[UPDATE May 2014: The article described here is no longer available online (nor is the Demon Muse blog). A slightly abridged version of it can be found in the book Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence, edited by Angela Voss and William Rowlandson (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013). The same version can also be found in Paranthropology, Vol. 3, No. 4 (October 2012).]
Over at Demon Muse, my blog about the psychology of creativity and the experience of the muse/daimon/genius, I’ve published the next installment in my article series about the ontological status of the muse.
“Theology, Psychology, Neurology: Is the Muse Real? (Part Two)” looks at the interlinked experiences of three major figures in the 20th century’s occult and paranormal scene — Aleister Crowley, Timothy Leary, and Robert Anton Wilson — in receiving what they perceived as communication from “higher intelligences.” It also says a bit about Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, two modern-day legends in the comic book scene who are tapped into the same thing.
Here’s an excerpt:
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.