Demons, where this concept came from

[♦ Fuego ♦]

This is a 12-minute history video that talks about how Greeks and Jews talked about these creatures, and how Judaism/Christianity made them all evil. Judaism wanted to create a stark monotheism out of a long history of polytheism and animism, so anything that was godlike became "daimon", like the gods of the non-Jews. Angels in Judaism were considered different, not really acting on their own. But the Greeks held that any creature between the gods and Earth were "daimon", and that we even have at least one inside each of us, a muse of sorts. All the other cultures whose writings we can read also had similar views. We are still unable to decode the unique Minoan writing, an apparent combination of pictographs and letters like hieroglyphs. 

 

It seems that pre-science humans developed the abstract thought that anything that was mysterious has a personality associated with it (disease, celestial objects, terrestrial objects and life, lightning, wind, "fortune"). I remember talking with an African teenager who said that his village worshiped the spirit of the river. All of these are insights into how humans regarded themselves and the environment. Romans had being for everything, like Janus who faces two directions at once, who was associated with doorways, new years, and decision making. Amulets and spells for invoking or placating daimons were common. And of course religious leaders always found a way to make a profit off of such beliefs, and insisted that atheists were dangerous to society. I do wish we had more actual information regarding pre-historic humans and how they interpreted themselves and the world. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3HQ_luNqE