DAIMON EYES
Gleaming with Intent
Neo-Platonic Revival
Gleaming with Intent
Neo-Platonic Revival
“No eye ever saw the sun without becoming sun-like,
nor can a soul see beauty without becoming beautiful.” --Plotinus
Grant, writing of the “eye of the void” had a name said to be incommunicable. It was the equivalent of El or Al , continued in the Draconian Cults as El Shaddai or Al Shaitan, the stellar deity worshipped by the Arabs and the Jews and by the earliest settlers in Sumer (in Sumeria the god El is also known as Ia) Alemi or Alhim became the Elohim of biblical lore. "These gods or cosmic powers poured through the Veil of the Ain-- the all seeing eye-- which has its human analogue in the ajna chakra, concentrated in the first power zone-Kether.” The Elohim are messengers from on high bringing “knowledge” down for mankind, similar to the Nephilim. They are also associated with Set, or the Chaldean form of Set.
nor can a soul see beauty without becoming beautiful.” --Plotinus
Grant, writing of the “eye of the void” had a name said to be incommunicable. It was the equivalent of El or Al , continued in the Draconian Cults as El Shaddai or Al Shaitan, the stellar deity worshipped by the Arabs and the Jews and by the earliest settlers in Sumer (in Sumeria the god El is also known as Ia) Alemi or Alhim became the Elohim of biblical lore. "These gods or cosmic powers poured through the Veil of the Ain-- the all seeing eye-- which has its human analogue in the ajna chakra, concentrated in the first power zone-Kether.” The Elohim are messengers from on high bringing “knowledge” down for mankind, similar to the Nephilim. They are also associated with Set, or the Chaldean form of Set.
James Hillman sees individuation as the recognition of the motivating and protective daimon, who invents or "often forces deviance and oddity upon its keeper, especially when it is neglected or opposed" (1996, 39). He says, the daimon "cannot abide innocence."
Angelic Formula
'Reveal thyself here to me today...'
FAR-SEEING EYE
Call & Recall: A light which empowers our ability to see and creates the very act of seeing itself, creates an eye in order to be seen. A higher faculty of consciousness “sees” the imaginal realm. As we look upon the Angel, so does it look upon us, and so do we become. Meister Eckhart says, “The seeing through which I know him is the same seeing through which he knows me.” The divine/human dyad is an exemplar of the Platonic concept of macrocosm and microcosm, expressed in Hermeticism by the aphorism, "as above, so below". We discover and re-discover a new field of reality.
Neo-Platonic Approach: The objective reality of the human soul. The challenging Heraclitean fragment 54 simply translates "Character is fate." Its range of meaning includes "the good and evil genius of a person," the Greek sense of a daimon as a power or force influencing or even controlling human destiny, our unique character, independence, non-conformism, and even eccentricity. Character is our guardian divinity, providing guidance or protection rather than control as a spirit or some power either within or without.
Theurgic Approach: Magic is an artistic medium with a palette of interconnected correspondences, including alchemy and astrology. Cosmic sympathy underlies Greek magic. Magic has qabbalistic and angelic formulae for calling up the daimon or Holy Guardian Angel, the most famous being that of Abramelin the Mage. Crowley used Abramelin and Dee's Call to curb destructive forces with evocation and to elevate the spirit with invocation.
Devotional Approach: We work with pure ideas as if they were personalized beings with direct communication, knowledge or abilities otherwise unavailable -- personification of forces or concepts. Evocation calls forth angels or demons to bring spiritual inspiration, do the bidding of the magician, or provide information. Methods exist in many cultures that feature a belief in spirits, such as shamanic traditions. Daemons can take the forms of animals. Calling out removes spirits from the body; calling in brings them inside.
Indeterminant States: The angel's healing power is the 'medicine of the Imagination.' igniting spontaneous remission, arousal of psyche, placebo effect, and the immune system, perhaps via the vagus nerve. Incantation of widespread formulas and divination had curative effects. Thus, it functioned as a transpersonal, integrative mind-body psychology. Malicious daemons are integrated and guiding spirits summoned by personification and identification. The angel's wings are intellect and will. True Will is the interface between Self and Absolute, Dharma, Tao, Anahata, a Path with Heart.
Angelic invocation has its attributions, and this being so, there is no chance of the Operator using Names of Power and Formulas on wrong occasions and in error, tested by the power of symbols and signs. Within the magical trance, the mystic reconciles frustration by resorting to longer and more elaborate magical formulae.
The invocation of angelic names in magic or theurgic practice may be regarded in part as parallel to the pagan invocation of many deities by magic words, sacred names, amulets, and formulas, and in part as invocation of the personal angel with magical names for God. Magic is the materialization and manipulation of forces and phenomena of the imaginal domain. Theurgy is the same principle transposed to the supraordinary, noumenal or angelic realm, from astral to mind-manifesting causal plane.
Stephen A. Diamond explains in his book, “Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic,” our impulse to be creative “can be understood to some degree as the subjective struggle to give form, structure and constructive expression to inner and outer chaos and conflict."
“It can also be one of the most dynamic methods of meeting and redeeming one’s devils and demons.”
Angelic invocations are formulas against malicious spirits, using magic squares, the seal of Solomon, and the shield of David. Magic circles, characters, attributions, and formulas, are image magic. All magic is self-hypnosis that creates a particular atmosphere. A magical formula of power becomes one of love.
Border Phenomenology: A mysterious initiation prepares the soul for a barely perceptible but intense and pleasing magical vision, with gradually increasing precision. This worship becomes a living reality to us. As we meditate, adore, and praise we grow continually in understanding of the divine being of this Great Work. On this path of heart, we learn to feel at ease, wrapped in the form characteristic of our deity.
Liminality: As we are enveloped, love and understanding grow and gather increased meaning and richness. Increasing affinity with divine force builds up. Awareness becomes completely objective certainty of the numinous power.
The daimon is radiant, magnetic, encompassing -- irresistible. As the approach intensifies progressively higher levels of psyche become reciprocally engaged. Convinced of the deity's presence, we identify and experience it from within. We espouse our genius.
"The recall of the soul is convincing; it is a seduction that leads to psychological faith, a faith in images and in thought of the heart, leading to an animation of the world. Soul creates attachments and ties. Makes us fall in love." --James Hillman
'Reveal thyself here to me today...'
FAR-SEEING EYE
Call & Recall: A light which empowers our ability to see and creates the very act of seeing itself, creates an eye in order to be seen. A higher faculty of consciousness “sees” the imaginal realm. As we look upon the Angel, so does it look upon us, and so do we become. Meister Eckhart says, “The seeing through which I know him is the same seeing through which he knows me.” The divine/human dyad is an exemplar of the Platonic concept of macrocosm and microcosm, expressed in Hermeticism by the aphorism, "as above, so below". We discover and re-discover a new field of reality.
Neo-Platonic Approach: The objective reality of the human soul. The challenging Heraclitean fragment 54 simply translates "Character is fate." Its range of meaning includes "the good and evil genius of a person," the Greek sense of a daimon as a power or force influencing or even controlling human destiny, our unique character, independence, non-conformism, and even eccentricity. Character is our guardian divinity, providing guidance or protection rather than control as a spirit or some power either within or without.
Theurgic Approach: Magic is an artistic medium with a palette of interconnected correspondences, including alchemy and astrology. Cosmic sympathy underlies Greek magic. Magic has qabbalistic and angelic formulae for calling up the daimon or Holy Guardian Angel, the most famous being that of Abramelin the Mage. Crowley used Abramelin and Dee's Call to curb destructive forces with evocation and to elevate the spirit with invocation.
Devotional Approach: We work with pure ideas as if they were personalized beings with direct communication, knowledge or abilities otherwise unavailable -- personification of forces or concepts. Evocation calls forth angels or demons to bring spiritual inspiration, do the bidding of the magician, or provide information. Methods exist in many cultures that feature a belief in spirits, such as shamanic traditions. Daemons can take the forms of animals. Calling out removes spirits from the body; calling in brings them inside.
Indeterminant States: The angel's healing power is the 'medicine of the Imagination.' igniting spontaneous remission, arousal of psyche, placebo effect, and the immune system, perhaps via the vagus nerve. Incantation of widespread formulas and divination had curative effects. Thus, it functioned as a transpersonal, integrative mind-body psychology. Malicious daemons are integrated and guiding spirits summoned by personification and identification. The angel's wings are intellect and will. True Will is the interface between Self and Absolute, Dharma, Tao, Anahata, a Path with Heart.
Angelic invocation has its attributions, and this being so, there is no chance of the Operator using Names of Power and Formulas on wrong occasions and in error, tested by the power of symbols and signs. Within the magical trance, the mystic reconciles frustration by resorting to longer and more elaborate magical formulae.
The invocation of angelic names in magic or theurgic practice may be regarded in part as parallel to the pagan invocation of many deities by magic words, sacred names, amulets, and formulas, and in part as invocation of the personal angel with magical names for God. Magic is the materialization and manipulation of forces and phenomena of the imaginal domain. Theurgy is the same principle transposed to the supraordinary, noumenal or angelic realm, from astral to mind-manifesting causal plane.
Stephen A. Diamond explains in his book, “Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic,” our impulse to be creative “can be understood to some degree as the subjective struggle to give form, structure and constructive expression to inner and outer chaos and conflict."
“It can also be one of the most dynamic methods of meeting and redeeming one’s devils and demons.”
Angelic invocations are formulas against malicious spirits, using magic squares, the seal of Solomon, and the shield of David. Magic circles, characters, attributions, and formulas, are image magic. All magic is self-hypnosis that creates a particular atmosphere. A magical formula of power becomes one of love.
Border Phenomenology: A mysterious initiation prepares the soul for a barely perceptible but intense and pleasing magical vision, with gradually increasing precision. This worship becomes a living reality to us. As we meditate, adore, and praise we grow continually in understanding of the divine being of this Great Work. On this path of heart, we learn to feel at ease, wrapped in the form characteristic of our deity.
Liminality: As we are enveloped, love and understanding grow and gather increased meaning and richness. Increasing affinity with divine force builds up. Awareness becomes completely objective certainty of the numinous power.
The daimon is radiant, magnetic, encompassing -- irresistible. As the approach intensifies progressively higher levels of psyche become reciprocally engaged. Convinced of the deity's presence, we identify and experience it from within. We espouse our genius.
"The recall of the soul is convincing; it is a seduction that leads to psychological faith, a faith in images and in thought of the heart, leading to an animation of the world. Soul creates attachments and ties. Makes us fall in love." --James Hillman
In The Soul's Code, Hillman says, "myth has a redemptive psychological function, and a psychology derived from it can inspire a life founded on it." Our daimon "has affinities with myth, since it is itself a mythical being and thinks in mythical patterns."
The path leads through the ghost-lands of the unconscious, undead aspects of personality. 'Seering' and soul-searing voices illuminate the darkest layer of the inherited personality structure and the daimonic imagination and uncanny intelligence, another order of reality.
The inner voice of the daemon speaks, uncensored, and takes control for a time. This "assuming the god-form" is an epiphany -- a miracle marriage, the merging of subject and object, figure and ground, profane and sacred.
Our demons are the instinctual impulses and unconscious complexes that overcome and possess us. We confront the pitiless monsters of archetypal Grief, Loss, Cares, Diseases, Age, Dread, Hunger, Want, Death, Toil, Sleep, Catastrophe, War, and Discord. Our personal suffering is commuted to collective, even transpersonal suffering.
The path leads through the ghost-lands of the unconscious, undead aspects of personality. 'Seering' and soul-searing voices illuminate the darkest layer of the inherited personality structure and the daimonic imagination and uncanny intelligence, another order of reality.
The inner voice of the daemon speaks, uncensored, and takes control for a time. This "assuming the god-form" is an epiphany -- a miracle marriage, the merging of subject and object, figure and ground, profane and sacred.
Our demons are the instinctual impulses and unconscious complexes that overcome and possess us. We confront the pitiless monsters of archetypal Grief, Loss, Cares, Diseases, Age, Dread, Hunger, Want, Death, Toil, Sleep, Catastrophe, War, and Discord. Our personal suffering is commuted to collective, even transpersonal suffering.
DaiMON eYES
Gleaming with Intent
Art & Temperance
PART I:
Angel-Daimon-Genius-Muse-Self-Duende-Augoeides
in Philosophy, Magic, Depth Psychology,
Self-Knowledge, Creativity & Mysticism
Angel-Daimon-Genius-Muse-Self-Duende-Augoeides
in Philosophy, Magic, Depth Psychology,
Self-Knowledge, Creativity & Mysticism
Hollis
SPIRITUAL PARTNERS / PARALLEL WORLDS
"Thus, then, having overcome the World of the Elements, does the Adept stand equilibrated in Tiphareth. In that equilibrium he must set forth upon the greatest magical adventure which has yet befallen him, to win the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, otherwise called his holy Genius. Equilibrium is vitally necessary to him in this quest, for the fulfillment which he seeks will not come about unless in accordance with the aphorism, "As Above, so below." ...The Holy Guardian Angel is a beam transmitted from...that Supernal region which even in symbolic representation defies dimension...this Being of living light and love whom the Adept, and he alone, is to know as his Angel. ...the Reality which is named in occult doctrine as the Holy Guardian Angel is the same which underlies the pale abstraction, Grace." --Denning & Phillips/The Magical Philosophy, Vol. IV
Apuleius describes Socrates' genius (daimonion) as follows: He is "a private patron and individual guide, an observer of what takes place in the inner person, guardian of one's welfare, he who knows one most intimately, one's most alert and constant observer, individual judge, irrefutable and inescapable witness, who frowns on evil and exalts what is good." If one 'watches him in the right way, seeks ardently to know him, honors him religiously," then he shows himself to be "the one who can see to the bottom of uncertain situations and can give warning in desperate situations, can protect us in dangerous situations, and can come out to rescue when we ar in need." He can intervene "now through a dream and now through a sign [synchronistic event], or he can even step in by appearing personally to fend off evil, to reinforce the good, to lift up the soul in defeat, to steady our inconstancy, to lighten our darkness, to direct what is favorable toward us and to compensate what is called evil." --M.-L. von Franz/Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology
"The last stage is reached when, in the highest tension and concentration, beholding in silence and utter forgetfulness of all things, it [the soul] is able as it were to lose itself. Then it may see God, the fountain of life, the source of being, the origin of all good, the root of the soul. In that moment it enjoys the highest indescribable bliss; it is as it were swallowed up of divinity, bathed in the light of eternity."–Plotinus
"This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called ‘apparition,’ the whole so-called ‘world of spirit,’ death, all these things that are so closely related to us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely eliminated from life that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied."
—Rainer Maria Rilke (from the Duino Elegies)
Kenneth Grant wrote of Austin Spare “Although Spare was convinced that an occult Intelligence frequently painted, drew, or wrote through him, he was unable to discover its identity. He was, however, in almost daily contact with a familiar, a spirit-guide, known as Black Eagle whom he had clearly seen and drawn on several occasions.”
Mystics have long talked about the Christ Consciousness, an ideal state of being united with the divine yet incarnated in the flesh. They say, once attained, miracles can be worked through this idealized Self by authority of the connection to the Pleroma or akasha.
Some traditions call it the Higher Self, again an Ideal Being, but that ideal is oneself made perfect, one’s own being made divine. Usually this idea gets connected to the Crown Chakra as does Christ Consciousness, once that ideal returns from the crown and resides in the heart.
“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.” (James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life)
Hillman suggests our imaginary sense or callings drive each of us like a personal daimon or force. It can use everything in our environment, from lucky accidents to bad movies to express itself in the real material of our lives, pulling us up out of cultural conditioning to have a fate.
He describes the daimon as the imagination "to live one's oddity" -- to cope with, adapt, or normalize our lack of conformity, of idiosyncrasy, of sudden urges, perhaps including the oddity of our self-reference (1983: 161).
Socrates attributed his own creative and intuitive faculty of 'understanding' to the presence of his own ‘daemon.’ (Harding 14) This communion with the Muse, who provides the insight necessary for true poetic inspiration, is in terms of process, linked to trance ability.
There are always unforeseen consequences of choices we set in motion. What is called unconscious is actually only obfuscated.
"Only by understanding our unconscious inner nature -- 'the undiscovered self' -- can we gain the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. But this requires facing the duality of the human psyche – the existence of good and evil in us all.”
Thomas Moore describes "a humbler approach, one that is more accepting of human foibles, and indeed sees dignity and peace as emerging more from that acceptance than from any method of transcending the human condition."
Hillman elaborates that, "All consciousness depends on the images. Everything else - ideas of the mind, sensations of the body, perceptions of the world around us, beliefs, feelings hunger—must present themselves as images in order to become experienced." (ReVisioning Psychology, 1975, xi)
Psychic images form and shape us, not through sense images, but images as metaphor. Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. We find them by entering myths, since that is where they are.
We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments. The creative bridge is 'seeing through,' taking the senses as metaphorical modes of perceiving. Myth is alive and present in the wider consciousness of the world, our buried instincts, and unconscious orgiastic emotionality.
Acts of imagination connect us to this world. Soul's relationship with death, love, and the spiritual deepens events into experience in the reflective depth of the metaphorical realm. Typically, we encounter the concept of the soul in spiritual terms, but the archetypal school emphasizes depth and descent, not the ascending heights of spirit.
Gods are manners of existence or attitudes toward existence, and a set of ideas. Hillman revisions consciousness as multivalent, with a variety of actors invoking numerous gods through multiple masks.
The personal daimon is grounded in the transpersonal and unknowable depths, in subtext, as enactment, personae, movement, and flow. Transformative capabilities mirror our own uncharted unconscious.
"But apparently, we are not alone on this journey of remembering: an emissary/daimon—the holder of our soul memory/pattern—accompanies us in this rebirth journey."
Ira Progoff, in his lecture series “Waking Dream and Living Myth (2010),” offers the image of a newly born soul, calling it an “organic soul” and comparing its nature and process of development to the seed of a plant, much in the same way that Hillman speaks of the acorn theory. The idea is that each individual life contains a specific life pattern within its seed/soul, a pattern which gestates, then, slowly, evolves into a mature specimen of its species. If we think of the original divine Self as a unitary whole, then we can imagine the soul pattern of each individual life as one thread in the giant tapestry of a unitary divinity. In this way, by living out our life pattern (growing from acorn to oak), we each become creative weavers of a jointly held divine destiny. --Khoie
James Hollis (2010) puts it, “We are asked to become the individual in order that our small portion of the unfolding of the divine may be achieved. To flag or fail in that task is to injure God” (p. 44). In other words, failing to realize our soul pattern impoverishes not just our own, but the transpersonal anima mundi or world soul." --Khoie
Discover the Wound & Discover the Genius
"But there’s something in us that’s always wishing expression, something is wishing embodiment. And I’ve also found, as historically it was reported, there’s some other element that Plato and others called the Daimon. The Daimon was a tutelary spirit in a sense, so Plato expressed it very deliberately, “I don’t philosophize, the Daimon speaks through me.” And we’ve all had that sense at some point, of almost being possessed by some energy, some spirit if you will, and then it’ll disappear." Hollis
A familiar spirit can be seen on the spectrum of a spiritual partner that aids magic practice. The familiar could be an animal form or humanoid. They connect the mage with a divine power (The divine is a spectrum) as intermediary rather than the full experience of that power.
SPIRITUAL PARTNERS / PARALLEL WORLDS
"Thus, then, having overcome the World of the Elements, does the Adept stand equilibrated in Tiphareth. In that equilibrium he must set forth upon the greatest magical adventure which has yet befallen him, to win the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, otherwise called his holy Genius. Equilibrium is vitally necessary to him in this quest, for the fulfillment which he seeks will not come about unless in accordance with the aphorism, "As Above, so below." ...The Holy Guardian Angel is a beam transmitted from...that Supernal region which even in symbolic representation defies dimension...this Being of living light and love whom the Adept, and he alone, is to know as his Angel. ...the Reality which is named in occult doctrine as the Holy Guardian Angel is the same which underlies the pale abstraction, Grace." --Denning & Phillips/The Magical Philosophy, Vol. IV
Apuleius describes Socrates' genius (daimonion) as follows: He is "a private patron and individual guide, an observer of what takes place in the inner person, guardian of one's welfare, he who knows one most intimately, one's most alert and constant observer, individual judge, irrefutable and inescapable witness, who frowns on evil and exalts what is good." If one 'watches him in the right way, seeks ardently to know him, honors him religiously," then he shows himself to be "the one who can see to the bottom of uncertain situations and can give warning in desperate situations, can protect us in dangerous situations, and can come out to rescue when we ar in need." He can intervene "now through a dream and now through a sign [synchronistic event], or he can even step in by appearing personally to fend off evil, to reinforce the good, to lift up the soul in defeat, to steady our inconstancy, to lighten our darkness, to direct what is favorable toward us and to compensate what is called evil." --M.-L. von Franz/Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology
"The last stage is reached when, in the highest tension and concentration, beholding in silence and utter forgetfulness of all things, it [the soul] is able as it were to lose itself. Then it may see God, the fountain of life, the source of being, the origin of all good, the root of the soul. In that moment it enjoys the highest indescribable bliss; it is as it were swallowed up of divinity, bathed in the light of eternity."–Plotinus
"This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called ‘apparition,’ the whole so-called ‘world of spirit,’ death, all these things that are so closely related to us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely eliminated from life that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied."
—Rainer Maria Rilke (from the Duino Elegies)
Kenneth Grant wrote of Austin Spare “Although Spare was convinced that an occult Intelligence frequently painted, drew, or wrote through him, he was unable to discover its identity. He was, however, in almost daily contact with a familiar, a spirit-guide, known as Black Eagle whom he had clearly seen and drawn on several occasions.”
Mystics have long talked about the Christ Consciousness, an ideal state of being united with the divine yet incarnated in the flesh. They say, once attained, miracles can be worked through this idealized Self by authority of the connection to the Pleroma or akasha.
Some traditions call it the Higher Self, again an Ideal Being, but that ideal is oneself made perfect, one’s own being made divine. Usually this idea gets connected to the Crown Chakra as does Christ Consciousness, once that ideal returns from the crown and resides in the heart.
“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.” (James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life)
Hillman suggests our imaginary sense or callings drive each of us like a personal daimon or force. It can use everything in our environment, from lucky accidents to bad movies to express itself in the real material of our lives, pulling us up out of cultural conditioning to have a fate.
He describes the daimon as the imagination "to live one's oddity" -- to cope with, adapt, or normalize our lack of conformity, of idiosyncrasy, of sudden urges, perhaps including the oddity of our self-reference (1983: 161).
Socrates attributed his own creative and intuitive faculty of 'understanding' to the presence of his own ‘daemon.’ (Harding 14) This communion with the Muse, who provides the insight necessary for true poetic inspiration, is in terms of process, linked to trance ability.
There are always unforeseen consequences of choices we set in motion. What is called unconscious is actually only obfuscated.
"Only by understanding our unconscious inner nature -- 'the undiscovered self' -- can we gain the self-knowledge that is antithetical to ideological fanaticism. But this requires facing the duality of the human psyche – the existence of good and evil in us all.”
Thomas Moore describes "a humbler approach, one that is more accepting of human foibles, and indeed sees dignity and peace as emerging more from that acceptance than from any method of transcending the human condition."
Hillman elaborates that, "All consciousness depends on the images. Everything else - ideas of the mind, sensations of the body, perceptions of the world around us, beliefs, feelings hunger—must present themselves as images in order to become experienced." (ReVisioning Psychology, 1975, xi)
Psychic images form and shape us, not through sense images, but images as metaphor. Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. We find them by entering myths, since that is where they are.
We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments. The creative bridge is 'seeing through,' taking the senses as metaphorical modes of perceiving. Myth is alive and present in the wider consciousness of the world, our buried instincts, and unconscious orgiastic emotionality.
Acts of imagination connect us to this world. Soul's relationship with death, love, and the spiritual deepens events into experience in the reflective depth of the metaphorical realm. Typically, we encounter the concept of the soul in spiritual terms, but the archetypal school emphasizes depth and descent, not the ascending heights of spirit.
Gods are manners of existence or attitudes toward existence, and a set of ideas. Hillman revisions consciousness as multivalent, with a variety of actors invoking numerous gods through multiple masks.
The personal daimon is grounded in the transpersonal and unknowable depths, in subtext, as enactment, personae, movement, and flow. Transformative capabilities mirror our own uncharted unconscious.
"But apparently, we are not alone on this journey of remembering: an emissary/daimon—the holder of our soul memory/pattern—accompanies us in this rebirth journey."
Ira Progoff, in his lecture series “Waking Dream and Living Myth (2010),” offers the image of a newly born soul, calling it an “organic soul” and comparing its nature and process of development to the seed of a plant, much in the same way that Hillman speaks of the acorn theory. The idea is that each individual life contains a specific life pattern within its seed/soul, a pattern which gestates, then, slowly, evolves into a mature specimen of its species. If we think of the original divine Self as a unitary whole, then we can imagine the soul pattern of each individual life as one thread in the giant tapestry of a unitary divinity. In this way, by living out our life pattern (growing from acorn to oak), we each become creative weavers of a jointly held divine destiny. --Khoie
James Hollis (2010) puts it, “We are asked to become the individual in order that our small portion of the unfolding of the divine may be achieved. To flag or fail in that task is to injure God” (p. 44). In other words, failing to realize our soul pattern impoverishes not just our own, but the transpersonal anima mundi or world soul." --Khoie
Discover the Wound & Discover the Genius
"But there’s something in us that’s always wishing expression, something is wishing embodiment. And I’ve also found, as historically it was reported, there’s some other element that Plato and others called the Daimon. The Daimon was a tutelary spirit in a sense, so Plato expressed it very deliberately, “I don’t philosophize, the Daimon speaks through me.” And we’ve all had that sense at some point, of almost being possessed by some energy, some spirit if you will, and then it’ll disappear." Hollis
A familiar spirit can be seen on the spectrum of a spiritual partner that aids magic practice. The familiar could be an animal form or humanoid. They connect the mage with a divine power (The divine is a spectrum) as intermediary rather than the full experience of that power.
Imaginal Mystery of Human Relationship
Following Plato, James Hillman asserts that every soul (psyche) is granted a unique daimon before birth, and this daimon has chosen a pattern that individuals must live while on earth. The daimon leads the soul into the world, but the daimon is forgotten at birth. Although forgotten, the daimon remembers the destiny of the soul and guides the person through life, “therefore the daimon is the carrier of your destiny” (Hillman, RVP, p. 8).
Prior to birth, people choose the body, parents, place, and circumstances most suited to the soul. We are summoned into the world with a calling. From this, Hillman concludes: (1) the daimonic call is a fundamental fact of human existence; (2) people should strive to align life with the call, and (3) come to understand that accidents, illnesses, and all maladies are in the service of fulfilling the call.
The daimon is a personification of the ancestors, intimately related, yet separate and remote, like the dead. A daimon is our divine element, an intercessor between gods and mankind -- a 'serpentine' companion spirit, the impersonal collective power of the gods to dispense destiny and the numinous as individual events and experience.
Daimon is uncanny because it presents itself in everything ordinary without being the ordinary. With the ancient Greeks, the daemonic appears not only through elements “inside” the self—the passions, the blood, but also “outside” the self—in wind, rain, fire, animals.
"To connect to the daimon requires the courage to shine a light on one’s inner world, with all its unpleasant humanness. It takes practice and rigor to listen closely to one’s inner life so that the connection to one’s calling (or callings) can be recognized and teased out. If one lives in a culture which does not support or understand this kind of work, one may never make time for it."
Thomas Moore's A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born To Do (2008)
A destiny spirit or guardian angel, it also personifies conscience, the voice of our unconscious, or higher self -- a doppelganger through who's eyes we can catch of glimpse of our far-flung future, the life we will live in reverse. It is our destiny and protector, but it only protects the part of us that serves its plan for your self, because it springs from the impersonal Ground of being.
Prior to birth, people choose the body, parents, place, and circumstances most suited to the soul. We are summoned into the world with a calling. From this, Hillman concludes: (1) the daimonic call is a fundamental fact of human existence; (2) people should strive to align life with the call, and (3) come to understand that accidents, illnesses, and all maladies are in the service of fulfilling the call.
The daimon is a personification of the ancestors, intimately related, yet separate and remote, like the dead. A daimon is our divine element, an intercessor between gods and mankind -- a 'serpentine' companion spirit, the impersonal collective power of the gods to dispense destiny and the numinous as individual events and experience.
Daimon is uncanny because it presents itself in everything ordinary without being the ordinary. With the ancient Greeks, the daemonic appears not only through elements “inside” the self—the passions, the blood, but also “outside” the self—in wind, rain, fire, animals.
"To connect to the daimon requires the courage to shine a light on one’s inner world, with all its unpleasant humanness. It takes practice and rigor to listen closely to one’s inner life so that the connection to one’s calling (or callings) can be recognized and teased out. If one lives in a culture which does not support or understand this kind of work, one may never make time for it."
Thomas Moore's A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Born To Do (2008)
A destiny spirit or guardian angel, it also personifies conscience, the voice of our unconscious, or higher self -- a doppelganger through who's eyes we can catch of glimpse of our far-flung future, the life we will live in reverse. It is our destiny and protector, but it only protects the part of us that serves its plan for your self, because it springs from the impersonal Ground of being.
"For the ancient Greeks, a daimon is an unnamed urge that pushes you in a certain direction. It is the force behind the passion and tenacity of your yearning. If you experience the daimon of love, your whole life might be centered on the quest for a perfect mate. If the daimon were beauty, you might … pursue ways of caring for the body. There are also daimons of aggression, home, sport, and creativity - the possibilities are endless.
The Romans believed that a child is born with his daimon, or in their language, genius. It’s a fertile idea: that the deep passion and drivenness that stays with us all our lives is there from the beginning. It becomes more defined as we grow older, or perhaps we simply learn more about what it is and where it can take us. It can also wake you up with a startle … offering you a kernel of vision for your future. This is one of the functions of the daimon.
From ancient times, the inner urge, which can be both guide and tempter, has been called a daimon. he daimon is a strong drive found either within you or sometimes in the world that urges you toward some action. You have to spend time with this daimonic force before you discover how to give it a creative place in your life.When you feel an urge to take a major turn in your life, that is the daimon waking you up. When you find unexpected strength in your voice or in your work, that is the daimon empowering you.
When you want to go in one direction, and something in you pushes strongly in a different direction, that other voice is the daimon. It is an ancient idea, but it also lies at the heart of the work of the Greek mystic Heraclitus, C. G. Jung, W. B. Yeats, Rollo May, and James Hillman. You live with your daimon when you take your innermost passions into account, even when they go against your habits and standards. You need dialogue so that you can work out a livable connection with this challenging but ultimately creative power.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/291596/dark-nights-of-the-soul-by-thomas-moore/9781592401338/excerpt
To live by the dictates of your daimon requires a willingness to ease up on your rationality and your desire to control your life. You listen more and pay attention to signals from within, especially to inhibition and hesitancy. You consult yourself, heeding the daimonic force, which, over the years, you may have come to know. Sometimes the daimon appears as a strong intuition." --Thomas Moore
The Romans believed that a child is born with his daimon, or in their language, genius. It’s a fertile idea: that the deep passion and drivenness that stays with us all our lives is there from the beginning. It becomes more defined as we grow older, or perhaps we simply learn more about what it is and where it can take us. It can also wake you up with a startle … offering you a kernel of vision for your future. This is one of the functions of the daimon.
From ancient times, the inner urge, which can be both guide and tempter, has been called a daimon. he daimon is a strong drive found either within you or sometimes in the world that urges you toward some action. You have to spend time with this daimonic force before you discover how to give it a creative place in your life.When you feel an urge to take a major turn in your life, that is the daimon waking you up. When you find unexpected strength in your voice or in your work, that is the daimon empowering you.
When you want to go in one direction, and something in you pushes strongly in a different direction, that other voice is the daimon. It is an ancient idea, but it also lies at the heart of the work of the Greek mystic Heraclitus, C. G. Jung, W. B. Yeats, Rollo May, and James Hillman. You live with your daimon when you take your innermost passions into account, even when they go against your habits and standards. You need dialogue so that you can work out a livable connection with this challenging but ultimately creative power.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/291596/dark-nights-of-the-soul-by-thomas-moore/9781592401338/excerpt
To live by the dictates of your daimon requires a willingness to ease up on your rationality and your desire to control your life. You listen more and pay attention to signals from within, especially to inhibition and hesitancy. You consult yourself, heeding the daimonic force, which, over the years, you may have come to know. Sometimes the daimon appears as a strong intuition." --Thomas Moore