Healing and Archetypes

Marqués de Riscal Hotel Healing and Archetypes This last Sunday the Curriculum Committee of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco offered an intramural event for members and candidates on Contemporary Issues in Archetypal Theory in which several members and board members presented different perspectives. The concept of “archetype” is an ancient one with… Read more »

Honoring the Ancestors: Jane and Jo Wheelwright, Part Four

Honoring the Ancestors: Jane and Jo Wheelwright, Part Four Twenty four years ago this fall, my candidate group began our training to become Jungian analysts. We were the last group to meet with Jo and Jane Wheelwright, some of the first generation analysts from our Institute, meaning that they were analyzed by Jung. They were also… Read more »

Blessed Greenness

 Detail of Gaia, Ceramic Piece by Genevieve Haven Blessed Greenness Carl Jung defines the benedicta viriditas, “blessed greenness,” as …the state of someone who, in his wanderings among the mazes of his psychic transformation, comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles him to his apparent loneliness. In communing with himself he finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but… Read more »

Demeter’s Grief: Reflections on Our Evolution

No wonder she was tempted! Demeter’s Grief: Reflections on Our Evolution Yes, she was a great Goddess, that Medium of a tone of consciousness, and boy, was she pissed! Her daughter Persephone had been abducted by Pluto into Hades and the Underworld. In her fury, Demeter stopped everything from growing until she got Persephone back…. Read more »

Listening to the Cosmos: Crystallization Period

Listening to the Cosmos: Crystallization Period     Beginning the 15th of January, we enter what, in Biodynamic Agriculture, is called the Crystallization Period. In this time of fallowness the earth is quiet and most receptive to the energies of the cosmos, a time receptiveness is critically important. For the ground of my psyche, it… Read more »

On Seeds and Chaos

Black Oak Seed     Rudolf Steiner stated that when matter’s complexity is taken to its most ultimate degree (as in the seed), it disintegrates, and chaos ensues. Carl Jung would call this enantiodromia: the tendency to change into the opposite, “especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development” (New… Read more »

Biodynamic Prep 507: Challenges of Valerian

Valerian in our garden. Biodynamic Prep 507: Challenges of Valerian Until I was well into my Jungian analysis and had personally experienced the paradox of dark light, I could not have understood the mystery of valerian. We planted the seeds in our garden, not knowing the looks of the plant. When the seeds vigorously sprouted and… Read more »

The Smell of the Living Earth

The Smell of the Living Earth Once my sister and I dug a “raccoon trap” in the fall stubble of my father’s corn field, a 3’ by 4’ hole about 3’ deep. In the bottom we placed marshmallows and then disguised the hole with dried corn stalks. The only thing we ever “caught” was the… Read more »