Meeting the Other: Garden As Alembic by Patricia Damery

“Every man should have his own plot of land” Jung claimed,“ so that the instincts can come to life again.” The intimacy afforded by gardening and farming effects us as much as the land. This talk will discuss some of the common principles of analytical psychology and Biodynamic agriculture, both firmly embedded in the scientific and philosophical works of Goethe. Goethe was a great advocate of unity in diversity, of developing the capacity to embrace the totality of a being, and thereby its essence. Only through this meditative process can we come to know the animating force of a being. We will experiment with some of Goethe’s ideas and meditation techniques in communicating with some of the living plants in Gareth and Ruth’s garden.

An analyst member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and practices in Napa, CA, Patricia Damery is the author of the just published: Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation. Patricia grew up in the rural Midwest and witnessed the demise of the family farm through the aggressive practices of agribusiness. With her husband Donald, she has farmed biodynamically for ten years. Her chapter, “Shamanic States in Our Lives and in Analytic Practice” appeared in The Sacred Heritage: The Influence of Shamanism on Analytical Psychology, edited by Donald Sandner and Steven Wong, and her articles and poetry in the San Francisco Library Journal, Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche, Psychological Perspectives, and Biodynamics: Working for Social Change Through Agriculture.