So vivid is the belief in this story that many good Christians never pass through the archway without making the sign of the cross as a prophylactic against possible demonic influences.
It seemed to him for a moment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible that without malice he should have selected so unusual a topic.
But what did it matter, after all, whether he were demonic or not, and whether she loved him or hated him?
The Battas believe indemonic agency called Begu for every species of malady.
Malaria, which is perhaps the indisposition by which they are most frequently attacked, is always attributed to demonic agency.
This character however is of course totally incompatible with a demonic origin; and here, it seems to me, the interpretation which we are discussing hopelessly breaks down.
But we have yet to consider the case of Högni; and here it must be remarked that the demonic character of Högni is quite essential to the mythological theory.
It is not to be wondered that Correggio, possessed of this demonic power in the highest degree, and working to a purely sensuous end, should have exercised a fatal influence over art.
But far above, the bells began again to clash and jangle confusedly, with volleys of demonic joy.
Another demonic nature of a far more powerful type contributed his share to the ruin of art in Italy.
When a man has fully mastered his subject, and his subject has mastered him, there is sure to emerge a certain demonic force in literature or in science, all the more if the writer be a man with a style.
It is only that a certain lust for creation, and a certain demonic curiosity, scourge these latter on to something beyond passive resignation.
Dickens was too great a genius to confine his demonic touch to the town alone.
Dostoievsky has, indeed, a demonic power of revelation in regard to that twilight of the human brain, where lurk the phantoms of unsatisfied desire, and where unspoken lusts stretch forth pitiable hands.
And he approached Antonina threateningly, who again could not avoid the demonic fascination of his glance.
Indeed, if demonic possession in the New Testament is explained away, there is no reason why every other miraculous element should not be dealt with in the same manner.
Demonic possession cannot be cut out of the New Testament without leaving a gap through which all the "infidelity" in the world might pass freely.
The demonic theory of disease, including insanity, is universal among savages.
The demonic element in a man, therefore, may in one case be the demonic of the etherial and celestial, in another the demonic of the Tartarean and infernal.
The avoidance of the menstruous woman is an even more widespread custom than the shunning of pregnancy, probably because this function was interpreted as a symptom of demonic possession.
The phallic ceremonials which formed so large a part of heathen ritual became marks of the devil, and the deities in whose honour they were performed, although losing none of their power, were regarded as demonic rather than divine in nature.
Her fertility could be explained only on the basis of her possession of an unusually large amount of mana or creative force, or by the theory of impregnation by demonic powers.
It may be that the pains of delivery were ascribed to the machinations of demonic powers, or possession by evil spirits,--we know that this has sometimes been the case.
Culmination of belief in demonic power of woman in witchcraft persecutions.
His works--the De abstinentia for example--teem with detailed and believing discussion of every kind of theurgic practice and magic rite, whereby the divine and demonic natures may be moved.
Thus a constant looking for divine or demonic action became characteristic of the pagan intelligence.
This also is a portion of the same "illusion of impersonality" into which the inert malice of the ultimate "resistance" betrays us with demonic cunning.
But the supreme moments of human consciousness, when the apex-thought of the complex vision is shooting its arrows of flame into the darkness, are but slightly concerned with the demonic sub-human life of hypothetical elemental personalities.
And it is in this malignant apathy, rather than in the demonic exultation of the mood that preceded it, that the extreme opposite of love finds its culmination.
It follows its purpose with demonic tenacity, heedless of logic, contemptuous of consequences.
Goethe frequently refers to this demonic element; and others, besides Goethe, have had experience of it.
It is complicated by the fact that although in certain moods the contemplation of "the illusion of dead matter" produces profound melancholy, in other moods it produces a kind of demonic joy.
Against him the unfathomable power of evil struggles with eternal demonic malice.
I mean the experience which certain natures have of a demonic or magnetic force in life which can be drawn upon either for good or for evil, and which seems in some strange sense to be diffused round us in the universal air.
For in its hour of demonic exultation, when the will to evil buries itself with insane joy in "the illusion of dead matter," it is drawing savagely upon the energy of life.
Indeed the crisis comes with a new rage of this symbol of mad abandon, in demonic strife with the fervent song that finally prevails.
Dionysus had already been scared from the tragic stage, and in fact by a demonic power which spoke through Euripides.
In all this it is evident that the inquisitor, if conscientious, must himself have been firmly convinced of the truth that all the arts of sorcery, simple as many of them were, were based on demonic aid.
The Blessed Juan de Avila emphatically admonishes the devout to beware of such deceptions, but he fails to guide them in discriminating between demonic illusions and the effects of divine grace.
Moreover, many effects that have been attributed to demonic intervention were due to natural causes or to fraud (e.
The terrible excitement aroused by the persecution of the Stedingers and of Conrad of Marburg's Luciferans must indubitably have given a stimulus to the belief in demonic agencies.
All the accumulated beliefs in the occult powers of demonic agencies inherited from so many creeds and races still flourished in their integrity.
Demonic angels, tumbling on clouds like Leviathans, hurl them to and fro in brutal wrath above the crowd of souls, as though to demonstrate the justice of damnation.
Michelangelo's women suggest demonic primitive beings, composite and undetermined products of the human race in evolution, before the specific qualities of sex have been eliminated from a general predominating mass of masculinity.
And if nature triumphs in us so that we give our whole glowing, passionate devotion to such a woman, her serene joy of life appears to us as something demonic and cruel, and we read into our happiness a sin which we must expiate.
To suffer and endure cruel torture from then on seemed to me exquisite delight, especially when it was inflicted by a beautiful woman, for ever since I can remember all poetry and everything demonic was for me concentrated in woman.
I am beginning to feel a demonic curiosity to see how far your strength goes.
The trail of demonic influence could be found in every department of their life and thought, especially in their religion, which was very close to demon worship, and in their philosophy and poetry.
In all these the demonic art has arisen from a pestilential association of men and bad angels.
