" Zeus has placed by every man a guardian, every man a daemon, to whom he has committed the care of the man; a guardian who never sleeps , is never deceived. (Epictetus, Dissertation I 14,12)
God is with in, and your daemon is with in." (Epictetus Dissertation I 14, 14)
Heraclitus states "Character is your daemon," in one of his fragments.
Pythagoras:
"Father Zeus, O free them all from suffering so great or show unto each the daimon, who is their guide." (Pythagorean Golden Verse 36)
The paper I'm referring to is here: http://www.theandros.com/daemon.html
"The focus of this paper will be to explore origins and various ideas concerning the Daemon as recorded in works of Philosophers, mythographers and astrologers. The time frame of our search will span almost two thousand years.
The Greek Philosopher Plotinus (205-270C.E.) is located almost right in the middle of this search for understanding of the Daemon. Homer and Hesiod would be at the beginning and we find Proclus, Michael Psellus and George Gemistos known as Plethon near the end of this search.
Plotinus starts his discussion of the guardian daemon in Ennead 3.4. He is concerned in resolving an immanence-transcendence dilemma. Is the daemon operating in man’s innermost mind like conscience or is the daemon as a transcendent being and in no sense as a force innate in and the property of the human soul. Plotinus’ solution rests on Unity, upon the principal that the soul contains the whole intelligible world- in fact that we are "each of us an intelligible cosmos (ordered whole)." From the perspective of Unity we are our own daemon which may be us at a more refined level. The contrast that Plotinus is writing about is between Plato’s Phaedo 107d where the daemon is represented as an individual entity:
For after death, as they say the daemon of each individual, to whom he belonged in life, leads him to a certain place in which the dead are gathered together, whence after judgement has been given they pass into the world below, following the guide, who is appointed to conduct them from this world to the other: and when they have received their due and remained their time, another guide brings them back again after many revolutions of ages. (Phaedo 107d)
In Timeaus 90A of Plato it is identified with the highest part of the human soul. Somewhat implying that our guardian daemon is the level in the hierarchy of being next above that on which we habitually operate on. Hence, though immanent within us, it is yet transcendent to our normal life."
(end of quote)
Shai (Shay, Schai, Schay) was the ancient Egyptian god of fate and destiny. He was both a personification of these concepts as well as a deity - the Egyptians believed that he was 'born' with each individual, yet he was also a god. During the New Kingdom he appeared in the Book of the Dead, shown in the judgement scene in the Halls of Ma'ati. He was a god related to birth in the world and rebirth in the underworld.
The name of the god - shay shaay - comes from the ancient Egyptian word for 'appoint' or 'command'. The word shay shaay could mean 'extent' or 'bulk'. He was the god of the allotted life-span of a human being, relating Shai to the extent - the length - of their life. Another translation of his name could be 'that which is ordained'. Thus, the Egyptians believed that Shai was also related to the 'destiny' or 'fate' or even the 'luck' of a human being. The Turkish word kismet can closely describe the concept of the god Shai.
Shai first appeared in the 18th Dynasty and continued through Egyptian history even under the reign of Akenaten. He was even sometimes given the name Shait - shaayt - and was depicted as female rather than male! He was often partnered with three specific goddesses - Meskhenet, goddess of the birth brick and fate, and Renenutet, the goddess who would give a child his or her true name and Shepset, a hippopotamus goddess of childbirth. He was depicted as a man, a cobra or Shai as a man snake and even as a human-headed birth brick, and most often shown in funeral papyri, near his female partners.
As a god of destiny and fortune, Shai could be a positive or negative influence. He could protect an individual, or he could bring misfortune down on the individual. He could be an ambivalent deity, and the Egyptians believed that he followed a person from the moment of birth through to the judgement in the afterlife. His presence at the weighing of the heart could be either one of helping or hindering the deceased, or even as an unbiased party telling the court what has happened in the life of the deceased. But as Meskhenet and Renenutet were there to help with rebirth of the individual into the afterlife, Shai may also have had a similar protective purpose, rather than being a witness against the deceased. An interesting ancient Egyptian greeting was "Shai and Renenutet are with you."
Shai was originally the deity who "decreed" what should happen to a man, and Renenutet, as may be seen from the pyramid texts, was the goddess of plenty, good fortune, and the like; subsequently no distinction was made between these deities and the abstract ideas which they represented.
But it was not only mortals who had to contend with Shai. It was believed that both he and Renenutet are in the hands of Thoth. To emphasise his divinity, Ramesses II claimed to be "the Lord of Shai and the creator of Renenutet". Yet in the temple of Opet in Ipet-Isut (Karnak), he is mentioned as "Shai of all gods" - the destiny and fate of all gods seemed to also be in Shai's hands. In the Instructions of Amenemope, the scribe suggests that no-one could ignore Shai. Akenaten tried to link Shai with the Aten when he stated that "the Aten is the Shai who gives life". Even Akenaten, who was not the monotheist that people believe him to be (as Assmann and Hornung point out), could not ignore Shai.
Do not set your heart upon seeking riches,
For there is no one who can ignore Shai;
do not set your thought on external matters:
for every man there is his appointed time.
Some here already know I couldn't ignore Shay..
(My research into this subject began on New Year's Day 2000 when I awoke hearing a voice repeating the phrase "The Shay Shay are the people who live life the way it shoud be lived" - I'm not in the habit of hearing voices...)
After researching this I came across author Anthony Peake and his wonderful books on the Daemon / Eidolon. http://www.wowio.com/users/product.asp?BookId=4606
It got me thinking...
In familar alchemical illustrations we see two serpents devouring one another. The winged serpent signifies the Universal World Spirit; the bottom serpent signifies our Matter, the Virgin Earth. The crowned, winged serpent is the Cosmic spirit which brings everything to life, which also kills everything and takes all the forms of nature. It is everything and nothing. This upper serpent has the material serpent by the tail. The lower serpent of matter also has the winged serpent by the tail.
These two serpents also represent the fixed state and the volatile state.
"Through the art of separation one makes One into Two….It is the most volatile and also the most fixed…it is a fire that consumes everything, and opens and closes everything. Cook with this fire until it stops, and you have the most fixed thing that penetrates all things - and one has eaten the other, and this figure [the ouroburos wearing the crown] comes out."
This then symbolises the continuous process of the union of the internal world and the external world, the eternal 'now' with the present 'now'.
Now without going into Alchemy too much, the 'fusion' of the two serpents - the fixed and the volatile - is an inner (spiritual) process; part of the Great Work on the Self, one of the aims of which is the unification of (inner) opposites eg Light and Dark, Moist and Dry, Masculine and Feminine etc etc. One of the symbols for successful completion of this inner work is the Ouroboros, another is the Phoenix and still another is The Golden Child.
Some here may have seen my article in Astraea Magazine (Vol.1) on The Cosmic Cycle and The Black Madonna, where I proposed that the symbol of the Black Madonna and Child was a portrayal of exactly the same process depicted in the Ouroboros, but one step further, in that it also depicted the Golden Child (as does the same imagery of Isis and the child Horus, - Divine Son of the Union of the 'material' Isis and the 'god of the underworld' Osiris) and hence could be interpreted as a gnostic/alchemical symbol going back to the time of the days of very early Christianity.
I am wondering if the union of the Daemon and the Eidolon also falls into this category, with the Daemon Ultimate Life of Tony's books being a version of the Golden Child - something we can attain through the Work on the Self, with the assistance of the Daemon making this possible.... The Upper Winged serpent of the Universal World Spirit being associated with the Daemon, and the lower serpent of matter being the Eidolon.
The way I see it is that when the Eidolon and the Daemon are working together as a fully functioning single unit, they become the third 'self', like the ouroboros, or the golden child, or the united Eidolon/Daemonic ultimate life. To live a life as it should be lived.
In all the methods of working on the self, this is the aim, and it's by discovering and listening to the higher self, allowing it to be the guide and to govern the way we behave, rather than the lower self, that this is achieved.
The Crowned Dragon
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