Art for Healing: Guided Painting Then and Now

In this major statement on art and healing, Dr. John Diamond reveals his unique approach. At its root are the twin concepts of Guidance – that everything we do, including all creativity, is guided from the Spirit World – and matrophilia, the love of the mother, the ultimate basis of all health. These two aspects are exemplified in Paleolithic cave art created by painter-shamans for the purpose of healing.

“I can in my mind very clearly see the ancient sufferers, twenty or thirty thousand years ago, stumbling through the passageways in almost total darkness, climbing up and down all sorts of makeshift ladders, and suddenly emerging into a cave filled with the most incredible paintings,” writes Dr. Diamond. “They would be overwhelmed by what had been done through, not by, the shamans. They would become aware of a completely different world – the World of Spirit – and would see, would feel, nothing but matrophilia in the cave. And that was its healing.”

Brilliantly integrating an astonishing array of learning, from the spiritual to the psychological, from ancient oriental art to Jackson Pollock, and punctuated throughout by original insights, Art for Healing offers an entirely new appreciation of art, and by extension all human creativity, as a modality for holistic health.