‘Two Sages: Hall and Jung’

     

The Philosophical Research Society offers an online discussion that will address two thinkers who contributed mightily to the twentieth century refinement of esoteric thought. From the publicity:

Manly Palmer Hall

and Carl Gustav Jung:

the Story and Message

of Two Sages

Presented by Stephan A. Hoeller

of the PRS

Thursday, April 29

10 p.m. Eastern Time

Reservations here

Philosopher Manly Palmer Hall and visionary psychologist Carl Gustav Jung both revived the Esoteric Tradition. The future republication of Hall’s work The Secret Teachings of All Ages, and the recent publication of Jung’s Black Books (amplifying his Red Book) call attention to the contributions of these two sages.

Stephan A. Hoeller was Manly P. Hall’s principal lecturing associate at PRS for more than twenty years. He is a noted scholar and lecturer on Gnosticism and the message of C.G. Jung. He is the author of five books, and is president of Besant Lodge of the Theosophical Society in Hollywood.

     

‘The Gnostic Sophia’

     
I’m enjoying summer to much to think of anything planned for next February, except this class at the C.G. Jung Foundation because on this date in 1875, Carl Jung was born. From the publicity:

The Gnostic Sophia:

Redeeming the Feminine Divine

C.G. Jung Foundation

28 East 39th Street, Manhattan

14 Thursdays, 7 to 8:30 p.m.

February 1 through May 10, 2018

Carl Jung’s seminal work, Answer to Job, remains highly relevant today. In 1945, Jung was implicitly responding to the horrific events of the Holocaust and the dropping of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the first time, the capacity to annihilate humans was no longer projected onto a godhead, but now onto humankind. Individually and collectively, we find resonance today with Jung’s text as it speaks to the dire plight of humanity that is blatantly before us. With current world and national events constantly bombarding our collective psyche, how do we attend to our own individuation processes in the midst of this chaotic and dis-regulating news cycle? What is the impact of the current state of affairs on the processes of clients and on the collective at large?

Click to enlarge.

In Answer to Job, Jung looks to the divine image of the Gnostic Sophia as a potential remedy for the collective. To repair and redeem ourselves, we need to repair and redeem the fragmented feminine on a mytho-poetic level. This course will pick up where Jung left off in Answer to Job. The Gnostic Sophia is an image of feminine wisdom that meets and balances the masculine principles. She is a figure that can potentially restore wholeness to the Western civilization’s collective myths.

Collectively, we are left with patriarchal values that prioritize the accruing of power and domination at the risk of losing our very humanity. The topics that will be explored in depth reveal the clinical application of a deeply valued Gnostic belief in gnosis, or knowing. Within each class, there will be an in-depth exploration of the Gnostic religion and its significant role in influencing Jungian thought and concepts, as well as how this symbol system can serve us now both personally and clinically. Clinical cases will be presented in each class to amplify the material presented and offer an opportunity to discuss the inner knowingness that is awakened in psychic material and its meaning for our unfolding individuation processes.

Instructor: Hilda Seidman, MFA, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Manhattan. She is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York, for which she wrote the thesis “Redeeming the Feminine Divine: Encountering Gnostic Sophia.” She is a co-founder and co-owner of a private education company, Intelligentsia, Inc., working with school-age students to become advocates for their own intellectual and academic development. In her previous graduate studies, she taught courses on performance and authentic creative expression.
     

‘In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order’

     
Summer draws near, so it is time for the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York’s Summer Studies classes. To gain a stronger understanding of Freemasonry, it helps to find alternative contexts, such as Jungian psychology, for the fraternity’s teachings. Try it. I think I recognize some potential within these course descriptions. The Foundation is located at 28 East 39th Street. From the publicity:

The C.G. Jung Foundation of New York

One-Week, Intensive Summer Study Programs 2017

Intensive Program 1:

Ancient Myths for Modern Times

July 10-14

The title “Ancient Myths for Modern Times” captures the heart of this week’s program as well as the complexity of Jungian or archetypal psychology, in which myths present ways of seeing and new perspectives. Myths are archetypally charged, providing images, symbols, stories and a pantheon of gods that constellate in our Personal and Collective Unconscious.

Archetypes can be seen as carriers of fiction, the myths and heroes that still speak to us through time and memory, providing another angle for seeing and containers for our psychological complexity. Jung reminded us that we cannot escape imaginal history for it still lives in our psyche.

Monday, July 10
9 to 10 a.m.
Registration, Welcome, and Orientation

10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

Homer’s Penelope: Walking the Path
of the First Heroine in the Western Canon

Penelope is the first heroine in the Western Canon. She appears on the world stage in Book I of Homer’s Odyssey, and she has lived in our collective memory for more than 2,800 years. For much of the time, however, her story, like the stories and myths of many important female figures, has been undervalued and largely untold. Until today Penelope as a role model for the development of feminine consciousness, and her importance in our collective meaning system, lie dormant. The mythology, which shaped Penelope’s character and her world, as old as time out of mind, is contained in Homer and other ancient sources, and continues to shape the lives and souls of women and men today.

Jung understood myths to be collective dreams, which express archetypal patterns residing in the collective unconscious. He taught that myths, fairy tales, and legends are fundamental vehicles for translation and integration of the archetypal contents into consciousness, culturally and individually. Like dreams, these ancient stories are rich repositories of archetypal patterns, symbols, and ancestral memory. Furthermore, when mythic stories are seen and heard, they stimulate the flow of archetypal patterns from the creative unconscious into consciousness. Jungian methods of dream analysis may be applied to work with these primordial forms in myths, fairy tales, and folk legends—association method, amplification method, active imagination, and other imaginative techniques.

During this program we will see how Penelope stands at the center of Homer’s great epic poem as the first heroine in the Western Canon. We will see how her presence and power drive the narrative. We will then apply Jungian methods, culture theory, comparative mythology, and creative techniques that stimulate imagination, to amplify and enlarge her story, and identify major archetypal elements embedded in the poetry. By applying these methods and techniques to translate archetypal patterns into psychological language, and by hearing some examples from case material, we will discover how these ancient patterns of womanhood are alive in our world today.


Tuesday, July 11
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

Trauma, Temenos and Transformation:
Alchemy, Myth and Human Development

“In many cases in psychiatry, the patient who comes to us has a story that is not told, and which as a rule no one knows of. To my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story. It is the patient’s secret, the rock against which he is shattered. If I know his secret story, I have a key to the treatment. The doctor’s task is to find out how to gain that knowledge. In most cases exploration of the conscious material is insufficient . . . In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.”

C.G. Jung.

Many of the myths, traditions and rituals that once guided us on our shared journey of the human experience—and helped give purpose to our lives—are lacking in our modern world. As a result, we often wander hopelessly while our spirit aches for a safe place where we can face our fears and explore our true calling.

Alchemy, a non-profit organization based in Akron, Ohio, creates just such a safe environment—a temenos—where through the telling, discussion and analysis of mythological stories and fairy tales urban adolescent males learn to “become the hero in their own story.” Utilizing this same approach, adults will work through a myth while the myth simultaneously works through them. “Myths are not just for putting children asleep, but for waking adults up.” This workshop is designed to assist in an awakening.

The foundational theory of Alchemy, based upon the work of C.G. Jung, the Akan people of West Africa and common themes of myth, will be explored and experienced. The socialization and psychology of urban male youth will be inspected and the importance of a Temenos to address trauma will be examined—all the while, providing a blueprint of how myth can be applied in any setting, with anyone, assisting in the development of the psyche.


Wednesday, July 12
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

Narcissistic Injury in Polynesian
and Inuit Myth (and in Current Politics)

Healthy narcissism is healthy self-love, which enables us to love and respect others as we respect ourselves. A politician might then love his or her own values and ideas enough to seek office, and love his or her constituents enough to work faithfully for their well-being.

But we all have some degree of injured narcissism. If the injury is severe we will be hollowed out by it, empty, greedy, obsessed with our own importance, and destructive. If constituents’ self-esteem has been injured, perhaps by social change, technology, or globalism, then they may elect a severely injured narcissist because his defensive grandiosity speaks to their own.

Narcissistic injury has always been part of the human condition, even in stone-age cultures. We will read two neolithic legends. We will see that they anticipate some of Jung’s insights. They both describe narcissistic injury and show psychological responses which help to heal it, or at least withstand its destructive power.

We will see that the wisdom of these legends can help us now as we face current political developments.

To prepare for this day’s workshop, please read this essay, and this Polynesian and this Inuit legend.

Please do the reading weeks ahead of time to give yourself time to reflect, especially upon the legends. The symbolic language of legends and dreams requires meditation. This class will be, in part, about the process by which symbols may be interpreted. Try to notice and record what associations (and perhaps dreams) these legends evoke in your own psyche.


Thursday, July 13
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

The Odyssey: Masculine Individuation
and the Anima

We have come to regard The Odyssey as a timeless mythological and imaginal offering that dramatizes in poetic form patterns of human behavior. In this respect, Homer’s Odyssey is a heroic, dramatic and archetypal poem that in the raw also represents a psychology. We don’t really know why the Greeks were able to produce such timeless creations. Psychologist James Hillman has written that the Renaissance had no field of psychology and the Greeks had no field of religion. We see through the works of Socrates, Plato and later Plotinus that the Greeks had a capacity to think psychologically and metaphorically. For these philosophers, soul-making did not depend on the personal but on a relationship to the archetypal powers. This is just one reason The Odyssey can find a home in contemporary psychological thinking.

In this session, we look at patterns of masculine individuation as a critical part of Odysseus’ journey home to Ithaca from Troy after the Trojan War. We will consider the archetypal transformation inherent in this journey. We will pay particular attention to the inclusion of the anima as part of the masculine individuation and the variety of feminine influences encountered along the way. We will explore how these influences are perceived, received and projected. Our primary objective is to underscore the importance of the feminine consciousness in Odysseus and how he grew psychologically from his relationship with Penelope and the anima within.

It is important to note that these archetypal contents reside in the collective and therefore do not indicate a literal, conscious course of action on the part of Odysseus. A reading of The Odyssey reminds that us Odysseus, unlike Achilles in the Iliad, is a very complex character: an anti-hero, a Hermes character with his twists and turns, and at times the proverbial Trickster. In such a complex, ancient and archetypal tale, a character can represent a psychological complexity within the context of raging action. Odysseus can do no less with the archetypal figure Penelope waiting for him beyond the horizon, in the mist, yet a real and persistent anima influence.


Friday July 14
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

The Tragic Hero in Modern Times

In his Poetics, when describing the reaction to the tragic hero, Aristotle writes “our pity is excited by misfortunes undeservedly suffered, and our terror by some resemblance between the sufferer and ourselves… There remains for our choice a person neither eminently virtuous nor just, nor yet involved in misfortune by deliberate vice or villainy, but by some error or human frailty…”

In this workshop, we will explore the flaws that bring about the downfall of ancient figures such as Oedipus, Achilles, Macbeth, and Lear and modern figures such as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and Troy Maxson in Fences. These deficits result from an inability or unwillingness to look at qualities hidden in the shadows. We will also look at how similar problems in our lives and in the lives of well-known people, such as Freud and Jung, and figures in the political world result in unfortunate, and sometimes tragic, consequences.

Intensive Program 2:

Cosmos from Chaos:

Living Consciously in a Troubled World

July 17-21

During this week we will focus on issues as familiar to the ancient Greeks as they are to us in the 21st century. The human goal has always been to bring cosmos, order or unity, out of chaos. The third century Neoplatonist Plotinus, later revered during the Italian Renaissance, wrote about reaching Oneness or the Intellectual Principle by joining disparate forces and rising above them. Jung’s joining of opposites, such as the conscious and the unconscious, is in this spirit and intellectual tradition. The desire for unity is a compelling psychological urge that is universal and fraught with danger.


Monday, July 17
9 to 10 a.m.
Registration, Welcome, and Orientation

10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

Living Consciously in a Troubled World

“For in all chaos there is a cosmos; in all disorder a secret order.”
C.G. Jung
CW Vol. 9,1

“What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is my end, that I should endure?”
Job 6:11

In this workshop, we will look at the ways people cope in times of chaos. It is suggested that participants read the Book of Job, especially as translated by Stephen Mitchell. We will also explore the coping mechanisms used by people who survived the Holocaust, racism, sexism, and LGBT discrimination. We will focus on how the strategies used in the individuation process can help us understand ourselves as we face difficulties that the world presents.


Tuesday, July 18
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

C.G. Jung’s Psychoanalytic Approach
to Spirituality: A Compass for Conscious Living

“Everything now depends on man.”
Jung 1969d: 459

Jung contended that the archetypes were driven to create consciousness and that mysticism was at the heart of the individuation process. He proposed that mystical nothingness generated a greater compassion for the world and assisted in birthing the Divine into consciousness.

Jung came from a traditional religious background on his father’s side and had a mother who was connected to Spiritualism. These two realities contributed to his search for a religious function in the psyche. During Jung’s career he attempted to bridge these two religious expressions and was in pursuit to understand the spiritual propensity within the psyche. Through the historical writings of the mystics, his personal religious experiences, his confrontation with the unconscious and his treatment of patients, Jung came to know the connection between religious experience and the psyche. The numinous became the ground of being for Jung and also the door to the sacred. According to Jung, the divine and the human are dependent on each other to bring consciousness into the world. It is through consciousness that the Divine can incarnate and redeem humankind.

Jung developed his analytic theory and therapeutic techniques from his findings to assist humankind in psychological, personal, societal growth and development. He cautioned that unconsciousness could cause personal, political, and spiritual ramifications that would hinder or halt involvement in the further creation of humanity. Unconsciousness truncates the Divine and throws one into chaos while reflection and connection with the numinous fosters consciousness and thus assists in helping one live more consciously. Jung’s union of psychology and spirituality became humanity’s compass for conscious living and a call from the Divine. His psychoanalytic approach to spirituality made us aware of how one can participate in the creation or destruction of the world.

This seminar will explore Jung’s thoughts and influences from the mystical tradition and the analytic theories that evolved to create a compass for conscious living.


Wednesday, July 19
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

The Magic of the Other

“Magical practice falls into two parts: first, developing an understanding of chaos, and second translating the essence into what can be understood.”

C.G. Jung, The Red Book

This seminar is an exploration of self as Other because it is often through Other that we best come to know our psychological selves. But how do we define Other? The definition of Other includes not only that which is representative of the true self in reflection, but also those projected Shadow aspects we cannot contain nor see within ourselves.

Material from the unconscious seeps through in order to provide a disruption to the ego’s “normal”—creating chaos, as we are overcome by our complexes, by what appears to belong outside ourselves—to the Other. Many times it is the emotional content of personal or cultural complexes that orient us in positions of opposition to the Other.

In contemporary times, within the Collective, we might be feeling anxious and made fearful by events in our personal and/or professional lives. Against a foreground of the personal daily life is the Collective one of societal issues—racism, misogyny and fears of terrorism, just to name a few. How we find inner solace often depends on how willing we are to go deeper into developing knowledge regarding our complexes, our Shadow and an understanding of psychological Opposites. Our seminar discussion will focus on Jung’s theories of Shadow as well as Opposites and their importance in seeing into one’s own psychological strengths, weaknesses, personal and cultural Collective projections in relationship to Other.


Thursday, July 20
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

The Shadow Unmasked

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair — in short, the period was so far like the present period.”

Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities

We are living in times of paradox much like the historical period Dickens is writing about in the years leading up to the French Revolution. It seems that the fabric of our culture, indeed the fabric of the Cosmos, is breaking apart. Chaos reigns. Reliable cultural, political and religious institutions and beliefs are falling into states of crises. This was also what C.G. Jung was experiencing in 1913 when he was in the midst of his personal psychological crisis. He dreamt that Europe was engulfed in rivers of blood even though the outer world seemed to be relatively stable. Still there were signs of unrest and disaffection. It was as a result of his inner experiences and finally after the outbreak of the Great War, World War I that he became aware of what he later called the Shadow. This became one of his key concepts in what is now known as Analytical or Jungian Psychology.

The Shadow encompasses all that is unconscious within us as well as without. How we become aware of our own shadow material and how we begin to see it in the outer world will determine not only our personal health but also the health of our planet. In this presentation, we will examine and learn to identify shadow material. We will use images from films and news media, literature and art, and the writings of Jung, including material from The Red Book, to help us in this vital exploration of our souls and of the world we are currently involved in shaping and by which we are shaped. Forces within and without are pushing us like tectonic plates to transform. Our greater consciousness can guide us to more positive social and environmental change. As Jung said, “The world hangs by a thin thread. That is Psyche. And what would occur if something happens to Psyche?”


Friday, July 21
10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
1:30 to 4 p.m.

Falling Apart and Coming Together:
Living Consciously through Times
of Upheaval and Uncertainty

“In the threatening situation of the world today, when people are beginning to see that everything is at stake, the projection-creating fantasy soars beyond the realm of earthly organizations and powers into the heavens, into interstellar space, where the rulers of human fate, the gods, once had their abode in the planets. Our earthly world is split into two halves, and nobody knows where a helpful solution is to come from.”

C.G. Jung Vol.10, para 610

In this seminar, we will try to understand the challenges and terrors of our current times through a Jungian lens. Jung’s understanding of the nature and evolution of both the collective and the personal psyche will guide us in our explorations, including Jung’s unique appreciation of the role of projection in relation to consciousness. We will focus on the clinical manifestations and individual symptoms, such as anxiety, stress, and the wide range of disorders on the bi-polar spectrum associated with our current political, cultural and economic divisions. We will place particular emphasis on helpful strategies and attitudes to navigate the rough waters of these difficult mood states which plague so many in our culture. Selected images from the Tarot will assist us in approximating the battlefield of this archetypal drama played out in the collective psyche.
     

‘The Secret of the Golden Silence’

     
I’ll continue advertising events where the hosts impart mindfulness techniques and insights into mindfulness techniques because I believe in the benefits of certain practices to the individual, and to the Masonic lodge working as a group. Rosicrucians and others already employ some form of this work in their gatherings, and it is sad that almost all Freemasons are missing out. When I spoke at the Masonic Restoration Foundation’s 2015 symposium in Philadelphia, my topic was meditation exercises intended for lodge use. Among my audience of about 75, I think something like 12 or 15 raised their hands when I asked whose lodges incorporate some form of mindfulness work in their labors.

I was stunned.

Of course the attendees of any given MRF event are Freemasons who don’t waste time on the generic fraternal club pap that characterizes probably 95 percent or more of the Craft lodges in the United States, but to see 20 percent or so of that group answer in the affirmative – and then dominate the ensuing half hour of Q&A—was an answer to a prayer.

Anyway, as you may infer from what I wrote here, it is necessary to search outside the Masonic lodge to learn about mindfulness practices, and this edition of The Magpie Mason takes us to the C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology on East 39th Street. It’s hard for me to think of December just yet, but on Saturday the 3rd there will be a daylong seminar based on Carl Jung’s writings on contemplative silence through a Taoist prism. From the publicity:

The Secret of the Golden Silence

Led by Royce Froehlich, Ph.D., MDiv, LCSW

Saturday, December 3

10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Jung’s Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower (1929) presents his insights on the nature of consciousness in the light of Taoist thought, with a nod to Christian gnostics and mystics. In the Chinese text, Jung hears the archetypal call for contemplative silence. Whether to foster communion between one’s subjective self and a deity, the objective psyche, or to focus one’s attention on a task at hand, we are encouraged to follow Jung’s lead to quiet the mind. Contemplative techniques can offer insight to one’s personality and may contribute to a variety of therapeutic benefits for body, mind, and spirit. In Jung’s case, the application of “certain yoga techniques” contributed to the development of The Red Book.

Much of Analytical Psychology’s rich lexicon and clinical language is in this treatise on individuation and mental illness, where Jung engages the subject of we-wei (actively doing nothing), which is the “secret” of the golden flower. Resonant in the mystical thought of preacher and spiritual guide Meister Eckhart, who describes such a state of mind as Gelassenheit (letting-be-ness), the contemplative attitude of doing nothing also inspired the composer John Cage, whose work will inform this presentation. In addition, the workshop will review basic emotion regulation (mindfulness practice) techniques prescribed for the treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder in Dialectical Behavior Therapy.

The C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, Inc., SW CPE, is recognized by New York State Education Department’s State Board of Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers 0350.

At completion of this workshop participants will be able to:

• Offer an overview of a key text in the development of Jung’s analytical psychology and its application in clinical practice.
• Show the relationship between analytical psychology and contemporary models of psychotherapy that include mindfulness techniques.
• Identify common elements in Jungian theory, spiritual practice, and the arts.

Royce Froehlich, Ph.D., MDiv, LCSW, is a Jungian analyst with a private practice in New York City. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of Social Work, Union Theological Seminary, the New School for Social Research, and the European Graduate School, he is on the faculty of The C.G. Jung Institute of New York, The C.G. Jung Foundation for Analytical Psychology, and teaches in The Open Center’s Holistic Psychology certification program.

Registration:
General Public: $90
Members/students: $75

Register here.
     

‘Red Book events coming to the Big Apple’

     
In happier publishing news (see post below), Carl Jung’s enigmatic and irrepressible Red Book, or at least the art within, is making the rounds worldwide, including two events in New York City coming soon. As reported previously on The Magpie, the huge Occult Humanities Conference at New York University is only a week away. Coming soon are two related events in Brooklyn and Manhattan. From the publicity:

The Incantations on Page 54 of the Red Book by C.G. Jung.

Snakes, Dragons, and Other Scaly Creatures:

A Red Book Event and Conference

Gallery Opening Event: March 4

Exhibit: February 29 to April 1

Salena Gallery of Long Island University

One University Place, Brooklyn

Conference: March 5

C. G. Jung Center of New York

28 East 39th Street, 
Manhattan

Click here

From February 29 to April 1, an exhibition of the DigitalFusion prints from Jung’s Red Book will take place at the Salena Gallery of Long Island University-Brooklyn. You are cordially invited to the Opening Reception on Friday, March 4 at the gallery at One University Place in Brooklyn. These magnificent 25x33-inch reproductions of Jung’s paintings made their art world debut at the 55th Annual Venice Biennale in 2013, where the original manuscript of the Red Book was on display.

In conjunction with the exhibit, a conference will be held on Saturday, March 5 at the C.G. Jung Center of New York (28 East 39th Street). Titled “Snakes, Dragons, and other Scaly Creatures,” the conference will be co-sponsored by the C.G. Jung Institute of New York, the New York Association for Analytical Psychology, the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York, the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, and the Analytical Psychology Club of New York.

Jung asserted that when we meditate on a particular image, it comes alive and takes on an independent life of its own. “That is the case with any fantasy image… It gets restless, it shifts, something is added, or it multiples itself; one fills it with living power.” We invite you to muse on the symbol of the snake. Let the image speak to you and stir your imagination. Follow your ideas into realms such as psychological theory, mythology, clinical practice, and contemporary culture.
     

‘Occult Humanities Conference to return to NYU’

     
Phantasmaphile and New York University will conspire again to host the Occult Humanities Conference next February.

Pam Grossman and Jesse Bransford will welcome you at the university’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions, located at 34 Stuyvesant Street in Manhattan, February 5 through 7, for a weekend of lectures, performances, and art exhibits exploring “Contemporary Art and Scholarship on the Esoteric Traditions.”

Click here for the schedule, and click here to buy tickets.

From the publicity:


The 2016 Occult Humanities Conference is a weekend conference to be held in New York City on February 5-7, 2016. The conference will present a wide array of voices active in the cultural landscape who are specifically addressing the occult tradition through research, scholarship and artistic practice.

The arts and humanities at present are acutely interested in subjects related to the occult tradition. The tradition represents a rich and varied visual culture that displays a complex set of relations at once culturally specific and global in their transmission. Roughly defined, the occult tradition represents a series of culturally syncretic belief systems with related and overlapping visual histories. Though there are as many ways into this material as there are cultural—and personal—perspectives, universal occult concerns often include a belief in some sort of magic; a longing to connect with an immaterial or trans-personal realm; and a striving for inner-knowledge, refinement of the self, and transformation of one’s consciousness, if not one’s physical circumstances.

Intensely marginalized throughout most historical periods, these traditions persist and represent an “underground” perspective that periodically exerts a strong influence on structures of dissent, utopianism and social change. Though history is marked with several so-called “Occult Revivals,” the contemporary digital age is a perfect confluence of several factors that make this moment prime for a re-examination of all of the esoteric traditions. While the information age has allowed for easier access to previously obscure writings, imagery, and social contexts, it alternately elicits a deep desire for sensorial experiences and meaning-making when one steps away from the screen.

The presenters at the OHC represent a rich and expanding community of international artists and academics from multiple disciplines across the humanities who share an exuberance and excitement for how the occult traditions interface with their fields of study as well as the culture at large. The small scale of this conference (approximately 100 attendees) will give ticket holders an intimate look at the presenters and their views.
This year’s conference coincides with the exhibition “Language of the Birds: Occult and Art” on display at 80 WSE Gallery, the art gallery of NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions, curated by Pam Grossman.

There will be an onsite exhibition of prints from Carl Jung’s The Red Book, courtesy of DigitalFusion.

Books and editions from a variety of vendors will be available for sale throughout the duration of the conference. Vendors include Inner Traditions, Ouroboros Press, Wonderella Printed, and more.

MEMES OR SCHEMES
If we consider a consciously magical approach to art in contemporary culture, should we be fascinated by memes of potential or paranoid about manipulative schemes? History shows us that more than anything else, it is culture that defines how “posterity” will regard a certain area or region. Logically, this would extend to our times too, then. In transcending the causal and rational approaches to human existence (economy, politics, science, etc.), we find that our culture is increasingly infused with magical approaches, not only in thematics but also in attitude and content. How will this shape our immediate future and, beyond, how will later generations regard our phase of experimentation?

Carl Abrahamsson (b. 1966) is a writer, publisher, and filmmaker based in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been writing about occultural people, phenomena, tendencies and movements since the late 1980s. He is a lecturer at art institutions, colleges, and universities, and is the editor and publisher of the annual journal The Fenris Wolf, which contains material from the vital intersection between art and esotericism.

Dionysus Stardust: Theater, Masks,

and the Spectacle of Rock and Roll

Peter Bebergal, author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, will discuss the relationship between theater, ritual, and popular music, with a look at the influence of ancient religious practice, turn of the century art, and occult lodge rites on the performance and culture of rock. From Robert Plant’s Dionysian swagger to Bowie’s alchemical transformations, Bebergal will reveal the gods under the masks of rock’s most arresting moments.

Peter Bebergal writes widely on the speculative and slightly fringe. His essays and reviews have appeared in NewYorker.com, The Times Literary Supplement, Boing Boing, The Believer, and The Quietus. He is the author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood, The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God (with Scott Korb). Bebergal studied religion and culture at Harvard Divinity School, and lives in Cambridge.

Swallowing the Stone

with the Brothers McKenna:

Psychedelics, Alchemy,

and Media at La Chorrera

The “Experiment at La Chorrera,” which Terence and Dennis McKenna performed in the Columbian jungle in 1971, and which became the core of Terence’s True Hallucinations, stands as one of the most storied trips in the annals of modern psychedelia. As an exploration of what Wouter Hanegraaff calls “entheogenic esotericism,” this talk will unpack the various threads of alchemy, science fiction, and media theory that formed the matrix for the protocols, phenomenology, and after-the-fact interpretations of the McKenna’s unparalleled encounter with high weirdness.

Erik Davis is an author, podcaster, award-winning journalist, and lecturer based in San Francisco. He is the author, most recently, of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (Yeti, 2010). He also wrote The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle, 2006), Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3, 2005) and TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Crown, 1998), which has been translated into five languages and recently reissued with a new afterword by North Atlantic Books. His essays on music, technoculture, psychedelics, and esoterica have appeared in dozens of books, including A Rose Veiled in Black: Art and Arcana of Our Lady Babalon (Three Hands, 2015), Zig Zag Zen (Synergetic, 2015), Rave Culture and Religion (Routledge, 2009), and AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Μan (University of New Mexico Press, 2005). Davis has contributed to scores of publications, including Aeon, Bookforum, Wired, Salon, Slate, the LA Weekly, and the Village Voice. He has been interviewed by CNN, the BBC, Wisconsin public radio, and the New York Times, and explores the “cultures of consciousness” on his weekly podcast Expanding Mind. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University, and recently earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Rice University.

Delphic Oracle - Saturday Evening Performance

Christiana Key began classical violin training on her fifth birthday, followed by piano and opera a few years later. During those formative years, she was also active in community theatre, as an actor and costume designer, and started a bespoke evening and holiday gown label for her young friends’ parties. She was accepted into the University of North Florida as a double music major in Performance Violin and Voice at 16 years old, though she left two years later to pursue her interests in punk, rock, electronic, and experimental music, first moving to London, then settling down in New York City. She began recording original compositions in her bedroom in 2006 and joined Cult of Youth in 2009, and Zola Jesus in 2012 as a touring member.

During her time in New York and as part of Cult of Youth, she met several occultists who introduced her to different and innovative ways of fusing music and magick, and through that, Delphic Oracle was born. Christiana saw there was a lack in both the accessibility of experimental magical music and the (powerful) intentions of mainstream pop and hip-hop. Delphic Oracle aims to fuse the power of magickal intent and the power of sound, and additionally, the power of spectacle into every performance. Each performance is based on astrological vibrations, current events, popular culture, and the audience's subtle emotional dynamics felt before and during the show. The intentions behind each show can range from self-love to financial stability to gratitude to wisdom, and are represented by obvious things such as the songs' timbre, lyric matter, and costume choice, down minute details such as color and number of candles, types of metals and wands used, and the planetary and elemental correspondences of the homemade incenses burned during the performance.

Delphic Oracle has self-released one EP, “Watching the Fern,” and a cassette through Popnihil, “Mirrors/Crows/Echoes.” She performs solo using only a sampler, violin, drum pad, and vocal microphone. She now lives in St. Augustine, Florida, and after a year’s forced-hiatus from touring, she is working on a full-length album to be released fall 2016.

Bohemian Occult Subculture in Britain’s 1890s: How Artists, Actors, and Writers Made the Golden Dawn

The Order of the Golden Dawn is an icon for modern occultists: it is the late Victorian ceremonial magic organization which created the template for subsequent occult magic. Western mysteries, Kabbalah, Celtic mysticism, and even Wicca would follow forms it developed in its 25 short years, c.1885-1925. It was an occult renaissance, sudden and powerful.

Historians stress the first founders’ connection with Freemasonry, giving the impression that it was a club of old establishment men with gray suits and gray beards. Their rites and study course were, one imagines, equally boring and patriarchal. But in fact, the Golden Dawn core group were a bunch of young creatives - friends working in creative collaboration, inspired by the mysterious. They were the kind of people who, if they lived today, would perhaps hang out at Observatory.

The women, first. One was a polyamorous working actress who wrote for feminist magazines. Another was a feisty trust-fund girl who staged avant-garde plays with her friends. A third was gorgeous Swedish art student who liked older men and doing portraits. The guys: a very cute poet from Irish parentage; a bright researcher with no money and a bad temper; and a rich kid who did a lot of drugs and a lot of boyfriends. They were all bright, feisty, achievers; by old age each had made real impact in their chosen fields. Together they made art, made ritual, did meditations, hung out, had romances, had breakups, studied old texts, and tried to reach into something beyond normal human experience. As we see them anew via this illustrated presentation, it is hoped we can see the Order of the Golden Dawn anew.

Dr. Christina Oakley Harrington is the founder and managing director of the legendary Treadwell’s of London, a bookshop and events center for the British pagan and esoteric community. She is co-editor of the Abraxas International Journal of Esoteric Studies. A former assistant professor of History, she feels passionately that esotericism is an important strand in Western culture, to be addressed, studied, celebrated—and, of course, practiced.

John Augustus Knapp and His Circle

Perhaps most famous for his watercolor illustrations that populate Manly P. Hall’s esoteric encyclopedia The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928) and his illustrations for John Uri Lloyd’s curious novel Etidorhpa (1895), J. Augustus Knapp was an illustrator at the center of a circle of the most influential members of the American Occult Revival. I will discuss Knapp’s personal occult interests and beliefs and his circle of friends and collaborators.

A Curtis G. Lloyd Fellow at the Lloyd Library and Museum, Ken Henson is the author and illustrator of the treatise Alchemy and Astral Projection: Ecstatic Trance in the Hermetic Tradition (LLM, 2014), the illustrated novella/grimoire HIGH GRAVITY: Werewolves, Ghosts, and Magick Most Black (Oneiric Imprint, 2015), and the illustrator of Blue Jay Slayer (Aurora Press, 2015), which is a collaboration with poet Matt Hart. He also recently collaborated with the Philosophical Research Society to restore and reissue Manly P. Hall and John Augustus Knapp’s Revised New Art Tarot. Ken’s writings and art have been published in periodicals such as Abraxas, Clavis Journal, and The Gnostic Journal, and he has presented at the Esoteric Book Conference, SCIENTIAE, Babalon Rising, and the Left Hand Path Conference. He is an Associate Professor and the Head of Illustration at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Ohio where he teaches studio courses and Art and the Occult.

Blues Magic

References to witchcraft, and magic spells appear frequently in the lyrics of popular songs, but, in general, these references are metaphoric. For example, when Frank Sinatra sings about “that sly come-hither stare” in his classic “Witchcraft,” few listeners think that the subject of that song is actually practicing dark arts.

A prominent exception exists in blues and its descendant, rhythm and blues (R&B), whose lyrics are permeated with references to actual magical practices. Magic is alive in the blues; very specifically the magical practices that first arose in the African-American communities of the southern United States, the traditions of Hoodoo and Conjure. Blues is the crossroads where music and magic meet:
• Blues songs praise and excoriate Conjure women and Hoodoo doctors.
• Songs document historical magical practitioners, like the Seven Sisters of New Orleans or Caroline Dye, the seer of Newport, Arkansas.
• Blues lyrics are studded with mention of magical practices such as mojo hands, John the Conqueror roots, hotfoot powder, and the fidelity-enforcing Nation Sack.
• An occult aura surrounds some musicians, too: reminiscent of the legend of Faust, blues stars Robert Johnson and Tommie Johnson were both reputed to have met the devil at the crossroads, so that they could barter their souls in exchange for spectacular musical prowess and success.

During this talk, we'll explore the musical genre, as well as the specific magical practices celebrated within its songs.

Judika Illes is a native New Yorker and an independent scholar and researcher. She is the author of eight books devoted to spiritual traditions, witchcraft, and the magical arts including the Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, as well as the forthcoming The Weiser Book of Forgotten and Fantastic Tales. In her younger days, Judika hosted The Low Budget Blues Show on WRSU-FM.

An Invisible Art: Maya Deren and Experiments with Absence

Experimental filmmaker Maya Deren traveled to Haiti four different times with the ultimate aim of making a film that would compare children’s games, Balinese dances, and the rituals practiced for Voudoun that she had gone there to film. In the process, her work began to focus on generating connections through which what is seen and what is unseen might traffic. She gives precedence to that which is accomplished through suggestion or association rather than through causal links, and takes pains to represent that which seems not to be present but is actually simply not visible. Such strategies underline Deren’s obsessions, including how to access inaccessible states of being and present them cinematically. The work that comes out of her Haitian experience draws on energies related to the incomplete, missing, or desired but absent object that she labored to represent.

Sarah Keller is Assistant Professor of Art and Cinema Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She co-edited the collection Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations (Amsterdam University Press, 2012), and her book Maya Deren: Incomplete Control (Columbia University Press, 2014) examines the role of unfinished cinematic works by focusing on the Maya Deren oeuvre. Keller’s current project, Cinephilia/Cinephobia, focuses on the history and theory of love and anxiety in the cinema.

Lykanthea - Opening Performance

Lykanthea is Lakshmi Ramgopal, a solo electronic musician from Chicago, IL. With lyrics rooted in ancient mythologies, a haunting voice smoked in cave-like reverb and the gauzy drone of synths, Lykanthea writes the soundtrack of thresholds. Drawing on a decade of Carnatic vocal training, Ramgopal "sings hymns of the ancients in a tale that breaks against oppressive hands to expressions and emotions that emerge from behind the veil" (IMPOSE). Her sound is ritual chanting for the electronic age.

Ramgopal began writing and performing as Lykanthea while pursuing a doctorate in Classics at the University of Chicago. She found herself drawn to the narrative of legacy and rebirth in ancient Sumerian texts about the goddess Inanna. While isolated on an uninhabited Greek island in 2013, she began writing lyrics, collecting field recordings, and laying down the soundscapes that became her debut Migration. The EP was released in July 2014 digitally and on cassette to local acclaim, with the initial physical run selling out in months.

A fixture in Chicago’s dark fashion and witch house scene, Ramgopal’s passion for atmosphere and texture has made her music an inspiration for collaborators. Her music has been featured in promotional videos for Velvit and Vespere Vintage, and her style was praised by dark fashion blog FAIIINT and Culture Magazine. She also collaborated with Hvnter Gvtherer to release a capsule collection of jewelry inspired by Migration’s lyrics. While living in Italy earlier this year as a winner of the prestigious Rome Prize, Ramgopal has performed across Europe, including Leipzig’s Wave Gotik Treffen. She also partnered up with sound artist Paula Matthusen for the sound installation “Prex Gemina” for exhibition in Rome and worked with Austrian artist Krist Mort on the video for “Parturition.”

Lykanthea has been featured in Noisey, IMPOSE, MTV Iggy, Culture Magazine, No Fear of Pop, Warren Ellis’ SPEKTRMODULE podcast, Chicago Reader, Largehearted Boy and Artribune.

Art, Technology, and the Mysterious Imagery of C.G Jung’s Red Book

In 2007, Jung’s Red Book was released from the family vault for the first time in decades and given to Hugh Milstein from DigitalFusion to evaluate and archive for future generations. This behind the scenes journey into how The Red Book was digitally captured begins in 2002 and will provide insights into the technology, process, and care undertaken in Zürich during the photographic process. Hugh will reveal the technological transformations that have occurred in the last 12 years, allowing this masterwork to be printed with amazing clarity as fine art prints. He will share conversations with Massimiliano Gioni from the Venice Biennale, where The Red Book and fine art print reproductions were exhibited in the world famous art show, making a transformative historical statement about Jung’s art into a modern reality. Hugh will also share in-depth closeups of the masterwork, revealing mystic imagery and hidden themes that were hand crafted by Jung.

Hugh Milstein, co-founder and President of DigitalFusion. DigitalFusion is a leading Creative Services company headquartered in Los Angeles. With a base in photography, and an expansion into motion, DigitalFusion is a cutting edge provider to major publications and entertainment outlets worldwide. Hugh’s expertise in image making led him to be name to the “100 Most Important People in Photography” by American Photographer. Hugh continues to design and develop new image styles and services that appear on digital newsstands, moving billboards, iPads, and mobile devices.

The Tarot and its Gifts

When I asked the Shining Tribe Tarot what it wanted to talk about at the conference, I received three cards about receiving gifts and being willing to join with the cards to utilize them. In the Gift of Trees (Queen of Wands) two snakes wind around a tree, so that the three figures, snakes and tree, form the caduceus of Hermes. Between them, the snakes hold up the alchemical Philosopher’s Stone of transformation. In the Gift of Birds (Queen of Swords), a shaman wears a bird-headed helmet and carries a feathered shield and a banner with a bird on it. However, a flute falls from the sky, and in order to play this Gift (many people believe that flutes originally were inspired by bird songs) he will have to drop the shield and banner and take off the helmet. Finally, in the Two of Rivers (Two of Cups), a dark and light fish swim head to tail, forming the famous yin-yang symbol (the card is a tribute to the I Ching). The message is clear: in order to truly work (and create) with the Tarot, whether for readings, story telling, or spiritual discovery, we need to meet it as a partner, open up to its gifts, and merge with it.

Rachel Pollack is the author of 36 books of fiction and non-fiction, including two award-winning novels, a poetry collection, a translation (with David Vine) of Sophocles’s Oidipous Tyrannos (Oedipus Rex) and a series of books about Tarot that have become known around the world. Rachel has taught and lectured in the U.S. Canada, Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and China. Rachel has designed and drawn The Shining Tribe Tarot, and recently worked with artist Robert Place to create The Burning Serpent Oracle. Her work has been translated into 14 languages. Her most recent book is a novel, The Child Eater. Until her recent retirement, Rachel was a senior faculty member of Goddard College’s MFA in Writing program. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.

The Forms of Hidden Things: Surrealism Through the Mirror of Magic

Artists, like alchemists, employ matter to reveal its transformative properties as magic and metaphor. Celia Rabinovitch, artist, author, and pioneer in the field of art and religion, uncovers surrealist art as a special form of knowledge related to insight and imagination. In The Forms of Hidden Things: Surrealism Through the Mirror of Magic, she investigates the Swiss American artist, Kurt Seligmann (1900-62) who immigrated to the USA in 1938, becoming the acknowledged expert on magic in surrealism. A decade later his book, Through the Mirror of Magic, (New York: Pantheon, 1948) was welcomed into the effervescent cultural mix that included Joseph Campbell, Wallace Stevens, Carl Jung, and others. Neglected until recently, Seligmann’s art has come to the fore, while the recognition of his book in the history of religions was constant. Celia shows how Seligmann’s magical imagination arises from his personal history and experiences as well as his occult research. She illuminates how his understanding of Jewish mysticism informs his art and defines his identity, while remaining hidden from others and even from himself.

Celia Rabinovitch (Ph.D. History of Religions, McGill, Montreal; MFA, Painting, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an artist and writer and professor whose work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Her book, Surrealism and the Sacred: Power, Eros, and the Occult in Modern Art, is cited in new approaches to art, literature, and spirituality, and considered an authority in the field. Using cultural anthropology, the history of religions, and art history she uncovers a history of hidden knowledge that includes magic and the imagination. She has written for Artweek, The Dictionary of Art, American Ceramics, C Magazine, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and contributed chapters to The Spiritual Image in Modern Art, ed. Katherine Regier, and was interviewed by Louis E Bourgeois, ed., in Complete with Missing Parts: Interviews with the Avant-garde. Her atmospheric paintings have been exhibited at The Florence Biennale; Galerie Mourati, Vienna; University of California; California Institute of Integral Studies; the Winnipeg Art Gallery; the Beck Center Museum, Cleveland, and published in Cerise Press: A Journal of Literature, Arts and Culture (2012), with awards for her art from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts, New York. She has held teaching and director appointments at the University of Colorado-Denver, California College of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and at Stanford University. As a Visiting Artist at Syracuse University she co-chaired the graduate program in painting, and was Program Director for Fine Arts and Graphic Design at the University of California, Berkeley (1992-2002). Currently she is professor at the University of Manitoba (on leave) and Director of Research at the Seligmann Center for the Arts, NY.


Janaka Stucky - Saturday Evening Poetry Reading

Janaka Stucky is the author of The Truth Is We Are Perfect (2015), the first title from Jack White’s new publishing imprint, Third Man Books. He is also the Publisher of award-winning indie press, Black Ocean. Janaka’s poems are at once incantatory, mystic, epigrammatic, and spiritual. His meditative sensibilities and minimalist style create ritualized poems acting as spells-transcribed to be read aloud and performed in the service of realizing that which we seek to become. His influences draw on his Vedantic upbringing, as well as interests in Gnosticism and 20th century magickal traditions. His poems have appeared in such journals as Denver Quarterly, Fence and North American Review, and his articles have been published by The Huffington Post and The Poetry Foundation. He is a two-time National Haiku Champion and in 2010 he was voted “Boston’s Best Poet” in the Boston Phoenix.

Picture Yourself in a Burning Building

Artist Scott Treleaven talks about the furtive role of mysticism, occultism and theories of consciousness in historical abstractionism and his own work.

Scott Treleaven (born Canada, 1972) is a painter and filmmaker. He has written extensively about the intersection of art, mysticism, sexuality and marginal culture, and his influential ’90s underground publications are included in the book In Numbers: Serial Publications by Artists Since 1955. Recent solo shows include Invisible-Exports, New York, and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco. Group exhibitions include Contemporary Art Museum Houston, ICA Philadelphia, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and the British Film Institute.