Webinars

From Hermetic to Terragnostic: Resurrecting an Ancient Wisdom Path

Hermeticism is an Earth-honoring path of knowledge, insight, and practice stretching back to ancient Egypt. From there, the Way of the Mage opened into Gnosticism, alchemy, depth psychology, spiritual ecology, and many other intersections of self and world, symbol and dream.

This introductory webinar and conversation will focus on these questions:

• What is Hermeticism? Who founded it, and why? What are its Nine Agreements?
• How does the Hermetic view of nature, Earth, and cosmos replace a mechanical model of passive objects with an organism of primal relationships?
• How might Hermeticism be updated to serve as an ethical, embodied, world-appreciating approach to understanding our role in these anxious times?

As Above, So Below: Living in an Animate World

Terrapsychology is a field of studies, ideas, and practices for reimagining and restorying how deeply and intimately our psychological life is involved with our surroundings, whether human or other than human. We learn tend how the world gets into the heart and how the heart reflects the world.

This webinar will focus on “redeing” how the world speaks to us in symbolism. Everyday objects, fires, storms, oracles, planetary transits: what if we quit squeezing them into boxes of causality and let them move our imagination? How would life be different if we walked through it interpretively, “worldredeing” whatever we came across?

One and Many: A Universal Delight in Diversity

Rooted in ancient Egyptian philosophy and practice, Hermeticism transmuted through exposure to different cultural groups, in Alexandria and elsewhere. In fact, some version of Hermetic wisdom shows up around the world, either brought there in antiquity or springing up on its own.

Find out more about how the ecology of the world favors diversity at every level, and about how Hermeticism moves beyond tolerance to delight in differences on common ground. We will also hear about forms of Hermeticism in India, China, and elsewhere.

Beyond Gods and Demons: Grappling with Guardians of the Threshold

In the Hermetic view, archetypal powers (“aeons” and “archons”), whether celestial or terrestrial, stand ready to give us difficult blessings that move us beyond their influence. Rather than being controlled by the movements of deities or stars, gnosis – consciousness aware of its own sources – opens our sphere of creative choice.

Join us for a presentation and discussion about roadblocks, obstacles, inner critics, and other Threshold Guardians we must acknowledge and see through to obtain the gifts they can bestow.

A World of Wonder: Imagination, Creativity, and Humane Science

Nous is often translated as “intellect” or “intelligence,” but in a Hermetic context it refers more to creative consciousness. From its earliest days onward, Hermeticism has insisted on imagination as a path into the very depths of the world, which meant: into our own depths too.

Alchemy—technical Hermeticism—was not just an attempt to change lead into gold. It was a multicultural inquiry into our deep relations with matter, especially when Islamic masters worked with it. This webinar will touch on alchemy as a language of creativity. C. G. Jung relied on active imagination to probe deeply into the psyche. We will also discuss how alchemical ideas can coagulate a sense of vocation and what integral and humane science looks like.

Dreaming the Myth Onward: New Takes on Ancient Tales

Gnosticism is a branch of Hermeticism in which old biblical tales were refashioned into calls for liberating the soul from oppressive powers. Centuries later, C. G. Jung wrote about “dreaming the myth onward by giving it a modern dress.” How might we retell traditional tales in ways that bring out their message for us now?

In this webinar we will ask what makes for a myth, a folktale, a fairytale, and a legend, explore the nature wisdom in ancient folklore, discuss its relevance for our day, and look into what Jung referred to in a letter as a “life myth”: the deep story we come in with and which consciousness opens to rich elaboration. In this letter he identified with Faust the alchemist. Who might we be?

The Core of Caring: A Fivefold Heartsteading

Emphasis on caring for oneself and each other appear in Hermeticism’s earliest literature. Each of us, the Asclepius tells us, is a magnum miraculum, a “great miracle” worthy of every consideration. Reflection must be balanced with ethical action in the world. Nonhuman beings worthy of care included our animal friends.

Join us for a discussion of a simple and practical Fivefold Caring model and its relation to ecoresilience, communities of deep learning, and heartsteading: creating circles of support, resource, experimentation, and revisioning, all organized around a compelling concern.

Living in Cycles and Seasons: Practices of Earthly Dreaming and Alignment

For most of human history, we woke with the dawn, slept at night, ate what was in season, and rested in winter. We used no alarm clocks, and our schedule was largely nature’s. Might we resynchronize ourselves with natural cycles and rhythms without losing all the advantages of modern living?

We will explore this through reconnective practices, schedule analysis, and work with dreams that link us inwardly to the natural life on every side, even in urban settings.

True Human Being: Surviving Our Initiation

“True Human” was how Hermetics described us when fully conscious and mature. Noting that empires and religious institutions curtailed this flourishing, Gnostics told tales in which various heroines and, less often, heroes guided us back to ourselves not through revolution, but through walking the ways of wisdom, knowledge, and care.

In this webinar we will muse on what a mature, full-spectrum human being is like, consider enchantivism as a form of storytelling for better possible futures, and explore stages of transrevolution, whereby deep social and structural change works from inside a complex system outward to bring beneficial results that endure.