C.G. Jung Society, Seattle

Terry Gibson, Ph.D.

The Anima Mundi and Repair of the World Tree

Lecture: Friday, November 8, 2013, 7 to 9 p.m.
Good Shepherd Center, Room 202, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. North, Seattle  98103 (driving directions)
$15 members, $25 nonmembers

In Carl Jung’s famous commentary The Philosophical Tree, he reflected
on a patient-generated series of tree drawings by persons in deep
engagement with the depth psyche. Within that rich canon of
therapeutically-generated images Jung found a whole healing
cosmology, a cosmology that goes all the way back to Plato and through
Plato to our shamanic cave origins. The tree is a living imago of Plato’s
ancient world soul. Jung explitizes the connection of tree, symbol, and
soul. The ancients called this Uber-earth spirit the Anima Mundi, the
spirit of the world, one of the oldest consistent psycho-spiritual ideas in
the west.

The earth is pure psycho-spiritual space. This notion about the primary
vitalism that underlies all sentient experience on the planet probably is
as old as the Paleolithic cave sanctuaries, but certainly as old as Plato.
It is a notion that the planet is alive, that she is Mother, Breast, and
Home to us all. The Tree stands as an essential demotic of Soul.

This seminar seeks to frame Jungian psychology as one of many synchronistically appearing
recent disciplines that recalls this Anima Mundi and calls us to Her service. It asks what our
chaotic, contemptuous politics would look like, what our ailing planet might heal, what our
vacuous culture and collectively empty spiritualties might manifest in Her renewing,
transformative embrace.

Workshop: Saturday, November 9, 2013, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Good Shepherd Center, Room 202
$50 members, $70 nonmembers

Advance registration for workshops is encouraged. You can mail your registration and payment to our office using this registration form or buy tickets in advance at brownpapertickets.com.

Using clinical and cultural vignette, film clip illustration, and personal reflection, this seminar hopes to
revive an interest and awareness into the pervasive essence and transformative balm of the Anima Mundi
matrix within which we abide and from which we have become so tragically dissociated as both
individuals and as a species. To find our way back to Her Home may be the only way we survive as a
species.

Learning Objectives

1. How does depth psychology reconnect us with the Anima Mundi and her ancient shamanic, mystical, and contemplative methodologies of psycho-spiritual deepening and healing?
2. How does depth psychology create safe containers within which to locate and “voice” the Anima Mundi?
3. How does depth therapy and the Anima Mundi open us up to our destinies—both personal and collective?
4. How might a holistic reconnection with the Anima Mundi help heal our tattered planetary politics?

Terrill L. Gibson, Ph.D., is a Jungian Analyst, Diplomat in the American Assoc. of Pastoral Counselors, and an approved supervisor for the American Assoc. for Marriage & Family therapy. Dr. Gibson practices individual & family therapy with Pastoral Therapy in Tacoma, WA. He writes widely on the basic theme of the integration of psychotherapy and spirituality, corporations, and religious congregations.

Programs presented by the C. G. Jung Society, Seattle (unless otherwise noted) have approved CEUs by the Washington Chapter National Association of Social Workers (NASW) for Licensed Social Workers, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapists and Licensed Mental Health Counselors. Provider number is #1975- 157.

Updated: 21 August 2013

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