Demons: Psychological Perspectives

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DEMONS: PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

The experience of the demon as a supernatural being that can affect human life for good or for bad is found all over the world. Modern depth psychology provides us with a fuller understanding of the nature of this phenomenon. Even in modern civilization where there is no longer the belief in demons, demons continue to play an important role. The existence of demons is a fact. The question of central importance is "How does consciousness interpret this fact?"

The interpretation depends upon the development of consciousness and the awareness of the multiple forces that determine human personality and experience. A more advanced stage of consciousness can look back at the preceding stage and describe it. For the present stage of consciousness, however, there exists no outside objective and critical standpoint from which to observe it. C. G. Jung has distinguished five different stages in the development of consciousness (also referred to as stages of the relation between object and subject). I would like to discuss the attitude toward the existence of demons at each of these five stages with reference first to cultures in which the stage of consciousness dominates and then to cultures of modern Western civilization.

Examples of each of these five stages can be found in human psychology side by side with the more advanced stages. There is no civilization in which consciousness belongs only and exclusively to one stage alone, because different psychological faculties will be developed to a different degree at any one time. Even though the main function may become advanced and rational, the inferior function remains archaic and closely aligned with the unconscious psyche.

The Myth of the Cosmic Man: Archaic Mentality

The unconscious psyche is the original mind of man, his primeval mentality, with which he still functions through his instincts. All persons function in this archaic way when unconscious; that is, to be unconscious in psychological terms is to be governed simply by the unconscious forces of instinct. Humankind has survived for hundreds of thousands of years supported by this primordial mentality, living in a state of identify with the environment called by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl "the participation mystique." The fact that humankind survived the Stone Age points to the value of this instinctive behavior.

The consciousness of these early stages of humankind and of today's hunters and gatherers resembles that of early childhood. At this stage man lives undifferentiated from his surroundings. This does not mean that he cannot differentiate between himself and the objects around him, but rather that for him these objects are alive: they have soul and behave like animated beings. In the words of Jung, the individual lives as though he were immersed "in a stream of events in which outer and inner worlds are not differentiated, or are differentiated very indistinctly."

For archaic man, the whole world reflects his psyche, or his psyche is just as much outside as inside, because as long as a psychic content is unconscious, it will appear in both realms. This stage of consciousness is mirrored in the myth of the cosmic man, a giant who pervades the entire universe; examples are the Indian Puruṣa or the Scandinavian Ymir. The psyche of archaic man is everywhere. All of the objects in the universe of archaic man lead their own purposeful lives, influencing or even dominating him. He feels inferior to these powers of nature and worships or propitiates them. Religion and magic are at his disposal in order to deal with these powers. Because his own ego is ill defined, it is easily transformed into an animal or possessed by one of the surrounding powers, by a spirit or a demon, or transformed into an animal. Possession belongs to this mentality, and one can be exorcised as easily as possessed.

By worshiping these powers, human beings acknowledge their reality and importance, and they are kept in the awareness of the entire community. Only when something escapes our attention and is thus neglected are we in danger of being possessed by it.

Possession—when our actions are determined by some psychic (or spiritual) force that overwhelms the ego—is by no means a phenomenon restricted to primitive societies, nor is it limited to those in our present civilization whom we call possessed. On the contrary, it is a universal experience. Whenever an unconscious power takes over the ego, possession occurs. Archaic man is threatened by all the demons and spirits around him, but at the same time he is wrapped also in the protection of the symbolic mother; that is, he is protected by powers that look out for him and provide him with sustenance so that he does not have to worry about himself. For example, when the Kusase people hear a certain tree in the village ask for a new dress and for new offerings, they are not surprised since this happens from time to time. In the context of their world, this is a common event and demands no explanation.

The idea of an all-pervading power in nature (mana, manitou, orenda, wakanda ) forms part of this animistic view of existence. And magic is the primitive technology that seeks to manage this power. But the religious attitude is already prominent at this stage in the person of the shaman, rainmaker, or weathermaker, who is a specialist in dealing with spiritual powers. Furthermore, the power becomes embodied in certain sacred persons such as the chief, warrior, or blacksmith, as well as in sacred objects such as swords, stones, and medicine.

In modern Western civilization this archaic attitude still survives. Not only fairy tales and legends but also the words of poets reflect this attitude. And whenever an emotion lays hold of us, we fall back into such archaic behavior; for example, we kick the corner that "hit us," or we swear at the car that refuses to budge. We treat things as if they had a will of their own. This indicates that we believe that things share our human nature: the lime tree in the famous folk song bears all the feelings of love and the sorrow of farewell that men and women experience beneath its branches. We find ourselves feeling attached to objects as well as to persons, and when either fails to act according to our expectations, we experience strong emotion, because we identify with them to a certain extent.

If we look closely at our fears, we may detect the old demons and spirits in modern disguise: irrational fear of cancer or of atomic energy, idiosyncrasy, fear of war and power. We do not trust our modern consciousness to be able to handle these mighty things; there might be a demon in them that would make a fool of us. And we still worship the body of Christ in the host or the represented person in icons. In Switzerland, mountain climbing was avoided for a long time because of the belief in a divine numen living on top of the mountain. Old names point to this fact, such as the Vrenelisgärtli of Glärnisch, or "garden of Venus." Many names of parcels of land or of rivers also refer to the ancient spirits of nature that formerly lived in these places. Most vegetation rites in May and on midsummer's night recall the spirits of grain. Many Europeans still put a fir tree with colored ribbons on a newly built house in order to appease the spirits who will enter and dwell there. In Greek religion, the spirits of nature are personified as nymphs, dryads, and satyrs as well as in the form of the god Pan and numerous other local deities. Many of the sanctuaries of the Virgin Mary found in the woods, in a grotto, or by a well have inherited the site from pagan spirits. In the beginning of the common era, Christian churches were built on the site of earlier temples, sometimes with the stones of the earlier temples, because the power of the numen was already present there. Modern exorcists continue to banish ghosts in places that have been haunted for ages.

The Sacrifice of the Cosmic Man: Projection

In the myth of the cosmic man, the giant is sacrificed by the gods or by the wise men of old. This sacrifice symbolizes the cultural moment when the archaic mentality is sacrificed in favor of a different level of consciousness. This moment seems to correspond to the great Neolithic revolution of humankind, the transition from a life of hunting and gathering foods (living off the gifts of nature, the symbolic mother) to the life in which both plants and animals were domesticated. In agriculture and the herding of animals, humankind assumed some responsibility for husbanding natural resources and providing a steady food supply the human being. At this point he becomes separate from its environment; for the first time there occurs a split between human as subject and nature as object. Differentiation from the environment is one of the most difficult tasks for humankind. Psychic development (individuation) depends upon the ongoing continuation of this process. However, the individual is constantly threatened by demons, threatened, that is, by forces that are unconscious. The mythical combat between the hero and the dragon mirrors this dangerous situation.

Therefore it is consciousness that, in effect, creates the cosmos, for in the differentiation of consciousness the world comes into being as a realm separate from man. From this stage onward we can properly speak of a projection whenever there is any doubt as to whether or not a phenomenon does, in fact, belong to the outer world in which we seem to experience it. For example, when a schizophrenic of our civilization hears the voice of the devil, it is correct to interpret the voice as a projection of something that exists within him rather than something existing in the world.

Usually a demon is understood to be a supernatural being of a nature intermediate between that of gods and men. In the writings of Homer, the word for "demon," daimōn, can still refer to a god or, in a rather vague sense, to a divine efficacy. In a famous passage of Plato's Symposium, Diotima describes Eros as a "great spirit [daimōn ], and like all spirits a being intermediate between the divine and the mortal" (202e). Psychologically speaking, this corresponds to the complex of the collective unconscious as defined by Jung. The complex, which is a necessary and normal component of the psyche, is intermediate between the ego and the archetype, having both a personal and an impersonal aspect. Whereas the archetypes are inborn dispositions, the complex comes into being through experiences in the individual life.

At this stage of consciousness, for example, the warrior is no longer believed to be generally demonic, but rather he becomes the berserker who fights with a mad frenzy only when he is possessed by the god Odin. Mediumship and possession attributed to specific gods or spirits are regular phenomena at this stage of consciousness. At this level, every disease is explained as the result of a spirit or demon. They are primitive forms of what we call mental disorders or Geisteskrankheit ("spirit-illness"). In psychological terms, a complex, also called a partial personality, takes over the ego.

The shaman is the master of spirits, the one who has overcome his own states of possession. Demons are far from being only noxious. In spirit-mediumship the spirits mediate the power of divination, providing information about the future and about matters removed from ordinary perception. They mediate between the spirit world and men and convey to their society the beneficial power of the gods. Everyone may have his own guiding spirit that controls to some effect his behavior. Mediumship may be experienced as a vocation whereby a spirit chooses a specific person as its vehicle. Our word inspiration means that a spirit is whispering wisdom into the ear of the inspired. When the world as a whole is no longer believed to be alive, it remains, nevertheless, filled with spirits and demons. One must be careful lest one be tripped up by a demon unnoticed. Spirit possession can even be contagious, especially during adolescence.

Spirits, particularly those of dead ancestors, may have control over the fertility of the earth, because they are believed to live in the earth under the ground or above the rain clouds. Passing by a cemetery one must take care not to be bewitched by a lurking ghost, the spirit of an ancestor that might cause illness or even death. (Psychologically, this appears to be the same fear that one experiences today when passing by a graveyard late at night.) Furthermore, a young girl has to be careful when she walks by a pond lest one of the unborn souls lurking there might jump into her womb and make her pregnant. The ghosts of the dead are especially hungry and desirous of blood or meat, food that must be provided through sacrifices. The great power of a mighty man continues to hold sway even after his death. In the vicinity of the grave of a shaykh there is a palm tree and a conical stone; barren women may silently step over the stone seven times and eat dates from the tree in order to become pregnant.

A regressive appearance of demons and spirits occurs when the high gods become remote. This often happens when a new civilization overlays an older one, whether by historical change or by conquest. The conquerors impose their social and administrative systems upon the conquered people, but they are themselves unconsciously infected by the spiritual culture of the latter. Some conquering tribes believe that the vanquished tribe survives in spirit form. In the new religious system the high gods become demons and spirits. As high gods they had received a cult and were represented in the collective consciousness, but in the new system they sink into relative unconsciousness. The Greek magical papyri are full of ancient high gods and goddesses, among them both Hekate and Hermes. Hellenistic syncretism absorbed many gods of the Mediterranean culture. In early Christianity the pagan gods became demons or spirits. The medieval iconography of the Devil, for example, depicts the Greek god Pan, who in ancient times was first a spirit of nature and the god of shepherds and finally became god of the universe. (In Greek pan means "all.") Plutarch relates the story of the death of the great Pan, according to which some sailors learn of the event and bring the tale to an island, whereupon a great lamentation ensues. This story marks the end of the archaic worship of nature, an end that resulted from the rise of Christianity. Our modern dilemma deriving from the pollution of nature demonstrates the practical value in the worship of ancient nature spirits, which served to render the superhuman quality of nature conscious to humankind, forming a consciousness that has been lost up to our present time. Today, natural science is searching again for the mysteries of nature, albeit with a rationalistic attitude.

Moral Differentiation: Belief in a World of Good and Evil Demons

In the ancient story of Jacob's fight with the angel at the Jabbok River (Gn. 32:24) Yahveh is a deadly but not evil power. In the tale of Job from a later period, Satan ("the adversary") is one of the sons of God and represents the partial separation of an inner opposition generated by God himself. Similar is the history of the deva/daēva common to both prehistoric India and Iran. Originally the term was a neutral one referring to the celestial, daytime sky. After further development in India the term deva came to signify the high gods. In Iran, however, daēva acquired the meaning of "demon" in the evil sense.

Moral differentiation splits the world further into the opposites of night and day, earth and sky, left and right, good and evil. The collective consciousness is always in danger of identifying with one of a pair of opposites, abandoning the second to the demonic powers of the unconscious. Such an attitude gave rise, for example, to the Black Mass. Neglected aspects of the psyche are not simply repressed and forgotten, they become more and more powerful in the unconscious psyche and more disturbing to the conscious personality. A worldview that fails to acknowledge and experience the original unity of the opposites is in danger of an invasion from the neglected or rejected side. Psychologically, every optimistic or exclusively good attitude calls forth a reaction from its opposite. The more one-sided the conscious attitude, the larger grows the demonic counterworld.

The Enlightenment: Denial of the Existence of Demons

Modern literature on demons is written for the most part from the standpoint of rationalism and attempts to explain demons as superstitious phenomena of a primitive mentality. The psychoanalytic approach developed by Sigmund Freud toward religious phenomena in general shares this attitude. It is a necessary transitional stage in the development of consciousness for man to ask "Who creates the demons?" and to answer "It is I!" In fact, man cannot help assuming responsibility for the products of his own imagination. They have arisen in him, and therefore he is their creator. Thus man identifies with his consciousness and explains all unconscious phenomena as derivative of that con-sciousness.

But in our time we can observe a certain counterreaction to this one-sided view in the form of irrational reactions: the new religions; the parapsychology enthusiasts; drug-based religion and fascination with science fiction among the youth; the "worship" of the natural wisdom of animals by some modern scientists; and the popularity of modern myths such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Objectivity of the Psyche: Unus Mundus

Modern analytical psychology attributes to demons a reality of their own, recognizing the important role they play in the psychology of man. Because the Auseinandersetzung (Ger., "coming to terms") with the world of demons and spirits in the individuation process is so important, Jung specified a method called active imagination in which the figures of the unconscious are regarded as autonomous living entities of the psyche. Using this method it is possible to approach the archaic mentality from a position of conscious responsibility, acknowledging the unconscious and its personifications (demons, spirits, ghosts, fairies, angels, and so on) and seeking to find the appropriate way to respond to them. For these personifications may become conscious to the ego, but they are not created by it. The ego is obligated to take the unconscious realities into consideration. (This process recalls the Latin relegere, "to gather up again. ") Spirits and demons must be allowed to arise as inner figures so that the ego can come to terms with them.

Sometimes one central spirit becomes the leading principle. This figure is called the archetype of the Anthropos, or the Self in human form (the unconscious principle of personality). Often the Anthropos is experienced as an inner guide, as, for example, Poimandres ("shepherd of men"), Agathos Daimōn ("good spirit"), and Hermes-Thoth in antiquity; Mercurius in alchemy; and Khidr in Islam. The daimōn of Socrates was a figure or a voice of a similar kind who forbade him certain things. A later variation is the guardian spirit who mediated between the spirit world and man, bringing dreams and foretelling the future.

The contemporary notion of spirits affects our understanding of mental illness as well as the psychic side of physical illness. Lauri Honko has studied the belief in so-called sickness projectiles, and he demonstrates the appearance of this belief in numerous cultures. For example, the German expression for lumbago is Hexenschuss, which means literally "the witch's shot."

The projection plays an important role in the transference of complexes from one person to another. Unconscious complexes are always projected onto other persons whom they may harm. Emotions are energy-laden phenomena that also affect other people. Typically, the gods of love (Eros, Cupid, Amor, Kāma) are armed with a bow and arrow, indicating that projections are sent by the divine principle or demon. But Job's plague, too, was caused by the arrows of Yahveh (Job 6:4), and the Vedic god Rudra sends death and illness with his arrows (Ṛgveda 7.46). A demon can be either a pathological complex or a new, creative impulse; both issue forth in connection with an archetype and embody a value that can destroy or save the individual person.

Further, the reality that analytical psychology attributes to demons provides insight into the parapsychological meaning of ghosts. The autonomy of the complex, together with the concept of synchronicity (the meaningful coincidence of events), provides tools with which we can understand, though not explain, the psychology of apparitions. French and English literature on this topic is extensive and points to a common belief in locally bound spirits, the genius loci, often depicted as a snake. In Roman families the genius was also a spirit of fertility. Modern parapsychology takes into account the psychological conditions that give rise to the appearance of apparitions. Beyond any doubt there are some people who are simply more aware of or sensitive to such phenomena; they are often said to possess second sight. Nevertheless, such occurrences are not uncommon for the less sensitive.

There is little doubt of the existence of the phenomena that have been called demons, angels, spirits, ghosts, and so on. But since these are experiences of a psychic nature, they can never be known except by means of such inner images.

Bibliography

The most important work for this topic from the standpoint of analytical psychology is Marie-Louise von Franz's Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology (La Salle, Ill., 1980). Recent encyclopedic works mostly treat the topic historically and geographically. I mention here only the more recent and extensive ones. Lutz Röhrich gives a concise survey of demons in legends and fairy tales, including a psychological section, under "Dämon," in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1979). Material from the standpoint of the history of Christianity is collected in Otto Böcher's article "Dämonen," in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 8 (Berlin, 1981); articles include extensive bibliographies, with mention of Judaism. Even more comprehensive is the article "Geister (Dämonen)," with extensive bibliography, by Carsten Colpe and others in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 9 (Stuttgart, 1976). The standard reference for the Bible and Judaism is Werner Foerster's article "Demon," in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (1935), translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1964), which also gives the meaning of the term in folklore. Andres's article "Daimōn," in Pauly's Real-encyclopädie der classischen Altertumwissenschaft, supp. 3 (Stuttgart, 1918), is still useful for Greek material. The Church Fathers' standpoint is found in G. W. H. Lampe's A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1978), pp. 327–331. The New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1967) gives a very short survey, as does Bernhard Kötting's article "Dämon," in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 3 (Freiburg, 1959). The articles under "Démon," in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique: Doctrine et histoire, vol. 3 (Paris, 1957), give very interesting material not found elsewhere.

The classical survey of ancient authors is Julius Tambornino's De antiquorum daemonismo, "Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten," vol. 7 (Giessen, 1909). Another classical work is The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, 2 vols., translated by Reginald C. Thompson, which consists of Babylonian and Assyrian incantations against the demons, ghouls, vampires, hobgoblins, ghosts, and kindred evil spirits that attack humankind (London, 1903–1904). The entry in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1911), summarizes the material in an extensive and comprehensive way; the introductory article by Louis H. Gray is the most useful.

No important recent works dealing with the subject in a scientific way exist. An outdated, although still useful, book is Demonology and Devil-Lore, 3d ed., rev. & enl., 2 vols. (London, 1889), by Moncure D. Conway. Ilmari Manninen's Die daemonistischen Krankheiten im finnischen Volksaberglauben (Helsinki, 1922) and Lauri Honko's Krankheitsprojektile: Untersuchung über eine urtümliche Krankheitserklärung (Helsinki, 1959) are high-quality standard collections of material related to this topic.

The iconography of demons and spirits is very enlightening, but unfortunately Herbert Schade's article "Dämonen," in Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 1 (Freiburg, 1968), is too short. One needs to refer to Enrico Castelli's Il demoniaco nell' arte: Il significato filosofico del demoniaco nell' arte (Milan, 1952), Heinz Mode's Fabulous Beasts and Demons (London, 1975), or Jurgis Baltrusaitis's Réveils et prodiges: Le gothique fantastique (Paris, 1960). A classical work with pictures is Edward Langton's Essentials of Demonology: A Study of Jewish and Christian Doctrine, Its Origin and Development (London, 1949).

Important for our topic is the profound work of Dieter Harmening, Superstitio: Ueberlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1979), as well as Wilhelm Dupré's Religion in Primitive Cultures: A Study in Ethnophilosophy, "Religion and Reason," vol. 9 (Paris, 1975). An exhaustive collection of material and history of ideas can be found in Karl R. H. Frick's Die Erleuchteten (Graz, 1973), Licht und Finsternis (Graz, 1975), and Das Reich Satans (Graz, 1982).