The gate of the year

Illustration from a French manuscript of the XII century (Liber Floridus, ms. 92), in the Rijksuniversiteit te Gent Bibliotheek, Gand, Belgium. The image shows the Devil riding on the demon Behemoth, a monstrous animal mentioned in the Old Testament (Job, 40, 15-24), which here takes the aspect of a bull.
In Ancient Greece, the demons were regarded, after the gods and the heroes, powers without a precise individuality, whose only expression was the mask. The indeterminacy of the demon was visible in the image of the Good Demon that protected the ancient family, an element of rites and beliefs proper of the rural society which had been transferred into the city. The peculiar activity of the demon was mediation between the mortals and the gods, and this being, who participated both to divine and human nature, was consulted or manifested himself in ritual practices like divination, magic, enchantments, dreams.
In Christian times, the demon, who for the Greeks could induce mankind toward both good and evil, splits in two different entities, developing the dualism between angels and demons, in a world arranged in decreasing order, starting from God. The mediating function was excluded and the demons were identified with the Devil, with the drives of desire, with the temptations of the marvelous and of imagination and above all with the senses (Detienne 1978).
For the peoples of Antiquity, a pair of bull horns on a human head were an attribute of divinity. For example, in the Mesopotamian world the gods were iconographically recognizable because they wore an headdress decorated with several pairs of horns. With Christianization and the reversal of sign of pre-Christian beliefs, the horns became a symbol of Evil and have been associated exclusively to the person of the Devil. The mixture of human and animal traits, that is the ability to change shape, to transform, has also become a uniquely diabolic and malefic characteristic. At the same time, the subterranean world, which throughout Antiquity had represented the land of the dead, but also the place where the generative power, which produced the birth, growth and fertility of all that was living, had its abode, gradually took on the negative characteristics of the Netherworld, the realm of the Devil, where the souls of the damned were dragged inside.

[Image: http://library.artstor.org]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Illustration from a French manuscript of the XII century (Liber Floridus, ms. 92), in the Rijksuniversiteit te Gent Bibliotheek, Gand, Belgium. The image shows the Devil riding on the demon Behemoth, a monstrous animal mentioned in the Old Testament (Job, 40, 15-24), which here takes the aspect of a bull. In Ancient Greece, the demons were regarded, after the gods and the heroes, powers without a precise individuality, whose only expression was the mask. The indeterminacy of the demon was visible in the image of the Good Demon that protected the ancient family, an element of rites and beliefs proper of the rural society which had been transferred into the city. The peculiar activity of the demon was mediation between the mortals and the gods, and this being, who participated both to divine and human nature, was consulted or manifested himself in ritual practices like divination, magic, enchantments, dreams. In Christian times, the demon, who for the Greeks could induce mankind toward both good and evil, splits in two different entities, developing the dualism between angels and demons, in a world arranged in decreasing order, starting from God. The mediating function was excluded and the demons were identified with the Devil, with the drives of desire, with the temptations of the marvelous and of imagination and above all with the senses (Detienne 1978). For the peoples of Antiquity, a pair of bull horns on a human head were an attribute of divinity. For example, in the Mesopotamian world the gods were iconographically recognizable because they wore an headdress decorated with several pairs of horns. With Christianization and the reversal of sign of pre-Christian beliefs, the horns became a symbol of Evil and have been associated exclusively to the person of the Devil. The mixture of human and animal traits, that is the ability to change shape, to transform, has also become a uniquely diabolic and malefic characteristic. At the same time, the subterranean world, which throughout Antiquity had represented the land of the dead, but also the place where the generative power, which produced the birth, growth and fertility of all that was living, had its abode, gradually took on the negative characteristics of the Netherworld, the realm of the Devil, where the souls of the damned were dragged inside. [Image: http://library.artstor.org]