Systematic demonologies survive from Mesopotamia (udug-hul incantation series), Judaism (the Watchers tradition), Zoroastrianism (the daeva inversion), Christianity (Pseudo-Dionysius's hierarchies inverted into hell's ranks), Islam (the jinn taxonomy), and the grimoire tradition. Each ranks spirits, assigns functions, and prescribes counter-measures. The anthropological record shows the same pattern in non-literate traditions: affliction gets personified, named, and negotiated with.
The story the comparatists tell: Israel's shedim absorbed Babylon's monsters; the church redescribed pagan daimones as devils; the gods of the previous religion become the demons of the next, on schedule, everywhere. Pan gets horns; the horned god gets a pitchfork; yesterday's deity is tomorrow's defendant.
The theoretical claim, in its strongest form: a demon is whatever a cosmology cannot govern, named. Give chaos a name, a face, a rank, and a known enemy, and it becomes negotiable; that is why amulets, contracts, and exorcisms are universal. On this reading, demonology is not the opposite of theology but its shadow filing system, and modern cultures have not abolished it, they have reassigned the names to pathogens, toxins, and invisible networks.
Every demonology names its threats so they can be bargained with. Is the naming the superstition, or the technology?