Hillman School
The Hillman School opened its first class on October 1, 2016. The class, Archetypal Immersion, has students in 6 countries on five continents. What a great start!
I am teaching the Archetypal Immersion class again starting March 3rd, 2017. More information here.
For many years I have held on to the desire to teach this class — an opportunity for the students and me to immerse ourselves in the ten archetypes. I imagined that we would concentrate on one archetype a week. How would our lives be enriched if we fully engaged with, and began to embody, these energies? How would we know ourselves and those in our lives better?
Archetypes can be defined as universal principles, core ideas and experiences that we all share. Archetypes are also eternal and have a certain more than human quality to them, This means that being aware of archetypes, within ourselves and in the world around us, is a way of stepping into something vast and meaningful.
But why ten?
The planets in the sky connect us. No matter where we go in the world stargazers are watching the same planets move through the heavens. As an archetypal astrologer I have studied the movement of the planets, and the synchronous correspondence in people’s lives, for nearly forty years. This has led to my understanding that we can explain just about anything with the extraordinary richness of the ten planetary building blocks if we understand them as archetypal. It is astrological convention to call the Sun and the Moon planets. And yes, Pluto is still an (astrological) planet.
Yet, this course is not about astrology. It is broader than that.
My worldview is archetypal. This means that nothing is merely as it appears. As a matter of course I always see underlying forms, structures, and stories. When I see a person dance out of line, buck the system, and go their own way, I see their Inner Disturber. This is an archetype, a universal expression that was as present in the French Revolution as when you broke up with your first love. It does not matter when in history, or where in the world, this archetype expresses itself. While time and place modify the particular expression of the archetype, with a developed sensibility we can recognize such core principles universally and through time.
This course is about developing such sensibilities. You will dis-cover how the ten archetypes express themselves through you by consciously immersing yourself in their world. This way you will be able to recognize them in the world around you.
We all have an Inner Disturber, a part of us who disrupts, invents, wears purple hair, and sometimes gives the third finger. For some, this archetype — “personality trait” is an appropriate term here — is what they are most known for. For others, there is only a faint memory of this part of them.
This course is about re-connecting with all ten inner archetypes.
Why? Because that is when you live the most complete life you can. It is my contention that by the end of this course you will agree with this bold statement: With the ten archetypes explored here we have the tools to understand anything that we come up against in the complex and difficult world of today.