Der Dämon "What, then, is time?" Augustine asked more than 1,500 years ago. "If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know how." Similar to the philosopher's struggle with laying out what time actually means is the challenge to explain to mere humans what being a demon really is like, what it means to have existed since time itself has exited, and what age even means for the ageless. Furthermore, what is a demon at all? Of course, there are various religious constructs and concepts, but - and I feel I can speak with authority on the issue - they were all written down by people who have but seen through a glass, darkly. They only knew in part, and they only prophesied in part. Some of the loudest and most influential - albeit not most insightful - of those human writers spoke a great deal about good and evil: human constructs that rose to prominence due to certain religious ideas that heavily emphasized a primitive dualism. Human versus animal, culture versus nature, man versus woman, life versus death, good versus evil. Silly, silly humans. Poor in spirit, indeed. If you want to get to the plain truth, however, be not concerned with right and wrong. The conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind. Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. Demons are too large (we contain multitudes) to fit into this narrow invention of a hairless ape. Creation itself is larger than this! “For the believer", Protestant Reformer John Calvin once wrote, "the beauty of creation speaks of the majestic beauty of his God. He worships the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Examining creation brings him to praise and submit to his Creator." What kind of a creator is that, though? What kind of creation? The Ichneumonidae, for instance, is a parasitoid wasp family that reproduces by injecting their eggs directly into a host's body. After hatching, the larvae eat its host alive. The alleged cruelty of the Ichneumonidae troubled philosophers, naturalists, and theologians in the 19th century. They found the parasitoid lifestyle inconsistent with the notion of a world created by a loving and benevolent god. Most famously, Charles Darwin found the example of these parasitoid wasps so troubling that it contributed to his increasing doubts about the nature and existence of a creator. So, maybe there is no creator. Maybe nature is the creation of Satan. Or maybe it was simply created for a different kind of beast than man! A beast that might enjoy the sunrise and the beauty of majestic animals just as much as the fact that many of these graceful animals - like, say, gazelles or antelopes - were meant to spend their days in abject terror while lions and panthers live out theirs in lethargic imbecility, punctuated only by explosive bursts of cruelty. They slaughter weaker animals, dismember and devour the sick and the old before falling back into a brutish sleep where the only activity is that of the parasites feeding on them from within. Some of these parasites are hosts to smaller parasites, which in turn are a breeding ground for viruses. Snakes move among the trees, their fangs bared, ready to strike at bird or mammal, only to be ripped apart by hawks. "Now this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky, / And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die." "The pain in this world", Schopenhauer writes somewhere, "outweighs the pleasure. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other." "Oh," say you now, "but man is different, is he not?" And yet, war has destroyed so many countries, but men still believe the cure for war is war, much as the shaman prescribes the serpent's flesh for its bite. Reply you again, "this is not natural, for man has just learned this from society!" But no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to hold. Let us then adhere to the fact that what the writers of old have called "demonic" is just an embrace of life itself, an embrace of life as a whole, and the ability to nourish oneself at and to feed off of the whole range of sentient existence. Effectively, being a demon - or being demonic - is first and foremost the ability to overcome the discriminating mind of human dualism. While man's bound mind allows him to gain strength only from emotional states he considers to be positive, the boundless mind of a demon also finds strength and pleasure in blood, sweat, and tears. How limited the mind that feels emotionally nourished only from the child that is laughing but not also from the child that is crying? Only from the child that was just born but not also from the child that is stricken with cancer, already losing the thin hair it had just grown? Admittedly, there are demonic classics, I presume: devotion, submission, and obedience. Very sweet things, and - frankly - my first and favorite choice to feed off. If those are not achievable, though, there are still tears, pain, and finally even anger to devour. Maybe humans do consider this "evil" and "dark", but it is not to be thought that the life of such darkness is sunk in misery and lost as if in sorrowing. There is no sorrowing. For sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death, but death and dying are the very life of the darkness. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Name: Gorgoroth Race: Demon Age: Ancient Masquerade Job: Police Officer Masquerade Name: Varg Feeds Off: Submission, obedience, devotion (Most Energy) Pain (physical and mental) and fear Anger Other emotions (Less Energy) Current Goals: Find out more about witch covens and "anti-demonic" societies in WR, and burn them all alive. ((Always looking for RP in that regard, e.g. people who - willing or due to blackmail - spy out witches and societies for me, or - well - witches etc. themselves.)) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Final OOC note: As I don't wanna take credit for work that is not mine, I just want to say that the text above contains various quotes (from Jacob Boehme, Michel Houellebecq, and Cormac McCarthy) I've rewritten and arranged to give this - hopefully - nihilistic whole. That part about the conflict between right and wrong being the sickness of the mind is actually a quote from a famous 7th century Buddhist, the Chan Patriarch Sengcan. I've found it in a book describing the role Zen Buddhism played in Japan during World War II ("Zen at War" by Brian Victoria). In this interesting read, the author outlined how the Buddhism establishment of Japan promoted a kind of "Zen Nihilism" that was then used to justify Japanese fascism and imperialism. After all, the proper Buddhist is not supposed to be attached to positive, nor to flee negative states of mind but just experience everything with the same kind of equanimity. And right and wrong, well, that's just "the sickness of the mind" anyway. And so on. Point being: I always found or felt that such kind of nihilism is far more demonic than a one-sided and cartoonish "evilness" that reminds me more of a Batman villain in a spandex costume. Not really sure if that distinction makes sense, though. But I feel a proper demon should be "Beyond Good and Evil" and leave all notions of traditional morality behind. Hm. Anyway. Be that as it may, my demon will first and foremost feed off of submission and obedience (usually requiring more of a carrot and stick policy to achieve and to maintain anyway) and if that is not readily available, then pain and fear. So I think this should leave enough space for a wide variety of RP and responses. (And this thread is supposed to introduce my character, not begin a philosophical debate.)