seductive-charm

Lilitu · salience 0.9

“Often depicted as a beautiful woman with an irresistible charm, Lilitu embodies the dangerous aspects of femininity that were feared in ancient cultures.”

Aisha Qandisha · salience 0.85

“In the most widespread version of her legend, she appears to a man as a strikingly beautiful woman, often with an inviting or seductive manner”

Boto Encantado · salience 0.85

“In this guise he charms and seduces young women at the gathering, dancing with them and, in many tellings, disappearing with a chosen partner before reappearing alone by the water's edge; he is gone by sunrise, leaving no trace, and in some tellings any child born of such an encounter is said to be fathered by the Boto, a explanation sometimes invoked for unattributed pregnancies in river communities.”

Deer Woman · salience 0.85

“luring them away from a gathering to dance or walk with her before revealing her true form and killing them, in some accounts by trampling them underfoot”

Trauco · salience 0.85

“accounts hold that his gaze or presence overcomes their will, and that any resulting pregnancy in a Chilote community could be attributed to an encounter with him”

Xtabay · salience 0.85

“Men drawn in by her beauty, in many tellings men returning home late or drunk, follow her into the bush, where she reveals her true monstrous nature”

Venus · salience 0.85

“Once identified with the Greek Aphrodite through the usual Roman practice of matching native gods to Greek counterparts, she absorbed Aphrodite's full mythology and became the goddess of love, desire, beauty, and sexual union.”

Jorōgumo · salience 0.75

“In most tellings, a Jorōgumo is a spider of great age, sometimes several hundred years old, that gains the power to take the form of a beautiful woman. In this guise she is often described drawing a traveler into her home or into a cave, sometimes by playing a biwa or otherwise offering hospitality, before entangling the victim in strands of spider silk strong enough to bind them in place.”

Huli jing · salience 0.7

“In some tellings the fox spirit seduces or possesses men to drain their vital essence and hasten its own cultivation”

Nymphs · salience 0.7

“They also act on their own account: taking mortal lovers, abducting beautiful youths, granting or withholding, and punishing those who offend against their places.”

Lamia · salience 0.6

“Beyond her role as child-devourer, Lamia is credited in some tellings with the power to remove and replace her own eyes, and with a seductive, shape-taken aspect that let her lure victims, a strand of the myth later echoed in Hellenistic and Roman poetry describing serpent-women who beguile young men before revealing their monstrous nature.”

Cliodna · salience 0.6

“Later literary and folk material continued to develop her, sometimes as a beauty who lures men, sometimes as a benefactor. The strands do not resolve into a single character, and Irish tradition generally does not require that they should.”

Pontianak

“She is most commonly depicted as a pale, beautiful woman with long, disheveled black hair and a white or pale funeral shroud, who can appear alluring at a distance and only reveals her true monstrous nature, including long nails, bloodshot eyes, and a gaping wound, when she draws close to her victims.”

Selkie

“Once the skin is shed, most tellings describe the human form as strikingly beautiful, and Selkie women in particular are said to be irresistibly attractive to human men who encounter them dancing on moonlit beaches.”

Si'lat

“The Si'lat is described as a mistress of disguise, able to take on beautiful human form, most often that of an alluring woman, in order to approach travelers, and in some tellings she can also assume animal or monstrous shapes.”

Ghaddar

“The behavior most consistently attributed to the Ghaddar centers on deception rather than direct violence: sources describe the being as enticing a person to approach or follow it, after which it either subjects its victim to torment described as indescribable in its severity, or, in a milder outcome recorded in some accounts, simply terrifies the person before abandoning them, stranded and shaken, in some remote place.”

Incubus

“The incubus is a figure widespread in medieval and early modern European folklore and theology, described across sources as a male demon who assumes a human shape in order to have intercourse with women, typically while they sleep.”

Cihuateteo

“The tradition is emphatic that the Cihuateteo were no benevolent mothers: descending to earth on the days sacred to them, they haunted crossroads at night, struck children with seizures and madness, stole them outright, and seduced men into adultery and other transgressions.”