Sublime

• Eidolon (εἴδωλον): A ghostly phantom or illusory double in Greek mythology, reflecting an unreal or idealized image of a person or thing.


• Daemon (δαίμων): A divine or spiritual being in Greek philosophy, acting as a guiding force or moral conscience between gods and humans.

In The Soul's Code, Mr. Hillman introduces the concept of the daimon. Daimon is a Greek word. The equivalent term in Latin is genius. Both words refer to an inhering spirit. We are born, each of us, (says James Hillman) with our own individual daimon. The daimon is our guardian. It knows our destiny. It kens our calling.

The daimon then becomes the source of human ethics, and the happy life—what the Greeks called eudaimonia—is the life that is good for the daimon. Not only does it bless us with its calling, we bless it with our style of following.

For the ancient Greeks the Eidolon was exactly as I use it in my first book – the lower, everyday ‘self’. By implication this means that there is a Higher Self that is a reflection of the gods. This being was called the ‘Daemon’ and I have continued to use this term to describe the part of us that knows that we have lived this life before.

The idea is this: that from the moment of birth until we leave our mortal bodies, a good being is assigned to us, watching over and supporting all our efforts to draw down the divine into matter and so make matter sublime.

We can’t know why the Daimon wants to pursue certain things and refuses to engage in others; its long view cannot be corralled into the pedestrian confines of human conceptual models and narratives. All we can do is trust the inner whispers, under moral oversight.

This brings me to the fourth telltale sign of the Daimon’s presence: a sense of destiny, related to the feeling of duty and responsibility discussed above.