Blood In Eye And Marijuana

the terrifying "forms" of sleep

Part

Ephialtes

'The Nightmare Generally seizes people sleeping on Their backs, and Often begins with frightful dreams, Which are soon succeeded by a Difficult respiration, a violent oppression of the breast, and a total privation of voluntary motion '
(John Bond, 1753)

HERE you can read Some excerpts from the book.

"Ephialtes (lit." that jumps on you ") is an anxiety syndrome identified as such by the Scottish physician John Bond in 1753 along with other authors of the time, in his treatise" Incubus. The famous greek physician Galen in the second century AD had already called nightmares "Ephialtes". The idea of \u200b\u200ban incubus as a generative factor nightmares arose from the belief that a spirit or ghost crept and was lying on the chest of the sleeping person so much, with its weight to crush his chest and make breathing difficult, thus leading to a sense of suffocation, with the terrifying dream of being crushed or (in the case of a woman) suffer sexual violence by a Ephialtes. The sleeper feels as if he were to die and wakes up in the throes of a great and throbbing languor, but also relief at the narrow escape. " (Wikipedia)

Incubus, watercolor by Charles Walker, 1860

Between the pages of myth is told of the terrible anger of the Giants by the decision of Zeus in Tartarus confine their fellow Titans. Imagine the Giants as they were in ancient Greece, which is not beings of flesh and blood, but spirits were born from the Earth with tails of snakes instead of feet. Ephialtes was one of their leaders, who undertook the battle against the gods, but the goddess had foretold that a man, a mortal man dressed in lion skins, would triumph with the help of a magic herb. The man was Heracles, the Savior, and the grass was the Ephialtion . But do not go look for grass, because you can not find! You can not. Neither you, nor I. And how magical and exorcistic Heracles used this herb? I'll get when we talk about another scary spirit that can sometimes stir in our sleep, He who speaks of murder and violence ... we'll see, we'll see .... you never know what you can then move between the folds of our sleep ... what could create our own dark thoughts and agitated ... and these days the world the wind blows too "heavy thin" ... However, if in your sleep you were attacked by quest'Efialte, when you wake up rammentatevi of Heracles, accompanied dell'Ephialtion from the Intelligence, the blind campers a dart in the right eye. It 's always Heracles against these entities shell the final blow. It 's always a mortal who triumphs over them. The gods intervene by providing advice, this is true, but the final action is up to him. It is up to us.