Daimon
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The daimon ({{#invoke:Lang|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>
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 daimon "provider, divider (of fortunes or destinies)," from the root *da- "to divide".<ref>"Demon", Etymology Online</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>
DescriptionEdit
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). 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
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 mythologyEdit
Homer's use of the words theoí ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "gods") and daímones ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) suggests that, while distinct, they are similar in kind.<ref>As par example in Hom. Il. 1.222: {{#invoke:Lang|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 ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) he called them spirits ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) and in the old form of our language the two words are the same" – Cratylus 398 b</ref> speculates that the word daimōn ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "deity") is synonymous to daēmōn ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "knowing or wise");<ref>Entry δαήμων at LSJ</ref> however, it is more probably daiō ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot").<ref>"daimōn" Template:Webarchive, in Liddell, Henry and Robert Scott. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon.</ref>
SocratesEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} 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"/>
CategoriesEdit
The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: agathodaímōn ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "noble spirit"), from agathós ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "good, brave, noble, moral, lucky, useful"), and kakodaímōn ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "malevolent spirit"), from kakós ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, "bad, evil"). They resemble the Arabic jinni (or genie), and in their humble efforts to help mediate the good and ill fortunes of human life, they resemble the Christian guardian angel and adversarial demon, respectively. Eudaimonia ({{#invoke:Lang|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, of 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" that would make it all but impossible to imagine the daimon in any other way with Eros, who is neither god nor mortal but a mediator in between, and 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.’ The highest, the best is one; but for the movement of the planets a plurality of unmoved movers must further be assumed. In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end-point. That even this is a self-projection of a human, of the thinking philosopher, was not reflected on in ancient philosophy. 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 with the exception of the agathodaemon, honored first with a libation 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>On this account, the other traditional notion of the daemon as related to the souls of the dead is elided in favour of a spatial scenario which evidently also graduated in moral terms; though [Plato] says nothing of that here, it is a necessary inference from her account, just as Eros is midway between deficiency and plenitude. ... 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.’ ... The use of such malign daemones by human beings seems not to be even remotely imagined here: Xenocrates' intention was to provide an explanation for the sheer variety of polytheistic religious worship; but it is the potential for moral discrimination offered by the notion of daemones which later ... became one further means of conceptualizing what distinguishes dominated practice from civic religion, and furthering the transformation of that practice into intentional profanation ... Quite when the point was first made remains unanswerable. Much the same thought as [Plato's] is to be found in an explicitly Pythagorean context of probably late Hellenistic composition, the Pythagorean Commentaries, which evidently 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 alsoEdit
- Anito
- Anthelioi
- Eudaimon
- Fravashi
- Fylgja
- Hyang
- Kami
- Koalemos
- Moral imperative
- Shoulder angel
- Unclean spirit
- Xian (Taoism)
- Yaksha
NotesEdit
External linksEdit
Template:Sister project Template:Sister project
- 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)