Children often use such narratives and pretend play in order to exercise their Imagination.
When children develop fantasy they play at two levels:
- First, they use role playing to act out what they have developed with their Imagination
- Second, they play again with their make-believe situation by acting
as if what they have developed is an actual reality.
Some psychologists suggest that Imaginary Friends are much like a fictional character created by an author.
They reveal, according to several theories of psychology, anxieties, fears, goals and perceptions of the world.
"Adult fiction writers often talk about their characters taking on a life of their own, which may be an analogous process to children’s Imaginary Friends."
An Imaginary Friend can be considered the product of the child's
creativity whereas the communication between the Imaginary Friend and
the child is considered to be the process.
A Thought Form is
a manifestation of the thoughts, ideas or emotions of someone. While
the mind is capable of creating a world of illusion, it can also
create any desired object. This process consists of transforming a
visualization into a palpable being. It begins by creating an intention.
The directed energy of desire, which, if persisted in, gives rise to a Thought Form made up of the accumulated energy of that intention/desire.
There are three classes of Thought Forms:
- Forms in the shape of the person who creates them
- Forms that resemble objects or people and may become ensouled by nature spirits or by the dead
- Forms that represent inherent qualities from the astral or mental planes, such as emotions
Within chaos magic, a Servitor
is an entity specifically created by the magician to perform a set
range of tasks and may be considered as expert systems which are able to
modify
themselves to take into account new factors that are likely to arise
whilst they are performing their tasks.
Deliberately created by the magician with the specific purpose of operating autonomously from the magician's consciousness, Servitors are created by budding off portions of our
psyche and identifying them by means of a name, trait, symbol, after
which we can come to work with them (and understand how they affect us)
at a conscious level.
(Servitors form part of a Thought Form continuum: from Sigils, to Servitors, to Egregores, to Godforms)
"These beings have a legion of names drawn from the demonology of many cultures: elementals, familiars, incubi, succubi, bud-wills, Daimons, atavisms, wraiths, spirits, and so on."
A Daimon is described as a lesser divinity or spirit which possessed special knowledge and power. Capable of interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; Entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above. Often personifications of abstract concepts, a Daimon is a non-personified "peculiar mode" of their activity. It is an occult power that drives humans forward or acts against them.
For example, Socrates claimed he had a Daimon that gave him warnings
and advice but never coerced him into following it. He also claimed that
his Daimon exhibited greater accuracy than any of the forms of
divination practiced at the time.
"It was not the ruler, but his guiding Daimon that was venerated..."
In multitasking computer operating systems, a Daemon is a type of program that runs unobtrusively in the
background, rather than under the direct control of a user, waiting to
be activated by the occurance of a specific event or condition.
Examples of actions or conditions that can trigger a Daemon into activity are:
- A specific time or date
- A passage of a specified time interval
- A file landing in a particular directory
- A receipt of an e-mail or a Web request made through a particular communication line.
The common method for launching a daemon involves forking (dividing) once or twice, and making the parent (and grandparent)
processes die while the child (or grandchild) process begins performing
its normal function. In addition to being launched by the operating system and by application programs, some daemons can also be started manually.
In many operating systems, each daemon has a single script (short
program) with which it can be terminated, restarted or have its status
checked.
(Note: It
is not necessary that the perpetrator of the action or condition be
aware that a Daemon is listening, although programs frequently will
perform an action only because they are aware that they will implicitly
arouse a Daemon)