Demonology - what is a demonology

Are you looking for information about the demons inhabiting our world? You've found the right place, in this category you will find a lot of information about popular and unknown demons functioning in history and the present.

In this particular article I want to focus on describing demonology itself, history, where it comes from, what religions it concerns and whether it is now common knowledge.

What is demonology?

Simply put, demonology is a science about demons and beliefs about them. What a being is considered a demon is very arbitrary, but in principle it is not divided by demons because of their physical form. For example, ghosts like a poltergaist can be considered a full-fledged demon, such as Alloces, one of the demons inhabiting hell according to Solomon.

Demons are not beings belonging to religion, although beings in Christian or Catholic demonology do not have to be in pagan or Sumerian demonology.

If you were careful in history lessons, you probably associate the beliefs of pagans, no matter who we recognize them. In fact, the entire ancient world can be considered pagan, according to a broad definition. The term paganism appeared in the Roman Empire and referred to people who believed in more than one God by implication, Christian God. In order not to go deeper into this topic, pagans could be called Vikings, Slavs, Greeks, etc.

These people believed that the world is ruled by ghosts, which in our world often take a material form. Every element from water to fire had a separate God guardian and nothing happened without his knowledge, often they were not even Gods but ghosts.

Most demons are at least malicious and often unfavorable to people. They are supposed to cause supernatural phenomena, but also more mundane pranks like storing objects or contaminating food.

Few people realize that some Catholic holidays are actually matched pagan holidays. When Christianity was born in Europe, it was persecuted, but at some point it began to gain followers. After reaching a sufficiently strong position, he expanded his circle to Slavic pagans , the Middle East, etc. Those who led the process realized that ordering a sudden change of religion would be very difficult , so they adapted the holidays to those pagan ones. The result is a Christmas holiday falling on the day of the birth of Mithra, the sun god.

Many demons are also the result of taking over the beliefs of pagans, which most Catholics have no idea about. This type of treatment was also present in other countries and religions, so Christianity is quoted here as an example.

The spiritual world is inseparable from virtually any religion, regardless of whether we are talking about African tribes, Korean beliefs or Judaism.

Types of Demons

You already know what demonology means and in what aspects it should be considered. Let us now discuss briefly what types of demons you can encounter.

According to wikipedia, demons are classified as ghosts and in fact in most cases it is, although not always. The very existence of demons would not make much sense if it wasn't for people. One could say that demons without people could not exist because their life would have no purpose.

Demons are fallen angels, among them Lucifer, the most powerful of demons in Christian demonology, demons hostile to people like succubs, familiar familiars most often in the form of animals, currently very popular in games as player's helpers and ghosts wanting revenge and creatures that are part of the cult .

The concept of the human soul is not considered in the fields of demonology. The demon is not a human being, although it could have been vampires or drowners, for example . Demons are credited with natural disasters, wars, setbacks, diseases and other bad things that happen to people.

Demonology in various religions

I have written a lot about the Christian religion, probably due to the fact that I was raised in this faith, but as I mentioned demonology can not be reduced to one belief system. Nevertheless, since I started with this religion I will finish the topic of demons in Christianity.

The Holy Book of Christians is the Bible , which includes the Old and New Testaments. It is the foundation for Christian demonology, but there are other Christian writings recognized by the church as official.

Perhaps the most famous demon in the whole world is Lucifer. Fallen angel one of the first created by God and very close to him. He was to be jealous of people, which was a direct cause of the conflict with God, which ended in failure and being sent to hell.

Nobody wants to get to Lucifer's house, this is one of the basic scare things for people living in sin.

An absolute violation of the church's rules may seem to be an attempt to summon a demon, but instructions were found, written by people respected in the church, which described the ritual of summoning various demons in the name of God. The authority of those people is now being questioned and most Catholics do not accept these texts as Christian. They contained not only instructions to summon the demon, but also the hierarchical system that reigned in hell.

Times are changing and today a large group of Christians do not recognize demons except those in the Scriptures.

Another religion worth mentioning is Islam, which has no hierarchy of demons, and these are very interesting. Islam has a distinction between demons and jinn, and most of them have physical form.

Many demons overlap with other beliefs, such as Succubus is Si'lah , such relationships are nothing special.

In Judaism you will not meet demonology, although there are legends about vampires and other creatures that can be safely called demons.

A much broader topic is Asian religions with a large role of India. This topic deserves a separate article, so I will limit myself to the most important issues.

Asia is dominated by Buddhism and Hinduism and both sets of beliefs are full of demons. Buddhism is built on the concept of hell, in which, like in Christianity, demons torment damned souls. Demons appear in our world and urge people to sin. Mara is such a Lucifer, ruling the underground world, he is credited with illness, or serves as an explanation for mental illness. Asia is a large continent and Buddhism took various forms in different countries.

Buddhist demonology is very broad and describes many demons.

Summary

The definition of demonology is simple and comes down to one sentence, but people who want to delve into this topic will need a lot of time to learn its secrets. Signs and seals of demons are waiting for you, summoning rituals and getting to know each demon separately so as not to summon evil.

I will try to create an encyclopedia of demons and invite you to familiarize yourself with everyone!