Further on daimons (from Twitter)
Oct. 21st, 2014 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
endymions_bowerGiving further thought to the issue of daimons in the Gods' series.
We could say that the daimons just are a God's soul(s). Because Gods exist prior to Soul, produce Soul rather than participating it, they don't "have" a soul in the same sense we do. When we have a psychical encounter with a God, that is, an encounter in the space of our soul, the figure I encounter is probably a daimon, but the entire encounter takes place within the God as source of the entire psychical realm, me and the daimon alike.
The doctrine concerning daimons is not, I think, about separating us from the Gods, but about understanding how the Gods are totally present to the worshiper in the way and the place the worshiper comes to them. So instead of positing that each person experiences some sliver of the God, each person perhaps experiences a total daimon of that God. And that daimon can be shared to the degree that practices can be shared among individuals and over time.
[@DamianChavezArt in reply to “The higher class of daimon creates long cycles, with few peaks and valleys, whereas the lower create dramatic swings of fortune.” (Here)]
@DamianChavezArt: Fortune’s wheel as the stars, circuit of heaven? I tend to see it as "climatological" and opportunistic, rather than deterministic.
There are so many factors to take into account when dealing with the divine activities on this plane, everything ramifies. This is why I was more than happy to only take things as far as the end of the intellective order in my dissertation. All of the structures the Gods have created through their activities on higher planes are active here, including daimons and so forth, but in addition the Gods themselves are also active here in further direct hypostases. So it's all very complicated!
@DamianChavezArt: Perhaps some of the complication results from superfluity on our part, specifically redundancy of terms?
Not really, because there is a valid distinction, for example, between a psychical God and divine psyche.
@DamianChavezArt: Might some daimons also be hypostases? I wonder about the *autonomy* of daimons.
If we take "daimon" in the broad, generic sense, then I guess angels would be more likely to exhibit hypostatic structure. (That is, taking angeloi as a species of daimon, as Platonists sometimes do.) The hypostases are the basic infrastructure of Being; in a sense this infrastructure might be "made of" daimons.
As for autonomy, I think that given the notoriously heterogeneous nature of the genus of daimons, their autonomy varies widely. The autonomy they have, moreover, is not the autonomy of Gods, but ontic autonomy, which has something privative to it.
There is a sense in which daimons are Gods too, for Proclus. Daimons arrive at the tail end of the 1st Hypothesis of the Parmenides according to Proclus, so technically are supra-essentials. Damascius seems to reject this, though.
@DamianChavezArt: Eros as great Daimon of Aphrodite. The Paredrae as 'damonic' Gods...like Dike for Zeus?
These are all generally considered Gods, and not daimons. There is the one passage from Plato about Eros as a daimon, but this is taken by later Platonists as having a narrow reference. Proclus specifically mentions Dikê and Eros as Gods, in any case.
More broadly, I think that it would be safe to say that we do not generally know the names of daimons in the ancient sense. They are generally either attached to a deity, or to a place or something else by which we may designate them.
@DamianChavezArt: When Sallustius says "spirits of punishment" and appeasement with rites, this is for non-autonomous variety?
Probably.
@DamianChavezArt: Do all proceed from the higher Series, or might any be "opposed" to something like 'Reversion'? In other words 'Perversion'?
I would say that none are, in your term "perverse", though Porphyry would probably go there. However, some daimons are not likely to be helpful in reversion because they are so embroiled with us on this plane. This is how I read Porphyry on the "maleficent" daimons, filtering his rhetoric for substance. It is not that these daimons do not proceed from the higher, but they are more engaged in fleshing out the material plane. Even Porphyry admits that they bestow benefits sometimes, though he sees these benefits as shallow and worldly. In my paper for the conference, I argue that we corrupt these daimons as much as they corrupt us.
We could say that the daimons just are a God's soul(s). Because Gods exist prior to Soul, produce Soul rather than participating it, they don't "have" a soul in the same sense we do. When we have a psychical encounter with a God, that is, an encounter in the space of our soul, the figure I encounter is probably a daimon, but the entire encounter takes place within the God as source of the entire psychical realm, me and the daimon alike.
The doctrine concerning daimons is not, I think, about separating us from the Gods, but about understanding how the Gods are totally present to the worshiper in the way and the place the worshiper comes to them. So instead of positing that each person experiences some sliver of the God, each person perhaps experiences a total daimon of that God. And that daimon can be shared to the degree that practices can be shared among individuals and over time.
[@DamianChavezArt in reply to “The higher class of daimon creates long cycles, with few peaks and valleys, whereas the lower create dramatic swings of fortune.” (Here)]
@DamianChavezArt: Fortune’s wheel as the stars, circuit of heaven? I tend to see it as "climatological" and opportunistic, rather than deterministic.
There are so many factors to take into account when dealing with the divine activities on this plane, everything ramifies. This is why I was more than happy to only take things as far as the end of the intellective order in my dissertation. All of the structures the Gods have created through their activities on higher planes are active here, including daimons and so forth, but in addition the Gods themselves are also active here in further direct hypostases. So it's all very complicated!
@DamianChavezArt: Perhaps some of the complication results from superfluity on our part, specifically redundancy of terms?
Not really, because there is a valid distinction, for example, between a psychical God and divine psyche.
@DamianChavezArt: Might some daimons also be hypostases? I wonder about the *autonomy* of daimons.
If we take "daimon" in the broad, generic sense, then I guess angels would be more likely to exhibit hypostatic structure. (That is, taking angeloi as a species of daimon, as Platonists sometimes do.) The hypostases are the basic infrastructure of Being; in a sense this infrastructure might be "made of" daimons.
As for autonomy, I think that given the notoriously heterogeneous nature of the genus of daimons, their autonomy varies widely. The autonomy they have, moreover, is not the autonomy of Gods, but ontic autonomy, which has something privative to it.
There is a sense in which daimons are Gods too, for Proclus. Daimons arrive at the tail end of the 1st Hypothesis of the Parmenides according to Proclus, so technically are supra-essentials. Damascius seems to reject this, though.
@DamianChavezArt: Eros as great Daimon of Aphrodite. The Paredrae as 'damonic' Gods...like Dike for Zeus?
These are all generally considered Gods, and not daimons. There is the one passage from Plato about Eros as a daimon, but this is taken by later Platonists as having a narrow reference. Proclus specifically mentions Dikê and Eros as Gods, in any case.
More broadly, I think that it would be safe to say that we do not generally know the names of daimons in the ancient sense. They are generally either attached to a deity, or to a place or something else by which we may designate them.
@DamianChavezArt: When Sallustius says "spirits of punishment" and appeasement with rites, this is for non-autonomous variety?
Probably.
@DamianChavezArt: Do all proceed from the higher Series, or might any be "opposed" to something like 'Reversion'? In other words 'Perversion'?
I would say that none are, in your term "perverse", though Porphyry would probably go there. However, some daimons are not likely to be helpful in reversion because they are so embroiled with us on this plane. This is how I read Porphyry on the "maleficent" daimons, filtering his rhetoric for substance. It is not that these daimons do not proceed from the higher, but they are more engaged in fleshing out the material plane. Even Porphyry admits that they bestow benefits sometimes, though he sees these benefits as shallow and worldly. In my paper for the conference, I argue that we corrupt these daimons as much as they corrupt us.
