Many people think that demons are composed only of legions of evil spirits, but this is simply not true. There were many various ancient cultures in history, and also people today, who still believe that demons are the recently departed spirits of their ancestors, who can be either good or bad. The Christian concept of a demon, would be the angels and saints of Catholicism. Therefor, a demon is more of a pagan concept and an angel is a Christian invention; both basically have the same spiritual meaning across many cultures.

The English word demon is derived from the Latinized versions, “dæmon” and “daimôn” of the original Greek “δαίμων.” According to Plato, in his Cratylus, the etymology of daimôn/daēmones (δαίμονες: deity/daêmôn δαήμονες) is from tfanuwv, knowing, wise or intelligent.

Like Socrates, Plato had also taught that the soul is immortal and all knowledge gained in one’s life, is actually knowledge learned from a previous lifetime. This is also where human intuition (wisdom) originates from. The knowing within our very DNA that helps our soul to be guided through the waters of life with the assistance of our spirit guides, AKA demons.

33rd Degree Freemason and Master Rosicrucian, Manly P. Hall had written on demons and angels in his most popular book, “The Secret Teachings of All Ages;”

The Christian Church gathered all the elemental entities together under the title of demon. This is a misnomer with far-reaching consequences, for to the average mind the word demon means an evil thing, and the Nature spirits are essentially no more malevolent than are the minerals, plants, and animals. Many of the early Church Fathers asserted that they had met and debated with the elementals.

The word demon would have the same meaning as the English word, ‘genie.’ The name genie is derived from the Latin genius, meaning a sort of tutelary or guardian spirit thought to be assigned to each person at their birth. The various synonyms for genie are spirit, jinnee, ghost, gin, genius and jinn. The jinn (Arabic: الجن‎ al-jinn, singular الجني al-jinnī; also spelled djinn), or genies, are spiritual creatures mentioned in the Qur’an and other Islamic texts.

This is where we get the genie in the bottle that can be found in folk-lore, where the person rubs the lamp and makes their wishes known to the genie (spirit) trapped in the bottle (body). The Qur’an mentions that the jinn are made of a smokeless and “scorching fire”, but also physical in nature, being able to interact physically with people and objects, and likewise be acted upon. Like human beings, the jinn can also be good, evil, or neutrally benevolent, and hence have freewill like humans and unlike angels.

The usage of demon (daimon) in the New Testament‘s original Greek text, caused the Greek word to be applied to the Judeo-Christian concept of an evil spirit by the early 2nd century AD (Wikipedia). This is why the meaning of demon in English has changed over time, due to this change of the spirit guard. Today, the meaning of the word demon is often only used to represent evil  supernatural beings, spirits, or devils who possess a person or act as a tormentor in hell. This is a form of religious propaganda to make people conform to that said religion’s tenants, aims and goals. For us to discover the truth about demons, we must look to the Ancient Greeks who had passed down this mythology to the Western world.

ARE DEMONS GOOD, EVIL OR SUPERNATURAL BEINGS?

These demons that Christians today would most likely call evil, were actually worshiped by people such as the Ancient Greeks, who were the mighty pagans of their day. To the Greeks, these demons were a divinity or supernatural being of nature between the gods and humans who appeared to men, both to do them service, and to injure them. The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: agathodaimōn (αγαθοδαιμων: “noble spirit”), from agathós (ἀγαθός: “good, brave, noble, moral, lucky, useful”), and kakódaimōn (κακοδαίμων: “malevolent spirit”), from kakós (κακός: “bad, evil”). – (Wikipedia)

The good demons were considered to bring good intent to mankind; evil demons had brought many evils, both upon men and beasts. They were also attributed to a person who is part mortal and part god. According to Plutarch, “that according to a divine nature and justice, the souls of virtuous men are advanced to the rank of daemons; and that from demons, if they are properly purified, they are exalted into gods, not by any political institution, but according to right reason.”

The Greek poet, Hesiod had written that the people of the Golden Age were transformed into demons by the will of Zeus (Jupiter), to benevolently serve mortals as their guardian spirits; “good beings who dispense riches…[nevertheless], they remain invisible, known only by their acts.” Socrates, had claimed that a friendly spirit, whom he called his daemon, was his spirit guide who had helped him on many important occasions in his life, and also restrained him from committing bad or harmful acts.

Manly P. Hall had written in “The Secret Teachings of all Ages,” that evil spirits obsess only those human beings in whom the animal nature is predominating and that a healthy and pure person cannot become obsessed by them;

In his De Ente Spirituali, Paracelsus writes thus of these malignant beings: “A healthy and pure person cannot become obsessed by them, because such Larvæ can only act upon men if the later make room for them in their minds. A healthy mind is a castle that cannot be invaded without the will of its master; but if they are allowed to enter, they excite the passions of men and women, they create cravings in them, they produce bad thoughts which act injuriously upon the brain; they sharpen the animal intellect and suffocate the moral sense. Evil spirits obsess only those human beings in whom the animal nature is predominating. Minds that are illuminated by the spirit of truth cannot be possessed; only those who are habitually guided by their own lower impulses may become subjected to their influences.” (See Paracelsus, by Franz Hartmann.)

Author Thomas Lewis explains these demons of an angelic nature in the book, “Origines Hebrææ: The Anitquities of the Hebrew Republic”;

These demons of an angelic nature, that were never joined to a mortal body, there were others who are called dii animales, soul-gods, or the deified souls of men after death. This way of canonization is of great antiquity, and was practised by the heathens in the beginning of the Hebrew government, and gave occasion to a kind of idolatry, which the people fell into in imitation of the nations about them.

Hesiod takes notice of this superstition, and asserts, that when those happy men of the first and golden age of the world were departed from this life, great Jupiter promoted them to be demons, that is, keepers and protectors, or patrons, of earthly mortals, and overseers of their good and evil works. And Plato, in his Republic, would have all those Lib. v. who die valiantly in the field, to be made demons, and the oracle to be consulted how they should be buried and honoured; and accordingly, ever afterwards, their sepulchres to be served and adored as the sepulchres of demons. In like manner should be done to all, who in their lifetime excelled in virtue, whether they died through age, or otherwise.

DEMONS AND THE PLANET JUPITER

The Greeks had held the God Zeus in high veneration, and Zeus was the SO BELOW representative of the King of the planets and Gods of the AS ABOVE; Jupiter. The beliefs of Homer, Socrates, Plato, and also other poets and philosophers associated demons with Zeus, who we know of as the King of Planets; Jupiter. Socrates says, ” that the army of Gods and daemons divided into eleven parts, follows Jupiter”, and Plato had said, “that when the great leader Jupiter drives his chariot swiftly in the heavens, he marches first, as disposing and taking care of all things, a vast host of gods and demons then follow, distributed into twelve parties, but that Vesta alone remains in the mansion of the gods.”

In the book by author Nathaniel Homes, The resurrection revealed: or, The dawning of the day-star , he explain this relationship between demons and the planet Jupiter;

For their highest gods they called Qeoi, whom they supposed to s_ be in the heavens, (distinguishing them by the titles, dii superi, dii cxlestes”-) and therefore, for their sublimity and purity, not to be profaned with approach of earthly things, or with the care or management of the affairs of mortal men. The original of these daemons was, the deified souls of men after death: for (say they) “when those happy men of the ‘golden age of the world were departed this life, great Jupiter promoted them to be demons; that is ‘to be keepers, protectors, and ‘patrons of earthly mortals, overseeing good and evil works, giving riches, & Further, they would have all those that died valiantly in the field, to be accounted of the golden age, and to be made daemons; and all such as lived virtuously likewise.

One of the last major Classical philosophers and developers of the systems of Neoplatonism of Ancient Greece, Proclus had written about Jupiter in his work, “On the theology of Plato;”

Farther still, this Jupiter indeed, presides over a philosophic life, and souls [that follow him] perpetually lead this life. But another God presides over the prophetic, amatory, and poetic life. The demiurgus of wholes, however, contains in himself the paradigms of all lives; and as he uniformly comprehends the essence of souls, after the same manner also, be comprehends all the different mutations of their lives. He is not, therefore, divisibly the cause of the lives in the soul, but pre-establishes according to one demiurgic cause, all the periods of souls, all the variety, and all the measures of life. And as the mundane sun is not the cause of some things, but the demiurgua of others, but of whatever the sun is the author, the demiurgus is in a greater degree the fabricator, and prccedancous cause,—thus also in the lives of souls, it is not proper to refer the cause to the demiurgus in a divided manner. For the demiurgic monad, presides as the impartible, common, and one cause of all lives; but the divisions according to lives, and the different paradigms of mundane natures, pertain to the Gods posterior to him.

If, however, some one should think that we ought to abandon this hypothesis, but that we should assert this Jupiter, and the other leaders to be mundane, where must we arrange the Gods that follow him? For Socrates says, ” that the army of Gods and daemons divided into eleven parts, follows Jupiter.”

For there are more comprehensive and partial’ orders of Gods in the universe than these, and some of them have the relation of leaders, but others of followers. The magnitude, however,of the principality celebrated by Socrates, does not manifest to us a transcendency co-arranged with, but exempt from mundane natures.For in incorporeal causes, the great, imparts a peculiarity of this kind to those to whom it is present. And as Love being not simply called a demon by Diotima, but a great demon, is demonstrated to be expanded above all demons, and is a god, but is not arranged in the genus of daemons, thus also Jupiter, being celebrated as the great leader, not as the mundane leader of mundane natures, but as exempt from, and’ transcending the mundane order, is allotted this appellation. But if Jupiter is exempt from. the Gods in the world, it is necessary that the other leaders also should have an essence antecedent to those that follow Jupiter.

For all of them are allotted a ruling dignity. But if the other leaders are arranged as mundane, and Jupiter alone is a leader beyond these, again we must transfer the whole principality from the dodecad, to the Jovian monad. It is necessary, however, to attribute a ruling power to all of them, and to preserve to Jupiter the principal authority among them.

DEMONS AND KINGS

In the Hellenistic ruler cult that began with Alexander the Great (Pictured to the left on coin), it was not the ruler but his guiding demon that was venerated. At twenty-four years old, the Greek Macedonian hero had beat the Persians and drove them out of Egypt, and for this reason he was treated like a god by the Egyptian Priesthood of Amon Ra (Zeus Amon). It was these priests who had declared Alexander to be the Son of Amon Ra and a God on earth. The Egyptian Amon Ra was the same deity as Zeus of the Greeks. They both represented the planet Jupiter. When Olympias married Philip II of Macedonia in 357 BC,  she claimed that on her wedding night she had been visited by the god Zeus-Amun and was made pregnant by him.

There would be other men that were mighty war heroes after Alexander, who would also be called gods on earth and proclaim that they were the Sons of Jupiter. Both, Julius and Augustus Caesar had declared Jupiter to be their father. They were also members of the same priesthood of Alexander the Great, that had originally originated in Greco-Egypt, and was then transferred to Rome after Augustus had conquered Egypt in approximately 8A.D. This was in the Archaic or early Classical period of Rome, when Augustus Caesar had abolished all other cults and priesthoods in the Empire. The first-century Roman Imperial cult of Augustus had begun at this time, where he was venerated as a living God.

DEMONS OF THE GREEKS BECOME EVIL AND THEIR PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY:

Pythagoras had taught his followers that demons sent diseases to men and cattle. It was Plato and his pupil Xenocrates who would propagate the teachings, that the demons were dangerous, if not evil, and a lesser spirit. From thereafter, the Western world and the Christian church would also incorporate this meaning into their doctrines, for they had their own Apostles and Saints who were venerated under the new law in the form of the New Testament, which had usurped the demon spirits and Gods of the Ancient Greeks.

To the Christians, there is but one sovereign God, the Father, and but one Lord, Jesus Christ. In Scripture and in Catholic theology, this word has come to mean much the same as devil, and denotes one of the evil spirits or fallen angels. This is where the Christian concept of the great dragon, Satan and the devil was conceived as seen in Revelation 12:9, where it is written; “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

These new Christian teachings and Brotherhood were propagated in order to usurp the Gnostics of the East, who were now considered pagan and enemies of the Universal (Catholic) Church. Some of these Gnostics were part of Ancient Initiates into the Sacred Mysteries and who were also known as the Masters of Wisdom, Serpents of Wisdom, or Nagas (Blavatsky). The symbol of these Masters of Wisdom was the serpent on the cross. The Christians would later take this same symbol and place Jesus on the cross instead of the serpent of the pagans. A change in teachings, gods, demons and symbols that were part of this changing of the guard from East to West that the Catholic Church would help manage, and that brought our world into the 6th Age of that which we are in the ending chapters of the Apocalypse.

DEMONS ACROSS THE WORLD:

Throughout the world and in places such as India and China, local demon deities hold extensive sway. It is said, that in every town you can find that they each have their own special demons, like the guardian mother who has a husband associated with her as protector.

The Chinese think of demons as malevolent animal spirits or fallen celestial beings that have acquired magical powers through the practice of Taoism. They call the good demons, Yaoguai (妖怪 pinyin yāoguài) or yaomo (妖魔 yāomó, literally, “demon”) or yaojing (妖精 yāojīng, literally, “sprite” or “seductive”), which is a Chinese term that generally means “demon.” They call the bad demons, mogwai (mo) which often inflict harm on humans. These evil spirits are said to avoid light, and this is why many Chinese rituals involve the use of fire and light such as torches and even fireworks. These spirits are said to be ancestors who are just unhappy and this is why they practice ancestor worship, in which they make offerings and say prayers for the souls of the deceased in order to keep them happy and give them proper honor. To the Japanese, yaoguai are known as yōkai (actually, the term is a loanword from Chinese; the native Japanese equivalent, sometimes written with the same kanji, is mononoke) – (Wikipedia)

The belief of the Hindus, especially in the villages, is a dread of evil spirits who are believed to bring about all evils and diseases, and often have peculiar and special areas of destructiveness. They may have material bodies of a more ethereal structure than those of men, have differences of sex, and possess the power of assuming any shape and moving through the air in any direction.

Islam recognizes the existence of jinn, which are sentient beings with free will that can co-exist with humans (though not the genies of modern lore). Jinn is a noun of the collective number in Arabic literally meaning “hidden from sight”, and it derives from the Arabic root j-n-n (pronounced: jann/ junn جَنّ / جُنّ) meaning “to hide” or “be hidden”. The jinn (Arabic: الجن‎ al-jinn, singular الجني al-jinnī; also spelled djinn), or genies, are spiritual creatures mentioned in the Qur’an and other Islamic texts who inhabit an unseen world in dimensions beyond the visible universe of humans. Together, the jinn, humans and angels make up the three sapient creations of God. The Qur’an mentions that the jinn are made of a smokeless and “scorching fire”, but also physical in nature, being able to interact physically with people and objects, and likewise be acted upon. Like human beings, the jinn can also be good, evil, or neutrally benevolent and hence have freewill like humans and unlike angels. (Wikipedia)

Moe

Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.