From the Vault: Demogorgon

You probably know the Demogorgon as the powerful demon lord from Dungeons and Dragons, or perhaps as the interdimensional monster from “Stranger Things.” But where does this curious name come from? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe pursue the origins of the Demogorgon through modern pop culture, romantic poetry, translated texts and Gnostic mystery. (Originally published 10/1/2019)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey folks,
Robert and I were out of the office for a bit.
I guess whatever you would call the office right now.
We were out of the home office for a bit. Uh.
So we are running a vault episode today. We're going
into the vault for a classic episode on the demo Organ. Yeah,
this is a fun one. It's one that we referenced

(00:26):
recently on the show, so we thought what better time
than now to unleash the demogorgan once again. This originally
aired on October one, twenty nineteen. I have very fond memories.
I think you'll enjoy it at length. The universal Hubbub,

(00:49):
wild of stunning sounds and voices, all confused, born through
the hollow dark, assaults his ear with loudest vehemence. Thither
he applies, undaunted and eat their whatever power or spirit
of the nethermost abyss might in that noise reside of
whom to ask which way the nearest coast of darkness

(01:10):
lies bordering on light? When straight behold the throne of
chaos and his dark pavilion spread wide on the wasteful deep,
with him enthroned sat sable, vested night, eldest of things,
the consort of his reign. And by them stood orcas
and eighties and the dreaded name of dim Rumor. Next

(01:35):
and chants and tumult and confusion, all embroiled and discord
with a thousand various mouths. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios, How Stuff Work.

(01:57):
Hey you, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and I'm
so excited. It's my favorite time of the year. It's October,
which is my favorite month of the year anyway, but
it's also my favorite time of the year at work
because it's Monster Month. Here on Stuff to Blow your Mind,
that's right when we devote the entire month of October
and sometimes a little change two topics that are either

(02:19):
obsessed with monsters or or darkness or horror or terror.
Is there anything even remotely HALLOWEENI We just fully embrace it.
It's the most wonderful time of the year. And so
and you know, as we were coming up with episodes
to record this year, where we you know, our minds
turned to things we've covered in the past. So on
one hand, there's an old episode of the show about

(02:42):
the mind flares of Dungeons and Dragons. Uh, and it's
led various folks to request another episode dealing with something
from the world of Dungeons and Dragons. And likewise, last
year we did an episode on the Great Basilisk where
we talk about this concept of not only the monstrous Bassilist,
but this kind of uh, you know, tech world futuristic

(03:06):
vision of an all powerful, malevolent AI. And so we
decided we we'd up the anti this year and discuss
an entity that kind of combines both of these themes.
And so we're going to talk about the Demogorgan. Now,
I would not be surprised for the largest portion of
you out there are familiar with the idea of a demogorgan,
primarily from the recent Netflix show Stranger Things. I guess

(03:30):
it's mainly the first season of that, right, Yeah, I
mean the creature it keeps popping up as well, but
it's mainly that that first excellent season of Stranger Things,
and uh, and I think that's a good place to start.
Like the most recent pop culture incarnation of the demogorgan.
It's probably one of the best new cinematic monsters that
we've encountered in recent years. Uh, you know, this category

(03:51):
confusion entity that's at once humanoid and be steal but
at times he's bipedal and other times it's crawling around
on all fours. It's like a v this fly trapped minotaur. Yeah,
that's the other cool aspect of it's It's it's head
at times looks like a featureless mask of flesh, but
then it opens up in these these flower petals, these
kind of uh you know, a razor toothed flower petals

(04:15):
around this gaping maw. But I also like that it's
a dimension hopper, right, which kind of means it's always
it could pop up anywhere. Yeah, it travels through dimensions,
though I'm uncertain if that's part of its natural abilities,
because we see it feeding on an egg in its
own dimension at one point. Uh. And perhaps it takes
to hunting in our world due to the weakening of

(04:35):
the connection between the two, uh, you know, due to
mad science, of course. Um. But if this is the case,
it's still quite proficient it traveling between the world's through
those rips and tears to acquire food. Right, So it
could actually be a rather mundane predator in its own world.
It's just that Matthew Modine and his psychic projects unleashed

(04:55):
this predator into it made it an invasive species in
our world. Right. Yeah, yeah, like it, like it. It
does pretty well in its own world, but here it
can really go at it, you know, like a Superman
with the Yellow Sun. Yeah. But of course in stranger Things,
we also learned that the kids in the in the story,
they name this creature the democ Organ because they are
actively playing dungeons and Dragons and they and they are

(05:18):
playing a campaign that involves the democ Organ. Uh. This,
this Prince of Demons, is mighty demon, lord of just
immense power. Now, Robert, I know that you have a
reputation as a quite cruel dungeon master yourself. So do
you subject to your adventuring travelers to a democ Organ
every now and then? No? Not not no, not yet.

(05:38):
And it's not the kind of thing you would you
would inflict on your adventures in a hap hazard fashion.
It is one of the most powerful entities in the game,
so it's it's the kind of thing you cap off
an entire campaign with that you would only throw at
you know, a higher level, like really high level characters. Um.
I mean, I guess you could throw it in haphazardly.

(06:00):
You have just kind of a very casual game where
people have like just immensely powerful characters. In each week
you just battle some things that are tremendously powerful to
just see how it all shakes out. But um, for instance,
in the campaign Out of the Abyss, which is a
campaign that I've been playing in my group that I've
been dungeon mastering for about four years now, we are

(06:20):
almost at the point where the Demogorgon may be encountered.
Oh yeah, so we've been building up to it. Do
you have demogorgon que music ready to go when it happens? Basically,
I mean, it's a it's a big deal. It's uh,
you know, we have an enormous figuring that we've been
putting together. It's a it's huge. Okay, Well, in the
Dungeons and Dragons world, what is this demogorgon creature? It's

(06:42):
obviously nothing like what's in Stranger things like that. It's
not a venus, fly trap minotaur, right, So in Dungeons
and Dragons. The Demogorgon dates back to nineteen seventy six.
That's when this entity originated in a supplement titled Eldric
Wizards by Gary Gyga himself and Brian Bloom. And if

(07:02):
you look around online you can find this in PDF
form and it has some you know, some adorably kind
of crude illustrations of what the various creatures would look like.
Those those those the illustrations, and Dungeons and Dragons have
come a long way. Like the most like the earliest
version of the democ organ that is illustrated in this
book is which just crude sketch of this, uh, this

(07:24):
kind of two headed tentacle armed, chicken footed thing with
baboon heads, right yeah, with baboon heads. But the like,
it's cute. I mean, it's like it's kind of like
the monsters in the Ranking and Bass Middle Earth. Yea.
And of course, you know, part most the big thing
abou Dungeons and Dragons is it does take place in
the mind, and especially early on they did, they didn't

(07:46):
have elaborate illustrations. You're supposed to, you know, come up
with it yourself. Today we have elaborate illustrations the most
recent fifth edition illustrations of the democ Organ are just
absolutely beautiful where it seems like there's like a burning
on inside of the creature. But I want to read
just a quick description from that original nine supplement to

(08:07):
to properly describe what the creature looks like, because the
basic description has not changed. Okay, melt my mind with terror. Okay,
quoth guy GaX and bloom here. Uh. It is contended
by some that this demon lord is supreme, and in
any event, he is awesome in his power. This gigantic

(08:27):
demon is eighteen tall and reptilian. His skin is plated
with snake like scales, His body and legs are those
of a giant lizard, His twin necks resemble snakes, and
his thick tail is forked. Dimagorgan has two heads which
bear the visages of evil baboons or perhaps mandrils. Rather
than having arms, he has great tentacles. His appearance testifies

(08:51):
to his command of cold blooded things such as serpents, reptiles,
and octopi. And Robert, you brought in a glorious figure
in the I now hold in my hand. It's uh,
it's very nice. Yeah, this is a small one, the
big one I couldn't even bring in because it's just
it's it's too enormous. It would alarm people. Uh and
they would they would wonder what was about to befall them.

(09:12):
So so yeah, basically, this description, though, holds up. It's
been tweaked a little bit. I think at one point
the heads were more hyena like because as I mentioned earlier,
we've had various editions of Dungeons and Dragons were on
addition five at this point, uh and uh and in
each edition has brought about various changes to the rules,
the mechanic, to the lore, and we'll get into some
of that in a minute as it relates to democgorgan

(09:34):
Um and then the art, who has mostly gotten just
tremendously better over the years. And again the most recent
fifth edition art is absolutely splendid to behold. But of course,
another thing to keep in mind is that the democ
organ is a demon, a demon lord. And given the
moral panics surrounding supposed Satanists and the the quote unquote

(09:55):
dangers of D and D back in the nineteen eighties,
the various demons and devils the game lore lost their titles.
At one point Um so when I originally started playing
back in the nineties, Uh, these various devils and demons
were known as uh the tenari uh instead of actually
referring to them as demons. So it's a rebrand. Yeah,

(10:17):
it was a rebrand because everyone was freaking out about
imagine Satanist, which I think we've discussed on the show before.
The Satanism as presented in the Satanic Panic of the
eighties did not exist, no one, No one has actually
no ritual um, you know, sacrificial uh worship of Satan

(10:43):
has has occurred in human history. Uh, certainly not on
the organized scale that uh that you see described in
some of these moral panics. But but anyway, Yeah, the
demonic edge was taken off the game for a while,
and if you wish to invoke such entities you had
to you had to bust out an older monster manual. Thankfully,

(11:05):
the Demons of the Abyss and the Devils of the
Nine Hells have made the return, and de mcgregan himself
is is not only back, but he's a he's a
cover batty, you know, he's he's there on the cover
of Out of the Abyss and is the the creature
that you battle at the very end, and you know
he's he's not only fearsome physically, he's also a highly
intelligent entity. He has an intelligent score of twenty, which is,

(11:30):
you know, like top of the d twenty. Okay, how
high does it go? Is twenty the most intelligent? Yeah,
twenty is is tremendously impressive. It's like a John von
Neumann kind of thing. Like it's I think, like a
ten is is more in keeping with like, you know,
sort of average human intelligence. This thing is beyond that.
Like eighteen is is like really high for a starting

(11:53):
character in Indungens of Dragons, starting mortal character. But the
Demcgorgon does not use the intelligence for the good of humankind.
The de m ocgorgan is gonna what is gonna design
the most neferious financial instruments that have ever been uh imagined?
Oh yeah, I mean he's he's completely chaotically evil. Um.
He's also known as the Sibilant Beast and the Master

(12:15):
of the Spiraling Depths and h by in those two heads,
each one has a name. In dungeons and dragon's lore,
one is Annual and the other is Hathoradia. Uh I
guess I don't know that anyone ever actually speaks to
one head or the other. You just kind of speak
to the de m Ocgorgan. Maybe that's the way to
beat it. You get them fighting each other. Maybe, I
don't know. I mean it basically, he's this wonderful embodiment

(12:39):
of like chaos and disorder, and uh I you know,
I think he wonderfully, you know, embodies the sense of
maddening division. Kind of a perfect demon for modern times especially.
And I also like to think of the two heads
is representing like the different hemispheres of the brain. Okay,
so maybe only one of them can do a complex language,
maybe so, yuh. But but also I like the idea

(13:02):
that the demon lords like are these mighty things, but
perhaps they exist because they're they're like the accumulated runoff
of all like human inequity, you know. And of course
there are other demon lords as well, and they all
plot against each other and war eternally. They represent different
depths of moral sin. So Demogorgan's most prominent rivals are Orcus,

(13:23):
the demon Lord of undeath, as well as the demon
Lord of perversion graz It, and the Master of Lies
fraz are Blue. But He's also opposed by Bahamat you know,
Gou and then of course Jubilex and Zuktimi, who we've
mentioned in passing on the show before. Wait, so one
of his rivals is Orcas. You know. We began this
episode with a reading from John Milton's Paradise Lost, in

(13:45):
which the name Orcus is invoked. They don't really explain,
Milton doesn't go into who Orcus is there, but uh so,
I didn't expect Orcas to come back. Also in the
D and D law here, Yeah, I mean Orcus was
a Roman god of the under world who punished oathbreakers.
And oh and by the way, he also has his
own designated trans Newtonian object in zero four A two Orcus.

(14:10):
Not all demon lords can make that claim that they
actually have some sort of cosmic body named after them.
But this gets to the point that the D and
D is this wonderful mix of influences, fusing various twentieth
century fantasy and sci fi works with mythology and flow
in folklore to create its worlds. So that's so Orcus

(14:31):
obviously comes from Roman mythology. There are other creatures we mentioned.
Bahammed Bahamed is the entity that the knights templars who
are accused of worshiping in the fourteenth century and we're
subsequently eradicated for uh. So you know that's where that
name comes from. But then there's d m ocg Oregan
to consider, and uh and obviously the name predates dungeons

(14:52):
and dragons because it pops up in Paradise Lost. Yeah,
so you would I think, obviously expect given the word demogorgon,
that this is something from Greek mythology, right, just sounds
like something straight out of Greeks were of course, like
like Medusa. So you might think, oh, well, this is
some this is some Greek monster that gets turned into

(15:13):
a god at some point. But despite what you would
think from the name, you will not find the Demogorgon
in ancient Greek mythology. You flipped through the works of Homer,
labors of Hercules, myths of Antalympus, cults of Athena or Apollo,
you're gonna find no demogorgan anywhere. So where does this
beast come from? Well, we've we've considered pop culture, and

(15:35):
we've considered uh, you know, a current twenty first century
Netflix show. We've considered a twentieth century role playing game.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna dive deeper.
We're gonna go into the literary world and continue to
follow follow the shadow of Demogorgan through the spiraling depths.
But first we're gonna take a break. Alright, We're back, alright.

(15:58):
So we've been talking about the monster, the demon lord,
the dem Organ as it is represented in Dungeons and Dragons,
and Robert has some experience with that. But we now
have said that we need to go deeper because we're
trying to figure out where this monster came from. If
it doesn't come from what you would guess based on
its name Greek mythology, right, And our next step is
to look at its very the way its name is

(16:20):
invoked in various works of literature. So one of the
books I was looking at on this count was a
book called Dangerous Games. What the Moral Panic over role
Playing Games says about play, religion, and imagined worlds, by
Joseph P. Laycock, And uh, this is this is an
interesting looking book that I really want to read more from.
But the author mentions that DeMorgan pops up in a

(16:43):
number of early modern and Romantic works. Uh. Interestingly enough,
Leacock also highlights an author and RPG named that I've
brought up on the show before. You may are Barker. Um,
you know the this is this guy who is known
for creating these books and this role world of Tucamel,
which is this fantasy. It's the sci fi fantasy world

(17:07):
that depends less far less on Western models of of
history and religion and uh in myth and more on
East Asian models. So uh there, if you're into fantasy,
I recommend picking up those books. They are a little
old fashioned in some respects, like they're very much in
the mold of like kind of a swashbuckling uh, you know,
male centered adventure. But the world that he created is

(17:31):
really something to behold. But anyway, he he points out, quote,
the prominence of original fantasy religions in D and D
as opposed to adaptations of Christian saints and demons, can
be attributed largely to the influence of M. A. R. Barker. Uh,
because Barker was was very active in that whole scene
at the time. These various individuals like Geykax and others

(17:53):
who were creating these role playing worlds. But as should
be clear from us talking about John Milton, the demogorgon
is not something that is a purely created, uh you know,
fantasy religion creature. It actually does have more of a history.
It goes back into Christian mythology in some way. So again,
whence the democ organ? Can we trace it back through literature? Yeah, well,

(18:16):
let's look at some of the key examples of literary
democ organ that pop up. Well, let's start with Milton's
Paradise Lost. We read that fantastic quote from it in
our cold open Uh. Paradise Losses, of course, the masterpiece
of John Milton, who lives sixteen o eight through six
seventy four, and which he sets no higher goal than
to quote justify the ways of God demand which I

(18:40):
always love that, like they just just really going for
it with this work, you know, um. And to achieve
this lofty goal, he retells the creation and the angelic
fall and the fall of man, and in doing so
creates a Satan that is uh, in some people's eyes,
problematically uh sympathetic and tragic. Yeah. Now, I think you

(19:03):
can easily say that Milton was not like sympathetic towards Satan.
He was a devout, devoted Protestant Christian. But I've seen
I've seen that criticism leveled at him, particularly in when
I was growing up reading some particularly various like Christian
fundamentalists of views of demonology and the treatment of demons

(19:23):
and angels, and literature that would chart to another like,
oh Milton made uh he he made Satan way too likable. Yeah,
I mean I think if you've got no tolerance at all, uh,
then then yeah, might might go too far for you.
But I think one thing he sets out to achieve
and does in Paradise Lost is he shows sin as
as going astray, you know, as folly, as like following uh,

(19:48):
following a misguided path, and not always just kind of
this like uh, indefinable miasma of horrible nous. People often
like to think of the devil is like something you
can't even look at. But Milton's devil. I mean the
kind of scary thing about the devil in classic conceptions
of it is that he's seductive and that he makes

(20:09):
good arguments. Yeah again, I mean de mcgregan and dn
D has that intelligence of twenty wisdom of seventeen. You'd
expect as much at least from Satan. Yeah, now in
Paradise lost, of course, Satan Ultimately he loses a war
in heaven. He falls down with his demons. They get
cast into Hell. They have a big debate about what
to do about this. Some demons counsel that they should,

(20:31):
you know, take up arms, and I think Malock says,
let's go fight again. Some say, you know, we're down here,
we can do just let's make the best of it.
You know, Hell's not so bad. And but but Satan
gets to this idea He's going to get revenge by
by corrupting God's favorite creation, the human, and spoiler, he
pulls it off. But yeah, this epic poem, you can

(20:53):
see you can almost think of it as kind of
a reboot or kind of like an amazing piece of
of biblical and fiction where he fleshes out this idea
of a war in heaven and he adds in all
sorts of dramatic and gnarly details. One I always liked
is that he forges a sword for the Archangeel Michael uh,
that is powerful enough to cut through anything, including the

(21:16):
flesh of other angels. God forges the sword, you mean, yeah, yeah,
who did I say forged it. Oh, I thought it
sounded like you're saying Satan did. Okay, well I'm probably
thinking Saranto because we just did that right, right, But
to be clear, and God made the sword. Yeah, that's cood. Well,
I mean, I feel like there's so much stuff in
Paradise Lost. And we were talking before we came into
the studio here about Dante as well, where there are

(21:39):
these great works of literature within the Christian literary tradition
that get incorporated into people's theology, like they forget that
stuff that's just in Paradise Lost isn't actually in the Bible, right, Yeah,
And and we can thank Dante for the pretty much
the whole concept of of purgatory becoming so prominent in
when in West traditions. But but yeah, so so in

(22:03):
creating Paradise Lost, Milton, he drags in a number of
names and develops a more demon names that do pop
up in the Bible, like the Elzeba, Belial, Mammon, Moloc.
But then he also drags in Orcus and Demogorgon, and
then there are seemingly new creations like most mus saber Uh,
the architect of Pandemonium, the capital of Hell. So de

(22:25):
mcgorgan is mentioned in book two and you heard it
at the start of this episode described and this is
a section of Paradise Lass that describes Satan's voyage out
of Hell with sin and death. So the dem Ogregan
is basically a background player's texture. Yeah, just add a
little texture to this scene as Satan crosses the wilds
of chaos and night that span the void between Heaven

(22:47):
and Hell. And there are other literary invocations of the
Demogorgon that I would say are basically the same. They
use the demogorgan not as a major figure of significance,
but something is sort of texture to a dablished that
a place is sort of ultimately abandoned by God and
and wretched, you know, like it's just really horrible. And

(23:07):
another great example of this is the way the demog
organ is invoked in Edmund Spencer's The Fairy Queen. Uh So,
if you've never read it, The Fairy Queen is also
it's like Paradise Lost, an English epic poem. It's from
the sixteenth century, so it's earlier than Paradise Lost, and
it's this really long poem about virtues and the adventures
of chivalrous nights. It's one of those that's uh, you know,

(23:30):
to modern readers. I think it has a whole lot
of interest in it, and there is some great poetry
in it, but also it can be very long and
ponderous and kind of stuffy in some ways, because I mean,
you can only read so much about piety and shipt um.
But it's long been interpreted as containing a lot of
allegorical representations of present figures and politics from the Elizabethan era.

(23:52):
When it was written, I think I was reading about
how spencer Um he secured himself a really nice pension
from the Elizabethan court by presenting the poem to Queen Elizabeth.
But again, the Demogorgan here does not appear as a
main character, but sort of as a bit of character
for the landscape. So just to read one stands in
which it is invoked. Therefore desirous the end of all

(24:15):
their days to know and them to enlarge with long
extent by wondrous skill and many hidden ways to the
three Fatal Sisters house. She went far underground from Tract
of Living, went down in the bottom of the deep abyss,
where Demogorgan in dull darkness pent far from the view
of God's in Heaven's bliss, This hideous chaos keeps their

(24:39):
dreadful dwelling. Is So this character is going She's going
down into a into a dark, godforsaken place. And how
do you signal places dark and God forsaken? How do
you show places evil and far from God? Well, you
mentioned it's where the demogorgan hangs out. So if the
red Cross Night stands for piety and holiness, the Demogorgan
stands for unholiness and satanic chaos. Now, another work that's

(25:02):
uh that's often invoked that mentions the Demogorgon is another
sixteenth century work. It's an Italian epic poem by uh
Lodovico Ariosto, a titled Orlando Furioso, which is a poem
that concerns the night Orlando, who is known in French

(25:22):
traditions as Roland Uh. Now, at least in some versions
and translations, it does mention Demogorgon quote the ruler of fates.
But as far as I could tell, again, he's just background.
He's just texture that's added to this to a particular scene.
All right, So this gets us back to the fifteen
sixteenth century UM. And so we see by then that

(25:46):
the demogorgan is being invoked in UH literature written by
Christians as some kind of infernal demons, some bad thing.
Maybe it has something to do with fate, maybe it
has something to do with chaos. And there's an earlier
source that came across that's a hundred years or so
before this UH, the fourteenth century Latin encyclopedia of pagan

(26:07):
gods in their relationships, known as Boccaccio's Gina Loggia deorum
Gentilium or the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles.
This was written by the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio, and
Boccaccio apparently was commissioned to sort of like put together this,
this compendium of all the bad old gods, you know,
the pagan stuff back then, and show the relationships to

(26:30):
each other, to make a family tree. I found an
addition and analysis by Ernest Hatch. Wilkins actually could not
find an English translation of this. I think there might
be one out there somewhere, but maybe it's not available online. UM.
But anyway, Wilkins, in this nineteen edition from the University
of Chicago Press, was discussing what is covered in this book,

(26:53):
and apparently in attempting to create a family tree of
all pagan gods, Boccaccio regards the dem o Organ as
the original pagan deity, like the great great grandfather of
Jupiter or Zeus, from which all other pagan deities are descended.
So the family tree just starts right at the top Demogorgon. Alright,

(27:16):
So if you're if you're looking at various pagan gods
from a from this Christian standpoint where pagan gods are
a bad thing and perhaps are actually demons, then later
that's where we getting the idea that the Demogorgan is
something primal and perhaps uh vile in nature, the very
first god. How strange. Now, it turns out this isn't

(27:39):
the first reference to a demo Organ and Christian literature,
and we will find an earlier mention of it later on.
But before we move on to that, I wanted to
talk about what I think is one of the most
interesting literary depictions of the demo Organ, definitely the most
interesting I've come across, and it's in Percy bish Shelley's
Prometheus Unbound. And this is of course Mary's husband yes, yes.

(28:03):
The husband of the author of Frankenstein, Percy B. Shelley,
was an English Romantic poet. This is a lyric drama,
so it's a drama sort of written in verse. The
play is a response to the Greek myth of Prometheus,
and Shelly first published it in eighteen twenty and he
explicitly presented it as this as a response to the

(28:26):
play Prometheus Bound by the ancient Greek playwright Escalus. So
the myth of Prometheus, you might know it well, but
just to refresh, it goes something like this. Prometheus was
one of a race of deities in ancient Greek religion
known as the Titans, and the Titans came before the
gods of Olympus. The Titans were offspring from the union

(28:48):
of Uranus the heavens and Gaya the earth, and they
ruled the earth until Chronus, the king of the Titans,
was dethroned and his allies were defeated by his son
Zeus and the Olympian gods. This is the War of
the Titans, or the Titanum macky um. So Prometheus was
one of the Titans, the son of the Titan Yapidus,

(29:09):
but he took the side of Zeus in the war
between the Olympians and the Titans, so he's still around
among the Olympian gods. And Zeus, of course is a creep,
as is Zeus is you just set your watch to it.
He's going to be a creep in a jerk. Zeus
doesn't want mortal humans down on earth like us, to
have power and knowledge like the gods. So he takes

(29:33):
this crucial step in this myth of hiding fire from
the humans. He takes fire from the earth, he hides
it amount Olympus. He says humans can't have it, and
Prometheus the Titan instead is sympathetic to humans, and so
what he does is he steals fire from where Zeus
had hidden it on Olympus, and he takes it down
to share with the mortals below. And this is a

(29:55):
trope that we see in various mythologies. So for instance,
there's a there's a nearly id intical role in Chinese
myth of the fire driller, who essentially does the same thing.
And when we see this again in so many stories,
there's some sort of knowledge of you know, some sort
of generally it's basically technological in nature and it is
taken from the gods one way or the other, borrowed

(30:18):
from the gods and bestowed be either bestowed to humans
by some benevolent entity like Prometheus, or it is just
straight up stolen from the gods by mortals. Well, I
think I like the Chinese version even better because in
that the god who brings the fire doesn't it explicitly
brings the technological means to make fire, not just the

(30:39):
fire itself, so the fire drill. Of course, you know,
if you ever used a bow drill, it's not so easy,
but you can make fire that way. I think Prometheus
is usually depicted as bringing like a burning branch or
something yeah like that. And granted that makes for a
much better sculpture of painting, right this naked Titan with
the with with this highly symbolic of a flaming torture branch.

(31:02):
But through the years Prometheus's gift to the humans, I
think it's more often interpreted along the lines of the
fire driller, where he's it's not just fire, Prometheus symbolizes
the power from the heavens, who betrays the leader god
and brings down general technology and knowledge and power and

(31:22):
succor to the humans, which which it's interesting that in
Prometheus and the figure of Prometheus and the figure of
Satan have a lot in common, right, Oh kind of yeah,
because I mean, yes, Satan. One of the things that's
interesting about the story of Satan and the Garden of
Eden is that Satan does not lie to the humans.
You know, he's presented as doing bad, but he he

(31:44):
encourages them to h to violate God's law in the
garden and eat from the tree that has forbidden to them.
But he says, you can eat from this tree and
you will not die as you've been told you will.
And it it turns out it's true. They eat and
it doesn't kill them, except you could make the argument
that maybe, well maybe it makes them mortal in the
long run. But I mean, basically, he's a disruptor, to
put it in like Silicon Valley terms, right, Like he's

(32:06):
trying to disrupt creation. Um. But so in the Greek myth,
of course, Prometheus being nice to the humans and betraying Zeus,
both the mortals and Prometheus are punished for this. The
punishment for humans is a sequence of events that leads
to the opening of Pandora's box, out of which flow
all the hardships and frailty of human life. You get plague,

(32:28):
you get toiled to survive all that stuff, and a
little bit of hope left over. I guess. Yeah. In
the bottom, uh, Prometheus is punished in a more explicit way.
He is bound to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains,
and not only has he chained up, but Zeus sends
a nasty eagle to peck out his liver each day,

(32:49):
and unfortunately, Prometheus is immortal, so his liver, as an
immortal liver, just keeps regenerating, and the eagle can fly
back and peck it out and eat it again the
next day. It sounds like a bad deal. Yeah, it's
a bad deal, But I don't know as far as,
like you know, offending Zeus goes. I guess it could
have been worse. I guess. So. Now, in response to
this myth, Shelly Percy bis Shelley in his play takes

(33:12):
up the banner of Prometheus and he makes him a
heroic figure in the play. And I would say this
is not surprising because you could definitely say that Percy
Shelley was of a revolutionary temperament theologically, politically and in literature.
He was very against the old ways and the old
powers and the authorities, and for sort of disruption and

(33:34):
revolution and doing things in a new way. Now, the
plot of Shelley's play is kind of abstract and sort
of loaded with characters and images of ponderous meaningfulness. So,
uh so I'm gonna try to do a short summary,
leaving aside all the stuff that takes us in other
directions and focusing on how the Dimmock organ comes in.
So Prometheus is we find him in this state where

(33:55):
he's bound up by Zeus. It's Jupiter in this play,
but this same figure, the king of the gods, bound
up and tortured by Jupiter for bringing knowledge to the mortals,
and in Shelley's version it is explicitly not just fire
but general knowledge and aid. And there are two other
deities who are sympathetic to Prometheus and they want to
help him. These are the sisters Asia and Panthea, and

(34:18):
they attempt to free Prometheus from his bondage. Asia is
a c nymph who is actually the beloved of Prometheus,
and Panthea is her sister. Led by a dream, the
two of them venture into the underworld, and they meet
a character called the Demogorgan, who is portrayed as a
kind of supremely powerful but also strangely passive and kind

(34:40):
of inert force of fate and nothingness, who is also
the son of Jupiter. Now, when they first come across
uh the demo Organ, the character of Panthea describes him
this way. She says, I see a mighty darkness filling
the seat of power, and rays of gloom, dark round
as light from the meridian sun, ungazed upon and shapeless,

(35:04):
neither limb nor form nor outline. Yet we feel it
is a living spirit. This is very different from the
D and D demigorgan, right, Yeah, This is more like
a primordial soup of the deity. Yeah. So they say
that they since there is a living presence down in
the abyss with them, and there's a mighty darkness, there's
something in the gloom, but they can't see that it

(35:26):
has any kind of shape or body. And then Panthea
and Asia have a consultation with the Demogorgon. They asked
him questions and the Demogorgan reveals to them that Jupiter
created the world with all the good and the bad,
that it entails, and also that even Jupiter himself is
not all powerful, because, in the words of the Demogorgon quote,

(35:49):
all spirits are enslaved, which serve things evil. And he
says to Asia, thou knowest if Jupiter be such or No.
Of course Asia knows that even though Jupiter is the
chief god, Jupiter still does things that are evil. He
serves evil, so there must be some kind of power
over him, because all things that serve evil have some

(36:09):
power over them. So what is even Jupiter subject to? Well?
The demo organ answer is that too. Quote if the
abyssum could vomit forth its secrets. But a voice is
wanting the deep truth is imageless. For what would it
avail to bid the gaze on the revolving world? What
to bid? Speak fate, time, occasion, chance, and change? To

(36:32):
these all things are subject but eternal love. Love. That's
the fifth element. I guess it is. So even Jupiter,
the ultimate god of everything, is subject to the power
of love. Uh. Sounds kind of cheesy, but then but
then Asia is like, Okay, well, I love Prometheus, so
when will he be freed? Like when shall the destined

(36:54):
hour arrive for Prometheus to be to be freed, and
the dem o organ just says, behold exclamation point. So
then immediately the Demogorgan travels to heaven where Jupiter is
the Jupiter, the chief God, is in the middle of
a big speech about how awesome he is, and the
Demogorgan appears and then he just he just messes up Jupiter.

(37:14):
He casts him down, He destroys the tyrant creator God,
and then Prometheus can be freed by Hercules and reunited
with Asia. That's quite a climax. Well, but it's not
the climax. Somehow, This is not the end of the play.
This is like act three of a five act play.
After this, it seems I've never read the thing in full,
I admit I've read some passages. It seems like after

(37:35):
this there is a lot of like sort of um
windy pontificating about love and virtues and what is good
and right. But anyway, I think the Demogorgon's role in
this story is very interesting. He's well, so I kept
saying he but the Demogorgan. Actually, one thing that's been
pointed out by scholars is that the Demogorgan has never
given a gender. Uh In in Percy's play. Uh In

(38:00):
and other sources. It is I think, assumed to be
a he, but there's no there's no gender in Prometheus Unbound.
So the Demogorgon, whoever they are, whatever they are, is
depicted as in some kind of infernal phantom of the underworld,
but also a liberating force for positive good overthrowing the
tyrannical order of creation at the appointed hour. Uh. Though interestingly,

(38:22):
I would say the demogorgan doesn't really seem to act
out of their own volition. It's almost as if, um,
they are somehow triggered into this act by the visit
from Asia and Panthea, Like it's the love for Prometheus
from Asia that was faded to proceed the appointed hour
of Jupiter's destruction and the liberation of the world. Another

(38:43):
thing that's interesting here about Shelley's work, So we talked
about how the demogorgan does not actually come from Greek mythology,
even though he's being retro insurgent into like classical mythology here.
Greek and Roman kind of blended mythology here. Um, what
would the word demo gorgon mean if it actually were
a Greek word. Well, you've got the apparent roots demos

(39:05):
and Gorgon like the people's gorgon like democracy, and then
then Gorgon again, the monster, the of which Medusa is
a member of the species. But actually the gorgon name
for Medusa that has a root in Greek too. It's
from the word gorgos, which means something like terrible or grim,
you know, terror inducing. So the demon organ could literally

(39:28):
be translated as the people's terror, like the terror of
the masses of people, which is a very interesting intersection
with the idea of like a long faded revolution to
dethrone tyrant kings and unworthy gods. And of course we know,
uh Percy Shelley was a supporter of the French Revolution.
He believed in atheism, He believed in republicanism, not to

(39:48):
be confused with like the Republican Party of today, like
in the context of the time, that was representative government
as opposed to monarchy. Um. And so I think it
could be tempting to think of like the French Revolution
as Shelley's demogorgon, the people's terror, like this inevitable swell
of justice that washes tyrants from their thrones, but at

(40:09):
the same time contains a terrifying and mighty darkness that
can't really be seen or understood. I like that, the
people's terror, I mean, yeah, I don't know. I don't
know if if Shelley himself would have seen that, uh
seen that comparison, because I think he may have had
a more a less nuanced view of the guillotine saying.

(40:33):
And of course this introduces the idea of the democ
organ as as being like potential, like political candidate. Yeah,
perhaps in in our upcoming elections. Yeah, if if you're
if you're inclined to use a right in candidate demogor
the just rage of the people that is without form
or shape. Now, one more example of demogorgan popping up

(40:57):
in uh in In in a work of literature, uh
Is is a story essentially a short story from Voltaire
Voltaire Live, seventeen seventy eight. And I've never read this
one before. I'd read I'd read some works of Voltaire
in the past. Um, but at anyway, this one is
titled Plato's Dream, in which the Demogorgon is presented as

(41:19):
a genie who witnesses the initial creation um of the
world by this primordial force called the demi urge, and
along with its fellow genies. Uh. The dem ogregan is
granted a portion of the creation too, then uh, you know,
to then finish into a functioning world. The demogorgan is

(41:42):
given the task of creating Earth and uh, and is
then critiqued and criticized by his fellow genies for making
such a mixed up planet. And so there's a part
here I want to quote where the Demogorgon responds to
his critics and says, quote, it is an easy matter
to find fault, good for olks, said the genie. But
do you imagine it is so easy to form an

(42:04):
animal who, having the gift of reason and free will,
shall not sometimes abuse his liberty? Do you think that,
in rearing between nine and ten thousand different plants, it
is so easy to prevent some few from having noxious qualities?
Do you suppose that with a certain quantity of water, sand,
and mud, you could make a globe that you'd have

(42:24):
neither seas nor deserts. As for you, my sneering friend,
I think you have just finished the planet Jupiter. Let
us see now what figure you make with your great
belts and your long nights, with four moons to enlighten them.
Let us examine your worlds and see whether the inhabitants
you have made or exempt from follies or diseases. I

(42:45):
guess we'll just have to wait for the Europa Probe
to form us on to resolve this one. Right, So,
there's not much to really I feel like uncover in
this one, but there are there's at least one detail
in this that will become critical. Uh. In our next
section of the podcast, after we come back from a break,
we will get into the true abyssal origins of the

(43:09):
demo organ. All right, we're back. So we've charted the
path of the demogorgan through much literature throughout especially the
Christian world, and its role in some interesting sort of
revolutionary sentiments as expressed through literature like Prometheus Unbound or
in Voltaire story. But we're trying to find the origin

(43:32):
of this. Where does the Demogorgon actually come from? If
it doesn't come from classic Greek mythology. Well, the origin
is discussed in a nineteen sixty four book titled The
Discarded Image and Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, written
by none other than C. S. Lewis. In fact, it
was C. S. Lewis's last book before he died, and

(43:54):
it deals with medieval cosmology. He turns our attention to
the fourth book of the Debate by Stadius, the first.
Stadius lived uh see forty five through and this is
an epic poem written in Latin about the Theban cycle.
And here the author alludes to a deity that shall
not be named a quote sovereign of the threefold world.

(44:19):
And then early Christian author Lactantius, who lived to fifty
through wrote a commentary on this work and stated that
Stadius was referring in in fact, to the Greek uh
demi Organ there this or creator quote the god whose
name it is unlawful to know. So we're talking so

(44:42):
demi Organ, from which we get Demogorgon and uh. And
then Lewis writes the following to sum this up quote,
this is plain sailing the demi urge or workmen being
the creator in the Timaeus. But there are two variants
in the manuscripts. One is Morgana, the other Demogorgan. From

(45:03):
the later of these corruptions, later ages evolved a completely
new deity, Demogorgan, who was to enjoy a distinguished literary
career in Boccaccio's geneology of the gods in Spencer, in
Milton and in Shelley. This is perhaps the only time
a scribal blunder underwent an apotheosis. Oh that's amazing, uh,

(45:27):
and just so in a mythological context, of course, Apotheosis
here reversed to the process of a human being being
deified or something being made into a higher being, like
a god or a star or heavenly object being taken
up into heaven. Ancient kings were sometimes made into gods,
and legendary heroes like Hercules, sometimes lived lives that were

(45:47):
so worthy or so notable they were assumed into the
pantheon and became god. So I think that's what he's
saying here, is that somebody made a blunder in copying
a manuscript or in translating, in understanding what a word
meant in an older book, and through that scribal error
we got a brand new deity such that, you know,

(46:10):
a thousand years later, Boccaccio would say, this deity is
the original Macdaddy deity, like the Number, like the Pagan
God before all the other ones, and it just comes
from a mistranslation or misreading of a word, right, And
the word that was misread or a mistranslated is the

(46:30):
dimmi urge, which which curiously enough, is cited in that
Voltaire short story. Right, So it seems like Voltaire was
kind of on the right track with the association here.
Uh And and this is great because the demi urge
is one of my favorite characters from any mythology in
the world. But its role is complicated and varies across

(46:50):
different traditions, including like Platonic schools of philosophy and religion
in the you know, in the centuries following Plato's actual teachings,
and in various Gnostic religions. I'll try to give a
general summary that applies to multiple lines of tradition that
have sort of similar attributes, but just be aware that
there are a lot of different things that are all

(47:10):
sort of versions of the demi urge. The word demi urge,
as uh As Lewis mentioned, comes from the Greek. In
its original form, is just a common noun that means
something like craftsmen. You know, it's somebody who makes things, sculptor, maker, producer.
But within these religious points of view or in in
these philosophies and cosmologies, the demi Urge is a figure

(47:34):
that creates the material world, is the creator, but apart
from many other religions, this does not mean that he
is the ultimate creator God or that he is good.
He is, I would say, variously portrayed as is everything,
ranging from kind of neutral and bumbling to actively malevolent.

(47:54):
And to give an example from one strain of Gnosticism
in the Gnostic text known as the Apoco Craffon of John,
the dimmi Urge figure is this foolish, arrogant, wicked deity
called yelled to both who creates the material bodies of humans.
I think he also maybe creates the material world or
some aspects of it um and humans. The humans that

(48:17):
he created end up with souls when they are inadvertently
contaminated by a spark or a light from the higher
nobler plane of being known as the play a roma,
which means something like fullness. And so you've got the
ple roma, the fullness the real world, the real greater place,
which is is immaterial in nature, and then you've got

(48:38):
the the crappy material world that yelled to both made
and now we're stuck in that thing. And yelda bo
Oath resents the fact that humans have this spark from
the ple roma and tries to fight against it. So
to do so, he tries to keep humans confused and
in the dark, so we're always fumbling around in this
kind of baffling material hell which is our everyday world.

(49:02):
And the Gnostics within this tradition believe that you can
only escape the horrors of the material world by becoming
privy to secret knowledge. That knowledge is the gns is
the secret knowledge that explains the real world. And this
is this is how you transcend the secret mythology, the
secret rituals that give you access to the true, fuller

(49:23):
reality behind this material illusion that controls our lives. And
you can actually see a connection to Platonic philosophy. Even
if this sounds like a very kind of strange, complicated
theological take on on the creation of the world, it
sounds a lot like Plato's cave, right, Yeah, yeah, it does.
I mean, and also the basic spirit of this is
also reflected in other faiths. I mean, the idea of

(49:45):
there being a secret reality of their of there being
some sort of cycle that we need to break free from.
I mean, you see that in say Hindu and Buddhist traditions,
and this idea of the spark of something more divine
being like trapped in the mud of our bodies. How
do you see that also reflected in even more recent
creations like scientology. Oh totally, I think, yeah, absolutely. I

(50:08):
would say gnostic theology reflects something that is a very
common belief among humans, and you can see how often
it appears, not just in other religions, but in all
kinds of pop culture. I mean, echoes of the gnostic
worldview bounce around constantly even through contemporary culture, whether we
are conscious of it or not, and whether the creators
of these pieces of culture or conscious of it or not.

(50:29):
If I mean, if you've seen the matrix, you already
have a sort of baseline understanding of gnostic cosmology. You
just replace the evil computers and the agents with like
cosmic realms and wicked ar cons like the demi Urge.
The demi Urge sort of created a material matrix for
us to live in, when in reality we are beings

(50:50):
from this better, immaterial world and we have to find
ways to escape and get back to it. So you're
saying we are star dust, we are golden, we are
billion year old card, and we have to find our
way back to the garden. Yes, but you can only
get back to the garden if you teach your children well,
because it is the secret knowledge that is required to
get you there. And most people are never going to

(51:12):
be let in on the secret. They're just sort of
going about their you know, their everyday life, toiling after
material things without understanding that the material world is bad
and fake. But I love this idea that the demi
Urge being this creator of the material world who's at
the at the very least bumbling and at worst some
kind of devilish thing that that hates us and wants

(51:34):
to trick us into living bad, wrong lives. I could
see this mistranslation leading to the creation of the demi
Organ figure being an excellent modern reworking of the Gnostic
theology and being a part of that demi Urge's plan,
Like the demmy Urge hides the true nosis about its
wicked role in creating the material world and these filthy

(51:55):
bodies of ours by causing a scribal error that hides
its six distance, and instead it gets everybody focused on
this fake, illusory demon or primordial god, the democ Organ
and then you're scared of the democ organ or you're
in all of its primeval darkness and shapeless presence, so
you forget that you need to be seeking the noses
to escape this wretched unreality. Uh and uh yeah, yeah,

(52:18):
I mean if you're ultimately if you're trying to envision
the ultimate evil power in a in a in a
fantasy world. Uh yeah, this this sounds like the This
is the Prince of Demons right here. You know. I
weirdly kept thinking about the demi irriage when we were
recently talking about that book I read by Philip Ball
about quantum mechanics that it is called Beyond Weird. It's

(52:42):
great book. It's a new book from this year last
year about quantum mechanics. And one of the things that
I think is really great about the book is it
doesn't let you off the hook. It doesn't just let
you say wow, quantum mechanics sure does seem weird and
then kind of shake your head and move on. Like it.
It tries to force you to look at it. It
does the thing from like Clockwork Orange where it helds

(53:02):
your eyelids open and says, no, look at this and
pay attention. And you know, one of the things that
you walk away from that with is that, Okay, you know,
I'm not saying that physical reality isn't real, but it
it makes you think that whatever way we're interacting with
the world on a day to day basis, you know,
the kind of reality we perceive with like objects you

(53:25):
can touch and and see and know their place and
all that, that is not the ultimate like arbiter of
what reality is. Like, your perception of reality is not
necessarily the most accurate way of understanding reality, even though it,
you know, it seems to work good enough to get
you through life, so how could it be wrong? But
yet we you know, we do experiments in physics all

(53:47):
the time. Now that that just show you over and
over again that the way you have of making sense
of the world is some kind of derivative, second order
kind of grasp of physics. So you have no intuitive
way of understanding quantum reality. You know, what happens before
decoherence and everything, So that ultimately there is this there

(54:08):
is this deeper truth in the universe that that we
are not inherently privy to. We're only privy to it
via UH technology, via science, UH these are essentially gnostic
tools of elevation. That that's how you get the noses
as you do a double slit experiment. Well, I've enjoyed this, uh,

(54:29):
this journey that we've taken, you know, because it feels,
i mean, part of it seems like the natural destination
for an exploration of the democ organ, that it would
tie back to this primordial being that's wrapped in gnostic mystery.
But on the other hand, I love that it also
hinges incredibly upon just a scribal blunder. You know that

(54:50):
it's a it's it's this thing that was actually you know,
it's never really real in the way that we uh
we might you know, attribute it as having been. It
was never actually uh an entity that was worshiped or
even factored into any actual myth cycle. No, it is
wholly without shape and out of the darkness. It is

(55:10):
the figure that Asia and Panthea go to visit, and
you know, it just waits there until it's hour comes
round at last. Yeah. Yeah, And I also love how
we got to let's see if we got to to
turn to Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills and Nash uh c
s Lewis Um Milton and of course Gary Gygax to
understand it all a wonderful motley crew for those wooden

(55:33):
ships on the water. All right, well, we're gonna close
it out right there, But obviously I imagined a number
of you have thoughts about the demogorgan, either the Netflix
version or the Dungeons and Dragons incarnation, or perhaps some
of the literary uh incarnations that we've discussed here as well,
and of course we would love to hear from you.
But stay tuned because again, this entire month of October

(55:56):
is going to be Halloween themed as it has been
in the past. Uh, We're gonna have all new monstrosities
to consider. Uh tying in as much science as we
possibly can. Have we ever done an episode on the
science of Medusa snakes for hair? Is there's something there? Something? Oh?
I don't know. I mean, I've I've covered at least

(56:18):
blogged about Medusa back in the day, and I think
I did maybe a monster science video about Medusa. But
that would be an interesting one to to to explore again,
because the Medusa is a is a fascinating monster. And
then some of the things we've done with the Medusa
are kind of monstrous. Uh yeah, I could. I would
be up for a Medusa exploration. Bring it all right.

(56:40):
In the meantime, if you want to support the show,
the best thing you can do is make sure you
have subscribed and then rate and review us wherever you
have the power to do so. And don't forget about invention.
Monsters are great, but the real monster is always human
endeavor and human invention, and that's what we explore. The
invention is a journey through human techno. His really, it's

(57:01):
a it's a celebration or at least a contemplation in
some in many cases, of the fire of Prometheus. Yeah.
The things we made, how they made us, where they
came from. Yeah, So make sure you have checked that
show out as well, and make sure you subscribe, rate
and review helps us out huge, thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you have

(57:24):
any feedback on this episode and we'd like to share
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just to say hi or suggest a topic for the future,
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(57:45):
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