Special Lecture: Gates to the Numinous – An Archetypal Understanding of Dreams

“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends.”
C.G. Jung

It is the simplicity of the dream, communicating to us in a language derived from the natural world that moves us so deeply. Similar to the apparent simplicity of French composer Eric Satie’s music, we are mesmerized and taken to a realm far beyond everyday life into something that may be the domain of the Numinous. Just listening to the opening stanza of Satie’s Gymnopedie we sense that he was already transfixed, and needed to create music expressive of this world existing beyond the veil. Like the image, these sounds and rhythms convey the movement of the Self as it so gently transports us into relationship with the sacred.

In the dream, patterns of life, of growth, and of endings are revealed through a rich collective language. So too, the dream allows us to see that something in our life – perhaps a relationship, a job, or an attitude – is outdated, and that the Self, the soul is in need of renewal.

Carl Jung was once asked why the dream speaks through symbols and not in the language of everyday life. To this question Jung responded by saying that such a direct communication would fall on deaf ears, and that the Self speaks through an iconographic, pictorial voice of the ages, the language of the “Antique Soul”. So too he reminds us that from time eternal, humanity has been moved by images, by sounds, parables, and symbols.

Could the majesty and utter beauty of Satie and Debussy’s music or DaVinci and Michelangelo’s art ever be conveyed in words?
Offering a glimpse into the world of the archetypal, and closely alighted to Jung’s and von Franz’s work, this presentation promises to enrich your appreciation and understanding of the archetypal images in dreams and the relationship between our personally created meaning of symbols, to their innate, archetypal meaning.

This lecture offers an Introduction to a four-part lecture series on Archetypes and Dreams which starts in September 2024. More details about this course will be announced in the new year.