The word for “beginning” or “origin” in Greek is genesis. Its root appears in other words like geneology, genes, gender, and genius, referring to being born from a certain source.
For a number of years, I have been musing about genius and “the genius”, the name for the Roman tutelary or guardian spirit of a person. The Greeks called it “the daemon”. This mysterious spirit (or spiritual force) was considered responsible for enabling a person to generate ideas and manifest ability, for instance in the arts. (Also see a TED-talk on this by Elizabeth Gilbert.)
A tutelary spirit also exists in the practice of shamanism. Carlos Casteneda, called it “the ally” in his Don Juan books, about the Yaqui sorcerer who was Casteneda’s guide to the spirit world. In fact, the guardian spirit idea seems to have a common universal thread in a wide range of spiritual traditions, even including Roman Catholicism with its idea of the guardian angel.
Author James Hillman, in his book The Soul’s Code, writes about how the genius urges a person to fulfill their unique destiny, for good or ill. A companion thinker, Carl Jung, actually painted and dialogued with a genius he named Philemon in his personal journal, recently published for the first time as The Red Book.
Here is my take on genius, and probably why I have been thinking about it so much. Recently I worked on a dream that showed me a quality of energy that most animates me, that I follow as if it were a path of bread crumbs through the forest on the way to my home. It has inspired and motivated me over a number of years, bringing me not just joy, but bliss, inspiration, insight, and the powerful urge to create.
I am a blood hound for this energy, sticking my nose into this and that hole, just to see if “it” is in there. When I am not caught up in some other mundane or befuddling occupation, I am on its track 24/7. It’s the spark around which my life seems to rotate. I could call it the animating force of my being, for it makes me come alive.
Describing it as “uniqueness”, “true essence”, or “true gift”, also fits with my feeling sense of this energy, but words just can go just so far in describing something that is basically indescribable!