My New Favorite Word

The word daimon, as used by James Hillman in The Soul’s Code, is my new favorite word. It is like a seed but also a guardian angel.  In Hillman’s book he describes his “acorn theory,” which holds that “each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived.”   In other words, we each have our uniqueness and our purpose.

Hillman sates, “The soul of each of us is given a unique daimon (think “demon,” but good not evil) before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth. This soul-companion, the daimon, guides us here: in the process of arrival, however, we forget all that took place and believe we come empty into this world. The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your daimon is the carrier of your destiny.” We could think of this daimon as the guardian angel.

Hillman helped me view quite differently how a child’s essential spirit seed relates to the blueprint of the natal chart.  This daimon then, perhaps would have been the guiding spirit who helped select the best possible conditions or select the positions of the stars for the most optimal time, choosing the parents, and the exact time of conception and birth, thus creating the particular pattern in one’s natal chart and the blueprint or code that would be employed for the particular life.

The daimon then, as an entity, precedes the natal chart. The guardian angel precedes the natal chart blueprint, or maybe even helps bring it into existence.  Therefore, we gain different access to different answers by discourse with the angels than we do through study of astrology.  That is not to say that one is “better” than the other, but different. Study of stars will help one gain understanding and connection to the angels will gain a different understanding. I think we need both, and more.

Many questions could branch out from there for further consideration.  Do we get paired with this daimon for only this one life or many consecutive lives through reincarnation? Does this daimon travel with the same soul indefinitely?