“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.

Events

Events

During this 3-session Alchemical Series, we will explore a little bit of the fabric that depth psychology has as its true inheritance in the full round of Life, Death and the Beyond: The Diamond Body Mysteries. Honoring the descent mysteries and the Archetypal Mothers of the Nigredo, we will then explore the birth of emerging connection with the light and experiences of the resurrection body, the light body.

Drawing from dreams, the work of Jung, Yeats, and Henri Corbin, along with experiences from the recent death process of my partner, Tom Elsner, threads will be woven in image, symbol, myth, dream and embodied experience to honor this evening in some small way, the mystery of the Diamond Body.

“Die before we die”, we all know the line so well in depth psychology; it is the cornerstone of all transformation. And here, from my point of view, is its twin: “In dying discover the light body before we literally die as well.”

My hope is that tuning in together in these three sessions with this material from real human life and death processes, near-death experiences, and sprinklings from the works of these luminaries, the time together with discussion, and plenty of time for active imagination and the growth of our shared field. This will create a place of reflection for the value of cultivating the subtle body dimension.

And this work is done by its very nature for the good of the world soul in these times. The dismemberment-rememberment forces of the psyche, so present in the order-disorder paradox, touch all of our lives more and more strongly as the collective problem is mounting. Our work with our own little piece of earth, our own vessel of consciousness as an offering for the good of the world, for the good of the collective unconscious, is real. And the need to give life to the religious instincts in the psyche comes to us with growing urgency in these times. The creation of the shared field together this evening is also part of this offering. (see Nathan Schwartz Salant’s book The Order Disorder Paradox, and chapter 3 Modes of Relating in Narcissism and Character Structure)

Staying with the reality of the collective transmutations a little longer, with Yeats, his question is ever more alive as a burning question of our age: “What rough beast its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” What is happening with the collective unconscious and the changing god image as madness in culture mounts? Appreciating the “Rough Beast” and the way it is emerging now as demonic greed and militaristic fascism, many of us feel the need to make fresh offerings to the spirit of the depths in these times to help with the balance between consciousness and the collective unconscious. In this vein, this alchemical contemplative work with the Nigredo Mysteries and the Diamond Body is of utmost value. It allows the axis to the transcendent to grow individually and in relationship and allows new transmutations of spirit to happen. It allows consciousness to tune in with the One who knows better the way with and through what is to come.

Events

2026 Events

JANUARY 9-10

Honoring the Diamond Body Mysteries: Pregnant Darkness and Birth of the Light Body

JANUARY 30 -FEBRUARY 1

Imbolc: Tending the Sacred Flame @ Zoom

MARCH 21

Rewilding | Fort Collins Colorado | In-Person SOLD OUT

APRIL 11 & 12

The C.G. Jung Institue of Colorado, Spring Seminar
The Psychology of Transference

May 26, June 9 & 23

Honoring the Diamond Body Mysteries: Pregnant Darkness and Birth of the Light Body

SEPTEMBER 10-16

Ocamora Retreat: Pregnant Darkness and the Birth of the Light Body
Ocate, New Mexico SOLD OUT

OCTOBER 11 & 25, NOVEMBER 8 & 22, DECEMBER 6 & 20

A FLASH OF GOLDEN FIRE: A Reading Group for Tom Elsner’s Book on Jung and the Romantic Poets with Tom Elsner’s Sons, Jake & Bennett Elsner & Monika Wikman

Monika Wikman, Ph.D, is a Jungian analyst and astrologer. Author of Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness. Editor and contributor to Living with Fire: The Alchemical Imagination of Nathan Schwartz Salant and his contributions to Depth Psychology, Chiron Publications, 2026. She has also contributed chapters, articles and poems to numerous publications including a chapter in The Dream and Its Amplification, edited by Erel Shalit and Nancy Furlotti. 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 on “Dreams of the Dying.” She hosts a non-profit project under Earthways.com, The Center for Alchemical Studies. Podcasts with Monika on various topics can be found at chasingconsciousness.net/episodes, shrinkrapradio.com and speakingofjung.com.

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

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