natives, perpetuated by the Ombuiri. So too, many of the spirits especially concerned with the operations of nature are conceived as neutral or even benevolent; the European peasant fears the corn-spirit only when he irritates him by trenching on his domain and taking his property by cutting the corn; similarly, there is no reason why the more insignificant personages of the pantheon should be conceived as malevolent, and we find that the Petara of the Dyaks are far from indiscriminating and malignant, though disease and death are laid at their door.
Classification.—Besides the distinctions of human and non-human, hostile and friendly, the demons in which the lower races believe are classified by them according to function, each class with a distinctive name, with extraordinary minuteness, the list in the case of the Malays running to several score. They have, for example, a demon of the waterfall, a demon of wild-beast tracks, a demon which interferes with snares for wild-fowl, a baboon demon, which takes possession of dancers and causes them to perform wonderful feats of climbing, &c. But it is impossible to do more than deal with a few types, which will illustrate the main features of the demonology of savage, barbarous and semi-civilized peoples.
(a) Natural causes, either of death or of disease, are hardly, if at all, recognized by the uncivilized; everything is attributed to spirits or magical influence of some sort. The spirits which cause disease may be human or non-human and their influence is shown in more than one way; they may enter the body of the victim (see Possession), and either dominate his mind as well as his body, inflict specific diseases, or cause pains of various sorts. Thus the Mintra of the Malay Peninsula have a demon corresponding to every kind of disease known to them; the Tasmanian ascribed a gnawing pain to the presence within him of the soul of a dead man, whom he had unwittingly summoned by mentioning his name and who was devouring his liver; the Samoan held that the violation of a food tabu would result in the animal being formed within the body of the offender and cause his death. The demon theory of disease is still attested by some of our medical terms; epilepsy (Gr. ἐπίληψις, seizure) points to the belief that the patient is possessed. As a logical consequence of this view of disease the mode of treatment among peoples in the lower stages of culture is mainly magical; they endeavour to propitiate the evil spirits by sacrifice, to expel them by spells, &c. (see Exorcism), to drive them away by blowing, &c.; conversely we find the Khonds attempt to keep away smallpox by placing thorns and brushwood in the paths leading to places decimated by that disease, in the hope of making the disease demon retrace his steps. This theory of disease disappeared sooner than did the belief in possession; the energumens (ἐνεργούμενοι) of the early Christian church, who were under the care of a special clerical order of exorcists, testify to a belief in possession; but the demon theory of disease receives no recognition; the energumens find their analogues in the converts of missionaries in China, Africa and elsewhere. Another way in which a demon is held to cause disease is by introducing itself into the patient’s body and sucking his blood; the Malays believe that a woman who dies in childbirth becomes a langsuir and sucks the blood of children; victims of the lycanthrope are sometimes said to be done to death in the same way; and it is commonly believed in Africa that the wizard has the power of killing people in this way, probably with the aid of a familiar.
(b) One of the primary meanings of δαίμων is that of genius or familiar, tutelary spirit; according to Hesiod the men of the golden race became after death guardians or watchers over mortals. The idea is found among the Romans also; they attributed to every man a genius who accompanied him through life. A Norse belief found in Iceland is that the fylgia, a genius in animal form, attends human beings; and these animal guardians may sometimes be seen fighting; in the same way the Siberian shamans send their animal familiars to do battle instead of deciding their quarrels in person. The animal guardian reappears in the nagual of Central America (see article Totemism), the yunbeai of some Australian tribes, the manitou of the Red Indian and the bush soul of some West African tribes; among the latter the link between animal and human being is said to be established by the ceremony of the blood bond. Corresponding to the animal guardian of the ordinary man, we have the familiar of the witch or wizard. All the world over it is held that such people can assume the form of animals; sometimes the power of the shaman is held to depend on his being able to summon his familiar; among the Ostiaks the shaman’s coat was covered with representations of birds and beasts; two bear’s claws were on his hands; his wand was covered with mouse-skin; when he wished to divine he beat his drum till a black bird appeared and perched on his hut; then the shaman swooned, the bird vanished, and the divination could begin. Similarly the Greenland angekok is said to summon his torngak (which may be an ancestral ghost or an animal) by drumming; he is heard by the bystanders to carry on a conversation and obtain advice as to how to treat diseases, the prospects of good weather and other matters of importance. The familiar, who is sometimes replaced by the devil, commonly figured in witchcraft trials; and a statute of James I. enacted that all persons invoking an evil spirit or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding or rewarding any evil spirit should be guilty of felony and suffer death. In modern spiritualism the familiar is represented by the “guide,” corresponding to which we have the theosophical “guru.”
(c) The familiar is sometimes an ancestral spirit, and here we touch the fringe of the cult of the dead (see also Ancestor Worship). Especially among the lower races the dead are regarded as hostile; the Australian avoids the grave even of a kinsman and elaborate ceremonies of mourning are found amongst most primitive peoples, whose object seems to be to rid the living of the danger they run by association with the ghost of the dead. Among the Zulu the spirits of the dead are held to be friendly or hostile, just as they were in life; on the Congo a man after death joins the good or bad spirits according as his life has been good or bad. Especially feared among many peoples are the souls of those who have committed suicide or died a violent death; the woman who dies in childbed is held to become a demon of the most dangerous kind; even the unburied, as restless, dissatisfied spirits, are more feared than ordinary ghosts. Naturally spirits of these latter kinds are more valuable as familiars than ordinary dead men’s souls. We find many recipes for securing their aid. In the Malay Peninsula the blood of a murdered man must be put in a bottle and prayers said over; after seven days of this worship a sound is heard and the operator puts his finger into the bottle for the polong, as the demon is called, to suck; it will fly through the air in the shape of an exceedingly diminutive female figure, and is always preceded by its pet, the pelesit, in the shape of a grasshopper. In Europe a similar demon is said to be obtainable from a cock’s egg. In South Africa and India, on the other hand, the magician digs up a dead body, especially of a child, to secure a familiar. The evocation of spirits, especially in the form of necromancy, is an important branch of the demonology of many peoples; and the peculiarities of trance mediumship, which seem sufficiently established by modern research, go far to explain the vogue of this art. It seems to have been common among the Jews, and the case of the witch of Endor is narrated in a way to suggest something beyond fraud; in the book of magic which bears the name of Dr Faustus may be found many of the formulae for raising demons; in England may be mentioned especially Dr Dee as one of the most famous of those who claimed before the days of modern spiritualism (q.v.) to have intercourse with the unseen world and to summon demons at his will. Sometimes the spirits were summoned to appear as did the phantoms of the Greek heroes to Odysseus; sometimes they were called to enter a crystal (see Crystal-Gazing); sometimes they are merely asked to declare the future or communicate by moving external objects without taking a visible form; thus among the Karens at the close of the burial ceremonies the ghost of the dead man, which is said to hover round till the rites are completed, is believed to make a ring swing round and snap the string from which it hangs.
(d) The vampire is a particular form of demon which calls for
