Next year’s Jungian travels offer two very different ways into the soul. One goes through the body, in the green south of India. The other goes through myth, across the Irish landscape.
Jung himself went to India on invitation, in the winter of 1937 to 1938, for the 25th anniversary of the University of Calcutta. He collected honorary doctorates and stayed in Mysore as a guest of the Maharajah. He also visited the temple at Konarak, where a pandit explained its erotic sculptures to him. Then he fell ill with dysentery and spent ten days in a Calcutta hospital, and it was there that he dreamed of the Holy Grail.
Jung in India 2027, “The Body of the Divine: Tantra, Ayurveda and the Living Soul of South India”, is the 20th Jungian encounter with India. It runs from 26 January to 5 February 2027 in Kerala, sponsored by the C.G. Jung Foundation of New York and the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. The programme starts from the Tantric view that the body is the vehicle of transcendence and not an obstacle to it. It links this to Jung’s conviction that individuation comes from living life more fully. Jungian analyst and psychiatrist Ashok Bedi and psychotherapist Ami Bedi lead the talks and dream groups. Between sessions the group travels from the old trading port of Fort Kochi, with its Chinese fishing nets and Sephardic synagogue, to the tea country of Munnar and the backwaters of Kumarakom, where there is a day on a houseboat. The tour carries 12 hours of continuing education credit. Numbers are limited, and enquiries go to regine@mindfuljourneys.com. You can register and see the full programme here.
If you would rather start the journey from home, Southern Arizona Friends of Jung hosts an online seminar this Saturday, 31 October. “The Many Faces of Jung in India” is led by Sulagna Sengupta, a Jungian scholar, author and coach based in Bangalore. The seminar follows Jung’s relationship with India, from his journey of 1937 to 1938 to the evolution of Jungian work there. Along the way it takes in synchronicity, India’s colonial past, German Romanticism and the encounter with the Other. It also asks where Jung found unity between Indian thought and analytical psychology, and where he met gaps and differences. Sengupta also shares her own journey with Jung. Starting at 10am Phoenix time, on Zoom. Get your tickets here.
In April, the New York Center for Jungian Studies marks the 25th year of Jung in Ireland with two programmes back to back. One of Jung’s best-known Irish connections is a book. In 1932 he wrote an essay on James Joyce’s Ulysses, admitting that it left him feeling “made a fool of”. Two years later, Joyce asked him to treat his daughter Lucia. Ulysses is a modern retelling of the Odyssey, so it makes a fitting backdrop for the first programme. In the seminar “Evolving Archetypes Within Us as We Grow Older”, from 3 to 10 April 2027 at Farnham Estate Resort in County Cavan, Phil Cousineau reads the Odyssey itself as an ancient map for aging, changing souls. Richard Tarnas explores how archetypes stay open to our active participation. Shannon Yockey asks what animals, in dreams and in nature, can teach us in the second half of life. Earl Collins, Marlene Frantz, Marilyn Marshall, Aryeh Maidenbaum and Diana Rubin complete the faculty. The resort stands in 1,300 acres of parkland and lakes, in a county said to hold 365 lakes. An optional full-day field trip with archaeologist Michael Gibbons visits an island monastery on Lough Erne and the Neolithic tombs and rock art of the Cavan Burren. It is limited to 40 people. You can read more and sign up here.
The poet and mystic George Russell, who wrote as AE, was reading Jung in the 1920s. He wrote that he was continually excited by Jung’s theories and almost as often doubtful of them. AE is among the writers at the heart of the study tour “Jungian Psychology and the Landscape of Celtic Mythology”, from 11 to 17 April 2027 at Cahernane House Hotel in Killarney. The hotel is a manor built in 1877 at the edge of Killarney National Park, in County Kerry. Monika Wikman and Charles Zimbrick-Rogers join Diana Rubin and Aryeh Maidenbaum in exploring the Celtic imagination through AE, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and the philosopher-poet John Moriarty. Expect lectures, close readings of poetry and myth, meditation exercises inspired by Celtic tradition, and time spent walking the land. Michael Gibbons leads a full-day field trip here too. Continuing education credits have been applied for on both Irish programmes, and certificates of attendance are available. Details and registration are with the New York Center for Jungian Studies. You can read more and register here.