Up: [[Calling]] Created: 2022-02-08 A daimon is the [[Archetype]] of what the Ancient Greeks called a **soul guide** or **psychopomp**, the Sufis called an angel (different from a Christian angel), and the Romans called a genius (people can’t be geniuses). The role of this being is to help us remember who we are and why we are here. This is the use of the word ‘daimon’ for Hillman and Blackie. However, Barbara Hannah, in *Encounters with the Soul*, pointed out that ancients believed that we couldn’t speak directly to our gods, so every figure that mediated between us and the divine was also considered a daimon. Our daimon (of the Hillman/Blackie variety) doesn’t direct our life. Rather, it offers us the gifts of what is in us at various points as we grow. We can always choose whether or not to take up those gifts, to “suffer change” as Lewis Hyde put it. If we don’t, the Greeks believed that our descendants would be haunted by an evil spirit. This makes a lot of sense to me. I connect it to the idea of intergenerational trauma and family dysfunction because a member of that family somewhere failed to be what he/she could be and passed on his/her misery throughout life and beyond. Our daimon can appear to us in dreams or in [[Active Imagination]] when we are ready. I consider [[Hestia]] my soul guide. Does that make her different from my daimon since a daimon is supposed to accompany you from birth and I only became aware of Hestia a few years ago? Or is it the case that she was my guide from the beginning and I’m only just now conscious of it? Or can you have multiple daimons for different stages of your life? Interesting things to ponder, although in the grand scheme of things just a semantic quibble!