Eleusis & the Mystery of the Divine Child with Denise Horton

Sunday, March 24 from 2 - 4 pm

(Program will be recorded and sent to registrants)

A collision between mythology and Jungian psychology occurred in 1949, when the collaboration between the acerbic Hungarian philosopher and mythologist, Karoly Kerenyi, and the reserved, but adventurous depth psychologist, C.G. Jung, created a brief, but pithy “novella”, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis (Bollingen Series XXII).

Jung’s travels, at that time and earlier, to New Mexico, Africa, and Peru, had brought him “face to face” with the larger context -- shamanic, cultural, anthropological, archaeological, astrological -- for his experiences. Kerenyi’s longtime interest in the "primal myth” of the classical Greek period, Demeter and Persephone, along with the characterization of the Eleusinian Mysteries as the foremost historical proto “Jungian” passage rite of the ancient Greek world, led to a fruitful collaboration. 

In this course, the fascinating journey between these two men will be traced in terms of archetypal influence:

• Mythological themes and characterizations of the personality “domain(s)” 

• Daemons of the gods/goddesses of the classical ethos

• The primal ”tool” of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which allowed a  re-enactment of the god/goddess transfiguration experience, attended by millions over the four to five centuries in which it was active (felled only by the invasions of Alaric I (Visigoth) in the 5th century A.D.) 

As a learning experience, the course will take the “Round” as its motif, engaging the student with the cyclical archetype of the ouroboros, and inviting active participation in the transformative process. The course will open with an explication of the main psychological-mythological themes. Relevant contemporary myths/rites of passage will also be introduced, such as Jungian psychotherapist Edward Tick’s enantiodramas enacted semi-annually with traumatized soldiers (PTSD), in the Greek Isles and Vietnam. Also, Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., director of Animas Valley Institute, wilderness guide, and “psychologist gone wild” (his term), offers a comprehensive international program of modern rites of passage/enantiodramas.