Creation Myths and Creativity

 I have recently been interacting with a book called creation myths by Marie Louie von Franz, a very talented swiss author and Jungian philosopher/student with a knack for vividly descriptions' of various psychological archetypes. Her descriptions are so comprehensive that I am hilariously finding it hard to complete one of her most famous works, the book in question is called the problem of the puer aeternus and it's an analysis of a fairytale but with a twist. She does a deep dive of the personality of the 'man child' by extracting various excerpts from a fairytale and extrapolating the traits of its characters. I will write an article on the book once I stop feeling so called out by it and finish it. (All the best writers know how to elicit emotions from their readers)

The book I want to talk about is called Creation Myths and I have just got done reading two chapters and I am already so intrigued by it I feel compelled to share some of its contents. In this book she goes on about how our reality is basically made of projections of our inner consciousness (sounds like something Philmore from cars would say). Basically, before something exists in the physical realm it exists as an idea or thought. Before we create we perceive, that's the gist of the whole book.  In this article I want to highlight one particular analogy I loved, so all I have written was a lead up to this; The Painter's analogy. I'll start with the excerpt.

"You know that if you try to draw or paint, it often happens that, by mistake, you male a spot- the brush goes off on its own and there is a bad spot. Often, if you allow for such accidents, you will suddenly see a face in it, or you make a figure to cover up the spot, and so the picture changes. Such accidents are one of the most constellating factors in unconscious"

From this we see that in the creative process there are often mistakes made, mistakes we try to atone for. Each time we make a cover up, the picture in our heads change to accommodate the blemish and make it part of the final picture which we will deem as perfect or ready. In the chapter containing this excerpt Marie Louie von Franz talks about how accidents are a part of creation. Think of any creation myth without one, I'll wait. Every origin story has an uncaused cause, the aforementioned 'accident'. She also mentions how man is at his most creative when he's playing. I'll take another excerpt where she talks about creativity and creation in the light of an experienced 'creator' and how it affects their output.

"If you cannot paint, it happens that the unconscious constellates much more in the act of painting, while if you know a craft, you are too skilliful and therefore are able to exclude such disturbing accidental interferences of the unconscious; you know how to handle the brush and can prevent the spot, but if you are helpless you become unhappy when you have a blob in the painting and you get an effect, for you have worked three hours and the wretched thing has now got smudged, so you fall into an affect and then the unconscious shows itself! You suddenly have a fantasy about the spot which tells you something like a rorschach spot...!

A Rorschach spot is part of a psychological test where you are shown ink blots and told to say what you perceive them as (hence the former spot) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test )-link to the wikipedia article. 

So in her opinion what you first make out to be a mistake may indeed later interpreted as an expression of the unconscious and she later says that it is important in active imagination to use a medium which you have no skill or technique by which you can exclude the interference of the unconscious. Comparison, even intrinsic makes you want to be equal to or better than an existent bench mark which defeats the whole purpose of creating and subsequently makes it look like emulation. In another instance she speaks about how creative people ostracize themselves from others because creativity is always associated with childishness and an antonym to reason and logic. So the more these extremely creative people hang around people unlike them, they get 'holes poked into the bubble of their idea or plan' which is a double edged sword depending on how it's presented.

So in conclusion creativity may also be unconscious and that is its best and most free flowing form. My challenge to myself and to others is to find an outlet that will allow us to be authentic and raw without criticism and also to be accepting and ready to work with our mistakes and always be open to small adjustments to the final picture