(Click the cover or the linked title below to download the PDF)
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 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 that exerts a kind of profound and inexorable gravitational pull on the shape of their lives?
These are all questions addressed by A Course in Demonic Creativity: A Writer’s Guide to the Inner Genius. The book’s starting point is the proposition 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. We can call this inner force the unconscious mind or the silent partner. We can call it the id or the secret self. But muse, daimon, and genius are so much more effective at conveying its subversive and electrifying emotional charge, and also its experiential reality.
Your unconscious mind truly is your genius in the ancient sense of the word, the sense that was universal before it was fatefully altered several centuries ago by historical-cultural forces. Befriending it as such, and interacting with it as if it really is a separate, collaborating presence in your psyche, puts you in a position to receive its gifts, and it in the position to give them to you.
A brief note about the history of this book
In 2009 I founded the blog Demon Muse, devoted to the subject of inspired creativity. A Course in Demonic Creativity was developed from material that I published there from 2009 to 2011. I shut the site down permanently in 2013 after repeated hacks (in the form of bot attacks, I assume) had finally tried my patience and technical skills to their limit. But that left no home for this book, so I decided to make it available here at The Teeming Brain due to people’s continued interest in it.
When I closed Demon Muse, downloads of the book were nearing four thousand. It has gained several thousand more readers here at The Teeming Brain. Additionally, various people have taken advantage of the Creative Commons license under which I published it to make it available elsewhere. I’ve been gratified and humbled to read people’s praise for A Course in Demonic Creativity over the years, and to witness how it keeps finding its way to individuals who grasp, appreciate, and resonate with its viewpoint and message.
Matt, I have been voraciously searching for an answer to my multiplying questions about creativity, for two years now. Your course is the best thing I have found. I am wildly grateful to you for putting so much that I needed all in one place, so absorbingly written, and so full of fabulous references.
Blessings and light on you for your role in providing the putty that I think will stick all the bits I had so far, together into a workable, meaningful and inspiring whole. I really cannot express the depth of my gratitude for this gift from you and your daemon both.
Grace