28/07/2025
Dancing with God - Striving for Wholeness:
Reflections of Archetypal Patterns in the African Psyche
Lynne Radomsky Ph.D
Maxim Ilyashenko
Robert Mark
Friday 22nd August 2025 - Sunday 24th August 2025 Location: High Leigh Conference Centre, Lord Street, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire EN11 8SG
to book with the extended early bird discount click below
https://www.guildofpastoralpsychology.org.uk/event/guild-summer-conference-2025-in-person/
The significance for Jung of his travels in Africa is strongly expressed in his autobiographical work, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Upon glimpsing a distant figure standing motionless, leaning on a long spear and looking down at the train he was on, he thought:
“I had the feeling that I had already experienced this moment and had always known this world which was separated from me only by distance in time. It was as if I were this moment returning to the land of my youth, and as if I knew that dark-skinned man who had been waiting for me for five thousand years”
(C.G. Jung, MDR, p. 283).
The Alchemy of the African Healer:
Lynne Radomsky Ph.D
At this time of uncertainty, when the opposites pull apart and we get caught in the cycle of destruction and we long for reconstruction, to find meaning in the chaos and for healing. With this background, and as this material may be foreign to our western predilections, we can ask: Why would be important? What is its relevance? The rich symbolic world of the African healer offers us a glimpse into a living system from which to begin to unravel the great mysteries of life, death, and the afterlife and to find healing. Here we perhaps catch a glimpse of the relationship to the collective unconscious in order to bring something into our modern day times.
In these talks, I will track one of the most numinous rituals in the African Healing tradition that of the calling to initiation. Psychologically, this call is an archetypal experience that potentially initiates individuation, birthing the awareness of a transpersonal other. Here we enter the realms of the unfathomable mystery of the unitary nature of spirit and nature, a pathway to a direct connection to the creator spirit, to rebirth and regeneration and most importantly – to healing. The striving towards wholeness is encapsulated in this initiation and in the symbol of the coniunctio, the totality as the essence of the alchemical opus and C. G. Jung’s approach to depth psychology.
I will explore this initiation ceremony in three parts:
In my first talk, I will look at the Nigredo, the dark night of the soul.
The second talk develops the theme with the Albedo, the new dawn.
The third talk culminates with the Rubedo, the fullness of the individuation journey.
