In folklore around the world, an incubus is a male demon, a fallen angel, a source of anxiety and illness, a nightmare – but the same spirit is also believed to be a progenitor of witches and wizards, that is people with intelligence above the ordinary. Whether one believes in the actual existence of fallen angels or not, the symbolic peril this group represents in the collective psyche is that of inducing the questioning of societal norms.
As such, these spirits are culturally portrayed as a negative influence, but there are notable exceptions to this rule. For example, in Romania incubi are called zburători (archaic form sburători) – literally “spirits who can fly” or sometimes translated as “dreamers” – and while the general attitude is that the person having this experience must reject the zburător before getting married, artists and writers have always viewed this spirit as their personal muse or inspiration:
“Vague thrills, warmth and coldness, yearnings for impossible beauty, and, at once, torpor, a deep unsettling of the entire soul, bashfulness and insane certainty, an escape from the world and realities, blended with a belief in chimaeras, restlessness and a thirst for rest… [These come from] the very same Dreamer, the same pale master of youthful dreams, the same kiss of warm lips on cool foreheads, the same mystical engagement to whatever will be. […] Those who begin issuing this magazine have received the Dreamer’s kiss a long time ago. They are halfway through on the path of life. They have not, however, forgotten the thrills of yesteryear, nor the taste and disgust for the world, the impossibility of fitting in and belief in impossible chimaeras. They have not forsaken their idealism.”
(Eugen Lovinescu – first editorial in Sburătorul, 1919)
Adina Ispas 