The words daemon and daimon, sometimes dæmon, are distinctively Hellenizing or Latinate spellings of δαιμων, used purposefully today to distinguish the daemons of Greek mythology, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes", from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, "a malignant spirit that can possess humans". The Greek translation of the Septuagint, made for the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, and the usage of daimon in the ...

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The English word "spirit" comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath. In religion and spirituality, the respiration of the human being has for obvious reasons been strongly linked with the very occurrence of life. A similar significance has been attributed to human blood. Spirit has thus evolved to denote that which separates a living body from a corpse, but can be used metaphorically (she performed the piece with spirit or she put up a spirited defence) where ...

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• Spirit - Etymology

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In Greek mythology, the Oneiroi were the sons of Hypnos, the god of sleep. They were personifications of dreams—black-winged daemons—and they were said to live on the shores of the Ocean in the far West, in a cavern near the border of Hades. The gods sent dreams to mortals from one of two gates located there: true dreams emerged from a gate made of horn, whereas false dreams threaded their way from a gate fashioned of ivory. The most powerful of the Oneiroi was Morpheus, and his brot ...

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In Greek mythology, Agathos Daimon or Agathodaemon (Greek: "good spirit") was a god of the vineyards and grainfields and of good luck, health and wisdom. It was customary to drink or pour out a glass of unmixed wine to honor him in every meal. He was the spouse or companion of Tyche Agathe (later Agatha). He was represented in art as a serpent or as a young man bearing a cornucopia and a bowl in one hand, and a poppy and an ear of corn in the other. The agathodaemon was later adapted into a general daemon of good luck, particul

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Alastor ("avenger") in Greek mythology, was the personification of familial feuds. He was also associated with sins that pass down from parent to child. As a genius, or spirit of the household in Roman mythology, he incited people to murder and other sins. He was originally a mortal, son of Neleus, King of Pylos. He was later downgraded to a minor daemon after he and his brothers were killed by Heracles. In Christian demonology, Alastor became chief executioner to the monarch of Hell. He was likened to Nemesis and the destroying angel and was known as The Executioner. He was exceptionally cruel.

• Alastor - Alastor in fiction

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In religion, folklore, and mythology a demon or demoness is a supernatural being that has generally been described as a malevolent spirit but outside Christian circles was viewed as a sort of elemental spirit: compare daemon and djinn. A demon is frequently depicted as a force that may be conjured and insecurely controlled. The "good" demon in recent use is largely a literary device (eg: Maxwell's demon). In common language, "demonizing" one's opponent is an aspersion. As the Indo-Iranian Avestan and Vedic traditions and also other branches of Indo-European mythologies show, the not ...

Including:

• Demon - Etymology
• Demon - Demons in ancient Persia
• Demon - Demons in the Hebrew Bible
• Demon - Influences from Chaldean mythology
• Demon - In Jewish rabbinic literature
• Demon - The King and Queen of Demons
• Demon - In the New Testament and Christianity
• Demon - In Christian myth and legend
• Demon - War in Heaven
• Demon - Demonologies
• Demon - In pre-Islamic Arab culture
• Demon - In Islam
• Demon - In Hinduism
• Demon - Demons in other cultures and religions
• Demon - Demons in Hellenistic Neopaganism
• Demon - In art literature and television
• Demon - In science
• Demon - In games
• Demon - External link

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A dæmon in the Philip Pullman trilogy His Dark Materials, is a physical manifestation of the soul of a conscious human. Many characteristics of a daemon match the concepts from other cultures or psychology. A dæmon takes the form of an animal, which has a separate identity even though it is an integral part of a person in that world, although in some universes such as ours they are invisible. A child's dæmon has no fixed form, and changes according to whim and circumstances, but as children reach puberty their dæmons take a form reflective of the person's p ...

Including:

• Dæmon His Dark Materials - Dæmons

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In Unix and other computer multitasking operating systems, a daemon is a computer program that runs in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user; they are usually instantiated as processes. Typically daemons have names that end with the letter "d"; for example, syslogd is the daemon which handles the system log. Systems often start (or "launch") daemons at boot time: they often serve the function of responding to network requests, hardware activity, or other programs by performing some task. Daemons can also configure hardware (like devfsd on some Linux systems), run s ...

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In Greek mythology heavily influenced by cultures from the East, Cybele was a goddess pursued by Zeus who raped her after she disguised herself as a rock called Agdistis. The result was a hermaphrodite named Agdistis. Another version claims that Agdistis was born when Zeus dropped his semen upon the ground in his excitement over an unknown Goddess that resisted his attentions, causing a rock or a mountain to become pregnant. Or perhaps Zeus's grandmother Gaia herself became pregnant. Either way, Adgistis was the result. It was ...

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The Black Jewels Trilogy is a series of fantasy books by Anne Bishop, telling the tale of a young girl who is destined to become the new Dark Queen. Black Jewels Trilogy - Plot summary. Set in a twisted world, where Darkness is worshiped almost as a god, and women rule in matriarchy. The protagonists are a strange mixture of demons, witches, and sex slaves. It is foreseen that a young girl will be born who is "dreams made flesh". She will become the Dark Queen after many long centuries with sub-par r ...

Including:

• Black Jewels Trilogy - Plot summary
• Black Jewels Trilogy - Character summary
• Black Jewels Trilogy - Protagonists
• Black Jewels Trilogy - Locations
• Black Jewels Trilogy - Realms
• Black Jewels Trilogy - Magic system and mythology

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Dark elves are the (mostly) evil counterparts of the Light Elves in many mythologies and fantasy settings. They are often at war with other elves. Dark elf - Dark elves in mythology and folklore. Dark elf - Norse/Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, Svartálfar ("Swartelves" or "black elves"), sometimes considered synonymous with duergar ("dwarves"), are subterranean creatures who dwell in the world of Svartálfheim. They may be either good or evil. The < ...

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• Dark elf - Dark elves in mythology and folklore
• Dark elf - Norse/Germanic mythology
• Dark elf - Celtic mythology
• Dark elf - British Isles folklore
• Dark elf - Dark elves in fiction
• Dark elf - Middle-earth
• Dark elf - Dungeons & Dragons
• Dark elf - Record of Lodoss War
• Dark elf - Shadowrun
• Dark elf - Warhammer Fantasy
• Dark elf - WarCraft
• Dark elf - The Elder Scrolls
• Dark elf - Final Fantasy IV
• Dark elf - Age of Wonders
• Dark elf - Lineage
• Dark elf - Sacred
• Dark elf - Mega Man Zero
• Dark elf - Arcanum
• Dark elf - Midkemia
• Dark elf - Famous Dark Elves in fiction
• Dark elf - Malus Darkblade
• Dark elf - Drizzt Do'Urden

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Greek mythology comprises the collected narratives of Greek gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. Our surviving sources of mythology are literary reworkings of this oral tradition, supplemented by interpretations of iconic imagery, sometimes modern ones, sometimes ancient ones, as myth was a means for later Greeks themselves to throw light on cult practices and traditions that were no longer explicable. The historian must sometimes deduce from hints in imagery, such as in ...

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• Greek mythology - Nature and sources of Greek mythology
• Greek mythology - An overview
• Greek mythology - The age of gods
• Greek mythology - The age of gods and men
• Greek mythology - The age of heroes
• Greek mythology - Theories of origin
• Greek mythology - Did the Greeks believe their myths?
• Greek mythology - Hellenistic rationalism
• Greek mythology - Syncretizing trends
• Greek mythology - Belles and Beaus of Greek Mythology
• Greek mythology - Modern interpreters
• Greek mythology - Greek cosmology
• Greek mythology - Related subjects
• Greek mythology - Sources

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In Celtic mythology, Abnoba was a forest and river goddess, worshipped in the Black Forest and surrounding areas. An altar at the Roman baths at Badenweiler, Germany, equates her with Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt. According to Tacitus's Germania, Abnoba also was the name of a mountain, from a grassy slope of which flows the source of the River Danube. Ptolemy's Geography (2.10) also mentions the mountain as the source of the Danube. The surrounding range, in Ptolemy, is the Abnobaia ora (the nominative case, given here, is not in P ...

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• Abnoba - Etymology
• Abnoba - Bibliography

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Garuda (Sanskrit: गरुड Garuḍa), the eagle, is a lesser Hindu divinity, the mount (vahanam) of Vishnu, one of the main forms of God in Hinduism. Garuda is depicted as having a golden body, white face, red wings, and an eagle's beak and wings but a man's body. He wears a crown on his head like his master, Vishnu. He is ancient and huge, and can block out the sun. His stature in Hindu religion can be gauged by the fact that an independent Upanishad, the Garudopanishada, and a Purana, the Garuda Purana, is devoted ...

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• Garuda - Garuda in popular culture
• Garuda - External link

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Mother Nature is a mythical personification of nature. Images of women representing "mother" earth, and mother nature, are timeless. Long before history was recorded, goddesses were worshipped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. Priestesses held dominion over Incan, Assyrian, Babylonian, Slavonic, Roman, Greek, Indo-European, and Iroquoian fertility cults in the millenn ...

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• Mother Nature - Western tradition
• Mother Nature - History
• Mother Nature - Greek Myth

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In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the player characters (fictional characters controlled by the players) often come into conflict with a variety of monsters from folklore and mythology. One of the game's more prominent monsters are the various races of demons, devils and other malicious otherworldly creatures, collectively referred to as fiends. These c ...

Including:

• Fiend Dungeons & Dragons - The Most Common Types
• Fiend Dungeons & Dragons - Tanar'ri
• Fiend Dungeons & Dragons - Baatezu
• Fiend Dungeons & Dragons - Yugoloths
• Fiend Dungeons & Dragons - Minor fiends and hybrids
• Fiend Dungeons & Dragons - Kythons
• Fiend Dungeons & Dragons - Controversy and related changes between editions

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In Greek mythology, Prometheus, or Prometheas (Ancient Greek, Προμηθεύς, "forethought") is the Titan chiefly honored for stealing fire from the gods in the stalk of a fennel plant and giving it to mortals for their use. Prometheus - Worship. As a god of fire, burning, and craft, Prometheus had a small shrine in the Keramikon, or potter's quarter, of Athens, not far from Plato's Academy. Prometheus - Myth. Prometheus was a son of Iapetus by Clymene ( ...

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• Prometheus - Worship
• Prometheus - Myth
• Prometheus - Comparative perspectives
• Prometheus - Promethean myth in culture

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The theme of weaving in mythology is ancient, and its lost mythic lore probably accompanied the early spread of this mysterious art. Westward of Central Asia and the Iranian plateau, weaving is a mystery within woman's sphere, and where men have become the primary weavers in this part of the world, it is possible that they have usurped the archaic role. Weaving begins with spinning. Until the spinning wheel was invented in the 14th century, all spinning was done with distaff and spindle (see those entries for technical details ...

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A genius is a person with distinguished mental prowess. This can manifest either as a foremost intellect, or as an outstanding creative talent. The term also applies to one who is a polymath, or someone skilled in many mental areas. The term specifically applies to mental rather than athletic skills, although it is also colloquially used to denote the possession of a superior talent in any field; e.g., Pelé may be said to have a genius for football or Gandhi for diplomacy. Genius - Etymology. In Ancient Ro ...

Including:

• Genius - Etymology
• Genius - Gifted
• Genius - Limitations
• Genius - In philosophy
• Genius - Pluralization

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