This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incantations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home. ~ St. Theresa of Avila ..read more

Art is capable of the total transformation of the world, and of life itself, and nothing less is really acceptable. ~Lawrence Ferlinghetti Nearly twenty years ago a friend and I collaborated on a writing project on the topic of female alchemists. Our original intention was to include historical and quasi-historical women alchemists such as Maria Prophetissa and Peronelle Flamel. The deeper we dove into the topic of alchemy and alchemists, the more we realized the definition could and should apply to artists – to writers (Anais Nin), painters (Emily Carr), dancers and choreographers (Martha Gr ..read more

I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known. ~ Hadith Qudsi I am wanting to write about the archetype of creativity. Since I am presently reading The Archetypal Artist, and it is close at hand, also because it is particularly relevant, I will quote author Mary Antonia Wood’s definition (which includes part of Jung’s) of archetype: In Wood’s words, archetypes are “dynamic potentials….primordial and thematic shaping energies – dynamos with the power to generate enactments in the physical world.” Wood quotes Jung who explains, “archetypes were, and still are, living psychic forces that dema ..read more

Recently I have been visited by my muse, or what Carl Jung, James Hillman and others refer to as daimon. Genius is another term, though not in the sense we usually use it. In essence, our ‘genius’ is an ‘attendant spirit present from one’s birth.’ (Therefore, everyone has one.) Others refer to soul, ‘anima’ or animus’ or creative spirit. I’m not sure what to call “it” exactly but what I do know is when it arrives. I recently told a friend that my muse has “captured me again” and that it “has me in its grip.” This sounds a bit aggressive, I know, and even made me wonder if I am allowing some i ..read more

Everyone is creative and you are every day. Just by living, doing, speaking, playing, and even if you feel you are working at a dull job, you are creative because you are doing these as a unique individual. Creativity and talent are different phenomena and whether or not you are talented, you are creative. I will be writing about many aspects of creativity, what it is, how it is a process, how it gets blocked and how it can get unblocked, calling and commitment, the conflicts that come up around creativity, and many other topics related to it. My main interest regarding creativity, though, is ..read more

Jack Shadbolt from his butterfly series Ours is an age between world views, creative yet disoriented, a transitional era when the old cultural vision no longer holds and the new has not yet constellated. Yet we are not without signs of what the new might look like. Richard Tarnas The magical process of a caterpillar in a chrysalis becoming a butterfly is often evoked as a metaphor for us humans experiencing a transformational process, and it can provide encouragement and hope in times of confusion and darkness. I have personally found it comforting and have offered it to clients who seem to b ..read more

THE RETURN, by Geneen Marie Haugen Some day, if you are lucky, you’ll return from a thunderous journey trailing snake scales, wing fragments and the musk of Earth and moon. Eyes will examine you for signs of damage, or change and you, too, will wonder if your skin shows traces of fur, or leaves, if thrushes have built a nest of your hair, if Andromeda burns from your eyes. Do not be surprised by prickly questions from those who barely inhabit their own fleeting lives, who barely taste their own possibility, who barely dream. If your hands are empty, treasureless, if your toes have not grown ..read more