Incubus & Succubus Incense

Who they are

The incubus and succubus have roots stretching back to ancient Mesopotamia — the Sumerian King List (c. 2400 BC) names Lilu, a male night-spirit, and Lilitu, his female counterpart, said to disturb and seduce the sleeping. Lilu is even named as the father of Gilgamesh. Lilith herself descends from this same lineage — a Mesopotamian figure of storm and death before she became, in later Jewish folklore, Adam's first and unyielding wife.

Medieval Europe carried the thread forward and gave us the names we use today: incubus, the demon who visits women in the night; succubus, who visits men. Shape-shifting, dream-walking, drawn to the sleeper's unguarded hour.

Why we call on them

The old texts frame these spirits as something to fear or explain away — grief, illness, the unfinished business of those who died before their time. But in contemporary practice, many who work with them read them differently: as guides for reclaiming a sensuality or creative fire that's gone quiet. Called on in dreamwork and shadow work, in workings where passion is the fuel — for art, for vitality, for meeting desire without shame. This is a modern lens laid over an ancient myth, not a claim about what the Sumerians believed — and it's one worth naming honestly.

To burn this blend is to open a door to your own hunger and ask it what it actually wants.

The blend

• Patchouli — earthy, grounding, the body made present
• Storax — warm and resinous, an old binder of desire-workings
• Myrrh — sacred, embodying, ties spirit down into flesh
• Coffee — waking, stimulating, pulls dream-logic into the body
• Black pepper — heat, urgency, a protective fire
• Sandalwood — soft aphrodisiac base note
• Damiana — classic loosener of inhibition, stirs longing
• Dragon's Blood — potency and protection
• Benzoin — sweetens and seals the working

A blend for the threshold hour — for calling in what you've been afraid to want.