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Notes on Imagination and James Hillman
Here’s my dilemma: it’s impossible for me to write about imagination without mentioning James Hillman. Yet every time I’ve started a post on Hillman, I’ve given it up because the scope of his thought...
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Your Own Damn Life: an interview with Michael Meade in The Sun
Michael Meade is an author, storyteller, and a passionate advocate of soul values in a world that increasingly ignores them; I’ve written about Meade or mentioned him in half a dozen posts. In The...
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James Hillman on world change and political polarization
James Hillman, 1926-2011 For decades, James Hillman brought us unique observations on modern life from the perspective of a depth psychology that embraced soul as its highest value. Recently, I’ve...
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Remembering James Hillman
James Hillman died two years ago today. As a culture, we have yet to appreciate the depth and range of his thought, but without any doubt, that will come. I’m going to post a brief interview with him...
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What’s coming to TheFirstGates in 2014?
Courtesy Emma Paperclip, Creative Commons Thanks to everyone who visited this year, old friends and new. Here are a few year end musings on where this blog may be going in 2014. These are not...
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Jung’s Tower: simplicity and the inner life
Jung’s Tower House, Bollingen, Switzerland by Andrew Taylor, 2009. CC BY-SA-2.0 Recent news of technological incursions into consciousness itself (virtual reality and altered memories); almost daily...
View ArticleJames Hillman on “The Soulless Society”
I often wonder what James Hillman (1926-2011), the most widely known post-Jungian thinker and someone whose work continues to inspire me, would make of our current times. Yesterday I found a clear...
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Cycles, Gyres, and Yugas, Part 3: Soul in a Dark Time
Edvard Munch, “The Lonely Ones,” woodcut, 1899 “the darkness around us is deep.” – William Stafford, 1960 “In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo...
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Soul Notes: #1
Art as the Mirror of All Nature, Matthaus Merian the Elder, 1617. Numerous Jungians have used this engraving as an image of “Anima Mundi,” the World Soul. Last summer, after writing on soul and soul...
View ArticleSoul Notes #2: Flying a Sign
A friend who used to panhandle at freeway on ramps told me that “flying a sign” is slang for that activity. The signs are usually hand lettered on cardboard. This post concerns a man I’ve seen flying a...
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Soul Notes #3: A Dog’s Life
Seven years ago today, we lost Holly, our second dog. She was 16 1/2, which objectively, is a good long life, but when it’s your dog, it’s never long enough. She was about two in this picture. At that...
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Soul Notes 5: From a Nobel Laureate in Literature
Olga Tokarczuk Nobel Prize Lecture, Dec. 7, 2019 Olga Tokarczuk, born January 29, 1962 in Sulechów, Poland, won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. She received her prize this year, and yesterday,...
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Remembering My Mother
My mother and father, New Years Eve in Chicago, probably 12/31/1946 Forty-five years ago, at the start of the week before Mother’s day, my mother, June Patricia Mussell, spent a happy morning starting...
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The Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens
Path through the Woodland Garden “For me beauty is the primary proof of the existence of God. Beauty is sublime, transcendent, and fulfilling. It takes us to the very edge of our capacity for...
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Reflections on Soul and Soul Loss
Down the Rabbit Hole by Kbetart, CC BY NC-ND 2.0 One morning in the fall of 2021, as Mary and I walked the dogs in a nearby park, we turned a corner, and at the other end of a parking lot, saw several...
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What is your quest?
Monty Python fans will recognize my title as a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a hilarious movie which is available on Netflix. Hero tales sometimes include riddles that must be solved...
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