Three thousand years of encounters with malevolent beings that have invaded our waking lives and our nightmares A Penguin Classic For millennia, societies have told tales of their fears incarnate--otherworldly couriers of plague, death, temptation, and moral decline. Drawing from three thousand years of religious traditions and world literature, Three thousand years of encounters with the malevolent beings that have invaded our waking lives and our nightmares

For millennia, societies have told tales of their fears incarnate - otherworldly couriers of plague, death, temptation and moral decline. Drawing from three thousand years of religious traditions and world literature, The Penguin Book of Demons follows these supernatural creatures - and the humans who have hunted and been haunted by them - through accounts across cultures and continents, including: the daimones of ancient Greece and Rome; the giant, biblical half humans known as Nephilim who stalked the earth before the Great Flood; corrupted angels, condemned to eternity in Hell; the djinn of Islamic Arabia; the female, child-eating gelloudes of Byzantium; the seductive incubi and succubi of northern Europe; the animal spirits of early modern China; and the cannibalistic wendigo of Native American folklore. From demonic possession to black magic, these accounts give life to a spellbinding, skin-crawling history of the paranormal.

Leseprobe
Contents
 
Legends of the Fall: Rebel Angels in Ancient Judaism
·         The Mystery of the Nephilim: From the Book of Genesis
·         The Prison of the Fallen: From the Book of Enoch
·         Against the Giants: From the Book of Jubilees
·         A Remedy for Demonic Attacks: From Flavius Josephus’s Judean War
 
I Am Legion: Demons in Ancient Christian Thought
·         Intimate Adversaries: From the New Testament
·         In the Guise of Gods: From Justin Martyr’s Second Apology
·         Their Work is the Ruin of Humankind: From Tertullian’s Apology and On the Spectacles Origen’s Folly: From Jerome’s Letter to Avitus
·         Delivered from Filthy Tyranny: From Augustine’s On the City of God Against the Pagans
·         Angels of Tartarus: From the Apocalypse of Paul
·         The Fall of Simon Magus: From Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend    
 
Mastered by Magic: Demons in the King Solomon Tradition
·         From Sage to Mage: From the Hebrew Scriptures and Flavius Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews
·         Enslaved by Solomon’s Ring: From The Testament of Solomon
 
Dwellers in the Wasteland: Demons in Dark Age Europe
·         The Desert, A Battlefield: From Athanasius’s Life of Saint Anthony
·         Taming a Hell-Beast: From Jerome’s Life of Saint Hilarion
·         Frenzied Possessions: From Sulpicius Severus’s Life of Saint Martin
·         The Ancient Gods are Frauds: From Martin of Braga’s On the Correction of the Countryfolk
·         Lurking on the Threshold: From Pope Gregory the Great’s Dialogues
·         Inhabitants of Hell: From Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People
·         Entrusted to Torment You: From Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac
 
Spirits of Fire and Air: The Riddle of the Jinn
·         Quranic Demonology: From the Qur’an
·         A Short History of the Jinn: From the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity
·         Prisons of the Jinn: From the Tales of 1001 Nights
 
Eaters of Children: The Witch-Demons of Byzantium
·         Monks Contemplate the Nature of Demons: From Michael Psellos’s Concerning Demons
·         Saints in Pursuit of the Gellou: Two Story Charms Against the Witch-Demon
·         The Lady of the Mountain: A Late Byzantine Magical Formula
·         Legends of the Child-Eater: From John Lawson’s Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion
 
A Thousand Arts of Injury: Demons in the High Middle Ages
·         A Malice Foretold in Scripture: From Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogues on Miracles
·         Tundale’s Tormentors: From the Vision of Tundale
·         Dunstan’s Tongs: From Osbern of Canterbury’s Life of St. Dunstan
·         From Holy Hound to Devil Dog: From Stephen of Bourbon’s Treatise on Diverse Preaching Materials
·         Preying on the Laity: From Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogues on Miracles
·         The Psalm-Skipper Demon: From Late Medieval Exempla Collections
·         Satan’s Family: From Late Medieval Exempla Collections
·         The Craven Angels: From the Voyage of St. Brendan, Wolfram’s Parzival, and Dante’s Inferno.
Apes of God: Demons in Early Modern Europe
·         A Covenant of Death: From Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend
·         A Faustian Bargain: From The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus
·         Thou Profoundest Hell Receive Thy New Possessor: From John Milton’s Paradise Lost
           
Serpent Kings and Animal Spirits: Demons of the East
·         Hymns Against Demons and Sorcerers: From the Rig Veda
·         The Serpent-King Zahhak: From Shahnameh: The Book of Kings by Abolquasem Ferdowsi
·         Fatal Fox-Girls and Other Perils: From Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling
           
The Allure of the Incubus: Demon Lovers Through the Ages*
·         The Air’s Embrace: From Augustine’s On the City of God Against the Pagans*
·         Lascivious Spirits: From Caesarius of…