Artists: Today's prophets?

In 1992 Dr. Arnold M. Ludwig, a psychiatrist at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, published an extensive biographical survey of 1,005 famous 20th-century artists and writers, comparing their mental health with those of individuals in other, more conventional, professionals. Ludwig discovered that artists and writers experienced two to three times the rate of psychosis, suicide attempts, mood disorders, and substance abuse than did comparably successful people in business, science, and public life. Ludwig went so far as to trace various types of mental illness to different creative professions: he found that if you're a poet you're more likely to suffer from mania and psychoses; a musician or actor, drug abuse; a composer, artist, or non-fiction writer, alcohol dependence. In Ludwig's analysis, those professions which rely on precision, reason, and logic have a much lower rate of mental illness than those that rely on emotive expression, personal experience, and vivid imagery as a source of inspiration.

In other words, it could always be worse--you could be a poet.

William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Irish poet, dramatist, and writer.
Sara Allgood (1879–1950), Irish stage actress and later film actress in America
Allan Bennett (1872–1923), best known for introducing Buddhism to the West
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), occult writer and mountaineer
Bram Stoker[41][42] (1847–1912), Irish writer best-known today for his 1897 horror novel Dracula

Thelema is a religious philosophy (referred to by some as a religion)[1] that was established, defined and developed[2] by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus,[3] based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904.[1] By his account, a possibly non-corporeal being that called itself Aiwass contacted him and dictated a text known as The Book of the Law or Liber AL vel Legis, which outlined the principles of Thelema.[1][4]

Hollywood Insiders: Beneath the surface follows the career of movie writers such as:

James Cameron,
Roland Emmerich,
David Goyer,
Michael Ferris.

It also examines symbolism in movies like: Avatar, 10000BC, 2012, The men who stare at Goats, Sherlock Holmes, Surrogates, Jumper, and The Crow 2. Further, it analyzes predictive programming, the mayan calender, global warming, the supernatural, mythological retellings in movies.

Text

Originally posted by curious7
reply to post by MasterGemini

---

I'm a musician AND a writer but the only drugs I ever take are caffeine in my coffee and tea and my antidepressants due to suffering with major depression

Pretty cool thread though creatureme

Childish strokes take on air of prophecy
By LUCY MORGAN
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 13, 2001

Perhaps the CIA should have looked in Quincy, a small town in the Florida Panhandle about 30 miles east of Tallahassee.

There on a wall-sized, brightly colored mural painted about six years ago, a group of school children imagined the unthinkable.
[1996]
.......

There on a wall-sized, brightly colored mural painted about six years ago, a group of school children imagined the unthinkable.

The twin towers stand out, with windows lighted up and faces peering from them. Some of the windows seem to be filled with fire, and people are shown jumping from the building. The Empire State Building appears in the background, and a large jet airplane flies directly at the upper floors of the trade center.

The children who painted the mural were part of a summer reading program at the Gadsden County Library.