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A Prose Poem on the Dæmon

6/9/2014

1 Comment

 
Dæmon: (in ancent Greek belief) an inner attendant spirit or inspiring force; the guardian      of an individual’s destiny and character; a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans

"Each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived.” 
                                                     -James Hillman 
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Carl Jung’s Philemon, from the Red Book
“When the souls had all finished choosing their lives, they approached Lachesis in the order the lottery had assigned them.  
She gave each of them the personal dæmons they’d selected to accompany them throughout their lives, as their guardians and to fulfill the choices they had made.”
                                                -Plato, The Republic
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A Prose Poem on the Dæmon

       The moment when the dæmon that is his destiny takes possession of a young man is an event that forever remains a mystery to all who surround him, and even more so, to himself.  What calls forth this haunted blossoming from the organism of time, this strange geometry from the manifold, layered design of chance and change?  For some, it gathers and arrives in the chemistry of their thoughts and actions with the light, angelic touch of joy.  Their task is clear, they perform marvels without effort.  So it was with Mozart.  For others it comes woven into the dark breath of necessity.  In opposition to any will of which they are aware, a hidden hand casts a shroud over them, carrying with it a dark flowing weight that binds them to courses of action they would not have chosen, to thoughts no man would wish on his worst enemy, and to a desperate groping for understanding, light, and fate, that their now quickened pulse pushes them towards.  To say it can be demonic is not an exaggeration, though we are, of course, speaking of a sort of psychic possession, possession by the power of an idea, an obscure but directed urge that overcomes and replaces much of what the young man, and those who possibly surround him, hoped would become of his life and character.  So it was with Beethoven.

         However, to say that this force enters at one time is not accurate, and we should correct ourselves on this point.  Often, when a young man destined to take on such a burden looks back to even his earliest memories he recognizes the shadow of this presence.  But it is not until the mysteries of time and direction have made it manifest, have given the dæmon birth, following the scattered tempests of its gestation, in all their horror and light, that he recognizes the memories, coupled with the thoughts and feelings that accompany them, as a prophecy of what will one day overcome him. Now he hears the voice, the voice that here dripped a tainted word in his unprepared ear, there hummed a forbidden melody while he slept; he hears the thousand broken poems of his childhood reach out for one another and form one unerring song of danger and longing, one tightrope of terror and beauty that extends beyond his furthest horizon -a tightrope he must walk alone. He recognizes this presence primarily in premonitions half unconsciously visited upon him during times of isolated play and wandering, for these children are often solitary according to their own choice and nature.  The dæmon is a serpent that has always been there, coiled, calling, wrapped around the base of the spine, poison in the mouth of the shepherd; a cold omniscient ubiquitous eye in the back of a dream, a thin outline of bleeding black loss traced slowly around his fantasies of adventure and victory.  He recognizes it pushing its protean forms through inner gardens he has tried in vain to keep holy through love and prayer.  It is a spectre wrapped around the neck of stories his grandfather told him, the voice of an ineffable destiny moving through the trembling altar of his imagination.

         Do you see these lonely children playing?  Where are they?  They are burrowing hiding places, creating new prisons of fantasy, dancing, as unwatched children do, in the dusts and dim light of our attics.  They wear the clothes of the dead, costumes to their years, and the song life yearns to sing is unshackled.  Come forth once more.  Abandoned cars and rotting houses, useless in the utility weighed vision of adult fatigue, shelter their biology as the change takes hold.  A sunken roof becomes the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral.  Paint is mixed in the mind.  Dusted records spin black, and the music we lost is heard again.  Father!  Father that the war took hold of and then took!  Read the lost books of Thomas to me again! Cast thy voice out of the dark!  It is here.  At window sills they stand, watching night begin to clutch at day, and know they too change at night.  They climb trees and in silence watch those who pass underneath, delighting in the leafy folds of the secret.  Will I always be a stranger?  Hidden under your city's bridges they trace the graffiti, shivering in backyard snow caves they speak, they reveal themselves, but only to themselves.  The steps disappear beneath the street.  It is lost, but I will follow; you my beacon.  They are adorers of cupboards they can squeeze into, boxes with locks on them, hidden pockets in their clothing, things that appear to be one thing and are really another.

Philip Pullman has brilliantly recreated the dæmon in "The Golden Compass" and the rest of the "His Dark Materials" Trilogy.
1 Comment
Souzen
9/6/2020 07:14:41 am

Thus prose gives pause to the year of 2020, when it seems we have manifested our fear, with repercussions of estranged illness. The dark fear of our unconscious arises, and leaders have taken advantage of that fear. Yet there is light in unity, in the interwoven fabric of our being coming together, to stave the folly of the jesters and thieves, who try and separate us from each other. Hopeful we have become, that this will cause our phoenix to rise from these ashes of the dark.

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    Author

    Chuck Crabbe is an author and teacher. His first novel, As a Thief in the Night, was published by Open Books in February 2014. He currently lives in Brampton, Ontario with his wife Lesley and their children.

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    Blog History
    1. How I Discovered Fire and Cormac McCarthy
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    2. A Tragic Fire: Cormac McCarthy and Gnosticism in Blood Meridian, No Country For Old Men, and The Counselor
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    3. Video Blog. An Open Books Event: The Book Launch Party for As a Thief in the Night
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    4. A Prose Poem on the  Dæmon 
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    5. An Inquiry Into Tool’s Jimmy (Not Jimmy’s Tool) or How a Man Can Travel Psychospiritually Back to a Time When He Was Jung to Save the Woman In Him
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    The Wounded Healer, Alex Grey
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