Demon (tradition)

Belief in demons is ancient and cross-cultural. Some scholars and overviews often trace such beliefs back to Paleolithic-era human responses to the unknown, using agentive beings to explain disaster, disease, and other threats. The Ancient Greek daimōn originally denoted a spirit or divine power (comparable to Latin genius or numen); over time—notably through the Septuagint translation and later Christian theological developments—the term acquired more negative moral valence in many contexts. In some religious frameworks demons are independent actors, while in others they are conceived as subordinate to a single devil figure.

No systematic or consistent physical description is provided in the supplied sources. Ancient and folkloric conceptions vary widely, and the encyclopedic sources emphasize functional and conceptual roles over fixed corporeal forms.

Across traditions demons are attributed agency to cause harm: illness, destructive natural phenomena, moral temptation, social disruption, and possession in accounts that recognize demonic possession. Individual entities may specialize in particular kinds of harm. In esoteric and magical traditions (notably elements of Western esotericism and Renaissance magic), practitioners may attempt to conjure, bind, or control such spirits. Literary sources may depict demons with enhanced, story-specific capacities (e.g., a fiction summary describes an "invincible demon" that steals a magical manuscript), but such depictions are narrative rather than ethnographic.