Dear IAJS Membership,
On behalf of the IAJS Board of Directors, we are pleased to announce the coming IAJS Online Seminar presented by Liz Greene that begins on August 5th and ends on the 11th, 2020. Below you will find a Biography, an introduction, a chapter reading and a poem along with various illustrations that accompany the chapter. We are grateful to Liz for her presentation, her time and expertise in this area of Jungian and Integrative Studies.
Sheltering around the world.
Jean Lall
IAJS Online Seminar temporary Chair
Robin McCoy Brooks
IAJS Online Seminar Chair
August 5-11, 2020 with Liz Greene
Bio: Liz Greene is a Jungian analyst and professional astrologer, who received her Diploma in Analytical Psychology from the Association of Jungian Analysts in London in 1983. She holds doctorates in both Psychology and History and worked for several years as a tutor for the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at University of Wales, Lampeter. She is the author of a number of books and articles, some scholarly and some interpretive, on the relationships between psychology and astrology, Tarot, Kabbalah, and myth. Her most recent works, Jung’s Studies in Astrology and The Astrological World of Jung’s ‘Liber Novus’ (Routledge), were published early in 2018.
Abstract: ‘The Way of What Is to Come’
This seminar will focus on Chapter Six, entitled ‘The Way of What Is to Come’, from Jung’s Studies in Astrology: Prophecy, Magic, and the Qualities of Time (Routledge 2018), which was awarded the 2018 IAJS Book Award.
Jung insisted that, according to his understanding of astrological symbolism, a huge collective psychic change was coming, equal in enormity to the dawn of Christianity; that it would not be pleasant (and could be unthinkably horrific) in its initial phases; that it would provoke extremes of ‘splitting’ and polarizing; and that it would involve the necessity of internalizing ideas of good and evil, rather than projecting them ‘outside’.
Astrologers at the moment are attempting to analyze current planetary configurations to ascertain whether anyone could have foreseen the coronavirus pandemic and how it might be reflected in astrological configurations. Like the discussion about the incoming Aquarian Age in which Jung was deeply involved, every astrologer has a different perspective, sometimes entirely literal, sometimes more symbolic and psychological, and sometimes both.
Just as Jung attempted to define the birth chart of Jesus as the harbinger of the beginning of the Piscean Age, present-day astrologers pore over planetary configurations and the birth charts of countries and their leaders to get some insight into what is happening and how things will develop over the next months and even years. Jung relied on astrological symbolism to get a sense of the meaning of the time. This topic is not meant to debate the truth or falsehood of astrology but is focused on how Jung used astrological symbolism to describe the upheaval and change now on our doorsteps.
Hopefully this material can provide a basis for some interesting discussions.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
~ By William Butler Yeats