| Demon Lover / Daemon
Lover The paragraphs below are a brief outline of a muse, the daemon lover and his dark twin the demon lover. I wish to thank authors John Haule and Marion Woodman for their in depth writings on love, spirituality and sexuality. The demon lover is known in literary mythology to represent a man or woman captured by a destructive anima or animus. Author and analyst Marion Woodman examines the life of poet Emily Dickinson to elaborate on the connection between eros love and creativity. She points out ways that the demon lover relationship is compulsive, life destroying and addictive. The downward draw between the elegant vampire and innocent victim is exciting. If you're scared, you'll want to believe his (or her) lies. And if you believe the lies you hunger for and become addicted to more lies until you realize you're not on solid ground anymore. The demon lover stands in her blind spot holding a mirror up to pain she's been afraid or unable to own. He makes promises that are never delivered. To turn and look at her reflection in the mirror would reveal fear, rage and grief over unrequieted love. It is an alliance that will come to no good until one or both are compelled to do some soul searching. In the painting the snake (symbol of wisdom) encircles her from her crotch to her head and whispers in her ear. One wonders what it might be trying to tell her. Then again there is the love attraction that demands that our hearts break open. Like a muse, the daemon lover shows us how limited our life was before our fateful encounter. We try to bear the tension between living and behaving within society's expectations in the life that we've built up until then, while simultaneously steeped in a maddening spiritual and erotic longing for union with the other- our beloved who in our joining would complete us and make us feel whole again. Our thoughts repeatedly turn to him or her in the same way that a mantra brings us back to our center. We can even begin to live as if through our beloved to find that our life is being lived more fully. Call it love-mad insanity or the embodiment of the divine, it is through our humanity that we endure the confusion and myriad of feelings ushered in through embrace of love's promise. Human love is
but a species of divine love. The mystics
recognize this in seeing the love of God as the meaning of human
love. And, having arrived at this insight, they have
traditionally seized upon romantic love as a model to explain the love
of God to their followers. ....... Whether our beloved is human or
divine, there is no escaping love’s madness or its pain. Unity belongs
to the soul, but we are bodily beings, and body brings about
separation, distance, and pain. (1)
The fires of longing can burn us down to ashes and heal us at the same time. Through genuine suffering and conscious attention, or even through time in and of itself, the dark cycles of the demon lover relationship can be transformed. The muse/daemon appears cyclically and in many guises (ie. not only through their fleshly presence, but through the writings or good works or art of another). Whether lived as life or primarily through our imagination, relationship with our daemon and can create a bridge to the self, helping us to realize new potentials and creativity (2). |