Enthusiasm

After my talk on Saturday one of the audience came up to me and said that what came across strongly was my enthusiasm for my subject. For some peculiar reason the thought leapt into my mind that I should check that word up in the dictionary. Why this was I have no idea but these days I am allowing myself to listen more to my 'inner voice' so when I got back home I checked this commonly used word out.

It came as no surprise that there was a 'hidden agenda'. The word comes from the Greek word enthousiasmos meaning inspiration or possession by a divine presence (termed afflatus in Greek). This is exactly the kind of linguistic support I need for the whole Daemon-Eidolon Dyad theory. That we are sometimes 'taken over' by enthusiasm is because maybe our Daemon is being more active in our life.

This reminds me of another word that seems to have daemonic connotations - inkling. In the first version of ITLAD I had a footnote about this interesting little word. I explained that it is believed to be of Middle English origin and derives from the word inkle which is to utter in an undertone. The implication is that another ‘voice’ is heard by the observer, a voice that speaks in a whisper and warns of events to come. And who may be the whisperer in this context?