LA BAJA EDAD MEDIA. LA CRISIS DE LOS SIGLOS XIV Y XV

charac-teristics, associated with Lilitu, the prototype of LILITH. Labartu carries a SERPENT in each hand and attacks young children, mothers, and nurses.

Lactance, Father Gabriel (d. 1634) Franciscan priest who was a principal EXORCIST in the LOUDUN POSSESSIONS

in France from 1630 to 1634. Father Gabriel Lactance earned the nickname of “Father Dicas” because he kept shouting, “Dicas, Dicas!” at URBAIN GRANDIER, the priest accused of bewitching the nuns.

Lactance was one of three exorcists sent to the Ursuline convent at Loudun when the POSSESSIONs and bewitch-ments of the nuns seemed to be getting out of control. He was joined by a Jesuit, FATHER JOSEPH SURIN, and a Capu-chin, Father Tranquille.

Lactance was especially zealous in his persecution of Grandier. As the condemned priest, badly broken by torture, was carted about town on his way to be burned at the stake, Father Lactance prevented supporters from helping him. He was the fi rst to light the execution fi re.

Later, when the priests continued their EXORCISMs of the principal DEMONIAC, Mother Superior JEANNEDES AN

-GES, he was obsessed to know precisely how Grandier was suffering in HELL. One of the DEMONs possessing Jeanne, ISACAARON, tried his best to satisfy the priest, but Jeanne went into convulsions to avoid further answers.

Lactance immediately suffered psychological and physical ailments. The evening of the execution, while the exorcists were at the convent, Lactance became pale and distant. He worried that he had prevented Grandier from making his confession by tearing him away from one of his supporters as he was taken to the stake. Per-haps this had been a sin. Reassured that it was not by his colleagues, Lactance remained ill at ease. He passed a sleepless night and by morning was in a fever. He re-peated, “God is punishing me; God is punishing me.”

A physician, Mannoury, bled him, a customary rem-edy at the time. He worsened and began hallucinating and hearing things. He relived Grandier’s screaming un-der torture and asking God to forgive his enemies as he was strapped to the stake. He saw swarms of demons. The demons entered him and made him rave and contort. He spouted blasphemies.

On September 18, 1634, exactly one month after Grandier’s execution, Lactance was on his deathbed. A priest was summoned to give him extreme unction. He knocked the crucifi x from the priest’s hand and died.

Lactance was given a fi ne funeral. Father Tranquille preached the sermon and said Lactance was a model of holiness who was killed by SATAN.

Shortly thereafter, Mannoury had a vision of the na-ked Grandier when he was pricna-ked for DEVIL’SMARKS. The doctor fell to the ground, screaming for pardon. Within a week, he was dead.

L

FURTHERREADING:

Certeau, Michel de. The Possession at Loudun. Translated by Michael B. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Ferber, Sarah. Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Mod-ern France. London: Routledge, 2004.

Huxley, Aldous. The Devils of Loudun. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952.

Lahmu Benevolent Assyrian god who protects against evil DEMONs. Lahmu means “hairy,” a description of the god’s long hair and beard. Statues of Lahmu were placed in house and building foundations to ward off evil.

Lam See CROWLEY, ALEISTER.

Lamastu Babylonian and Assyrian goddess who prac-tices evil for its own sake. Lamastu is usually translated as “demonness.” She is hideous in appearance, having the head of a lion, the teeth of a donkey, a hairy body, naked breasts, blood-stained hands with long fi ngers and fi ngernails, and the feet of a bird. Sometimes she is shown with donkey ears. She suckles pigs and holds SER

-PENTs. She fl oats in a boat in the river of the underworld.

Lamastu causes disease in all humans. As does LIL

-ITH, she especially preys upon pregnant women, women in childbed, and newborn infants. Lamatsu goes into homes at night. She kills pregnant women by tapping on their bellies seven times. She steals infants from their wet nurses.

The DEMON god PAZUZU has power over her and can force her back into the underworld. Women protected themselves against her by wearing AMULETs made of bronze and fashioned as the head of Pazuzu. Offerings of centipedes and brooches were made to tempt her away.

FURTHERREADING:

Black, Jeremy, and Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Sym-bols of Ancient Mesopotamia. London: British Museum Press, 1992.

lamiae Monstrous female birth DEMONs found in Mid-dle Eastern and Greek lore. The lamiae are named after Lamme, a destroyer deity in Babylonian and Assyrian lore, and Lamia, who was the mistress of Zeus.

Lamia was the beautiful daughter of Belus, the king of Libya, who caught Zeus’ eye. In exchange for her sexual favors, Zeus gave her the power to pluck out the eyes of people and replace them. She had several children. Hera, the wife of Zeus, was so enraged by the liaison that she killed all the offspring who resulted from the union. She condemned Lamia to give birth only to stillborn infants.

In revenge, Lamia became a demon and swore to kill the children of others. She joined the EMPOUSAI, female demons similar to the SUCCUBUS. Lamia bore a large fam-ily of children, all female demons, who became known as the lamiae. They have deformed lower limbs (often

de-picted as SERPENTs) and the face and breasts of beautiful women. They prey upon newborns, drinking their BLOOD

and consuming their fl esh.

In Hebrew lore, lamiae are the lilim, the demonic chil-dren-killing offspring of LILITH, Adam’s fi rst wife.

JOHANN WEYER used the term lamia to describe female witches who had entered into a deceptive or imaginary

PACT with the DEVIL in order to perpetrate evil.

larvae In Roman lore, evil spirits that harm and frighten the living. Larvae, also known as lemurs, are demonic ghosts of the dead who, because of their mis-deeds in life, are punished in the afterlife by being sen-tenced to exile and eternal wandering without a home.

They do not bother good men, but they harass men of evil intent. The counterpart of the larvae are lares, benevolent ghosts of the dead who guard people, homes, and places.

Apuleius described both of these types of spirits in De deo Socratis:

There is also another species of daemons, according to a second signifi cation, and this is a human soul, which, after its departure from the present life, does not enter into another body. I fi nd that souls of this kind are called in the ancient Latin tongue Lemures. Of these Lemures, therefore, he who, being allotted the guardianship of his posterity, dwells in a house with an appeased and tranquil power, is called a familiar [or domestic] Lar. But those are for the most part called Larvae, who, having no proper habitation, are punished with an uncertain wandering, as with a certain exile, on account of the evil deeds of their life, and become a vain terror to good, and are noxious to bad men.

Romans observed a festival in May called Lemuria, for appeasing the spirits of the dead, exorcising them from households, and preventing them from causing trouble.

Businesses and temples closed. The most important ritual took place on the last night of the festival, when the lar-vae or lemures were exorcised. The homeowner or head of the household washed his hands three times, placed black beans in his mouth, and walked barefoot through the house, making the sign of the horns with his hands (see EVILEYE), tossing black beans over his shoulder, and saying, “With these beans I do redeem me and mine.”

This incantation was repeated nine times without look-ing backward. The evil ghosts who followed would pick up the beans and depart, leaving the residents alone until the following year’s festival.

The Greeks had a similar festival, observed in Febru-ary or March.

In The City of God, St. Augustine commented on lar-vae, believing them to be wicked demons, in reference to comments made by Plotinus:

He [Plotinus] says, indeed, that the souls of men are demons, and that men become Lares if they are good, Lemures or Larvae if they are bad, and Manes if it is 144 Lahmu

uncertain whether they deserve well or ill. Who does not see at a glance that this is a mere whirlpool sucking men to moral destruction?

For, however wicked men have been, if they suppose they shall become Larvae or divine Manes, they will become the worse the more love they have for infl icting injury; for, as the Larvae are hurtful demons made out of wicked men, these men must suppose that after death they will be invoked with sacrifi ces and divine honors that they may infl ict injuries. But this question we must not pursue. He also states that the blessed are called in Greek eudaimones, because they are good souls, that is to say, good demons, confi rming his opinion that the souls of men are demons.

FURTHERREADING:

Augustine. The City of God. Translated by Marcus Dods, George Wilson and J. J. Smith; introduction by Thomas Merton. New York: Modern Library, 1950.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spir-its. 3rd ed. New York: Facts On File, 2007.

Ogden, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook. New York: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2002.

LaVey, Anton Szandor See SATANISM.

legion A unit of DEMONs. There are 6,666 demons per legion. JOHANN WEYER cataloged demons, listing 72 princes who commanded legions totaling 7,405,926 underlings. The legions are organized in military fash-ion, with ranks and specifi c duties assigned to each demon. The legions attend their princes when summoned by a magician. They are dispatched by SATAN to infest, oppress, and possess victims.

Legion See JESUS.

lemures See LARVAE.

Lerajie (Leraie, Lerayou, Oray) FALLEN ANGEL and 14th of the 72 SPIRITSOF SOLOMON. Lerajie is a marquis who appears as an archer, dressed in green and carrying a bow and quiver. He causes great battles and makes arrow wounds putrefy. He commands 30 LEGIONs of

DEMONs.

Leviathan In Hebrew lore, primordial monster DEMON

of the seas and king of beasts.

Leviathan is described in the book of Job as a huge whalelike creature who is nearly invulnerable; spears do no more than tickle him:

His back is made of rows of shields, Shut up closely as with a seal. . . . His sneezings fl ash forth light,

And his eyes are like eyelids of the dawn.

Out of the mouth go fl aming torches;

Sparks of fi re leap forth. . . . In his neck abides strength, And terror dances before him.

The book of Jonah tells about Jonah, who fl ees from God’s wrath across the sea toward the city of Tarshish.

Along the way, God sends a tempest, and the ship’s crew fi nd out that Jonah is the cause. They throw him over-board and he is swallowed by Leviathan. For three days, he is imprisoned in the belly of the beast, and then God forces Leviathan to vomit him up on land.

John Milton, in his epic poem Paradise Lost, describes Leviathan as “the Arch-Fiend,” who lurks about the seas around Scandinavia. He would rise to the surface and fool sailors into thinking his huge bulk was actually land.

When the ships were close, he would drag them down and sink them.

Leviathan was one of the possessing demons named in the LOUDUN POSSESSIONS. He is ruler of Envy, the fourth of the SEVEN DEADLY SINS.

In Hebrew lore, Leviathan has two aspects, male—

Leviathon, the Slant Serpent—and female—LILITH, the Tortuous Serpent.

See BEHEMOTH. FURTHERREADING:

Hyatt, Victoria, and Joseph W. Charles. The Book of Demons.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.

Koltuv, Barbara Black. The Book of Lilith. Berwick, Me.: Nicolas-Hays, 1986.

leyak In Balinese lore, a sorcerer who has the ability to shape shift into a DEMON, causing death and destruction to people, animals, and crops. The leyak also is the cause of all bad events and misfortunes.

While the sorcerer sleeps, the leyak fl ies in the night skies in the form of a mysterious light, a monkey, or a bird. If the leyak is destroyed, its human form dies in-stantly along with it. A leyak can remain disguised to fel-low human beings indefi nitely. Usually, it is unmasked only when it is killed in its shape-shifted form.

lezim See KESILIM.

liderc Hungarian DEMON that shape shifts into three guises: an INCUBUS, a household spirit, and a death omen light.

The incubus liderc takes advantage of loneliness, mas-querading as long-absent lovers and dead husbands. Once in its victim’s bed, it returns night after night and forni-cates with the victim, who has a wasting death. A give-away to the demon’s true nature is that it has one goose leg and foot, which it keeps hidden in trousers and boots.

The household liderc takes the form of a featherless chicken that suddenly appears or is hatched from an egg carried in the armpit. It can never be banished once it has liderc 145

entered a home. The only solution is to keep it busy with tasks; otherwise, it will destroy the occupants.

The fl ickering light liderc is a ball of light (ignis fau-tis) that hovers over the household where someone will soon die.

FURTHERREADING:

Mack, Carol K., and Dinah Mack. A Field Guide to Demons:

Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits. New York: Owl Books/Henry Holt, 1998.

ligature A knotted loop of thread used by witches to cause demonic castration or impotence in men, as well as barrenness in women and unhappiness in marriage.

The ligature also served to bind couples in illicit amatory relationships.

Belief in impotence caused by SORCERY with DEMONs was not widespread until about the 14th century, when

SABBATs, PACTs with the DEVIL, and the evil acts of witches gained prominence in witch trials. Fear of ligature in-creased in the witch hysteria of the Inquisition, when witches were believed to use powers bestowed by the Devil to interfere in the sexual acts of people.

Thomas Platter, a physician in the Montpellier region of France in 1596, described how ligature happened to newlyweds: At the instant when a priest blessed a new marriage, a witch went behind the husband, knotted a thread, and threw a coin on the ground while calling the Devil. If the coin disappeared, it meant that the Devil took it to keep until Judgment Day, and the couple was doomed to unhappiness, sterility, and adultery.

Platter believed fully in ligatures, noting that couples living in Languedoc were so fearful of demonic castra-tion that not 10 weddings in 100 were performed publicly in church. Instead, the priest, the couple, and their par-ents went off in secret to celebrate the sacrament. Only then, Platter reported, could the newlyweds enter their home, enjoy the feasting, and go to bed. He concluded that the panic was so bad that there was a local danger of depopulation.

Other means could cause ligature: a nut or acorn split in two and placed on either side of a bed; a needle used to sew a corpse’s shroud, placed beneath a pillow; or three or four beans placed beneath the bed, on the road outside a house, or around the door.

Folk magic remedies could remove a ligature. The vic-tim would be cured by eating a woodpecker or by smell-ing the scent of a dead man’s tooth. Another remedy called for rubbing the entire body with raven’s bile and sesame oil. Quicksilver (mercury) enclosed in a reed sealed with wax or sealed in an empty hazelnut shell could be placed beneath the affl icted person’s pillow or under the thresh-old of the house or the bedroom. The bile of a BLACKDOG

sprinkled on a house would neutralize a demon, and the

BLOOD of a black dog sprinkled on the walls would clear all evil spells. Wormwood or squill fl owers hung at the bedroom door would keep out a demon.

FURTHERREADING:

Lea, Henry Charles. Materials toward a History of Witchcraft.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1939.

lightning In folklore, the mark of the DEVIL. Lightning strikes leave streaks and ragged, hooked, charred marks on objects. According to lore, these are claw marks of the Devil.

NICHOLAS REMY, a 16th-century demonologist, said that DEMONs mingle with lightning and determine where it strikes. Remy said that when he was a boy, his house at Charmes, France, was struck by lightning and marked with “deep claw marks.” Further evidence of the presence of the Devil was the “most foul smell of sulphur.”

FURTHERREADING:

Remy, Nicholas. Demonolatry. Secaucus, N.J.: University Books, 1974.

Lilith A female DEMON of the night and SUCCUBUS who fl ies about searching for newborn children to kidnap or strangle and sleeping men to seduce in order to produce demon children. Lilith is a major fi gure in Jewish demon-ology, appearing as early as 700 B.C.E. in the book of Isa-iah; she or beings similar to her also are found in myths from other cultures around the world. She is the dark aspect of the Mother Goddess. She is the original “scarlet woman” and sometimes described as a screech owl, blind by day, who sucks the breasts or navels of young chil-dren or the dugs of goats.

In addition to Jewish folklore, Lilith appears in various forms in Iranian, Babylonian, Sumerian, Canaanite, Per-sian, Arabic, Teutonic, Mexican, Greek, English, APer-sian, and Native American legends. She is sometimes associ-ated with other characters in legend and myth, includ-ing the queen of Sheba and Helen of Troy. In medieval Europe, she was often portrayed as the wife, concubine, or grandmother of SATAN.

Lilith appears in different guises in various texts. She is best known as the fi rst wife of Adam, created by God as twins joined in the back. Lilith demanded equality with Adam and, failing to get it, left him in anger. Adam complained to God that his wife had deserted him. God sent three angels, Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf, to take Lilith back to Eden. The angels found her in the Red Sea and threatened her with the loss of 100 of her demon children every day unless she returned to Adam.

She refused and was punished. Lilith took revenge by launching a reign of terror against women in childbirth, newborn infants—particularly males—and men who slept alone. She was forced, however, to swear to the three angels that whenever she saw their names or im-ages on an amulet, she would leave infants and mothers

She refused and was punished. Lilith took revenge by launching a reign of terror against women in childbirth, newborn infants—particularly males—and men who slept alone. She was forced, however, to swear to the three angels that whenever she saw their names or im-ages on an amulet, she would leave infants and mothers

In document TEMA 1 LAS RAÍCES. LA HISPANIA ROMANA (página 26-30)