DAIMON is ‘divine spirit’. It is sort of a sprite, a demon which resides in all human beings. It is the portion (in man) of the all-inclusive cosmic energy. Our personal genius and our deepest spiritual part. It functions as an advisor, an awakener a motivator, an instigator. We need to get to know our own <daimon> and to listen to it.

The Symposium of Platon (Plato) features a priestess, Diotima, who teaches Sokrates (Socrates) that love is a “great daemon“. She says that “daemonic” means “between divine and mortal”. It is so because daemons “interpret and transport human things to gods and divine things to men”. In Platon’s Apology of Socrates, the latter claims to have a <daimonion> (a divine something) that warns him. It manifests himself as a voice that he is the only one to hear. This voice alerts him against possible mistakes, although the same voice never tells him explicitly what to do.

<Daimon> is ‘divine spirit’. The Platonic Sokrates never talks of the <daimonion> as a <daimon> but as an impersonal “something” or “sign”. With this word he seems to indicate the human soul’s true nature, his newfound self-consciousness, a kind of guardian angel checking Sokrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests.

The Hellenistic Greeks had a distinction between good daemon and evil ones. <Agathodaímōn> (noble spirit), is a word coming from <agathós> (good, noble, useful). <Kakodaímōn> (malevolent spirit), is a word coming from kakós (bad, evil).

It is important to have a relationship with one’s own <daimon>. Listening to it and understanding it is not easy, but the effort is part of the soul-searching process we should all go through. After all, this inner divine spirit is the mediator between us and the <logos> that is the universal spirit.