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Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since January 2007. - For the evil spirits of the Christian religion, see Demon
The words daemon and daimon, sometimes dæmon, are Latinized spellings of Greek δαιμων, used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Greek mythology, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes", from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, "a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans." The Greek translation of the Septuagint, made for the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, and the usage of daimon in the New Testament's original Greek text, caused the Greek word to be applied to a Judeo-Christian spirit by the early 2nd century AD. Then in late antiquity, pagan conceptions and exorcisms, part of the cultural atmosphere, became Christian beliefs and exorcism rituals. The transposition has recently been documented in detail, in North Africa, by Maureen Tilley (see Links). St. ...
Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ...
The bust of Zeus found at Otricoli (Sala Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican) Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and their own cult and ritual practices. ...
Judeo-Christian (or Judaeo-Christian) is a term used to describe the body of concepts and values which are thought to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, and typically considered (sometimes along with classical Greco-Roman civilization) a fundamental basis for Western legal codes and moral values. ...
St. ...
The Septuagint: A page from Codex vaticanus, the basis of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brentons English translation. ...
John 21:1 Jesus Appears to His Disciples--Alessandro Mantovani: the Vatican, Rome. ...
Late Antiquity is a rough periodization (c. ...
Saint Francis exorcised demons in Arezzo, fresco of Giotto Exorcism (from Late Latin exorcismus, from Greek exorkizein - to adjure) is the practice of evicting demons or other evil spiritual entities from a person or place of which they have possessed (taken control of). ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
In Greece and Rome
For Greeks and Romans, daemons ("replete with knowledge", "divine power", "fate" or "god") were not necessarily evil. Socrates claimed to have a daimonion, a small daemon, that warned him against mistakes but never told him what to do or coerced him into following it. He claimed that his daemon exhibited greater accuracy than any of the forms of divination practised at the time. The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: eudaemons (also called kalodaemons) and kakodaemons, respectively. Eudaemons resembled the Abrahamic idea of the guardian angel; they watched over mortals to help keep them out of trouble. (Thus eudaemonia, originally the state of having a eudaemon, came to mean "well-being" or "happiness".) A comparable Roman genius accompanied a person or protected and haunted a place (genius loci). The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787) The trial of Socrates in 399 BC gave rise to a great deal of debate and to a whole genre of literature, known as the Socratic logoi. ...
This article is about the religious practice of divination. ...
The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance...
A Gothic angel in ivory, c1250, Louvre An angel is a supernatural being found in many religions. ...
This article does not cite its references or sources. ...
In Roman mythology, every man had a genius and every woman a juno (Juno was also the name for the queen of the gods). ...
In Roman mythology a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. ...
In Plato In Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a god, but rather a good daemon. The Symposium is a dialogue by Plato, written soon after 385 BCE. It is a philosophical discussion on the nature of love, taking the form of a series of speeches, both satirical and serious, given by a group of men at a symposion or drinking party at the house of...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
Daemons were important in Neo-Platonic philosophy. In Platonism daemon here being more in tune with demigod rather then evil spirit. As Eros being described as in-between Gods and mankind. In the Christian reception of Platonism, the eudaemons were identified with the angels. The term demigod, meaning half-god, is a modern distinction, often misapplied in Greek mythology. ...
Metaxy (μεταξÏ) as defined from Platos Symposium, via the character Priestess Diotima, is the in-between. Metaxy or metaxi is defined as the in-between or middle ground were as Diotima as the tutor to Socrates uses the term to show how oral tradition can be perceived by different people...
Cyprian was debunking the gods of the pagans as a euhemerist falsehood in his essay On the Vanity of Idols, but he had this to say of daemons: This page is about Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. ...
Euhemerus (ΕυήμεÏος) (working late 4th century BCE) was a Greek mythographer at the court of Cassander, the king of Macedonia. ...
| “ | They are impure and wandering spirits, who, after having been steeped in earthly vices, have departed from their celestial vigour by the contagion of earth, and do not cease, when ruined themselves, to seek the ruin of others; and when degraded themselves, to infuse into others the error of their own degradation. These demons the poets also acknowledge, and Socrates declared that he was instructed and ruled at the will of a demon; and thence the Magi have a power either for mischief or for mockery, of whom, however, the chief Hostanes both says that the form of the true God cannot be seen, and declares that true angels stand round about His throne. These spirits, therefore, are lurking under the statues and consecrated images: these inspire the breasts of their prophets with their afflatus, animate the fibres of the entrails, direct the flights of birds, rule the lots, give efficiency to oracles, are always mixing up falsehood with truth, for they are both deceived and they deceive; they disturb their life, they disquiet their slumbers; their spirits creeping also into their bodies, secretly terrify their minds, distort their limbs, break their health, excite diseases to force them to worship of themselves, so that when glutted with the steam of the altars and the piles of cattle, they may unloose what they had bound, and so appear to have effected a cure. The only remedy from them is when their own mischief ceases. | ” | The daemons are real enough — "the principle is the same, which misleads and deceives, and with tricks which darken the truth, leads away a credulous and foolish rabble" — it is relying upon them that is deceptive. In this way the daemons passed easily into Christian "demons."
In Early Christianity The specific motivation for the rush of inspired destruction of Greek and Roman sculpture unleashed at the end of the 4th century, as soon as Christianity was in secure control, is revealed here: the images were inhabited by demons. As in all such destruction, the faces were especially attacked: "defaced."
In the process of Christianizing Roman populations in the official Christianity from the late 4th century, theologians, hermits and monks, and the bishops and presbyters who influenced individuals, had their own repertoire of ideas, which were derived from Scripture and from the ambient culture of Late Antiquity. Within the Christian tradition, ideas of "demons" derived as much from the literature that came to be regarded as apocryphal and even heretical as it did from the literature accepted as canonical. A biblical canon is a list published by a religious authority of those books of the Bible that are considered inspired by God. ...
In North Africa The North African Apuleius summed up their character in the Golden Ass (2nd century AD): "The daemones have an animal nature, a rational mind, a soul subject to passions, an aetherial body and they are immortal." The Hellenic and Roman gods were increasingly seen as immovable, untouched by human sorrows and suffering, existing in a perfect heavenly sphere (compare Epicurus, Lucretius). The daemones were earthbound, passion-tormented, and in Late Antiquity, loremasters were separating them into the noble kinds and troublemaking kinds. The gnostic followers of Valentinus multiplied the circles of daemons and gave them oversight in various areas of concern to people: oracles, animals, and, interestingly, as "patron daemons" of nations or occupations (compare Principalities and Patron saint). Lucius Apuleius (c. ...
Roman marble bust of Epicurus Epicurus (Epikouros or in Greek) (341 BC, Samos – 270 BC, Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of thought in Hellenistic Philosophy. ...
Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus (c. ...
Valentinus can refer to: Pope Valentinus Saint Valentine Basil Valentinus, a 15th century monk from Erfurt who may have described Bismuth Valentinius, a Gnostic also known as Valentinus Roman emperors - Valentinian I (364 - 375) and Valentinian II (371 - 392) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists...
Prince Albert of Monaco on the left represents a principality where he wields adminisitrative authority. ...
Saint Quentin is the patron saint of locksmiths and is also invoked against coughs and sneezes. ...
In Hermeticism The lore of Hermes Trismegistus is a source both for pagan and Christian conceptions of daemons, for in the Corpus Hermeticum, they functioned as the gatekeepers of the spheres through which souls passed on their way to the highest heaven, the Empyrean. The Early Medieval St. Gall sacramentary testifies to the continuity of this belief of daemones in the oldest extant prayer for anointing the dying: This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...
Corpus Hermeticum is collection of several Greek texts from the second and third centuries, survivors from a more extensive literature, known as Hermetica. ...
The Divine Comedys Empyrean, illustrated by Gustave Doré Empyrean, from the Medieval Latin empyreus, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek, in or on the fire (pyr), properly Empyrean Heaven, is the place in the highest heaven, which in ancient cosmologies was supposed to be occupied by the element of...
The Abbey of St. ...
Sacramentary was a musical service book, containing the prayers that were recited by the celebrant during the mass. ...
- "I anoint you with sanctified oil that in the manner of a warrior prepared through anointing for battle you will be able to prevail over the aery hordes."
Notes Philip Pullman Philip Pullman, (born October 19, 1946) is an English writer, educated at Exeter College, Oxford, who is the best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy of fantasy novels and a number of other books, purportedly for children, but attracting increasing attention by adult readers. ...
The trilogy (U.K versions), in order of succession from left to right. ...
Parallel universe or alternate reality in science fiction and fantasy is a self-contained separate reality coexisting with our own. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
“Animalia†redirects here. ...
In witchcraft, a familiar spirit, commonly called familiar (from Middle English familiar, related to family) is a spirit who obeys a witch, conjurer, etc. ...
External links - Maureen A. Tilley, "Exorcism in North Africa: Localizing the (Un)holy" explores the meanings of daimon among Christians in Roman Africa and exorcism practices that passed seamlessly into Christian ritual.
- Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol V: Cyprian, "On the Vanity of Idols" e-text Daemons inhabiting the images of gods
- Kakodaemons on Theoi.com (listed under 'demon'; no mention of eudaemones)
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