A couple of
months ago I had a chance to find and read a book entitled “Summa Daemoniaca”,
written by the Catholic priest and exorcist José Antonio Fortea.
I think this
book is very interesting to read, philosophically speaking, whether one
believes or not that there might be things like “angels or demons or spiritual
entities in general”. I personally don’t share some of Fortea’s points of view,
however, I’d like to summarize some concepts of
his book.
According
to Fortea’s interpretation of demonology, angels and demons are spiritual
entities sharing the same nature but belonging to different spiritual
orientations. They are “pure spirits”, that is, they have no physical body in
any way. They aren’t dead human beings, they have never had a proper human
experience. So they’re “aliens”, it means they’re not humans and they were not
originally created “on the Earth planet”.
Since
angels and demons are spiritual entities and have no physical body at all, they
cannot “die” or become ill (e.g. they cannot become affected by diseases or
cancer or infections…). They do not need to introduce food as we do and animals
of other species do. They do not need to
eat, drink, eliminate, sleep, reproduce. They might need to get some kind of
energy (from the elements? From the sun? the kind of energy they use and its natural
or even “non earthly” and thus space or even preternatural source is not exactly
clear/known for sure).
Although
they do not experience physical pain or physical pleasure, hunger or thirst or
sex desire, they can conceptually “understand” what humans mean when we talk about
these issues concerning physical bodies and their natural needs.
Another
interesting point in Fortea’s book regards entities’ concept of what we call “time”.
Time for entities is not the same as it “feels” for us. In fact, the word
Fortea uses instead of “time” is aevum. This
word, aevum, is a Latin word to define
a succession of events and changes. In relation to spiritual beings, aevum could be defined as a series of intellectual actions, conceptual
understandings and acts of free will.
