Tag: jung

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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Rick Alexander

Rick’s presentation is called “Tantra and the Erotic Heart of Individuation”

For Carl Jung, the chakra system represents a symbolic theory of the psyche, displaying its evolution as it moves through various levels of consciousness. While the west tends to associate psyche solely with the intellect or mind, Kundalini presents an image of psyche that is not only spread throughout the body, but even reaches beyond it. This puts the western-minded person in a precarious situation. “We are confronted with a paradox; for us consciousness is located high up, in the ajna chakra, so to speak, and yet muladhara, our reality, lies in the lowest chakra” (Jung, Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, 60). To further complicate the matter, Jung understood the level of consciousness most associated with individuation, the goal of his analytical psychology, as occurring at the anahata (heart) chakra. Within each person then, lies an inherent division that must be reconciled in order to “become whole.” This requires Eros—an embodied relational capacity wherein our own longing can be seen as the driving force toward individuation—bringing disparate elements of the psyche together in a sacred marriage.

The Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra, a collection of sutras that originate in Kashmir, India circa 800 CE, offers additional Tantric images by which one can imagine the work of psychic development. It is a conversation between lovers, Shiva and Shakti, who have been separated since creation and who long for reconciliation in the human heart. Here, the body itself is imagined as a container where the original cosmogonic romance is recapitulated. This presentation dreams forward the dialogue between Tantra and Jungian psychology, exploring its implications on the body, the development of the personality, and ultimately, one’s place within the cosmic order itself.

About Rick

Rick Alexander is an author, speaker, and coach. He is also currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Pacifica Graduate Institute where he studies comparative mythology and depth psychology, following the path of thinkers like Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. His written material, lectures, and personal client work draw heavily from contemplative spiritual traditions of the east and west and are centered in depth and archetypal psychology. He speaks and writes predominantly on psychological wellness, the Hero’s Journey, and the quest to find meaning in life. Recently, he taught workshops and lectured for organizations around the world including the United States Air Force and Bell Canada, as well as for specialized retreats, private events, and academic conferences.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Kirsten Ellen Johnsen, PhD

Kirsten’s talk is called “Unsettling our Understandings of Place”

What does it mean to “understand place?” I suggest it is a position of humility and reception. The land holds real spiritual power. The places we live contain and embody ancestral personality. To be in true relationship with place is to recognize the independence of these personalities and ancestries: it is to respect their otherness and agency.

Jung dreamt of a descent through the layers of a house and down through the sediments of the earth below as a way to connect with ancestral and archetypal energies. After visiting America, he noted how white settlers faced a gap in this descent, owing to the discontinuity of ancestry on the land. Several contemporary Jungian scholars also recognize the cultural grief and confusion that settler cultures experience due to ancestral discontinuity, and its deleterious historical effects on both settlers and indigenous peoples.

This workshop is oriented toward the settler-colonial experience. It will discuss the ancestral gap that Jung identified and address how to navigate it with consciousness, compassion, and commitment to counter oppressions.

About Kirsten

Kirsten Ellen Johnsen lives in relationship with Northern Pomo land in what is now known as Mendocino County. The life-journey this land has asked her to undertake has led her into honest reckoning with deep ancestry. She holds a PhD in Mythology and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Will Linn and Andre (AJ) Fleuridas

Will and AJ’s talk is called “Healing Journey and Return”

By studying the myths we see in art, we can better understand the myths we experience in our lives and in our culture. Could there be a way to use this deeper understanding to engage our cultural and personal myths and to heal them?  

Where Eliade describes the renewal of a culture as dependent on the re-enactment of its creation myth, Jung sees the renewal of self as dependent on the integration of repressed other. This presentation argues that the redemption of inner and collective wastelands depends on the living out of a new myth that is, at once, a renewal of the original creation myth AND an integration of repressed other. In a search for healing threads through the pandemic, this talk seeks to address the creation myths we are reliving, the otherness we are integrating, the wasteland(s) we are attempting to redeem and the new myths we are starting to tell.

This multimedia, interactive presentation will utilize musicmaking, video, written media, interactive webpages, writing prompts, and reflection to offer a grab-bag of tools attendees might use to recognise and heal personal and cultural myths.  

About Will and AJ

Will Linn, Ph.D. is the founder of Mythouse.org and the General Education Department at Hussian College in LA Center Studios, where he teaches mythology, storytelling and philosophy. Will has appeared in several documentaries and TV series. He is the co-creator of a radio show for the Santa Barbara News-Press called Mythosophia, and he co-hosts the Myth Salon. His collaborators include many of the world’s leading mythologists and story experts. After working for the Joseph Campbell Foundation in a variety of roles for seven years, he supports musicians, filmmakers and brands on the development of their stories.

AJ Fleuridas is the head of technology at Mythouse.org, with experience mediamaking, educating, and building technical systems. His web-dev, media-making, and communication-tech skills have brought him the fortune of working with leaders across the planet with the purpose of changing the world of education and of storytelling. Some highlights include working to innovate technology, media, and education with the Global Schools Alliance in New Zealand, Autens in Denmark, Liger Leadership Academy in Phnom Penh, the city of Helsinki, and HundrEd. 

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2020 welcomes J. Emile Moss

J. Emile’s talk is called, “Psychic Reality Lost & Found: Evocations in Language and Vision”

The term “psychic” is as fraught as it is interesting: connoting both the neon-lit side street phenomenon of the tarot card reader as well as the complex conceptions of the human psyche found in the psychological tradition, that which is psychic draws a huge range of associations and intellectual responses. C.G. Jung famously asserted that “only psychic existence is immediately verifiable. To the extent that the world does not assume the form of a psychic image, it is virtually non-existent.” In essence, all that we perceive is psychic reality. Through the diverse lenses of divinatory poetics, new comparative mysticism, and depth psychological thought, this presentation begins to explore the primacy of psychic reality and calls for the necessary reinstantiation of the psychic as a broad mode of conception.

About J. Emile

J. Emile Moss is an interdisciplinary poet, musician, mythologist, educator and psychospiritual intuitive based in Portland, Oregon. The J. is for Jesse (they/them, he/him). Jesse received an MA in the study of Mythology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, as well as a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They are currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Pacifica exploring the jazz musician Sun Ra’s personal mythology. At the core of Jesse’s work is the belief in the deep power of the psyche, the guidance of dreams, the living force of language and poesis, and the revelatory capabilities of narrative – both personal and collective. 

2020 Mythologium program