Description
Daemons are 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 (see Plato's Symposium). Walter Burkert suggests that unlike the Judeo-Christian use of demon in a strictly malignant sense, “ 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’. How far this is an expression of widespread popular superstition is not easy to judge… On the basis of Hesiod's myth, however, what did gain currency was for great and powerful figures to be honoured after death as a daimon…” Daimon is not so much type of quasi-divine being, according to Burkert, but rather a non-personified “peculiar mode” of their activity.
In Hesiod's Theogony, Phaëton becomes an incorporeal daimon, but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly gods, keres, not daimones. From Hesiod also, the people of the Golden Age were transformed into daimones by the will of Zeus, to benevolently serve mortals as their guardian spirits; “good beings who dispense riches…, they remain invisible, known only by their acts”. The daimon of venerated heroes, were localized by the construction of shrines, so as not to restlessly wander, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects.
Characterizations of the daemon as a dangerous, if not evil, lesser spirit were developed by Plato and his pupil Xenocrates, and later absorbed in Christian patristic writings along with Neo-Platonic elements.
In the Old Testament, evil spirits appear in the book of Judges and in Kings. In the Greek translation of the Septuagint, made for the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, the Greek ángelos (άγγελος: "messenger") translates the Hebrew word mal'ak, while daimon (or neuter daimonion) carries the meaning of a natural spirit that is less than divine (see supernatural) and translates the Hebrew words for idols, foreign gods, certain beasts, and natural evils. The usage of 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.
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