Divine and Creative Inspiration

[Saer]

Pagans are a pretty creative lot. Many of us have at least a couple creative hobbies and the spirituality itself includes quite a bit of creativity. Writing rituals and journal entries, doodling that crazy stuff we saw in our dreams and meditations, crafting charms, sewing up some robes, baking ritual bread; Paganism can include a whole array of artistic pursuits. It's no wonder it's called 'the Craft'! But what relationship does one's creative inspiration and divine inspiration have exactly? Does your creativity bolster your spirituality or vise versa? Have you ever used your spiritual practices to obtain creative inspiration? What's the difference between divine and creative inspiration? Is there one?
Inspiration of any sort has a touch of divinity to it in my opinion. Our drive and ability to create is both an inherently human trait and reflection of divinity within us. As an artist my creative inspiration comes and goes like a capricious storm who rains down upon an eagerly awaiting crop, sometimes the crop is drowned in it's torrential downpour, sometimes they are left to wither for months on end. My inspiration in my spirituality is often the same, I am ever a Pagan but only sometimes am I struck with the urge to set up an elaborate altar and offer flowery words and fresh baked treats to the gods. My inspiration, creative or otherwise, is a life source to me and I am ever plagued by questions of how to grow and nurture it, free it, or contain it. Once again these questions came to mind and I began musing on inspiration in the arts and spirituality.

And now I seek your opinion on the matter. What do you think of the relationship between creative and divine inspiration? Have you even used ritual to bolster your creativity? Tell me your thoughts forum =)

[Also, sorry for the novella, I'm still in that post nap haze and I got carried away.]

[Bjorn]

Re: Divine and Creative Inspiration

I think that creativity can be a direct expression of divine inspiration. This does not go so far as to say that creativity IS a direct expression of divine inspiration, but creativity is a natural, healthy extension of what's within. I think some of the most boring, uninspired people are ones who who lack creativity. I know a few of them and they are your run of the mill corporate cronies, pencil pushers, science nerds.

I want to clarify in case anyone gets their panties in a bunch that I do not think that being a corporate croney/pencil pusher/science nerd makes you an uninspired, uncreative dweeb. I am simply stating that the ones *I* know are.

However, I also think that there are a lot of spiritual people who attribute their creative muses to whatever god or gods they worship without stopping to think that perhaps it was simply a brilliant idea that they themselves had.

My bottom line is this: some people are more creative than others, and it has nothing to do with divine inspiration, but just like every singer likes a crowd to sing for, having someone or several someone's to dedicate your creations to can help keep the juices flowing.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Divine and Creative Inspiration

The urge to create, inspiration, gnosis, they all come out of the dark.

It's "dark" because it is the place where linear logic doesn't work, and, because words are the tools of linear logic, whatever knowledge you have of the dark place can't be expressed in words (those who know don't speak, those who speak don't know - to borrow from the Zen people). You can go there, but as soon as you try to describe it, you loose it in strings of poetry which nobody who hasn't been there can understand...

People who create - whether they are large acts of creation or small, ever day acts, take something from the dark and make it material - they "fix" it in a physical form. This is an act of translation, from the inexpressible into the expressed.

Something is always lost in the translation - some of the dark always stays dark - but... the numinous quality that you find in great visual art, or drama, or literature, or poetry, is the part of the dark that made the translation. Ultimately, every act of creation is a failure because it leaves something behind, but every act of creation is also a success because it brings something forth.

You can attribute all this to the gods, or to psychology, or to brain physiology, or to damned blind luck - it doesn't matter. They're all just different ways of saying the same thing.


...and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating...

Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

[KashakuTatsu]

Re: Divine and Creative Inspiration

I have a few rituals and transmuted incenses that are specially formulated to raise the creative energies, rid creative blocks, etc. I don't use them all the time, but will for when I'm sluggish in the creative process.

Then again I see creativity as the process where we utilize the underlying creation force of the chaotic energies that flow through the universe in order to solve a problem or bring life from nothing. Some exhibit this in gardening, some in problem solving, some in writing, performance, children, illustrations, paintings, architecture, science, math the possibilities are endless.

I wrote this awhile ago, but I think it will apply.

Chaos Through an Artist's Eyes

Chaos is quite possibly the most misunderstood force in the Universe. Through years of societal conditioning , chaos has come to mean anarchy and an evil thing that needs to be brought to order and enlightened. Newer chaos deities become archtyped as dimwhitted and devils. Chaos was oversimplified and pigeon-holed by the ego of minuscule mortal man. Our lives at their longest are a mere quark in comparison to the span of eternity. Who are we to try to tell the energies of the Universe how they are to act and change the very laws of existence?

Chaos is the very essence of life. It's formless, endless, timeless, raw energy that is not bound by law (human or cosmic). To understand forever is to only understand a fraction of it's true nature. We are born from it, grow because of it, and return to it when we die. It is not to be harnessed and tamed. It is to be honoured for what it is.

Artists truly tap into chaos when they do their work. Think of the board as the physical cosmic plane. The acrylic paint is chaos. The artist is the creation force (can be creation force, a deity, normal cycle of life, etc). The artist gains inspiration to create something new and picks up a brush to begin. She takes the paint and forms beauty on the blank board. Stroke after stroke, life is formed. When she feels the image is complete she hangs it in a room to be displayed. After a period of rest she may choose to create a new existence. She'll create a record of the piece and place it into a room for later viewing, these become a part of the timeless Halls of Akasha. After the record becomes secured, in a destructive act she slashes at the board freeing the paint from it's confines and clear the board to house new life.