Noon demon
In the popular beliefs of antiquity and the Middle Ages, the idea was widespread that the noon hour was a preferred time for the appearance of spirits and gods, and there is evidence of this even until recently. The expression noon demon as a separate term appears for the first time in the Septuagint , the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the 3rd century BC. Chr., On. In the 4th century AD, the monk Euagrios Pontikos equated the midday demon with that of the akedia (Greek ἀκήδεια, carelessness, carelessness, unwillingness to do something 'from κῆδος' worry '), according to him, one of the eight main vices, from which the seven later Deadly sins were.
The midday in popular belief
The midday hours are still considered dangerous and ominous in many places, especially in the countries of the Mediterranean region . The focus is on the risk of heat stroke or sunstroke; In Greece, popular expressions still show that it was interpreted as an attack by nymphs or nereids , in ancient times the sirens played a similar role (not only for seafarers). The symptoms of so-called " nympholepsy " include inability to move, cramps and falling silent or delirious talking.
The sirens we encounter in the Odyssey (12 singing, V. 166-196), where the lunch is not expressly mentioned, but his characteristic calm. According to their name, like Sirius , the "dog star", whose heliacal rise earlier ushered in the hottest time of the year (hence the " dog days "), they are probably derived from an old sun name seir . The nymphs are addressed in Plato's dialogue Phaedrus , where Socrates repeatedly refers to the time and place of the conversation - it takes place at noon near a grove dedicated to the nymphs - and at the risk of falling victim to them (238 CD: "nympholeptos") . In this context he also compares himself with Odysseus, who drives past the sirens (259 A).
Another theme that was always present, which was still emphasized in the Hellenistic era, are erotic dreams and temptations that are associated with the beings mentioned, but also with the shepherd god Pan . While the best-known source for the connection between Pan and midday , the 1st Idyll of the Greek poet Theocritus , only speaks of Pan's anger when he is disturbed at noon, other texts and vase paintings show him waking up sleeping shepherds at the same time erect member pursued. The particular unrest caused by the appearance of Pan led to the term " panic " horror.
The noon hour is also the time of the shortest shadow and the change from the rising to the setting of the sun, in which the sun seems to slow down or to stand still. This was linked to the idea that the spirits of the dead would return at this time - be it because the time (which, before clocks were used, could only be measured precisely at noon, based on the length of the shadow) was now experienced directly as time, which was eerie confronted with the possibility of death; be it that it was believed that at noon the spirits of the dead wanted to satisfy people's hunger for life (which is why temples were closed earlier at noon, and churches and cemeteries up to the present day); or that it was assumed that the sun, after its nocturnal journey through the realm of the dead at noon, when it stands vertically above it, creates a connection to it.
So formed z. B. the idea of the " wild hunt ", an army of the dead that can be heard or seen around noon. His leader was Artemis - Hekate , later "Hellequin" or "Herlething", two names that return later as " Harlequin " (the obvious connection with Erlkönig is probably not true).
As the time in which the spirits of the dead return, midday was replaced by midnight in the high Middle Ages - this became generally determinable with the spread of church clocks and was apparently quickly considered to be even more sinister than midday. Apparitions of midday spirits were still given, for example in England that of the "midday witch" ("noontide hag", Walter Scott calls her in 1810 in The Lady of the Lake ), in Brittany and in the Rhineland those of midday field ghosts.
The midday demon of the Septuagint
When at the beginning of the 3rd century BC When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in Alexandria , the so-called Septuagint , an expression in Psalm 91: 6 (in the standard translation : “the plague that rages at noon”) was rendered as “daimonion mesembrinon” - noon demon. In the Hebrew original there is no mention of a demon, but the opposition of "horror of the night" and "arrow that flies by day" in verse 5, then of "plague that creeps in the dark" and "plague that rages at noon “In verse 6 the thought of the Babylonian gods Lugalgirra and Schitlamta'ea had already suggested, two manifestations of the underworld god Nergal . Associated with the heat and the cold, they were considered to be the trigger for the midday and midnight fever attacks in malaria .
The midday demon is also mentioned several times in the Talmud . The Greek expression was translated into Latin as “daemonium meridianum”, whereupon the midday demon became, so to speak, a “recognized” phenomenon in the whole area of Christianity for centuries. Its first mention on German territory comes from Caesarius von Heisterbach in his Dialogus miraculorum from the 13th century.
Diana and Meridiana as midday demons
Both the Roman goddess of the hunt Diana and her Greek counterpart Artemis were identified in Christian sources with the midday demon. At about the same time as the Septuagint was written, the poet Callimachos , who also lives in Alexandria, wrote in a hymn to the bath of Pallas , d. H. to the goddess Athena how the mythical seer Teiresias surprises the goddess while bathing in the midday heat:
“Midday rested quietly on the mountain.
(…) It was noon.
Silence all around kept the mountains under its spell. ”
She discovers him and commands him:
“ Which daimon led you on the paths of disaster? ”
(Translation by E. Howald and E. Staiger)
As a punishment, she blinds him, but gives him the gift of vision. Callimachus refers to the myth of Artemis and Actaion , in which this is torn apart by the dogs of Artemis in a similar situation. When Ovid relates this myth, which for him is about Actaeon and Diana, in the Metamorphoses (2nd book, v. 138-252), he conjures up the midday glow in which the story took place in even greater detail. Nevertheless, these literary sources are not or not directly at the origin of the Christian naming of Diana and Artemis as midday demons, but their already mentioned function as the noon appearing goddesses of the dead, a function that the myth reflects.
Another common explanation for Diana is that the name could be read as a short form of meridiana ("the midday"). It is also noticeable that the (Christian) sources refer to Celtic settlement areas for both uses of the name : to southern and central France for Diana, to Celtic Galatia in Asia Minor for Artemis, as if, due to local traditions, had a special - and particularly persistent - affinity to passed these phenomena.
The name "Meridiana" for the midday demon occurs in a story by Walter Maps from the 12th century, his legendary life story of Pope Silvester II in De nugis curialium .
In the Slavic region there have been references to a “ midday woman ” since the 13th century , which are strikingly similar to the much earlier reports about the encounters with Artemis and Diana. Whether here a motif hike, e.g. B. from Asia Minor- Byzantine area via Russia, has not yet been clarified.
Midday Demon and Akedia
Another character of the noon hour, which summarizes the characteristics mentioned so far, is the acedia . This connection was discussed by Euagrios Pontikos , a Greek who in the last decades of the 4th century retired as a monk to the Egyptian desert south of Alexandria, where numerous monks lived as hermits at that time:
"The demon of indolence, also called the midday demon, is more burdensome than all other demons."
From Origen Euagrios had adopted the idea that the fight against sin is a fight against demons and that "every sin corresponds to an angel of Satan", according to Origen (translation by R. Augst). Origen refers to this idea in turn on the Jewish testament of the twelve patriarchs , which does not speak of demons, but of the " striving " of the people (Hebrew yeser , in the extant Greek text diaboulion ).
Euagrios describes the symptoms of akedia :
- The feeling that time is passing particularly slowly.
- The monk's urge to go outside, out of his cell.
- Hatred of your own life and work.
- The friends and colleagues are experienced as incomprehensible.
- Another life seems easier and happier.
The equation of akedia and the noon demon is sometimes ascribed to Origen. The texts of Origen cited here have recently been viewed as spurious and are probably from Euagrios.
Johannes Cassian , a pupil and friend of Euagrios, who later worked in Marseille and conveyed the thoughts of Euagrios to the West, names the loneliness and the special diet of the monks as causes for this condition in addition to the climatic conditions. H. her frequent fasting or her only occasional evening meal. In the 12th century, perhaps because of another experience of monastic life, Euthymios Zigabenos , a Greek theologian, associated the midday demon with the spirit of fornication that occurs on a full stomach.
As a lived experience, the connection between the noon demon and indolence gradually disappeared after Euagrios. His concept of inertia, however, remained virulent, as he developed it within a doctrine of the eight main "vices" which, mediated by Johannes Cassian, later became the seven deadly sins .
... and melancholy
The melancholy , a term used in Hippocratic medicine and Aristotelian philosophy, was already at the time of Evagrius of the Church Fathers Jerome and John Chrysostom with very similar words described the Akedia of Evagrius. In the Middle Ages, as with Hugo von St. Viktor , both were expressly equated. Since then, references to the midday demon have repeatedly appeared in texts about melancholy. Recently (2001) named z. B. Andrew Solomon his great study on depression The Noonday Demon (German title: Saturn's shadow ).
literature
- Roger Caillois : Les demons de midi. Montpellier 1991 (reprint of the eponymous article in the Revue de l'histoire des religions 115, Paris 1937, pp. 142–173, and 116, Paris 1937, pp. 54–83 and 143–186).
- Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky , Fritz Saxl: Saturn and Melancholie. Frankfurt / M. 1994 (English original 1964).
- Dietrich Grau : The midday ghost (daemonium meridianum): Investigations into its origin, distribution and its research in European folklore. Bonn 1966.
- Reinhard Kuhn: The Demon of Noontide. Ennui in Western Literature. Princeton 1976.
- Rüdiger Augst: Realization of Life and Christian Faith. Acedia - Religious indifference as a problem of spirituality in Evagrius Ponticus. Frankfurt 1990.
