Demon

Demonism (synonymous with daemonomania = possession) denotes a peculiar state of mind characterized by the fact that certain psychic contents, the so-called complexes, take over the control of the total personality in place of the ego, at least temporarily, to such a degree that the free will of the ego is suspended.

Jung provides the canonical depth-psychological definition of demonism as complex-possession displacing ego sovereignty, linking it to primitive phenomena, trance, shamanism, and epidemic psychosis.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976thesis

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instead of allowing himself to be convinced once more that the daemon is an illusion, he ought to experience once more the reality of this illusion. He should learn to acknowledge these psychic forces anew, and not wait until his moods, nervous states, and delusions make it clear in the most painful way that he is not the only master in his house.

Jung argues that Western rationalism’s dismissal of the daemon as illusion is itself pathogenic, and that recognizing dissociative psychic forces as ‘real’ is therapeutically and spiritually necessary.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Alchemical Studies, 1967thesis

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Demonism arises, not because of supposed or actual sexual dysfunction, but because of the dysfunctional relation with the daimon. We strive to fulfill its vision fully, refusing to be restrained by our human limitations — in other words, we develop megalomania.

Hillman argues that demonic possession is not sexual in origin but arises from an unbounded, unmediated identification with the daimon’s demands, producing megalomania and psychopathic violence.

Hillman, James, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996thesis

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Prevention of the demonic must be based in the invisible ground ‘above the world,’ transcending the very idea of prevention itself. Prevention requires not combat but seduction, inviting the daimon in the acorn to move out from the hard-shell confines of an only-bad seed, so as to recover a fuller image of glory.

Hillman proposes that the demonic is cured not by suppression or combat but by seducing the daimon away from monolithic literalism toward a fuller imaginative vision.

Hillman, James, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996thesis

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the demons who do this, and what sort of demon follows what, and which does not follow which… Akēdia is the noonday demon and lasts for four hours. The demon who leads astray visits at dawn.

Sorabji presents Evagrius’s systematic demonology of the logismoi, in which specific demons operate on precise temporal schedules and causal sequences that the ascetic must learn to identify and interrupt.

Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis

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We have learnt, after much observation, to recognize the difference between angelic thoughts, human thoughts, and thoughts that come from demons. Angelic thought is concerned with the true nature of things and with searching out their spiritual essences.

The Philokalic tradition establishes a tripartite discernment of spirits in which demonic thoughts are distinguishable from angelic and human ones by their object and quality, requiring sustained contemplative attention.

Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting

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All the demons teach the soul to love pleasure; only the demon of dejection refrains from doing this, since he corrupts the thoughts of those he enters by cutting off every pleasure of the soul and drying it up through dejection.

Evagrius, in the Philokalia, differentiates the demon of dejection from all others by its paradoxical mechanism: it destroys pleasure itself, constituting a unique mode of psychic siege.

Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting

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There are times when this cunning demon even touches the flesh, inflaming it to uncontrolled desire; and it devises endless other tricks which need not be described. Our incensive power is also a good defense against this demon.

The Philokalia describes the demon of unchastity as capable of both psychic manipulation through imagery and somatic inflammation, while prescribing the redirection of incensive power as its antidote.

Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting

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if you feel you have lost your mission, your oomph, if you feel confused, slightly off, then look for the Devil, the ambusher of the soul within your own psyche. If you cannot see, hear, catch it in the act, assume it is at work, and above all stay awake.

Pinkola Estés relocates the demonic ambusher entirely within the psyche, treating the Devil-figure as an internalized complex that operates through stealth, disorientation, and sudden disappearance.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting

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These demons the Gauls call by the name dusii, since they incessantly perform such filthiness… the moruzzi pilosi, whom the Greeks call panitae, the Latins incubi, whose form is derived from the human but ends in the extremities of beasts.

Roscher’s ethnographic survey traces the nightmare demon across Gaulish, Greek, Latin, Bohemian, and Polish traditions, establishing the incubus-demon as a cross-cultural morphological constant linked to Pan and the satyr.

Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972supporting

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Nobody dares to fire his gun or pistol when he is aware of the demon because many a weapon has exploded and caused a fatal wound to the shooter.

Hillman and Roscher document the survival of Pan as a nightmare-demon in modern Greek shepherd communities, demonstrating the mythological continuity of the demonic figure across millennia.

Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972supporting

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it is one of the characteristics of night demons and specters that they are linked with night and darkness and that they have to escape if either a light is kindled or if day breaks. The first ray of daylight banishes the night demons.

Roscher establishes the structural rule governing night-demons across Lithuanian, Parsi, Talmudic, and Germanic traditions: their power is absolutely bounded by darkness, and light or dawn constitutes the universal apotropaic.

Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972supporting

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the demon of the nightmare, working only in sleep or the state preceding sleep, or the demon of fever accompanied by restless, fearful dreams (epialos, Epiales), must have had a great deal in common with Hypnos (and Oneiros) from the first.

Roscher traces the genealogical proximity of the nightmare-demon (Epiales) to sleep-deity Hypnos and dream-god Oneiros, revealing the composite mythological substrate underlying demonic sleep-terror.

Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972supporting

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these wrenching tales constitute powerful testimonials for the myth of demon drugs. They have been treated as serious evidence by leading authors in the addictions field.

Alexander critically examines ‘demon drugs’ as a cultural myth that shapes addiction discourse, arguing that testimonial evidence for demonic compulsion is countered by equally numerous narratives of chosen addiction.

Alexander, Bruce K., The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008supporting

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it is less painful to attribute their life of addiction to possession by a demon drug than to face the shame of enduring, irremediable dislocation.

Alexander argues that demonic attribution in addiction functions as a shame-management strategy, displacing the unbearable recognition of social dislocation onto an external possessing force.

Alexander, Bruce K., The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008supporting

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one is obliged to reflect about Hitler as a demonic potential in this same Western world. To reflect upon Hitler is to do more than present a case study in psychopathy or political tyranny… It is a ritual act of psychological discovery.

Hillman frames the study of Hitler’s demonic calling as a civic and psychological necessity, positioning the examination of radical evil as a ritual confrontation with the demonic potential latent in Western culture.

Hillman, James, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting

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Man and woman become a devil to each other when they do not separate their spiritual paths, for the nature of created beings is always of the nature of differentiation.

In the Gnostic-Jungian Sermons, the demonic (devil) arises from the failure of differentiation between complementary principles, making the demon a figure for undifferentiated psychic entanglement.

Hoeller, Stephan A., The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, 1982supporting

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the violent emotion of a god can be projected or externalized in the shape of an autonomous monster. Such apparitions abound in the mythological annals of India.

Zimmer shows that in Indian mythology the demonic figure is a direct projection of divine affect — wrath and destruction — externalized into an autonomous entity, paralleling depth-psychological conceptions of the autonomous complex.

Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, 1946supporting

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a demon who sometimes appears as a werewolf, sometimes as a nightmare demon with the feet of a donkey or goat, with goat’s ears and a hairy skin, and in many ways recalls the old Greek Pan and the satyrs who of course also appear as nightmare demons.

Roscher documents the baboutzikarios as a late Greek syncretistic demon who fuses werewolf, vampire, and nightmare attributes, illustrating the morphological plasticity of the demonic across folkloric traditions.

Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972aside

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Pan is enraged with the girl because he envies her music and because he is ugly. He cements the shepherds and goat herdsmen. They tear the girl apart like wolves or dogs and throw her limbs in all directions.

Roscher traces epidemic insanity and lycanthropy to Pan as demonic inciter, providing mythological evidence for the pan-ic demon’s capacity to dissolve collective rational order into frenzied violence.

Hillman, James; Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, Pan and the Nightmare, 1972aside

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The root dai- is ambiguous; the most common interpretation as Apportioner encounters the difficulty that daio means to divide, not to apportion.

Burkert surveys the philological bibliography on daimon in Greek religion, noting the etymological ambiguity between ‘divider’ and ‘apportioner’ that underlies the semantic range of the term across archaic and classical sources.

Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977aside

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Demon, 173, 180, 208

Rank’s index entry for Demon indicates its presence in the Trauma of Birth at pages dealing with rebirth symbolism and mythological imagery, situating it within a perinatal and mythological framework without elaboration.

Rank, Otto, The Trauma of Birth, 1924aside

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