Talk:Daemon (mythology)

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[edit] Eudaemons

"Eudaemons resembled the Abrahamic idea of the guardian angel; they watched over mortals to help keep them out of trouble. (Thus eudaemonia, originally the state of having a eudaemon, came to mean "well-being" or "happiness".)"

This is very interesting, can anyone give me a source for this etymology. I'd like to add a reference to this on the eudaimonia page. --Dast 16:18, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article is inaccurate

I'll just quote part of the entry for daimōn in the Oxford Classical Dictionary:

Etymologically the term daimōn means 'divider' or 'allotter': from Homer onwards
it used mainly in the sense of operator of more or less unexpected, and intrusive,
events in human life. In Homer and other early authors, gods, even Olympians,
could be referred to as daimones...

This article's definition of daimōn as "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes", is incorrect. The description of the term's transformation under Christianity is a bit better, but misses the incorporation of good daimones as angels. --Akhilleus (talk) 23:11, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Not incorrect, merely post-Homeric. Read Plutarch; to quote the same authority:

...Plato's concept (e.g. Symp. 202d–203a) of daimones as beings intermediate between god and men. This notion was adopted by all subsequent demonologies. A pupil of Plato, *Xenocrates (1) (frs. 23–5 Heinze), argued for the existence of good and evil daimones. This is essentially the picture accepted by the Stoa (see STOICISM) and in Middle and New Platonism (esp. *Plutarch, *Porphyry, and *Iamblichus (2) ). In later antiquity the existence of semi-divine beings helped to solve problems connected with the emergence of monotheistic ideas and the inherent problems of *theodicy.

Septentrionalis 21:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll stick with "incorrect". If this article is about *mythology*, Homer's usage is more important than that of Plato and subsequent philosophy.

If the article is a more general history of the term "daemon", (as in fact it seems to be) then it still needs to start with Homer, though it's probably true that Platonic ideas of daimones were more influential than Homer's in the development of Christianity. --Akhilleus (talk) 07:02, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subsections

I broke this article into subsections today; there was little flow between the sections, the article is still very much cut-and-paste. Maybe this will encourage more depth.

This very large subject has worldwide analogs, and there are probably many other articles by now that address aspects of the same ideas (anywhere 'forces' were viewed as gods (+-) of various degrees ....). Alchemy has many interesting entities, for example. Twang 03:28, 22 July 2006 (UTC)