{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2765",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2765,
    "subject": "Daemons",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-08-07T10:30:58+00:00",
    "last": "2001-08-07T10:30:58+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0612@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "pei047 at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-08-07T10:30:58+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Daemons",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "To Tony Ellis:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "Hey, -my- hypothetical child occasionally looks words up when it\nfinds them being used in an unexpected manner, or asks a grown-up.\nI can't help it if your hypothetical child is too lazy. :-)"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Actually, so does mine, and so do I; but frankly, this doesn't seem\nto qualify as using the word \"daemon\" in an unexpected manner. It's\nsome supernatural being that changes shapes, okay, that's a demon,\nmy hypothetical [\"You bitch about the present/and you blame it on\nthe past/I'd like to find your hypothe, uh, inner child/and kick his\nlittle ass\" -- D. Henley] child has no problem with that. And then,\nbecause said child has read a moderate amount of SF/F, she has no\nproblem adapting when the word is revealed to mean something like an\nexternalized soul. At no point does anything happen which would send\nsuch a child scurrying to look it up in her funk & wagnall's.\n\nNor, if she did, would I bet on said child giving even a glance to\nthe word's etymology; nor, if she did, is said etymology likely to\nbe much help -- consider Merriam-Webster's Collegiate etymology of\n\"demon\" (to which \"daemon\" refers one), for example:\n\nMiddle English demon, from Late Latin & Latin; Late\nLatin daemon evil spirit, from Latin, divinity, spirit,\nfrom Greek daimOn, probably from daiesthai to distribute\n\nNothing in here even hints at Socrates' usage, which is what (I\npresume) Pullman has in mind. From all of which I stand by my\noriginal conclusion: that it is fairly unlikely that a child,\nreading THE GOLDEN COMPASS, will (as you originally put it)\nlearn that a word used by Christianity to mean an\nincarnation of evil originally meant something as\nharmless as \"spirit.\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Pullamn is a Brit, and as a writer I bet he uses the OED, nor I think\ndoes he worry a lot about a word's use being unexpected when it is also\ncorrect. Here is the very FIRST, also second, meaning of \"demon\" in the\nOED. (I have left out derivations, as they seem implicit.):\n\n1. a. In ancient Greek mythology (= ______): A supernatural being of a\nnature intermediate between that of gods and men; an inferior divinity,\nspirit, genius (including the souls or ghosts of deceased persons, esp.\ndeified heroes). Often written dæmon for distinction from sense 2.\n1569 J. Sandford tr. Agrippa Van. Artes 2 Grammarians..doo expounde this\nwoord Dæmon, that is a Spirite, as if it were Sapiens, that is, Wise.\n1587 Golding De Mornay xix. 303 And vnto Cratylus again [Plato] saith,\nwhen the good man departeth this world..hee becommeth a Dæmon.\n1638 Mede Gt. Apost. iii. Wks. (1672) iii. 627 et seq.\n1680 H. More Apocal. Apoc. 252 Dæmons according to the Greek idiom,\nsignify either Angels, or the Souls of men, any Spirits out of\nTerrestrial bodies, the Souls of Saints, and Spirits of Angels.\n1774 J. Bryant Mythol. I. 52 Subordinate dæmons, which they supposed to\nbe emanations and derivatives from their chief Deity.\n1846 Grote Greece i. ii. (1862) I. 58 In Homer, there is scarcely any\ndistinction between gods and dæmons.\nb. Sometimes, particularly, An attendant, ministering, or indwelling\nspirit; a genius.\n(Chiefly in references to the so-called ‘dæmon of Socrates’. Socrates\nhimself claimed to be guided, not by a ______ or dæmon, but by a\n_________, divinum quiddam (Cicero), a certain divine principle or\nagency, an inward monitor or oracle. It was his accusers who represented\nthis as a personal dæmon, and the same was done by the Christian Fathers\n(under the influence of sense 2), whence the English use of the word, as\nin the quotations.\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}