Plutarch Iamblichus And Personal Daimons

The original sense of “demon”, from the time of Homer, was a benevolent being. Homer even uses the word theos, which can be translated as Gods, to describe the daimons. In ancient Greece, daimons were believed to be beings that were different from the gods. Daimons dealt with fate and each person had a daimon that guided them through life; helping them make the right decisions. A daimon is the Christian equivalent to a guardian angel. The Greek historian Hesiod categorized daimons as human that lived through the Golden Age and have died. Their purpose was to increase justice on earth. The categories of daimons include, angels, heroes, and souls of the dead. This classification is then divided into the lower and high orders and there was a …show more content…
In the works by Plutarch, Iamblichus, and Apuleius, they all deal with the nature of daimons. There are some similarities between the three works, but the way they interpret the function and manifestation of daimons differs.
The similarities between De Mysteriis by Iamblichus, De Genio Socratis by Plutarch, and De Deo Socratis by Apuleius is that they all deal with the personal daimon. The personal daimon was a daimon that was assigned to someone a birth and guided them to make the right decision. The great philosopher Socrates was believed to have a personal daimon that would guide through the use of a sign. His sign was a sneeze, his own or from another person. Plutarch describes the sign as “when another sneezed at his right, whether behind or in front, he proceeded to act, but if at his left, desisted”(Plutarch 2). …show more content…
He defines daimons as “a class of animals, rational in nature, subject to emotion, airy in body, and eternal in time, Of these five factors which I have listed, the first three are the very ones we possess, the fourth their own, and the last they share with the immortal gods”(Apuleius). Daimons are capable of having the same emotions and feelings of humans and have the same powers of gods while still having characteristics that are only found in daimons. As for the other two works, they do not give daimons these characteristics. Iamblichus describes daimons as only having cosmic natures. Their nature extends further into the cosmos and have sway over the assignments tasked to them. Apuleius goes even further and claims that the human soul is a kind of daimon. The soul of a dead human is considered a daimon because they have guardianship over its descendants. Those who have done misdeed in their life will become daimons that have no guidance and are bound to purposeless wandering