[1][2] The term was introduced by German ethnographer W. Mannhardt,[citation needed] who was the first to carry out a special study of this mythology.
James George Frazer considered gods such as Attis, Adonis, Osiris, and Dionysus as related through transitional stages to the dying and resurrecting spirit of vegetation.
The original animism included the idea of the demon as a force determining a person's fate, evil or less often beneficent.
In Homer there are many examples of a nameless, faceless, suddenly acting and terrifying demon.
In developed animism the transformation of a demon or god leads to its anthropomorphism, humanization.