The concept of the ‘Hero’s Journey’, coined by American mythologist Joseph Campbell, has been profoundly influential, but it has also been subject to many criticisms. In response to those criticisms, in my 2018 book, The Enchanted Life, I suggested that the time of the Hero is over, and proposed instead the concept of the ‘post-heroic journey’.

Sharon Blackie, Ph.D., M.A., FRSA. is an award-winning writer, psychologist and mythologist, with degrees in behavioral neuroscience, creative writing and Celtic studies. Her many, highly acclaimed books plus courses, lectures and workshops are focused on the development of the mythic imagination, and on the relevance of myths, fairy tales and folk traditions to the personal, cultural and environmental problems we face today. Her word-of mouth bestselling nonfiction book, If Women Rose Rooted, offers up a new Heroine’s Journey for this challenging age of social and ecological crisis.

Sharon was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2022, and has taught and lectured at academic institutions, Jungian organizations, retreat centers and cultural festivals around the world. Her newest book, Wise Women: Myths and Folklore in Celebration of Older Women, was published by Virago just last year (2024). She invites you to join her at, The Art of Enchantment, a Top 10 Literature Substack: www.sharonblackie.net

The artist, the alchemist/magician, and the activist are distinct archetypal manifestations, yet their patternings merge in a powerful hybridity that blurs distinctions and challenges perceptions of the nature of creativity and its power to reveal and transform. This talk will highlight the work of contemporary creator/theorist/activists who exhibit this type of hybridity alongside the work of C.G. Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz, and James Hillman. The more esoteric writings and practices of these three depth psychological icons offer revelatory insights into psyche, matter, and creative processes; insights that hold tremendous value not only for those who identify as creative individuals, but for anyone called to a cocreative/co operative and activist relationship with nature, society, and the cosmos.

Dr. Mary Antonia Wood is a visual artist, writer, and Chair of the M.A. Depth Psychology & Creativity Program with emphasis in the Arts and Humanities at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. She completed an M.A. and Ph.D. in Mythological Studies with emphasis in Depth Psychology, also at Pacifica, and an earlier BFA focused on visual art at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. She is the author of, The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create. She resides in Santa Barbara, CA and mentors creative individuals via talismanmentoring.com.

In this lecture, we will discover the embodied transformational process of body/soul/spirit that engaged the alchemists for centuries. This was an era before the split between science, physical healing, and spirituality, when the body was not relegated to the shadow. For them nature was animated and an ally. In their laboratories, they communed with the souls and spirits of the metals, planets, animals, plants, and cosmos. The goal was to find the philosopher’s gold which is the totality of wholeness or individuation that Jung describes. It was an embodied process not an ascension out of the body.

This presentation will take us into the world of the alchemist through ideas, images, case material, and the imaginal realm. Theirs was an earth-.based journey to enlightenment.

Erica Lorentz, MEd, LPC, Diplomate Jungian Analyst (IAAP) is a training analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute of New England where she has served on the Training Board. She has been an adjunct faculty at Antioch New England Graduate School of Professional Psychology, and a training analyst with the Inter-regional Society of Jungian Analysts. Pacifica Radio and the Jung Platform have featured her work, and her lectures can be found on YouTube. She is finishing a book entitled, Body as Shadow: Jung’s Embodied Individuation Process. Her area of expertise is working with the embodied mythopoetic process in analysis and the inter-active field. Her initiation into Jung’s Embodied Active Imagination Process started in 1975 when she began studying Authentic Movement with Janet Adler.

It’s been roughly 2 millennia since the death of the great god Pan – the only god in the Greek pantheon to die. Pan’s death heralded the demise of a polytheistic consciousness rooted in the anima mundi and marked the ascension of a monotheistic, patriarchal order that considered the earth as separate from the sacred. The implications of this shift are coming into alarming focus as we reach global tipping points in the life-sustaining balance of the earth’s ecological systems. In this time of great uncertainty, our individual and collective psyches are under immense pressure, resulting in pervasive anxiety and sometimes panic – areas that fall within Pan’s domain. Through exploring the themes of madness and wildness within Pan’s mythology, we discern deeply embedded self-regulatory patterns emergent in constellated experiences of fear and desire. Pan, god of the periphery and a symbol for untamed wilderness, can help us understand our responses to existential threats and integrate a different consciousness that moves us toward a greater relatedness to each other, our own nature, and the earth.

Ryan J. Maher, MA, LMHC, is a psychotherapist, writer, and presenter. He is a graduate of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology where he studied clinical counseling with a focus on trauma. His interests include dreamwork, liminality, and depth/relational approaches to psychotherapy. He has appeared on the Myth Salon and the podcast Jung in the World. In 2018, he completed a certificate program in Jungian Psychotherapy through the Jung Institute of Chicago where he is an affiliate member. Ryan is also a member of the National Board of Certified Counselors, The Breath Network, and the Jungian Psychotherapists Association. Correspondence: ryan@theinnerworldtherapy.com

Poseidon is best known as the fierce and temperamental god of the sea, angry, vengeful, causing sea storms and earthquakes. But he was much more, and his rich mythology and history is largely unknown. Poseidon was a king god before Zeus, an archaic chthonic god, a source of primordial energies, a father figure, a savior and protector as well as destroyer. He was of immense importance in shaping the ancient world and our own. We have been subjects and victims of a fierce patriarchy for millennia and Poseidon was part of its father god foundation that we continue to expose and work to heal today. Through myth, collective, family, and personal histories, meditation, and guided imagery, we will explore the full complexity of Poseidon’s mythology and archetypal nature. We will discover the ways this archetype has surfaced in our personal and collective lives and histories, how to integrate it, and how to shape Poseidon’s primal and instinctual energies for growth and creativity. This program introduces my new book, Passage to Poros: In the Sanctuary of the God of the Sea, forthcoming from Inner Traditions.

Edward Tick, Ph.D., is an archetypal psychotherapist, author, educator, international pilgrimage guide, and advisor to the Jung Association of Western Mass. An expert on ancient Greece and the origins of medicine and psychotherapy in the Asklepian tradition, his books The Practice of Dream Healing, War and the Soul, and Soul Medicine, are modern classics. His next book, premiering tonight, reports on Ed’s encounters and explorations of the Poseidon archetype.

Ed has pioneered archetypal and culturally based healing for over forty years and his work is renowned in the holistic healing of war trauma. In addition to private practice, Ed works in Greece and Viet Nam on holistic and spiritually based healing and the restoration of ancient practices. He has led two dozen healing pilgrimages to Greece, nineteen to Viet Nam, and works by zoom in Russia and Ukraine. Author of eight previous books including the award winning War and the Soul, Ed uses the Greek tradition extensively in healing, writing, and teaching.

Given current political polarization and raging culture wars across the United States, the task of interrogating conscious and unconscious aspects of the national psyche has become ever more pressing. The newly released book of collected essays, Re-Visioning the American Psyche: Jungian, Archetypal, and Mythological Reflections, seeks to respond to this dire need.

In this panel discussion, the book’s editor Ipek S. Burnett will be joined by three authors who contributed to the volume: Edward Tick, Dennis Patrick Slattery, and Glen Slater. Together, they will offer a close look at the American psyche by examining some of its most prominent myths, images, and archetypal fantasies. Using various interpretative processes—from psychoanalytic to literary—they will reflect on pressing matters including intergenerational trauma due to colonialism and racism, the psychological cost of wars and violence, and the emotional dimensions of political polarization. Beholding the tensions and complexity of the American psyche to illuminate the eclipsed corners and unconscious realities within it, the panelists will provide insights into the narratives, voices, and images that are often overlooked by dominant ideologies. As with the book itself, their discussions will affirm the importance of critical thinking and imagination in the service of collective self-knowledge and transformation.

Ipek S. Burnett, Ph.D., is a Turkish-American author who provides a psychological critique of social, cultural, and political issues. She is the author of, A Jungian Inquiry into the American Psyche: The Violence of Innocence (Routledge, 2020), the editor of Re-Visioning the American Psyche: Jungian, Archetypal, and Mythological Reflections (Routledge, 2023), and a contributing writer at CounterPunch. In Turkey, she is the author of two published novels. Burnett is the Chair of Human Rights Watch’s San Francisco Executive Committee and serves on the boards of nonprofit organizations and foundations that specialize in social justice, human rights, and democracy.

Glen Slater, Ph.D., has taught for over twenty-five years at Pacifica Graduate Institute where he is currently the Associate Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Psychology Program. He has written articles and book chapters for Jungian publications, edited the third volume of, James Hillman’s Uniform Edition, Senex and Puer (Spring Publications, 2005) and co-edited the essay collection, Varieties of Mythic Experience (Daimon-Verlag, 2008). His research and writing interests concern Jung and film, the psychology of religion, and depth psychology and technology. His book, Jung vs. Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age (Winter Press/Spring Publications) was published in January, 2024.

Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D., has taught for 58 years, years, the last 27 in the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, where he is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He is also a Core Faculty Member at Jung Platform. He is the author, co-author, editor or coeditor of 33 volumes, including 7 volumes of poetry and one co-authored novel. His recent titles include the award-winning, Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit, co-authored with Deborah Ann Quibell and Jennifer Leigh Selig, and The Way of Myth: Stories’ Subtle Wisdom. His most current book is The Fictions in Our Convictions: Essays on the Cultural Imagination. He has written over 200 articles, book reviews and op-ed pieces. For two years he taught student inmates in a California prison by mail, using Campbell’s, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. www.dennispatrickslattery.com

Edward Tick, Ph.D., is an archetypal psychotherapist, author, educator, and international journey guide. An expert on ancient Greece and the origins of medicine and psychotherapy in the Asklepian tradition, his book, The Practice of Dream Healing is a modern classic. Director Emeritus of Soldier’s Heart, Inc., he also has pioneered archetypal and culturally-based healing with veterans and trauma survivors for over 40 years. In addition to his private practice, Dr. Tick works in Greece, Viet Nam, and internationally on holistic and spiritually-based healing and the restoration of ancient practices. He has led 20 healing pilgrimages to Greece and 19 to Viet Nam. He is the author of seven previous books including the award-winning, War and the Soul. He uses the Greek tradition extensively in healing, writing, and teaching.

Like all archetypal powers deep within the human psyche, Wotan (sometimes called Odin) can seize individuals and infect entire nations. Carl Jung describes in his essay, written in 1936, how Wotan occupied the German people, giving rise to Hitler and the Nazi conquest of that country. With attention to Jung’s description of Wotan’s power to dominate and destroy, we will consider how such an archetypal power may disrupt our lives at this present time, evoking the archetype of war and the authoritarian impulse.

Randall Mishoe is a graduate of the CG Jung Institute of New England, following graduate studies at Harvard University, Andover Newton Theological School, and clinical training at Boston City Hospital as well as the Middleton Pastoral Counseling Center that provided services to all persons regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, gender identity, cultural background, and sexual orientation. More information is provided at the website, randallmishoe.com.

Who wounds? Who heals?
We will sit together tonight, on the cusp of a profound Presidential election, to contemplate with the support of dreams, myth, art, and self-reflection, this great paradox. What happens when we accept and bear this dynamic tension?

Penelope Tarasuk, Ph.D., is a Jungian Analyst (Jung Institute Boston,1988). She has served on the boards of the C.G. Jung Institute NE Training Program and the Jung Association of Western MA. She teaches, supervises, consults with those integrating non-ordinary experiences, practices Tibetan Buddhism, wanders in nature, and is a lifelong artist. Her book, Polishing The Bones (Muswell Hill Press, UK), is the story of a Jungian analysis that included assisting in the patient’s death. She was a consultant and volunteer at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter and Humane Society for six years. She is certified in Grof Holotropic Breathwork and, most recently, in Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy and Research with the CA Institute of Integral Studies. Penelope has a private practice in South Deerfield, MA.