Nothing New Under the Sun, Everything Made Anew: The Alchemy of the Muse
We’ve all heard the expression, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and certainly every piece of art is entrenched in the context and history that comes before it (cue the Kamala Harris coconut tree audio). But additionally, we, as humans, are amalgamations of all of our experiences; of everyone we’ve ever loved and every place we’ve ever been. Jorge Luis Borges, in Ficciones, writes, “I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
It’s quite impossible to separate the act of creativity from the act of collaboration, even if we seemingly engage in creativity in isolation. Every act of creation carries the echoes of every experience, every person, every influence or inspiration that has shaped us.
I also deeply believe that for art to be created, for something to be genuinely crafted from our hands, there is a magical, alchemical act that takes place within us as individuals, one that is both generative and additive. If we are a bucket compiling different pieces throughout our lives, then perhaps creating a work of art is the act of puzzling them together aesthetically, in our own image. In doing so, we create a mirror to who we are, one that must be instantiated externally.
But here, we’re discussing the inspiration that we take from the Other, from those and that which we deem as separate from ourselves. However, through the act of creation, we are deeply blurring the lines of distinction between who we are and what we engage with. Not only are we creating with Others as ingredients and inspiration for our work (in the same sense as the Muse/the same as the Muse itself) but also, with the understanding that the Other serves as a mirror to all that we are. When we create a work of art as an alchemization of all that we are, we are also creating a mirror to the Other. In this way, every work of art is both of us and of the Other.
It is quite impossible to separate our works from the Muse, and yet, at the same time, we have a deep desire to attain credit, credibility, notoriety, and success for the works “we” create. This tension, the paradox, that lies at the heart of artistic creation; the simultaneous urge to claim ownership and to surrender to the collective sources that make the work possible. The knowing that this comes from deep within our soul, but that our soul comes from maybe everything except us, a la Borges.
So,when it comes to the Other and the Muse, I think of them rather similarly. The Muse, in ancient descriptions of creativity, visits artists at Her whim – randomly, sitting with them when She has an idea ready for their hands to manifest. And artists would give credit to the Muse for Her participation and co-creation. They understood that their craft was not a solitary act, but a deeply divine connection with something bigger than themselves. We discussed this dimension of creativity last week, but this week, I want to connect it to how we engage with one another as fellow creators, collaborators, and reflections of the same Source.
Many philosophers and thinkers have conceived of a uniting energy: Heidegger’s Dasein, Nietzsche’s Übermensch, Jung’s Collective Unconscious, the Egregore from metaphysicists and occultists like Eliphas Levi, or Plato’s World Soul or Anima Mundi. This concept is also foundational to the ancient and enduring beliefs of Animism and other indigenous practices and worldviews. The idea of an interconnective reality has existed as long as humans have, and it has only become unpopular in the wake of the Scientific and Technological revolutions, as well as the Enlightenment, all of which placed us solidly in the materialist camp.
Materialism, as a functioning metaphysic, yields many benefits when it comes to scientific discoveries within an immediate cause-and-effect-based reality, yet it still falls depressingly short when it comes to actual metaphysics (actually understanding what is going on here). While it has been deeply beneficial for allopathic medicine, psychological advancements in mental health, and for our baseline engagement with the scientific method, a major struggle for scientists and researchers lies in staying locked into one belief system, when we, as the curious, should be at the forefront of questioning everything, even the building blocks of our reality. And, in a sense, understanding materialism has led us to the cliff’s edge of its own demise.
Just look at developments in fields like quantum physics. The explanatory gap is a gap because of the materialist blockage. We face a similar problem with the hard problem of consciousness: we can’t make heads or tails of this leap between the material and the other aspects of lived experience. Yet we experience them! As some of the most fundamental aspects of our existence! And those undefinable aspects of experience remain the ones that we describe as “human.” And it is precisely in this mode[of being – this mysterious, interconnected state – that we engage with creativity.
So is the Muse just the Collective Unconscious coming to visit us, connecting points previously unconnected? Perhaps. Is the Muse simply the wholeness of the Other reflecting through our subjectivity in the instantiation of one human creating one art piece? Maybe. Is it both? I think probably. Because when we collaborate, we create. And when we create, we become real.
Smack,
Reese
Citations:
Heidegger, Martin, and David Farrell Knell. Basic Writings from “being and Time” (1927) to “the Task of Thinking” (1964). HarperPerennial, 2008.
Jung, Carl G., and Martyn Swain. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Ukemi Audiobooks from W. F. Howes Ltd, 2024.
Levi, Eliphas. The Great Secret or Occultism Unveiled. Weiser Books, 2025.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Stanley Appelbaum. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Selections = Also Sprach Zarathustra: Auswahl. Dover Publications, 2014.
Plato, et al. Plato’s Republic: A Vision of Truth, Justice, and the Ideal Society. Watkins Pub. ; Distributed by Sterling Pub, 2010.
Learn More:
Learn More about Spiritual Alchemy in the occult text The Emerald Tablet: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6117076-the-emerald-tablet-of-hermes
Learn More about Spiritual Alchemy from Esoterica on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K16AS4N9iq8
