Not long after God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, the number of men inhabiting the Earth increased tremendously. From the beginning, God gave Satan certain power over the earthly concerns, and Satan immediately set out to destroy man, either by beguiling the naive humans or by outright corruption. God sent certain angels to protect and spiritually guide the human race. Because He had given these angels free will, He specifically warned them above all things not to defile themselves with contamination from the earth, which would cause them to lose the dignity of their heavenly nature.

 

God plainly prohibited these “guardian angels” from doing what He considered to be the unpardonable sin — a sin that would make the angels lose any hope of redemption. Despite the warnings from God, while they lived among humans on Earth, Satan convinced the angels that intercourse with the women of Earth would be acceptable. He probably managed this by changing the way God’s instructions were to be perceived. In God’s eyes, this represented a “cardinal sin,” and because of their disobedience, God forbade the angels entrance back into the heavens. From there, they simply fell to the earth.

 

So the angels who defied God became Satan’s first emissaries and attendants on Earth. But the offspring who were born from these, because they were neither angels nor men, but instead were a bizarre, mutated, nature, were not admitted into hell, just as their angelic fathers were not readmitted into heaven.

This led to two different kinds of demons: one of heaven; the other of the earth. The latter are the wicked spirits, instigators of all evils done –Satan is their prince. He is supreme ruler of the evil demons.

It is interesting to think that all demons are not evil. Our word is derived from the Greek daimon which actually means “lesser god, guiding spirit, tutelary deity.” This is how we have “demons” of both the earth and heaven. It represents a semantic game, to be sure, but words mean what they mean.

Poets recognize both kinds of demons. The poets know both to be demons, and so describe them. Hesiod, a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, says this about them:

“These are the demons according to the will of Zeus, Good, living on the earth, the guardians of mortal men.”

 

Greek philosophers also discuss these beings. Plato even attempted to explain their natures in his “Banquet;” and Socrates claimed there was a demon continually about him, who had become attached to him when he was a boy, whose will and direction guided his life.