The Anatomy of Melancholy

The seventh is a destroyer, captain of the Furies, causing wars, riots, upheavals and disturbances, mentioned in Revelation and called Abaddon. The eighth is the accusing or slandering devil whom the Greeks call diabolos, who drives people to despair. The ninth consists of tempters of various kinds, and their prince is Mammon.

Psellus distinguishes six kinds, though none above the moon. Weyer, in his False Monarchy of Demons, drawing on an old book, makes many more divisions and subordinate ranks, with their respective names, numbers, offices and so forth. But Gazaeus, quoted by Lipsius, maintains that every region is full of angels, spirits and devils, above and below the moon, in the ether and in the air, as Augustine reports from Varro in book 7, chapter 6 of the City of God.

Celestial spirits are above and aerial spirits below; or, as some have it, gods above and demigods below—lares, heroes and genii—which rise higher if they have lived well, as the Stoics held, but grovel on the ground, nearer the earth, if their lives were more base: these are manes, lemures, lamiae and so on.

They insist that no place is empty, but that everywhere is filled with spirits, devils or other inhabitants: “Heaven, air, water, earth and everything beneath the earth are full,” says Gazaeus. Although Antonio Rusca, in book 5, chapter 7 of On Hell, would confine them to the middle region of the air, these writers will have them everywhere: not so much as a hair’s breadth left empty in heaven, earth or water, above or below the earth.

The air is less full of flies in summer than it is of invisible devils at all times. Paracelsus firmly maintains this, and says that each has its own particular elemental realm. Others will have infinitely many worlds, each with its own spirits, gods, angels and devils to govern and punish it.

Some believe that every star may itself Be called a world; they call the earth a darkened star Over which the least of the gods presides—

Grégoire of Toulouse distinguishes seven kinds of ethereal spirits or angels, corresponding to the seven planets: Saturnian, Jovian, Martian and so on. Cardano discusses them in book 20 of On Subtlety, calling them “primary substances”; Trithemius calls them “Olympian spirits, who preside over the zodiac,” and so forth, and holds that they are good angels above the moon and devils below it.

He sets out their respective names and offices there, and, like Dionysius on angels, assigns different spirits to different countries, people, offices and so forth. They live around them and, as so many assisting powers, bring about their activities. In a word, he makes their number countless, as many as the stars in the sky.

Marsilio Ficino seems to support this view—whether from Plato or on his own authority, I do not know. These spirits continually rule their inferiors, who in turn rule those beneath them, all in a chain of subordination. Those nearest the earth rule us; we divide them into good and evil angels, call them gods or devils according to whether they help or harm us, and accordingly worship, love or hate them.

Most likely, though, he takes it from Plato, who, relying entirely on Socrates—“who, he writes, preferred death to falsehood”—distinguished nine kinds on Socrates’ authority alone. Presumably Socrates took this view from Pythagoras, Pythagoras from Trismegistus, and Trismegistus from Zoroaster: first God; second, Ideas; third, Intelligences; fourth, Archangels; fifth, Angels; sixth, Demons; seventh, Heroes; eighth, Principalities; ninth, Princes.