account are present, including s.e.xually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically, and perform breeding experiments on the human species. Unless we we believe that demons really exist, how can we understand so strange a belief-system, embraced by the whole Western world (including those considered the wisest among us), reinforced by personal experience in every generation, and taught by Church and State? Is there any real alternative besides a shared delusion based on common brain wiring and chemistry? believe that demons really exist, how can we understand so strange a belief-system, embraced by the whole Western world (including those considered the wisest among us), reinforced by personal experience in every generation, and taught by Church and State? Is there any real alternative besides a shared delusion based on common brain wiring and chemistry?

In Genesis we read of angels who couple with 'the daughters of men'. The culture myths of ancient Greece and Rome told of G.o.ds appearing to women as bulls or swans or showers of gold and impregnating them. In one early Christian tradition, philosophy derived not from human ingenuity but out of demonic pillow talk, the fallen angels betraying the secrets of Heaven to their human consorts. Accounts with similar elements appear in cultures around the world. Parallels to incubi include Arabian djinn, Greek satyrs, Hindu bhuts, Samoan hotua poro, Celtic dusii and many others. In an epoch of demon hysteria, it was easy enough to demonize those we feared or hated. So Merlin was said to have been fathered by an incubus. So were Plato, Alexander the Great, Augustus and Martin Luther. Occasionally an entire people - for example the Huns or the inhabitants of Cyprus - were accused by their enemies of having been sired by demons.

In Talmudic tradition the archetypical succubus was Lilith, whom G.o.d made from the dust along with Adam. She was expelled from Eden for insubordination - not to G.o.d, but to Adam. Ever since, she spends her nights seducing Adam's descendants. In ancient Iranian and many other cultures, nocturnal seminal emissions were believed to be elicited by succubi. St Teresa of Avila reported a vivid s.e.xual encounter with an angel -an angel of light, not of darkness, she was sure - as did other women later sanctified by the Catholic Church. Cagliostro, the eighteenth-century magician and con man, let it be understood that he, like Jesus of Nazareth, was a product of the union 'between the children of heaven and earth'.

In 1645 a Cornish teenager, Anne Jefferies, was found groggy, crumpled on the floor. Much later, she recalled being attacked by half a dozen little men, carried paralysed to a castle in the air, seduced and returned home. She called the little men fairies. (For many pious Christians, as for the inquisitors of Joan of Arc, this was a distinction without a difference. Fairies were demons, plain and simple.) They returned to terrify and torment her. The next year she was arrested for witchcraft. Fairies traditionally have magical powers and can cause paralysis by the merest touch. The ordinary pa.s.sage of time is slowed in fairyland. Fairies are reproductively impaired, so they have s.e.x with humans and carry off babies from their cradles, sometimes leaving a fairy subst.i.tute, a 'changeling'. Now it seems a fair question: if Anne Jefferies had grown up in a culture touting aliens rather than fairies, and UFOs rather than castles in the air, would her story have been distinguishable in any significant respect from the ones 'abductees' tell?

In his 1982 book The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural a.s.sault Traditions, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural a.s.sault Traditions, David Hufford describes an executive, university-educated, in his mid-thirties, who recalled a summer spent as a teenager in his aunt's house. One night, he saw mysterious lights moving in the harbour. Afterwards, he fell asleep. From his bed he then witnessed a white, glowing figure climbing the stairs. She entered his room, paused, and then said - anticlimactically, it seems to me - "That is the linoleum.' Some nights the figure was an old woman; in others, an elephant. Sometimes the young man was convinced the entire business was a dream; other times he was certain he was awake. He was pressed down into his bed, paralysed, unable to move or cry out. His heart was pounding. He was short of breath. Similar events transpired on many consecutive nights. What is happening here? These events took place before alien abductions were widely described. If the young man had known about alien abductions, would his old woman have had a large head and bigger eyes? David Hufford describes an executive, university-educated, in his mid-thirties, who recalled a summer spent as a teenager in his aunt's house. One night, he saw mysterious lights moving in the harbour. Afterwards, he fell asleep. From his bed he then witnessed a white, glowing figure climbing the stairs. She entered his room, paused, and then said - anticlimactically, it seems to me - "That is the linoleum.' Some nights the figure was an old woman; in others, an elephant. Sometimes the young man was convinced the entire business was a dream; other times he was certain he was awake. He was pressed down into his bed, paralysed, unable to move or cry out. His heart was pounding. He was short of breath. Similar events transpired on many consecutive nights. What is happening here? These events took place before alien abductions were widely described. If the young man had known about alien abductions, would his old woman have had a large head and bigger eyes?

In several famous pa.s.sages in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon described the balance between credulity and scepticism in late cla.s.sical antiquity: Edward Gibbon described the balance between credulity and scepticism in late cla.s.sical antiquity: Credulity performed the office of faith; fanaticism was permitted to a.s.sume the language of inspiration, and the effects of accident or contrivance were ascribed to supernatural causes...

In modern times [Gibbon is writing in the middle eighteenth century], a latent and even involuntary scepticism adheres to the most pious dispositions. Their admission of supernatural truths is much less an active consent than a cold and pa.s.sive acquiescence. Accustomed long since to observe and to respect the invariable order of Nature, our reason, or at least our imagination, is not sufficiently prepared to sustain the visible action of the Deity. But in the first ages of Christianity the situation of mankind was extremely different. The most curious, or the most credulous, among the pagans were often persuaded to enter into a society which a.s.serted an actual claim of miraculous powers. The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events. They felt, or they fancied, that on every side they were incessantly a.s.saulted by daemons, comforted by visions, instructed by prophecy, and surprisingly delivered from danger, sickness, and from death itself, by the supplications of the church...

It was their firm persuasion that the air which they breathed was peopled with invisible enemies; with innumerable daemons, who watched every occasion, and a.s.sumed every form, to terrify, and above all to tempt, their unguarded virtue. The imagination, and even the senses, were deceived by the illusions of distempered fanaticism; and the hermit, whose midnight prayer was oppressed by involuntary slumber, might easily confound the phantoms of horror or delight which had occupied his sleeping and his waking dreams...

[T]he practice of superst.i.tion is so congenial to the mult.i.tude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the marvellous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard to future events, and their strong propensity to extend their hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible world, were the princ.i.p.al causes which favoured the establishment of Polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superst.i.tion...

Put aside Gibbon's social sn.o.bbery: the devil tormented the upper cla.s.ses too, and even a king of England - James I, the first Stuart monarch - wrote a credulous and superst.i.tious book on demons (Daemonologie, (Daemonologie, 1597). He was also the patron of the great translation of the Bible into English that still bears his name. It was King James's opinion that tobacco is the 'devil's weed', and a number of witches were exposed through their addiction to this drug. But by 1628, James had become a thoroughgoing sceptic -mainly because adolescents had been found faking demonic possession, in which state they had accused innocent people of witchcraft. If we reckon the scepticism that Gibbon says characterized his time to have declined in ours, and if even a little of the rampant gullibility he attributes to late cla.s.sical times is left over in ours, should we not expect something like demons to find a niche in the popular culture of the present? 1597). He was also the patron of the great translation of the Bible into English that still bears his name. It was King James's opinion that tobacco is the 'devil's weed', and a number of witches were exposed through their addiction to this drug. But by 1628, James had become a thoroughgoing sceptic -mainly because adolescents had been found faking demonic possession, in which state they had accused innocent people of witchcraft. If we reckon the scepticism that Gibbon says characterized his time to have declined in ours, and if even a little of the rampant gullibility he attributes to late cla.s.sical times is left over in ours, should we not expect something like demons to find a niche in the popular culture of the present?

Of course, as enthusiasts for extraterrestrial visitations are quick to remind me, there's another interpretation of these historical parallels: aliens, they say, have always always been visiting us, poking at us, stealing our sperms and eggs, impregnating us. In earlier times we recognized them as G.o.ds, demons, fairies, or spirits; only now do we understand that it's aliens who've been diddling us all these millennia. Jacques Vallee has made such arguments. But then why are there virtually no reports of flying saucers prior to 1947? Why is it that none of the world's major religions uses saucers as icons of the divine? Why no warnings about the dangers of high technology then? Why isn't this genetic experiment, whatever its objective, completed by now, thousands of years or more after its initiation by beings supposedly of vastly superior technological attainments? Why are we in such trouble if the breeding programme is designed to improve our lot? been visiting us, poking at us, stealing our sperms and eggs, impregnating us. In earlier times we recognized them as G.o.ds, demons, fairies, or spirits; only now do we understand that it's aliens who've been diddling us all these millennia. Jacques Vallee has made such arguments. But then why are there virtually no reports of flying saucers prior to 1947? Why is it that none of the world's major religions uses saucers as icons of the divine? Why no warnings about the dangers of high technology then? Why isn't this genetic experiment, whatever its objective, completed by now, thousands of years or more after its initiation by beings supposedly of vastly superior technological attainments? Why are we in such trouble if the breeding programme is designed to improve our lot?

Following this line of argument, we might antic.i.p.ate present adherents of the old beliefs to understand 'aliens' to be fairies, G.o.ds, or demons. In fact, there are several contemporary sects -the 'Raelians', for example - that hold G.o.ds or G.o.d to come to earth in UFOs. Some abductees describe the aliens, however repulsive, as 'angels', or 'emissaries of G.o.d'. And there are those who still think it's demons.

In Whitley Strieber's Communion, Communion, a first-hand account of 'alien abduction', the author relates a first-hand account of 'alien abduction', the author relates Whatever was there seemed so monstrously ugly, so filthy and dark and sinister. Of course they were demons. They had to be ... I still remember that thing crouching there, so terribly ugly, its arms and legs like the limbs of a great insect, its eyes glaring at me.

Reportedly, Strieber is now open to the possibility that these night-time terrors were dreams or hallucinations.

Articles on UFOs in The Christian News Encyclopedia, The Christian News Encyclopedia, a fundamentalist compilation, include 'Unchristian Fanatic Obsession', and 'Scientist Believes UFOs Work of Devil'. The Spiritual Counterfeits Project of Berkeley, California, teaches that UFOs are of demonic origin; the Aquarian Church of Universal Service of McMinnville, Oregon, that all aliens are hostile. A 1993 newsletter of 'Cosmic Awareness Communications' informs us that UFO occupants think of humans as laboratory animals, wish us to worship them, but tend to be deterred by the Lord's Prayer. Some abductees have been cast out of their evangelical religious congregations; their stories sound too close to satanism. A 1980 fundamentalist tract, a fundamentalist compilation, include 'Unchristian Fanatic Obsession', and 'Scientist Believes UFOs Work of Devil'. The Spiritual Counterfeits Project of Berkeley, California, teaches that UFOs are of demonic origin; the Aquarian Church of Universal Service of McMinnville, Oregon, that all aliens are hostile. A 1993 newsletter of 'Cosmic Awareness Communications' informs us that UFO occupants think of humans as laboratory animals, wish us to worship them, but tend to be deterred by the Lord's Prayer. Some abductees have been cast out of their evangelical religious congregations; their stories sound too close to satanism. A 1980 fundamentalist tract, The Cult Explosion, The Cult Explosion, by Dave Hunt, reveals that by Dave Hunt, reveals that UFOs ... are clearly not physical and seem to be demonic manifestations from another dimension calculated to alter man's way of thinking... [T]he alleged UFO ent.i.ties that have presumably communicated psychically with humans have always preached the same four lies that the serpent introduced to Eve... [T]hese beings are demons and they are preparing for the Antichrist.

A number of sects hold UFOs and alien abductions to be premonitions of 'end-times'.

If UFOs come from another planet or another dimension, were they sent by the same G.o.d who has been revealed to us in any of the major religions? Nothing in the UFO phenomena, the fundamentalist complaint goes, requires belief in the one, true G.o.d, while much in it contradicts the G.o.d portrayed in the Bible and Christian tradition. The New Age: A Christian Critique The New Age: A Christian Critique by Ralph Rath (1990) discusses UFOs, typically for such literature, with extreme credulity. It serves their purpose to accept UFOs as real and revile them as instruments of Satan and the Antichrist, rather than to use the blade of scientific scepticism. That tool, once honed, might accomplish more than just a limited heresiotomy. by Ralph Rath (1990) discusses UFOs, typically for such literature, with extreme credulity. It serves their purpose to accept UFOs as real and revile them as instruments of Satan and the Antichrist, rather than to use the blade of scientific scepticism. That tool, once honed, might accomplish more than just a limited heresiotomy.

The Christian fundamentalist author Hal Lindsey, in his 1994 religious best-seller Planet Earth - 2000 AD, Planet Earth - 2000 AD, writes, writes, I have become thoroughly convinced that UFOs are real... They are operated by alien beings of great intelligence and power ... I believe these beings are not only extraterrestrial but supernatural in origin. To be blunt, I think they are demons... part of a Satanic plot.

And what is the evidence for this conclusion? Chiefly, it is the eleventh and twelfth verses of Luke, Luke, Chapter 21, in which Jesus talks about 'great signs from Heaven' - nothing like a UFO is described - in the last days. Typically, Lindsey ignores verse 32 in which Jesus makes it very clear he is talking about events in the first, not the twentieth, century. Chapter 21, in which Jesus talks about 'great signs from Heaven' - nothing like a UFO is described - in the last days. Typically, Lindsey ignores verse 32 in which Jesus makes it very clear he is talking about events in the first, not the twentieth, century.

There is also a Christian tradition according to which extraterrestrial life cannot exist. In Christian News Christian News for 23 May 1994, for example, W. Gary Crampton, Doctor of Theology, tells us: for 23 May 1994, for example, W. Gary Crampton, Doctor of Theology, tells us: The Bible, either explicitly or implicitly, speaks to every area of life; it never leaves us without an answer. The Bible nowhere explicitly affirms or negates intelligent extraterrestrial life. Implicitly, however, Scripture does deny the existence of such beings, thus also negating the possibility of flying saucers... Scripture views earth as the center of the universe... According to Peter, a 'planet hopping' Savior is out of the question. Here is an answer to intelligent life on other planets. If there were such, who would redeem them? Certainly not Christ... Experiences which are out of line with the teachings of Scripture must always be renounced as fallacious. The Bible has a monopoly on the truth.

But many other Christian sects - Roman Catholics, for example -are completely open-minded, with no a priori a priori objections to and no insistence on the reality of aliens and UFOs. objections to and no insistence on the reality of aliens and UFOs.

In the early 1960s, I argued that the UFO stories were Grafted chiefly to satisfy religious longings. At a time when science has complicated uncritical adherence to the old-time religions, an alternative is proffered to the G.o.d hypothesis: dressed in scientific jargon, their immense powers 'explained' by superficially scientific terminology, the G.o.ds and demons of old come down from heaven to haunt us, to offer prophetic visions, and to tantalize us with visions of a more hopeful future: a s.p.a.ce-age mystery religion aborning.

The folklorist Thomas E. Bullard wrote in 1989 that abduction reports sound like rewrites of older supernatural encounter traditions with aliens serving the functional roles of divine beings.

He concludes: Science may have evicted ghosts and witches from our beliefs, but it just as quickly filled the vacancy with aliens having the same functions. Only the extraterrestrial outer trappings are new. All the fear and the psychological dramas for dealing with it seem simply to have found their way home again, where it is business as usual in the legend realm where things go b.u.mp in the night.

Is it possible that people in all times and places occasionally experience vivid, realistic hallucinations, often with s.e.xual content, about abduction by strange, telepathic, aerial creatures who ooze through walls, with the details filled in by the prevailing cultural idioms, sucked out of the Zeitgeist? Zeitgeist? Others, who have not personally had the experience, find it stirring and in a way familiar. They pa.s.s the story on. Soon it takes on a life of its own, inspires others trying to understand their own visions and hallucinations, and enters the realm of folklore, myth and legend. The connection between the content of spontaneous temporal lobe hallucinations and the alien abduction paradigm is consistent with such a hypothesis. Others, who have not personally had the experience, find it stirring and in a way familiar. They pa.s.s the story on. Soon it takes on a life of its own, inspires others trying to understand their own visions and hallucinations, and enters the realm of folklore, myth and legend. The connection between the content of spontaneous temporal lobe hallucinations and the alien abduction paradigm is consistent with such a hypothesis.

Perhaps when everyone knows that G.o.ds come down to Earth, we hallucinate G.o.ds; when all of us are familiar with demons, it's incubi and succubi; when fairies are widely accepted, we see fairies; in an age of spiritualism, we encounter spirits; and when the old myths fade and we begin thinking that extraterrestrial beings are plausible, then that's where our hypnogogic imagery tends.

s.n.a.t.c.hes of song or foreign languages, images, events that we witnessed, stories that we overheard in childhood can be accurately recalled decades later without any conscious memory of how they got into our heads. '[I]n violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues,' says Herman Melville in Moby d.i.c.k; Moby d.i.c.k; 'and... when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing.' In our everyday life, we effortlessly and unconsciously incorporate cultural norms and make them our own. 'and... when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken in their hearing.' In our everyday life, we effortlessly and unconsciously incorporate cultural norms and make them our own.

A similar inhaling of motifs is present in schizophrenic 'command hallucinations'. Here people feel they are being told what to do by an imposing or mythic figure. They are ordered to a.s.sa.s.sinate a political leader or a folk hero, or defeat the British invaders, or harm themselves, because it is the wish of G.o.d, or Jesus, or the Devil, or demons, or angels, or - lately - aliens. The schizophrenic is transfixed by a clear and powerful command from a voice that no one else can hear, and that the subject must somehow identify. Who would would issue such a command? Who issue such a command? Who could could speak inside our heads? The culture in which we've been raised offers up an answer. speak inside our heads? The culture in which we've been raised offers up an answer.

Think of the power of repet.i.tive imagery in advertising, especially to suggestible viewers and readers. It can make us believe almost anything - even that smoking cigarettes is cool. In our time, putative aliens are the subject of innumerable science fiction stories, novels, TV dramas and films. UFOs are a regular feature of the weekly tabloids devoted to falsification and mystification. One of the highest-grossing motion pictures of all time is about aliens very like those described by abduct-ees. Alien abduction accounts were comparatively rare until 1975, when a credulous television dramatization of the Hill case was aired; another leap into public prominence occurred after 1987, when Strieber's purported first-hand account with a haunting cover painting of a large-eyed 'alien' became a best-seller. In contrast, we hear very little lately about incubi, elves and fairies. Where have they all gone?

Far from being global, such alien abduction stories are disappointingly local. The vast majority emanate from North America. They hardly transcend American culture. In other countries, bird-headed, insect-headed, reptilian, robot, and blond and blue-eyed aliens are reported (the last, predictably, from northern Europe). Each group of aliens is said to behave differently. Clearly cultural factors are playing an important role.

Long before the terms 'flying saucer' or 'UFOs' were invented, science fiction was replete with 'little green men' and 'bug-eyed monsters'. Somehow small hairless beings with big heads (and eyes) have been our staple aliens for a long time. You could see them routinely in the science fiction pulp magazines of the twenties and thirties (and, for example, in an ill.u.s.tration of a Martian sending radio messages to Earth in the December 1937 issue of the magazine Short Wave and Television). Short Wave and Television). It goes back perhaps to our remote descendants as depicted by the British science fiction pioneer, H.G. Wells. Wells argued that humans evolved from smaller-brained but hairier primates with an athleti-cism far exceeding that of Victorian academics; extrapolating this trend into the far future, he suggested that our descendants should be nearly hairless, with immense heads, although barely able to walk around on their own. Advanced beings from other worlds might be similarly endowed. It goes back perhaps to our remote descendants as depicted by the British science fiction pioneer, H.G. Wells. Wells argued that humans evolved from smaller-brained but hairier primates with an athleti-cism far exceeding that of Victorian academics; extrapolating this trend into the far future, he suggested that our descendants should be nearly hairless, with immense heads, although barely able to walk around on their own. Advanced beings from other worlds might be similarly endowed.

The typical modern extraterrestrial reported in America in the eighties and early nineties is small, with disproportionately large head and eyes, undeveloped facial features, no visible eyebrows or genitals, and smooth grey skin. It looks to me eerily like a foetus in roughly the twelfth week of pregnancy, or a starving child. Why so many of us might be obsessing on foetuses or malnourished children, and imagining them attacking and s.e.xually manipulating us, is an interesting question.

In recent years in America, aliens different from the short grey motif have been on the rise. One psychotherapist, Richard Boylan of Sacramento, says: You've got three-and-a-half-foot to four-foot types; you've got five- to six-foot types; you've got seven- to eight-foot types; you've got three-, four-, and five-finger types, pads on the ends of fingers or suction cups; you've got webbed or non-webbed fingers; you've got large almond-shape eyes slanted upward, outward, or horizontally; in some cases large ovoid eyes without the almond slant; you've got extraterrestrials with slit pupils; you've got other different body types -the so-called Praying Mantis type, the reptoid types... These are the ones that I keep getting recurrently. There are a few exotic and single case reports that I tend to be a little cautious about until I get a lot more corroborative.

Despite this apparent variety of extraterrestrials, the UFO abduction syndrome portrays, it seems to me, a ba.n.a.l Universe. The form of the supposed aliens is marked by the failure of the imagination and a preoccupation with human concerns. Not a single being presented in all these accounts is as astonishing as a c.o.c.katoo would be if you had never before beheld a bird. Any protozoology or bacteriology or mycology textbook is filled with wonders that far outshine the most exotic descriptions of the alien abductionists. The believers take the common elements in their stories as tokens of verisimilitude, rather than as evidence that they have contrived their stories out of a shared culture and biology.

8.

On the Distinction between True and False Visions

A credulous mind... finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pa.s.s with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such.

Samuel Butler, Characters Characters (1667-9) (1667-9)

For just an instant in the darkened room I sense an apparition -ould it be a ghost? Or there's a flicker of motion; I see it out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn my head there's nothing there. Is that a telephone ringing, or is it just my 'imagination'? In astonishment, I seem to be smelling the salt air of the Coney Island summer seash.o.r.e of my childhood. I turn a corner in the foreign city I'm visiting for the first time, and before me is a street so familiar I feel I've known it all my life.

In these commonplace experiences, we're generally unsure what to do next. Were my eyes (or ears, or nose, or memory) playing 'tricks' on me? Or did I really and truly witness something out of the ordinary course of Nature? Shall I keep quiet about it, or shall I tell?

The answer depends very much on my environment, friends, loved ones and culture. In an obsessively rigid, practically oriented society, perhaps I would be cautious about admitting to such experiences. They might mark me as flighty, unsound, unreliable. But in a society that readily believes in ghosts, say, or 'apporting', accounts of such experiences might gain approval, even prestige. In the former, I would be sorely tempted to suppress the thing altogether; in the latter, maybe even to exaggerate or elaborate just a little to make it even more miraculous than it seemed.

Charles d.i.c.kens, who lived in a flourishing rational culture in which, however, spiritualism was also thriving, described the dilemma in these words (from his short story, 'To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt'): I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a listener's internal life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea-serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it; but the same traveller having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before he would own to it. To his reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which such subjects are involved.

In our time, there is still much dismissive chortling and ridicule. But the reticence and obscurity is more readily overcome, for example, in a 'supportive' setting provided by a therapist or hypnotist. Unfortunately - and, for some people, unbelievably -the distinction between imagination and memory is often blurred. Some 'abductees' say they remember the experience without hypnosis; many do not. But hypnosis is an unreliable way to refresh memory. It often elicits imagination, fantasy and play as well as true recollections, with neither patient nor therapist able to distinguish the one from the other. Hypnosis seems to involve, in a central way, a state of heightened suggestibility. Courts have banned its use as evidence or even as a tool of criminal investigation. The American Medical a.s.sociation calls memories surfacing under hypnosis less reliable than those recalled without it. A standard medical school text (Harold I. Kaplan, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 1989) warns of 'a high likelihood that the beliefs of the hypnotist will be communicated to the patient and incorporated into what the patient believes to be memories, often with strong conviction'. So the fact that, when hypnotized, people sometimes relate alien abduction stories carries little weight. There's a danger that subjects are - at least on some matters - so eager to please the hypnotist that they sometimes respond to subtle cues of which even the hypnotist is unaware. 1989) warns of 'a high likelihood that the beliefs of the hypnotist will be communicated to the patient and incorporated into what the patient believes to be memories, often with strong conviction'. So the fact that, when hypnotized, people sometimes relate alien abduction stories carries little weight. There's a danger that subjects are - at least on some matters - so eager to please the hypnotist that they sometimes respond to subtle cues of which even the hypnotist is unaware.

In a study by Alvin Lawson of California State University, Long Beach, eight subjects, pre-screened to eliminate UFO buffs, were hypnotized by a physician and informed that they had been abducted, brought to a s.p.a.ceship and examined. With no further prompting, they were asked to describe the experience. Their accounts, most of which were easily elicited, were almost indistinguishable from the accounts that self-described abductees present. True, Lawson had cued his subjects briefly and directly, but in many cases the therapists who routinely deal with alien abductions cue their their subjects, some in great detail, others more subtly and indirectly. subjects, some in great detail, others more subtly and indirectly.

The psychiatrist George Ganaway (as related by Lawrence Wright) once proposed to a highly suggestible patient under hypnosis that five hours were missing from her memory of a certain day. When he mentioned a bright light overhead, she promptly told him about UFOs and aliens. When he insisted she had been experimented on, a detailed abduction story emerged. But when she came out of the trance, and examined a video of the session, she recognized that something like a dream had been caught surfacing. Over the next year, though, she repeatedly flashed back to the dream material.

The University of Washington psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has found that unhypnotized subjects can easily be made to believe they saw something they didn't. In a typical experiment, subjects will view a film of a car accident. In the course of being questioned about what they saw, they're casually given false information. For example, a stop sign is off-handedly referred to, although there wasn't one in the film. Many subjects then dutifully recall seeing a stop sign. When the deception is revealed, some vehemently protest, stressing how vividly they remember the sign. The greater the time lag between viewing the film and being given the false information, the more people allow their memories to be tampered with. Loftus argues that 'memories of an event more closely resemble a story undergoing constant revision than a packet of pristine information'.

There are many other examples, some - a spurious memory of being lost as a child in a shopping mall, for instance - of greater emotional impact. Once the key idea is suggested, the patient often plausibly fleshes out the supporting details. Lucid but wholly false recollections can easily be induced by a few cues and questions, especially in the therapeutic setting. Memory can be contaminated. False memories can be implanted even in minds that do not consider themselves vulnerable and uncritical.

Stephen Ceci of Cornell University, Loftus and their colleagues have found, unsurprisingly, that preschoolers are exceptionally vulnerable to suggestion. The child who, when first asked, correctly denies having caught his hand in a mousetrap later remembers the event in vivid, self-generated detail. When more directly told about 'some things that happened to you when you were little', over time they easily enough a.s.sent to the implanted memories. Professionals watching videotapes of the children can do no better than chance in distinguishing false memories from true ones. Is there any reason to think that adults are wholly immune to the fallibilities exhibited by children?

President Ronald Reagan, who spent World War Two in Hollywood, vividly described his own role in liberating n.a.z.i concentration camp victims. Living in the film world, he apparently confused a movie he had seen with a reality he had not. On many occasions in his Presidential campaigns, Mr Reagan told an epic story of World War Two courage and sacrifice, an inspiration for all of us. Only it never happened; it was the plot of the movie A Wing and a Prayer - A Wing and a Prayer - that made quite an impression on me, too, when I saw it at age 9. Many other instances of this sort can be found in Reagan's public statements. It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction. that made quite an impression on me, too, when I saw it at age 9. Many other instances of this sort can be found in Reagan's public statements. It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction.

In preparing for courtroom testimony, witnesses are coached by their lawyers. Often, they are made to repeat the story over and over again, until they get it 'right'. Then, on the stand what they remember is the story they've been telling in the lawyer's office. The nuances have been shaded. Or it may no longer correspond, even in its major features, to what really happened. Conveniently, the witnesses may have forgotten that their memories were reprocessed.

These facts are relevant in evaluating the societal effects of advertising and of national propaganda. But here they suggest that on alien abduction matters - where interviews typically take place years after the alleged event - therapists must be very careful that they do not accidentally implant or select the stories they elicit.

Perhaps what we actually remember is a set of memory fragments st.i.tched on to a fabric of our own devising. If we sew cleverly enough, we have made ourselves a memorable story easy to recall. Fragments by themselves, unenc.u.mbered by a.s.sociation, are harder to retrieve. The situation is rather like the method of science itself where many isolated data points can be remembered, summarized and explained in the framework of a theory. We then much more easily recall the theory and not the data.

In science the theories are always being rea.s.sessed and confronted with new facts; if the facts are seriously discordant -beyond the error bars - the theory may have to be revised. But in everyday life it is very rare that we are confronted with new facts about events of long ago. Our memories are almost never challenged. They can, instead, be frozen in place, no matter how flawed they are, or become a work in continual artistic revision.

More than G.o.ds and demons, the best-attested apparitions are those of saints, especially the Virgin Mary in Western Europe from late medieval to modern times. While alien abduction stories have much more the flavour of profane, demonic apparitions, insight into the UFO myth can also be gained from visions described as sacred. Perhaps best known are those of Jeanne d'Arc in France, St Bridget in Sweden, and Girolamo Savonarola in Italy. But more appropriate for our purpose are the apparitions seen by shepherds and peasants and children. In a world plagued by uncertainty and horror, these people longed for contact with the divine. A detailed record of such events in Castile and Catalonia is provided by William A. Christian Jr in his book Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (1981). (1981).

In a typical case, a rural woman or child reports encountering a girl or an oddly tiny woman - perhaps three or four feet tall -who reveals herself to be the Virgin Mary, the Mother of G.o.d. She requests the awestruck witness to go to the village fathers or the local Church authorities and order them to say prayers for the dead, or obey the Commandments, or build a shrine at this very spot in the countryside. If they do not comply, dire penalties are threatened, perhaps the plague. Alternatively, in plague-infested times, Mary promises to cure the disease but only if her request is satisfied.

The witness tries to do as she is told. But when she informs her father or husband or priest, she is ordered to repeat the story to no one; it is mere female foolishness or frivolity or demonic hallucination. So she keeps quiet. Days later she is confronted again by Mary, a little put out that her request has not been honoured.

'They will not believe me,' the witness complains. 'Give me a sign.' Evidence Evidence is needed. is needed.

So Mary - who seems to have had no foreknowledge that evidence would have to be provided - provides a sign. The villagers and priests are promptly convinced. The shrine is built. Miraculous cures occur in its vicinity. Pilgrims come from far and wide. Priests are busy. The economy of the region booms. The original witness is appointed keeper of the sacred shrine.

In most of the cases we know of, there was a commission of inquiry, comprising leaders civic and ecclesiastic, who attested to the genuineness of the apparition, despite initial, almost exclusively male, scepticism. But the standards of evidence were not generally high. In one case the testimony of a delirious eight-year-old boy, taken two days before his death from plague, was soberly accepted. Some of these commissions deliberated decades or even a century after the event.

In On the Distinction between True and False Visions, On the Distinction between True and False Visions, an expert on the subject, Jean Gerson, in around 1400, summarized the criteria for recognizing a credible witness of an apparition: one was the willingness to accept advice from the political and religious hierarchy. Thus anyone seeing a vision disturbing to those in power was an expert on the subject, Jean Gerson, in around 1400, summarized the criteria for recognizing a credible witness of an apparition: one was the willingness to accept advice from the political and religious hierarchy. Thus anyone seeing a vision disturbing to those in power was ipso facto ipso facto an unreliable witness, and saints and virgins could be made to say whatever the authorities wanted to hear. an unreliable witness, and saints and virgins could be made to say whatever the authorities wanted to hear.

The 'signs' allegedly provided by Mary, the evidence offered and considered compelling, included an ordinary candle, a piece of silk, and a magnetic stone; a piece of coloured tile; footprints; the witness's unusually quick gathering of thistles; a simple wooden cross inserted in the ground; welts and wounds on the witness; and a variety of contortions - a 12-year-old with her hand held funny, or legs folded back, or a closed mouth making her temporarily mute - that are 'cured' the moment her story is accepted.

In some cases accounts may have been compared and coordinated before testimony was given. For example, multiple witnesses in a small town might tell of a tall, glowing woman dressed all in white carrying an infant son and surrounded by a radiance that lit up the street the previous night. But in other cases, people standing directly beside the witness could see nothing, as in this report of a 1617 apparition from Castile: 'Aye, Bartolome, the lady who came to me these past days is coming through the meadow, and she is kneeling and embracing the cross there - look at her, look at her!' The youth though he looked as hard as he could saw nothing except some small birds flying around above the cross.

Possiole motives for inventing and accepting such stories are not hard to find: jobs for priests, notaries, carpenters and merchants, and other boosts to the original economy in a time of depression; augmented social status of the witness and her family; prayers once again offered for relatives buried in graveyards later abandoned because of plague, drought and war; rousing public spirit against enemies, especially Moors; improving civility and obedience to canon law; and confirming the faith of the pious. The fervour of pilgrims in such shrines was impressive; it was not uncommon for rock sc.r.a.pings or dirt from the shrine to be mixed with water and drunk as medicine. But I'm not suggesting that most witnesses made the whole business up. Something else was going on.

Almost all the urgent requests by Mary were remarkable for their prosaicness - for example, in this 1483 apparition from Catalonia: I charge you by your soul to charge the souls of the men of the parishes of El Torn, Milleras, El Salent, and Sant Miquel de Campmaior to charge the souls of the priests to ask the people to pay up the t.i.thes and all the duties of the church and restore other things that they hold covertly or openly which are not theirs to their rightful owners within thirty days, for it will be necessary, and observe well the holy Sunday.

And second that they should cease and desist from blaspheming and they should pay the usual charitas charitas mandated by their dead ancestors. mandated by their dead ancestors.

Often the apparition is seen just after the witness awakes. Francisca la Brava testified in 1523 that she had gotten out of bed 'without knowing if she was in control of her senses', although in later testimony she claimed to be fully awake. (This was in response to a question which allowed a gradation of possibilities: fully awake, dozing, in a trance, asleep.) Sometimes details are wholly missing, such as what the accompanying angels looked like; or Mary is described as both tall and short, both mother and child, characteristics that unmistakably suggest themselves as dream material. In the Dialogue on Miracles Dialogue on Miracles written around 1223 by Caesarius of Heisterbach, clerical visions of the Virgin Mary often occurred during written around 1223 by Caesarius of Heisterbach, clerical visions of the Virgin Mary often occurred during matins, matins, which took place at the sleepy midnight hour. which took place at the sleepy midnight hour.

It is natural to suspect that many, perhaps all, of these apparitions were a species of dream, waking or sleeping, compounded by hoaxes (and by forgeries; there was a thriving business in contrived miracles: religious paintings and statues dug up by accident or divine command). The matter was addressed in the business in contrived miracles: religious paintings and statues dug up by accident or divine command). The matter was addressed in the Siete Partidas, Siete Partidas, the codex of canon and civil law compiled under the direction of Alfonso the Wise, king of Castile, around 1248. In it we can read the following: the codex of canon and civil law compiled under the direction of Alfonso the Wise, king of Castile, around 1248. In it we can read the following: Some men fraudulently discover or build altars in fields or in towns, saying that there are relics of certain saints in those places and pretending that they perform miracles, and, for this reason, people from many places are induced to go there as on a pilgrimage, in order to take something away from them; and there are others who influenced by dreams or empty phantoms which appear to them, erect altars and pretend to discover them in the above named localities.

In listing the reasons for erro