Quote:
Originally Posted by Lovewyrm
Cause the concept of a daemon has been corrupted by abrahamic culture displacement and I guess daemons were too folkloric and close to divinity to be allowed to remain good things.
|
From my understanding, the Hebrew word
shedim was essentially a term for "foreign gods," and this got translated into Greek as
daemon, as the two concepts were pretty similar (the
shedim are also the basis for the Islamic
djinn), but at the time there was a big emphasis on dualism (from Zoroastrianism), so they gained a negative connotation as they were essentially "gods who aren't God" (putting them in opposition to God, which under dualism would mean they were on the evil side of things). But that all seems fairly divorced from the topic of the thread.
I will admit, however, to liking the concept of demons being a bit more neutral. You could still have such demons have need of souls - indeed, if going with the
shedim as "foreign gods," and using the (modern?) concept of gods requiring worship, it may be that the demons need souls - either outright or in the form of dutiful worship - because they are minor gods, and gods need such to survive/grow powerful/etc.