Past Events

2026

ACTIVE IMAGINATION SEMINAR:
Connecting with Source, Honoring the Abject Black and Fresh Connection with the Ally

SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 2026

For this workshop, we will bring threads from the lecture and discussion and begin the processes of active imagination. Honoring the Mothers of the Nigredo as the true ground of transformation, we will then turn to work with Jungian analyst Jeff Raff’s discoveries in his book, Practical Guide to Ally Work. We will bring his wisdom into active imagination with the intention of making fresh contact with your ally, your star, your vertical axis to draw the energy down into the rest of your being and your life.

The workshop aims to help participants develop various practices for cultivating attunement to the subtle body dimensions. The midline lives in every person, it is every being’s birth right. Osteopathy, cranial sacral work, Taoist alchemy each work with this energetic midline phenomenon. And many people are having spontaneous dream phenomena where tutelary spirits begin teaching these realities to the dreamer. This level of alchemical work is waking up in the psyche at large. Learning to attune to and differentiate the energy bodies (along with the bodies of complexes) is a big part of the work needed these days for the alchemical stone to grow in both worlds.

Meditations and Active Imagination with shamanic music by my friend, Kirsten Kairos, will be offered to help participants open to finding fresh contact with one’s own star, their own vertical axis informed by the transcendent.

January 30 – February 1, 2026

Welcoming Imbolc: Tending of the Flame and the Archetype of the Alchemical Bride
HONORING THE DIAMOND BODY MYSTERIES: Pregnant Darkness and Birth of the Light Body

Designed around the celtic calendar, this seminar will ponder and enter into the myths and symbols of ancient Celtic Spirituality to open our consciousness to the alchemical mysteries of the Unus Mundus, the one world, where eternal and temporal, visible and invisible worlds join hands in our midst.

Yeats poetry that brings in this wisdom will be read and shared among us. Time for active imagination and writing exercises to help us activate our connection to the divine, to the Imagination, will have priority.

In terms of content, special attention will be given to Imbolc mysteries, the goddess Brigid, the keeper of the sacred flame and the archetype of the Bride. This links us to Sophia in gnosticism and in Jung’s work, and lives at the foundation of our lives.
It is fostering the inspired uniquely co-created field among us all that is our aim.

Suggested Readings:

• The Learning of the Imagination, by Kathleen Raines.
• The Collected Poems of WB Yeats.
• Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness, Chapter 4, 5, 6.
• Jung, C. G. (1997). Jung on active imagination, J. Chodorow (Ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• An article by Lynn de Gerenday, one of our group participants, entitled: The Problem of Self-Reflective Love in Book III of the “Fairie Queen” (to be emailed).

Details

1536 Bishops Lodge Road, Tesuque, NM
CEU’s: 13.5

“If you do not listen to the helpful animal or bird, or whatever it is, if any animal gives you advice and you don't follow it, then you are finished. In the hundreds and hundreds of stories, that is the one rule that has no exception.”
-Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairytales

Marie-Louise von Franz speaks from her wisdom of soaking in and working for four decades with fairy tales, discovering the archetypal patterns inherent in the psyche. How are we at listening to the animals and what they represent in the psyche? In this seminar, we will find our way into this material through the fairy tale first…

In a forgotten village, the treasure lies hidden—guarded by barking dogs deemed mad. The Dummling, who has been cast out of his father’s (the King’s) kingdom, wanders into the village. They reject this stranger and cast him into the castle walls where they expect the mad dogs will devour him. But the Dummling, landing hard on the ground inside the castle walls, stands up and finds to his surprise that he does not fear the raging dogs. Instead, he listens. He leans into what he is hearing and listens. And here he learns the language of animals. He asks them, “Why are you barking like this?”

And they, in turn, reveal the secret needing to be revealed: “We are barking incessantly, which the town people deem mad, but it is madness that no one listens. We are barking because we know the spell at the castle will remain unless the town people dig up the buried treasure. They must come dig! We are trying to get them to listen. This would break the spell and bring the buried treasure up into life, and we would…we then would stop barking.”

This tale—like many fairy tales—encourages us to learn to listen to the depths, and provide a place for transformation in so doing. It reminds us that healing begins when we discover new ways to fruitfully turn toward what has been rejected, feared, or silenced. Healing begins when we learn new ways of listening to the psyche where something needs to be heard. In such stories, it goes much better for those who attune with the animals. To speak their language is to uncover the treasure of the soul alive in instincts, and to discover embodied wisdom via deep instinctual knowing. It is a return to the wild center—the life force that sprouts its life up in symbols and somatic experiences, and knows how to restore balance and meaning.

In this workshop, we will follow the Dummling’s path. Through story, symbolic exploration, and somatic practice, we will explore the threshold where we are called to listen more deeply to where psyche needs our attunement. Ample time will be given for experiential exercises, including practices that attune us to the body and psyche—learning to listen to the somatic unconscious, where the language of animals leads us.

By “lending an ear to the great below,” as the myth of Inanna envisions it, by turning toward what has been split off or cast out, we recover compassion—for ourselves, for others, and for the forgotten parts of the soul that hold the keys to our wholeness. This may entail encountering “the voice in madness that is wanting” (Elsner, 2008). We will co-create and establish a field that brings support for this work of deeper listening together.

And here the treasure is the fresh connection to the living psyche and the growth of the subtle body states of consciousness, along with the ability to unite with the world soul. This is the buried treasure of digging in the ground of being and learning more in the art of listening. The heart of Jung’s work is the religious function, where the transcendent function comes alive in the psyche. Jung thought of the religious function as the art of learning to hear and to see in ever new ways. Then we may learn that with our little lives, we serve that Something Greater, psyche’s living mystery, that allows us to participate with the evolution of consciousness through the ages.

Participants will:

1. Learn how to participate to co-create a field to foster learning the art of listening to and with psyche.
2. Understand Jung’s theory of the somatic unconscious.
3. Learn to recognize and gather somatic information from ourselves and our patients.
4. Explore how to shift fight, flight, freeze, and collapse responses into new neural pathways through a co-regulated, restorative relationship with the sensing body.
5. Engage the instinctual psyche through active imagination in relationship to the body as a therapeutic approach to trauma.
6. Recognize that the “mad” parts of the psyche often hold the treasure, and that turning toward them enables connection to the transcendent function in the psyche where healing happens and consciousness evolves with subtle body states of consciousness growing. This brings a deeper sense of meaning to our lives, and here we also learn more wholehearted ways of living.

Required Reading: (PDFs will be provided for the first three)

• Elsner, T. (2010). Animals and analysis: The Grimm’s tale “The Three Languages.” Psychological Perspectives, 53(3), 313–334.
• Elsner, T. (2008). Book review: The voice that in madness is wanting. Jung Journal, 2(3), 98–122.
• Schwartz-Salant, N. (1982). Narcissism and Character Transformation. Inner City Books. Read pp. 110–123 and we will gather information from the somatic unconscious.
• von Franz, M.-L. (1995). Shadow and evil in fairy tales (Revised ed.). C. G. Jung Foundation Books Series. Shambhala. (Original work published 1974) Read the first 5 chapters: pp. 1–134.

Suggested Reading:

• Woodman, R. (2005). Sanity, madness, transformation: The psyche in romanticism. University of Toronto Press.

Community Offerings

Invitation to Various Public Events Presented by
Monika Wikman and/or Guests of the
Center for Alchemical Studies, a non-profit project of earthways.org

________________________________________

Reimagining our Relationship to the Warrior Archetype in Service of Eros: Reflections on the Alchemy of Love and War (with Jung and Yeats)

An Evening of Reflection with Yeats and Jung with time for Active Imagination

JANUARY 5 – 8, 2023

Jung begins the most significant work of his life, The Mysterium Coniunctionis, with the simple alchemical pondering
about opposites: they will war, and will they come to unite in love? We sit with this question at the bottom of the psyche constellating intensely during our current times. This presentation will explore archetypal alchemical underpinnings to these forces in the individual and collective psyche. Myth, dreams, astrology, poetry and examples from human life will help us explore a healthier relationship to the warrior archetype and to the subtle presence of the ever renewing spirit of love alive in the psyche, which the warrior serves.

Community for Integrative Learning
2010 N. Bancroft Parkway Wilmington, DE 19806 – 302.540.0661
CIL is the educational arm of the Brandywine Pastoral Institute
The Community for Integrative learning
________________________________________

IRSJA Colloquia Supervision Group with special emphasis on applying the work of Nathan Schwartz Salant

JANUARY 19 – 21, 2023 | Santa Fe, NM

PSYCHE, SOMA & THE LIVING IMAGINATION:
Working with Dreams, Illness & Healing States of Consciousness

with Monika Wikman

FEBRUARY 3, 2023

PSYCHE AND ILLNESS: Dreams and Healing States of Consciousness

This lecture will focus on psyche, illness, dreams, and the somatic unconscious. We will consider how we can cultivate healing states of consciousness through work with dreams and the somatic unconscious where psychosomatic unity reveals itself in ever-new ways.

PSYCHE AND ILLNESS: Dreams and Healing States of Consciousness with special experiential emphasis on imagination and the somatic unconscious

FEBRUARY 4, 2023

This workshop will focus on dreams and healing states via work with the imagination and the somatic unconscious. Our goals will be:To understand Jung’s theory of the somatic unconscious; To learn to recognize and gather somatic information from ourselves and our patients; To learn the basics of how to change fight-freeze-collapse-paralysis responses to stress and trauma into forming new neural pathways in a co-regulated, restorative relationship with the sensing body; To explore the concept of the subtle body in alchemy, yoga, and psychotherapeutic practices; To utilize the Jungian practice of the “active imagination” in relationship to the body as a process of therapeutic healing; To learn to identify the elements of “healing states of consciousness,” in which psychosomatic unity is present and can be developed.

Seminar Objectives

Participants will:

1. Learn elements of Irish culture and history, including review of the 1916 Uprising and the resulting Celtic Revival that swept through Ireland and brought a renewal of culture and vision that took place linked to primary sources of imagination.
2. Identify some parallels of archetypal patterns between Irish and Greek myths illuminating the value of the divine
   feminine unique to Irish culture.
3. Learn elements of the archetypal patterns of celtic Queen Maeve that help with transformative processes and addiction in our analytic work.
4. Learn more about the practice of active imagination and its important value as an analytic tool in our work.

Assignment:

A one or two page reection paper or art project of any kind. My hope is that you take whatever is being stimulated or comes up for you and bring it to an art process or the page. You will not need to read them aloud, although there will be some time for some pieces to be read if one feels moved.

Required Reading:

You can select one of the three below for your required reading:

1. Kathleen Raines, W.B. Yeats and the Learning of the Imagination. Golongooza Press, 1999, London.
2. Mark Patrick Hederman, “The Wisdom Of W.B. Yeats: Thunder of a Battle fought in some other Star,” in Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, Volume 79, Irish Culture and Depth Psychology, Putnam, Connecticut, June 23, 2008. (The article is attached to the email)
3. Sylvia Brinton Perera, Queen Maeve and Her Lovers: A Celtic Archetype of Ecstasy, Addiction and Healing.
   Carrowmore Books New York, 1999.

Suggested Reading:

1. Mark Hederman, Art and our Future: The Haunted Inkwell. Specically chapters two and three: Art and Criticism and Poetry as Truth. Colombia Press, 2001, Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland.

A few of Yeats’ poems to inspire us:

• The Old Age of Queen Maeve
• The Song of Wandering Aengus
• The Valley of the Black Pigs
• From Celtic Twilight

Mystery of Hope and Resilience Conference
County Limerick, Ireland (In-Person)

MARCH 20 – 26, 2023

An Alchemical Perspective on Where Deep Peace Comes From in the Psyche with Monika Wikman.

Reflections on the hard work with the opposites and the openings to transcendent peace.
________________________________________

Jung Platform Summit

MARCH 30 – APRIL 2, 2023

Reimagining our Relationship to the Warrior Archetype in Service of Eros: Reactions on the Alchemy of Love and War (with Jung and Yeats)

APRIL 13, 2023

An Evening of Reflection with Yeats and Jung with time for Discussion and Active Imagination

Jung begins the most significant work of his life, The Mysterium Coniunctionis, with the simple alchemical pondering about opposites: they will war, and will they come to unite in love? We sit with this question at the bottom of the psyche constellating intensely during our current times. This presentation will explore archetypal alchemical underpinnings to these forces in the individual and collective psyche. Myth, dreams, astrology, poetry and examples from human life will help us explore a healthier relationship to the warrior archetype and to the subtle presence of the ever renewing spirit of love alive in the psyche, which the warrior serves.

Community for Integrative Learning
2010 N. Bancroft Parkway Wilmington, DE 19806 – 302.540.0661
CIL is the educational arm of the Brandywine Pastoral Institute

________________________________________

IRSJA Colloquia Supervision Group with special emphasis on applying the work of Nathan Schwartz Salant

APRIL 14 – 16, 2023 | Santa Fe, NM

Minnesota Seminar in Jungian Studies 2022 – 2023 (Invitational) | St. Paul, MN

MAY 13 – 14, 2023

Healing States of Consciousness: Working with the Somatic Unconscious via Alchemical Embodiment Processes with Emphasis on the Subtle Body with Monika Wikman

In this seminar, we will explore the somatic unconscious and the alchemical mystery of the “subtle body” in theory and practice and examine the value of this work for discovering healing states of consciousness where spirit and body are united in greater psychological harmony. We will investigate responses to trauma in the nervous system that activate fight, freeze, collapse, and paralysis and venture into how we can form neural pathways instead from co-regulated restorative relationship with the sensing body. The poly vagal theory will be reviewed as background for learning about self-regulation with activation of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems to create well-being, inner harmony and peace. We will take this somatic reective and also interpersonal alchemical work into relationship with the imagination to amplify healing states of consciousness and grow our capacity to cultivate the healing eld of the psyche and psychoid where healing happens. Reviewing the alchemical work in analysis with the subtle body via the alchemical teaching the “axiom of maria”will explore the intricate subtlety of clinical work and the growing of the Self structures.

MinnesotaJung.org

Suggested Readings:

• The Learning of the Imagination, by Kathleen Raines.
• The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
• Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness, Monika Wikman, Chapter 4, 5, 6.
• Jung on active imagination, J. Chodorow (Ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Jung, C. G. (1997). Jung on active imagination, J. Chodorow (Ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Monika Wikman, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst and astrologer. Author of Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness, she has also contributed chapters, articles and poems to various books and journals. Monika enjoys guiding retreats locally and abroad and her podcast interviews can be found at shrinkrapradio.com.

ON THE THRESHOLD: The Experience of Liminality
Worcester College, Oxford (Conference & Webinar)

AUG 25 – 27, 2023

GuildOfPastoralPsychology.org

In this year’s conference Monika Wikman and Tom Elsner will explore with us the experience of liminal states with
reference to working with the somatic unconscious and growing the subtle body; and as a symbolic death central to the transformation of consciousness.

Monika writes, “the alchemical waters of the unconscious are portrayed as coming from below and above and our work is in the liminal space between. In his Zarathustra lectures Jung speaks about the ‘somatic unconscious’ as a subtle body in relationship with the physical body. He makes the important distinction between the psychic unconscious and the somatic unconscious. The healing intermediary realm of the subtle body happens as we learn to work with the somatic unconscious as well as the psychic unconscious; and create the living waters from above and below to help the psyche come into her fullness.”

In her first lecture, she will draw on the symbolism of the alchemical fugitive stag to illuminate this process.
And in her second lecture, she will enable us to utilize active imagination to create an ‘alchemical laboratory’ in which to explore growing the subtle body.

Tom will explore liminal states of symbolic death and rebirth as they appear in ancient medieval alchemy, Romantic poetry and Jungian psychology. He writes: “There is a little known spiritual/psychological tradition of initiatory death and rebirth that runs like a golden thread throughout alchemy, Romanticism and depth psychology.”

In his first lecture he will explore the imagery of figurative death as a liminal state, a state of being at a transformational threshold as it appears within these three traditions. Examples will be oered from dreams and personal life. His second lecture will explore the question: ‘What can individuals hope to contribute to the problem of war, the possible elimination of the human in the face of cyber-physical systems, the disintegration of meaning, the pandemic, and other crises that confront us all in the modern world?’ This lecture will build on the first and apply liminal imagery of symbolic death as a transformation process to contemporary collective issues, particularly the evolution of Western solar/patriarchal consciousness through a return of the repressed lunar/matriarchal consciousness of the past and present.

Monika Wikman, PhD, is a Jungian analyst, clinical psychologist, astrologer and author of Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness. A graduate of the Jung–Von Franz Center for Depth Psychology in Zürich, she taught for many years in the graduate department at California State University, Los Angeles, and was a dream researcher at UCSD Medical Center with cancer patients investigating 1500 dreams in her project on dreams of the dying. She hosts a non-profit project under Earthways.com, The Center for Alchemical Studies. She lives in Santa Fe, NM and Gaviota, CA. Podcasts with Monika on various topics can be found at Shrinkrapradio.com, and SpeakingofJung.com.

Thomas Elsner, JD, MA, was a certified Jungian analyst practicing in Santa Barbara, California, and a graduate of the Jung–Von Franz Center for Depth Psychology in Zurich. A core faculty member and highly respected lecturer at Pacifica Graduate Institute for many years where he taught courses on depth psychology and alchemy, Thomas lectured and led workshops nationally and internationally. A recipient of the distinguished annual Fay Lecture series in analytical psychology, his book on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was published in summer of 2025.

JUNG IN SPAIN: Annual Fall Seminar

THE SYMBOLIC LIFE: Language of the Soul with Ann Belford Ulanov, MDiv, PhD, Earl Collins, PhD, Aryeh
Maidenbaum, PhD and Monika Wikman, PhD

NOV 8 – 15, 2023

Experience an exciting combination of in-depth presentations on the language of the soul. Join our superb faculty, including Earl Collins, Ann Belford Ulanov, Aryeh Maidenbaum and Monika Wikman and visit notable sites, among them Avila and Toledo.

Monika’s Two Contributions:

Nov 11: John of the Cross: Visionary Mystic and Poet with Wisdom for Our Times

Nov 13: Alchemical Tongues: the Passion of the Soul Alive in Spanish Hebrew Poets in Christian and Islamic Middle Ages

Monika Wikman + The Center for Alchemical Studies - Santa Fe, New Mexico

Website Design by Artemis Studios, Santa Barbara, CA 93101