Cat Rose Neligan | Discovering Your Daimon: A Guide To Creative Flow States
Pronoia: The Sneaking Suspicion That The Universe Is Conspiring In Your Favor...
Cat Rose Neligan is an astrologer, author, and coach, who has a mission to assist creatives on their path to discovering a truer calling in life. In this conversation we discuss her upcoming book: Discovering Your Personal Daimon, which is about connecting to the inner and outer guiding forces, integral to the universe, that are conspiring to align you to your deepest purpose. This episode is a great flow for anyone who seeks to improve their perspective on creativity and imagination.
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In this episode
Core themes
The Daimon as a Guide to Destiny
Cat Rose Neligan found the daimon through astrology and a podcast about locating a personal daimon in the birth chart, a word that first called up the animal companions of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Raised Catholic with a guardian angel at her bedside, she says guardian turned into guiding for her. She retells the Myth of Er from Plato's Republic, where souls choose their lives and a daimon to hold them to it, and Socrates, whose daimon warned him away but did not object to his death. In her view the daimon wants to hold us to our destiny, not merely keep us safe.
Daimon, Demon and Possession
Chance points to the Greek daimos, which he says means dread, as a sign of how feared these spirits were, and argues that a demon can be read as the divided self, fragmented parts of our energy that stop communicating. Cat, fresh from watching The Conjuring, says the daimon turns demonic when we deny it, pointing to great artists and writers overcome by it. Asked how to tell a guiding spirit from an earthbound hitchhiker, she suggests practice, noticing a consistent voice, and being fairly self-possessed, while Chance argues that being closed to spirit leaves a person more open to manipulation.
Intention, Flow and the Body's Yes
Chance treats scratches, bruises and stubbed toes as an early warning that he is forcing something out of flow, arguing that nature moves in smooth transitions until a cataclysm is the only option left. He lives by the rule that if it ain't a hell yes, it's a hell no, and reads intention as being in tension, a rubber band pulled back and released. Cat shares a skateboarding lesson about which inner voice to trust, and both prefer a yes and approach when people call the same guidance intuition, the shadow or the anima.
Childhood Callings and Imaginary Friends
Following an astrologer's tip to look back at childhood, Cat recalls wanting to be an artist before being told it was a tough road, and says she still paints because it keeps her daimon happy, feeling something is off when she stops for too long. She talked to Beanie Babies until she was about ten and still wants to build dens, while Chance remembers blanket forts where he read whole Harry Potter novels. Cat describes the loneliness of traveling in 2019 as a search for the other, and sees familiars, spirit guides and imaginary friends as versions of that companionship.
Dragons, Watchers and Playful Spirit
Cat describes meeting a small black and purple dragon in meditation and later flying on a far larger one in a tea ceremony. Chance says the word dragon comes from the Greek drakon, one who sees, and links it to the seraphim as watchers and steersmen of the body. Cat adds that the household daimon of ancient Alexandria was pictured as a snake, echoed in the snake ring she wears. Chance describes rhyming spontaneously when in flow, connects genius to the jinn, and asks whether fear of such spirits has been taught, while Cat wonders whether people tuned in to their daimon would buy as much.
Quotes
“When we're sort of trying to deny some of these parts of ourselves, or the daimon, however you want to see that, that's when the daimon can kind of turn demonic.”
“If it ain't a hell yes, it's a hell no. And that makes all the difference, because then you don't find yourself compromising on the big things.”
“I don't think the daimon is just trying to keep us safe and keep us alive. It really wants to hold us to our destiny.”
“All one is the same as alone with just one missing L.”
“It feels like I'm meant to, for example, practice astrology and take that into the world, because I feel like I'm getting yeses from the daimon.”
“The word dragon actually comes from the Greek word drakon, which actually means seeing one, one who sees.”
“I personally don't think that the daimon can ever abandon us. I think the daimon wants to connect with us just as much as we want to connect with it.”
“Life is a feedback web, not a feedback loop, and that's my new trademark term based on the realization of how open communication is really supposed to work in our energy field.”
Cat Rose Neligan is an astrologer, author, and coach who helps creatives connect with their "daimon," or inner guiding force; she is the author of Discovering Your Personal Daimon and runs Cat Rose Astrology.
See all Cat episodes→Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
