Demonology

​Demonology is one of the most misused terms in English, particularly by those relating the phrase to the occult. But what is it?

The terms demonology and demonologist are two of the most misused terms in the world of pseudoscience, and sometimes even within evangelical belief systems centered around modern interpretations of exorcism. A cursory search online reveals several “demonologists” and their work. Some appear in sensationalist photos displaying various wares as though taking on a pseudo-witch hunter role against “the Devil” and “demons,” though they rarely explicitly define what they mean when using these terms. Occasionally, such types appear on television series like Ghost Hunters dictating their practice of “demonology,” yet they have no formal training or education, at least none that is stated. Unfortunately, this is part of the problem. In a society more and more frequently forgetting the mystery and rituals of the old world for modern technology and science, terms like demonologyare more easily manipulated than one such aschemistry. It is not so simple to say “I am a chemist” without an actual background. It would, in fact, be ridiculous. Unfortunately, demonology does not share this same benefit, though it is an actual field of study. Why it has come to such misuse and what it really is are the main issues behind this article, which I’ll use as a springboard into further writings about the connections of “demons” to real-world phenomena and how myth has been used to explain the unknown.

The term demon is today almost totally devoid of its original Greek meaning, which in itself is not so simple, suggesting at times a sort of inner presence that must be controlled by reason, destiny, or even divine power (Zijderveld 2008). As a further complication the term δαiµων (daimon) occurs in Greek literature as both a noun and a verb (Gall 1999) and was later shifted to a position among things considered “evil” by Christianity as the religion struggled to gain ground over paganism. Christianity thus relegated various creatures and old gods to the position of “demons,” while contradictorily accepting certain practices as part of the faith, such as the practice of visiting and venerating spaces of the dead (Viola and Barna 2012). This, like the movement of the celebration of Easter and some of its components over a previously pagan holiday (Leonhard 2006), was a natural progression to eliminate attachments to old religions and practices, which were so ancient and familiar to our forefathers that their elimination was nearly impossible in certain cases (Spalding 1880). With any new religion that achieved dominance, the replacement of “the old” was something practiced for centuries, and the process was not unique to Christianity. For the West, a “demon” became a thing of evil, attached to the “Devil,” which functions largely as a conglomeration of various old gods and mythical beings and leads to a discussion of demonology.

“Demonology” first came into usage in the English language in roughly the mid-1500s, though it may have originated in conjunction with developments in what is known as the “witch craze.” The witch craze stemmed from a variety of factors, including political upheaval through the end of feudalism, religious conflicts against various heresies, and social collapse through disease, urbanization, and the breakdown of the family from effects of the Black Death (Kieckhefer 1976). Some of this frustrated energy of the Europeans was directed toward the symbolic entity of the “witch.” This led to the grand delusion of the existence of witchcraft and the subsequent mania that caused the torture and death of hundreds of thousands of people, mainly women (Ben-Yehuda 1980), starting in the late 1400s with the publication of the infamousMalleus Maleficarum (Hammer of the Witches,Hexenhammer in German), which came almost 100 years after Pope John XXII’s proclamation against witches in 1326 (Ben-Yehuda 1980).

Taken from Malleus Maleficarum.

Accusations of witchcraft were often established through “proof” of pacts with the Devil and maleficia, or any such events that caused an individual or their property harm but had no immediate explanation. Something as simple as pink eye, for example, was interpreted as a sign that a witch was at work in the community, as was a cow unable to provide milk or a sudden hailstorm. Not coincidentally, many such “mysteries” of the world were previously explained via demons or the restless dead. The term demonology, specifically, was originally in reference to powers through demons (minions of the Devil) (Thorndike 1925) but was eventually closely linked to witches. Most writings from roughly 1580 until the late 1600s, including various treatises, anecdotes, trial reports, and personal experiences of the so-called “demonologists,” became attached to the idea of witches and pacts with the Devil. In 1597, for example, King James VI of Scotland published hisDaemonologie, in which he refers to “the fearful abounding at this time in this country, of these detestable slaves of the Devil, the Witches or Enchanters” (translated into modern English by the author).

Such attachments of the witch to the Devil (and thus demonology to the witch) were rampant, as the witch craze reached epic proportions and was used by the Inquisition as a tool for combating various heresies and gaining more control for the Church (Russell 1984). The prestige of the demonologists through this tactic assured the popularity of their writings and the spread of belief in witchcraft itself, an entirely contrived concept. It is beyond my scope here to detail the entire history of the witch craze. It is enough to say that demonology at this time very rarely had anything to do with demons unless it related to the Devil, something that in itself was never very clearly defined. Demonology was specifically a field of the “study” of witches, perhaps to be rendered for our purposes as “witchology,” as Rossell Hope Robbins once suggested, and the focus of actual demonologists in the 1500s and following was primarily on pacts with the Devil and the women under his power (Russell 2007). Women were generally the focus of the witch craze because of an assumed belief that they were more prone to having “bestial appetites” and, as some witch hunters believed, easily fell under the Devil’s sway because “there is nothing which makes a woman more subject and loyal to a man than he should abuse her body” (Weber 1992). This is another matter I will not comment on further. I wholly remove myself from this antiquated thinking.

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