Daimon is an inner force,
an inner passion, a mixture of desires and aspirations. Our daimon is the genius that
lives with us, good and evil at the same time. As Blake would say, it's the marriage
between heaven and hell. It's death in life and life in death. It's a kind of enthusiasm
that guides us towards the search for knowledge, without believing in any superior entity.
It's an olistic approach to life that struggles against any form of vanity, of stupid
power and false authority. It's a form of magic, of ecstatic feeling, it's the art
of living for freedom without having to submit our inner thoughts to the banalities of our
society. It's a dream that gives hope to our intellect, it's a mistery without solution.
it's the absurdity of our life, it's a nonsensical joke. That's why I thought to link the
surrealistic poetics with the spirit of my creation, and that's why the Daimon Club was
born. Now I only hope to be able to communicate to other people this idea, and to divulge
our love for equality, peace and freedom. (to read more about
daimonology go to this page, but unfortunately it's in Italian, because I have still to
translate it)
Carl William Brown
One of the first examples of surrealistic writer and daimon guided author was
Laurence Sterne. He was born in Ireland in 1713 end died in 1768. As a clergyman,
Sterne was rather unusual. Besides being involved in frequent amorous escapades, together
with some friends he formed a group called "The Demoniacks" which used to meet
at Skelton Castle, a curious house on the border of the Cleveland Moors, (belonging to a
friend of Sterne's, who called it "Crazy Castle", where they indulged in
moderate revelry. When I found the Daimon Club I didn't know about Sterne's association,
but now what I intend to point out is that unfortunately we don't have a castle, and it's
always more difficult to find people who like to be open minded, not only from a sexual
point of view, but also from an artistic and intellectual one.
Carl William Brown
Personal Daimons by Patrick Harpur
Guardian angels derived from Neoplatonism and, along with the other classes of angels,
became part of Christian dogma at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325). But, long before this,
the ancient Greeks believed that individuals were attached at birth to a daimon who
determined, wholly or in part, their destiny. Philemon was clearly such a daimon for Jung,
who emphasized the crucial part this strange Gnostic figure played in his life and work.
Plato's mentor, Socrates, had a daimon who was famous for always saying "No." It
did not enter into rational discourse with Socrates; it merely warned him when he was
about to do something wrong (especially something displeasing to the gods), like the
prompting of conscience...
However, Plato in Timaeus identified the individual daimon with the element of pure reason
in man and so it became "a sort of lofty spirit-guide, or Freudian super-ego."
This may be true of certain, perhaps exceptional individuals, but is is also true - as we
shall see - that daimons are as likely to represent unreason or at least to be equivocal.
But meanwhile it is instructive to consider the case of Napoleon. He had a familiar spirit
"which protected him. which guided him, as a daemon, and which he called his star, or
which visited him in the figure of a dwarf clothed in red that warned him."
This reminds us that personal daimons favor two forms by which to
manifest: the abstract light, globe, oval and (as here) shining sphere, or the
personification - angelic, manikin-like or whatever. It confirms, in other words, my
speculation ... that the two forms are different manifestations of each other, with (in
Napoleon's case) different functions: the star guides, the dwarf warns. Both are images of
the soul, which is another way of understanding the daimon.
Indeed, it seems that, next to personification, daimons prefer luminous appearances or
"phasmata," as the Syrian Neoplatonist Iamblichus (d. 326) called them. He was a
real expert on daimons, and ufologists could do worse than study the distinctions he makes
between phasmata. For instance, while phasmata of archangels are both "terrible and
mild," their images "full of supernatural light," the phasmata of daimons
are "various" and "dreadful." They appear "at different times ...
in a different form, and appear at one time great, but at another small, yet are still
recognized to be the phasmata of daemons." As we have seen, this could equally well
describe their personifications. Their "operations," interestingly, "appear
to be more rapid than they are in reality" (an observation which might be borne in
mind by ufologists). Their images are "obscure," presenting themselves within a
"turbid fire" which is "unstable."
The first of the great Neoplatonists, Plotinus (AD 204-70), maintained that the individual
daimon was "not an anthropomorphic daemon, but an inner psychological
principle," viz:- the level above that on which we consciously live, and so is both
within and yet transcendent... Like Jung, he takes it as read that daimons are objective
phenomena and thinks to emphasize only that, paradoxically, they manifest both inwardly
(dreams, inspirations, thoughts, fantasies) and outwardly or transcendently (visions and
apparitions). Plotinus does not, we notice - like the early Jung - speak of daimons as
primarily "inner" and as seen outwardly only in "projection." He seems
to agree with the later Jung - that there is a psyche "outside the body."
However, his use of the word "transcendent" also suggests that the real
distinction to be made is not between inner and outer, but between personal and
impersonal. There is a sense, he seems to be saying, in which daimons can be both at once.
...[P]ersonal daimons are not fixed but can develop or unfold according to our own
spiritual development. Jung might say: in the course of individuation, we move beyond the
personal unconscious to the impersonal, collective unconscious, through the daimonic to
the divine. Acording to Iamblichus, we are assigned a daimon at birth to govern and direct
our lives but our task is to obtain a god in its place.
Ancient Hellenic Culture Hermetic Magic
Theology and Daimonology
Quotes are from "Hermetic Magic" by Stephen Edred
Flowers, Ph.D.
"Hermetic theology poses a number of questions or problems for the student to solve.
What is a god? Is there only one, or are there many? By what names are the gods to be
called?"
"Philosophical Hermeticism holds that the gods are creations of the universal mind or
intelligence (Nous) and are in fact abstract functions or archetypes of relative being.
This is the root cause of the happy sense of eclectism in the Hermetic tradition. In
reality the various gods and goddesses of national (natural) traditions are mere images of
real archetypes which in fact exist beyond their sensible images."
"But to the practical-minded magicians, the images cannot be dispensed with just
because they are quasi-illusions. Magicians must inspire and motivate their own psyches to
effective action."
"For the most part, the magicians would try to convince the power of a god to work
for them, while the daimon would be something they would eventually try to absorb and make
their own to work with at will."
"Angels on the other hand are quite different from daimons. The chief difference
between them lies in the fact that the angel is not independent. It is the mere,
messenger, or 'active principle', of a greater god."
"The ability to be eclectic in any effective way must be based on a deep level of
understanding of the core principles that the gods and goddesses of various pantheons
represent. It is not based on arbitrary choices predicated on questions of style or
fashion."
PERSONAL VIEWPOINT
After reading the above material and some other resources, I have
finally formed my Anthropos. I now believe that the gods and goddesses are the combination
of the subconscious of all the people that believe in them. And just as the whole is
greater than the parts, this group mind has a consciousness and personality all it's own.
The angels or superconscious of each individual is a personal communication path between
the individual and this group mind (gods, goddesses). Therefore, if you want to
communicate with a goddess or a god wants to communicate with you, it is done through such
an angel.
A Daimon or the id, is the individual or group passion that powers magic. In order to
effectively do magic you must be passionate about what you're trying to perform and/or you
need to inspire passion in a number of others. This type of emotional communication is
performed through a Daimon.
Soul and Body (an abstract from Patrick
Harpur's remarkable book Daimonic Reality)
Traditional views of human nature have always allowed for (at
least) two "souls" of the latter kind. In ancient Egypt, for instance, they were
known as the ka and the ba; in China, hun and p'o. One of these souls inhabits the body
and is the equivalent of what, faute de mieux, we call the ego. I will call it the
rational ego to distinguish it from the second soul, variously called, in other cultures,
the shadow-soul, ghost-soul, death-soul, image-soul and dream-soul, for which our culture
has either the word "soul" or else no word, because it is not generally believed
to exist. However, it does exist and can be thought of as an ego, in the sense that it
confers identity and individuality. It enables us, that is - like the rational ego - to
say "I." But it is an ego, not of consciousness, but of the unconscious; not a
waking, but a dream ego; not a rational ego, but an irrational ego. I will call it the
daimonic ego. Like the rational ego, it has a body - not a physical one but a dream-body,
a "subtle" body such as daimons are imagined as having, an "astral"
body as some esoteric doctrines say: in short, a daimonic body.
The combination of rational ego and physical body is not directly analogous to the
daimonic ego and daimonic body because the latter are not, strictly speaking, experienced
as separate. The daimonic body immediately reflects the daimonic ego, and vice versa. It
is an imaginative body, an image, as we know from dreams, when it can wear whatever
clothes it wishes and can even change its shape altogether. Suddenly it can shift from a
position of observing someone to becoming that person - that is, it embodies the way in
which the daimonic ego shifts its point of view, looking out of the eyes of a person whom
the moment before it was watching, or feeling the emotions of someone in whom it was
previously inducing those emotions.
Thus it is this daimonic ego-body, so to speak, which is the
"soul" that can be "lost," the soul that, in the shaman, makes
otherworld journeys. It is this which leaves the physical body in the
"out-of-the-body" experiences or in fashionable "near-death
experiences" when, typically, we "die" on the operating table, only to find
that we are floating above our bodies, able to observe what is going on and to hear what
the surgeons are saying (they are startled to have their words repeated to them later,
when we recover). It is this soul, too, which can be seen by us, or others, in those cases
of "bilocation" when our doppelgängers (doubles) appear mysteriously. It is
this soul which, in Christian mystics, ascends towards the Godhead, sparking the debate as
to whether it remains intact during mystical union (as a sense of identity) or whether it
is, finally, dissolved in, or subsumed by, God.
The daimonic and rational egos are not as separate as, for the sake of convenience, I have
made them out to be. They constantly flow into each other, just as our waking lives and
dream lives influence each other. The daimonic ego can at any time dispossess
consciousness of its rational ego as, for instance, when we are absorbed in some
imaginative activity or when we are seized by a visionary experience. Conversely, the
rational ego can traduce the daimonic, carrying over into dreams and visions those
"daylight" attitudes which are wholly inappropriate to the twilight world of the
daimons. Naturally, the rational ego is often frightened by the irrational images it
encounters there. It tries to run away or lash out - only to find that it cannot move,
because such literal muscular actions have no power to move the daimonic body.
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