Demon Muse

Embrace your inner genius

Posts Tagged daimon

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 »

Share

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

Creativity, the Greek Daimons, and the New Consciousness Revolution

Aug 23

Posted by Matt Cardin in Creativity and Consciousness, Creativity and Society | 1 Comment

Photo: Cosmic EyeOne of the posts that consistently draws the most traffic here at Demon Muse is “A Brief History of the Daimon and the Genius.” This confirms what I already knew when I launched this project: that interest in the subject of the “inner other” — the sensed presence of another mind, an autonomous/independent force that each of us carries in his or her psyche, and that came to be known as “the unconscious” with the advent of psychoanalytic theory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — is running high these days, and that this is leading to an increased interest in the deep cultural history of the subject.

This runs entirely in tandem with the wider phenomenon of a steadily increasing interest among the mainstream of consumer-technological society in matters related to consciousness, reality, metaphysics, and so on. In a recent post at my other blog, The Teeming Brain, I described the whole thing as follows:

[In the 1960s] it seemed as if the collective cranium of Western and global civilization was primed to erupt in a psychedelic expansion into new realms of thought, experience, and being that would inevitably lead to new patterns of social, political, religious, and cultural arrangement.

. . . . Now fast forward to the first decade of the 21st century, and what do we find? As in the sixties, everything seems apocalyptic. Everything seems poised to melt away and reveal an ugly truth lurking beneath the facade of what we have collectively agreed to call a normal way of life. For Americans especially, what primed us for this was the Y2K non-event. Then 9/11 deflowered us. After that, successive waves of tentative financial calamity, followed by our current and ongoing full-blown financial-economic collapse, erased our (illusionary) innocence entirely. Additionally, fears about serious and calamitous climate change have made significant attitudinal contributions, along with other ecological portents, fears about peak oil and 2012, and the first-ever wide-open recognition, by pretty much the entire public at large, of the entrenched and seemingly incurable corruption of our most prominent political and business institutions, as illustrated most recently by the collusion of BP and the U.S. federal government in creating a total fustercluck in the Gulf of Mexico.

And running neck in neck with this — again as in the 60s — we’re seeing a concomitant explosion of new discourse, expressed in books (including those by the likes of, e.g., Anthony Peake and Deborah Wells), films, music, and more, that appears to pick right back up where the original consciousness revolution left off. This formerly esoteric and marginal realm of investigation and experience, which deals with a true upending of conventional notions about selfhood, identity, time, space, and reality, presently appears to be snowballing into a major cultural force with transformative and mainstream-invading potential.

– Matt Cardin, “The 1960s Redux: In our new age of apocalypse, is the consciousness revolution back on?” The Teeming Brain, August 18, 2010

In light of all this, when I sat down to write this week’s Demon Muse post, I realized it would be valuable and worthwhile to say more about the daimon, because this concept, or tropes and themes closely akin to it, lurks behind and figures into most if not all aspects of this ongoing cultural metamorphosis, which in turn is deeply linked to our shared focus here on recognizing the reality of, and then cultivating a harmonious relationship with, your muse/daimon/genius/unconscious mind in order to empower your creative work with an organic and deeply meaningful sense of inspiration and direction. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: 2012, ancient greeks, anthony peake, consciousness, daimon, daniel pinchbeck, dark awakenings, deborah wells, e.r. dodds, homer, inception, james hillman, plato, psychoanalysis, reginald barrow, rollo may, socrates, stephen a diamond, unconscious mind, victoria nelson

Seven Perspectives on Living with a Muse

Aug 16

Posted by Matt Cardin in Dealing with Creative Block, Tapping the Creative Unconscious, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | No Comments

Image: L'Artiste et sa MuseIn your life as a muse-driven writer, there’s a great deal of help and gratification, not to mention pure pleasure, to be gained from reading the accounts of other artists who have consciously experienced their creativity to some degree as an autonomous force, entity, or process. Equally valuable are statements of general creative principles that have been abstracted from such accounts. Learning the various ways in which writers have conceived, related to, and referred to their inner collaborators can go a long way toward helping you to clarify your relationship with your own muse or genius. And of course such statements often shade into speculations about the general meaning and purpose of human life, both individually and collectively — a subject that’s always worth considering.

You’ll find quotes to this effect scattered throughout the library of articles housed here at Demon Muse. Right now, to reinforce the point, here are a few more. By way of a disclaimer, please note that not all of the individuals quoted below make explicit mention of the muse, daimon, or genius. Some of them might well quibble with the use of such terminology. But all talk about the ins and outs, both practical and philosophical, of living and working with the realization that creativity comes to us as a seemingly autonomous force that demands an attitude not of control, but of relationship and respect. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: creative process, creativity, daimon, don delillo, george blair-west, james lee burke, lisa a riley, maxie van roye, muse, robert louis stevenson, Steven Pressfield

When the Muse Becomes Monstrous: The Demonic Modern History of the West

Aug 2

Posted by Matt Cardin in Creativity and Consciousness, Creativity and Society | No Comments

Image: Solitude - Dark MuseThis isn’t even close to what I originally intended when I sat down to write this week’s post, but it’s what came out. As always, such occurrences make for a nice illustration of the main point around here (which, as you’ll note, is conveniently restated in the first couple of sentences below.)

* * *

Abandoning the muse: from the Renaissance to Freud

The muse model of creativity, a.k.a. the daemonic or genius-based model, holds that it’s eminently reasonable and helpful to regard creativity as an independent force that emerges through you, as opposed to a quality or power that you possess or a mere feat that you’re able to perform. This ancient model of creativity is also a model of consciousness in general. It’s a model of the nature and status of the conscious self within the wider context of psychological life as a whole, human life in general, and the world at large.

As such, it underwent a drastic change over the course of several recent centuries in the West, beginning with the Renaissance and culminating in the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment and the 19th-century Age of Science (the latter of which, as we can now see in retrospect, might be more accurately termed the Age of Scientism). This was a period of enormous and energetic change in fundamental cultural understandings of what it means to be human, so the idea of the muse couldn’t help but be affected. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: A.M. Rosenthal, Age of Enlightenment, creativity, daimon, demon, Frankenstein, Freud, genius, genocide, horror, kierkegaard, Mary Shelley, monsters, muse, Nazis, Nietzsche, ray bradbury, Renaissance, Romantics, scientism, World War II

The Secret to Writing Is Writing: A Conversation with John Langan

Jul 26

Posted by Matt Cardin in Interviews, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | 2 Comments

This is the second in the Demon Muse series of conversations with notable writers and artists about their experiences of the creative process. The first was with T.M. Wright. In this latest installment, I talk with horror writer and SUNY writing instructor John Langan.

* * *

Photo: John Langan

John Langan

I’m almost inclined to preface the following conversation with a blatantly hyperbolic claim, to wit: If you haven’t heard of John Langan, then you soon will. That’s how strongly I feel about the quality and importance of the man’s writing. And although it’s true that he may, like many horror writers, end up being known not to a general audience but only to those who actively seek out such stories, this doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have a mainstream breakthrough. Because he’s writing some really stunning stuff.

I first heard of John maybe five or six years ago when a friend, the fantasy and horror artist Jason Van Hollander, directed me to John’s story “On Skua Island,” which had been published in 2001 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I found out somewhere, maybe from Jason, that John is a creative writing teacher at SUNY New Paltz. He also teaches classes in gothic fiction and film. This interested me greatly.

In keeping with my usual mercurial reading habits (dictated by weird inner pressures and impulses that I’ll never manage to map out), I examined the story, found it hugely exciting, and then put off reading it for several years. When I finally did read it, I was positively enraptured by its thoroughly delicious deployment of classic supernatural-horrific literary tropes — all of them used quite consciously — in the service of a really fine and wholly original tale.

This was in 2009, only a few months after John’s first book, the fiction collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, had been published (in December 2008) to an enthusiastic reception that included a starred review in Publishers Weekly. The book consists of five stories that demonstrate more of what the author had demonstrated in “On Skua Island,” which is included in its contents. I read it  and was again enraptured.

Then John’s first novel, House of Windows — a thoroughly literary exploration of the haunted house theme, as played against the family curse theme, as played out in a parable about the power of language, as played out in the lives of two career academics — came out in late 2009. I reviewed it for Dead Reckonings. Here’s a snippet of what I said: “House of Windows is a scarifyingly assured debut. It’s one of those wonderful books where you realize only a few pages in that you can relax into it and trust yourself fully to the author, since he obviously knows what he’s doing.” A host of other critics and reviewers agreed.

The story continues: His work has now been featured in editor Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 2, and editor Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. He has been a judge for the Shirley Jackson Awards for the past three years. Most interesting of all — to a person like me, at least — he’s currently working on a Ph.D. through the CUNY Graduate Center, with his dissertation to be titled Lovecraft’s Progeny. It offers “a consideration of Lovecraft’s influence on Fritz Leiber, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, and Caitlin Kiernan.”

Somewhere along the way, I became Internet acquaintances with John, and that led to my inviting him to sit down in virtual space for an interview. Well, that, and the fact that his stories were pinging right and left on some of the major themes that I’ve pursued here at Demon Muse: the question of creative inspiration’s true nature, the experience of being dominated by autonomous psychic forces, and so on. I wanted to ask John about the origin of these strands in his work, and about his interesting fusion of academic themes with supernatural ones, and about the implications of these things not only for his own literary creative life but for the creative lives of anybody else who might benefit from hearing what he’s learned.

So that’s what I did. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: creative process, creative writing, d.h. lawrence, daimon, flannery o'connor, genius, h.p. lovecraft, horror, john langan, muse, shirley jackson awards, stephen king, suny, supernatural, the magazine of fantasy & science fiction

Advice for Writers: Dig Deep into Your Passion

Jun 30

Posted by Matt Cardin in Dealing with Creative Block, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | No Comments

I’ve just been interviewed by a publisher of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction for a feature at their blog. Along with questions about my writing career — how I got hooked up with Ash-Tree Press for Divinations of the Deep and Mythos Books for Dark Awakenings, how I came to my overriding focus on the combination of horror with religion and spirituality, what my writing process is like, etc. — the interviewer asked me if I had any advice for aspiring writers.

It was only after I had answered the question that I realized I had ramped up into a state of heady intensity as I tried to distill my best advice to writers into the span of a few sentences. Since I know this type of thing is of interest to Demon Muse’s audience, I figured I’d reprint it here, with a few slight expansions.

Here’s what I said: Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: advice, daimon, dark awakenings, divinations of the deep, muse, publishing, ray bradbury, unconscious mind, writing

The Muse in the News

Jun 21

Posted by Matt Cardin in Creativity and Society | No Comments

inspirationAs recounted in part two of “Embrace Your Creative Demon’s Rhythm,” the poet Amy Lowell once compared poets to radio antennas. The poet, she said, is someone who “is capable of receiving messages on waves of some sort; but he is more than an aërial, for he is capable of transmuting these messages into those patterns of words we call poems.”

Lately, if you consciously fashion yourself into a different kind of antenna — specifically, one that’s set to detect references to the daimon/daemon, the genius, and the creative muse in current cultural discourse — you’ll find that you receive a lot of signals indeed. There’s a diffuse conversation afoot about this ancient view of creativity and selfhood, and paying attention to it can reap some serious rewards in terms of clarifying your crucial relationship to your own inner partner.

Here are some choice items from the past few weeks, months, and years. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: amy lowell, creativity, daimon, demon, edward hirsch, Elizabeth Gilbert, lawrence staples, meredith wickham, mike nichols, muse, nick laird, Steven Pressfield, sunni brown, thomas moore, tony white, unconscious mind

Stoking Your Creative Fire: Embrace Your Creative Demon’s Rhythm (1)

May 10

Posted by Matt Cardin in Tapping the Creative Unconscious, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | 4 Comments

FirestarterFor many of us, one of the hardest things to learn in the creative life is the necessity of falling into step with our creative demon’s innate rhythm. Your inner partner is invested with a certain schedule or pace, and a major part of your job is to discover this schedule through trial and error — and then to embrace it wholeheartedly.

Note the emphasis: You don’t choose when your demon will deliver the creative goods. Cooperating with your genius or muse isn’t like ordering fast food. In the creative life, delivery may be fast — or it may be slow. It may be regular — or it may be intermittent. Regardless, your task, the job of you-as-ego, is first to find your demon’s natural schedule and then to welcome it, to second it, to work with it wholeheartedly. Semi-paradoxically, this deliberate cooperation is also what enables you eventually to exercise, if not outright control, then some sort of benign mutual influence over the comings and goings of your creative cycles.

The overall principle is illustrated by something H.P. Lovecraft said about his authorial process in a 1928 letter to Frank Long. “I never try to write a story, but wait till it has to be written” (Lovecraft’s emphases). That’s what we’re talking about: waiting for the moment when creative work has to be done, as indicated and dictated by the internal pressure of daemonic necessity.

But, significantly, not all waiting is alike. It’s common to think of waiting as a passive activity, but the type of waiting we’re talking about is quite active, so much so that you may be just as well served by thinking of it as an aggressive (or maybe passive-aggressive?) courting of your demon muse, a kind of “come-on” that encourages it to provide an influx of inspiration. Whichever way you want to regard it, learning to do it effectively represents a milestone in your maturation as a creative artist. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: angel, betty scott, creative demon, creative process, daimon, dorothea brande, genius, graham wallas, h.p. lovecraft, muse, s.t. joshi, unconscious mind

Ignorance, Faith, and the Discipline of the Demon Muse, Part 3

May 3

Posted by Matt Cardin in Tapping the Creative Unconscious, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | No Comments

I ended Part 2 of this series with a description of the “realm of infinite inner richness and raw, self-evident meaningfulness” that offers to inform your writing when your unconscious mind acts as muse or genius by speaking to you in mental images, persistent thoughts, and intensified emotions. You tap into the nightside of consciousness when you deliberately seek and allow this guidance from beyond your ego shell.

To circle back around to where we started in Part 1, in order to accomplish that necessary nightside tapping you have to give up the idea that you know what you’re doing and where you’re going with it. The reasons for this should be obvious, but in case not: If you think you know what you’re creating, where it’s headed, how it’s going to turn out, what you’re trying to accomplish, what its overall structure is supposed to be, and so on, then this sense of knowledge will almost inevitably result in an attitude of control and ownership over the results. And this is, bar none, the most surefire way to block out the light, whether of the bright or the dark variety, that your genius is trying to shine through you.

The way to overcome this problem is to sidestep it entirely by embracing conscious ignorance and relying on your daemon to carry you through and inform your work with a deep, organically coherent direction. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: daemon, daimon, daimonic, demon, Federico Fellini, genius, Huston Smith, Mad Men, Marion Milner, Matthew Weiner, muse, ray bradbury, William Stafford

Ignorance, Faith, and the Discipline of the Demon Muse, Part 2

Apr 26

Posted by Matt Cardin in Tapping the Creative Unconscious, Techniques for Enhancing Creativity | No Comments

As explored in Part 1 of this series, communications from your unconscious mind are recognizable as such by the fact that they occur spontaneously. From your point of view — that is, the viewpoint of you-as-conscious-ego — the voice of the unconscious arrives in the form of involuntary promptings from a separate, independent, autonomous source within your subjectivity. This source — to restate the fundamental insight that animates this blog — is, or is equivalent to, the muse, daimon/daemon, and personal genius of classical antiquity.

(It’s also equivalent to a few additional and equally potent metaphors that we haven’t talked about yet, such as the Spanish duende as described by Federico Garcia Lorca. See “A Writer’s Guide to the Psyche, Part 1” and Part 2 for more detail about the daimon and such.)

Learning the specific “language” of your unconscious mind is therefore crucial to the cultivation of an empowered creative life. It doesn’t do you much good if your genius is trying to speak to you but you can’t understand it, or if you don’t even recognize the sound of its voice.

What you have to do is figure out, via careful attentiveness to your inner states of mind and emotion, the form(s) and the channel(s) by which and in which your inner partner wants to communicate and collaborate. We’ve already explored the general idea and some specific techniques by which you can get to know your daemon’s character (see “Getting to Know Your Creative Demon, Part 1,” Part 2, and Part 3). Now it’s time to take a look at what’s effectively the converse side of things by considering the specific ways in which your daemon tries to make itself and its wishes known to you. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tags: brewster ghiselin, buddhism, carl jung, creative unconscious, creativity, daemon, daimon, dorothea brande, dorothy canfield, duende, eckhart tolle, federico garcia lorca, fourth way, genius, gurdjieff, h.p. lovecraft, james bonnet, john gardner, mindfulness, morning pages, muse, religion, sandra lee dennis, Tapping the Creative Unconscious, unconscious mind, zen

SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline