The late poet, theologian and philosopher, John O’Donohue, references beauty in a transcendent language. If we trace the stem of the word ‘inspire’ down to its seed, we find that it means to inhale a divine beauty and to become animated with this blessing. Finally, Polymnia is the keeper of the sounds and silence of the sacred resonating throughout the universe. Clio advocates the importance of connecting with our ancestors and the intangible heirlooms we’ve inherited, while Euterpe accompanies our unique melody, our sense of belonging. Erato brings our attention to the biographies of our heart, Terpsichore to the tales of our bodies, and Calliope to the stories of our personal and collective mythology. – underlying these is a devotion to the divine, and at times contradictory, qualities inherent in life itself: the comedy (guided by the muse, Thalia), the tragedy (Melpomene) and the quest for meaning in it all (Urania). While the nine muses are ambassadors for many of the age-old artistic forms – poetry, storytelling, music, dance, etc. Regardless of whether we are birthing an idea or project, the muses are an ally in the body of work that is the unfolding of our life story. They urge us to remember this relationship through tending to the creative fire that we each carry within. As such, the lineage of the muses upholds the union of spirit and matter. Mnemosyne, a titan and the goddess of memory, was born to Uranus, god of the heavens and Gaia, goddess of the earth. The muses are the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. At heart, they are forces of nature that transcend gender, serving instead as metaphors that illustrate the many facets of our interior life. In this mythology, the nine muses personify a very active part of our deep imagination. Maybe this inability to truly comprehend the muse’s elusive nature explains why the ancient Greeks divided this energy into nine goddesses. Perhaps the most common icon that emerges when we think of a muse is the alluring and evocative – yet often passive – embodiment of the feminine. The Romantic poets found inspiration in communion with the way light moved through the woods.
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Then there is that of the beloved, the people in our lives that crack open our hearts and reconnect us with parts long forgotten. One depiction is the whimsical image of the genie, the firefly spirit that keeps us awake at night. The face of the muse takes many different shapes. In every one of her gifts, the muse continues to offer inspiration, beauty, and initiation into the life-affirming expression of the great mystery.
She is also an emissary for my ancestors, delivering the wisdom found in the didactic rhythms of a talking drum or the depths of a highland loch. During moments of despair she has presented me with grace, reminding me that these experiences ask me to deepen my trust and soften my walls, so that I may converge with a love that is so much bigger than the tension in my heart.
It would appear that the muse accompanies me through not only the luminous voyages. I hear her murmurings in meditative insight and embodied revelations, and in wild and domestic encounters with the more-than-human world. She envelops my psyche in mythic poetry and draws my attention to the way the ocean’s tides mirror the rise and fall of the breath in my belly. Sometimes she brings me the sweet, sunlit perfume of jonquils in bloom and other times puzzle pieces of stories, flashes of fiction ferried from the unchartered waters of my unconscious mind. Since that night, the muse’s presence has steadily grown in my daily life. What I didn’t anticipate from my conversations with the muse was a greater sense of meaning and a passage of self-inquiry that would ultimately guide me home. I sensed that buried somewhere in the mud of those waters I would find the key to my creativity.
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I welcomed the muse she was responding to my yearning to unlock my voice, to break free from the chains of the inner critic and demolish the barriers that dammed my self-expression. This call continued to reverberate throughout my dreams, and over time, I began to listen. She met me on the page, asking me to write, write because the trees are begging to grow their limbs through your words and their foliage through your verses.
A number of years ago, I started hearing whispers from a muse in the middle of the night.
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