Prophets revered it as their channel to God, artists praised it as the source of their genius, and people from all walks of life sought to invite its gleaming impulse to color their lives. We have all intimated moments of inspiration that left us gasping, albeit unable to grasp its nature. Like wildfire, inspiration stubbornly refuses the bounds of our mental categories, fiercely escapes the hold of our understanding, and insists on remaining an enigmatic fascination of our experience. Nevertheless, many have tried their luck at discovering where inspiration comes from.
Daughters of Zeus: Who Were the Goddesses of Inspiration?
One of the most famous records of inspiration comes from ancient Greek mythology, where muses were deemed the goddesses of inspiration. The Greek word mousa is derived from the root ‘men’, which means ‘to put in mind’ or ‘have in mind’. The English words ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are derived from the same root, emphasizing the role of muses as sources of knowledge and inspired cognition. According to the Theogony of Hesiod, muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne.
They are traditionally nine, but their numbers vary according to different narrators. Muses were otherwise known as water nymphs, each associated with a certain spring. They had several temples in ancient Greece where people made their offerings and invoked the power of inspiration.
What Was Socrates’ Divine Madness?
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates described inspiration as a form of Divine madness – Theia Mania. Inspiration, according to him, is a madness and possession that comes from the muses. As he famously said, “Whoever draws near to the portals of poetry and has not this madness of the Muses, but thinks, poor fool, that by skill he shall grow into a poet worth the name, that man is doomed to failure, and the poetry of the Sane shall fade away into nothingness before the works of the Men of Madness” (Phaedrus, 245a).
In this beautiful passage, Socrates distinguishes between the art produced by one possessed by the madness of inspiration and one who relies solely on skills. The latter’s work is mere craftsmanship, outlived and outshined by inspired art.
In another Platonic dialogue called Ion, Socrates critiqued inspiration in favor of philosophy. He distinguished between ‘the men of inspiration’ and ‘the men of knowledge’, triumphing the latter in terms of wisdom. Although he admitted that states of inspiration can allow people to arrive at the same conclusions of ‘the men of knowledge’ (i.e. philosophers), he argued that they would be unable to explain or defend their opinions.
Socrates explained that this is due to the nature of inspiration itself, which suspends one’s senses and rational faculties. Curiously, however, in the Phaedrus, Socrates attributed the highest status of wisdom to one who is “a follower of the Muses and a lover” (i.e. a lover of knowledge; a philosopher). As philosopher Robert Carter argued, this suggests that the “artist-philosopher is the pinnacle of Platonic wisdom” (Carter, 1967).
Creative Fire: What Is Theia Mania?
Surely, as modern people, we may have a hard time accepting that our inspiration springs from the influence of mythological Goddesses, but let’s not dismiss Plato’s account just yet. While Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, did not talk about inspiration in the context of Muses, we can easily see how his understanding of ‘the creative impulse’ grounds Plato’s Theia Mania in a solid psychological framework. Much like Plato’s description of madness and possession, Jung described the creative impulse as “a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument” (Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, 1966).
Whenever the creative force arises, “life is ruled and shaped by the unconscious rather than by the conscious will, and the ego is swept along on an underground current, becoming nothing more than a helpless observer of events” (Jung, 1966). Effectively, an artist ceases to be a person endowed with free will. Instead, she becomes a vehicle that merely allows the creative impulse to realize its end and find expression through her.
An artist forgoes her personal humanity for the sake of becoming a channel of the collective unconscious, “a vehicle and molder of the psychic life of mankind” (Jung, 1966). Indeed, she becomes possessed by what Jung called “the gift of creative fire” (Jung, 1966). In this context, art is no longer understood as a creative reproduction of our personal experiences, but as an expression of the collective psyche, driven by an impulse instigated by the Self.
Carl Jung and Creativity
We do not derive inspiration from our personal lives but from the fertile well of the collective unconscious. This not only explains how artists can produce pieces that transcend the scope of their personal experiences, but also how certain artworks are timeless, resonating for centuries in the hearts of all generations. The creative impulse produces art that is universal and timeless, for it draws upon the essence of our shared humanity.
Curiously, Jung believed that the creative process has a feminine quality, which may explain why the ancient Greeks attributed the power of inspiration to goddesses. The feminine is the archetypical womb where the fruits of creativity are conceived. An artist becomes a vessel that gives birth to whatever form the creative impulse assumes in the psyche, rendering art an act of worship to the Self, the source of that impulse.
