The book explores creativity, silence, inner guidance, the tension between spirituality and writing, and the deeper sources from which writing—and life itself—unfolds. It offers a contemplative approach to creative work that draws on nonduality, spiritual inquiry, and decades of reflection on the creative process.
BookLife from Publishers Weekly has described the book as “an intimate journey into the mystery of creativity and spirit.” Joanna Penn calls it “a guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning.” Some of the readers who encountered the book in the course I taught from the pre-publication manuscript last year — an audience of writers, artists, educators, and more — have called it “revolutionary,” “the perfect book for this moment in my life,” and “a gift to anyone with a core creative longing.”
Writing at the Wellspring is available in ebook and trade paperback editions through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and other major retailers.
Full details, reviews, and purchase links can be found here:
The very idea of the muse, daimon, or creative daemon is infused with mystery, and even with potential fear. The sense of relating to an other within oneself, of receiving inner communications from an outer source, is frankly uncanny. In fact, there are distinct parallels between the idea and experience of the daemon muse and the signature artistic-emotional effect of weird horror. Both dive into the murky unknown and evoke feelings you can’t quite describe.
The daemon is a mysterious presence playing hide-and-seek in the psyche, much like the elusive object of fascination and fear in a story by Lovecraft, Blackwood, or Ligotti. Your daemon muse haunts you with — and more, it haunts you as — an aspect of your very self. This is distinctly reminiscent of the numinous dread that pervades a weird horror story. To live in conscious communion with this presence, entity, force, or intelligence is to live in a darkly enchanted universe, one where the boundary between inner and outer is blurred, where the infusion of creative inspiration becomes entangled with vivid outward synchronicities that propel you through the gates of Chapel Perilous and into a fertile state of spiritual emergency.
And even more: This very fact — the fear of your inner genius — contains the seeds of its own solution. The experience of the daemon muse is essentially dissociative. It’s a phenomenon in which one part of the psyche, the ego, perceives another part as separate or different, as an autonomous presence or intelligence with which “I” interact. This means it can serve as the seed for nondual self-realization, an awakening to or remembrance of your real identity in and as the whole: not only the whole of the personal psyche, but the whole of the cosmos in which this self is embedded, and beyond that, the Absolute Subject in which both self and a world arise.
To say the whole thing differently: In the darkest depths of Chapel Perilous, where you encounter the sense of an invisible and inescapable presence that feels simultaneously helpful and haunting, immanent and transcendent, intimate and mysterious, the very flavor or texture of this destabilizing experience may serve as the catalyst for a shattering instant of self-remembrance. It may trigger a reawakening to your real identity beyond the both of you. After that — though, to be precise, there is no “after” in a zone without time — all bets are off.
Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius is now fully typeset and laid out, and the proofs have been through a couple of rounds of corrections. Here’s a two-page spread from the book’s introduction. It’s a section where I talk about why art matters in difficult times. Creative pursuits, following your muse or daemon, can seem trivial in an age bristling with real-world crises. I argue that this impression is mistaken, as artistic creativity is all the more important at a time like this.
Yesterday I came across a popular TEDx talk from five months ago in which author and creativity coach Amie McNee makes the very same point, though with some different emphases. Titled “The Case for Making Art When the World Is on Fire,” it resonates strongly with my words in the Wellspring intro, as reflected in the video’s official description:
The world is on fire—figuratively and literally. And in the middle of all this chaos, I want you to make art. In this passionate and empowering TEDx talk, writer and creative coach Amie McNee challenges the idea that art is frivolous or indulgent in difficult times. She argues that creativity is not a luxury—it’s a necessity. Art calms us, connects us, and gives us purpose. It heals our bodies, minds, and communities. More than that, it’s an act of rebellion, a tool for hope, and a legacy that outlasts us all. If you’ve ever felt like your creativity doesn’t matter, like painting, writing, singing, or creating is a waste of time in a world with so many problems—this talk is for you.
The talk is well worth listening to:
Writing at the Wellspring is scheduled for a November release, with cover art currently in the works. For progress updates and launch news, you can subscribe to this blog or to my Living Dark newsletter. Or to both. I’ll let you know when preorders are available.
Why is it that every time a headline says something like, “Study reveals fascinating new information about creativity,” the article proves to be not fascinating at all, but the most boring thing anyone ever thought to write?
“Researchers at XYZ Institute of Research into the BrainMind have published a new paper in the Journal of Creative Biological Studies of Brain and Mind that indicates the Ganglior Network in the basal singular portion of the brain is implicated in stochastular effusions of concatenated electrical impulses throughout the anterior dingalum. Lead researcher Dr. ABC, speaking for a ninety-seven person team distributed across twelve universities in six countries, stated, ‘These findings represent an astounding leap forward in our understanding of how creativity works. Because the concatenated electrical impulses have now been observed to be pervasive throughout the anterior dingalum, we know the Ganglior Network communicates continuously with the Markoff Parietal Network in a different region of the brain, suggesting that creativity is the result of these internal communications within the human nervous system. To put it in lay terms, whenever you receive a new idea, your brain is literally about to explode out the top of your skull.’”
Okay, I suppose that last part about a potential cranial eruption would qualify as interesting. But for some reason, the rest of it just doesn’t grab me. Call me weird or blinkered or out of touch, but I’m more interested in the muse or daemon itself, and in what it feels like to commune and collaborate with this intelligence, this force, this presence that arrives with the felt sense of a discrete entity with whom you’re partnered and allied. And I think such an interest, and such a communion, is far more exhilarating, and far more conducive to an actual experience of creative emergence and flow, than all those dry-bones attempts to explain the whole thing in terms of its possible neurobiological correlates and underpinnings.
Recently I finished teaching a five-module course for Weirdosphere, the online learning platform created by the founders and hosts of the Weird Studies podcast. The title was “Writing at the Wellspring,” which, not coincidentally, is also the title of my newly written and not-yet-published book on creativity and spiritual purpose in an age of upheaval. That book, plus my A Course in Demonic Creativity, served as the required texts.
More than 80 students signed up for five weeks of lectures, suggested reflections, writing exercises, and vigorous group discussions. It was a greatly fulfilling experience for me as the teacher, and reaction from the students was likewise intensely positive, with many of them telling me the readings, lectures, and interactions generated a transformative experience for them.
I may end up teaching the course again in the future. You can read a full description of it in my Living Dark newsletter. Here’s the heart of that description:
October 22 to December 1, 2024
MC101: WRITING AT THE WELLSPRING
A Course in Daemonic Creativity
with Dr. Matt Cardin—author, educator
Where does creativity come from? Why do ideas and inspiration feel as if they come from “outside,” from an external source that whispers directly into the mind? What if the key to unlocking both your creative potential and the purpose of your life lies in embracing the darkness of the unknown? What if the path to spiritual awakening is also the path to authentic self-expression as a writer?
Beginning October 22, Matt Cardin, a two-time guest on Weird Studies and one of the great contemporary exponents of weird fiction, is offering “Writing at the Wellspring,” an online course based on his books A Course in Demonic Creativity and the brand-new, unreleased work Writing at the Wellspring: Creativity, Life Purpose, Nonduality, and the Daemon Muse.
This course goes beyond the typical writing or creativity workshop.
Students will progress through a series of lectures, readings, and discussions to explore the concept and experience of creativity as an inner collaboration with a separate force or intelligence within the psyche—what we can call the unconscious mind, the silent partner, the secret self, or, most evocatively, the muse, the daimon, the daemon, and the genius. The course will delve into the core concept of “living and writing into the dark,” embracing uncertainty and trusting one’s intuition as a pathway to unlock creative destiny. Students will examine ways to understand and navigate the tension between the drive to create and the impulse toward total stillness and inactivity that can accompany spiritual insight. Matt will share nondual perspectives on effortless action or creative quietude as a way to align personal creativity with the creative current that animates the cosmos. Finally, the course will examine the possibility of using writing and other creative work as a “monastic option” that makes a monastery of one’s life and provides purpose and meaning in a time of apocalyptic cultural transformation.
Students will receive access to the full text of both of Matt’s books, plus the full text of his short ebook Transmitting Vision: Essays on the Writer’s Path (previously available only to subscribers to his blog/newsletter, The Living Dark), along with additional suggested readings, plus prompts and exercises for sparking the imagination and deepening our understanding of ourselves, our world, and how the reality that gives rise to both can tell us what we’re here to do.
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