Demogorgon

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This article is about the mythical Demogorgon. For other uses of this term, see Demogorgon (disambiguation).

Demogorgon, although often ascribed to Greek mythology, is actually an invention of Christian scholars, imagined as the name of a pagan god or demon, associated with the underworld and envisaged as a powerful primordial being, whose very name had been taboo.

Derivation and history

Demogorgon is first mentioned by a Christian scholiast of ca 350 - 400 CE, who was writing glossary annotations into the margins of Statius's Thebaid. This unidentified scribbler is misidentified with various Christian authors by enthusiastic modern demonologists. Prior to this, there is no pagan mention of any mythic "Demogorgon" anywhere.

By the late Middle Ages, nevertheless, the reality of a primal creative pagan "Demogorgon" was so well fixed in the European imagination that "Demogorgon's son Pan" became a bizarre variant reading for "Hermes' son Pan" in one manuscript tradition of Boccaccio's Genealogie Deorum ("Genealogies of the Gods":1.3-4 and 2.1), misreading a line in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

"Though a "primal" god mentioned in quite a few Renaissance texts, and impressively glossed "Demon-Gorgon," i.e., "Terror-Demon" or "God of the Earth," Demogorgon was quite possibly brought into existence by way of a garbled scholium on Statius' Thebais 4.516 (often linked to Lucan 6.744-49), where most scholars like Seznec, for instance, now spot an allusion to the Demiurge ("Craftsman" or "Maker") of Plato's Timaeus. For a remarkable early text actually identifying Ovid's Demiurge (1/1, here) as "sovereign Demogorgon," see the paraphrase of Metamorphoses I in Abraham France, The third part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch (London, 1592), sig. A2v." (Dr Daniel Kinney, "Ovid Illustrated: The Renaissance Reception of Ovid in Image and Text" linked below).

The origins of the name Demogorgon are uncertain, partly because the figure itself was of imaginary coinage. Various theories suggest that the name is derived from the Greek words daemon ('spirit' given the Christian connotations of 'demon' in the early Middle Ages)— or, less likely demos ('people')— and Gorgon or gorgos ('grim'). Another, less accepted theory claims that it is derived from a variation of 'demiurge'. The early Christian obsession with Satan and the vivid inhabitants of Hell are of Persian origin, while the magical context in which such imaginings thrive was Egyptian and Syrian.

"According to Ariosto, Demogorgon has a splendid temple palace in the Himalaya mountains, whither every fifth year the Fate are all summoned to appear before him, and give an account of their actions. They travel through the air in various strange conveyances, and it is no easy matter to distinguish between their convention and a Sabbat of the Witches." - The Fairy Mythology

"Demogorgon" was taken up as a poetic Christian ogre of Hell:

"Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name Of Demogorgon."

:--John Milton, Paradise Lost II.966.

Note, however, this quote does not refer to the inhabitants of Hell itself, but of an unformed region where Chaos rules with Night. In Milton's epic poem Satan passes through this region while traveling from Hell to Earth.

Demogorgon's name was earlier invoked by Faustus in Scene III of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (1590) when the eponymous Doctor summons Mephistopheles with a Latin incantation.

Demogorgon is also a character in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. In that "lyrical drama," Demogorgon overthrows his father, the tyrannical Jupiter. The theory of Demogorgon's name originating from Greek "demos" and "gorgos" is possibly at work in this text as an allusion to a politically active and revolutionary populace. Shelley's allusions to the French Revolution further support this.

References

[P.van de Woestijne, "Les scholies à la Thébaïde de Stace: remarques et suggestions," L'Antiquité Classique n.s. 19 (1950), pp 149-63], dates the scholiast of Statius to ca 350 - 400 CE.]
[Dr Daniel Kinney, "Ovid Illustrated: The Renaissance Reception of Ovid in Image and Text"]
[Varda's Demogorgon page]

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