Living with a creative fire demands a life that can consciously harness the forces of imagination in a constructive fashion. Creativity at its essence is a source of vitality that requires those who depend on its fuel to channel moments of imagination into productive outcomes. The Creative Fire by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes is a recording collection in storyteller format that shares myths, poems, and tales from around the world on the art of living with a creative inferno inside you. The "creative" gives birth daily whether as a writer, artist, performer, thought provocateur, teacher, or any profession that cannot exist without innovative imagination. Pinkola-Estes has distilled in her recordings a form of "creative midwifery" to support, nurture, and propel the creative to manifest their art in physical form. These series of stories offer guidance on the fundamentals of working with the creative spirit, which by its very nature, is unbridled and capable of so much potential. Any fire requires a container to harness and unleash the incredible energy contained in the flames. The risk of many artists' lives according to Julia Cameron (author of The Artist's Way) is being consumed by their own energy through addictions, depression, fear, etc. Pinkola-Estes' work parallels this concept and through The Creative Fire gives practical techniques that delve into the creative soul (psyche) to retrieve and release the obstacles that misdirect such a potent force from its true aim: creative birth.
The Creative Fire is also inspired by the author's Jungian training to foster personal discovery, healing through archetypes, overcoming the negative emotions that squelch the creative fire, working from vision, and opening oneself up to new avenues of creative inspiration. The creative needs a muse and The Creative Fire is one musing to never be without. A must have tool to keep the artist alive, occupied, and continuously on creative fire by being out of their own way, thus freeing up the psyche to express without abandon.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes is also the author of Women Who Run With the Wolves. She is a Jungian psychoanalyst, poet, and a cantadora (storyteller) in the Latina tradition.