personal or cultural compulsions or addictions.

Today, we prefer to call them personal or cultural compulsions or addictions. The fourth century desert writer Evagrius describes eight such demons or passionate thoughts which afflict the solitary desert dweller. They are none other than the seven capital sins plus one. These, when traced phenomenologically to their root manifestations, simply suggest how we might be tempted. In Evagrius's historical context and milieu, the most serious demon was "acedia."-- a spirit of boredom, restlessness, and deep depression which tempted the solitary to abandon the contemplative life altogether. The fiercest passion, however, was seen as anger which led to either a constant state of irritation or, when inverted, to a paranoid depression.