Demon Muse

Embrace your inner genius

My new ebook: ‘Divinations of the Deep’

Dec 8

Posted by Matt Cardin in Creativity and Consciousness | No Comments

A heads-up to all of my readers here at Demon Muse: My first book, Divinations of the Deep, is now available in an ebook edition.

PURCHASE IT FROM THE PUBLISHER: Ash-Tree Press

PURCHASE IT FROM Amazon

First published in 2002  by Ash-Tree Press (which also published the new ebook), Divinations is a collection of five cosmic/supernatural horror stories that all deal with the intermingling of horror with deep religious and philosophical themes — just like my second book, last year’s Dark Awakenings. At least two of the stories pointedly address the issue of creative artistic inspiration in a manner that invokes the same psychological-spiritual reality I’ve been exploring here at Demon Muse and in A Course in Demonic Creativity.

“Notes of a Mad Copyist” is set in a medieval monastery, and it tells the story of a Christian monk whose job is to copy the Holy Scriptures by hand. His passionate spiritual life is invaded by a nightmarish horror, which he eventually learns to embrace and exult in, when he finds that his work has been taken over by a force that may be older than God, and that compels his hand to write a new scripture that speaks of a nightside reality impinging on God’s orderly creation. What’s  more, the monastery’s abbot, who would otherwise be expected to condemn such blasphemy, proves to be an agent of that darkness itself. D. F. Lewis has said of the story, “Writing Horror, as I have done for many years, does bring one’s own abbot ‘shadow’ as tutelary guardian angel only to find out it’s a demon not an angel…This whole book is Fiction-as-Religion in action. It is truer than truth.”

The second of the two stories in question, titled “If It Had Eyes,” tells of a self-absorbed painter who, after years of being enchanted by the dreamlikeness of the nocturnal fog roiling over the Atlantic ocean, finally learns the secret of painting it:  “When the fog began to roll in once more from the black waters, claiming first the breakwater, then the harbor, and then the town itself, I was shocked, overjoyed, elated beyond my wildest expectation when fingers of the most delicate whiteness curled lightly about my arm and hand, guiding me to the colors and strokes, the blendings and shadings, that would express at long last the color of my soul.  I expended no effort, but simply tilted my head back to gaze up into the smoky white void while the fog worked through me to reproduce itself on the canvas.”

The other three stories likewise address in their respective ways the question or issue of the power that ultimately motivates and directs each of us by lying behind our souls and shaping our thoughts, emotions, actions, and lives. If you find the exploration of these matters in the context of the daimonic muse of creativity here at Demon Muse to be of interest, then you’ll likely find  Divinations of the Deep to be interesting as well.

Here are what some readers have said about it:

Praise for Divinations of the Deep

“This collection was everything I’d hoped it would be, and that doesn’t happen often. Divinations of the Deep contains five stories that share the same Judeo-Christian religious theme. But this isn’t a book that you’ll find in Jerry Falwell’s library. This collection goes far beyond Judeo-Christian tradition, far beyond God, into the dark possibilities of what existed before God…Like Lovecraft and Ligotti, Cardin excels in creating a truly terrifying atmosphere of dread and decay by revealing what may lurk just beyond our view of reality. Few people succeed in this, but Matt does it with aplomb. His prose is intelligent and poetic, his execution, effortless. I believe this collection will become a classic of weird fiction.”

— Durant Haire, writing for Feoamante.com

“It’s a bold writer who, in this day and age, tries to make modern horror fiction out of theology, but Cardin pulls it off. Like most heretics, he may be wrong in the eyes of the Church, but he can cite texts: lots of scary Old Testament passages that suggest a gnostic mystery underlying perceived reality. What was the ‘face of the deep’ upon which there was darkness, before the first act of Creation? Was God’s act one of pushing back or containing a primal Chaos older and vaster than Himself? Cardin manages to turn this into a vision of terrifying, Lovecraftian nihilism. No mean feat, that.”

— Darrell Schweitzer

“Cardin massages the dark and hidden, and penetrates the ancient deep to fashion unique visions of horror and deity. Each piece has its own depth and unwavering regard to the theme. The settings are universally dark, murky, and decadent, putting you in mind of Poe especially, but also some of the more depressed turn-of-the-(20th)Century writers. In each of these stories, the author personalizes the apocalyptic question of ultimate power and order. It is a fascinating approach.”

— Cemetery Dance

“Matt Cardin’s stories display a thorough appreciation of what cosmic horror is all about…[H]e knows that the Bible staked out the territory long before Lovecraft came on the scene. You might even say that he saw where Lovecraft went off the tracks by dismissing the power of the pre-existing symbols. In Divinations of the Deep, he has steered the train back onto the mainline of Western religion. I don’t want to suggest that these stories are devout or uplifting, or that they follow the Christian party-line. Far from it. The reputed consolations of faith are notably absent from Matt’s bleak universe. He comes by his credentials as a horror writer honestly: not by reading Stephen King with a felt marker in hand and one eye on the cash-register, but by suffering through a dark night of the soul that very nearly undid him. He merely writes what he knows.”

— Brian McNaughton

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Writer’s voice and the unconscious mind

Oct 18

Posted by Matt Cardin in Tapping the Creative Unconscious, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | 2 Comments

In the latest installment (published just today) of the Guardian and Observer series of articles about “How to write fiction,” novelist Meg Rosoff offers some brilliant and exhilarating advice about finding your writer’s voice by learning to negotiate the relationship between your conscious and unconscious minds. (Or actually, she uses the word “subconscious,” which, while it carries a slightly different denotation and connotation, is close enough.) And she ties this directly to the question of not only writing authentically, but of knowing and living your life’s deep meaning. This is a subject and a discipline that, as you know, sits at the center of what we’re about here at Demon Muse, and also in Demonic Creativity.

Observe:

Self-knowledge is essential not only to writing, but to doing almost anything really well. It allows you to work through from a deep place — from the deep, dark corners of your subconscious mind. This connection of subconscious to conscious mind is what gives a writer’s voice resonance. Read a great writer and you’ll feel the resonance – it’s the added dimension of power that can’t quite be explained by mere talent. An ability with words is nice, but it’s not a voice.

Connecting with your subconscious mind is not easy. It requires confronting difficult facts — about yourself and about the world…Of course the biggest, darkest question of all is death. Not an easy question to meet head-on. Some people naturally confront death. Some seem incapable of not confronting it. Woody Allen says that when he was a small child he lay in bed, terrified, contemplating eternal nothingness. So, apparently, did William Golding. Many people, however, live their lives in evasion of the central fact of existence. Of course it is perfectly possible to be a writer without facing death face-on, without years of psychoanalysis, and without a tendency towards depression. But the resonant, powerful, exciting voice that grips you in its thrall is likely to be a voice with a good deal of hard-won wisdom about humanity.

…Now think, for a minute, of your subconscious mind as the horse and your conscious mind as the rider. The goal is a combination of strength, suppleness and softness. If the rider (conscious mind) is too strong, too stiff or unsympathetic, the horse becomes unresponsive and difficult to control, or resistant and dull. The object of dressage is to create an open, graceful exchange of understanding and energy between horse and rider.

…A book written with an exchange of energy between the conscious and subconscious mind will feel exciting and fluid in the way that a perfectly planned and pre-plotted book never will. Writing (like riding, or singing, or playing a musical instrument, or painting or playing cricket or thinking about the universe) requires the deep psychological resonance of the subconscious mind.

– “How to write fiction: Meg Rosoff on finding your voice“

She follows this up with some useful advice about — surprise — taking up the practice of writing in the early morning, and writing with abandon, in order to feel your way into that living relationship between the two minds. It’s a great article, and I recommend it highly.

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Ebook now available: “A Course in Demonic Creativity”

Sep 26

Posted by Matt Cardin in A Course in Demonic Creativity, Creativity and Consciousness, Creativity and Society, Tapping the Creative Unconscious, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | No Comments

The stars have aligned. The ebook has landed. Visit the download page. And remember, it’s free.

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Tags: ebooks

Ebook rescheduled for September 26 release

Sep 19

Posted by Matt Cardin in A Course in Demonic Creativity | 6 Comments

As I’ve gone about the task of making final edits and improvements to A Course in Demonic Creativity over the past few weeks, the text has unexpectedly begun to grow. Instead of the previously mentioned length of 30,000 words, the final version will clock in closer to 40,000. It’s an appropriate enough development, given the book’s — and this blog’s — focus on the inner genius, the daimonic muse, and the experience of creativity as an autonomous phenomenon.

The newly expanded version naturally requires a bit more editing, not only for orthographic purposes but to ensure that the whole thing fits together as a coherent and harmonious text. So I’m rescheduling its release from today to September 26. It will appear here first as a free pdf that has been intentionally formatted to look good on e-reader screens, and then a short time later (a few weeks to a month) in one or two other formats (Kindle, epub). The table of contents remains the same as previously announced.

Many thanks for your interest and patience. A lot of people have told me they’re looking forward to the book. In lieu of publishing it today, here’s its introduction:

Where does creativity come from? Why do ideas and inspiration feel as if they come from “outside,” from an external source that’s separate from  us but able to whisper ideas directly into the mind? Why have so many writers throughout history—and also composers, painters, philosophers, mystics, and scientists—spoken of being guided, accompanied, and even haunted by a force or presence that not only serves as the deep source of their creative work but exerts a kind of profound and inexorable gravitational pull on the shape of their lives?

These are all questions addressed by the ebook you’re now reading. A Course in Demonic Creativity is a book about the deep nature of creativity in art and life. Its starting point is the understanding that we all possess a higher or deeper intelligence than the everyday mind, and that learning to live and work harmoniously and energetically with this intelligence is the irreducible core of a successful artistic life, and also of a successful life as a whole, if true success is defined as fulfilling the purpose for which you were born (and failure as its soul-crushing opposite). Read the rest of this entry »

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Revised cover for demonic creativity ebook

Aug 31

Posted by Matt Cardin in A Course in Demonic Creativity | No Comments

I got to looking at my rough/working cover for A Course in Demonic Creativity and realized that it’s pretty bland. I’m no graphic designer, but I can do better than that. After some tooling around and conferencing with my creative self, here’s the new version, which in addition to being more attractive offers a much better visual statement of the book’s guiding themes:

I’ve also added a few thousand new words to the book itself as I’ve been doing a final or penultimate revision of the text. The September 19 publication date is still firm. As previously stated, the ebook will be free and in pdf form. Watch this space for announcements about additional ebook formats.

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Tags: ebook

Free Demon Muse ebook set for September 19 release

Aug 29

Posted by Matt Cardin in A Course in Demonic Creativity | 5 Comments

I spent the past weekend speaking on various panels at the 33rd annual ArmadilloCon (the latest installment of the venerable science fiction/fantasy/horror publishing convention held each year in Austin, Texas). And since I mentioned the upcoming Demon Muse ebook to audiences there, and even gave a publishing date, I figured an update here at the website itself is obviously in order.

A Course in Demonic Creativity: A Writer’s Guide to the Inner Genius will be published here as a freely downloadable ebook on Monday, September 19. The primary format will be pdf, but if enough people show an interest in a Kindle and/or ePub file (by sending me a message or leaving a comment here) then I’ll make those available as well.

Here’s a screen shot of the cover:

The ebook will be just over 30,000 words in length, and will bring together the contents of the core articles here at Demon Muse that deal specifically with the practical end of creative collaboration with the inner genius, along with one or two articles about the subject that I’ve published elsewhere on the Internet.

The contents will include:

  • Chapter One: Perspiration Meets Inspiration, or The Return of the Muse
  • Chapter Two: A Brief History of the Daimon and the Genius
  • Chapter Three: A Writer’s Guide to the Psyche
  • Chapter Four: Getting to Know Your Creative Demon
  • Chapter Five: The Practice of Inner Collaboration
  • Chapter Six: Divining Your Daimon’s Rhythm
  • Chapter Seven: The Art of Active Waiting
  • Chapter Eight: The Discipline of the Demon Muse

I’ve spent considerable time revising and editing, and in some cases substantially expanding, this content from its original appearance here at the Website. This includes adding full information, in the form of footnotes and a bibliography, about the various books, authors, articles, and essays that I’ve read in my research about creative writing, the psychology of creativity, and the experiential reality of the daimonic muse.

Mark your calendar and use one of the subscription options offered below to make sure you don’t miss it.

ADDENDUM, 8/31/11: Check out the revised cover.

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Tags: ebook

You and Your Inner Neanderthal, or The Muse in the Cerebellum (Theology, Psychology, Neurology – Part 3.2)

Jul 25

Posted by Matt Cardin in Creativity and Consciousness | 3 Comments

This article continues the search for a possible biological basis of the muse experience, as explored in Part One, Part Two, and Part 3.1. The final paragraph of the previous article serves as the perfect lead-in to this one, so I’ll quote it in full and let it serve as a preface: “To summarize: The deep source of creativity truly feels to the ego like an independent and autonomous force or presence. Since the pineal gland is or may be centrally involved in the production of entity encounters, dreams, visions, and other experiences that display that same quality of intra-psychic autonomy as, and stand as first cousins to, the muse experience, and since psychedelics in general, including DMT, are so deeply associated with the stimulation of creativity, the pineal gland is worth considering as a possible biological locus of the muse.”

In addition to serving as a possible muse-location in its own right, the pineal gland transitions us to our next speculative/interpretive “lens” via its relationship to the cerebellum. Let’s allow the late Stan Gooch (1932-2010), psychologist and paranormal theorist extraordinaire, to launch the discussion:

[W]e have two brains: the cerebrum (the front brain) and the cerebellum (the back brain). The ancestor of all mammals had two pairs of eyes—one pair on top of the head and connected to the cerebellum. The second pair was in the front of the head and connected to the cerebrum. Originally, the cerebellum was the main brain. But in the course of time the pair of eyes on top of the head fused together and sank down into the skull to form what is today called the pineal gland, which is still actually light sensitive (of course the pineal gland is the “third eye” of ancient Hindu mysticism). Now the cerebrum and its pair of front eyes became the main brain. But when did you ever hear these astonishing evolutionary facts discussed? The pineal is located directly above the cerebellum, whose name is Latin for “little brain.” This is a structure beneath the forebrain.[1]

Although this passage touches on matters that we’ve already looked at in the previous section, it effectively slams us into the subject rather than easing us into it, and requires some backtracking to set the stage for explaining the cerebellar muse hypothesis—that is, the idea that the muse is located in, or perhaps simply is, the cerebellum — which was the proprietary theoretical creation of Gooch himself. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: brain, cerebellum, daimon, muse, stan gooch

Third Eyes and Unknown Entities: Mysteries of the Pineal Gland (Theology, Psychology, Neurology – Part 3.1)

Jul 12

Posted by Matt Cardin in Creativity and Consciousness | 7 Comments

Although this article can stand alone, it will mean more if you read Part One and Part Two first. Also note that I decided to publish this part of the “Theology, Psychology, Neurology” series in separate sections, hence the “3.1″ in the title. Future installments/sections will discuss other possible biological locations for the muse experience; see “Next Up” at the end of this article.

* * *

Introduction

From the previous post‘s focus on the experiences of Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson in contacting or being contacted by a “higher intelligence,” we now turn to the question of the daimonic muse’s neurological aspect, to wit: When we feel as if we’re being guided and inspired in creative work by an independent, external force or presence, what’s going on in our body, and more specifically, in our brain? What are the neurological aspects of the experience of the demon muse? And how does this contribute to answering, or at least informing, our overarching question about its ontological status?

By way of continuity, we can note that in their respective ways Crowley, Leary, and Wilson were all deeply interested in the workings of the human nervous system. In fact, the veritable explosion of new interest over the past couple of decades in what are now commonly called the “neural correlates of consciousness” — the brain states corresponding to subjective experiences — directly fulfills Wilson’s oft-expressed wish for a widespread cultural recognition of our real epistemological predicament vis-à-vis the neural basis of all our knowledge,[1] which is, he maintained, an aggregation of impressionistic takes on a wildly rich and diverse primary reality by a multiplicity of nervous systems that experience fundamentally different worlds because they are “tuned” to different experiential wavelengths. For him, as well as for Leary and Crowley, the question of creative inspiration and the question of its neurological component were inseparable.

Basically, what we’re asking here is 1) whether and where the muse experience might be located in the brain or, more broadly, the body, and 2) how this might contribute to our understanding of what this experience “really is.” Several possibilities commend themselves immediately to our attention. Some of them involve the new knowledge made available to us by the two technologies propelling today’s functional neuroimaging wave, positron emission tomography (PET) scans and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Others hail from different lines of inquiry. Collectively, they form a series of “lenses” through which to focus our question and gain a multipoint perspective on it. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: dmt, muse, pineal gland, Psychedelics, rick strassman

Muselinks for June 7, 2011: daimonic imagination, creative cycles, and marrying your muse

Jun 7

Posted by Matt Cardin in Muselinks, Tapping the Creative Unconscious, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | 2 Comments

“How to Marry Your Muse: An Interview with Jan Phillips,” Sounds True. An award-winning photographer, writer, artist, and national workshop leader shares her ideas on establishing a right relationship with your unconscious collaborator. “The whole point about the concept of ‘marrying your Muse’ is to recognize that our relationship with the inner world is every bit as important as our relationship with the outer world. If we want to experience the Muse, to really know and feel her as a collaborator in our creative work, then we have to commit our time and attention to her on a regular basis.”

“Developing Your Creative Practice: Tips from Brian Eno,” Scott McDowell, 99%. This article draws practical tips from a new ebook about Brian Eno’s career and creative process, and relates his advice to recent discoveries in neuroscience about the necessity of building a relaxation phase into your creative cycle.

“5 Steps to Subconscious-Driven Creativity,” Patrick Ross, The Artist’s Road. An excellent procedure for directly engaging your unconscious mind by formulating targeted questions and handing them over to it.

“Writing above Your Head,” Clayton Luz, Glimmer Train. “Writing above your head makes something happen inside; it’s a process of self-realization, a self-knowing what Steven Pressfield artfully described as giving ‘birth to ourselves, to that person we were born to be, to the one whose destiny was encoded in our soul, our daimon, our genius.’”

“Finding a ‘Muse’ at the Beinecke,” Iva Popa, Yale Daily News.  “For the next several months, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library will be providing insight into ‘the science of the soul.’ A new exhibition at the Beinecke, ‘Psyche and Muse,’ features a collection of pictures, handwritten letters, postcards, manuscripts and books belonging to influential figures from the history and development of psychology, ranging from Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung.”

“Daimonic Imagination, Uncanny Intelligence.” This was a conference held on May 6-7 at the University of Kent. A number of abstracts, PowerPoints, and full papers that were presented are now available online. The original call for papers itself is richly evocative and informative in its own right, and is well worth quoting at length:

In this inter-disciplinary conference we will be addressing the question of inspired creativity. In many traditions the fount of creative vision and the source of divinatory insight is located in an intelligent ‘other’, whether this is termed god, angel, spirit, muse or daimon, or whether it is seen as an aspect of the human imagination and the activation of the ‘unconscious’ in a Jungian sense. From the artistic genius to the tarot reader, the sense of communication with another order of reality is commonly attested. Such communication may take the form of a flash of intuitive insight, psychic or clairvoyant ability, or spiritual possession. In art and literature many forms have been given to the daimonic intelligence, from angels to aliens, and in the realm of new age practices encounters with spiritual beings are facilitated through an increasing variety of methods including shamanism, hypnotherapy, mediumship, psychedelics, channelling and spirit materialisation. Theories of divinatory practices such as astrology, tarot or I Ching often assume a spirit or god-like intelligence at work in symbolic interpretation, and guardian angels abound in self-help literature.

This conference is not concerned with ‘proving’ or ‘disproving’ the existence of such beings. Rather, we would invite papers that address the theme of how the ‘numinous other’ is conveyed and depicted, how its voice is heard, how it informs, and has always informed, human experience. We would like to engage the imagination and open up discussion, particularly around the subject of how researchers might best approach the study of such marginalised and culturally anomalous visions and experiences, and what their value might be.

Image credit: “Dark as my soul can be” used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) from formerlydumb

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Tags: Brian Eno, carl jung, daimonic imagination, jan phillips, sigmund freud, unconscious mind

In Search of Higher Intelligence: Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson (Theology, Psychology Neurology – Part Two)

May 23

Posted by Matt Cardin in Creativity and Consciousness, Creativity and Society, Tapping the Creative Unconscious | 14 Comments

NOTE: It’s tempting to begin with an exclamation like “And we’re back!” For the past several months, Demon Muse has been on hiatus as I’ve done some necessary clarifying and recharging in communion with my creative source. If you’re a long-time reader, I thank you sincerely for your patience, and for the expressions of ongoing interest that some of you have sent me. If you’re new to Demon Muse, then I hope you’ll enjoy and profit from this ongoing exploration of the theory and practice of inspired creativity, and will add your voice to the conversation in each post’s comment section. In particular, you may find it worth your while to explore the Course in Demonic Creativity, which organizes this blog’s “backbone posts” into a coherent course of self-study in the art of creativity as a muse-driven or daimon-driven pursuit. (For an even more easily accessible and portable presentation, look for an ebook version later this year.)

Be advised that the present post inaugurates a new format that will include 1) occasionally longer articles with endnotes and 2) a drastic reduction in the number of in-text links. For a rationale concerning the second part, see “Experiments in delinkification” by Nicholas Carr, author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and its book-length expansion, The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Also see “To link or not to link? That is the question” at The Economist and “The Hyperlink War” at the Barnes & Noble Review. Or do a Google search for hyperlinks + distraction. For a rationale concerning the first part: Endnotes keep a reader engaged in the same text instead of leading attention away.

* * *

Image: ConsciousnessTo review, in the opening post of this series I raised the question of whether the personification of the creative force that we’ve been pursuing here at Demon Muse is “really real.” Is the muse, the daimon, the personal genius — that gravitational center of our creative energy and identity — truly a separate being/force/entity with an independent, autonomous existence? Or are such words and the experience to which they refer simply convenient metaphors for the unconscious mind? The first thing we discover when we truly begin to consider the issue in depth is that arriving at a viable answer will not be, and cannot be, as straightforward a matter as it might first appear. All of our attempts run us into immediate difficulties, because whichever side we try to choose, we find we’re automatically skirting important issues and begging crucial questions. Hence, the value of reviewing some of the various ways in which intelligent individuals have understood the experience of guidance and communication from a muse-like source.

Of all the myriad strands in the cultural conversation about this issue, it would be hard to identify a more pertinent — or fascinating (and entertaining) — one than the line of influence connecting 20th-century occultist Aleister Crowley to psychedelic guru Timothy Leary to counterculture novelist-philosopher and “guerilla ontologist” Robert Anton Wilson. The dividing line between objective and subjective interpretations of the experience of external-seeming communication from an invisible source is highlighted not only in their individual stories but in the plotline that connects them. In particular, Wilson’s final “resting point” in terms of a belief system to encompass the whole thing is helpful and instructive in our search for the muse’s ontological status, and can prove a helpful tonic for dogmatism, because what he ended up with was more of an anti-belief system that highlights and hinges on the irreducible indeterminacy of any possible answer.

By way of a warning: Prepare for high weirdness! What follows is a strange story. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: Aleister Crowley, daemon, Holy Guardian Angel, Magick, muse, Occultism, Psychedelics, Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, unconscious mind

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