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Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine

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Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine (Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)
by Joseph Campbell

“Joseph Campbell brought mythology to a mass audience. His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics.

While Campbell’s work reached wide and deep as he covered the world’s great mythological traditions, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs.

In this provocative volume, editor Safron Rossi—a goddess studies scholar, professor of mythology, and curator of collections at Opus Archives, which holds the Joseph Campbell archival manuscript collection and personal library—collects these lectures for the first time. In them, Campbell traces the evolution of the feminine divine from one Great Goddess to many, from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance. He sheds new light on classical motifs and reveals how the feminine divine symbolizes the archetypal energies of transformation, initiation, and inspiration.”

Ego and Archetype – Edward Edinger

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Ego and Archetype
by Edward Edinger

This book is about the individual’s journey to psychological wholeness, known in analytical psychology as the process of individuation. Edward Edinger traces the stages in this process and relates them to the search for meaning through encounters with symbolism in religion, myth, dreams, and art. For contemporary men and women, Edinger believes, the encounter with the self is equivalent to the discovery of God. The result of the dialogue between the ego and the archetypal image of God is an experience that dramatically changes the individual’s worldview and makes possible a new and more meaningful way of life.

Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism

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Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy (Reality of the Psyche Series)
by Edward Edinger

“Edinger has greatly enriched my understanding of psychology through the avenue of alchemy. No other contribution has been as helpful as this for revealing, in a word, the anatomy of the psyche and how it applies to where one is in his or her process. This is a significant amplification and extension of Jung’s work. Two hundred years from now, it will still be a useful handbook and an inspiring aid to those who care about individuation”. — Psychological Perspectives

A Revelation of Science

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An excerpt by Wade Davis

Let me share yet another amazing revelation of science. It’s the moon shot of this generation. Like that first vision of the Earth from space, it too will be remembered for a thousand years. Indeed nothing in our lifetimes has done more to liberate humanity from the parochial tyrannies that have haunted us since the birth of memory.

It also came about at the end of a long voyage of discovery, a journey into the very fiber of our beings. Over the last decade geneticists have proved to be true something that philosophers have always dreamed. We are all literally brothers and sisters. Studies of the human genome have left no doubt that the genetic endowment of humanity is a single continuum. Race is an utter fiction. We are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all descendants of a relatively small number of individuals who walked out of Africa some 60,000 years ago and then, on a journey that lasted 40,000 years, some 2500 generations, carried the human spirit to every corner of the habitable world.

But here is the amazing idea. If we are all cut from the same fabric of life, then by definition we all share essentially the same mental acuity, the same raw genius. So whether this intellectual potential is exercised through technological innovation, as has been the great achievement of the West, or through the untangling of complex threads of memory inherent in a myth, a priority of many other peoples in the world, is simply a matter of choice and orientation, adaptive insights and cultural emphasis.

There is no hierarchy of progress in the history of culture, no Social Darwinian ladder to success. The Victorian notion of the primitive and the civilized, with European industrial society sitting proudly at the apex of a pyramid of advancement that widens at the base to the so-called primitives of the world has been thoroughly discredited. The brilliance of scientific research, the revelations of modern genetics, has affirmed in an astonishing way the essential connectedness of humanity.

The other peoples of the world are not failed attempts to be us, failed attempts to be modern. They are unique expressions of the human imagination and heart, unique answers to a fundamental question. What does it mean to be human and alive? When asked that question they respond in 7000 different voices, and these collectively comprise our human repertoire for dealing with all the challenges that will confront us as a species even as we continue this never ending journey.”

A Bridge on Borneo

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An excerpt by Wade Davis

Let me tell you a story that begins on a bridge in Borneo, close to dusk with thunder over the valley and the forest alive with the electrifying roar of black cicadas. I was sitting by a fire with an old friend, Asik Nyelit, headman of the Ubong River Penan, one of the last nomadic people.

The rains, which had pounded the forest all afternoon, had stopped and the light of a partial moon filtered through the branches of the canopy. Earlier in the day Asik had killed a barking deer. Its head roasted in the coals.

At one point Asik looked up from the fire, took notice of the moon and quietly asked me if it was true that people had actually journeyed there, only to return with baskets full of dirt. If that was all they had found, why had they bothered to go? How long had it taken, and what kind of transport had they had?

It was difficult to explain to a man who kindled fire with flint and whose total possessions amounted to a few ragged clothes, blowpipe and quiver of poisoned darts, rattan sleeping mat and basket, knife, axe, two dogs and three monkeys- a space program that had consumed the energy of a nation and, at a cost of nearly a trillion dollars, placed 12 men on the moon.

Or the fact that over the course of six missions, they had traveled 1.5 billion miles and indeed brought back nothing but rocks and lunar dust, 828 pounds altogether.

Asik’s question provoked the timeless answer. The true purpose of the space journeys, or at least their most profound and lasting consequence, lay not in wealth secured but in a vision realized, a shift in perspective that would change our lives forever.

The seminal moment came on Christmas Eve, 1968, when Apollo 8 emerged from the dark side of the moon to see rising over its surface not a sunrise but the Earth itself ascendant, a small and fragile planet, floating in the velvet void of space. This image more than any amount of scientific data showed us that our planet is a finite place, a single interactive sphere of life, a living organism composed of air, water, wind and soil. This revelation, only made possible by the brilliance of science, sparked a paradigm shift that people will be speaking about for the rest of history. Almost immediately we began to think in new ways. Just imagine. Thirty years ago simply getting people to stop throwing garbage out of a car window was a great environmental victory. No one spoke of the biosphere or biodiversity; now these terms are part of the vocabulary of school children.

Almost immediately we began to think in new ways. Just imagine. Thirty years ago simply getting people to stop throwing garbage out of a car window was a great environmental victory. No one spoke of the biosphere or biodiversity; now these terms are part of the vocabulary of school children.

Like a great wave of hope, this energy of illumination, made possible by the space program, spread everywhere. So many positive things have happened in the intervening years. In little more than a generation, women have gone from the kitchen to the boardroom, gay people from the closet to the altar, African Americans from the back door and the woodshed to the White House.

What’s not to love about a country and a world capable of such scientific genius, such cultural capacity for change and renewal?

Stephanie Jourdan – Astrologer, Archetypal

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Stephanie 2011Stephanie has had a private practice as an astrologer and archetypal therapist since 1987. She was prompted to change careers by a pivotal reading from a trance channel in 1981. She sold her advertising agency and went back to school to study clinical hypnotherapy, Jungian psychology and astrology. She is co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide Astrology Dictionary published by Penguin, 2010, which received rave reviews. Her articles have appeared in numerous publications for more than 20 years. She was a regular guest on The Other Side, an NBC Daytime show about the paranormal that aired in 1994 through 1995. She has additional certifications in Neuro Linguistic Programming, Inner Guide Initiation, Medical Hypnotherapy, Aromatherapy, and Gem Elixir Therapy. She is currently writing a comprehensive book about the archetypal natures of gemstones and minerals.”

 

Northern Lights – Beauty and Science

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The following photos were taken of the Aurora Borealis –known to many as the “Northern Lights” over Ireland which occurred at the end of February 2014. The Aurora Borealis provided viewers with a rare and spectacular display over parts of the UK, from the north of Scotland to as far south as Essex and Gloucestershire.

Northern Lights 1

Northern Lights 2