A demon is an evil or malevolent supernatural entity,Martin, Dale Basil. "When Did Angels Become Demons?" Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 129, no. 4, 2010, pp. 657–58. . Accessed 5 January 2025. though they can be benevolent too. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in folklore, mythology, religion, occultism, and literature; these beliefs are reflected in media including fiction, comics, film, television, and video games. Belief in demons probably goes back to the Paleolithic age, stemming from humanity's fear of the unknown, the strange and the horrific.. In ancient Near Eastern religions and in the Abrahamic religions, including early Judaism and ancient-medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity that may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. Large portions of Jewish demonology, a key influence on Christianity and Islam, originated from a later form of Zoroastrianism, and was transferred to Judaism during the Persian era.
Demons may or may not be considered to be devils: minions of the Devil. In many traditions, demons are independent operators, with different demons causing different types of evils (destructive natural phenomena, specific diseases, etc.) in general, while devils appear more often as demons within a theological framework; demons opposing the Divine principle.Erdağı, D.; Evil in Turkish Muslim horror film: the demonic in “Semum”. SN Soc Sci 4, 27 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-024-00832-w As lesser spirits doing the Devil's work, they have additional duties—causing humans to have sinful thoughts and tempting humans to commit sinful actions.
The original Ancient Greek word () did not carry negative connotations, as it denotes a spirit or divine power. The Greek conception of a notably appears in the philosophical works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates. In Christianity, morally ambivalent were replaced by demons, forces of evil only striving for corruption. Such demons are not the Greek intermediary spirits, but hostile entities, already known in Iranian beliefs. In Western esotericism and Renaissance magic, which grew out of an amalgamation of Greco-Roman magic, Jewish Aggadah, and Christian demonology, a demon is believed to be a spiritual entity that may be conjured and controlled.
Belief in demons remains an important part of many modern religions and occult traditions. Demons are still feared largely due to their alleged power to possess living creatures. Within a psychological context demons may be used as metaphors for inner psychological processes ("inner demons").
Etymology
The Ancient Greek word () denotes a spirit or divine power, much like the Latin or . most likely came from the Greek verb ( or ). The Greek conception of a notably appears in the philosophical works of Plato, where it describes the divine inspiration of Socrates. The original Greek word does not carry the negative connotation initially understood by implementation of the Koine (daimonion), and later ascribed to any cognate words sharing the root.
The Greek terms do not have any connotations of evil or malevolence. By the early centuries of the Roman Empire, cult statues were seen, by Pagans and their Christian neighbors alike, as inhabited by the numinous presence of the Greco-Roman gods: "Like pagans, Christians still sensed and saw the gods and their power, and as something, they had to assume, lay behind it, by an easy traditional shift of opinion they turned these pagan daimones into malevolent 'demons', the trope of Satan. Far into the Byzantine period, Christians eyed their cities' old pagan statuary as a seat of the demons' presence. It was no longer beautiful, it was "infested." The term had first acquired its negative connotations in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which drew on the mythology of ancient Semitic religions. This was then inherited by the Koine text of the New Testament.
The English use of demon as synonym for devils goes back at least as far as about 825. The German word (), however, is different from devil () and demons as evil spirits, and akin to the original meaning of . The Western Modern era conception of demons, as in the Ars Goetia, derives seamlessly from the ambient popular culture of Late Antiquity.
History From an anthropological perspective, demons result from human fear of the unknown.Hutter, M., Görg, M., Kollmann, B., Haustein, J., Koch, G., Streib, H., Veltri, G., Dan, J., & Krawietz, B. (2011). Demons and Spirits. In Religion Past and Present Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1877-5888_rpp_COM_03364 Forces of nature and foreigners may be portrayed as demons if they are perceived as hostile or dangerous; an evil demon might be considered as a projection onto unknown entities which are perceived as potentially dangerous. Thus, unknown causes of death or illness are anthropomorphized into rational agents with evil intentions and then giving rise to the notion of a demon.
Likewise, people outside one's own social group may be blamed for accidents and unexplained causes of harm, leading to a demonization of said people. Then, the imagined cause of said evil is integrated into one's prevailing belief-system. This may also include persons who are considered to be banished from the social group. Transgressions of social norms may result in expulsion from the community and or being killed. From a psychological perspective there is no difference between expulsion and death as both leave a gap in the community. This gap is then filled with a ghost (in case of death) or demon (in case of expulsion), perceived as a disruptive factor in the life of the community.
Ancient Egypt
The Ancient Egyptian language lacks a term for the modern English demon,. since both deities and lesser spirits can act as intermediaries to deliver messages to humans By that, both share some resemblance to the Greek . However, magical writings indicate that ancient Egyptians acknowledged the existence of malevolent demons by highlighting the demon names with red ink. Demons in this culture appeared to be subordinative and related to a specific deity, yet they may have occasionally acted independently of the divine will. The existence of demons can be related to the realm of chaos, beyond the created world. The role of demons in relation to the human world remains ambivalent and largely depends on context.
Ancient Egyptian demons can be divided into two classes: "guardians" and "wanderers". "Guardians" are tied to a specific place; their demonic activity is topographically defined and their function can be benevolent towards those who have the secret knowledge to face them. Demons protecting the underworld may prevent human souls from entering paradise. Only by knowing the right charms is the deceased able to enter the Halls of Osiris. Here, the aggressive nature of the guardian demons is motivated by the need to protect their abodes and not by their evil essence. Accordingly, demons guarded sacred places or the gates to the netherworld. During the Ptolemaic and Roman period, the guardians shifted towards the role of genius loci and they were the focus of local and private cults.
The "wanderers" are associated with possession, mental illness, death and plagues. Many of them serve as executioners for the major deities, such as Ra or Osiris, when ordered to punish humans on earth or in the netherworld. Wanderers can also be agents of chaos, arising from the world beyond creation to bring about misfortune and suffering without any divine instructions, led only by evil motivations. The influences of the wanderers can be warded off and kept at the borders of the human world by the use of magic, but they can never be destroyed. A sub-category of "wanderers" are nightmare demons, which were believed to cause nightmares by entering a human body.
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamian demonology had a strong influence on later Hebrew and Christian concepts of demons,Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 92 with shedu from Chaldean mythology being an example.. The demons of Mesopotamia were generally hostile spirits of lesser power than a deity. Since both nature and culture were in constant change, neither were considered part of a divine cosmos.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 88 According to the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš, both gods and demons are the children of Tiamat, the goddess of primordial chaos.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 88-89 The demons were engendered by Tiamat as an act of revenge in reaction to the gods slaying her primordial partner Abzu. In the Babylonian tale of the Great Flood, since the gods promised to never flood humanity again, the demoness Lamaštu was installed instead and given the task of killing humans in order to avoid excessive multiplication.Maul, S. (., Jansen-Winkeln, K. (., Niehr, H. (., Macuch, M. (., & Johnston, S. I. (. (2006). Demons. In Brill's New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e309270
Some demons were the evil spirits of those who died in misery, while other demons were nature demons causing harm by carrying plagues and nightmares, and causing headaches and storms. People could protect themselves from demons by wearing amulets, using magic, or seeking refuge amongst another demon or deity. On an ontological level, in early Semitic history, deities and demons often shed into another, as the distinction was of no importance for the believer.Introduction: Angels and Their Religious and Cosmological Contexts p. 17
The underworld was home to many demonic beings, sometimes referred to as the "offspring of arali". These demons ascend from the underworld and terrorize mortals. One class of demons that were believed to reside in the underworld were known as galla; their primary purpose appears to have been to drag unfortunate mortals back to Kur. They are frequently referenced in magical texts, and some texts describe them as being seven in number. Several extant poems describe the galla dragging the god Dumuzid into the underworld. Like many other Mesopotamian demons galla could also fulfill a protective role. In a hymn from King Gudea of Lagash ( 2144 – 2124 BCE), a minor god named Ig-alima is described as "the great galla of Girsu".
Zoroastrianism
The Zoroastrian concept of demons (Daeva, later )Eduljee, K. E. "Zoroastrian Heritage." On-line at: http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism (2014). had strong influence on the Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity and Islam. By elevating Ahura Mazda to the one supreme God, the founder Zoroaster relegated the daevas to demons.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 104 Emphasizing free will, Zoroaster taught that demons became evil by their own volition in rejecting truth over falsehood. At a later stage, Mazdaism makes Ahriman, the principle of Evil (i.e. the Devil), the creator of demons and leader of daevas.Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Cornell University Press, 1987. p. 105