daemon

That might be the most practical idea you can take out of our time together today.

The next time that you, uh, you kind of have your daimon, right? I talk a lot about you, daimon, yeah, living with virtue, expressing the best version of yourself.

You have a guiding spirit.

The ancient Greeks called it your daimon.

The ancient, um, Romans would call it your genius, a guiding spirit.

Christians would call it your conscience.

You got that guiding spirit.

Then you got the other voice, right? Daimon, demon is the diminutive of daimon, right? You got the, the courage wolf, the fear wolf, whatever metaphor you want to use, but you got those two voices in your head.

So that's where the word demon comes from.

Daimon, demon.

If you haven't noticed, we've got two different voices in our head.

Mm-hmm.

The harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels." In the New Testament, there are various words used to describe these beings.

They, uh, so, uh, daimon is a Greek word, D-A-I-M-O-N, which is where we get our English word demon.

Uh, it wa- that was just a common Greek word in everyday usage.

Sometimes they're just called spirits, uh, and sometimes that's specifically qualified as evil spirits.

They shuttle messages between the gods and humans, but they also control all manner of magical and astrological powers.

Daemons control the art of priests concerning sacrifices, rites, spells, and every mode of divination and magic.

Roman philosophers continued this idea for centuries to come.

The philosopher Apuleius wrote that there are certain divine middle powers situated in this interval of the air between the highest ether and earth.

According to this essay, he agrees with Plato in thinking that daemons fulfill all sorts of supernatural jobs on Earth.

They control the flight of birds, which Greeks and Romans studied as a form of divination.

Daemons inspire prophets, they cause lightning, and they enable fortune tellers to be able to tell the future.

Notice how both Plato and Apuleius agree on where daemons live, somewhere between humans and gods.

I, I really, I really enjoyed talking to you.

And for those of you, uh, who are interested in the back of this conversation, uh, Daimons and Divinity begins on October 15th.

You can go to the lectern, uh, down the show notes.

There's a link, right, where you can register for the course.