devils and demons
Publié le 22/02/2012
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EVIL. The two words mean about the same thing,
though demons may be subordinate to a principal
devil, or to SATAN, the chief of the forces of
evil in Western religion. Most traditional religions
have given a place to individual powers that work
wickedness in the world, and usually are related
to a principle of cosmic evil. These entities may
be called demons or devils. For simple believers
they may help explain many unfortunate things:
sickness, madness, war, disasters. They may even
have a positive role as an agent of the divine to
punish the wicked. The more sophisticated may
see demons as symbolic of important truths of
FAITH: that evil exists despite a good GOD or universe,
that it affl icts and can even possess humans
yet also comes from outside them, and fi nally that
evil is a force of cosmic dimensions—perhaps part
of a "war in HEAVEN" of God and his ANGELS against
Satan and his demons—and so the defeat of evil
requires divine action on a large scale. At the same
time, the actual history and meaning of demons
in various religions says much about them. Sometimes
the gods of one era or religion are turned
into the demons of another that supersedes it.
In ancient HINDUISM, for example, the asuras,
demonic deities, were originally good gods but
became malevolent beings to the next race of gods,
gods like INDRA and VISHNU. The asuras are in constant
confl ict with those gods, but the latter always
outwit them in the end. Another class of demons
are the raksasas, like Ravana in the great EPIC, the
Ramayana (see RAMA, RAMAYANA); they delight in
causing misery to human beings.
Many of these Hindu entities were borrowed
by BUDDHISM. The realm of the asuras is one of the
six places of rebirth, for those overly dominated by
anger, violence, and stupidity; those condemned
to the worst of those six places, the HELLS, are tormented
by raksasas-like demons. But the most
important Buddhist demon is MARA, who tempted
the BUDDHA on the night of his enlightenment. Signifi
cantly, Mara is not so much consumed by evil
will as blinded by ignorance, unable to see that
the Buddha's enlightenment could be of benefi t to
him too, though the Buddha is "teacher of gods and men" alike. For in Buddhism as in Hinduism
the ultimate source of evil is not in the will but in
ignorance of the true nature of reality.
The demons in Western religion, like the Western
Satan, are beings in rebellion against God out of
evil will, though even here ambiguities may occur.
An early example is Satan in the Hebrew scriptures'
book of JOB. Here Satan appears as an adversary to
God in the sense of a prosecutor whose function is
to present an opposing point of view to the Lord,
in this case that Job should be unjustly affl icted
to test him. Other demonic fi gures, probably infl uenced
by Babylonian examples, like Leviathan and
Rahab representing chaos, Lilith the demoness of
night, and Azazel the wilderness, also appear but
only on the margins of the divine story (see MESOPOTAMIAN
RELIGIONS).
However, by the sixth century B.C.E. and probably
under the infl uence of ZOROASTRIANISM from
Persia, JUDAISM became much more prone to see the
world in terms of an eternal cosmic war between
two opposing forces of good and evil, led by two
personal commanders, God and Satan.
Zoroastrianism believed the universe was a
battleground between the high god Ahura Mazda
and the hosts of darkness under Angra Manyu
or Ahriman. Hellenistic Judaism likewise saw
Satan as the adversary of God from the beginning
and the world infested by demons under his
rule. This is the world view carried over into the
NEW TESTAMENT and CHRISTIANITY. In mainstream
rabbinical Judaism after the Diaspora of the Jews
throughout the world, belief in Satan and demons
became less of a central force and today has
relatively little importance, although it lives on
in Jewish folklore about Lilith, about magicians
who had dealings with demons, about dibbuks or
evil spirits, and about golems or artifi cial humans
created by sorcery.
Christianity in its traditional form perceived
Satan as a fallen angel in age-long rebellion against
God, who corrupted ADAM and EVE in the Garden
of Eden and thus brought SIN to the world, and
who continues to twist toward himself whom he
can out of his hatred for the good. Cast down from
heaven, Satan and his minions landed in hell at
the center of the Earth. There they not only plot
their war against God waged through tempting
humans on the world's surface, but also receive
the souls of those condemned to eternal torture
and gleefully impose that punishment. This story
is familiar to readers of Dante and Milton. In it
evil in the world can be attributed both to perverse
human will and human entanglement in the cosmic
rebellion of Satan and his angels. The height
of Christian demonism was the 15th to 17th centuries,
the period of the notorious witch-persecutions
and of related elaborate beliefs in the powers
of demons, their pacts with humans, their signs
and methods of operating (see WITCHCRAFT). But
the horrible injustice and cruelty to which such
beliefs could lead produced a reaction, and they
went into decline with the 18th century and the
"Age of Reason."
Since then, liberal theologians and psychologists
have taken demons as allegorical personifi cations
of the evil within the human consciousness.
In conservative Christian circles belief in the Devil
and his demons often remains strong; much that is
bad is attributed to them, and there are RITUALS and
services for exorcism or the driving of demons out
of persons and places.
In ISLAM, the opponent of God is Iblis or Shaitan,
who fi rst disobeyed God by refusing to bow
before his greatest creation, human beings. While
not always totally evil, he and his jinns (genies;
spirits) and shaitans (demons) are ill-disposed
toward humans and keep trying to lead them
astray. Demon-doctrine is not a central feature of
Islamic thought, but acknowledgment of the reality
of angels and demons is required of the orthodox,
and there is a large store of popular belief and
folklore about the jinns and shaitans.
Though not as strong as it once was, belief
in devils and demons remains alive in the modern
world. Some have contended that the horrors
of the 20th century, such as the demonic Nazi
regime, show that it is not outdated to speculate
about the presence of such malevolent forces. It
is as though some intelligent energy of more than
merely human wickedness possessed a brief hold
on an entire nation at that time, and has shown its hand in other places from Cambodia to Bosnia as
well. However that may be, devils and demons live
on as parts of many religious worldviews.
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