is a quarterly magazine of Pacifica Extension and International Studies
Loralee M. Scott, Vice President Institutional Advancement and Lifelong Learning, Executive Editor
Carolyn Vega, PGI Extension Associate Director & Events Management, Co-Editor
Angela Wood, Co-Editor
Joyce Familara, Assistant Editor
Many thanks to Mary Antonia Wood, Ph D for letting us feature her art "Anima I " (Collage, drawing, and Venetian plaster on panel, 2023) on the cover.
Dear Pacifica Community Members and Lifelong learners,
We are living in a historical moment of the archetypal strongman. In the US and around the globe, this archetypal motif of control and forceful dominance continues to plant its leaden foot upon the neck of individual freedoms and democratic principles. Now, perhaps more than ever before, we need an understanding of the anima as that dynamic energy that Carl Jung described as “the archetype of life itself.”
This second edition of Insights offers creative and scholarly illustrations from Pacifica faculty, alumni, and students of the anima as more than just the feminine component of a man’s psyche, but a powerful force that can mediate between the unconscious and the conscious in moving both the individual and the collective towards transformational growth. One of the things you may note as you read through this issue is the uniqueness of each contributing scholar’s explication of the anima. The anima refuses to be reduced to simple definitions or formulas. While there are archetypal constants that enable us to recognize her contours throughout history, the anima insists on being uniquely engaged with rather than formulaically defined
In much of literature, anima presents as the monstrous feminine, the crazy woman in the attic, who drives the storyline forward. We can read in The Red Book of Jung’s efforts to integrate his own anima as he struggles to understand and accept Salome, yet another historically transmogrified symbolic feminine. History offers us a powerful example of the transformative force of the anima in the figure ofEnheduanna, the first known author of the written word, who used her storytelling genius to unify two warring kingdoms
In her book, The Way of Individuation, Jolande Jacobi wrote that individuation is about learning how to follow the “Self” in its dance. Recognizing rather than fearing, engaging with rather than running from the anima is an essential part of our journey of individuation. My hope is that rather than the monster hidden in the attic, we can collectively come to recognize anima as the music that compels us to get out of our chairs of complacency and rigidity, of polarization and division, and begin to dance in the margins
Thank you to each of the wonderful scholars who contributed to this issue of Insights and to our members and readers.
Dancing with you,
Loralee M. Scott, MFA
Pacifica Vice President of Institutional Advancement and Lifelong Learning
[1] The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious (Carl Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 7, para. 391)
Carolyn Vega, MA is Associate Director of Pacifica Extension and International Studies She combines her scholarship as a Pacifica Humanities alumna, experience with diverse communities, and creative spirit to foster engaging and inclusive learning environments “Dancing between thresholds” by Carolyn is a 9"x 12" collage, plaster on panel, 2020
Contemporary Reflections of the Anima
by Carolyn Vega
The Latin word for soul, the Jungian term anima has traditionally been associated with qualities such as intuition, emotion, and receptivity. In today’s world, where traditional norms are being challenged and redefined, the anima has taken on a multifaced and nuanced significance. I believe that the anima of today represents the fluid, adaptive, and deeply personal aspects of our psyches that are an expression of something larger than ourselves. In this sense, the anima has become a symbol of the collective longing for wholeness, integration, and balance It reminds us that our true nature is not fixed, but instead a vital interactivity of opposites in our personal psyches as well as the collective psyche
As we continue to navigate the complexities of life, the anima offers us a powerful reminder of the importance of embracing our contradictions, listening to our intuition, and cultivating a deeper sense of empathy and compassion.
Soul, Sister, Serpent
Discussing Anima with Mary A. Wood, Ph.D.
Angela Borda: Jung is currently criticized for reducing the anima down to a feminine component within the psyche of men, to such a degree that “anima” is a term that some depth psychologists prefer to avoid altogether Yet you’ve pointed out that journal entries of Jung’s that were only recently published show him in dialog with Soul, giving agency to the imaginal, to the Soul or anima, as a feminine sentience that he had access to but did not control Have we misunderstood Jung’s ideas on the anima?
Mary A. Wood: Yes, we’ve misunderstood and limited the range of manifestations of this archetypal force that Jung called “anima,” but also would sometimes refer to as soul and psyche. Attempting to strictly define and separate these inherently mysterious and overlapping terms has contributed to confining the anima to only one type of expression a contrasexual expression of male interiority that we find dated today. Even though Jung did describe this role as an aspect of anima, he also offered a myriad of other roles. This continued limitation is somewhat puzzling as fifty years have passed since archetypal psychologist, James Hillman released the book, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion
In the 1970’s and 80’s, Hillman was wrestling with the nature of this thing called “anima” and was rather obsessed with tracking down the multitude of expressions of anima in Jung’s vast body of writings, including his letters It’s interesting to realize that Hillman’s inquiries occurred before scholars and practitioners like himself had access to either Jung’s Liber Novus/Red Book or his earlier Black Books. Hillman’s book features a clever layout with selected passages from Jung on the left-hand side of each spread, accompanied by Hillman’s commentary on the right. I love that Hillman approached anima with a combination of curiosity, rigor, playfulness, and reverence, as he followed the trail of anima’s relationship to eros, the feminine, psyche, and polarity with animus, among other factors. Two of the most important revelations for me are first, the idea of anima as a mediatrix or guide of the unknown, and secondly, anima as part of a syzygy or tandem with animus–anima as only one half of an inseparable polarity like yin and yang
If as Jung suggested, anima is “the archetype of life itself,” then we’re talking about a multifaceted, kaleidoscopic power beyond any notions of gender or ownership It’s also helpful to look to modern words such as “animate,” and “animation” to underscore Jung’s notions of what the anima is, and does: It enlivens, it gives life, it’s the life force
Angela: You point out that Hillman built upon the idea of the importance of dialog with images or Soul, saying, “We might as well call the unfathomable depth in the image, love, or at least say we cannot get to the soul of the image without love of the image.” I hadn’t heard this before in discussions of Hillman and the anima. Do you consider the realm of the mystical, of the heart, as more fruitful in our conception of the anima, rather than taking at face value any thoughts Hillman or Jung had about gender and the psyche?
Mary Antonia Wood. "Anima II." Collage, drawing, and Venetian plaster on panel, 2023.
Mary: First, I’d return us to the slippery nature of related, but ultimately undefinable terms such as image, soul, psyche, and anima, as they refuse to be pinned down. Hillman’s thoughts that you quoted refers to the autonomy and soulful depths of images, which are manifestations of, and the very “stuff” of psyche. Jung’s famous assertion that “image is psyche” could launch us on a much longer conversation, so let’s focus on what you noted as the realm of the mystical, the realm of the heart. One way we can describe the mystical is as the mundus imaginalis, or imaginal world, a term coined by Henry Corbin, a scholar of Islamic mysticism whose insights into imagination and the imaginal were very influential to Hillman The mundus imaginalis is a realm of imagination between the realm of matter and body, and the realm of pure spirit or the ineffable. This is the home realm of the anima as mediator/mediatrix/soul guide. For me, this is one of the most generative ways to imagine the anima: as a guide or psychopomp, a denizen of an imaginal world that is not a literal place, but nonetheless is as real and influential as our everyday reality. This middle place between matter and spirit could be called the realm of the mystical, the realm of the heart, as you intuited earlier We humans have a rich history of mystics and shamans from across cultures who’ve told us that this realm exists
“I have defined the anima as a personification of the unconscious in general, and have taken it as a bridge to the unconscious if the unconscious figures are not acknowledged as spontaneous agents, we become victims to a one-sided belief in the power of consciousness.” C. G. Jung
Angela: You discuss that Jung had many names for the Soul in his Black Books, calling her “sister,” as well as “serpent.” The serpent, as Jung described her, is a wise yet dangerous figure. How do you regard the serpent in Jung’s Black Books? Is it a figure that he created from a subconscious place, from cultural understandings of the snake as a symbol, or is it something else?
Mary: It’s a common assumption that Jung created the serpent that he described in his Black Books and Liber Novus/Red Book After what he called his “confrontation with the unconscious,” Jung was emphatic that he did not create or “make up” the figures that appeared to him they were autonomous and existed independently of him, he beheld them. Most of these figures took human form, but there was also the serpent manifestation of the Soul, who as Jung observed, combined aspects of wisdom, cunning, shapeshifting, and ever-renewing life. It’s fascinating to note that the serpent wasn’t the only form that Jung felt the anima could manifest into. There’s a passage in Volume 9i of his Collected Works where he mentioned that the anima can appear as a tiger or a bird. Indeed, there’s a scene in the Black Books where the anima separates herself into both bird and serpent. For me, it’s less important that the anima appeared as a serpent (or even a bird) and more crucial that this force is a shapeshifter extraordinaire
Angela: In your article for Quadrant, you take into account Jung’s primary female relationships and their possible effect on his ideas. What did you find in terms of the possible impact of the important relationships in his life with women?
Mary: According to his main biographer, Deirdre Bair, and to the prominent Jungian historian, Sonu Shamdasani, some of the development of the idea of the anima could have come from his wife, Emma Rauschenbach Jung, and from relationships with other influential women in his circle, such as Toni Wolff and Maria Moltzer Moltzer has been mentioned as someone who may have not only contributed to Jung’s formulation of the anima archetype, but who may have also influenced Jung’s more negative descriptions of anima; for example as a figure that is moody, jealous, critical, and controlling. These are characteristics that every human being can express from time to time, but unfortunately, they’re still associated primarily with women. By all accounts Jung was a highly charismatic and magnetic person who dominated the attention of everyone in his presence. The women in his circle, all brilliant in their own right, were oftentimes overshadowed by this enormous personality
"AnimaI"Collage,drawing,andVenetianplasteronpanel,2023byMary A Wood
Angela: Jung’s relationships with women in real life seem very different than his relationship with Soul, in which he certainly was not the larger of the two.
y y g g this same harmony of polarities in alchemy, with its evocative images of the union of sol and luna, along with the rebis, where male and female unite in a single hermaphroditic body. When we imagine the anima in this way (along with psychopomp/guide/mediator), then the assertion that anima is only a man’s inner feminine becomes much less interesting and harder to defend
Finally, when we talk about Pacifica’s motto of being in service to the anima mundi, we’re talking about the ensouled world The world’s soul doesn’t belong to a specific gender, nor does it reside inside us; rather, it is we who live within it in all its multiplicity As Jung insisted, anima is the archetype of life itself it is the life behind life.
For More on the Multifaceted Anima:
James Hillman Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion
C.G. Jung. “The Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious.” Vol. 9i of the Collected Works of C.G. Jung. See also his autobiographical memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, especially Chapter 6, “Confrontation with the Unconscious ”
Mary A Wood “The Life of the Soul: Imagination, Individuation, and Love in C.G. Jung’s Black Books.” Quadrant: The Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation of Analytical Psychology, fall 2022. See also Chapters 2, 4, and 5 of The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create Dylan Thomas “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower ” (poem)
D.H. Lawrence. “Song of a man that has come through.” (poem)
Mary Antonia Wood Ph.D., is Chair of the Depth Psychology and Creativity with Emphasis in the Arts and Humanities program, and the author of The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create She is also the artist who created the art featured on the cover and within this article (Anima I & Anima II)
— Demaris Wehr Jung and Feminism: Liberating Archetypes
Still Point Painting
This painting emerged as a meditation on activating the archetype of stillness what I call the “stillpoint ” A moment suspended between movement and quietude, it spirals inward through waves of dark and light, each shape in motion yet drawn toward a quiet center. A white orb hovers at the heart of the piece, luminous yet ungraspable a stillpoint holding the tension of all that surrounds it. Feathers of energy scatter like a gathering storm, softening the motion and reminding us that solace can exist even in turbulence. As I painted, my breath slowed, my body aligning with the quiet rhythm at the work’s core a reminder that coherence isn’t the absence of motion, but the presence of inner steadiness within it - Steven Morris
(2) Teeth of orthodoxy hunt text unhurried written as wind/code tree/code earth/code
My throat a fiery orb I give up safe harness of doubt, hang upside down from branch of kalpataru,
head stricken off earth mother raising bony hands to redress separation
I am a part of fossils feeding the commons only
Not quite human, they say
I run through body as a trick or riverine storm
open up, petal by petal, each lotus in your being
Show you what is/not so you turn un/familiar to yourself, meander into your center
so that only chiasmus remains
By Monica Mody, Ph.D.
(3) A true sadhika knows the apogee: look inside
There you change into nothing, also all that begins
Are you willing to take & give a life, sister?
Subtle body familiar with gradations of difference, eddying with fluid mystery, we came to Earth to remember innate divinity
Fluid being, flowing through subtle channels
Ida pingala sukhman singing: breath within breath, macrocosm in microcosm
Life force distributes
Vital roots of shakti knit every shifting form on Her polymorphic bridge
Monica Mody is the author of poetry collections Wild Fin (Weavers Press, 2024) and Bright Parallel (Copper Coin, 2023), the cross-genre Kala Pani (1913 Press, 2013), three chapbooks, and other creative and academic works that have been published widely and presented at international and US-based conferences and talks. She is Chair and Assistant Professor of the Mythological Studies MA/PhD program at the Pacifica Graduate Institute.
*The poem appears in full in Monica Mody’s Wild Fin.
Engaging Through Image, Engaging Through Feeling
By Camille Jarmie and Peter T. Dunlap
Carolyn Vega invited me to write 1200 words for the Spring addition of our Insight magazine on the “Anima ” I thought that sounded like fun! I started in my usual way by being thoughtful hmmm I like thinking but I’m losing my taste for thinking alone So, I asked my friend and colleague Camille Jarmie to join me And simply by speaking our thoughts out loud, most abstraction faded away and we started thinking in images We followed archetypal psychologist James Hillman’s idea of the thought of the heart, which brings the “divine face into visibility a simultaneous knowing and loving by means of imagining ”
In her words, Camille and I are “reaching down into our shared becoming.” What a resonant image; Camille helps me with image. Peter and I have been doing just this AND through our work, he has helped me to connect to my power by encouraging my attention towards shadow aspects along my own journey, always returning to body and feeling.
We are core faculty members in the clinical psychology program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. We are also citizens of the International Jungian community, which has for over 100 years been practicing with the imagination, returning it to its primacy as a source of cultural knowing. Here, in the 21st century, we extend this work to feeling as a source of cultural knowing. While we started in our private practice offices and classrooms, we are extending emotional intelligence into the life of organizations and communities. This is the work of our time
Thought without feeling takes us into our heads, harboring festering feeling in the unconscious, which fractures us into isolating ideologies, too readily turning people against one another When a well-developed feeling function joins in, we become more capable of doing the shadow work of withdrawing projection and attending to the hatreds that divide us This enables us to reestablish the moral ballast of the feminine ethic of care This is the path of the Anima, folding ourselves into the dark soil of the unconscious. In these folds we find the histories we must minister to: multigenerational trauma, systemic racism, the collapse of traditional communities with the resulting “empty self,” and more. We also find the telos through the unconscious, the future we can reach for, our shared becoming. This is the work of feeling, deepening our trustworthiness and with that the trust between us.
Camille and I know how to do psychotherapy, and we place feeling and relationship at its heart. We are also learning to be less timid with engaging students in the classroom with feeling, and we are supporting students to do the same within their cohorts, with each other, and always with respect This is moving us toward the active use of groups as sacred spaces to move our work from the clinic and classroom into the Commons
In group work we integrate healing and justice values through the cultivation of belonging
Peter and I are turning our attention to the sacred life of groups to help us learn to engage with feeling. Whether in ritual circles, town councils, town halls, or boardrooms we want to reestablish feeling-based egalitarian ethics Human history is filled with examples of the success of this, especially when women and their values lead This work requires that we attend to the dynamics within our organizations, within the Pacifica community. We can bring our consciousness to bear on this work and shift these dynamics with integrity, moving toward one another and toward being a community of practitioners that can shape our communities and the world.
Camille and I are intensifying our commitment to healing and justice values However, we also are humbled by how difficult it has been to integrate these as one represents the inner path to freedom and the other the outer This recognition has helped us move each a little off-center, with healing values placed out of the corner of one eye, and justice values placed out of the corner of the other. This new way of focusing helps make room for something new to occur, something new in the middle, a new center of shared attention. Something buds out of the soil of the unconscious. Or we are in a kitchen and have just put a pot on the stove
The space between Peter and I is a cauldron filling with stone soup Into the soup goes C G Jung’s statement, “Turn back to the most subjective part of yourself, to the source of your being, to that point where you are making world history without being aware of it.”
Jung’s words go around and around the cauldron. His wisdom and his hubris. Each of us is a carrot, or a potato, or an onion.
We add our flavors, our shadows and our moments of clarity. In this broth Camille and I explore our desire to belong together. We have come to understand belonging as a super-ordinate value, transcending and including healing and justice values. We are responding to the crisis of loneliness identified by so many, including US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
We have not stopped there.
Peter and my devotion to the feminine enables us to open at our center to the mycelia-like connections between us. These vibrate alive. They tingle and then spark. While our focus on belonging is creating the ballast to hold healing and justice steady, a fourth value is arising. This is our shared becoming, which we identify as a primary remedy for the ills of our time.
Shared becoming begins with projection withdrawal
It has become too easy imagining that change only leads to catastrophe Camille and I witness this and without false optimism we pray for and pursue transformation We are determined We do not know what’s ahead for our democratic institutions, but we do know that depth practitioners are coming out of their offices and classrooms and stepping into their communities to establish organizational and community-wide practices of projection withdrawal. This too is the work ahead.
Peter and I engage this work with students, other faculty, and members of multiple communities within the auspices of the Emergent Systems Research Center We seek to bring down the “empathy wall” between tradition and progress through our placing belonging and becoming values as the primary foci. Our work begins in psychology; however, we know that there are no psychological solutions alone to current human problems. The work is multidisciplinary, we are cultivating public programs and research projects with this in mind. We are bringing our consciousness to bear on building community, reducing suffering, and the mutual engagement with becoming the people called for by our time We have faith in this process and are leaning into it through inquiry and shared practice
We can integrate masculine and feminine values, conservative, liberal, and progressive ideologies and return to an image of our shared humanity. We can go from the blind men (and women) unable to identify more than the parts of the elephant to remembering how to be a people.
See what you think, feel, imagine Reach out to us to warm yourself in this becoming space, we want to include your images, your fire
Peter T. Dunlap, Ph.D., is a clinical and political psychologist in Petaluma, CA. He follows C.G. Jung’s vision of psychology focusing on both individual and sociopolitical transformation. He engages this vision by bringing psychotherapists and community leaders together to integrate psychological and political paths to freedom He is the author of Awakening our Faith in the Future and a Core Faculty in the Clinical Psychology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute
Camille Jarmie, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist living in San Francisco, CA. Camille focuses on early attachment work with children and adolescents. She integrates the healing values of psychotherapy with rebuilding traditional communities and supporting community and family mental health. She is a Core Faculty in the Clinical Psychology Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute
Gift of Heart
24x18" Oil on panel by
Kevin Winger
Gift of Heartis a turning point in both my life and creative process, capturing the deep psychological shift I am experiencing as a student at Pacifica. In Jungian terms, the glowing feminine figure represents the Anima, a nurturing force offering something essential to the more rigid mechanical figure representing a divided self. I relied on intellect, logic, and structure for much of my life, but true transformation cannot come from the mind alone; it must come from the heart. The gold light, radiating from a deeper space, is not merely decorative. It signifies this shift, a truth I have had to learn, sit with, and embody. The receiving figure, without arms or legs, has no choice but to surrender.
Kevin Winger is a visual artist living in San Diego He holds an AA in Fine Arts from San Diego Mesa College and a BA in Art History and Visual Culture from Lindenwood University and is pursuing an MA in Depth Psychology and Creativity at Pacifica Graduate Institute.
I close my eyes
And turn towards the woman
Forgotten inside of me
I see the Soul of the World
Anima Mundi
She is the Bride of the Kingdom
Toying with the pining initiate,
She plays hide and seek
She smiles back at us
Impishly and infinitely
Dancing behind a Black Veil
It is time for her coronation
The Queen of Heaven and Earth
And so she rises
From the depths
Of our oceanic dream, flowering
In triumphant commandments
The Islands of the Blest
Stay awake with the moon
Preparing endless fiesta plates
A ravenous communion
Celebrating her sweet Incarnation
Trumpets begin to blare from the heavens
Their song pierces through the waters
And as it reaches my ears, it slows
Into a woman’s deep and ancient wail
A gospel song of wild longing and revelation
A grand procession of merpeople appear
Holding rosaries made of pearls
Beating and throbbing in their hands
Like an orchestra of iridescent hearts
They have been called to intercede
On the behalf of those of us
Who have forgotten
How to stand before Beauty
How to Love and Adore
Her Nature, sublime
On the Knees of Prayer
And so they begin to recite
The Mystery of Enchantment:
Mama Sirena, Full of Grace
The Lord is with thee
Blessed art thou amongst women
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb
Your innocently bewitching daughters
O Holy Siren,
Initiate us through your song
Open up our senses
To the vast Spell of Creation
And unveil your radiant glory
Lure us away
From our worldly attachments
Teach us how to surrender ourselves to you
And how to love Fully
And foolishly
Free from all fear
We offer up our singleness Which keeps us small and separate
As we enter into your cup
Let us pour out from ourselves
As you so generously do for us
Let us return to you, faithfully To The Source of All That Is And we shall gladly lay down our lives for you To serve, as one of your endless, selfless gifts
For it is you who gives life And it is you who takes it
In the end, we must give it all back to you
To be infinite and one
Let us rejoice and be glad in it
Amen.
Devin Nicole Johnson is a master’s student in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she weaves myth, art, literature, religious studies, depth psychology, and feminist and decolonial thought into an evocative practice of mythopoeisis. Like all the world's mystics, she seeks to realize greater peace and unity within the numinous whole of creation, using her voice to lure others ever closer towards the Truth of Love in all its mystery and complexity
Renegades and Stardust
Angela Borda: My understanding of archetypal astrology is it uses the stories of planets and stars to look at the ways their universal themes are at play within us Why do humans strive to map the universe with our oldest and most fundamental stories? Is the cosmos an equal contributor in archetypal astrology?
Laurence Hillman: The core reason for astrology is to learn to deal with a chaotic world, and it’s always been chaotic, since we gathered around the fire wondering if the sun would rise the next morning, if we’d live to see another day. That’s what started our following the cycles in the sky. And while it appears the night sky is a fixed heaven, we know there are heavenly bodies moving through the sky. Since the beginning of time we’ve followed these paths, trying to make sense of them and find something we can rely on. So the calendars have been set to the sun and moon as a measurement tool. Put it all together and you have a complex language constantly playing out in the sky.
It's been asked if the Zodiac, the belt of fixed stars through which the planets travel, was invented or if it was discovered There are patterns in the universe we can discover, just like we discover things in science I think of astrology as synchronous. What is happening in me is happening in the sky; as above, so below. I’m just part of the sky, I’m just stardust.
Angela: Given the topic of your upcoming certificate, “AI and Archetypal Astrology: How to Embrace Uranian Energy Without Losing Your Soul,” I thought it would be interesting to let AI tell me about the myth of Uranus. What AI concluded was, “Uranus is a symbol of masculinity and the power of creation. The blood that flowed from his genitals signifies his ability to give life. The male gender symbol we recognize today traces back to Uranus.” Can you do us one better than AI here in our understanding of why Uranus is the lens through which you are tackling AI and Archetypal Astrology?
Laurence: Rick Tarnas makes the argument in his book Prometheus the Awakener that Uranus is misnamed and should’ve been called Prometheus. The Uranian energy is better described by the myth of Prometheus, who brought fire to people, who broke the rules and was punished gruesomely for that. Uranus is not a “her” or a “him,” it’s the renegade energy, archetypal and in each of us. I like to call Uranus the “third-finger planet.” When we talk about the planets as mythological figures, it’s hard not to see them as a gender But everyone has an inner king and queen, regardless of gender For the sun and moon we can instead talk about the sovereign and the nurturer. We’re moving away from the gendering of planets...
The connection to AI is that we live in Uranian times This course is about learning how to activate your inner Uranian Energy to meet the chaos of our times The sign of Aquarius is ruled by Uranus, so there’s an affinity between the two. As we enter the age of Aquarius we enter the age of Uranus. It’s in politics, it’s everywhere. It’s no accident that AI or the Internet have changed our lives and will change our lives much more over the next few decades.
It’s very Uranian. There’s nothing new under the sun until Uranus comes along That’s why there’s so much talk of non-human machines or people or aliens; we’re in a time when what we’ve known about reality no longer exists It feels in your face, scary, and very representative of Uranus. Some people thrive on chaos, they have access to their inner renegade or Uranus. So the work to be done is to get comfortable with talking to that part of ourselves.
People are afraid of AI in many ways, afraid of losing their job, having their art or poetry stolen, plagiarism. We need to keep a clear head and understand what AI is. The course will give people an experience of AI that is not intimidating and help them activate their inner renegade and embrace chaos That’s where your chart comes in It’s a way of seeing the world with clarity and knowing your place in it, which has always been the purpose of astrology.
Laurence Hillman will be teaching the upcoming PEIS certificate on “AI and Archetypal Astrology: How to Embrace Uranian Energy Without Losing Your Soul.” He is also a professional archetypal coach and the author of Planets in Play - How to Reimagine Your Life Through the Language of Astrology
Angela: I imagine it is both easier and harder to enter the field of depth psychology when your father is James Hillman, but in speaking about the anima, he is fundamental to the discussion. So I hope you won’t mind if we begin there. In Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, James Hillman took Jung’s conception of the anima as the archetype of the unconscious feminine side of a man, and expanded it to be, in my understanding, an archetype of the soul itself, something that bridges the gap between the conscious and unconscious If we accept that each generation of depth psychologists must take this concept and evolve it further, how would you describe the anima?
Laurence: I don’t mind at all I love that he’s my father But the gender question has changed dramatically since my father wrote that Jung has been criticized for having traditional ideas about gender, many of which I disagree with. Rather than masculine and feminine, I like to use “yin” and “yang,” the universal idea of the forward-moving yang and the circular, interconnecting yin. They’re simpler terms to me and less loaded. Culturally yin and yang are expressed differently, like the idea that boys don’t cry and girls don’t’ get angry. And each planet may have more yin or yang. But we each contain both, so we can step into different parts of ourselves.
Jung’s notion that men have to learn to deal with their anima and women have to learn to deal with their animus is outdated. My father’s notion that anima is more than that, or a description of the soul, is not terminology that I use either. Soul literally means “anima” in Latin.
I talk about soul as an entity filled with archetypes that travels through many lifetimes; it’s the part of us that doesn’t die Archetypes are not the soul; rather, they make up your inner life, your personality traits So I don’t think of soul as bridging the gap between the conscious and the unconscious
Angela: Is there a direction in which you hope the idea of the anima will develop?
Laurence: I hope anima will grow into embracing our yin function, which is a term I coined, or a person’s capacity for yin energy. Rather than saying someone is masculine or feminine I like to say that we have a yin function that is gender separate. There are many men with high yin functions and many women with low yin function. I like to think about it also as right-brain capability. The future is us recognizing that a left-brained world is not enough. What’s the fastest-growing healing modality? It’s plant medicine, which helps us access our feelings. We need our right-brain, our yin function. It’s an awakening.
Man of Houses
This piece was inspired by a dream laden with feminine imagery about an invisible masculine presence and a murdered young woman.
Mother of Shadows
Jordan Chierotti is a PhD candidate in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies program Based in Gig Harbor, WA, she has been translating her dreams into art since childhood
This piece was inspired by a dream of a lion’s corpse filled with jewels, its face bearing a sorrowful expression reminiscent of Our Lady of Sorrows.
When you love something that you’ve read or watched, you want to remember it Taking notes is one thing, but making something out of your notes (like Jung did) takes your engagement to new depths When you turn your notes into something, you’ll not only increase your retention of what’s moved you, but you’ll also actually enter into a personal relationship with these ideas you’ll welcome them, add to them, challenge them, speak with them, and cherish them in your creative notebook/journal. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a visual artist to work/play with ideas like this. If you can copy, cut, and paste, then you’re on your way.
Supplies:
A large spiral-bound sketchbook–the larger the better, but at least 10”x12” or 11”x14”. Give yourself enough room to play.
Pens, pencils, markers, etc You don’t need to mess with paints or anything wet unless that suits you A pair of scissors
A glue stick or some spray glue. I like spray glue for large items, just use it outside.
Photocopies of your notes, whether typed or handwritten. You can even copy pages out of your books with your own underlining and marginalia Digital versions work too, just print them out
How to:
Open up that sketchbook and don’t freak out at the blank pages. You don’t have to “sketch” anything, so don’t let the word “sketchbook” on the front stop you.
Start by looking through your handwritten or typed notes. Cut out key passages that must be remembered/honored.
Look through old books, magazines, online sources, etc. and pull together a grab bag of images that seem to relate to the ideas. They won’t all make the cut (collage pun).
Distill things down even further (it’s all alchemy when you think about it.) Take the plunge and start cutting and pasting, maybe even writing out your favorite quotes and passages in your own handwriting.
Don’t worry about what anyone will think, just let things mingle as they amplify each other. Try not to visualize yourself posting your pages on Instagram—stay present and serve the ideas and images. You’ll be surprised as what emerges. It doesn’t have to be “good,” it just needs to be real
Give yourself a bow when you feel done, and don’t forget to thank the muses and daimons for showing up to play.
Return to the pages that you’ve created a few weeks from now and bask in how you cared enough to record what mattered to you in this way–then start a new page.
Meditations
by Elizabeth
Éowyn Nelson, Ph.D.
Anima. Who is she? How can one recognize her? As a psychological concept, Jung defines anima as the inner feminine figure in the male psyche, one of two contrasexual archetypes, anima and animus Yet anima cannot be reduced to a simple definition In fact, she’s difficult to examine at all
Anima resists the objective gaze because she draws us close and embroils us in life Jung tells us that “fantasies and entanglements are all her doing” (CW 8, §144) Anima entanglements propel individuation through the passions we cannot resist, the obsessions we cannot explain, and the subtle intuitions and sensations too often dismissed as irrational
As a psychological figure, the one I refer to as she, the anima trades in ineffability and probably has a sardonic sense of humor
Much of Jung’s writing on the anima is mired in unquestioned assumptions about sex and gender as well as patriarchal definitions of femininity and masculinity Whereas anima is the unconscious femininity of men (CW 5, §678), women possess an animus, expressing their unconscious psychological masculinity Since anima is Latin for soul, little wonder that a woman might be irritated upon learning that she doesn’t have one a soul, that is In fact, she might slam shut her volume of the Collected Works and pitch it across the room I would I have
Jung’s ideas about anima and animus exemplify a blind spot in archetypal theory-making Archetypes are modes of apprehension (CW 8, §280), ways of seeing or perspectives that delimit anyone’s understanding of anything We always speak from a perspective Often, when Jung spoke of anima, he spoke as a twentieth-century European male, a time when ideas about sex and gender were not the “deep and tangled wilderness” they are today (Stein 1998, p 127)
At other times, Jung reached deeper than twentieth-century thinking to describe anima in ways that help us abide the wilderness Anima (and animus) reveal how one relates “to one’s inner psychic processes; it is the inner attitude, the characteristic face,thatisturnedtowardtheunconscious”(CW6,§803)
Jung scholars have carefully examined Jung’s statements about the contrasexual archetypes to create a portrait of anima that is simultaneously more elemental and more expansive. I think she would like the paradox.
For example, Stein (1998) describes the anima as “a functional archetype” and “a psychic structure that complements the persona and links the ego to the deepest layer of the psyche” (p.128). Though this conceptual language may be helpful for some readers, others might better understand anima via images Then we can imagine her as a bridge, door, or portal that leads to the deep psyche Speaking about anima in the language of images is also better suited to her role in the psyche Images are alive; anima is life They and she invite us to muse, wonder, and play, to actively participate in the continual movement of the imagination as we make our way towards the interior.
Approaching the interior is also traveling down, an archetypal descent into the underworld, where “play” takes on more tortuous meanings. Jung related the anima to chthonic dimensions of the psyche (CW 8, §119) characterized by twilight or darkness, slowness, even timelessness. Traveling down helps explain why anima fascinations often include suffering. When caught in the grip of the anima, we can’t simply snap out it. We are vulnerable and helpless, and the only way out is through It is as though the underworld journey, so very personal to the traveler, is an encounter with our interiority and, at the same time, creates that interiority We become more spacious and multi-hued every time we follow the “rich imagery, pathologies, and feeling qualities” (Hillman 1983, 17) that are the anima’s calling cards
Cherishing the anima is counter-cultural because exploring the deep interiority of anything at all is slow work The speed, flash, and superficiality of contemporary life is not rich ground for growing down. Yet for those who are devoted to soul, anima is a true companion.
In my experience, the anima is formidable, persistent, patient, observant, and a little scary. Above all, she abides. She waits for the moment I recognize her presence in my fascinations. She is the one who draws me into relationships that deepen my character whether with a person, an activity, a creative project, community, or cause. The force of these fascinations is profound; following them is individuation. Here is a story that illuminates what I mean.
Decades ago, long before I read a word of Jung, I wandered through a show of fine American crafts held in San Francisco. Passing by one booth, I was seized literally halted in my tracks by an artfully molded blue leather mask, life-sized, the face a woman with an elaborate head wrap. She was remote, mysterious, serene, and beautiful.
I had very little money but could not resist her. The mask has travelled with me since 1986, always hanging on a wall near my laptop. I’m looking at her right now.
Over the years, her silent presence has been profound companionship. As my knowledge of Jung grew, she (the mask) began to take on new meanings, showing up in my dreams, writing, and teaching in ways I did not plan and could never have anticipated. Her name evolved over time as my relationship with her evolved; I won’t disclose them; that’s her preference.
She appeared most recently in a prose poem I composed entitled “The Serpent’s Song.” (Truthfully, the stanzas rushed through me in a few hours; I was scribe more than author.) Five times the poem described the lidless eyes of ancient goddesses. Here is the final stanza:
The power of the blood, serpentine, winds down the generations:
Tiamat, Ereshkigal, Inanna, Metis, Medusa
You, with your lidless eyes, the cool gaze that sees all, you know even the foolish Eve will one day feel the Blood Mothers awakening to end the patriarchal games.
“Lidless eyes” simply came to me, along with the rest of the prose poem Finished scribbling, I looked up and there, hanging on the wall of my office, was the mask staring into the distance through lidless eyes I had never noticed them
She laughed at me, but it was gentle chiding as if to say, Yes, there is still more about me to discover This is the enigma of anima, her deep interiority
I notice the presence of anima in my students when they become fascinated with an irresistible research topic. Anima has stirred their imagination and follow her they must. Then, the progress of the dissertation, guided by this figure, becomes their fate: the work they were meant to do in the way only they can do it.
As I watch the dissertations unfold, it is abundantly apparent that anima is “that particular gestalt which precisely, continually, and specifically signifies the core quality of [their] soul” (Hillman 1985, p. 155). I see the gestalt in the final manuscript, and I know it is the secret choreographer of their oral defense presentation. My wish is that anima continues to abide with my students in a lifetime of creativity.
Elizabeth Éowyn Nelson, faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute since 2003, has been a professional writer and editor for four decades. Dr. Nelson’s books include Psyche’s Knife(Chiron, 2012), The Art of Inquiry (Spring, 2017), coauthored with Joseph Coppin, and The Art of Jungian Couple Therapy, coauthored with Anthony Delmedico (Routledge, 2025)
When God Was A Woman By Pamela Brown
Artist in Residence for the M A Depth Psychology and Creativity with Emphasis in the Arts and Humanities program (DCH), Pamela Brown is an artist and poet who takes inspiration from the petroglyphs of the American Southwest
Because black is a blanket, a mystery, the night sky with her pregnant round silence, she speaks on shaped language. ath the his primordial fabric. It is ment It contains all potential s. It will continue beyond us. o and God was birthed from use black is a blanket she wra her edges. She is de picted he Ancient ones fo und h and red ochre th ey invok ol, as sandstone, as Cre ck is a blanket, a myst egnant round silence, ator, as ery, the ni she speaks . Beneath the skin of this world, . It is delicate. It is filament. It con started before us. It will continue One cell split in two and thed ecause aps the from the black is a bla Earth with her e depicted in caves where the An und her. Using breath and red o ked her as symbol, as sandstone, es Because black is a blanket, a night sky w ith her pregnant rou speaks kin of elica moon shaped languag this world, see primord te It is filament It con It started before us. It w h us. One cell split in tw ed from the Goddess. blanket, she wraps the She is depicted in caves where the Ancient breath and red ochre they invoked her as sym , , y It started before us. It will continue beyond us. One cell split in two and God was birthed from the Goddess. Because.
A Ghazal for Anima
By Julia Alter
A poet, singer and collage artist, Julia Alter is the author of Walking the Hot Coal of the Heartand a current graduate student at Pacifica Graduate Institute in The Depth Psychology and Creativity program
The body weaves a child from strands of wing and starlight. We swim in womby shadows, our true face is yet unknown, still hidden.
The garden burgeons with bougainvillea, peonies and snapdragons. Yet only when petals fall in death do we see inside the blossom of the heart, hidden.
From the slaying crash and thrashing wreck, a magnetic voice sirens out and sailors swim toward her song of lament and strange beauty, a gravity below the sea’s surface, hidden.
We breathe in nuance; we are not one or the Other. We are not sides, blocks, lines. Too often we keep the kaleidoscopes of our Selves so well-hidden.
Monsters beneath the bed again and the first name he calls is Mother. Will she still answer his cries, his own fears gnashing and clawing, under the covers, hidden?
On a red moon full moon Friday in the pre-spring howling hour, I watch the sun’s shadow fully eclipse the lunar brightness Fully alone, even my own moon shadow, hidden
Julia says, raise the glass of your own life. Weep like a sacred fool. Take home the stray dog of your heart. Use all the ink. Devour the nasturtiums. Promise the mirror you will not stay hidden. in memory of Len Anderson
Anima, Gender, Femin
Angela Wood: In your article, “Anima, Gender, Feminism,” you note that unashamed essentialist on gender, believing that male and female bo unproblematic masculinity and femininity respectively,” but you conte simplistic views were sabotaged by his understanding of the unconscio far as to say that “Jung's unconscious is sublime; it is the creative so ultimate origin of meaning, feeling and value.” How did Jung unders context of the unconscious and gender?
Susan Rowland: My sense of Jung is that neither he nor his world considered gender as anything apart from bodily sex Men were masculine and women were feminine, but a man has access to an inner feminine through his unknown psyche When Jung felt this unknown psyche close to overwhelming him, he found it addressed him as a female person As he tells us, he thought it must be his soul, so uses the medieval Latin for soul, anima However he does not address the issues stemming from this theorizing such as, since he is sure only men have animas, does that mean women have no souls? Women have a masculine counterpart to the anima in animus, or spirit Are men and women, masculine and feminine really so neatly polarized Is he arguing for universal heterosexuality? Why, if individuation inevitably means taking on aspect of the other gender, why not accept gender fluidity from the start? What is the problem with embracing nonbinary and trans identities since they might be living out what is implied by individuation?
Basically, I see Jung as a conservative with revolutionary ideas The way gender is supposed to work in individuation is revolutionary Yet Jung was not interested in social change for women in his patriarchal Swiss society He unfortunately regarded his own anima as inferior at times, and slips from writing the anima as his feminine to using her to criticize the inferior or annoying characteristics of women The anima is not a woman Jung too often forgot this
Such slippage from anima to indict women is why many women have a problem with the anima Women do not have them, yet the anima gets used as a stick to beat us This is why I suggest that the anima in Jung’s work corresponds to the phallus in that of Jacques Lacan It is what a man only ambivalently has and what women must be for men, a notion that almost certainly is heterosexist as well
Angela: Does Jung’s understanding of anima differ from your own?
Susan: Yes, because Jung liked opposites and gender essentialism I do not think understanding the world through opposites is useful in a world overly prone to literalism While women and men probably have some psychological differences or tendencies in different degrees based on how our bodies work, these are minor and should not be used to construct a hierarchy Unlike Jung, I would suggest psyche is destiny, not body Therefore I do not think that anima and animus exist as Jung understood them Rather, they may each indicate contrasting archetypal dispositions that all humans have and can individuate into
Angela: You are core faculty in Pacifica’s M.A. Depth Psychology and Creativity with Emphasis in the Arts and Humanities program, which approaches creativity as an enigma, a calling , and in Jung’s view, “a vital human instinct; a force akin to nature itself, which drives the unfolding and shaping of every life.” What is the relationship between anima and creativity in Jung’s view and your own?
About The Swan Lake Murders by Susan
Rowland
“Find me the dirt on a sorcerer…because he’s the reason I’m not prime minister!”
On the eve of a forecast hurricane, private detective Mary Wandwalker goes to meet thoroughly dislikeable minister Robin Prince to hear his gripe about a career-ruining sorcerer. Yet the minister fails to realize the real target is his teenage daughter, the star of Swan Lake, who is dancing dangerously close to evil magic.
When fifteen year old Irina disappears, Mary, two detectives, and the distraught parents follow the trail to Holywell, a center of witchcraft and healing. But murder follows them and as the storm closes in, Holywell becomes both prison and sanctuary.
With a desperate killer in their midst, Mary must confront her demons alone as those she loves become the chief suspects. It takes a séance, another death, and a bolt of lightning before the story of Swan Lake can be revised Because some fairytales are real, especially the legend of young women becoming swans
Susan: Creativity and individuation are very closely entwined. That means that gender energies are likely to manifest in the creative process. Like anything within the orbit of depth psychology, creative is complex. It refers to the business of becoming more whole by finding relationships with the collective unconscious, is what is demanded of us when faced with the unknown or the uncertain in anything, and can be concentrated and cultivated in art practice.
To bring the anima in here, we can see the legacy of the patriarchal notion of the muse; another mask that the woman must impersonate for the (presumed male) creator. More productively, is the notion that some of our numerous archetypes have creative energies attached to their expression in human life, so that different modes of creation call forth differently articulated, some gendered, creative energies. Here we would see parenting a fundamentally creative, so too politics, homemaking and the arts none of these favoring one gender, sexuality or iteration of gender.
Angela: You are a prolific, celebrated writer, whom aside from your academic books, is the author of the Mary Wandwalker novels. Your forthcoming The Swan Lake Murders “re-writes the anima.” What inspired the rewriting of anima, and can you speak of your writing process in interacting with the anima?
Susan: I am trying to re-write the anima in the sense of writing from the position of the marginalized other insofar as I can. Hence I have a triple goddess fictional detective who is a crone, a woman marginalized by post-menopausal age, a motherly character who is marginalized by not being an actual mother and a mental disability, and a maiden who is a formerly trafficked woman, so marginalized by never having experienced love. I have to acknowledge that I also write from a position of middle class white privilege. How this relates to the anima is that the anima is rarely allowed to speak in Jung’s work and in a lot of later depth psychology. So my characters are images of the (patriarchally repressed) feminine and I hope that the mystery that the anima waves at from afar (just what is psychological gender), attaches sometimes to my characters and animates them.
Susan: Put another way, no character in my novels is me They may live in my psyche, but they come from a much wilder, and more mysterious world Jung’s anima suffers from a banal gloss he gives her because of his own uncertainties But he too would admit (I believe) that she has wild roots
Angela: I liked this excerpt especially:
“As the black swan, the Princess brought transformational energy. The Prince could not tear himself from the woman, who was not a woman. She danced the wild night that the court tried to banish with its bright lamps. He tried to touch her. Always she leapt and spun away. At last the Prince helped her strip off her black feathers to the beauty of the white swan beneath.”
There’s a lot going on here, and I wondered if there was an alchemical component, and why, in particular, the ballet Swan Lake was chosen as your focus.
Susan: There is definitely an alchemical component in all my writing, especially the novels. The Swan Lake Murders is the fourth and these first four explore the theme of the elements. Air and spirit pervade The Swan Lake Murders after earth in Murder on Family Grounds, fire in The Alchemy Fire Murder and water in The Sacred Well Murders. Stories are a great depth psychology lens, and these mysteries use the genre as a lens to look at the ancient roots of modern consciousness. In one way, I am seeking the indigenous depths in modernity.
As for the ballet, I was particularly struck by how Swan Lake is based on a folktale found in many different cultures, of girls or children turned into swans What are the shapeshifting mysteries here that remain potent today in the highly wrought medium of ballet? What is the role of the sorcerer to such vulnerable beings? And then too, of the desire to fly, to flying witches, spirits conjured in the air in a séance, and the possibility of summoning a new creature of air and c !
Susan Rowland, Ph D , is a renowned Jungian scholar, core faculty in Pacifica’s M A Depth Psychology and Creativity with Emphasis in the Arts and Humanities program, and the author of the Mary Wandwalker Mysteries. Pictured above enjoying cream tea.
Growing up, like many families, my nuclear family’s weeknight tradition revolved around gathering together at the dinner table. The “kids,” my older brother and I, would often start dinner off with kid’s grace which, modeled by my always hungry, hyperactive brother, was a long-winded rushed phrase, “godisgood, godisgreat, thank you for our food amen.” Yet with my very young ears and open heart, I always heard and started to say, “goddess good, goddess great, thank you for our food amen. Thank goodness no one picked up on my elocution and thank goddess for my brother for gifting me with a worldview that recognized our most sacred daily activity was to give thanks to the goddess of Earth who gifts us with just about everything Some decades later, when I first dipped into the world of ecopsychology, my worldview and Self found home
Ecopsychology merges ecology and psychology (and in particular depth psychology), recognizing that personcentered psychologies are ineffectual for addressing the crises of our times, the psyches of humans and Earth are inseparable, and all sentient beings are suffering It is interesting that just as I misheard kid’s grace, with my studies in ecopsychology I mislabeled the concept of the ecological unconsciousness to the ecological consciousness. In many ways paralleling Jung’s collective unconsciousness, ecopsychology views a shared psyche amongst all living beings. Perhaps my mislabeling came from both intuitive and lived experience where the underlying animating force of Earth is alive and conscious, as well as understanding that only humans, habituated towards perpetual abstract thinking (self-conscious), have lost this experience.
One of my first exposures to the term anima, came through the writings of the “father” of ecopsychology Theodore Roszak (no doubt the mother of ecopsychology is Earth herself) with his introduction of the anima mundi, which he described as “the psyche of the Earth herself that has been nurturing life in the cosmos for billions of years through its drama of heightening complexification” (Roszak, 1995, p. 16). This pure energy of the soul of Earth is a key concept in ecopsychology and psychotherapist Chellis Glendinning (building on the work of Stanislav and Christina Grof) likens the anima mundi to our primal matrix, the state of humans before we disconnected our identities from Earth, claiming the anima mundi “resides both within us and all around us (1994, p.5).
Roszak (2001) roots the story of the anima mundi as one of the oldest myths of humankind, an ancient cross-cultural archetype of Mother Earth. While Roszak was aware of the complexity of such a gendered understanding of the life force, the psyche of Earth; the image of mother as home, as creative, as the ultimate nurturer has merit I love the term omphalos resurfaced by Devereaux (1996) as an ancient concept of a navel stone or world center embodied by each human and I imagine our personal omphalos as our very own umbilical cord tethering (and grounding) us to Mother Earth.
Roszak (2001) traces the demise of the more conscious, alive, feminine concept of anima mundi, with the age of Plato, replacing her with the “world soul” that was more distanced, immaterial, and otherworldly, leaving the anima mundi with a lesser role as the go between of humans and nature Devereaux (1996) continues with tracing her demise to the 17th century and the “age of rationalism” (p. 237). This was the same period marked by mechanistic science, colonization, the rise of Christianity, as well as The Witch Burnings – a time of massive backlash and demonizing of women and earthbased traditions. This was a time when the feminine Earth became suspect and despised. This backlash continues today with the rise of corporate globalization and the massive resource extraction of Mother Earth and ever-growing repression of the feminine
It is not surprising then that by the time Jung introduced his term anima that there would be some mixed messages crossing ancient, old, and new paradigms. In curt definitions anima is simplified as the unconscious shadow of man and animus that of woman Some of the expressions of the anima archetypes as projections of men are quite troubling and complex Jung also recognized these complexities and claimed that anima was in fact “ a purely empirical concept, whose sole purpose is to give a name to a group of related or analogous psychic phenomena (p 56, 1969 [CW 9i, para 114]) Moreover, Jung acknowledged the concept of soul aka anima in indigenous cultures embodied “the magic breath of life…or a flame (p. 26, 1969 [CW 9i, para. 55]) and in his work emphasized the phenomenological nature of the anima – its “a priori”, she is primordial, experiential, and ultimately as with all syzygies merges the gender binaries. While archetypal, the anima truly is an alive energy that lives outside of abstract concepts, swimming amongst and originating the emotions, spontaneity, the irrational, the creative.
The anima/anima mundi is no shadow, she is the star, Mother Earth She need not be swathed in concepts; she is pure form In tracing the historic shadowing of Mother Earth, Roszak (2001) notes her relatively recent return with Gaia theory His work on this thread of anima mundi ends there, yet the story continues Perhaps Gaia’s relatively soft debut and reappearance within the sciences primes her return as the heart and soul of the Earth While concepts help to draw her back in, it is the depths of embodiment, emotion, intuition, creativity, the dream worlds, and all forms of direct real sensory experience that re-throne her. She is the energetic force that binds us all...
The Earth in reality is not only mother, after all it takes at least two to tango – rather it is the othering of the body, the sensual, the emotional, and material that has created this projection of all these qualities solely to the feminine As most earth-based traditions know the elements of Earth (fire, air, earth, and water) bring together a balance of gendered concepts to form a whole. This syzygy of elements hints at emergent possibilities as we reembrace the divine feminine and weave rational consciousness and actively alive anima mundi in partnership.
Jeanine M Canty, PhD, is a professor of transformative studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco, telecommuting from Boulder, CO Formerly the chair of environmental studies at Naropa University, she continues to teach at Naropa and at Pacifica Graduate Institute A lover of nature, justice, and contemplative practice, her teaching intersects issues of social and ecological justice, ecopsychology, and the process of worldview expansion and change She is author of Returning the Self to Nature: Undoing our Collective Narcissism and Healing our Planet (Shambhala Publications, 2022) and her most recent edited book is an expanded, second edition of Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women’s Voices (Routledge, April 2025)
White Raven and Stag This smaller acrylic and mixed media painting on wood panel served as a preliminary exploration of the dream’s imagery The bold red background suggests the vitality and intensity of the dream, while the hand reaches toward the White Raven with both caution and intention The flowers blooming from the hand evoke transformation and new life emerging from loss and surrender This piece functioned as a guide during my altar practices, anchoring my active imagination work and serving as a visual touchstone for my somatic dialogue with the dream’s deeper meaning. These pieces, created in tandem with my written exploration, embody the journey of turning inward where the body, psyche, and creative impulse converge to reveal hidden insights and deeper connections.
White Raven and Stag This five-foot by five-foot painting on linen became the centerpiece of my somatic active imagination process The White Raven, with wings extended in flight, emerges as a guiding presence, while the shadowed hand evokes the unconscious forces shaping the psyche The hand is adorned with budding branches life pushing through darkness symbolizing regeneration and growth Below, kelp drifts gently, representing surrender to the natural rhythms of change The layered background reflects the shadowed forest from my dream, echoing the presence of the stags and their watchful gaze. This largescale piece allowed me to physically and psychologically step into the dream’s landscape, integrating its messages through breath, movement, and creative expression.
Dream Tending Altar This image depicts my dream tending altar, a sacred space created to actively engage with my dream of the White Raven, Stags, and Kelp. The altar includes symbolic elements from the dream: deer antlers representing strength, groundedness, and cycles of renewal; white feathers symbolizing the White Raven’s presence and its role as a guide; a candle representing illumination and inner reflection; and dried kelp evoking surrender, flow, and connection to oceanic wisdom The small painting at the altar’s center shows a white raven beneath a hand both symbols drawn directly from my dreamwork. This space became a place of presence, breath, and imagination, allowing the dream figures to continue speaking through embodied awareness.
Steven Morris is an artist, writer, and business strategist who lives a rich portfolio life at the intersection of creativity, leadership, spirituality, and human potential He is a current student in the Depth Psychology and Humanities program.
