The Weight of Dreams

     

   Once again, the darkness grew thick, heavy, suffocating.  Though it was not possible to see it, he just knew that the walls of his sleeping chamber, the ceiling too, must be closing in.  Torment, misery, and stifling panic.  In his younger days he could sleep so easily.  His bed was delicious, a comforting sanctuary from all the world and all its perils.  But now he dreaded the coming of night.  The darkness pushed into his room again.  His feeble candle failed to guard him from the oppression and the cold.  Inexorably, he was driven to his bed.  There, poorly shielded by the covers, he frequently held his breath, listening for what might be approaching.  But then came that drowsiness again.  Not the pleasant feeling of his past.  This was not a gentle, sinking feeling, but rather it was as if he was being crushed down into the depths of the stifling earth, bombarded by those dark shapes and dark feelings of chaos.  In the morning he pried himself from that coffin of the living, feeling wearier than when he retired.  He was blessed that the terrifying images of his dreams slowly evaporated with the rising of the sun like the dew itself. Tonight, however, it would be worse.  Much worse.

     From the Saxon word Mara, which means “crusher,” we get the word Nightmare.  The Latin word of similar meaning is Incubus.  There are many overlapping tales from a wide range of nations that describe something that might be called a night demon that preys on sleepers, feeding off their vitality or it might consume the life of infants.  It was important to block up all crevices in the walls with wax to prevent the intruder, who might enter in the form of a mist.  A second line of defense was the bed.  The head must not be pointed northward, which was the land of darkness and death.  The sleeper might also do well to place any available shoes around the perimeter of the bed with the toes pointed out as a feeble attempt to impale any approaching demon on their points.  Iron nails placed under the bed might also repel evil, due to the inherent power of that metal against the other world.

     According to Jewish tradition, the invader might be none other than Adam’s first wife, Lilith.  Her clash of wills with her husband in the Garden of Eden led to her storming away with a pledge of vengeance against all the Sons of Adam.  She would enter the young man’s chamber and leach away his strength.  The original Succubus.  Unlike the Saxon image of a demon perched on the chest of a sleeper, Lilith would enter the young man’s dream and use her extraordinary power of seduction to steal his vitality or even worse: she would steal away his seed so that she might produce her own inhuman spawn, which she was likely to place in the cradle of the infant that she had strangled and devoured.