Demonology

DEMONOLOGY. - D. studies the beliefs concerning spirits or demons. Primitive peoples imagine that everything lives insofar as it is endowed with an animating spirit; and they trace back to spirits or to souls, such as the wandering souls of the dead, all effects whose cause is not openly grasped. Moreover, the attribution to spirits of an extraordinary and mysterious force, which always engenders reverential fear in the soul, has brought it about that they have been introduced as demons into the sphere of religion, where they have ended up, alongside the gods, becoming the intermediaries between these and man.

Many demons are of human origin, being the souls of the dead who have remained on earth, outside Hades. Such are the souls of heroes, protectors of a people, of a city, who were believed to dwell beside their burial place, often in the form of a serpent, the animal that dwells in the underworld.

Generally the souls of the unburied or of those who died by violence wander over the earth, troublesome to the living, especially to those who were the cause of their misfortune. Among the Greeks the Erinyes were the souls of the slain, desirous of vengeance, who later became infernal furies, avengers of parricide and perjury.

Spirits are invisible, having a body formed of subtle matter, such as air, vapor, etc., and they live freely, though sometimes joined to an object of nature. When they show themselves they assume the often indeterminate and confused forms of giants, dwarfs, corpulent beings, thin beings, etc.

As for their dwelling, demons fill the elements with their presence, but above all they prefer places far from human habitation, at the bottom of valleys or on mountains, in the depths of forests or in the sands of deserts. Demons can sometimes be beneficial to men; in this case the same Erinyes were called Eumenides. But generally demons seek to harm man, darkening the sun and the moon, producing squalls, storms, floods, earthquakes, drought, famines, diseases and the death of men and animals; it may be said that every misfortune has its own special demon. At times one or more spirits obsess an individual's body, depriving him of all freedom of action. The existence of demons has been invoked to explain many physical facts, besides resolving the problem of the origin of evil, which in the polydemonistic stage was attributed to evil spirits. In polytheism good has been reserved for the gods, evil for the demons, in continual struggle with the former.

In Greece, demons passed into philosophy, especially Stoic and Neoplatonic, as rational beings intermediary between the gods and men. Some monotheistic religions too have accepted d., in the manner and to the extent that it is compatible with the idea of a single God.

Alberto Galetti