Starhawk
May 3 - June 14
Course texts:
The Earth Path: Grounding Our
Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature
by Starhawk
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EARTH AS TEACHER
Earth As Healer
Whether we are looking to heal and transform our personal hurts or the huge wounds our society inflicts on the earth and other human beings, the earth herself is our greatest teacher and healer.
The ancient Goddess traditions had no sacred texts or dogmas: instead, their mystics learned to read the book of nature. Understanding how the earth’s cycles work, how change occurs in nature, and how mother earth designs co-evolving, interdependent systems can help us be better designers of the changes we want to see in our own life and the world.
This online course weaves together readings, rituals, meditations and directed excercises, stories and journaling to help us connect more deeply with the great transformative powers of nature.
We’ll explore each of the elements: air, fire, water and earth, in both mystical and practical ways, bringing ourselves more deeply into contact with their enlivening energies, and taking the practical steps that can bring our lifestyles back into balance with the earth. We’ll learn how to save energy, harvest water, bring soil alive, and create fertility in our gardens and our projects.
Our connection to earth is our deepest source of hope, renewal, and strength. Now, when climate change and ecological stress assault the earth’s life support systems, this course will help us find hope, renewed strength, and practical tools for healing. |
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T. Thorn Coyle
June 8 - August 9
Course texts:
Kissing the Limitless
by T. Thorn Coyle
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Engaging the Warrior's Heart
Magic workers, activists, healers and lovers all need the power within to stand upright, walk their talk and engage their will. This workshop will discuss the Pentacle of Autonomy: Commitment, Honor, Truth, Strength and Compassion and incorporate movements to help open us to these energies. This pentacle is the basis for strong ethics and effective leadership. We will work with the blade and cup, our bodies and breath, forging a strong will and an open heart. Step into the possibility of your own authority.
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Starhawk
February 8 - April 5
Course texts:
All material is provided online with the course
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Earthly Delights
True Abundance in a Time of Scarcity
Come join a magical experiment—how do we create true abundance when all around us systems are crumbling? The meltdowns we’ve been experiencing, from Wall Street to Greenland, are a result of faulty thinking, of basing our institutions on false ideas and flawed stories. What are the ideas, the new stories, that can become a basis for real abundance, justice, and ecological balance?
Over these eight weeks, we’ll explore eight principles derived from the earth-based spirituality of the Goddess and the practical approach of permaculture to ecological design.
Abundance Springs from Relationships; Take Root; Feed What You Want to Grow; Build from the Ground Up; Waste is Food; Value Diversity; Sink In; and The Gift Multiplies. We’ll explore what they mean in systems that range from gardens to political strategy, and through exercises, meditations, and practices, we’ll apply them to our lives, and see what happens.
The course is light on reading, the major work will be self-reflection, journaling, forum discussions, and Starhawk will post trances and new lectures. As we tell ourselves new stories, as we take delight in the true gifts of the earth, our lives and our work will flourish like a plant growing in healthy soil.
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Starhawk
September 14 - October 25
Course text:
Truth Or Dare - Starhawk
- plus online texts and materials
| Unveiling CreativityWriting for Ritual and Spirituality
This online course explores writing both as a spiritual practice and as a key to freeing our creative voice. In a supportive atmosphere, we’ll write chants, liturgy, poems, songs, and short essays or journal posts, using the process as a way to affirm our power of self expression, defang our critical inner voices and transform them into helpful editors. We’ll learn how to give and receive constructive critique, and hone our work to a higher standard of excellence. Starhawk will off her special tips for chant-writing for the musically impaired. And we’ll create wonderful new material to enrich our spiritual communities.
Course Syllabus |
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Dr. Art Rosengarten
Summer 2009
Course text:
Tarot and Psychology by Art Rosengarten, Ph.D
| Tarot and Psychology
Crossing the Sacred Divide
Long associated with psychics and fortune-tellers, Tarot cards are evocative, multi-layered in meaning, and remarkably rich psychologically. Therapeutic use would seem a logical destination for a sacred tool so steeped in psychological meaning. With likely origins in the early Italian Renaissance, the Tarot is both a symbol map and sacred tool of timeless wisdom. Its modern resurgence has seen an explosion of creative, spiritual, and popular interest. Though undeniably, over the past thirty years, the vast majority of individuals who have discovered the wonders and mysteries of Tarot have done so through experiences of divination. Card reading, without a doubt, is Tarot’s most beguiling and potentially beneficial enterprise.
Yet for Tarot to continue its 21st century evolution, I believe it must have a stronger “application emphasis,” that is, it must be relevant, accessible, and meaningful to the changing contours of people’s lives and resonate with ALL who seek greater meaning, not simply small segments of the waning New Age. Moreover, Tarot’s methodology must be expanded into a global approach, addressing more than just individual problems, but as well collective realities bearing potentially dire consequences to the entire planet, particularly in view of their psychological and spiritual implications. This is the challenge and the hope.
As such, my teaching style is a rather eclectic, non-affiliated, intuitive appraoch with respect to “correctness” in the divinatory arena, honoring multiple points of view, as indeed, all roads (eventually) lead to Rome, but also, in my role as teacher/facilitator will encourage certain crisp and grounded “parameters” through which we may productively channel our short time together here.
In this six week course, a psycho-spiritual/transpersonal orientation to Tarot will be defined, developed, and demonstrated through our primary text, selected readings, various assignments, open dialogue, cyber-experiments in divination, Jungian “synchronicity,” and more. Designed specifically for those who are ready, whether tarot novice or initiate, to push beyond the sacred lines of separation that have fostered our troubled “psyche/spirit” split, but with awareness and respect for the historic realities that be.
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GEI Courses