Demons en vogue
Demons. They seem to be en vogue of late with many paranormal shows high-lighting their appearance in hauntings as signaling a truly horrible turn of events for those who are being visited by the unseen. Furthermore, many sects of Protestant Christianity view any and all ghostly phenomena as a result of demonic influences but is this truly the case?
Origin of the Species
The spiritual beings we refer to as demons haven't always gotten such a bad rap. In Ancient Greece, the eudaimonae were thought of as being like one's personal Jiminy Cricket or muse. According to Wikipedia demons in Greek thought were:good or benevolent nature spirits, beings of the same nature as both mortals and gods, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature or the gods themselves...Walter Burkert suggests that unlike the Judeo-Christian use of demon in a strictly malignant sense, “[a] general belief in spirits is not expressed by the term daimon until the 5th century when a doctor asserts that neurotic women and girls can be driven to suicide by imaginary apparitions, ‘evil daimones’.”In Vedic and later Buddhist thought demons were not the purely evil beings they would come to be described as in Christianity Islam and Judaism. Rather, they could be likened to asuras, devas, yakkhas or pretas depending on the circumstance.
Demons in Abrahamic Religions
So, how did demons come to get such a bad wrap? Well, in our next post, we'll take a deeper look at how demons came to be regarded as foul and contemptible beings rather than the nature spirits they were originally conceived of by the Greeks and Indians.
