Therefore we see from the lives of the holy fathers that among the demons, besides the supreme ruler, there are princes and subordinate demons. Some are stronger and some weaker, some more evil and some less.
The different names of the fallen angel have the following meanings. "Satan" is a Hebrew word meaning enemy or adversary. The Greek word "devil" has the same meaning.
"Demon" is a Greek word meaning mind, spirit, or genius, but it is used solely to signify a fallen angel. All these words are equivalent to the Russian word for evil spirit.
The angels of darkness, cast down from heaven, took their place beneath heaven. In Holy Scripture and in the holy fathers this region is also called the air.
For this reason the inhabitants of this space are called spirits, powers, and princes of the air.
The leader of the fallen angels was not satisfied with his first fall. He added to it a second, after which his state changed still more.
He became an angel entirely rejected, entirely alien to every good and to every hope of return to the good.
At the time when he, bearing within himself the terrible emptiness of despondency and darkness formed by the departure of God's grace, wandered with the hosts of his demons in the wilderness beneath heaven, the first-created pair of human beings enjoyed blessedness in paradise.
By the ineffable mercy of God, the fallen angel was permitted to enter paradise. This was probably so that, seeing the blessedness of the newly created creatures, he might come to himself.
Seeing how easily the Creator could replace with a new and excellent rational creature the creature that had made itself useless by its own will, he might have come to awareness of his sin and repentance.
At that time the fallen angel was not yet wholly without hope.
But the opposite resulted from the devil's visit to paradise. He became infected with terrible envy toward the newly created human beings.
He used his access to paradise to draw our first parents out of paradise, and to add them, as a future race, to the numerous assembly of his demons.
The devil succeeded in his intention. He persuaded human beings to reject obedience to God and to submit to their murderer.
This new name is assigned to him by Holy Scripture. For man, having disobeyed God, was immediately deprived of divine grace and died in soul.
In such a state he could not remain a dweller of paradise. Cast out of it onto the earth, cursed because of his sin, he submitted to the devil.
He began to beget human beings who were already slain in soul in him, and already beforehand subjected to the devil.
Terrible is the punishment to which human beings were subjected in Adam. But still more terrible is the punishment to which the manslayer, the fallen angel, was subjected.
Hope for salvation was left to man, since he was deceived and deluded, and since he acknowledged his transgression immediately after committing it.
This hope was taken from the devil, as from a deliberate and hardened evildoer.
"And the Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle and above all the beasts of the earth. On your breast and belly you shall go, and earth you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall watch for your head, and you shall watch for His heel" (Gen 3:1-15).
THEOSIS