2026 Archetypal Stories Fall Workshop

A three-session workshop on Zoom

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The stories that endure carry a wisdom the rational mind keeps trying to correct. Their sequence looks disordered, out of proportion, and it stays that way as long as we read them as plot. When we begin to see the images and symbols in relationship to one another, and in proportion to the story that holds them, the coherence reveals itself. From there a dialogue with the tale becomes possible.

Much of the archetypal literature we have inherited follows a single direction of travel: the hero ventures out, slays the dragon, and returns with the treasure hard to obtain. Where that emphasis has been countered, it has largely been through the feminine descent. Inanna is stripped at each of the seven gates. Persephone is drawn under. Both are journeys into depth.

Fairy tales open onto different ground. Theirs is a more liminal terrain, closer…