Marginalium

On Eurasian Demonology. I wrote an article this week about a very expensive faux-neuroscience-based program that talks about your inner demons, and it seems fun to see the places that our historical concept of actual demons overlaps. But also how we make abstractions gods and how we Christianised them:

However, this is not the whole picture, because, generally speaking, it was only these inner daimons of possession that were potentially ‘demonic’. When approached in the proper manner, the custodians of springs and rivers and sacred groves, like Plato’s guardian spirits or the various oracles of the ancient Mediterranean world, have shown themselves to be of a benevolent sort, and so have been sought out by persons in need of their help. Fairies, trolls, elves, nymphs and gnomes are so many ‘land spirits’, daimons of the natural environment. So it was that, when faced by their parishioners’ stubborn recourse to the healing waters of pagan sanctuaries, the same medieval Church whose vocation it had been to combat the demonic hordes was forced to yield to popular custom. Even today, the Mediterranean world is dotted with thousands of pools and springs consecrated to various saints and virgins who are none other than the daimons and fairies of yore, overlaid with the slightest Christian veneer.