From earliest times and in every civilization humans have had demons to affright or to bring misfortune on them...

Demons from the netherworld are all about us. There is no escaping them. They come up from the depths of the collective imagination, perhaps the race memory. Fiends of the dark, they are pictured flying on tattered wings or prancing on cloven hooves. Their sulphurous smell infects the air and their voices are the baying of hellhounds. Their evil faces are contorted. Their gaping, sharp-fanged mouths drool spittle.

According to the dictionary, creatures of the Underworld are either demons, shadow spirits or the devil himself and his emissaries. They are the abductors of souls and carriers of pestilence, and their wake causes misery, death and destruction. These are creatures that haunt the whispering forests or can be heard in the roar of fast-flowing rivers. They fly through tempests and raging winds, and today, their images are flashed on our television and cinema screens.

Demons and shadow spirits were in ancient times considered messengers of the Lord of the Underworld and marched before him. For the peoples of the Middle East, they often lived in deserts and near cemeteries. Many were the unquiet ghosts of those who had died with violence or had been left unburied. In Canaanite myth, the father of the gods, EL, was frightened almost to death by a demon “having two horns and tail”; this was the being that, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, evolved into the devil, or Satan.

Sickness was thought to be caused by demonic possession and some demons actually bore the name of the disease they were thought to induce. The Canaanite demon that brought on headaches was Kephalargia, while Abrasax brought fever. The sick of Canaan wore amulets, with priestly incantations: i.e., “Arasax Yah Yah El El El,” to exorcise fever and sickness.

A horrible shadow spirit of Mesopotamia was Lamashtu, the hag who killed children in the womb or the newborn. Like many other demons, she figured in other cultures. The Phoenicians depicted her as a winged sphinx, labeled ‘the Flying One’ Lil (ith). An amulet from Phoenicia had an incantation against her baneful influence on childbirth, “O Flying One... Stranglers of Lambs! The house I enter you shall not enter”. This she-demon is mentioned in the Bible and in later Jewish folklore as Lilith. The name was said to mean ‘screech owl’, which reflected and association with birds of ill omen. According to the Talmud, the two-part, basic code of Jewish civil and canon law, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, but they parted and she swore revenge on the newborn.

The Bible regards foreign gods as Shedim, translated as ‘demons’ or ‘devils’. They live in barren wastelands or desolate ruins, inflicting sickness on humanity. Psalm 91 speaks of “the pestilence that stalks in darkness or the plague raging at noonday”. Devils trouble and deceive the minds of humans. In Mark’s Gospel we are told of a man who “is possessed by a spirit, which makes him speechless...” The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke illustrate vividly the persistence of the popular belief in demons and devils and their ability to take over personality.

Many methods were employed in exorcising the possessed. Amulets with incantations were worn by the afflicted “to save him from the evil eye, from evil spirits and from all evil tormentors...” The Essenes or Qumran in Israel pored over ancient books in search of magic formulae to protect a man from a misfortune. One has been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Even surgery was employed. Skulls found in Israel show signs of rudimentary trepanning. This consisted of cutting a disc in the skull, which practitioners believed let out any evil spirits tormenting the victim. The patient was rendered unconscious through the use of hashish or opium. Surprisingly, it has been estimated that there was a post-operative survival rate of 77%.

In Greek mythology, demons were fearsome products of the national imagination. Most feared were the Erinyes or Furies. A loathsome trio of females, they were horrifying in appearance and they stank. With snakes in their hair, brandishing torches and cracking metal-studded whips, they were fulfillers of the curses that had been called by the angry, grieving kin of the murdered. Born of blood, roused from the Netherworld by its shedding, they are satisfied only by the misery of their quarry.

There were other she-demon monsters in Greek legend. The three Gorgons, daughters of the ancient sea god, also had snakes instead of hair, while their mouths were armed with great tusks. The gaze of one, Medusa, was such that all who met it turned to stone. In the end her head was lopped off by Perseus, son of Zeus, but only when he employed a mirror, so as not to have directly met her eyes. Even then, when he displayed her decapitated head to his enemies they were turned into stone.

The ancient Greeks also had to contend with Harpyai or Harpies, the Snatchers: winged women depicted in art and literature as equipped with long, hooked claws for the purpose of snatching their quarry. Their specialty was swooping upon human beings and carrying them off to none knew where. Then there were the Sirens, who so enchanted passing sailors with their song that they leapt overboard to join them, only to perish in the fury of the sea. Another marine monster, Scylla, was six-headed with a bark of a hellhound, and she snatched sailors from ships and crushed their bones.

The citizens of Rome had an equally wide range of demons. Most feared of all was the Chimaera, a compound of lion, goat and serpent.

Even those of our own sophisticated and skeptical age can find themselves susceptible to the evils of demons. Finding oneself alone in a forest on a dark, stormy night or in the dark of night in a deserted house can inspire terror in the hardiest of us. Every sound conjures visions.

In Israel during the Talmudic period, from 200 AD to 1200 AD, those who entered deep woods at night were considered insane. They were placing themselves at the mercy of Agrath, daughter of the king of demons, Asmodeus, who roamed the night together with his hosts. Anyone who drank water drawn from a river or pond at night put himself of herself in the powers of the she-demon Shabiri. “Beware of Shabiri, Biri, Iri, Ri,” ran the prophylactic incantation.

There were many evil spirits and demons in Talmudic literature and they continued to be dreaded in medieval Jewish folklore. Demons and evil spirits were thought to be countless. “Their numbers outweigh the number of humans on earth. If one could see them, none could stand the sight,” says the Talmud. One is Kuda, who attacks women in childbirth. Shibetta menaced those who touched food with unwashed hands. The Ketev was most dangerous during the months of July and August. Ruah Palga caused headaches. Ruah Tazazit attacked animals and caused rabies. And there were many more...

During the early Christian period, a demon could be ensnared by writing it name in conic form, now mainly known through the ‘ABRACADABRA’ formula, which is most probably of Gnostic origin. The evil spirit, when thus trapped, will lift to gain release.