An interesting article from alchemylab.com about Socrates’ daimon.

There is an ‘inner’ voice that certain individuals have heard so plainly and so often as to make them believe an intelligent being was about them, directing them with inspired counsel.

The Greeks called this intelligent being the ‘daimon.’

We know that Socrates possessed a personal daimon. “The favour of the gods,” said Socrates, “has given me a marvellous gift, which has never left me since my childhood. It is a voice which, when it makes itself heard, deters me from what I am about to do and never urges me on.”

He spoke familiarly of this being; Joked about it and obeyed blindly, the indications it gave. Eventually, his friends never took an important step without consulting it.

But the daimon had its sympathies, and when it was unfavourable towards the questioner, it remained absolutely silent; In that event it was quite impossible for Socrates to make it speak.

Of what order is this entity, that spoke to Socrates in childhood and was also heard by Apollonius of Tyana, but only after he had begun to put into practice the Hermetic principles?

“They are intermediate powers of a divine order. They fashion dreams and inspire soothsayers,” says Apuleius.

“They are inferior immortals, called gods of the second rank, placed between earth and heaven,” says Maximus of Tyre.

Plato thinks that a particular kind of spirit, which is separate from us, receives man at his birth, and follows him in life and after death. He calls it “the daimon which has received us as its portionment.” The ancient idea of the daimon seems, therefore, analogous to the guardian angel of Christians.

Possibly the daimon is nothing but the higher part of man’s spirit; That which is separated from the human element and is striving to reunite.

Socrates often said that this inner voice, which many times deterred him from doing one thing, never incited him to do something else.

Now, it is a rule among adepts never to give any but negative advice (ie to warn against a course of action); for he who advises someone to do a thing not only takes upon himself the burden of the consequences but also deprives the man he advises, of all merit in the action.