Ok through out this site I use a lot of loaded words like demon, angel, god and the like. To me there are three basic varieties of spirit.
Angels: When God first created the universe he created an order of spirits to serve him as messangers(the word angel comes from the greek angelos and in the hebrew is malak both of which means messanger). Angels are gifted with great power and authority over much of the natural world. The Angels themselves are ruled over by four principle Archangels two of which are in the bible and to more can be found in the apocraphia. They are Michael, Raphael, Uriel(also spelled Ariel), and Gabriel. Each has a role in the universe(look for an angel page to give more details comming soon) and there own importance. People love angels these days but forget some important facts the bible and other religious(not always christian) sources tell us. Angels are messangers they do the will of God which is not necissarily pleasant. Angels both deliver verbal messages(it was Gabriel who told Mary she was to bare Jesus and it was Michael who informed Mary when her time on earth was over) and to serve as hit men the bible speaks of an angel of the lord killing the first born sons of egypt after all.
The Next Group is spirits associated with nature. In other words ghosts, totems, animal spirits and other beings related to this world. Like humans some are good, some bad some indeferant but they lack signifigant power that would be needed to do real harm.
The Last Catagory is the one no one likes to talk about even people who should know better. Demons. A demon is an inhuman spirit they never were nor ever will be living things. Where they come from no one is sure although there are many theories. Personaly I beleive that demons are angels that chose to turn there back on God and rebel against every thing sacred and good in the universe. Scripturialy there are refferences through out the bible old and new testament(the watchers from Genesis and Satan in Revelations 12 7-9) but thats just the christian perspective. The babalonians, persians(zorastrianism specificly), chinese, japanese, greeks, romans, celts and many other cultures have negative gods and spirits who seek ruin and destruction. People often inquire why we know demons are not human but are a different order of spirit in rebellion against God. First demons exhibit powers ghosts don't have they possess people(the affects of which can make Linda Blair look pleasent in comparison), they lift objects that wiegh hundreds of pounds, paralize people making them unable to move, make objects appear out of thin air or disappear, and the like. More proof is in a different manner. Demons constantly seek to profane the divine. Look at the symbols used by satanists. Two major ones are an inverted cross an insult to christianity and the pentagram an insult to paganism. Beyond that they act at night almost exclusively, retreat or escilate in the face of prayer or religious cerimony, they act in threes to profane the number 3 which in many religions is considered a sacred number, and they act primarily and most destructively at 3 am both because of the importance of 3 as I mentioned before and because 3 pm is the traditional hour of Christ's death.
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