The knowledge that all humans must die arguably is the archetypal energy that drives humans to be creative.  Spiritually, humans must die to themselves to be reborn, as in Jung’s theory that all individual psyches are held within the Self.  Through cooperation with the Self, we potentially experience psychic reality at expanded transcendental levels.  It may be argued that the process of individuation is a process of being freed from one’s mortal boundaries.

In this course, we will concern ourselves particularly with mythologies of descent, death, and rebirth that find their origins in the cosmologies of the indigenous peoples of North America and explore how these origin stories are both known and unknown at the collective level of the North American cultures.  We will explore similarities and differences in attitudes towards death and rebirth in the multiple, contemporary, lived realities of Canada, Mexico, and the United States.  We will ask ourselves about historical and contemporary attitudes about the meaning of human life, the sanctity of the human body, the teleology of human life, and human beings’ role in the cosmology of existence.

We will also explore descent, death, and rebirth alchemically to enable us to imagine amplifications and applications that are clinically potent and necessary in the analytic container.  Analytic attitude and analytic inquiry may be understood symbolically as a cyclical experience of descent, death, and rebirth.

Class 1:  Laying the Foundations: Essays of Jung

We will explore themes of death and rebirth as they intersect with individuation, individual and cultural complexes, alchemical process, and clinical awarenesses.

Class 2: Myths of Death and Rebirth

We will focus here on an exploration of Henderson’s text, The Wisdom of the Serpent, and apply these readings to the Jung essays we explored previously.

Class 3: Expanding the Archetypal and Addressing the Cultural

We will explore death and rebirth imagery and ritual in the indigenous and colonial realities of North America through an exploration of Native American myths and through an encounter with the archetypal dimensions of Mexican culture.

Class 4: Towards a Synthesis of Understanding and an Ethical Imperative Both Personal and Cultural

In this final evening, we will attempt to bring our reverie together in a group process, centering around questions about what is needed in our current cultural zeitgeist around the themes of death, rebirth, the sanctity of the human body, the ethics of dying, and the centrality of community and inter-dependence.

Readings

Please read as much of this material as you can manage. We will have a much richer conversation if you can delve deeply into the texts.  At the same time, read lightly and allow yourself to dream into the general theme of our seminar.  Our group psyche will bring emergence and new insights and awarenesses!

Erdoes, Richard and Alfonso Ortiz, editors.  American Indian Myths and Legends.  New York:  Pantheon Books, 1984. (Please read pp. 427 – 499, Part Nine, Something Whistling in the Night, and Part Ten, Only the Rocks and Mountains Last Forever.)

Henderson, Joseph, and Maud Oakes. The Wisdom of the Serpent: The Myths of Death, Rebirth, and Resurrection, Princeton University Press, 1963. Republished by Must Have Books, 2023.

Jung, C.G.  The Psychology of the Transference, CW16.

Jung, C.G.  Spirit and Life, CW8, pp. 319-357.

Jung, C.G.  The Stages of Life, CW8, pp. 387-403.

Jung, CG.  The Soul and Death, CW8, pp. 404-415.

Lomnitz, Claudio.  Death and The Idea of Mexico. New York:  Zone Books, 2008.

(Please read the Introduction and as much of the text as you can manage, with an emphasis on chapters 2, 3, 9, and 11, along with the conclusion.)

Additional Suggested Readings:

Prickett, Pamela and Stefan Timmermans.  The Unclaimed:  Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels.  New York: Crown Books, 2024.

David Solem has added some further clarification on readings for his course:

For week one, please read the Jung essays only.

For week two, please read The Wisdom of the Serpent

For week three, please read the American Indian Myths and Legends and Death and The Idea of Mexico

Week Four is a group process discussion and synthesis of the material, no reading assignment.