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Salt Lake City, Utah

 

About the Wasatch Gnostic Society

Between 1995 and 2010, the Wasatch Gnostic Society provided a forum in Salt Lake City for lectures and discussions related to the broad subjects of Gnosis and Jungian Psychology. The principal speaker at these events was Dr. Lance Owens.

Since 2010 regularly scheduled activities of the society have been on hiatus. Dr. Owens continues, however, to speak frequently in other forums. A list of several of those presentations, available online in mp3 audio, is provided here.

 

 

C. G. Jung and the Red Book:

"The Numinous Beginning, which Contained Everything"

Lance S. Owens, MD

Archetypal Psychology Seminar - Sponsored by AEL
2011-2012

Westminster College

Some of these lectures are now available online
For more information, see the Red Book Lectures page.

Seminar Introduction and Overview:

C. G. Jung has had a seminal influence over the last century on the elaboration of key psychological concepts and terminology; he remains a vital force in current therapeutic psychology.  The empirical groundings of his work have however remained poorly understood even by practitioners who embrace his concept of the psyche and unconscious. Recent publication of Jung’s long-sequestered “Red Book” and disclosure of other material from his early private journals now provide a new and critically important perspective on the formative sources of his psychology.   

In 1957, C. G. Jung stated that the imaginative and visionary events recorded in The Red Book: Liber Novus – which he began transcribing in 1914 – were the foundation to all his subsequent work:

My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream....  Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life.  But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.

The Red Book: Liber Novus provides the long-awaited primary evidence to the truth of those words. It now becomes apparent that Liber Novus is indeed the bedrock upon which any understanding of the life and work of C. G. Jung must be built.   Its publication initiates a new era in Jungian studies.

In this series of six evenings, we will examine Jung’s psychology in light of his own experience of the inner world of imagination, vision and dream as revealed in the Liber Novus, “the numinous beginning, which contained everything.”  We will consider the Red Book in detail, and assess its influence on the development and evolution of a “Jungian psychology.” 

Each session is on a Wednesday Evening, 6:30 – 10:00 PM. A light buffet will be served prior to the lectures.

   

More information on this series, and audio of the lectures,
is available on the Red Book Lectures page.

 

Winter 2010 Lecture Series

These lectures are now available online - See Below

C. G. Jung and the Red Book

Imagination, Vision and Psychology

A series of four lectures by Lance S. Owens MD

 

In November of 1913 C. G. Jung embarked upon an extraordinary imaginative journey; in later life he called it his “confrontation with the unconscious”. An “enigmatic stream” of visions flooded upon him, and for the next decade he labored to accurately document these events in his private journals. As the work progressed, Jung felt a need to give the “revelations from his Soul” a more formal elaboration. With great artistic craft – employing antique illuminated calligraphic text and stunning artwork – he transcribed the record of his visions into a massive red leather-bound volume: This is the mysterious Red Book. Jung titled it Liber Novus, the “Book of the New”. Near the end of his life, Jung remarked about his work:

The years … when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life.... Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.

For nearly a century the Red Book, Liber Novus, remained Jung’s hidden treasure. Only a handful of Jung’s most trusted students and colleagues were allowed to see it during his life; after his death in 1961, all requests for access to the volume were refused by his family. But now, after decades veiled in mystery, the Red Book has finally been released to the world in a magnificent facsimile edition. This singular visionary volume – a book that defies category or comparison – is the crux for any developed understanding of Jung’s psychological work.

In this series of four lectures, Dr. Lance Owens will discuss the genesis and content of the Red Book, and explain its central place in the life and work of C. G. Jung.

Come join us for this amazing narrative of vision, imagination, science, and the birth of a new psychology....

(Lectures were presented at Westminster College in the Gore Auditorium, Salt Lake City, Utah.) Download a pdf copy of this lecture information.

 

These Lectures are now available online -- go to the Red Book Lecture page to listen or download.

 

 

Winter 2009 Lecture Series

J.R.R. Tolkien: An Imaginative Life

“The Land of Fairy Story is wide and deep and high.... In that land a man may (perhaps) count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very mystery and wealth make dumb the traveler who would report.... The fairy gold (too often) turns to withered leaves when it is brought away. All that I can ask is that you, knowing all these things, will receive my withered leaves, as a token at least that my hand once held a little of the gold.”– Tolkien, draft manuscript of “On Fairy Stories”

J.R.R. Tolkien has emerged as one of the most important and enduring literary figures of the twentieth century. His masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, possesses an intriguing quality of "depth" and veracity that has evoked a sense of wonder in three generations of readers. Those qualities have made it one of the most-printed and most-read books in history.

Most of his fans know that Tolkien was a philologist and professor of English language at Oxford. But very few readers appreciate the intensity with which he explored the beauty and perils of his imaginative world before ever starting down the road that led from the Shire to Mount Doom – the decade long labor of writing LOTR, begun by Tolkien in 1937.

This series of the three lectures will examine the broad span of Tolkien's life and work, with special focus on Tolkien’s experience of his imaginative gift. The lecturer, Dr. Lance Owens is a physician in clinical practice. He lectures frequently on subjects related to mythology, creative imagination and psychology. His last series of talks on Tolkien were presented at the Bruchion Center in Oslo, Norway.

Location and Times:

Gore Business Auditorium, Westminster College

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

This lecture series is now available online -- Click here to go to the online lectures.

 

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