In subsequent centuries, the mara is shape-shifted into the Old Hag myth, which Shakespeare appropriates for his epic Queen Mab soliloquy from 'Romeo and Juliet'. Grendel, the fearsome villain of the Anglo-Saxon tale ‘Beowulf’, is a perfect example of the mara crushing and devouring his prey in the dead of night. Not precisely a demon, the mara is a person with magical attributes who ‘rides’ their victim for the pleasure of pure wickedness. We get our term ‘mare’ from the Old Norse version of the incubus: the mara, which comes from the verb merran or ‘crusher’. Originating from the Latin ‘ to sit on’, the incubus sat on top of your chest inducing horrifying dreams and physical immobility, making it the first documented explanation of sleep paralysis. 2000 BCE) to the Roman Empire, a demon known as the incubus was responsible for your bad dreams. The Western concept of the nightmare is weighted with an accumulation of historical interpretations that emerged from the myth of the incubus. MORE: Discover the chequered past of male masturbation It’s no wonder that throughout history it has been linked to paranormal forces, from demons to aliens. If an individual is in the middle of a disturbing dream, this sense of fear is heightened ten-fold because there is usually a hangover that results in visual and auditory hallucination.Īlthough our contemporary knowledge of neuroscience demystifies sleep paralysis, its explanation does not match the extra-sensory fantastic experience of it. As this liminal state persists it activates our limbic system, our centre of emotional reaction, causing fear and panic. If the brain doesn’t give the order to the muscles, the muscles lay dormant while our mind is stirred to consciousness, giving us the sense of paralysis. Sleep paralysis occurs when the process happens at the wrong speed when the brain and body are out of sync. As the brain is roused to a waking (hypnopompic) state or as it falls into a sleeping (hypnagogic) state the brain gives the order to end or start the paralysis. During a ‘normal’ night’s sleep we can expect the brain to dispatch a message to the nervous system that relaxes the muscles so relaxed are they that they become inactive during sleep, protecting our body from acting out physically while in the state of sleep. It occurs when brain and body are not in sync during the sleep process. Sleep paralysis is relatively easy to explain and is (generally) not a serious condition.
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