Demoniac

“ There were demons only, more exactly there were diabolized expressions invented to denominate natural phenomena and whatever else perturbed. It was in the evolution of the demoniac that the divine appeared. ”

“ This conception of the soul once formed, the abnormal facts of disease, insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria, come readily to be explained by the invasion into these bodies of other spirits than their own—celestial or demoniac, superhuman or infra-human, according to the phenomena observed. These notions, once diffused, give rise, in their turn, to a whole cycle of kindred animistic theories and religious practices—such as divination by dreams, exorcisms of demons, dervish-dancings, and other artificially produced swoons and ecstasies, and fetichistic magic of all sorts. ”

“ The former are evident from the analogy which exists between this and demon-worship; and the latter, from the ascription to them of miraculous acts.
The existence of demoniacal intelligences, capable of communicating with and acting on mortals, appears to be in accordance with the teachings of the Saviour and apostles. Demoniacal possessions are clearly distinguished from all diseases; and demons are shown, by the admissions of the New Testament, to be actual intelligences, capable of physical power. ”

“ Without falling into the error of supposing that demons can mean demoniacs, we may imagine how readily one who had witnessed such scenes as those recorded in the Gospels might attribute to the demons the expressions of horror which he had heard in the words and seen on the faces of those whom demons possessed. ”

“ Nor is the demon always alone; there may be, as Holy Writ teaches, seven, thousands, or their name may be "Legions," for these visionary beings are only so many representatives of certain evil principles at work in the soul of the possessed. Some patients have been enabled to trace this connection and to discover that each symptom of their disease was thus personified by a separate demon to whom in their paroxysms they ascribed the infliction: Lucifer caused pricking and stinging pains, Anzian tearing and scratching, Junian convulsions of limbs, etc. ”

“ A demon—a fallen angel—evil spirit, an imp. Literally, a shade—a dark spot, moving as noiselessly and rapidly as a shadow. The many references in the New Testament to “devil,” and “devils,” should always be demons; the great multitude, so often found in one place, come from the innumerable concourse which constitute the “powers of darkness.” Shadow spirits, men and women who are controlled by these dark, shadowy imps, “love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.” ”

“ Only that intensest light could cast so black a shadow athwart the world as the belief in a purely malignant spirit. To such a conception—love of evil for its own sake—the word Devil is limited in this work; Demon is applied to beings whose harmfulness is not gratuitous, but incidental to their own satisfactions. ”

“ The apostle, however, supposed that this demon was the same which was driven out from that woman.
76. And the demon said, "I beseech thee, suffer me to go and to dwell where thou wishest, and command me for that purpose, then I shall not fear him who has power over me. For as thou hast come to preach, so have I come to destroy. As he who sent thee punishes thee for not fulfilling his will, so, unless I do the will of him who has sent me, I am sent before the time and appointed season into my nature (exist no more as an individual) . ”

“ Begone from my sight, thou demon of hell!
Boys, here they come! [1463] there they go! Ah, the spell
Is o’er. I’m afire! [1464] See! It shoots [1465] from my eyes!
I am burning within! [1466] There [1467] the red demon lies.
What angel is this? [1468] ’Tis my Bessie to see
If my word has been kept about ending this spree—
No, no, it is black! [1469] ’Tis the devil’s device—
He’s claiming a soul as a sacrifice. ”

“ Thus while the demon is the direct cause of sickness and death, the sorcerer who uses him as his tool is the indirect cause. The demon is thought to do his work by inserting some alien substance into the body of the sufferer, and a medicine-man is employed to extract it by chanting an invocation to the maleficent spirit, shaking his rattle, and sucking the part of the patient's frame in which the cause of the malady is imagined to reside. ”

“ And the same young man has vociferated a thousand other praises of the said demon, which bear witness to the vehement sorcery practised upon him, and prove, moreover, the abominable, unalterable, and incurable life and the fraudulent witcheries to which he is at present subject, concerning which our lord the archbishop will judge, in order to save by exorcisms and penitences this young soul from the snares of hell, if the devil has not gained too strong a hold of it. ”

“ I therefore, having heard this, glorified the Lord God, and again I questioned the demon, saying: " Tell me how ye can ascend into heaven, being demons, and amidst the stars and holy angels intermingle." And he answered: "Just as things are fulfilled in heaven, so also on earth (are fulfilled) the types * of all of them. For there are principalities, authorities, world -rulers', and we demons fly about in the air; and we hear the voices of the heavenly beings, and survey all the powers. ”

“ The hero of this strange and solemn romance, inheriting a melancholy and superstitious mental constitution, becomes in middle age the victim of a deep, and tranquil because deep, fanaticism. A demon in human form, perceiving his state of mind, wantonly experiments upon it, deepening and intensifying it by a fearful series of illusions of sight and sound. Tricks of jugglery and ventriloquism seem to his feverish fancies miracles and omens—the eye and the voice of the Almighty piercing the atmosphere of supernatural mystery in which he has long dwelt. ”

“ They then begin to sing the names of various demons, as though they were chanting a litany, until suddenly they perceive that the Devil has appeared in the midst of them in the shape of some animal or other. As he would seem to be visible to them all in some mysterious way they immediately extinguish the lights, and each one of them as quickly as he can seizes upon the woman, who chances to be nearest at hand. ”

“ Observe hence, Hell has more to do in promoting of fire of the tongue than men are generally aware of. It is from some diabolical designs, that men's tongues are inflamed. The devil is expressly called a liar, a murderer, an accuser of the brethren; and, whenever men's tongues are employed in any of these ways, they are set on fire of hell. The Holy Ghost indeed once descended in cloven tongues as of fire, Acts ii. And, where the tongue is thus guided and wrought upon by a fire from heaven, there it kindleth good thoughts, holy affections, and ardent devotions. ”

“ The peasantries who would see in the sub-alpine engine a demon are extinct. Admiration of the genii of obstruction, and horror of the demons that vanquished them, are discoverable only in folk-tales distant enough to be pretty, such as the interesting Serbian story of ‘Satan’s jugglings [207] and God’s might,’ in which fairies hiding in successively opened nuts vainly try to oppose with fire and flood a she-demon pursuing a prince and his bride, to whose aid at last comes a flash of lightning which strikes the fiend dead. ”

“ The main characteristic of a demon—that which distinguishes it from a devil—is, as we have seen, that it has a real and human-like motive for whatever evil it causes. If it afflict or consume man, it is not from mere malignancy, but because impelled by the pangs of hunger, lust, or other suffering, like the famished wolf or shark. ”

“ If they are sick, a demon is at the bottom of it; if an accident happens, it is still the spirit who is at work; thereupon the demon takes the name of the particular evil of which he is supposed to be the cause. Hence the demon being assumed as the author of every ill, all their superstitions resolve themselves into enchantments and spells to [pg 089] appease the evil spirit, to render mild and tractable the fiercest beasts.”274 To the mind of the Kamtchatkan every corner of earth and heaven seemed full of spirits, whom he revered and dreaded more than God.275
Demons in India. ”

“ There is a wonderful blending of good and evil in this demon, and, while the magnitude of his crimes makes us shudder, his wrongs and his loneliness awaken our pity. "The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. ”

“ Epileptic fits and insanity were signs that the demon had taken possession of unfortunate wretches, who were either tormented or put to death. Satan, with his legions of devils, continually harassed mankind. ”

“ And the ancient demon, the spirit of prehistoric confusion, of hoary chaos, rejoiced in the destruction of things, while the wild eyes of the madman reflected horror, like the horror of the death agonies of some monster. ”

“ That the stage devil should have been so commonplace an individual, when there were devils innumerable where-from an admirable selection of demons might be “constantly on hand,” made it the more inexcusable on the part of those gentlemen invested with the power of administering to, and in some measure forming, public taste. What a catalogue of devils may be found in the Fathers! Let us particularise a few from the thousand of demons with which the benevolent imaginations of our ancestors have peopled the air, the earth, and the flood. ”

“ The complexity of their symptoms produced what we call dedoublement, or a dual personality. Those possessed, claimed to be in the power of a demon, who entered their body by one of the natural passages, sporting with their person, placing itself in apposition with any place in their organism, proposing all sorts of erotic acts, natural and unnatural, whispering shameless propositions in their ears, blasphemy against God, forcing them to sign a contract with the Devil in their own blood. ”

“ Demons likewise entered into the bodies of animals, and in the narrative to which we have just referred, the demons, on being expelled from the man, requested to be allowed to enter into the herd of swine, which being permitted, ‘the demons went out of the man into the swine, and the herd ran violently down the cliff into the lake and were drowned,’ the evil spirits, as usual, taking pleasure only in the destruction and injury of man and beast. Besides possession, all the diseases of men and animals are ascribed to the action of the devil and demons. ”

“ But in addition to the official exorcists, many sorcerers and magicians assumed to cure the possessed, as well as those suffering from other diseases. The idea of good and evil demons assumed in the Middle Ages a specifically Christian character, which resembled the ancient Babylonian doctrine except that the good demons were replaced by angels and saints, whereas the evil spirits were embodied in the Devil. Both saints and devils were thenceforth destined to play their part in the domain of medicine. ”

“ A spiritual being, whose home is heaven, who rides on the winds, whose wrath is dreaded, who sanctions the oath, is only called "a demon" by the prejudice of the worthy father who, at the same time, admits that the savages have a conception of God—and that God, so conceived, is this demon! ”

“ I once knew a man possessed of a demon. He became so vicious that he had to be confined in a cell in jail. When he heard any one swear or blaspheme, he would go into convulsions of laughter. When any one used the name of God or Christ, he would curse everything good, and foam at the mouth. ”

“ That which one of the devoutest men of genius whom England has produced thus asked was silently answered in India by the serpent-worshipper kneeling with his tongue held in his hand; in Egypt, by Osiris seated on a throne of chequer.5
It is necessary to distinguish clearly between the Demon and the Devil, though, for some purposes, they must be mentioned together. The world was haunted with demons for many ages before there was any embodiment of their spirit in any central form, much less any conception of a Principle of Evil in the universe. ”

“ Did a man lie wasting of disease and torn of pain, a demon was thought to be within him, the disease being but a manifestation of his malevolence. There could be no return of the precious boon of {184} good health until the demon was exorcised, and it was to the exorcising of demons that so large, so disproportionate a part of the religious literature of Babylon and Nineveh was devoted." [24] Sometimes demons are referred to in a manner which shows that the conception in Job 1. ”

“ The fallen angels disclosed to the world unknown material substances, and various arts, such as metallurgy, the properties of herbs, incantations, and interpretation of the stars; and to women specially they revealed all the secrets of personal adornment. (5) There is scarcely any man who is not attended by a demon; and it is well known that untimely and violent deaths, which are attributed to accidents, are really caused by demons. (6) Those who go to theatres may become specially accessible to demons. ”

“ The Devil makes us quarrel whether we ought to have schools with or without bigoted religious teachings; he burns incense to stupefy our senses, lights candles to obscure our sight, amuses the masses with buffooneries to prevent them from thinking, draws us away from common-sense morality, and leads us, under the pretext of a mystic and symbolic religion, to the confessional, the very hothouse of mischief. ”

“ For the truth shall be spoken; since of old these evil demons, effecting apparitions of themselves, both defiled women and corrupted boys, and showed such fearful sights to men, that those who did not use their reason in judging of the actions that were done, were struck with terror; and being carried away by fear, and not knowing that these were demons, they called them gods, and gave to each the name which each of the demons chose for himself. ”