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Missing - My Glorious Shadow
[The following is a transcription from my personal diary, written at 5:30am. I'm not going to try to footnote it, since I think the gist makes sense even if most of the readers here won't know the stories/characters referenced. The one term I want to define is daimon. I use it in the sense that Caitlin Matthews does in In Search of Woman's Passionate Soul, in which it is the "masculine muse" or the inner spiritual beloved who inspires, challenges and teaches. The concept meshes beautifully with many male figures in my personal mythic creative writing.]
Edit: According to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
toesontheground I do need footnotes to make this entry intelligible. Here they are, behind cuts to keep this entry from totally taking over everyone's Friends pages.
The Journeyer is my shorthand for a fantasy alter-ego I developed spontaneously when I was twelve years old. I had a daydream about winning a particular promotional contest, and my imagination took off wildly from there. Eventually "I" was traveling between galaxies, becoming part of a variety of cultures, working toward a day when the galaxies would collide but I would be a trusted and respected part of many worlds, so I could lead the peace negotiations. (Eventually Adria ended up as the first President of the Galaxiad Council.) I built these fantasies for more than a decade, working out my ideas about who I wanted to be, what my values were, and etc.
Seonaid was the heroine of what started out as another daydream writing twiddle. I took a romance novel set-piece: young noblewoman defending the family castle against invaders, and tweaked all the conventions about what came after. It started out as a meditation on the different ways women and men could be in relationship besides the passionate, bodice-ripping sex that is found is romance novels. I had a great deal of fun with it, and before I realized it the story began to deepen, until it also became about growing up, discovering one's power and learning how to exercise it, religious and sexual initiation, leadership and sovereignty, loyalty, honor, relationships with parents, and how far one is willing to risk one's self and why. Again, as with Adria, I started writing fluff, and ended up digging fairly deeply into my psyche.
Both Seonaid and Adria were surrounded by potent male figures. Adria's were based on figures from popular stories, Seonaid's on several men close to me in my real life, plus some original creations. A couple of these figures also took on intense lives of their own, and were key to my heroine's development. They were teachers, catalysts for growth, challengers, lovers, champions, and initiators. Of course, I didn't think about them in those terms when I was writing - not at first, anyway. It was just how the creative springs were running.
These figures didn't stay on paper. They became parts of my mind, parts of my identity. Their presence enriched and provided a backdrop to my everyday life.
Back to the original post.
I have been distressed for some time about the lack of creative vitality and passion in my life. This morning, it suddenly struck me that I need a new alter-ego.
The first epoch of my conscious life was that of the Journeyer. The second was that of Seonaid Montgomery. Both were accidental, not deliberate, births. Both were born of a fantasy of confrontation, testing, captivity, and alliance with key daimonic figures. Seonaid's story is ultimately the same as Adria's: forced to a new self-awareness that reveals her true power (abilities, strength, honor, sovereignty). But where Adria left home and traveled widely, Seonaid stayed home and redefined herself in the midst of both the ordinary and the extrordinary.
Both Seonaid and Adria embodied my yearnings for my authentic self. Seonaid, despite being located in a different world, was closer to my actual situation, even more mythic than Adria.
And now?
Now, I have found my vocation, but my creative life is flat. As I step into ministry, a place where my heart and intuition are needed and necessary, I find myself drawn to Swords aspects as I once again embrace the academy. After a lifetime of passionate involvement with men - even on the fantasy, daimonic level - I find myself hollowed-out and dry. Instead of vibrant lovers, challengers, and initiators, my daimons move like cardboard, forced to play out scenarios unworthy of them or me.
I look inside for Seonaid and Adria, and they are ghosts. Their times have passed. But no one is there to take their place.
I look for the place within me from which they emerged, and find emptiness.
I feel like a character in a myth whose soul has been put in a box and hidden away.
A Peter Pan without my shadow.
My daimons have followed their ladies into the West.
There is something in that "missing shadow" image. Adria and Seonaid embodied all the glorious parts of myself I did not dare - or know how - to manifest in my life. They were the ordinary girl, the daughter, striving to be queen. Even if they didn't realize it at first.
Now here I am, finally feeling like I am closer than ever to my authentic path.
The easy, obvious answer is that it is finally time to express the "glorious shadow" in my daily life. To become, in this world, the heroine-queen of my otherworlds.
But why does it feel that that lack of an alter-ego is part of what I am most conscious of lacking right now: passion, creativity, intuition?
Where is my glorious shadow? The brilliant, secret, vibrant part of me that hides from the everyday world? How can I express it in this world if I can't touch it within myself?
How can I continue to cherish it in the secret darkness and be nourished by it?
And where is the Wendy who will help me bind it to me again?
This evening, I had a long chat with Sandy, my best girlfriend, who asserted her strong belief that what I'm experiencing is indeed the transition into the time when I will begin manifesting those shadow qualities in my real life. "You just don't have all the tools yet, so it feels empty. But it's not really empty. You're just at a crossroads. You're integrating all this stuff. Lighten up on yourself!"
Thank God/dess for best girlfriends with keen insight and a sense of humor!
Edit: According to
toesontheground I do need footnotes to make this entry intelligible. Here they are, behind cuts to keep this entry from totally taking over everyone's Friends pages.The Journeyer is my shorthand for a fantasy alter-ego I developed spontaneously when I was twelve years old. I had a daydream about winning a particular promotional contest, and my imagination took off wildly from there. Eventually "I" was traveling between galaxies, becoming part of a variety of cultures, working toward a day when the galaxies would collide but I would be a trusted and respected part of many worlds, so I could lead the peace negotiations. (Eventually Adria ended up as the first President of the Galaxiad Council.) I built these fantasies for more than a decade, working out my ideas about who I wanted to be, what my values were, and etc.
Seonaid was the heroine of what started out as another daydream writing twiddle. I took a romance novel set-piece: young noblewoman defending the family castle against invaders, and tweaked all the conventions about what came after. It started out as a meditation on the different ways women and men could be in relationship besides the passionate, bodice-ripping sex that is found is romance novels. I had a great deal of fun with it, and before I realized it the story began to deepen, until it also became about growing up, discovering one's power and learning how to exercise it, religious and sexual initiation, leadership and sovereignty, loyalty, honor, relationships with parents, and how far one is willing to risk one's self and why. Again, as with Adria, I started writing fluff, and ended up digging fairly deeply into my psyche.
Both Seonaid and Adria were surrounded by potent male figures. Adria's were based on figures from popular stories, Seonaid's on several men close to me in my real life, plus some original creations. A couple of these figures also took on intense lives of their own, and were key to my heroine's development. They were teachers, catalysts for growth, challengers, lovers, champions, and initiators. Of course, I didn't think about them in those terms when I was writing - not at first, anyway. It was just how the creative springs were running.
These figures didn't stay on paper. They became parts of my mind, parts of my identity. Their presence enriched and provided a backdrop to my everyday life.
Back to the original post.
I have been distressed for some time about the lack of creative vitality and passion in my life. This morning, it suddenly struck me that I need a new alter-ego.
The first epoch of my conscious life was that of the Journeyer. The second was that of Seonaid Montgomery. Both were accidental, not deliberate, births. Both were born of a fantasy of confrontation, testing, captivity, and alliance with key daimonic figures. Seonaid's story is ultimately the same as Adria's: forced to a new self-awareness that reveals her true power (abilities, strength, honor, sovereignty). But where Adria left home and traveled widely, Seonaid stayed home and redefined herself in the midst of both the ordinary and the extrordinary.
Both Seonaid and Adria embodied my yearnings for my authentic self. Seonaid, despite being located in a different world, was closer to my actual situation, even more mythic than Adria.
And now?
Now, I have found my vocation, but my creative life is flat. As I step into ministry, a place where my heart and intuition are needed and necessary, I find myself drawn to Swords aspects as I once again embrace the academy. After a lifetime of passionate involvement with men - even on the fantasy, daimonic level - I find myself hollowed-out and dry. Instead of vibrant lovers, challengers, and initiators, my daimons move like cardboard, forced to play out scenarios unworthy of them or me.
I look inside for Seonaid and Adria, and they are ghosts. Their times have passed. But no one is there to take their place.
I look for the place within me from which they emerged, and find emptiness.
I feel like a character in a myth whose soul has been put in a box and hidden away.
A Peter Pan without my shadow.
My daimons have followed their ladies into the West.
There is something in that "missing shadow" image. Adria and Seonaid embodied all the glorious parts of myself I did not dare - or know how - to manifest in my life. They were the ordinary girl, the daughter, striving to be queen. Even if they didn't realize it at first.
Now here I am, finally feeling like I am closer than ever to my authentic path.
The easy, obvious answer is that it is finally time to express the "glorious shadow" in my daily life. To become, in this world, the heroine-queen of my otherworlds.
But why does it feel that that lack of an alter-ego is part of what I am most conscious of lacking right now: passion, creativity, intuition?
Where is my glorious shadow? The brilliant, secret, vibrant part of me that hides from the everyday world? How can I express it in this world if I can't touch it within myself?
How can I continue to cherish it in the secret darkness and be nourished by it?
And where is the Wendy who will help me bind it to me again?
This evening, I had a long chat with Sandy, my best girlfriend, who asserted her strong belief that what I'm experiencing is indeed the transition into the time when I will begin manifesting those shadow qualities in my real life. "You just don't have all the tools yet, so it feels empty. But it's not really empty. You're just at a crossroads. You're integrating all this stuff. Lighten up on yourself!"
Thank God/dess for best girlfriends with keen insight and a sense of humor!
Re:
Coming from a writer of your quality, that means a lot!
Actually, your post from a while back about needing a new archetype was part of the process leading up to this realization.