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In medieval legend, a cambion is a half-human offspring of a demon and a human. Caliban, the son of the witch Sycorax in The Tempest by William Shakespeare, is a cambion; Merlin from the Arthurian legend is also a cambion.

Creation[link]

A cambion is most often depicted as the offspring of an incubus and a human woman. At birth, the infant has no pulse and no breath. This continues until the child is about seven years old, where it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate one from a human. A cambion is usually devilishly cunning and angelically beautiful, able to persuade even the most strong-hearted individual to do his or her bidding.

[edit] In the Malleus Maleficarum

According to the Malleus Maleficarum, demons, including the incubus and the succubus, are incapable of reproduction:

Moreover, to beget a child is the act of a living body, but devils cannot bestow life upon the bodies they assume; because life formally proceeds only from the soul, and the act of generation is the act of the physical organs which have bodily life. Therefore bodies which are assumed in this way cannot either beget or bear.^[1]

Due to this inability to create or nurture life, the method of the creation of a cambion is necessarily protracted. A succubus will have sex with a human male and so acquire a sample of his sperm. This she will then pass on to an incubus. The incubus will, in his turn, transfer the sperm to a human female and thus impregnate her.

Yet it may be said that these devils assume a body not in order that they may bestow life upon it, but that they may by the means of this body preserve human semen, and pass the semen on to another body.^[1]

The text goes on to discuss at great length the arguments for and against this process being possible, citing a number of biblical quotations and noted scholars in support of its arguments, and finally concludes that this is indeed the method used by such demons.

[edit] In the Encyclopedia of Occultism And Parapsychology

In the Encyclopedia of Occultism And Parapsychology the cambion is said to be the direct offspring of the incubus and the succubus, foregoing any need for human involvement. This same incarnation retained the absence of breath or a pulse until seven years of age, but was said to also have been incredibly heavy (even too heavy for a horse to carry) and to have cried upon being touched.^[2]

References[link]

See also[link]

• Changeling
• Mooncalf
• Nephilim
• Yōkai