DEMONOLOGY

(Yunanca köken — orijinale bakınız.) The belief in an intermediate race of beings, between deity and humanity, has been a prevalent feature in almost every popular creed; and all tradition or speculation respecting it may be said to fall under the general term of Demonology. Among the early oriental nations. eanectaUjf the Persians and Egyptians, tbe science of astronomy appears to have been e entially connected with this branch of superstition; the heavenly bodies were honoured as daemons or celestial intelligences. This ancient belief appears to have had much influence on the Jewish rabbinical writers; and out of it, connected with what is revealed to us in the Old Testament of the exist mythology.ence and attributes of angels, they framed their peculiar The Greek word iaifiuv, dmmon, is said to be derived from Sarifiojv, knotting or intelligent. In the earliest monuments of the language, its signification is vague and uncertain. In Homer it generally signifies a deity: iaiuoviov is anything godlike, wonderful, which may have been communicated or inspired by a deity; but, in the Ody ey, some traces are to be found of the meaning "fortunate'' or " unfortunate" attached to;he word. In Hesiod, however, wo have an expre mythological account of the daemons, — as spirits, in a state between mortality and divinity, peaceful and favourable to man: he describes them as of different orders. The mortals who liver in the golden age have become daemons of the first rank those of the silver age have inferior honours, and are mortal,although their life is prolonged toa length of many hun dreds of human generations. The heroes form a still inferior cla of intermediate spirits. In popular language, when hero-worship became widely spread in Greece, the words hero and d.emon were used without much distinction;but the more recondite difference appears to have been this, — the hero was the departed worthy himself, such as he had once lived on earth; the daemon was his immaterial part, converted into a sort of abstract principle, — a spiritual agent of good or evil, favourable or unfriendly to mankind. It is in this sense also that the inferior deities themselves are designated as daemons. Thales is said tc have defined more accurately the difference between gods, heroes as the souls of deceased mortals, and daemons properly so called; ami in Plato's theology the daemons occupy an important place — as intermediate spirits, closely watching over, directing, and recording the actions of mortals. Ilylater writers they were divided into many cla es: some ministers of punishment and revenge, some freeing from evils already befallen (XixrioO, some warding off their approach (aXcf<<ci*oO. . It was in Egypt and Syria, under the Ptolemies and Seleucidae, that the Grecian philosophy and mythology came in contact with those of the Rabbis; and from that union a new mixed system of dae monology took its origin. Hence, in the Greek of the New Testament, the word iatpoviov is taken, without addition or qualification, as an evil spirit, and rendered by our translators "devil." Analogous to the daemons of the Greeks were the genii of the Romans; but there were peculiar and characteristic features about the belief in the latter which show it to be of a different origin, probably derived from the Etruscans, who, as some antiquarians believe, drew their mythology from the ancient source of Samothrace. The genii of the Romans were an innumerable host of spirits: every man. house, or city, had an attendant genius. The genius of every mortal is mortal as himself; accompanies him into life, and conducts him in all its vici itudes. In this sense, the genius was a favourable companion: to enjoy the good things of life is represented as "indulging" or gratifying the genius; abstaining from them, as "defrauding" hun. Wine and flowers are appropriate offerings to him. But he is also " vultu mutabilis, alb us et ater:" he is the companion of the mischances as well as the pleasures of life; ■unle , as the difficulty appears sometimes *o nave,l?een solved, the individual had his pair of genii good and bad. [s. 341]