Demons

[WhiteTiger]

I am interested in learning what a demon is.

 

What exactly constitutes a Demon?

[hagar]

I am interested in learning what a demon is.

 

What exactly constitutes a Demon?

 

Audi A6, spray tan, blackberry, disenchanted worldview.

 

h

[Zeus]

I am interested in learning what a demon is.

 

What exactly constitutes a Demon?

 

 

A Demon is the higher self within us according to the ancient Greek language. It has nothing to do with the later term of christianity of an evil spirit. ΔΑΙΜΩΝ in Greek is a word much much more ancient comparing to christianity

 

Z

[Vajrasattva]

A Demon is the higher self within us according to the ancient Greek language. It has nothing to do with the later term of christianity of an evil spirit. ΔΑΙΜΩΝ in Greek is a word much much more ancient comparing to christianity

 

Z

 

just like the word "DEVA" was later changed to "DEVIL".

[VCraigP]

Audi A6, spray tan, blackberry, disenchanted worldview.

 

h

 

and what's funny about that is that you can't have a Demon and a disenchanted worldview at the same time.

[hagar]

and what's funny about that is that you can't have a Demon and a disenchanted worldview at the same time.

 

Avoiding the semantics, this boils down to perspecive now doesn't it?

[VCraigP]

Avoiding the semantics, this boils down to perspecive now doesn't it?

 

Yep.

And I don't think anyone has actually tried to describe the perspective of a culture where Demons are accepted as we commonly understand them in the west, whatever that means.

 

I think despite the proferred terms of DEVA and DAEMON (loosely translated from the Greek) that no one has attempted to talk about what Taoist's think a Demon is.

 

Mak Tin Si?

 

I don't think I will attempt to either. Preferring the tongue in cheek approach to looking for my own demons.

 

Craig

[Pero]

Depends on context.

[三江源]

.

Edited March 14, 2015 by 三江源

[Aetherous]

I agree, Cat.

[eighty4proof]

Hellraiser:

 

"Demons to some, angels to others."

[WhiteTiger]

Audi A6, spray tan, blackberry, disenchanted worldview.

 

h

 

As TBS T.V. commercials comments while trying to tell the audience how there shows are funny by using two words over and over again to get the message across that not only they think its funny but they think you should think its VERY FUNNY.

 

So Hagar, VERY FUNNY.

 

 

Being smug is a demon.

Sitting on top of other people, in your mind, squashing them lovelessly, like a big fat frog, is demonic.

Being passive agressive is acting like a demon. Taunting people into pain and ridiculing others is demonic, as you psychically dance about them coldly grinning at your own cleverness.

 

Being lost and cold and clingy and resourceless, ignoring nature and the beauty of it all is demonic.

These are examples of our demons. Whether dead or alive, embodied or not.

 

Ah in all of those things your describing mispractice of energy cultivation basically. The wrongs of how to use things. Thank you very much... Words can not describe how much this has helped!

 

When something feels amiss about how you are acting it does take searching to figure out why. (At least in my experience) This advice has alone made me figure out what i call "the misspractice of energy cultivation.

 

To think, Cat is a female in RL and she just helped me out. In my experience that has never happened unless they use that kind of helpful advice to get close to me to find details about me to later purposely use that against me. Totally duping me. Otherwise females (even almost all men) try to get close to me only to later on dupe me. Imo thats just wrong. More importantly the good ones had the intent from the get go... and always mentally was going to for something wrong... Thats mistreatment thats abuse... Thats definately some sort of messing with energy. The truth is if they put nearly as much effort as they did into messing with people (the ones that are strongly resistant) they would cultivate much more. The ones that are weak... well again why would you screw with the weak ones? Even if they give some sort types of energy easily, the truth is it will not last.

Edited January 8, 2009 by WhiteTiger

[Anabhogya-Carya]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_(Dungeons_&_Dragons)

[Stigweard]

One of my experiences with the lower vibrations:

 

Sleep Paralysis or Demonic Possession?

[Stigweard]

errare humanum est perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human; to persist is of the Devil'

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I am interested in learning what a demon is.

 

What exactly constitutes a Demon?

 

It is possible to examine the historical roots of the present usage for 'demon' without addressing the existence of such a creature. In this regard most of what I have seen on this thread is somewhat inaccurate and based on popular misconceptions not scholarship. I can trace that fairly accurately from Antiquity to the Renaissance if that is what you are interested in. Then there is the matter of cross cultural comparison. In Chinese traditions the closest thing to a demon would be a gui (鬼). While a fair definition of gui can be given especially when it is contrasted to shen (神), I can't be as complete in terms of conceptual history as I might be with the Western concept. If you want a historical answer I can give it, and such an answer may even give some insight into what a 'demon' might be, should such a thing exist. However the answer is going to be long and somewhat involved and I might have to break it up into several parts. So White Tiger what do you want?

 

By the way I was born in the year of the Metal Tiger and I have always identified with the White Tiger of the West, so I am willing to go the distance for you.

 

Donald

[Stigweard]

It is possible to examine the historical roots of the present usage for 'demon' without addressing the existence of such a creature. In this regard most of what I have seen on this thread is somewhat inaccurate and based on popular misconceptions not scholarship. I can trace that fairly accurately from Antiquity to the Renaissance if that is what you are interested in. Then there is the matter of cross cultural comparison. In Chinese traditions the closest thing to a demon would be a gui (鬼). While a fair definition of gui can be given especially when it is contrasted to shen (神), I can't be as complete in terms of conceptual history as I might be with the Western concept. If you want a historical answer I can give it, and such an answer may even give some insight into what a 'demon' might be, should such a thing exist. However the answer is going to be long and somewhat involved and I might have to break it up into several parts. So White Tiger what do you want?

 

By the way I was born in the year of the Metal Tiger and I have always identified with the White Tiger of the West, so I am willing to go the distance for you.

 

Donald

 

 

My goodness a SCHOLAR!? Who let him in through the front door?

 

I have my scholarly pose adopted ... please continue.

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

My goodness a SCHOLAR!? Who let him in through the front door?

 

I have my scholarly pose adopted ... please continue.

 

 

Stigweard we meet again! And you were kind enough to offer me a seat and some tea, I hope that you haven't changed your mind, but I guess that if you are willing to adopt a scholarly pose, if only to humor me, we are still on good terms if only for now. As for letting me in, the door guardian spirits were out fishing and and I just couldn't resist the temptation. No doubt some heterodox Maoshan Spirit put the whammy on them and I snuck by in the confusion. As for being a scholar, well, I just like to get to the bottom of things.

 

First I want to clarify what I am suggesting. I want to examine the development of a concept, which may or may not describe a real thing, but a concept that arose because people were trying to explain why 'bad' things happen to 'good' people and its converse why 'good' things happen to 'bad'. I don't at this time want to get involved in long digressions about the existence of 'demons', or more onerous still, the nature of 'good' and 'evil'. For the moment I am satisfied with more or less conventional definitions, such as it is good to be healthy, wealthy and wise, and bad to be sick, poor and a fool. After I am finished I leave it to the people who have trudged through this to see if if clarifies what a 'demon' might be or not.

 

So with that in mind we will start with Western Antiquity and follow the concept up to the Renaissance, though I may comment on how this ideas was adopted by the Neo-magicians of the Golden Dawn. Having done that I will turn some attention to the Chinese perspective.

 

To follow the lead of Whitehead it is all a footnote to Plato. When Plato in book two of The Republic starts asking annoying questions about how the characters described in Homer can be considered Gods, when they incite bloodshed and send deceiving dreams to people and do other 'bad' things like that he set off a landslide that totally changed how people thought about causation. Previously the gods were the cause of everything and no one asked 'are they friendly gods' (perhaps because they were afraid of being struck by lightning), and simply accepted such accounts as came down to them as being correct.

 

Again I'm not concerned with whether Plato was right to ask such annoying questions, culturally he is in a sense right up there with the kids who laughed when they say the emperor naked as a jaybird walking in all imaginable pomp and circumstance down the street of the capital city, but ask them he did and the result was what could be called critical theology, which within a generation or two was to lead to critical demonology. Which is part of the reason it is not correct to say that a demon is our 'higher self', it jumps from Plato's use of daimon in regard to Socrates 'inner voice' over some 2500 or so years.

 

Plato's usage of 'daimon' is to fill a gap between the 'gods' and mortals, something of its nature can be seen in Socrates speech in The Symposium, basically daimones in Plato's sense exist as mediators and it would be possible to consider your personal daimon in just such a light (Which is just what Plotinus does some 600 years later, see for Ennead III.4, 'Our Tutelary Spirit').

 

So Plato defined the divine nature as wholly good and the author of only the good things in our existence, the Gods in this sense do not incite to bloodshed and they do not send deceiving dreams, so where do these things come from then? Enter Xenocrates, Plato's second successor to the headship of the Academy. He had an answer, there were good daimones and bad daimones. In Greek these were called an agathodaimon and a cacodaimon (now don't laugh at caco, you may have just learned where caca comes from, for a similar usage think of cacaphony)

 

So what is the relationship between these daimones, good or evil and the Gods, conceived as wholly good? In Plato's Phaidrus Plato describes the Gods as being leaders of a great train of beings ranging down from them to human beings and perhaps lower. The daimones were seen as being follows in the chain of a particular God, just as people were. Philosophers were followers of Zeus, military men of Ares, etc., and so these daimones were also followers of the Gods and partook of their nature just as people did. Thus the ancient myths came to be seen largely as stories of the doings of the daimomes and their interactions with human beings, cacodaimones sending evil dreams and agagthodaimones being the sources of uplifting inspiration and saviors in cases distress.

 

Thus the 'demonization' of the pagan gods begins several centuries before Christianity, with their diamon-monization. Remember, I am not here to say whether this was a divinely inspired insight or a question of demon inspired hairsplitting, or simply the deluded thinking of some crazy ancient Greeks, only to describe the historical development.

 

So much for part one, what we might call the Hellenic background, next time I will deal with how this developed in the Hellenistic period. I warned you this wouldn't be easy, but for a nifty overview see Philip Merlan's discussion 'Theology and Demonology: Plato and Xenocrates' p.32-36, in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy.

Edited January 8, 2009 by Zhongyongdaoist

[hagar]

As TBS T.V. commercials comments while trying to tell the audience how there shows are funny by using two words over and over again to get the message across that not only they think its funny but they think you should think its VERY FUNNY.

 

So Hagar, VERY FUNNY.

Ah in all of those things your describing mispractice of energy cultivation basically. The wrongs of how to use things. Thank you very much... Words can not describe how much this has helped!

 

When something feels amiss about how you are acting it does take searching to figure out why. (At least in my experience) This advice has alone made me figure out what i call "the misspractice of energy cultivation.

 

To think, Cat is a female in RL and she just helped me out. In my experience that has never happened unless I've been helped out to be duped more. Amazing imo

 

Actually, that was written out of pain.

I live in the posh part of town. Almost like waking up in the middle of a Hopper painting.

 

I work out at a very chique gym that has a yoga room. Most of the time I get the whole room for myself; dimmed lighting, tatami mats, incense, candles. Yet it's only surface, creating the illusion of serenity and spirituality, only form. Very cold, very alienated.

Outside, oftentimes there sits middleaged businessmen, barefoot, talking to familymembers with a solemn or sad look on their face.

 

h

[rain]

Stigweard we meet again! And you were kind enough to offer me a seat and some tea, I hope that you haven't changed your mind, but I guess that if you are willing to adopt a scholarly pose, if only to humor me, we are still on good terms if only for now. As for letting me in, the door guardian spirits were out fishing and and I just couldn't resist the temptation. No doubt some heterodox Maoshan Spirit put the whammy on them and I snuck by in the confusion. As for being a scholar, well, I just like to get to the bottom of things.

 

First I want to clarify what I am suggesting. I want to examine the development of a concept, which may or may not describe a real thing, but a concept that arose because people were trying to explain why 'bad' things happen to 'good' people and its converse why 'good' things happen to 'bad'. I don't at this time want to get involved in long digressions about the existence of 'demons', or more onerous still, the nature of 'good' and 'evil'. For the moment I am satisfied with more or less conventional definitions, such as it is good to be healthy, wealthy and wise, and bad to be sick, poor and a fool. After I am finished I leave it to the people who have trudged through this to see if if clarifies what a 'demon' might be or not.

 

So with that in mind we will start with Western Antiquity and follow the concept up to the Renaissance, though I may comment on how this ideas was adopted by the Neo-magicians of the Golden Dawn. Having done that I will turn some attention to the Chinese perspective.

 

To follow the lead of Whitehead it is all a footnote to Plato. When Plato in book two of The Republic starts asking annoying questions about how the characters described in Homer can be considered Gods, when they incite bloodshed and send deceiving dreams to people and do other 'bad' things like that he set off a landslide that totally changed how people thought about causation. Previously the gods were the cause of everything and no one asked 'are they friendly gods' (perhaps because they were afraid of being struck by lightning), and simply accepted such accounts as came down to them as being correct.

 

Again I'm not concerned with whether Plato was right to ask such annoying questions, culturally he is in a sense right up there with the kids who laughed when they say the emperor naked as a jaybird walking in all imaginable pomp and circumstance down the street of the capital city, but ask them he did and the result was what could be called critical theology, which within a generation or two was to lead to critical demonology. Which is part of the reason it is not correct to say that a demon is our 'higher self', it jumps from Plato's use of daimon in regard to Socrates 'inner voice' over some 2500 or so years.

 

Plato's usage of 'daimon' is to fill a gap between the 'gods' and mortals, something of its nature can be seen in Socrates speech in The Symposium, basically daimones in Plato's sense exist as mediators and it would be possible to consider your personal daimon in just such a light (Which is just what Plotinus does some 600 years later, see for Ennead III.4, 'Our Tutelary Spirit').

 

So Plato defined the divine nature as wholly good and the author of only the good things in our existence, the Gods in this sense do not incite to bloodshed and they do not send deceiving dreams, so where do these things come from then? Enter Xenocrates, Plato's second successor to the headship of the Academy. He had an answer, there were good daimones and bad daimones. In Greek these were called an agathodaimon and a cacodaimon (now don't laugh at caco, you may have just learned where caca comes from, for a similar usage think of cacaphony)

 

So what is the relationship between these daimones, good or evil and the Gods, conceived as wholly good? In Plato's Phaidrus Plato describes the Gods as being leaders of a great train of beings ranging down from them to human beings and perhaps lower. The daimones were seen as being follows in the chain of a particular God, just as people were. Philosophers were followers of Zeus, military men of Ares, etc., and so these daimones were also followers of the Gods and partook of their nature just as people did. Thus the ancient myths came to be seen largely as stories of the doings of the daimomes and their interactions with human beings, cacodaimones sending evil dreams and agagthodaimones being the sources of uplifting inspiration and saviors in cases distress.

 

Thus the 'demonization' of the pagan gods begins several centuries before Christianity, with their diamon-monization. Remember, I am not here to say whether this was a divinely inspired insight or a question of demon inspired hairsplitting, or simply the deluded thinking of some crazy ancient Greeks, only to describe the historical development.

 

So much for part one, what we might call the Hellenic background, next time I will deal with how this developed in the Hellenistic period. I warned you this wouldn't be easy, but for a nifty overview see Philip Merlan's discussion 'Theology and Demonology: Plato and Xenocrates' p.32-36, in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy.

 

 

Rain sits quietly and listens, she thanks god for fishermen and is grateful for your effort and contribution. Looking forward to next part.

Edited January 8, 2009 by rain

[Stigweard]

Rain sits quietly and listens, she thanks god for fishermen and is grateful for your effort and contribution. Looking forward to next part.

 

Stigweard sits patiently next to Rain enjoying the ambience of her sunset personality, thinking quietly to himself that we simply must get back to our five element discussion, all the whilst awaiting our new scholarly friends' next diabolical discourse.

 

[三江源]

.

Edited March 14, 2015 by 三江源

[Yoda]

He had an answer, there were good daimones and bad daimones. In Greek these were called an agathodaimon and a cacodaimon (now don't laugh at caco, you may have just learned where caca comes from, for a similar usage think of cacaphony)

 

So that's where caca comes from!!

[lino]

So that's where caca comes from!!

 

 

I see where the "Shit Demon" in the movie "Dogma" came from.

 

http://www.vincentguastiniproductions.com/dogma.html

[三江源]

.

Edited March 14, 2015 by 三江源