daemon

Your person is not a process or a development. You are that essential image that develops, if it does. As Picasso said, “I don’t develop; I am.”

A Scandinavian tale in Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology expresses this idea in the language of myth. The big old giant Skrymir went to sleep under a big old oak. Thor came and hit him on the head with his hammer. Skrymir woke up wondering if a leaf had fallen on him. He went back to sleep and snored outlandishly. Thor hit him again, harder; the gia

The daimon’s “reminders” work in many ways. The daimon motivates. It protects. It invents and persists with stubborn fidelity. It resists compromising reasonableness and often forces deviance and oddity upon its keeper, especially when it is neglected or opposed. It offers comfort and can pull you into its shell, but cannot abide innocence. It can

the snake is perhaps the most ancient and universal carrier of the genius spirit, the figure of a protective guardian, the “genius” itself. Had she already made friends with her acorn?

NEITHER NATURE NOR NURTURE—SOMETHING ELSE

An unpredictable “luck of the draw” plays its part in who we are. In Plato this random cause was named Ananke; the formidable goddess of necessity, she defied reason and, in Plato’s myth, governed the lots our souls selected. And it was called Tyche and Moira, who are personifications of fate. From Roman times into the Renaissance this principle wa