Drinking Lightning is a fascinating, personal exploration of the relationship between art, creativity, and spirituality. Philip Ruvinov-Jacobson is both a writer and an artist--a bridge-builder between many different worlds. Here, he describes his encounters with a number of remarkable creative mystics and artist who, like him, have sought to explore the furthest boundaries of human experience--entering transpersonal domains associated with healing visions and archetypal dreams.

During the early 1970s, Rubinov-Jacobson studied painting with the renowned artist Ernst Fuchs--internationally acknowledged as the founder of Viennese Fantastic Realism--and was introduced to a group of creative thinkers whom Fuchs referred to as 'a Secret Lodge of Visionary Artists'. Rubinov-Jacobson later worked with other spiritual teachers representing various wisdom traditions from both East and West. Collectively, these visionary encounters would provide a basis for the exploration of art and creativity--opening a path which resonated with the writer's deepest intuitions, while also offering a revelatory and unifying vision of human spirituality.

Philip Rubinov-Jacobson provides us here with a provocative overview of the problems, passions, and pathways of the creative process, synthesizing insights from his own life experience with an enthralling and sometimes irreverent analysis of the nature of the artistic temperatment, the role of the artist within the community, and the relationship of art to spirituality.

Passionately written--combining wisdom and inspiration with biting wit and humor--Drinking Lightning invites us to explore dimensions of human creativity which have long been neglected or forgotten. It is a book which helps to enlarge our understanding and belief in our own inherent creative potentials, providing us with an inspired sense of spiritual direction in both art and life.