MATT CARDIN- DARK AWAKENING

Creativity, Reality, and Encounters with the Inner Genius

Matt Cardin is a horror writer, independent scholar, and college teacher living in Central Texas. With a master's degree in religion and a lifetime of involvement in the study of world religion and philosophy, he writes frequently about the convergence of religion, horror, the paranormal, creativity, consciousness, and culture. In the 1990s he began to suffer from recurring episodes of sleep paralysis, accompanied by assaults from what seemed like a demonic entity. These experiences altered his worldview and led not only to his career as a horror writer but to an enduring interest in the experience of the muse, daimon, or genius: the age-old feeling shared by writers and artists everywhere that the source of their creativity is separate and independent from them. Today he maintains the website Demon Muse, where he publishes articles that explore the nature and ontological status of the daimonic muse and offer practical advice to writers about how to tap into their own deep creativity by personifying it as an inner collaborator. He's developing a book titled Muses and Daimons: Creativity, Reality, and Encounters with the Inner Genius. He explains the basics of the demon muse-model and discusses the various theories about the nature of the force or entity "the Daemon or Holy Guardian Angel that haunts artists." Divinations of the Deep (2002), which launched the New Century Macabre and Dark Awakenings (2010), a collection of short horror fiction and nonfiction essays about horror and religion. Publishers Weekly praised as a "thinking-man's book of the macabre" with "unusual philosophic depth."