On Daemonology

Much like a demon, a daemon is an entity of possession. Just as demons are not natural, but supernatural, Daemons exist not in the reality of nature but in the symbolic realm, they are ideal not real. Yet there is an interface between the ideal and the real, for an ideal has to be simulated in a material substratum, just as a computer physically acts out, with transistors and electric currents, the non physical pattern of its program for the program to be meaningful. The Daemon, to have power, must possess a body.

Power is the action of the ideal upon the real through an interface of some kind. In nature there aren't creatures that have power over their environments, as Carse observed in the context of the sciences "If to command nature we must obey nature, then our commanding is only an obeying." Put another way, we cannot say what is in power in nature. Only when there is an ideal aspect can power be considered.

There can be identical copies of an idea, daemons like all ideas can multiply. Nature isn't divided, and can't be said to have copies, though there may be resemblances. Daemons have their own form, but not substance. DNA is ambigious, the code itself is ideal, but its expression in organisms, especially complex organisms, tends to be real, even 'identical twins' aren't identical. The true ideal tends to run in a substrate that has the potential to hold any of a number of ideals.

Daemons are cybernetic systems that reduce the ineffability of natural drives to a symbolic instruction, and then issue instructions that can unleash powerful drives. Daemons are therefor, when embodied, very powerful.

What distinguishes Daemons from other ideal assemblages is that a daemon is capable of possession, that is to say being confused with the host. The Daemon is a changeling, like the supernatural beings that replace the baby stolen from the crib, it becomes tied to the ego identity of its host. The host thinks the daemon is it, and insofar as the thoughts of the host are the thoughts of the daemon, this is correct. The daemon possesses the beast. The assemblage of symbols, of limits: thresholds, over determines the assemblage of drives, of will.