13 March 2023 9:34 pm

Gaia and the Tree of Life

The Tree of Life is an ancient image that comes to us from deep within the psyche. It has appeared across different cultures and throughout the ages. It has enabled many individuals to realise that their true happiness is inseparable from the well-being and health of nature, of Gaia, of our living earth.

Greek myths tell us that Gaia was the first born of primordial Chaos and that she gave birth to the starry heavens and then to all the beings here on earth. She is the mother of us all, including the Tree of Life.

In this talk we’ll explore whether the power of the myths and images of Gaia and The Tree of Life can help us harness the imaginative possibilities in the contemporary sciences of Gaia to solve our terrible contemporary global crisis. Together we’ll enquire whether this might enable us to embed ourselves in the living body of our sacred animate earth, open to its richness and ready to act in service of all her beings, peacefully and democratically.


Dr. Stephan Harding holds a doctorate in behavioral ecology from the University of Oxford. He Coordinated the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College for almost two decades and has been the College’s resident ecologist and tutor since its inception in 1991. He has worked and taught alongside many of the world’s leading ecological activists, thinkers and writers, including Fritjof Capra, Brian Goodwin, Lynn Margulis, and James Lovelock, with whom he has collaborated scientifically for a number of years. Stephan is highly acclaimed around world for his electrifying and deeply inspiring talks and lectures on the themes of Gaia theory, ecophilosophy and sustainable living. He is the author of Animate Earth (2009) and Gaia Alchemy (2022)

Jules Cashford studied Philosophy at St. Andrews University, and received a Carnegie Fellowship for postgraduate research in Literature at Cambridge, where she was a tutor in Tragedy for Trinity College for some years. She then trained in Jungian Analysis with the Association of Jungian Analysts in London, and taught Mythology. Her books include The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (co-authored with Anne Baring) (Penguin, 1993); The Moon: Symbol of Transformation (Cassell, 2003); a translation of The Homeric Hymns for Penguin Classics (2003); The Mysteries of Osiris (Atalanta, 2010), a retelling of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival for Young Adults, and a novel The Crane Dance. She was co-editor, with Thomas Singer and Craig san Roque, of Ancient Greece, Modern Psyche (Routledge, 2018). With Kingfisher Art Productions, she has made two films on the Early Netherlandish Painter Jan van Eyck, and three films on ‘Gaia’: Gaia, Mother Goddess Earth of Ancient Greece, The Return of Gaia, and The Eleusinian Mysteries. Jules serves as a trustee for the Gaia Foundation, an environmental non-profit.

5 October 2011 2:51 pm

Animus/Anima archetypes in Jungian psychology, excerpt from "A World of Dreams" , a three-part series of films produced by PBS, on the life and works of the great thinker and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.

5 March 2018 11:05 pm

A veces se plantea que podemos considerar a la mujer y al hombre como calcos directos de lo femenino y de lo masculino respectivamente, sin embargo la psique y la sociedad van complejizando cada vez más las vivencias hasta hacer improcedente cualquier simplificación con respecto a lo esencial de esas categorías. Como pionero y hombre de su tiempo, Jung abrió el camino expresando algunas opiniones que hoy son discutidas por analistas como Polly Young Eisendrath, Verena Kast y James Hillman, no obstante sus premisas siguen siendo la base de importantes hallazgos sobre nuestra relación con el mundo, con los otros, las otras y con nosotros mismos. Es tremendamente importante que los que hoy trabajamos sobre las ideas del maestro de Zurich, continuemos indagando sobre lo masculino y lo femenino como arquetipos, pues encontramos a cada paso discursos en los que se sigue confundiendo lo femenino con lo que hacen las mujeres y lo masculino con lo que hacen los hombres. Esto a la larga genera una confusión igual a la que se quiere combatir desde el gran proyecto de hacer alma.

Lisímaco Henao Henao. Analista Junguiano SCAJ - IAAP