Demons, Daemons, Jinns & Genies

Demons were not always so demonic. Originally, a demon, or daemon in the Ancient Greek, was an ambivalent spirit — some were good, some were bad. It was Christianity that turned the daemonic into the demonic: ‘Christianity could not tolerate the pagan integration of sex, cruelty, and divinity. It thrust chthonian nature into the nether realm, to be infested by medieval witches. Daemonism became demonism, a conspiracy against God’ (Paglia).

In Paradise Lost, Milton’s Hell is populated with fallen angels (i.e. demons) that go on to become the pagan gods of the Semitic, Egyptian and Greek tradition. This is not only a demonization, it is a complete chronological reversal; turning pre-Christian deities into Lucifer’s original co-conspirators.

The development of the daemonic into the demonic also occurs in Islam — but to a lesser extent. The Jinn, in pre-Islamic culture, was an invisible creature capable of good or evil. Today, jinns are mostly associated with the latter. However, in many ways, Islam maintains the ambivalence by allowing for faithful jinns that believe in god:

Al-Islam teaches that jinns are part of a world, a reality, parallel with ours. But it is an…