Mammon

Mammon is originally a dishonest or immoral earnings acquired wealth inserted when it is about the life-determining maxim. Today, the term disparagingly the money generally referred to ( filthy lucre ).

Term

The term is known due to its mention in the Bible:

" No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other. You can not serve God and mammon. "

The word mammon is originally derived from the Aramaic word mamona (wealth, possessions ). ( According to another source it comes from the Aramaic word aman and means that upon which you rely. ) The word got through his Greek word in the Bible in the Vulgate is from Latin mam [m ] ona. Martin Luther did not translate the word and so it came as Mammon from the 16th century into German. The result was that Mammon in popular belief and literature as personalized wealth became a demon who seduces men to avarice and greed.

Mammon in literature, film and theater

As personalized wealth enters the demon Mammon, who deceives the people to covetousness, and in the play " Everyman". As such, he is also represented in the humorously macabre pen & paper role-playing game to Heaven and Hell " In Nomine " by Steve Jackson Games. In 1667 published epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton Mammon is one of the fallen angels who turn against God under Satan's guidance.

In the movie Constantine, the son of Satan is called " Mammon ". In the comic series Spawn of American Todd McFarlane, the character of Mammon plays the role of the enigmatic stripping puller. He is depicted as a man in a white suit with three scars over his left eye. In the animated series DuckTales Scrooge McDuck used in the German dubbing relatively often the expression "Holy Mammon! " When he is surprised. In the video game Chrono Trigger a device called Mammon Machine, which was built by an advanced civilization in the year 12,000 BC to transport vast amounts of energy from the planet's interior to the surface and help the people to unlimited power and wealth appears. In the video game and the anime Umineko no Naku Koro ni mammon occurs as one of the "Seven Sisters of Purgatory".