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by mmfilesi
Hi friends
Demogorgon is an invention of Boccaccio, probably as a rendition of "demiurge" of Plato. I've written about this in Spanish. With the Google translator:
Boccaccio and Demogorgon
In this context, between 1350 and 1370, the Florentine writer Giovanni Boccaccio wrote a treatise entitled De monumental mythological genealogy gentilium deorum in Spanish, Genealogy of the Gentile gods, the latter term is sometimes replaced by "pagan" 1.
From available sources, Homer, Apollodorus, Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, Macrobius, etc.-fifteen books Boccaccio addressed in classical myths from pedigrees. In the first book about the lineage of one Demogorgon, the first god of all, which consider the following:
"[...] Those who claimed that the Earth was the creator of all things, says Teodoncio, which had within it a divine mind, they called Demogorgon. When I actually think the father and the beginning of the pagan gods, as I discovered, as poetic fictions it has had no father and because I read that this was not only father of Ether, but grandfather, and other many gods from which they were born, of whom mention was made earlier.
"So, taken all separated some as superfluous heads and taken to the members, after thinking have found the beginning of the road making Demogorgon not the father of things but of the pagan gods with God's help we will enter the rough way through the Etna Taenarum or descending into the bowels of the earth and furrowing before other fords of the lake Styx.
"Described with great majesty the tree of darkness, to me, who was wandering through the bowels of the earth, he appeared the inactive ancestor of all the pagan gods, surrounded on all sides of clouds and shadow, Demogorgon, horrible by the same name, covered with a certain pallor and a careless mossy moisture and foul exhaling a repulsive smell of earth and the father of the unfortunate confession source more foreign words than with his own, stood before me, the creator of the new work.
"I laughed, I confess, seeing, remembering the folly of the ancients, who thought that nobody was born eternal father of all things and hiding in the bowels of the earth. Since this really relates little to the work, let him in his misery, moving us toward what we want. For Teodoncio says the cause of this foolish credulity has its origin in men of science but rather on the former farmers of Arcadia. These, being landsmen, and savage and untamed as they saw the land, by its own momentum, producing all types of forests and bushes, making spring flowers, fruits and seeds, which fed all the animals and finally received in anything herself dying and, further, that the mountains belched flames, the fire tore the hard silica, that winds blew from concave areas and valleys and realized that she, the earth moving ever roars and even issued its own entrails poured fountains, lakes and rivers, as if from her ethereal fire and the air pure and fully saturated, poured this vast expanse of ocean water, and like as if tiny sparks that they flew to the top from the shock of the fire balloons produjesen sun and moon and stars and everlasting nailed haphazardly on top of the sky, he foolishly believed him.
"But those who followed after them, thinking they had something more profound, not just to the land called the author of these things, but had implicit in it a divine mind whose thought and will be producing things. And they thought that the mind had its home in underground places.
"Increased credibility in the error between the peasants have gone very deep in the caverns and recesses of the earth once, because in them, to move forward with an increasingly dim light, it seems that silence is enlarged, superstition became accustomed to penetrate the minds with the natural horror of the places and the suspected presence of some unknown divinity, divinity conjectured as such by them, did not consider another Demogorgon, by the fact that he believed his house was in the bowels of the earth, as has been said.
"So this, to be held among the oldest Arcadian high honor, considering that it increased the majesty of his divinity remained silent her name, or thinking it was decent so high that a man ran from mouth to mouth among mortals, perhaps fearing that when he was appointed was angry with them, was forbidden, with popular consent, which was named by someone with no punishment. What certainly seems to attest Ericto Lucan when he describes invoking the Manes said [VI, 744-747] "obey or to be called one who, when invoked, the earth trembles without ever being shaken, the openly looking Gorgona and punishing Erinys fearing his blows, and so on. "
"This is how Estacio, when the old order of blind Teiresias Eteocles searches the outcome of the war of the Thebans says [IV, 514-517]:" For we know it and you fear that something is said and known and disturbing Hecate if I Timbreo, do not be afraid of you and the world's largest triple that is harmful to know, to him, but corn, etc. ". This, of which the two poets speak not its name implies, clearly says Lactantius, famous and learned man, who says Statius, which is Demogorgon, the most important and the first of the pagan gods.
"And we can even accept it if they want to give value to the words of poems. For in Lucan says the woman witch [Ericto] and pagan, to show his prominence and his mansion underground, the earth trembles when invoked it, something he never does on other occasions not to be shaken. Following this he says that because he sees the Gorgon, this is the bare earth, ie in its fullness, because it inhabits the bowels of the earth, and we on our part towards him, only see the top surface. Or openly contemplates Gorgon, the monster turns to stone those who watch, and therefore turns to stone, so that it appears as a further sign of its preeminence.
"Thirdly, it also shows his power in the Underworld to say that this Erinys whipping instead of Furies, this is the Furies, that is repressed and angry with his power.
"Moreover, Estacio says this is known as the celestial gods, so that shows that it is underground and the first of all and invoked can crush the" Manes to the wishes of mortals, which they would not want. He also says that is harmful to know, because knowing the secrets of a god is not concerned at all, for if known, the power of divinity became a trifle.
"To him [a Demogorgon] Furthermore, so as not to distress in the tedium of solitude, the old generous and all-seeing, says Teodoncio gave as companions to Eternity and Chaos, and then a large battalion of children, for them between males and females claimed to have been nine, as shown later in detail.
"This was the place of revelation if there was something hidden under a poetic fiction. But, as it is to discover the meaning of this divinity wrong, so it only remains to explain what seems to signify his harsh name. Demogorgon Greek for Latin, I think, earth god. For demon is a god, says Leoncio, but Gorgon is interpreted as land. Or better yet, the wisdom of the earth, as it is presented as the god who knows or wisdom. Or, as more pleasing to others, a terrible god, which is read from the true God who dwells in heaven, His holy and terrible name. But this is terrible for other reasons, for one, for the rectitude of his justice is terrible in his trial for those who do evil, it instead to those who think foolishly. "
But who is Demogorgon?
Boccaccio's mythological treatise was popular during the Renaissance. Served as a reference for many artists and writers and described by Boccaccio Demogorgon a primal earth god, fierce and terrible, the father of all other gods, was taken up by other authors. Thus, for example, is mentioned by Leo the Hebrew in one of his Dialogues of Love, in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, in the seven books of Jorge de Montemayor Diana or three hundred of Juan de Mena. Even today there is a character in an RPG called Demogorgon.
Now, the puzzling thing is that neither Homer nor Hesiod and Apollodorus and Ovid, or any other relevant mythographer Antiquity mentions a Demogorgon by either side. Where Boccaccio then deduced the existence of God?
In 1930, a professor of Latin literature at the University of Palermo called Carlo Landi addressed this issue in an essay entitled delicious Demogorgon (Remo Sandron. Palermo, 1930) 2. According to Landi, Boccaccio managed three main sources to describe the god Demogorgon and their children. The first and most important was a treaty of such a mythological Teodoncio (Theodontius) whose existence is still being questioned.
With arguments, Landi says Teodoncio did exist, it was a Byzantine author who lived in the eighth century and wrote a treatise in Latin mythological Boccaccio was available, although not preserved today. In addition, suspects, to narrate the role of Demogorgon in the creation of the universe, Teodoncio was inspired by the triad of Zas - Chronos - pre-Socratic philosopher Chthonios Pherecydes of Syros.
The second source would be a poem entitled Byzantine Pronapide Protocosmos of one of Athens, Landi think it could have been written by the Tedoncio:
"Io che congetturare ardirei is non fu stesso own Teodonzio to invent it healthy di quel pianta poemetto tale, if di Pronapide dell'autorità Serviss" poet "{g d. l 3, 1. 5) to coonestare i suoi trovati ingegnosi press'a bit che nel so l'Ariosto e gli altri cavallereschi Poemi authorities if giovarono di di dell'autorità Turpin. "
And the third source is a passage from Lactantius Placidus comment to the Thebaid of Estacio3 (IV, 516), which speaks of a god who created the cosmos, which perhaps could have been the source of inspiration to Teodoncio to choose the Demogorgón4 name. And most interesting is that in the various codices where the comment has been preserved, the name of God appears differently: demoirgon, emoirgon, Demogorgon acme, Demogorgon, demogelgunta, demogerontem and so on.
This, as you have warned the reader familiar with the classical world, to suspect that the term Demogorgon might be some corruption Byzantine much more familiar word in antiquity: the "Demiurge", a divine entity who popularized by Plato in the fourth century BC and was used by many authors and sects to denote the creator god of the universe, either the beginning, whether an intermediary between transcendent forces and material reality, as they thought the Valentinians.
Thus, we suspect that some text Boccaccio Teodoncio collected, which in turn inspired a classic tradition of the Demiurge was the creator of the universe and, more specifically, given the following references to Eternity Boccaccio and other concepts similar to a Neoplatonic tradition and, perhaps, Gnostic, subject the latter to leave for another day.
When a man has a theory // Can’t keep his mind on nothing else (
By Ross)