thumb|Two [[Minoan Genius performing a libation over an altar]]
In ancient Greek religion, daimon (), also spelled daemon, often referred to lesser deities, but could more broadly signify "the experience of divine power". The term's etymology is unclear, though it is often thought to originate from (, ). The Iliad describes the gods congregated atop Olympus as daimones; the term is employed by a Homeric character when they are unaware which deity is the agent of an event. In Hesiod's Works and Days it describes the souls of people from the Golden Age, who acted as guardians (, ), leading to its denoting a spirit who positively or negatively influences an individual's life.
In Plato's Symposium, daimones are beings who sit somewhere between gods and men, an idea embraced by later authors. For Christian thinkers, the daimonic was associated with non-rational divine inspiration and, due to its lack of predictability, was considered evil. For modern non-Christian thinkers, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the daimon remained neutral. There is only one instance of daimon featuring in ancient Greek cult and art: in the form of Agathos Daimon ().
Etymology
According to Robert S. P. Beekes, the word is derived from Proto-Indo-European .
Description
Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature, or the deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium). Even though the term derives from Greek philosophy, anthropology agrees that daimons are universal across human cultures. According to the Animism-theory by Tylor and similar to William Robertson Smith's theory on totemism, belief in gods evolved from daimons — including ghosts and jinn — into gods. but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, keres, not daimones. The daimones of venerated heroes were localized by the construction of shrines, so as not to wander restlessly, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. Plato in Cratylus speculates that the word daimōn (, "deity") is synonymous to daēmōn (, "knowing or wise"); however, it is more probably daiō (, "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot").
Socrates
thumb|249x249px|Socrates with Alcibiades and the Daimonion. Oil painting by François-André Vincent, 1776, in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier
In Plato's Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a "great daimōn" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daimōnion is between divine and mortal" (202d–e), and she describes daimōns as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates, Socrates claimed to have a daimōnion (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do. The Platonic Socrates, however, never refers to the daimonion as a daimōn; it was always referred to as an impersonal "something" or "sign". By this term he seems to indicate the true nature of the human soul, his newfound self-consciousness. Paul Shorey sees the daimonion not as an inspiration but as "a kind of spiritual tact checking Socrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests."
Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399 BC, Plato surmised "Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in the gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings..." Burkert notes that "a special being watches over each individual, a daimōn who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimon. Burkert states that in the Symposium, Plato has "laid the foundation" to imagine the daimon as being with Eros, who as a mediator is neither god nor mortal but in between. His metaphysical doctrine of an <blockquote><poem>incorporeal, pure actuality, energeia ... identical to its performance: ‘thinking of thinking’, noesis noeseos is the most blessed existence, the highest origin of everything. ‘This is the god. On such a principle heaven depends, and the cosmos.’
In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end-point. ... In Plato there is an incipient tendency toward the apotheosis of nous. ... He needs a closeness and availability of the divine that is offered neither by the stars nor by metaphysical principles. Here a name emerged to fill the gap, a name which had always designated the incomprehensible yet present activity of a higher power, daimon.</poem></blockquote>
In the Archaic or early Classical period, the daimon had been democratized and internalized for each person, whom it served to guide, motivate, and inspire, as one possessed of such good spirits. Similarly, the first-century Roman imperial cult began by venerating the genius or numen of Augustus, a distinction that blurred in time.
Age of Enlightenment
During the Age of Enlightenment, the daimon went through a revival. German polymath and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), considers the daimonic to be neither necessarily good nor evil, neither divine, nor natural: