The creative process behind this blog

o

I thought that I would share with you something about the creative process behind the writing of this blog. The “secret” behind it is YOU… or the other person. I am regularly active on several fora, such as the International Golden Dawn Forum, the Rosicrucian Garden and the Golden Dawn Forum, besides lurking on several others. I also regularly comment on the blogosphere, foremostly on Gleamings from the Dawn, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Blog, Magic of the Ordinary, Mishkan ha-Echad, and Nick Farrell’s Blog which I find being the most interesting, amongst others such as the highly recommended Heavens Within Earth. I usually take this bulk written at these sites and use it – in a somewhat re-edited and reformatted form – to create my essays and blogposts here. Most of my Swedish essays are in fact the fruit of one year of writing on Flashback Forum, where I used to hang around before I created this blog instead to express my opinions and perspective on the mysteries.

So the process is basically something like this: I engage in a discussion or a debate, or answer a query, on a blog or a forum, and use my own written contents as a basis for my essays on this blog. The editing of this information is often a creative process in itself as I often get new ideas and expand upon the original material. I also am compelled to amend and add the bulk to make it coherent for you to read. Thus, the chance is that I meet some of you out there and that the fruit of our discussions or debates finally find its way into this blog in a processed format.

But there is one exception to this rule of process: the Order of the Golden Dawn-Martin Thibeault-Pat Zalewski yahoo-group. I used to engage in some discussions there, but my experience of that forum is that it is very easily to get flamed there if one criticizes Pat Zalewski or his line of thought. To be frank, the atmosphere there I found to be extremely rude towards my person on several occasions. Therefore I don’t engage in any discussions or debates over there, even if I would like to, because I don’t feel the culture to be fraternal. But I do follow that forum regularly and of course react to lots of what is said there, thought provoking as it is.

Martin Thiebeault and Pat Zalewski’s yahoo-forum is undoubtly the most interesting and entertaining of all the Golden Dawn fora. One can gather lots of good and enlightening information from there, from several distinguished personalities, not only Pat himself. But on the other hand it is also the place where the most strange notions and odd ideas are being presented, at least from my perspective, which may best be described as the “Pat Zalewski curve” (pun intended). I simply feel compelled to address certain of the issues brought up there, in a similar way that I do with themes brought up on other fora and blogs. I don’t make any distinction between that particular forum and any other. When I read something, I react and answer, and engage in discussions and debates. But with Martin’s and Pat’s forum I simply skip the part of discussion and debate directly with the persons in question before I write the blog, and instead write the blog straight away as an address to a current discussion; thus I by-pass the initial phase of this creative process.

Despite the fact that I’m a typical introvert, strangely enough I have found that this is the way that my own creativity is most readily evoked, through interaction with other people. I dislike traditional lectures, where I find myself holding some monologue before an audience; I prefer to be asked questions and engage in discussions and debates with my fellow men and women. I like the environment of open discussion, with lots of head room. I like and are stimulated by the reciprocal exchange of ideas; the dialectics of human relations. I don’t know if this is the most ideal in the context of esotericism; I sometimes wish that my inspiration came from the insides of myself without the aid of an outer stimulus. Sometimes it does, but not as often that I had hoped for. Instead my inner creativity needs some form of outer stimulus, such as the written word of another.

I don’t see any differences between being engaged in a questions & answers situation, or in discussions, or in a debate or even engaging in a polemic; I find it stimulating to defend the other side of a heated discussion. But I do also find that my tone becomes more polarized, extreme and “fundamentalist” as a result from polemicizing. Unfortunately there are lots of venues where one finds more debates rather than scholarly and serious discussions in the Golden Dawn Community as well as the Esoteric Community as a whole. Alchemists are probably the “worst” example of this kind of ego-bashing. But I readily form an opinion, from quite scarce information. This is sometimes a drawback as I often do it to readily. But on the other hand it makes me interact with lots of people, exchanging ideas, and the fruit of this interaction you find on this blog, for better and for worse.

S∴R∴