From my understanding, daimons are a race of beings that are immortal, but they are not gods. Like they are above humans but below gods.
1 Answer
The word daimon in Greek (δαίμων) generally just meant "divine power." It's god in the abstract. This is especially true at the earlier stages of Greek literature, such as in the Homeric epics. All gods are daimones, but not all daimones are Olympians.
The Greeks had many different types of divinities, in myth differentiated by parentage. In practice, though, the gods that populate the world come in all different forms, and they can all be called daimones. This would include the Titans, the Olympians, nymphs, ancestral souls, tutelary deities, and other types of spirits.
In this sense, daimon is most similar to the Shinto kami.
As time went on, it generally referred to the more powerful gods, chiefly the Olympians and Titans, less and less. By the Roman era, "spirit" is the better translation.
See for yourself all the different ways the Greeks used this word.
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I read that they are spirits not gods. The agathodaemon were a type of guardian entities that either guarded a home or a person. Plato mentioned that every person that's born is assigned their own unique guardian daemon that will follow them for the rest of their lives. It was believed that agathodaemons were created from a soul of a deceased person who didn't pass on into the underworld and stays on earth and transforms into an agathodaemon and they would be assigned a location or person to protect.– OrionixeMay 31 at 5:21
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@Orionixe Did you look at the dictionary link I sent you? Plato isn't representative of Greek mythology.– cmwMay 31 at 5:25
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Yes I did, Daimon has 2 meanings a very minor deity, or a spirit guide which was explained by hellenicgods.org/daimon-in-hellenismos– OrionixeJun 6 at 21:34
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