Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2009 TED talk about creativity as a relationship between a person and his or her genius has now entered the lore of contemporary digital media culture as a singularly popular and significant framing of the central creative question by a celebrity author. Gilbert used her TED time to talk about the damage caused…
Tag: daemonic creativity
Fuseli, Sleep Paralysis, and Horror’s Master Image
Just in time for the Halloween holiday, Ryan Hurd has published a horror-fied guest post by me at Dream Studies, his thoroughly excellent Website about dream science, nightmares, and related altered states of consciousness. The article describes my long-in-coming recognition about a very famous painting (you know the one; see above) and the way it…
UFOs, cultural synchronicities, and “a very real power in the creative process”
Over at Silver Screen Saucers, the always-interesting Website about Hollywood’s long-running engagement with UFOs, you’ll find a very long and totally absorbing essay by author and illustrator Mike Clelland about “a deep dark hole of synchro-weirdness” that opened up for him when he rewatched the 1974 television movie The Stranger Within, which he first saw…
Sleep paralysis, horror fiction, daemonic creativity, and dark religion: Matt Cardin interviewed
Teeming Brain founder/editor Matt Cardin was interviewed on the October 14, 2012 edition of the Expanding Mind Radio show, which is devoted to exploring “the cultures of consciousness.” The hour-long conversation with co-hosts Erik Davis and Maja D’Aoust delves into the deep psychological, philosophical, and spiritual underpinnings of the dark side of religious experience and…
Recommended Reading 29
This week, we bring you a roundup of readings spanning a rainbow of trends and topics, from the collapsing economy to the destruction of modern sociopolitical and cultural myths to the imaginal realm of shamanism, creativity, and mythic descents to the underworld. More specifically, we have: a report on the U.S. Army’s stated criteria for…
The daemonic discipline of Vincent van Gogh
The mythic potency of a life that is veritably (or literally) possessed by a daemonic creative force is beautifully and terrifyingly illustrated by the life, work, death, and legacy of Vincent van Gogh. So is the fact that a deliberate dedication to channeling this force through a discipline of strict technical training can result in…
Initiation by Nightmare: Cosmic Horror and Chapel Perilous
When the first of my sleep paralysis attacks occurred in the early 1990s, I had no idea that it was the onset of a period that I would later come to recognize or characterize as a spontaneous shamanic-type initiation via nightmare.
Liminality, Synchronicity, and the Walls of Everyday Reality
(Liminalities, Cycle 1, Part 1) A seminal moment in the formation of Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity came as he was treating a highly educated woman who, by his description, was locked in a rigid Cartesian rationalism that hindered her therapy. The basis of all depth psychotherapy is the airing of unconscious psychic content and…
Can dark matter, the multiverse model, and the observer effect help to explain UFOs and paranormal entities?
Here’s some fascinating, cogent, incisive, and subtle speculation/theorizing (marred in places by a mild stylistic clumsiness) from Kathy Kasten, whose accompanying bio describes her as “an experienced writer/researcher who delved extensively into the UFO phenomenon and related subject matter” and whose “resume includes acting as staff liaison on the Human Subjects Protection Committee while employed at the…
The wisdom of waiting
In a super essay at FT.com (“Waiting Game,” June 22), Frank Partnoy, law and finance professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, delves into the psychology and physiology of optimum performance among professional athletes to draw out a profound insight about the supreme value of waiting. This value, he says, isn’t just…