The Mythic Imagination - talks, trails and mysteries
	COURSES 2012
	April 6-8 programme Imagination and Reality
	This course explores the hidden tradition of the mythic imagination through the idea of the daimonic - an idea which asserts that reality is grasped not so much through the abstractions of mainstream philosophy and religion, as through the concrete imagery of myth and folklore, depth psychology and poetic vision.

	Friday
	6.00pm	Welcome.  Drinks and introduction to the weekend. The tradition of imagination as opposed to reason, from the Neoplatonists via the Romantics to modern psychology. (Patrick)
	7.00 – 8.00pm	Supper
	8.00 – 9.00pm	Hermes, messenger of the Gods. Called 'the friendliest of the gods', Hermes is also the trickiest and most daimonic of the gods, who alone can travel between Olympus and Hades, Above and Below, via the human world, and so connect consciousness to the unconscious - and us to our own imaginative wellspring. (Jules)
	Saturday
	9.30 – 10.45am	Imagining things: the daimonic nature of reality The activity of daimons, whether in folklore or in the unconscious psyche - to say nothing of the arch-daimon Eros, as Socrates describes him - provides us with a model of how the world really is - a model surprisingly different from the current Western world view. (Patrick)
	11.15 – 12.30pm	The image of the Daimon An illustrated talk on how daimons were pictured, from Thoth and the bird-soul of Egyptian mythology, to the angels of Christianity (Jules)
	12.30 – 1.30pm	Lunch
	1.30 – 4.00pm	Tour: Genius loci, the haunted landscape.
	5.00 – 6.00pm	Imagining ourselves: guardian angels and personal daimons. The notion that we all have a guardian angel comes from Plato's description of the personal daimon and its further elaboration among the Neoplatonists - a notion with far-reaching consequences for how we should live our lives. (Patrick)
	6.00 – 7.00pm	Questions and discussion over drinks.
	7.00 – 8.00pm	Supper
	8.00 – 9.00pm	Jan van Eyck A film by Jules Cashford in which she explores the imagery of this iconic painter and sends us in contemplative mood to bed...
	Sunday
	9.30 – 10.45pm	Imagining the world: Nature and her ambiguity Our historical view of the natural world keeps changing, showing that it is not a fixed entity so much as a daimonic embodiment of Imagination itself; and so we should beware of regarding her in a single-minded, literal way, especially now that ecology seems to be replacing traditional religion.  (Patrick)
	11.15 – 12.30pm	Blake's Vision An illustrated exploration of William Blake's poetry and art, in which we see the creative Imagination par excellence in action.  (Jules)
	12.30 – 1.30pm	Lunch
	1.45 – 4.00pm	Tour:  The sacred landscape - monuments to hidden deities
	4.00 – 5.00pm	Tea, questions and farewell.
	Talks are illustrated with Power Point projections as appropriate.
	N. B. The programme is flexible - timings and individual talks within it may change from time to time.
	How to book
	Courses overview
	The Golden Chain
	Four myths
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	'...Call the world if you Please "The vale of Soul-making". Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it). I say 'Soul making', Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence. There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions - but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception - they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God. How then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them - so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence? How, but by the medium of a world like this?' ~ John Keats, letter 14th February 1819