Musings on the Many Faces of the Daimon
by C. Charis Coyle

Deep inside each of us resides an irreplaceable friend; one who is willing to share their deepest knowings and secrets; one who is eager to partner us in a relationship that will fulfill the quest for our soul's code.

To better explain what I mean by the daimon, I want to first touch briefly on the better known concept of archetypes. Archetype refers to the “first types,” the primal patterns from which people derive their sense of essence and existence. These archetypal patterns include such well known symbols as Mother, Father, Empress, Emperor, Wizard and Warrior. As inhabitants of the We Are realm, the in between realm that contains the energies of universal story and myth, as well as the great creative patterns that guide and instruct us, these archetypal patterns bridge spirit with nature, mind with body, and self with universe.  They are not individual personal energies but rather shared constructs of the psyche, timeless beings once seen as gods and goddesses in older cultures that are available to all through our inner depth-soundings.

In contrast to archetypes, there are many faces to the daimon. It varies for each of us. We might think of the daimon as our very own archetypal entity, a personal image found within our psyche of our unique Highest Self or Essence, a deep directive force that drives us towards the actualization of our individual soul print. Essence invites us into extraordinary partnership, through interaction with the face of our daimon, in order to call forth a dance of becoming.  As the music plays, this choreography between the eternal and our inner depth selves helps evoke our deepest life patterns, coaxing them from out of the innumerable possibilities available in the We Are archetypal world.  When people come into resonance with their creative seed of greatness, their daimon essence or call, they know it in their hearts. They feel it in their bones. It sings in their blood.

When we tune into this daimon energy, a different way of being is engaged, one that lifts seeing into another domain where love rules and patterns of higher resonance are known. This daimon dance is experiential. It is being in the flow.  It is making use of the highest skills available to us.  It is putting old ideas to work in new ways and uncovering latent abilities we never knew we had.  When we live in service to the Daimon Dance we become actors in a new story that engages in the sacred drama of life.  We enter the domain of mythic mind, and come face to face, toe to toe, with the richness of who we really are.

Interestingly, Sufi scholar, Henri Corbin, says it is not personal individuation that is our main task during this life but rather the individuation, the unfolding into Essence, of our daimon self. A daimon (higher being) enters space and time and finds its individuation through its twinned human companion. Our little local self is here to be in service to the dance of the daimon, setting up our lives to help in its essential becoming. In the end, the daimon’s becoming is our becoming, our highest soul’s becoming. 

We can relate this notion of higher purpose to the images found in the depths of our psyche, images that provide clues as to who or what, within us, is choreographing the show. Because the psyche consists primarily of images, the primary activity of the psyche can be called imagining. As humans, we bloom out of the imaginal world, arising from the We Are realm of myth and symbol.  If at our core we are symbols and images then our lives can be said to be the actualization of these seeded codes. When all is said and done, our unique core image, the daimon dance, as I call it, is the ultimate concern of each person’s life. All else is just detail.

I bid you joy-filled dancing. Let the Daimon Dance begin

C. Charis Coyle is a soul dancer.  She is a life coach, author,
storyteller, mythologist, performer and all around choreographer
of the eclectic and unusual. The Daimon Dance (website and
newsletter) is her praise song dedicated to the inner partner,
her way of re-membering the soul’s inner dream. The purpose of
the Daimon Dance is to gently remind each and every one of us
the importance of periodically recharging our connection to our
inner dancing star. www.daimondance.com

Copyright 2006 Charis Coyle.  Please feel free to pass this
article on to your friends, or use it in your ezine or
newsletter.  It's a shareware article.