@Dex Stewart
👍 I’ll copy/paste my last contribution to this topic here.
In order to understand the true nature of a thing, one should often try to find out the true origin of a word. Demon from ancient Greek δαίμων daímōn is initially understood as a “spirit” or a power of destiny (δαιμόνιον daimónion) as a “warning or admonishing voice of conscience)”.
In Greek mythology, the name Daimon also stood for the departed spirit of the deceased (Greek σκιά skiá “shadow”), the disembodied figures of the departed. In this respect, it seems that a positive meaning was in the foreground as long as the legend was relevant, in which the souls of the people of the golden age were called δαίμονες daimones, who represented an intermediate level between gods and humans, a second class of lower gods. In a very similar meaning exists in German the rarely used word Schemen for ghosts and spooky figures. These are based on the Indo-Germanic root word *skai- in the meaning of “to shine, lustre, reflection”.
The meaning of demon as “evil spirit, a middle being between God and man” leads back to the Greek δαίεσθαι daíesthai — to be seperated/divided/shared. One can also derive “sharer and deliver (of fate)” from this. Interesting are the further relations of δαίμων daímōn — on the one hand to the Greek word for people δῆμος dēmos (as in democracy) on the other hand and even further reaching out to “time” in the sense of “section, divided”. All these are etymologically derivations from the Indo-Germanic root word *da[i]- for “to divide, tear up, cut up”, on which also German Teufel/Daifel (devil) and Latin diabolus are based.
Demons are as actual personifications of fate or conscience, which accompany humans invisibly at all times. There is the assessment that it was only in the course of the later Middle Ages (roughly the same period as the beginning of the indulgence trade) that the term demon was associated with unpleasant ideas and thus received a shift into the negative.
Evil tongues could also claim that a “demonization” took place here to turn the fear of the people into cash. For the Roman Church was always good at increasing its own (worldly) wealth. A circumstance which Protestantism has certainly inherited.
