Daemon (classical mythology)
"Dæmon" is the Latin version of the Greek "δαίμων" ("godlike power, fate, god"). It is a word used to refer to the daemons of ancient Greek religion and mythology, as well as later Hellenistic religion and philosophy.
Etymology
"Daemon" is the Latin version of the Greek daimōn.
Description
Daemons are benevolent or benign nature spirits, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature or the deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium). Walter Burkert suggests that unlike the Christian use of demon in a strictly malignant sense, "[a] general belief in spirits is not expressed by the term daimon until the 5th century when a doctor asserts that neurotic women and girls can be driven to suicide by imaginary apparitions, ‘evil daimones’. How far this is an expression of widespread popular superstition is not easy to judge. On the basis of Hesiod's myth, however, what did gain currency was for great and powerful figures to be honoured after death as a daimon…" Daimon is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Burkert, but rather a non-personified "peculiar mode" of their activity.
Daemon (novel series)
Daemon and FreedomTM comprise a two-part novel by the author Daniel Suarez about a distributed, persistent computer application, The Daemon, that begins to change the real world after the original programmer's death.
Plot
Upon publication of the obituary for Matthew A. Sobol, a brilliant computer programmer and CTO of Cyberstorm Entertainment, a Daemon is activated. Sobol, dying of brain cancer, was fearful for humanity and began to envision a new world order. The Daemon becomes his tool to achieve that vision. The Daemon's first mission is to kill two programmers Joseph Pavlos & Chopra Singh who worked for CyberStorm Entertainment and unknowingly helped in the creation of the Daemon.
The program secretly takes over hundreds of companies and provides financial and computing resources for recruiting real world agents and creating AutoM8s (computer controlled driverless cars, used as transport and occasionally as weapons), Razorbacks (sword-wielding robotic riderless motorcycles, specifically designed as weapons) and other devices. The Daemon also creates a secondary online web service, hidden from the general public, dubbed the Darknet, which allows Daemon operatives to exchange information freely.
Dæmon (His Dark Materials)
A dæmon /ˈdiːmən/ is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantaneously, to become any creature, real or imaginary. During their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost always of different genders.
Although dæmons mimic the appearance and behaviour of the animals they resemble perfectly, dæmons are not true animals, and humans, other dæmons, and true animals are able to distinguish them on sight. The faculty or quality that makes this possible is not explained in the books, but it is demonstrated extensively, and is reliable enough to allow humans to distinguish a bird-shaped dæmon within a flock of birds in flight.
Daemon (Warhammer)
In the Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 fictional universes, the Daemons are malevolent spirits born out of the destructive power called Chaos. The daemons found in both universes are very similar, although the precise natures of their creation and existence vary slightly.
Daemons in Warhammer Fantasy
Daemons in the Warhammer Fantasy world hail from the dread Hell-like place called the "Realm of Chaos", an alternate dimension, which has giant breaches into the material plane at both poles of the world. They are used in both Warhammer and Warhammer 40000. This realm is composed of pure magical energy; this energy flows into the world through collapsed gates of the Old Ones that, by collapsing, caused the breaches into the Realm of Chaos, and powers the spells cast by wizards and sorcerers. This magical energy is affected by the subconscious minds of men; their thoughts, fears and wishes become manifest as living creatures in the Realm of Chaos. According to the Daemons of Chaos Army Book, there can also be other, smaller "rifts" in the mortal world, caused by excesses of the emotions and magic that fuel Demonic life. The smaller the rift, the fewer and lower power the demons that pop out of it will be. Furies, winged monsters that are not linked with any god, come first, followed by small demons like Nurglings, followed by stronger and stronger demons. These demons will stay in the mortal realm until all of the magic that created them is used up. In the realms of the Empire this is usually less than a week, but demons can evidently manifest indefinitely in the warpstone-encrusted soil of the great northern Chaos wastes. This is one reason why the expansion of the Chaos Wastes that heralds an incursion of Chaos into the civilised world is very important to the success of the incursion.
Mythology
Mythology is a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular sacred, religious or cultural tradition of a group of people. Myths are a collection of stories told to explain nature, history, and customs–or the study of such myths.
As a collection of such stories, mythology is a vital feature of every culture. Various origins for myths have been proposed, ranging from personification of nature, personification of natural phenomena to truthful or hyperbolic accounts of historical events, to explanations of existing ritual. Although the term is complicated by its implicit condescension, mythologizing is not just an ancient or primitive practice, as shown by contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A culture's collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experience, behavioural models, and moral and practical lessons.
The study of myth dates back to antiquity. Rival classifications of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato's Phaedrus, and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists and revived by Renaissance mythographers. Nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science (E. B. Tylor), a "disease of language" (Max Müller), or a misinterpretation of magical ritual (James Frazer).
Mythology (Eloy Fritsch album)
Mythology is an album by new age artist Eloy Fritsch. It is generally viewed as one of his stronger solo works. As with Apocalypse, Fritsch plays a variety of keyboard instruments on the album. Featured in the inside photograph are a Modular Synthesizer System-700, Minimoog Synthesizer and electronic keyboards. Mythology deals with diverse myths of the world. So several cultures were visited, including those of Brazil, the Aztecs, the Incas, Assyria, Greek, Hindu, Egyptian, Nordic, Atlantis, the Romans, the Chinese, and so on. All electronic compositions on the album were based in his own interpretation of the characteristics of each mythological element chosen for this work.
Track listing
External links
Mythology (fiction)
Mythology (also referred to as a mythos) is the term often used by fans of a particular book, television, or movie series to describe a program's overarching plot and often mysterious backstory. Daniel Peretti argues that mythology "is often used emically to refer to back story". The term was pioneered by the American science fiction series The X-Files, which first aired in 1993. With this being said, many other forms of media have some sort of mythology, and the term is often applied in regards to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost and the Batman and Superman comics, among others.
References
See also
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