Prepared for a Pacifica Graduate Institute course on The Poetic Basis of Mind, these lectures were written roughly six years after the publication of the author’s In the Image of Orpheus: Rilke—A Soul History (Chiron Publications 2011). This series of lectures can serve as an introduction to (or perhaps distillation of) the in-depth treatment of the convergence of archetypal psychology and poetry offered in the Soul History.
They are, however, also much more than that. These eight lectures stand on their own as a unique and cohesive treatment of many core concerns of the soul, and pursue diverse threads not taken up in the Soul History.