Dumah (Douma)
Dumah
(Douma)
Angel of silence, the stillness of death, and vindication; the tutelary spirit of Egypt. In Aramaic, Dumah’s name means “silence.” He is a prince of Hell; in Babylonian legend, he guards the 14th gate. The Zohar Kabbalistic text describes him as a chief of Gehenna (hell) with tens of thousands of angels of destruction under his command and 12,000 myriads of attendants whose job it is to punish sinners. A small reference in the Talmud holds that even sinners have a day of rest on the sabbath and are released to roam the earth. At evening, Dumah herds them back into hell. Dumah releases all souls of the dead, not just sinners, to the Earth each evening for the first year after their deaths.
The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology – Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – Copyright © 2009 by Visionary Living, Inc.