δαίμων

The Greek daimōn was not evil. It was a spirit — something between a god and a mortal. Hesiod described daimones as the souls of the Golden Age dead, watching over living humans as invisible guardians. Socrates claimed he had a personal daimonion, a divine voice that warned him when he was about to make a mistake. It never told him what to do. It only said no.

Plato developed the concept further. In the Symposium, he described Eros as a daimōn — a mediating spirit between mortals and gods. In the Timaeus, each soul was assigned a daimōn at birth. The daimōn was your lot, your portion of divinity, the particular excellence you were meant to pursue. To live well was to honor your daimōn.

Christianity changed everything. The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) used daimonion to translate Hebrew words for false gods and unclean spirits. By the New Testament period, daimōn had become exclusively negative — a demon, a servant of Satan. The guardian spirit became the tempter. The inner voice became the enemy.

English inherited both forms. 'Demon' (via Latin daemon) carries the Christian meaning: evil spirit. 'Daemon' preserves the classical sense in specialized contexts — Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials uses daemons as external manifestations of the soul, and computing uses 'daemon' for background processes that run unseen, guiding the system quietly. Socrates' guardian lives on in software.