Gods, demons, evil spirits, what is going on here? In ancient times man was scared. You might say that he was even scared of his own shadow.There was a lot to be scared of in those days. You could be eaten by a wild animal, starve to death, die of a disease or even freeze, just to mention a few things. He understood almost nothing about his surroundings and felt that his life was being ruled by nature. Nature was the rocks and trees, the sky and earth and even the water. He decided that some of these objects, or all of them, must have mystical powers, so he decided to worship them. He worshiped the trees. The moon and the sun became gods and even the very earth itself was represented by a god. Who was the first to worship the elements, we will never know? This type of worship must have went on for hundreds of thousands of years. Gradually some of the gods began to take the general shape of people. I say general. because many were exaggerated figures while others were only partially human. The gods could be beneficial but they could also be very cruel.

Zeus

Some thought that the only way to make the crueler gods happy was to send them the souls of humans. So how did you do this? They did it with human sacrifice of course. Throughout history we find remnants of this procedure. Some races of other wise peaceful people sacrificed humans. This is another act that we really can't trace to it's roots. It usually began by sacrificing one's enemies. but as time went on, priests sought volunteers or selected people from their own community to be sacrificed. They were all told what an honor it was and many went along peacefully. The one thing you never seemed to see was a priest sacrificing himself or one of his number. I guess the honor was too much for him, if you get my meaning.

Some religious practices even went to the point of eating part of your enemy. You were supposed to eat his heart to gain his courage and strength. How this was ever figured out is a very good question. Well, anyway, by the time the Greeks ruled the world, their gods looked mostly human after awhile. The first thing the Greeks believed was that there was never nothing. This is an important fact to remember. It is contrary to the belief by many organized religions that God created the earth from nothing. The Greeks believed that in the beginning there was just shapeless objects and darkness. Some of the early Greek gods were indeed monsters or titans but the most powerful were gods like Zeus. Zeus was the king of the gods and these gods lived on top of a mountain named Olympus and looked like us. Why shouldn't the gods have looked human? Man now ruled the earth and was king of all the animals so the king of the gods looked like us.

Demon

Everything was not based upon gods however. People believed in demons also. The bible is full of stories about demons and evil spirits. Even the new testament tells of Jesus casting out demons. What exactly were these demons? Were they the representation of mental illness that may have been cured or were they creatures from hell? Why did people believe in demons anyway? I think that people needed something or someone to blame their bad fortune on. People that had extreme bad fortune may have been considered to be cursed or possessed. Can you imagine a mentally ill person or a person with a deformity thousands of years ago? What must people have thought of them? Surely some had to think that this was the work of a demon or devil.

The problem was that people didn't smarten up for a long long time. If we look at the middle ages, many of these poor souls were still being tormented by people who swore that the devil was involved with them. Things got so bad in the middle ages that most people didn't dare keep a cat for a pet. Cats were considered companions to demons or evil spirits. Many of those that had them were burned at the stake or put on trial for being a witch. You certainly didn't want that to happen because these trials had only one outcome. One of the more popular ways to determine if someone was a witch was to tie a heavy weight around them and tie their hands and feet. Next you threw them into the water. If they didn't float and drowned, they were innocent. I would love to know who thought this up. Of course you might get one of the other types of trials like having someone stick a hot poker through you. If it penetrated you were innocent. and died. It seemed that no matter what kind of trial you had, innocence was dependent on your death.

This practice was even brought over to the colonies as most of us know and practiced in New England. I bet many people who wanted to get ahead on a job or in their social standing would declare someone above them to be a witch. Great way to move up, except it could also happen to you. Well modern man seems to have finally moved beyond this point. Parts of the human race that are in places on this planet that don't have much contact with modern man may still practice some of these acts, but we are mostly over them. There is a holdover however. That holdover is superstition. Many people still believe in things like walking under a ladder is bad luck or if a black cat crosses your path that is not good. Some even believe in curses and cite the curse on King Tut's tomb as proof that curses still work. While opening King Tut's proved tragic, we know that most of the deaths were caused by a mold in the tomb and the rest were just accidents, such as a spider bite. You just can not convince some people that curses are nonsense.

Evil Spirit

So here we are, a people that have gods, demons, evil spirits, bad luck and curses in our past and in our present. Most of us believe in one God today. I would venture to say that most of us also believe in the devil or demons. Some of us believe in bad luck and curses. Even some of those that say they don't believe in curses feel queasy when they are asked to violate a curse or perform an act believed to be bad luck. I think that this is because we are violating our primordial memory. It is almost ingrained into us that performing certain acts will bring unfortunate results. Will we ever get to the point in our civilization were we will be entirely free of this nonsense? Only time will tell.