I ndeed, the Shaman-Rebbe is really not unlike his academic sister-shaman in that
his Hasidic tradition with its mythic structure has similarities with her mythically
structured spiral galaxy of Andemar with its sacred objects.
The research has shown that the mythopoeic writer and reader are
simultaneously a participant in the imaginal drama and an observer, a creator and a
creature, a creative artist as well as a created character in an elsewhere-place. I n
creating a work of art, s/ he creates a place and in (re)creating oneself, s/ he thereby
becomes a different person in a new place. The mythopoeic writer reveals him or
herself as a character of fiction that has transcended the barriers between fiction
and reality, thus challenging the reader to re-think her/ his own role with regard to
reality and the self. However, whilst the writer can only move within the boundaries
of the particular place(s) of the imagination or mythopoeic narrative they are
creating, the reader(s) can change those place(s) into a multiplicity of imaginal
possibilities. The mythopoeic narrative, like the shaman’s drum, has a dual
function: as the instrument of isolation and of interaction, of total unrelatedness and
at the same time, of connectedness. I n addition, it creates the connection to the
world outside the drama as it does not merely contain narrative, but takes on a life
of its own and acts as an allegory.
The responses to the research questionnaires revealed that for both the
mythopoeic writer and the reader their horizon is, on the one hand, broadened by
the narratives, but in another sense narrowed. They often contain an allegorical
description of everything that goes to make up their own inner world, which enables
them to become aware of the decentred self and another place, an elsewhere-place.
Thus, mythopoeic literature forms the bridge between the two realms: the external
place and the inner elsewhere-place, because all possibilities are contained in its
narrative.
(g) The Suprapersonal Aspect of Creativity
The Swiss psychoanalyst Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig suggested that creativity
happens outside the individual psyche, that a power external to the one creating is
at work. I n other words, creativity is impersonal and he uses the term
‘transcendent creativity’ to describe something that comes through, shines through
from another world (Guggenbuhl-Craig, 1995:8).