Many of the creation stories told by our ancestors, those from the early pre-industrial times, were drawn from ‘anthropomorphic imagery’, the human likenesses with which we clothed the world. Our images of the gods, the magicians, the lovers and the kings, allowed us to create a living universe that was similar to ourselves, with which we could step into dynamic relationships.
This is the basis of myth, that inner domain of the human imagination that finds commune and reciprocity with the outer living universe, through the sharing, inner and outer, of meaningful related existence.
But what happens when the life-force is withdrawn from these collective images, when our attention moves away from the imaginal realm within which we have existed and believed in for so long? What happens when all of creation is reduced to lifeless dust that has by chance came together to form the universe as we now experience it? To whom do we relate, with whom is the burden of existence shared and from where do we find the depths of meaning that can only emerge from the hearth of deep relatedness?
Elders from the few remaining pre-industrial cultures left now in the world seem to say the same thing. There was a time when things were different, when we still believed in myth, when the gods, the peoples of nature, the other-than-humans were not only all around us but deep within us too.
Colin Campbell is among the few people of western European origin who were accepted, taught and initiated by some of the wisest pre-industrial African knowledge carriers who lived in Southern Africa during his growing up years. He believes that, as a result of our alienation from the rest of nature, our relationship with our own inner mythic nature has in turn become severely compromised. The loss of these primary and vital relationships has left us with a deep sense of existential anguish and spiritual isolation.
The remedy, he suggests, is to begin a profound and sometimes radical process aimed at the restoration and deep healing of these damaged relationships. Over the last thirty years of teaching, research and wilderness immersion, Colin has developed maps that offer guidance for such restoration to people who belong to the western industrialised world. Theory and related practices draw on a combination of traditional knowledge systems still held and practiced by the few remaining pre-industrial cultures in the world.
This is a rare opportunity to work intensively with Colin in an intimate setting in the Black Mountains of Wales, a thin place where we might explore together his maps and practices that aim to bring back to our lives the primary elements of creation and their corresponding archetypes, identified in contemporary archetypal psychology, yet experienced and embodied through his particular African tradition and lineage. We will explore deeply within ourselves, with the group, and within our culture at large, our own experiences of these elements and archetypes, and their cycles and resonances.
In addition we will undertake a series of time-tested ritual practices from Colin’s tradition that help us to examine and restore these images to our lived experience in the moment and for the future. We will consider how we best offer them back as medicine at this intense time of transformation and renewed need for meaning and story-making. We will look at our own maps of the imaginal, mythic world, how we carry them, how we construct them, how they intersect with our daily lives and how we might use them in the world.
In many of the old creation stories, from the early times of our pre-industrial ancestry, it was said that in the beginning there was only the Creator. The Creator looked upon itself and said, “This is not enough. It is not good for me to be all alone in all of existence.” And so the creator cast off a piece of itself and from this piece began to create. The Creator created four spirits and with its breath gave them life. As each spirit came to life the Creator gave it a name. “You are Wind,” it said to the first of the creations. The second spirit the Creator named Sun, as the life-giving breath filled its being. The third spirit was to be called Water and the fourth and final of the creations was to be called Earth. When this was done, the Creator said to the four spirits, “Go out and create as you see fit. Give life as I have given you life, make a home for yourselves, create keepers who will care for it.”