What are Demons?

[redwolfshadow]

That sounds like an incredibly stupid question, but I mean: How do you define demons? Do you believe they exist? Do you have any personal experiences? Defined as "satan's henchmen" I do NOT believe in demons, because I do not believe in Satan.  

[Cunning Witch Angus]

I have always defined them as malicious spirits. Mostly I pay attention to the demons that are in the Goetia and other theological demons. I have always seen them as malicious spirits of any type not specifically Judeo-Christian.  

[redwolfshadow]

I have heard that definition before. Defined in that way, I do believe in them as I believe in spirits. But do theses violent spirits have any God like power, that would make them more dangerous than other spirits?  

[Underworld Priestess]

I believe that there may be some form of a hell for the malicious people of the world. That is where demons may stem from, because I feel that their capabilities go beyond those of a spirit.  

[Cunning Witch Angus]

I wouldn't call them "god-like". They are extremely intelligent (in most cases) and therefore cunning. Depends on the spirit really and how pissed it is.  

[redwolfshadow]

By "god like" I meant the ability to physically harm someone or force their actions (Ex. cause someone to kill themselves or someone else). I believe "Average" spirits cannot cause physical harm, but an do their share of mental scarring.  

[Cunning Witch Angus]

redwolfshadow

By "god like" I meant the ability to physically harm someone or force their actions (Ex. cause someone to kill themselves or someone else). I believe "Average" spirits cannot cause physical harm, but an do their share of mental scarring.

I believe that there are malicious entities that can physically harm someone. I do not, however, believe that they can cause someone to kill themselves save through psychological terror.  

[Oborosen]

There is a Faith that defines demons as greatly different from devils. Devils are place in the ranks of lower ring spirits.
Demons on the other hand are far and a world apart from them.

Demons are hated, largely in part to the Vatican's efforts in the earliest of its years. When pope Innocent the 2nd said (quote)

It is my rite through the words of the one who is he, our father. That I declare all that is not of heaven's realm will be cast down in our eyes. To never take a place above sin.

However it is believed that they are in fact the latest children of Eden.
That after the garden was left bare a new being found its way there. A Goddess named Acenia, who used the elements of Eden to create a Guardian before the first war.

That's about as much as I can say at this point.  

[Rustig]

Oborosen

There is a Faith that defines demons as greatly different from devils. Devils are place in the ranks of lower ring spirits.
Demons on the other hand are far and a world apart from them.

Which faith is this?

Oborosen

However it is believed that they are in fact the latest children of Eden.
That after the garden was left bare a new being found its way there. A Goddess named Acenia, who used the elements of Eden to create a Guardian before the first war.

Believed by whom, and where did you come across this information? Didn't Eden already have a guardian, the dude with the flaming sword?  

[Underworld Priestess]

I think that there are malicious entities in the world that wish as harm. Whether or not they want to be called demons or something else I do not know.  

[Nymshi]

I think I have to agree with the definitions given here. Because, at least so far, I have yet to encounter a demon that is not malicious in intent. However...I'd go further and describe them as beings of absence. Having been in the presence of one before, that's really the only way to describe him. An absence. A void. No light, no energy, no nothing. Like a black hole that brings all around it to oblivion.  

[J. Dragonhater]

I encountered something I call "nature demons". Out in the desert of nevada there were animal like things that weren't much more than globs of negative energy. They always gave me bad feelings and the sense of some sort of pressence but they weren't intellegent per se, just animal like, and they weren't corporal. Just thinking about them now is giving me the creeps actually.

I see a demon as any evil/malicious non-human spiritual or incorporeal entity with at least some sort of intellegence and purpose.  

[Chieftain Twilight]

i prefer the Shinto definition, but edited to not be dualistic in terms of Good and Evil. a Demon is a Spirit who is unclean or impure. that is to say, is based on Darkness or Coldness, is unsanitary, perhaps drinks or bathes in blood, kills clean or benevolent things, is malicious or malevolent, etcetera.  

[xxravenohayexx]

Well, that depends on who you ask and what form of the work "daemon" you are using. Demon often refers to Judeo-Christian spirits that reside under the rule of the Prince of Darkness, the Spoiler of Virgins, yada yada yada. But in the Grecian concept, a Daemon is not much more then a spirit in its own sense. The New- Age Archetypal Daemon is a creature made of pure energy, and resides in many places, the most common being a realm of void like stature.  

[TheyCallMeJustiursa]

The definition you get for a Demon depends on who you ask. From my own knowledge in general all Demons tend to be malicious and at the least aligned with Evil. However this can vary from being mischievous to out right vehicles for mass destruction and violence. The form of that can vary as well from the Sucubus of Sumer who would cause infertility and and kill men, assumin I havent missed something, to your Christian Demon who just wants to cause Mayhem. I myself tend to believe they exist but in a more of a negative vibe, negative energy. I dont think actual real demons walk among us, except as manifestations of negativity and such.