Threads and Destiny:

Dreampaths towards Hope

Perla Abdie

By chance and a twist of fate, on March 21st of this year, I attended a puppetry panel discussion with masters of the craft as part of the International Puppetry Day celebrations at the National Museum of World Cultures in Mexico City. The event was organised in collaboration with the International Puppetry Union (UNIMA), with headquarters in France and with 96 affiliated countries. The audience was mostly comprised of seniors, accompanied by marionettes, hand puppets, and other fantastical beings from Mexican cultural imagination, whom my inquisitive curiosity longed to encounter. Eight speakers participated in the discussion: Alejandro Jara, president of UNIMA-Mexico, Raquel Bárcena, co-founder of UNIMA, Carlos Converso, Carmen Luna, Sara Guzmán, Lourdes Perez-Gay, Yolanda Jurado, historian specialising in the history of puppetry, puppeteers and their audiences in Mexico, and Pablo Cueto, a master puppeteer and grandson of the Mexican renowned artist Lola Cueto, all with between 40 and 60 years of experience as master puppeteers.

Very soon the room came alive with the concerns and worries of true artists—those that escape the spheres of egotism characteristic in artistic individualism and narcissism¹ (that have so infected the society of performing artists today):  “We all share the same concern: post-pandemic children are used to feeling emotions individually, but the performing arts, specifically puppet theater, allow us to feel collectively -which makes us stronger as human beings,” one of the speakers mentioned, while another continued: “The amount of information we receive on our phones is diminishing our capacity to feel and to feel empathetically. Our responsibility towards children is to tell stories through emotions. We can no longer adopt or tell simple stories; our stories must be told with empathy and address and rescue cultural values ​​from our society. Our responsibility is to allow ourselves to feel and express this feeling; indifference is not the way.” Among other concerns were the challenges faced with new audiences (not only children, but also adolescents and adults) the challenges posed by technological advances, specifically the arrival of AI and social media, and how narratives can be offered to include children in social and collective participation. Sara Guzmán, a graduate in art and cultural heritage and a puppeteer with more than 40 years of experience, shared the following: “I felt a lot of pressure becoming a puppeteer because what we say through the puppet is real and has a powerful effect on children.” And indeed, the collective memory concentrated in legends, stories, and myth is what tells the truth; the true story is nothing but a lie.² It is undeniable that anyone who witnesses a puppet move immediately feels that Truth and magical³ impression without any difficulty. To be touched by something that both is and is not, an object in a liminal state, is mysteriously seductive and terrifying. Indeed, darkness embraces us when we are touched by the unknown…

     Many cultures at different times in history have placed emphasis on the concept of the numinous object on a poppet, a spirit or  ancestor doll which, while finite, somehow opens out into infinitude and transcendence. The word “poppet” comes from the Middle Ages in England, originally meaning small doll or child -and it is still in use today as a name of endearment as well as meaning a little magical doll. Both the use and meaning of poppets and puppets are deeply intertwined. The word “puppet” originates from the Latin pupa, meaning “doll,” “girl,” or “puppet,” which evolved into the Old French poupette (little doll) and the Middle English popet. These objects are frequently used to portray beings from “another world” or the immaterial world, such as in shamanic rituals or, modernly, in fantasy media and theatrical productions that draw on folkloric and mythological themes. Their connection to the spiritual spans from the psychological to the supernatural, embodying a liminal state where inanimate matter appears possessed by an external, often uncanny, spirit or <<daimon>>. 

        In ancient Greece, Δαίμων was both divinity and destiny, used in the singular, a kind of divinity, appointed at birth, that intervenes in the destiny of humans. Its derivative to daimonion sometimes means <<the divine>>; at other times, <<the demonic>>, fatal and superhuman. Ethymologically, daimon means ‘the giver of direction or destiny’, just as the daimon, according to Heidegger, means ‘the gift of meaning’. This conjunctio of meanings conducts us towards the ‘open gift’ of the daimonic dialogue or dialectic which includes God, the logos, and the Devil, the eros. In this sense, puppets may act as a bridge between the material and immaterial worlds, embodying the “daimonic”—a force that is neither wholly good nor evil, but rather an intense, creative, and sometimes destructive, intermediate energy.  In his book Daimonic Reality, Patrick Harpur suggests that the daimonic world operates via a different kind of reality, often represented in folklore and Imagination⁴ by beings that are “other” than human, but not entirely divine: “In modern times, the daimons appear much as they have always done. They appear externally as a host of apparitions; and internally, as muses who inspire and as devils who possess us and drive us mad. As ever they appear above all in dreams”. ⁵

      In Jungian psychology, the daimon is considered a mediator, a psychopomp, a guide of the Self and towards the Self: the organising centre of the total psyche. As the archetype of Totality, the Self represents the unification of both conscious and unconscious aspects of the human psyche aiming for wholeness, balance, and the synthesis of opposites (light/shadow, masculine/feminine). Material drawn from Jung’s own life, from dreams, and from a wide spectrum of world cultural, philosophical and literary history (that he researched extensively)  has placed the daimon in between worlds. We meet the daimonic paths revealed mostly in dreams. In The Red Book (Liber Novus) Jung illustrates his own encounters with these archetypal figures, including a profound and moving relationship with his own daemon Philemon, an inner guide, and wise figure who appeared in dreams and active imagination to teach Jung about the objective nature of the psyche. During these confrontations with his psyche he realised that these figures act or move autonomously, similar to theatrical figures or projections. 

      Although Carl Jung did not dedicate an entire treatise to puppets or marionettes, he did use the word “theatre” around 500 times throughout his work and uses the metaphor of the puppet and the mask to explain fundamental psychological concepts in several parts of his Collected Works, primarily related to the archetype of the Persona and the Shadow. In Two Essays in Analytical Psychology, Vol. 7, he develops the concept of the Persona as a role that the individual plays, similar to a puppet acting according to the demands of society, not their true self. In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,Vol. 9/I, Jung discusses how archetypal forces can “take over” the personality, causing the individual to unconsciously act like a puppet. These unrecognised aspects of the personality (the Shadow archetype) can cause us to act mechanically, moved by internal puppeteers. The process of ceasing to be a puppet is to become a conscious individual. Jung called it the process of individuation, a core process of psychological development where an individual integrates conscious and unconscious aspects to become their true, whole self. In other words, when we do not consciously interact with the “daimonic” in our lives, it possesses us from behind, making us behave like “puppets on a string” to our own unconscious, and often destructive energies.  

     The daimonic is fundamentally the <<not yet realised creative force>> and the puppet acts as a vessel that allows the artist to alchemically transmute these invisible “chaotic” forces into allies. A puppet is never “just a puppet”, it is a vehicle of pure potential, a guide that compels individuals toward personal development, a catalyst for the development of their personalities. Imbued with spirits or “daimonic” energy, working with puppets explores this metaphysics, where materials also feel possessed and the world suddenly turned into a “metaphysical playroom” governed by strange, non-human entities. Because puppets have the potential of adopting any form and narrative of the collective unconscious, the art of puppeteering can be considered as a powerful tool for peacemaking and human understanding. Not only puppets function as an aesthetic language for diversity and hope, but a tool for self-affirmation of cultural and spiritual values. Puppeteering is an artform that promotes understanding through communication, empathy, and active listening. Nonetheless, due to technology live theatre is very challenging nowadays –since the amount of attention you get from a child is very limited. For this reason, as performing artists, we should find new ways to coexist with technology. Understanding the new audiences in our human essence will allow puppets to survive. In this sense, we can genuinely ask (among many other questions): How does the puppet-daimon “see” these new audiences? What is their message to them? How do they want to communicate these messages? What are they challenging in us as human beings? What do they want from us as artists? It was clear that all puppeteers on March 21st shared a mission: challenge and change our devastating and destructive reality, rescue collectivity, free society from weapons of psychological destruction, and rescue how we used to interact and play… the value of collective interaction. We can no longer burden a child with the responsibility of creating “a better future” while we consider it a residue of the past while creating indifference towards them in our present. This only creates a horror vacui in their minds, a psychological discomfort with silence or empty space, leading to a need for constant stimulation, clutter, or filling time. Constructing a society that excludes these horrors and includes the joys of participation, critical thinking, analytical thought and empathetic communication from earlier stages of life ensures dreampaths towards plenitude and peace.

      Humans are beings imbued with destiny. Every step towards the mystery of creation is an invitation and an offering to the daemon assigned to us at birth. The principle of this relationship is based on the ritual of offering our innate talents and bringing them into the light of the material world. This means losing oneself in the mystery of creativity, understanding that there is always a two-way path: the path of the daemon towards myself and the path of myself towards the daemon… Dear reader, you are encouraged to create a puppet, write a play or to simply surrender to the mystery of creativity by following your daimon. The image below is the result of my curious encounter with the art of puppeteering in March 21st, its a Lambe Lambe play called Yumeji 夢路 (Dreampath), created one week after the event. The puppet itself guided every step of the creative process, from the materials to the development of the story. You can watch the premiere through my instagram account: @the.imaginist. Below you will also find the social media accounts of some of the master puppeteers from the panel discussion. Dear friend, may you find inspiration, may you always be guided towards the direction of your dreams and may you find, as master puppeteer Carlos Converso said:  “The scenic surprise created by the hands – with so much and with so little…”.

References:

Footnotes:

1. Artistic individualism and narcissism are concepts that often intertwine in contemporary culture, especially with the rise of social media and image culture. While artistic individualism can encourage unique personal expression, artistic narcissism takes this to the extreme, turning art into an instrument of self-validation and focusing the work exclusively on the “ego”. ↩︎
2. Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (El mito del eterno retorno), p. 62. ↩︎
3. From a historical point of view, this language of forms actually originates from representations, symbols, signs, aids, and magical practices. ↩︎
4. According to Patrick Harpur in The Philosophers’ Secret Fire, we should approach the concepts Soul of the World (Anima Mundi), the soul and the Imagination as analogous, models of the same daimonic reality, p. 38. ↩︎
5. ibid. ↩︎

Instagram accounts of some of the master puppeteers mentioned above:

Carlos Converso: @mano.y.contramano 

Teatro Lola Cueto:@teatrololacueto298 

Alejandro Jara: @titeroterapia

Carmen Luna: @marionetasdelaesquina 

Books:

Eliade, Mircea. (2023). El mito del eterno retorno. España: Alianza editorial.

Eliade, Mircea. (2025). Lo sagrado y lo profano. México: Ediciones Culturales Paidós.

Harpur, Patrick. (2024). Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld. United States: Pine Winds Press. 

Harpur, Patrick. (2002). The Philosophers’ Secret Fire. United States: Penguin Books.

Jung, C.G. (2013). Los arquetipos y lo inconsciente colectivo. Obras completas, vol. 9/1.                                          España: Editorial Trotta.

Dos escritos sobre psicología analítica, vol.7. España: Editorial Trotta.

Ortiz-Osés, Andrés et al. (2019). Lo demónico: el duende y el daimon. Barcelona: Anthropos.

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