"The Muse,nae poet ever fand [found] her,
Till by himself he learn'd to wander
Adown some trotting burn's meander,
An' no think lang [long}."
___ Robert Burns, "Epistle to William Simpson, Ochiltree"
We frequently read about the must, the female form that inspiration takes for men. She is courted by artists who know that they cannot create alone, who need to be folded within her embrace before the creative speak leaps the synapse of potentiality. We hear less about the forms that inspiration takes for women, who are no less inspired as artists and creators then men, although the inspirer most often appears to them in male form. The inspirer of women is the daimon (DYE'-mone), the quicksilver spirit who, like the golden muse, brings the wealth of the imaginable realms of creation to our world.
Sometimes the qualities of our muse, or daimon, are seen to temporarily reside in or become superimposed upon a living person, someone who shows us how desire, joy, love, and inspiration fuse together in creation. Sometimes the muse or daimon is seen not in a person but in a place, which fires us with inspiration. The embrace of nature becomes the embrace of the inspirer. In an act of participation as intimate as making love, the creator walks with the inspirer in the place of making.
When the inspirer is absent from us, we feel as empty as if a lover had gone. To woo the inspirer, we must go faithfully, time after time, to the threshold places where our soul is exposed to beauty - go without expectations to cloud our coming, without demands or extortions to coerce the erring inspirer to visit us again. Venturing into the frontiers of creation, we come to meet with the one who makes our heart's wish leap into verdant life again.
"What are the forms of your inspirer? Who most resembles your must or daimon in the world?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
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