This lecture series forms part of The Assisi Institute’s Public Lecture Program.

If you are not able to join the live sessions, please note that the lectures will be recorded and all registered participants will receive the recordings afterwards.

Please note: All currently enrolled Archetypal Pattern Analyst (APA) students receive a 20% discount on this series. Email assisi@together.net to receive your discount code. ​
Program Description

When C. G. Jung spoke of religion, he was referring to the numinous - the presence of the divine. This term, given by Otto Rank, describes an effectual and sublime experience where the individual psyche comes into union with a great mystery where the wisdom of The Self and the ineffable begins to touch our lives. 

This type of experience is profound. It often occurs spontaneously and represents the beginning of spiritual awareness. It is the messiahs, the “mad men”, the shamans, the priests and priestesses, the hermits, and all those living on the edges of society and consciousness that reach this state with forbearance and intention, and through their sacred experiences, rituals have formed.

Rituals are revelatory, and similar to the profound effect of prayer, creates an intentional relationship to the sacred. Here the numinous is experienced within a protective, psychic container allowing for a confluence of psyche, soul and spirit.

To approach the numinous is to enter a domain far beyond conscious understanding. It is through the a-priori existence of rituals, that Psyche has created a portal for an immersion into this sacred world. Prayers, chanting, dance, and music,guide the Self into the domain of the numinous.

In this seminar series, we will explore the roots, meanings, and the ongoing occurrence of rituals in our life, and discuss why they are experienced as revelatory. We will also look at the presence of rituals and the Numinous in a number of spiritual traditions, including Sufism, the Old Testament, Shamanism, and in modern psychotherapy.​
About the Presentations
1. Sufis, Saints and The Broken Jar
Presented by Silvia Behrend
Saturday, October 1st, 2022 from 12 pm - 1.30 pm US Eastern Time

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”
Rumi
    
The great Sufi mystic, Rumi, well understood the world we are called into by the Numinous. Out beyond all things we know, there is a field of connection and interconnection which unifies and changes us. In this presentation on Sufi saints, rituals and the story of ‘The Broken Jar’, we will explore the mystical path of Islam, in which there is no separation between male and female or God and soul. Through the lives of famous Sufi saints, we may get a taste of the wonder of the union of the Beloved and the lover that shatters the secular notions of right and wrong to lead us into a deeply lived union with the Self. 
2. The Ritual of Psychotherapy: Immersion in a Timeless Journey
Presented by Michael Conforti
Saturday, October 8th, 2022 from 12 pm - 1.30 pm US Eastern Time

While ultimately what occurs within the therapeutic relationship is a mystery, something essential about its nature is revealed by its rituals. The actual practice and ritual of therapy began in 46 AD and practiced within the Asklepian healing temples. The wound which brought the individual to seek help was understood as an expression of their need to renew their relationship to the divine, the Self. Healing involved two distinct series of rituals: the first was the Katharsis (purification), and then the incubation (dream therapy).

From the moment of our initial contact with the therapist, the dynamics inherent within this ancient world of healing are activated, and literally guide the relationship emerging between client and therapist. The hope is to understand this Voice of Psyche as it speaks through the conditions of treatment, each of which is reminiscent of what occurred back in 46 AD. Understanding the movement of Self, expressed through these dynamics, allows for a meaningful life, while otherwise, is often tragic when these messages from the Self are muted. 

3. Rituals and Exploration: A Pilgrimage in the Peruvian Andes
Presented by Patricia Llosa
Saturday, October 15th, 2022 from 12 pm - 1.30 pm US Eastern Time

Speaking of the significance of ritual and prayer, Jung writes that one’s “personal prayer does not fill the need at all because the response should be collective and historical; it should evoke “the ancestral spirits” so as to unite the present with the historical and mythological past, and for that a representation of the past is indispensable”, adding that: “rites should be archaic in language and gesture”. 

Through a discussion of the ancient rite of Pilgrimage in the Peruvian Andes we will build on  Jung’s work, in discussing the archetypal nature of rituals and their role in evoking the numinous. As Marion Woodman often noted how many of the old rites are dead, therefore, we need to deepen our understanding and widen our explorations in need of renewal, allowing us to better understand our own process of individuation and the initiations we are called to undertake. 

4. Ritual, Women and Liberation
Presented by Renate Jost 
Saturday, October 22nd 2022 from 12 pm - 1.30 pm US Eastern Time

Women in biblical texts experience the Numinous through participation in sacred rituals such as mourning, dancing, and singing. Examples are the daughter of Jephthah and her girlfriends, going to the mountains for two months to mourn the life she would never know, the dancing and the singing of Mirjam, and the songs of Mirijam and Deborah. These acts capture humanities' need for spiritual and political liberation.

Beginning with biblical texts, Rev. Dr. Jost will discuss the relevance of contemporary rituals, and their relationship to archetypal and sacred traditions. Dr. Jost will focus on the change of rituals during the 20th and 21st century where the new interpretation of traditional texts and symbols, the search for a just language, the female body and the rhythm of nature, open new ways of spirituality and political action for liberation.

About the Presenters

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Silvia Behrend

​Dr. Silvia Behrend is Director of International Studies at the Assisi Institute. She develops, supports, and teaches in our programs in Latin America, Russia, Australia and Italy. She has presented international webinars and lectures in English and in Spanish and is a faculty member on our Latin American Program. She has a private practice in Olympia, Wa as a Certified Archetypal Pattern Analyst, mentor and educator.  As a clinical leader, Silvia has co-developed programs and retreats for the Assisi Institute, and for Gonzaga University in the Doctoral Leadership Program. As Senior Faculty of the Assisi Institute, she hosts national and international webinars on dream pattern analysis, the field of leadership, psychological development, the creative, unconscious communication, and voice of psyche. She has researched and published articles on the transformational power of art, the archetypal fields of leadership and exile. 
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Michael Conforti
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Dr. Michael Conforti is a Jungian analyst and the Founder and Director of the Assisi Institute.  He is a faculty member at the C.G. Jung Institute of Boston, the C.G. Jung Institute of New York.  A pioneer in the field of matter-psyche studies, Dr. Conforti is actively investigating the workings of archetypal fields and the relationship between Jungian psychology and the New Sciences.

He has presented his work to a wide range of national and international audiences, including the C.G. Jung Institute - Zurich and Jungian organizations in Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Italy, Russia, South Africa, the Ukraine and Venezuela.

He is the author of Threshold Experiences: The Archetype of Beginnings (2007) and Field, Form and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature and Psyche (2002).  His articles have appeared in Psychological Perspectives, The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, Roundtable Press, World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, and Spring Journal.  His books have been translated into Italian, Russian, and Spanish.
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Patricia Llosa
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Patricia Llosa, MFA, LP, is a Jungian analyst in private practice based in New York City. A native of Peru, she earned her undergraduate degree in archaeology and art history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and did graduate work at The School of Visual Arts.  For more than 20 years she worked as an administrator and educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
​She did her analytic training at the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association in New York where she now teaches. A graduate of Marion Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms® Leadership Training Program she has served on the Foundation board and as faculty has taught workshops in Japan, Mexico, Peru and Spain.
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Renate Jost
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Rev. Dr. Renate Jost is Professor Emerta in Theological Gender Studies and Feminist Theology at the Augustana-Hochschule in Neuendettelsau, as well as director of the International Institute for Feminist Research in Theology and Religion. Among her publications are: Feministische Bibelauslegungen. Grundlagen - Forschungsgeschichtliches - Geschlechterstudien (Internationale Forschungen in Feministischer Theologie und Religion. Befreiende Perspektiven, Bd. 1).Gender, Sexualität und Macht in der Anthropologie des Richterbuches (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006) and Frauenmacht und Männerliebe: egalitäre Utopien aus der Frühzeit Israels (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006). Das göttliche Mädchen. Jesus als das Weiblich-Göttliche in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart(Internationale Forschungen in Feministischer Theologie und Religion. Befreiende Perspektiven, Bd. 9), Münster: Lit 2019.

She is the editor of several books among those recently: (with Sarah Jäger) Vielfalt und Differenz. Intersektionale Perspektiven auf Feminismus und Religion (Internationale Forschungen in Feministischer Theologie und Religion. Befreiende Perspektiven, Bd. 6), Münster: Lit 2017; ( with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza) Feministische Bibelwissenschaft im 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 2015; (with Klaus Raschzok) Gender - Religion - Kultur. Biblische, interreligiöse und ethische Aspekte (Theologische Akzente, StuttgartKohlhammer: 2011

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Unit 3A
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(860) 415-5004     assisi@together.net