Daimon
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The daimon (Template:Lang), also spelled daemon (meaning "god", "godlike", "power", "fate"),<ref>A. Delahunty, From Bonbon to Cha-cha: Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases (p. 90), Oxford University Press, 2008 Template:ISBN</ref><ref>J. Cresswell, Little Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins (p. 146), Oxford University Press, 2014.</ref> denotes an "unknown superfactor", which can be either good or hostile.<ref>Wiebe, G. (2020, June 30). demons in Christian thought. Oxford Classical Dictionary. Retrieved 12 Dec. 2024, from https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-8290.</ref> The daimonic manifests as a penetration into the order of the known and explainable world.<ref name=":0">Frey-Anthes, Henrike. Unheilsmächte und Schutzgenien, Antiwesen und Grenzgänger: Vorstellungen von" Dämonen" im alten Israel. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. 4-5</ref> For Christian thinkers, the daimonic was associated with non-rational divine inspiration and, due to lack of its predictability, considered evil.<ref name=":1">Nicholls, A. (2021, February 23). Daemonic. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Retrieved 17 Nov. 2025, from https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-1118.</ref> For modern non-Christian thinkers, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the daimon remained neutral.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" />
In ancient Greek religion and mythology a daimon was imagined to be a lesser deity or guiding spirit.<ref>daimōn "δαίμων". A Greek–English Lexicon.</ref> The word is derived from Proto-Indo-European *déh₂i-mō ~ *dh₂i-mn-és 'divider, apportioner(?)'.<ref>Template:Cite-book</ref><ref>Template:Cite-book</ref> Daimons were possibly seen as the souls of men of the golden age, tutelary deities, or the forces of fate.<ref>2323243 Perseus Digital Library Consulted 2017-05-05</ref>
Description
Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature, or the deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium). Even though the term derives from Greek philosophy, anthropology agrees on that daimons are universal across human cultures.<ref name=":0" /> According to Hesiod's myth, "great and powerful figures were to be honoured after death as a daimon…"<ref name="Burkert1985"/> A daimon is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Walter Burkert, but rather a non-personified "peculiar mode" of their activity.Template:Citation needed According to the Animism-theory by Tylor and similar to William Robertson Smith's theory on Totemism, belief in gods evolved from daimons — including ghosts and jinn — into gods.<ref name=":0" />
In Hesiod's Theogony, Phaëton becomes an incorporeal daimon or a divine spirit,<ref>"ποιήσατο, δαίμονα δῖον"; Hesiod, Theogony 991.</ref> but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, keres, not daimones.<ref name="Burkert1985"/> From Hesiod also, the people of the Golden Age were transformed into daimones by the will of Zeus, to serve mortals benevolently as their guardian spirits; "good beings who dispense riches…[nevertheless], they remain invisible, known only by their acts".<ref>Hesiod, Works and Days 122-26.</ref> The daimones of venerated heroes were localized by the construction of shrines, so as not to wander restlessly, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects.<ref name="Burkert1985"/>
One tradition of Greek thought, which found agreement in the mind of Plato, was of a daimon which existed within a person from their birth, and that each individual was obtained by a singular daimon prior to their birth by way of lot.<ref name="Burkert1985"/>
In mythology
Homer's use of the words theoí (Template:Lang, "gods") and daímones (Template:Lang) suggests that, while distinct, they are similar in kind.<ref>As par example in Hom. Il. 1.222: Template:Lang: "Then she went back to Olympus among the other gods [daimones]".</ref> Later writers developed the distinction between the two.<ref>p. 115, John Burnet, Plato's Euthyprho, Apology of Socrates, and Crito, Clarendon 1924.</ref> Plato in Cratylus<ref>"Because they were wise and knowing (Template:Lang) he called them spirits (Template:Lang) and in the old form of our language the two words are the same" – Cratylus 398 b</ref> speculates that the word daimōn (Template:Lang, "deity") is synonymous to daēmōn (Template:Lang, "knowing or wise");<ref>Entry δαήμων at LSJ</ref> however, it is more probably daiō (Template:Lang, "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot").<ref>"daimōn" Template:Webarchive, in Liddell, Henry and Robert Scott. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon.</ref>
Socrates
In Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a "great daimōn" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daimōnion is between divine and mortal" (202d–e), and she describes daimōns as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimōnion (literally, a "divine something")<ref>Plato, Apology 31c–d, 40a; p. 16, Burnet, Plato's Euthyprho, Apology of Socrates, and Crito.</ref> that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do.<ref>pp. 16–17, Burnet, Plato's Euthyprho, Apology of Socrates, and Crito; pp. 99–100, M. Joyal, "To Daimonion and the Socratic Problem", Apeiron vol. 38 no. 2, 2005.</ref> The Platonic Socrates, however, never refers to the daimonion as a daimōn; it was always referred to as an impersonal "something" or "sign".<ref>p. 16, Burnet, Plato's Euthyprho, Apology of Socrates, and Crito; p. 63, P. Destrée, "The Daimonion and the Philosophical Mission", Apeiron vol. 38 no. 2, 2005.</ref> By this term he seems to indicate the true nature of the human soul, his newfound self-consciousness.<ref>Paolo De Bernardi, Socrate, il demone e il risveglio, from "Sapienza", no. 45, ESD, Naples 1992, pp. 425–43.</ref> Paul Shorey sees the daimonion not as an inspiration but as "a kind of spiritual tact checking Socrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests."<ref>The Republic, volume 2, p. 52, note, italics added.</ref>
Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399 BC, Plato surmised "Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in the gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings..." Burkert notes that "a special being watches over each individual, a daimōn who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimonTemplate:'".<ref name="Burkert1985"/>
Age of Enlightenment
During the Age of Enlightenment, the daimon went through a revival. German polymath and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), considers the daimonic to be neither necessarily good nor evil, neither divine, nor natural:<ref name=":0" />
Er glaubte in der Natur, der belebten und unbelebten, der beseelten und unbeseelten, etwas zu entdecken, das sich nur in Wider sprüchen manifestierte und deshalb unter keinen Begriff, noch viel weniger unter ein Wort gefasst werden könnte. Es war nicht göttlich, denn es schien unver nünftig; nicht menschlich, denn es hatte keinen Verstand; nicht teuflisch, denn es war wohltätig; nicht englisch, denn es ließ oft Schadenfreude merken. He believed he had discovered something in nature, both animate and inanimate, soulful and inanimate, that manifested itself only in contradictions and therefore could not be grasped by any concept, much less by a word. It was not divine, for it seemed irrational; not human, for it had no intellect; not diabolical, for it was benevolent; not angelic, for it often displayed malicious glee.<ref name=":0" />
Categories
The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: agathodaímōn (Template:Lang, "noble spirit"), from agathós (Template:Lang, "good, brave, noble, moral, lucky, useful"), and kakodaímōn (Template:Lang, "malevolent spirit"), from kakós (Template:Lang, "bad, evil"). They resemble the Christian guardian angel and adversarial demon, respectively. Eudaimonia (Template:Lang) came to mean "well-being" or "happiness". The comparable Roman concept is the genius who accompanies and protects a person or presides over a place (see genius loci).
A distorted view of Homer's daemon results from an anachronistic reading in light of later characterizations by Plato and Xenocrates, his successor as head of the Academy, who saw the daemon as a potentially dangerous lesser spirit:<ref name="Burkert1985">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Samuel E. Bassett, "ΔΑΙΜΩΝ in Homer" The Classical Review 33.7/8 (November 1919), pp. 134-136, correcting an interpretation in Finsler, Homer 1914; the subject was taken up again by F.A. Wilford, "DAIMON in Homer" Numen12 (1965) pp. 217–32.</ref> Burkert states that in the Symposium, Plato has "laid the foundation" to imagine the daimon as being with Eros, who as a mediator is neither god nor mortal but in between. His metaphysical doctrine of an
<poem>incorporeal, pure actuality, energeia ... identical to its performance: ‘thinking of thinking’, noesis noeseos is the most blessed existence, the highest origin of everything. ‘This is the god. On such a principle heaven depends, and the cosmos.’ In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end-point. ... In Plato there is an incipient tendency toward the apotheosis of nous. ... He needs a closeness and availability of the divine that is offered neither by the stars nor by metaphysical principles. Here a name emerged to fill the gap, a name which had always designated the incomprehensible yet present activity of a higher power, daimon.<ref name="Burkert1985"/></poem>
Daemons scarcely figure in Greek mythology or Greek art: they are felt, but their unseen presence can only be presumed,Template:Citation needed. The exception is the agathodaemon, honored in ceremonial wine-drinking --especially at the sanctuary of Dionysus-- and represented in iconography by the chthonic serpent. Burkert suggests that, for Plato, theology rests on two Forms: the Good and the Simple; which "Xenocrates unequivocally called the unity god" in sharp contrast to the poet's gods of epic and tragedy.<ref name="Burkert1985"/> Although much like the deities, these figures were not always depicted without considerable moral ambiguity:
<poem> Indeed, Xenocrates ... explicitly understood daemones as ranged along a scale from good to bad. ... [Plutarch] speaks of ‘great and strong beings in the atmosphere, malevolent and morose, who rejoice in [unlucky days, religious festivals involving violence against the self, etc.], and after gaining them as their lot, they turn to nothing worse.’ ... Quite when the point was first made remains unanswerable. Much the same thought as [Plato's] is to be found in a late Hellenistic composition, the Pythagorean Commentaries, which draws on older popular representations: ‘The whole air is full of souls. We call them daemones and heroes, and it is they who send dreams, signs and illnesses to men; and not only men, but also to sheep and other domestic animals. It is towards these daemones that we direct purifications and apotropaic rites, all kinds of divination, the art of reading chance utterances, and so on.’ ... This account differs from that of the early Academy in reaching back to the other, Archaic, view of daemones as souls, and thus anticipates the views of Plutarch and Apuleius in the Principate ... It clearly implies that daemones can cause illness to livestock: this traditional dominated view has now reached the intellectuals.<ref name="AnkarlooClark1999">Template:Cite book</ref></poem>
In the Archaic or early Classical period, the daimon had been democratized and internalized for each person, whom it served to guide, motivate, and inspire, as one possessed of such good spirits.Template:Citation needed Similarly, the first-century Roman imperial cult began by venerating the genius or numen of Augustus, a distinction that blurred in time.
See also
- Anito
- Anthelioi
- Eudaimon
- Fravashi
- Fylgja
- His Dark Materials
- Hyang
- Kami
- Koalemos
- Moral imperative
- Shoulder angel
- Unclean spirit
- Xian (Taoism)
- Yaksha
Notes
External links
Template:Wiktionary Template:Commons category
- 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
- Abstract Personifications (a list of daimones of Greek mythology)