Podcast

Transcript:

Podcast episode 0

Release date: 17 September 2023

[Intro music]

Welcome, friends! I’m Arin Murphy-Hiscock, author of popular books about practicing green witchcraft and home-based spirituality in the modern world, and you’re listening to Sources, the podcast where we discuss the intersection of spirituality and creativity.

This brief episode is to introduce the podcast and talk about what you can expect from the monthly series.

For those who don’t know me, I write books on practicing nature-based spirituality in the modern world. I identify as a pagan and a witch, and I’ve been practicing for over 25 years.

I’m always looking for ways to incorporate spiritual practice into daily life. When my first child was born, I had to radically revise how I practiced, because the time and mental energy available to me was profoundly altered. I began looking at the things I could do along the way alongside my everyday activity. One of those things was my creative activity.

Using art to touch the Divine, however you define it, to express deep feeling about it, and to reflect one’s relationship with it is seen throughout time and in many cultures. Creative acts can also be offerings, a demonstration of time and energy invested to honour a deity. Art is also a way to communicate inspiration from the Divine, or share a narrative about it.

What we think of as art in the modern age tends to be skewed. The Western ideal, what we think of first when someone says “art,” tends to be fine art, the kind that you see in a museum. However, this excludes so much.

Art is more than just fine art. Creativity is more than fine art.

Creativity is how we approach problems. It’s how we work out how to break something down, address the disparate elements, and reassemble it in a way that will advance us or accomplish a goal.

The creative arts can comprise many disciplines, including the broad groupings of visual arts, literary arts, and performing arts. At their heart are the drive and desire to tell stories, express emotion, and explore or convey ideas. Architecture, music, weaving, horticulture, furniture making, fashion, and graphic design are all ways in which we encounter the creative arts on a daily basis.

This podcast came about because I am surrounded by creative types, and I’m always interested in knowing more about how people explore their spirituality through their creative work, and vice versa: how their spirituality inspired or directed their artistic expression. And by art, I mean any kind of creative expression: model building, design, writing, painting, digital sketching, cooking, music, calligraphy, tattooing, horticulture, dancing, sculpting, sewing, woodworking, knitting, temporary or ephemeral art—any and all forms of creative expression are valid, be they professional or amateur.
This podcast series features guests from all sorts of different walks of life, talking about their personal spiritual paths and their creative expression. Join me for a monthly dialogue with an artist about their creative process, and how it intersects with and informs—and is informed by—their spiritual practice or path.

Our first guest in Episode 1, releasing on 28 September 2023, is Erica Helder, a Canadian abstract artist and horticulturalist based in Brant, Ontario. We talk about art as an expression of grief, creative blocks, self-discovery through art, touching the magic of the natural world, and the challenges—and joys!—of sharing art with the public.

Join me as we explore how spirituality and creativity interact for Erica, and for our future guests. Learn about different artists who work in a variety of mediums, and be inspired by their thoughts about the spiritual component of their work.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for more ways to interact, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook under arinmurphyhiscock, or join my new Patreon. As always, you can check out my website, arinmurphyhiscock.com, where the show notes for each episode will be posted on the Podcast page.

Thanks for sharing this time with me. I’ll see you next episode. In the meantime, create joyfully.