Almost simultaneously, popular Hebrew mythology encompassed by the Semitic tribes of the Middle East began to ascribe to the daimons a certain independence of will, at first both positive and negative, but then with increasingly malicious intention. During the time of the ancient Greeks a word was found to describe this entire class of characteristics defined as spirits: daimon, later to become daemon or demon. With its earliest roots in the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Assyria, the idea of good versus evil was progressively quantified and refined by assigning names to positive characteristics such as happiness, inspiration and good fortune, and to negative characteristics such as sloth and greed, but also to ailments of the body and the mind such as depression, epilepsy, blindness and headache. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the continuum of civilisation collectively described as western. Since the dawn of human civilisation, mankind has attempted to rationalise its primeval fear of the unknown by creating order out of chaos and by categorising its understanding of the concept of death. Demons verses saints: detail of a painting by Andrea di Bonaiuto, Cappellone degli Spagnoli.

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