Eponymous Daimons (from Twitter)
Oct. 9th, 2014 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endymions_bowerMy recent project on heroes and temporality has given me a better insight into the phenomenon of eponymous daimons, I believe. Eponymous daimons are daimons in a God's series who operate in the God's name. All three of the "superior genera", as they are called—angels, daimons, and heroes—are essentially divine souls operating as temporal structuring principles. The daimons are the most heterogeneous class, and it's common to just call all three daimons of different sorts.
In the case of daimons eponymous with a God, I think that they are generated by the repetition of ritual in time. The elements that hold together a ritual practice in time, that lend it identity, give flesh, as it were, to the corresponding daimon.
This identity has diverse levels with different time spans, from the life of a single worshiper to the life of a liturgy's formal elements. However many of these levels one can tap into is the daimonic thickness, so to speak, of the practice. To have a daimonically "thicker" practice has numerous advantages, I'd say, but also certain potential drawbacks. The advantages, of course, are the intimacy of the contact with the God and its adaptation to one's self and circumstances.
The potential disadvantages come from the nature of daimons, at least this is the account one gets from, e.g., Porphyry. There's a degree of bias in Porphyry's account, because he favors a very austere, contemplative practice. Still, there's an aspect of it that's logical. Daimons, unlike entities "higher up", have pneumatic substance, a spiritual body as it were. Porphyry uses the relationship to the pneumatic substance to distinguish between a higher and lower class of daimon. The higher class, which he basically identifies with angels, dominates its pneumatic substance, while the lower is dominated by it.
Now obviously this binary structure shows that Porphyry has a problematic understanding of embodiment in general. But where I think he is correct is in pointing out that a certain type of daimon takes on the character of its environment. And so the manner in which we feed and educate the daimons immanent to our practice determines the kind of relationship to the Gods.
This could help to explain why different people have such different experiences of the same Gods. One person will have a relationship with a lot of drama, another much less. We could just say that these people are different. The Gods accommodate this difference, relate to them differently. But perhaps it’s more perspicuous to say that the difference in their practices has cultivated different types of daimons. These daimons belong equally to the God in question, but may have very different styles and demands.
To bring this doctrine back into discussion may be unwelcome in some ways, increasing the sense of relativism. It makes it harder, in principle, for even experienced priests and diviners to say "God X works like this, and not like that." People may also legitimately resist the attempt to place anyone "between" themselves and their Gods. It's a doctrine older than the Neoplatonists, at any rate, because it's all through Plutarch (1st c. CE).
In a way, these daimons are like statues of the Gods. We craft them with the correct attributes so that the God is identifiable to us. With the recognition of the God in the statue, s/he begins to live there, acquiring a place in time and space. This localization is empowering in certain respects, a loss of power in others. What was everywhere and nowhere is now here.
Our localization of the God is in contact with the God him/herself, but perhaps not directly with another's localization. Unless, of course, that connection is explicitly forged, which we do to some degree just by "comparing notes". Again, to link our practice to another's has its better and worse consequences. To expect our practice to look and feel like another's worship of the same God may affect our own relationship to some degree. We crave the validation that comes from having similar experiences, because that makes them objective, real. It also helps in establishing boundaries and norms for practice. But it may also impair our ability to experience a God differently from how they have been in the past.
@bittrotter: More than similar experiences I crave for a greek concept/name equivalent to the sanskit concept of prana pratishta murti.
This sort of procedure was very well known in ancient Egypt, and theurgists writing in Greek do certainly speak of it. Unfortunately there are no surviving comprehensive accounts of the procedure in Greek. In Egyptian this is the "Opening of the Mouth" ceremony. Contemporary Chinese polytheism practices this "opening" of statues as well. I think, though, that the experience of many polytheists living in diaspora is that this is not strictly needed. To be more precise, to have a statue opened by a specialist probably installs the daimon of that practice (lineage, etc.) in it, whereas to "open" a statue gradually by simply, e.g., placing it on one's altar, giving offerings, praying to it, to the degree that it is successful, establishes a new daimonic relationship, with just so many formal characteristics.
(Further, 10/10/14)
Porphyry speaks of the "vehemence", "suddenness", "rapidity" of the action of the lower class of daimons. On the other hand, the operations of the higher class of daimons are slower and more orderly. (De Abst. §39) One can see from this how practices cultivating different daimons could create a very different experience of the Gods involved.
Porphyry also argues that only the lower class of daimons do harm. Where it is argued that harm has occurred through divine wrath, this he attributes wholly to the operation of the lower daimons. "They direct us to supplications and sacrifices to the beneficent Gods, as if they [the Gods themselves] were angry, but they [the lower class of daimons] do these and similar things so as to turn us away from correct conceptions about the Gods and toward themselves” (§40).
Porphyry makes this argument in very inflammatory terms, which sound all too much like later Christian rhetoric about "demons". There is a core, here, though, that can be separated from his rhetoric and possibly be useful in polytheistic practice. What would need to be understood in a more nuanced way, is how daimons operating in this fashion still act on behalf of the Gods themselves.
In Proclus’ later systematic account, the procession of the daimons corresponds to the emergence of the forms of time. So too, already in Porphyry, if we look beyond his polemic, the daimon is a being that essentially measures and patterns time. The higher class of daimon creates long cycles, with few peaks and valleys, whereas the lower create dramatic swings of fortune. This just could be something to keep in mind when people describe a very tempestuous relationship with their Gods, instead of attributing this entirely to the nature of the Gods they worship, or, for that matter, entirely to that person's character.
In the case of daimons eponymous with a God, I think that they are generated by the repetition of ritual in time. The elements that hold together a ritual practice in time, that lend it identity, give flesh, as it were, to the corresponding daimon.
This identity has diverse levels with different time spans, from the life of a single worshiper to the life of a liturgy's formal elements. However many of these levels one can tap into is the daimonic thickness, so to speak, of the practice. To have a daimonically "thicker" practice has numerous advantages, I'd say, but also certain potential drawbacks. The advantages, of course, are the intimacy of the contact with the God and its adaptation to one's self and circumstances.
The potential disadvantages come from the nature of daimons, at least this is the account one gets from, e.g., Porphyry. There's a degree of bias in Porphyry's account, because he favors a very austere, contemplative practice. Still, there's an aspect of it that's logical. Daimons, unlike entities "higher up", have pneumatic substance, a spiritual body as it were. Porphyry uses the relationship to the pneumatic substance to distinguish between a higher and lower class of daimon. The higher class, which he basically identifies with angels, dominates its pneumatic substance, while the lower is dominated by it.
Now obviously this binary structure shows that Porphyry has a problematic understanding of embodiment in general. But where I think he is correct is in pointing out that a certain type of daimon takes on the character of its environment. And so the manner in which we feed and educate the daimons immanent to our practice determines the kind of relationship to the Gods.
This could help to explain why different people have such different experiences of the same Gods. One person will have a relationship with a lot of drama, another much less. We could just say that these people are different. The Gods accommodate this difference, relate to them differently. But perhaps it’s more perspicuous to say that the difference in their practices has cultivated different types of daimons. These daimons belong equally to the God in question, but may have very different styles and demands.
To bring this doctrine back into discussion may be unwelcome in some ways, increasing the sense of relativism. It makes it harder, in principle, for even experienced priests and diviners to say "God X works like this, and not like that." People may also legitimately resist the attempt to place anyone "between" themselves and their Gods. It's a doctrine older than the Neoplatonists, at any rate, because it's all through Plutarch (1st c. CE).
In a way, these daimons are like statues of the Gods. We craft them with the correct attributes so that the God is identifiable to us. With the recognition of the God in the statue, s/he begins to live there, acquiring a place in time and space. This localization is empowering in certain respects, a loss of power in others. What was everywhere and nowhere is now here.
Our localization of the God is in contact with the God him/herself, but perhaps not directly with another's localization. Unless, of course, that connection is explicitly forged, which we do to some degree just by "comparing notes". Again, to link our practice to another's has its better and worse consequences. To expect our practice to look and feel like another's worship of the same God may affect our own relationship to some degree. We crave the validation that comes from having similar experiences, because that makes them objective, real. It also helps in establishing boundaries and norms for practice. But it may also impair our ability to experience a God differently from how they have been in the past.
@bittrotter: More than similar experiences I crave for a greek concept/name equivalent to the sanskit concept of prana pratishta murti.
This sort of procedure was very well known in ancient Egypt, and theurgists writing in Greek do certainly speak of it. Unfortunately there are no surviving comprehensive accounts of the procedure in Greek. In Egyptian this is the "Opening of the Mouth" ceremony. Contemporary Chinese polytheism practices this "opening" of statues as well. I think, though, that the experience of many polytheists living in diaspora is that this is not strictly needed. To be more precise, to have a statue opened by a specialist probably installs the daimon of that practice (lineage, etc.) in it, whereas to "open" a statue gradually by simply, e.g., placing it on one's altar, giving offerings, praying to it, to the degree that it is successful, establishes a new daimonic relationship, with just so many formal characteristics.
(Further, 10/10/14)
Porphyry speaks of the "vehemence", "suddenness", "rapidity" of the action of the lower class of daimons. On the other hand, the operations of the higher class of daimons are slower and more orderly. (De Abst. §39) One can see from this how practices cultivating different daimons could create a very different experience of the Gods involved.
Porphyry also argues that only the lower class of daimons do harm. Where it is argued that harm has occurred through divine wrath, this he attributes wholly to the operation of the lower daimons. "They direct us to supplications and sacrifices to the beneficent Gods, as if they [the Gods themselves] were angry, but they [the lower class of daimons] do these and similar things so as to turn us away from correct conceptions about the Gods and toward themselves” (§40).
Porphyry makes this argument in very inflammatory terms, which sound all too much like later Christian rhetoric about "demons". There is a core, here, though, that can be separated from his rhetoric and possibly be useful in polytheistic practice. What would need to be understood in a more nuanced way, is how daimons operating in this fashion still act on behalf of the Gods themselves.
In Proclus’ later systematic account, the procession of the daimons corresponds to the emergence of the forms of time. So too, already in Porphyry, if we look beyond his polemic, the daimon is a being that essentially measures and patterns time. The higher class of daimon creates long cycles, with few peaks and valleys, whereas the lower create dramatic swings of fortune. This just could be something to keep in mind when people describe a very tempestuous relationship with their Gods, instead of attributing this entirely to the nature of the Gods they worship, or, for that matter, entirely to that person's character.
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Date: 2014-10-10 12:42 am (UTC)khairete
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