I am a writer, but words have never been my strong suit.

Don’t get me wrong, since the time I was young there has been a marked fascination with written word. Back then, it was scribbles into notebooks, emotionally-charged LiveJournal entries, or unpacking the mysterious vocabulary of my favorite high fantasy novels. Words were strange and whimsical, alluring and frustrating, but I wasn’t naturally drawn to them.

Before I was a writer, my creativity was funneled through music. I am first and foremost a singer, a skill I was born with and honed over years of playing live and recording. I am most happy with a mic in hand, sensing the melodies hidden in the guitar riffs. Long before lyrics emerge, I am playing with vocalizations and drawn out notes, riding the rhythm of the spirit of the music through my voice.

Even with music, I am less interested in wrestling the melodies into form. I can easily replace one word with another, make the song about this topic or that. In essence, the words aren’t as important to me. The real art is in the in-between, when I’m reaching out into that cosmic creative void and channeling its contents. A great hook can be lyrical, absolutely, but the magic for me is touching into that ineffable something.

My work now is not so different. Though I now play with symbol instead of song, I’m still attempting to translate the great energy of creation. Concessions, however, have to be made for the sake of accessibility. I can no longer just hum a tune or jam endlessly on sound and harmony, I have to write!

Though the process can be quite enjoyable, like working through a puzzle, I find that it often takes me further away from the flow state I so long for when creatively engaged. Distilling my thoughts and constructing coherent sentences can feel so mechanical. Laboring at the edge of my comfort zone, in the realm of logos and word, I’m much more susceptible to stalling out and losing the creative thread.

And that is where I find myself lately, entangled with an unslayable beast known as writer’s block.

I am writing a book, an endeavor I did not think I would ever embark upon. It always felt too complex, too big of a project to wrap my mind around. Now, I am more immersed in the realm of words than ever before. When I catch the creative wave, I ride it with exhilaration, words pouring out of me like my old songs. But when I’m struggling through the process, when I have no words to give, I feel completely bereft, adrift on placid seas.

Hour after hour, day after day slips by and I’m still starring at this blank page. The cursor blinks and blinks, and all I can think is, “Where is the spark of inspiration? Why is it so hard to find?”

In one such moment recently, while lamenting on my writer’s block, a sudden answer came to me:

With that realization, the image of the Ace of Wands burst into mind. You see, the suit of Wands governs passion, inspiration, creative intensity, and the psychological energy that animates life. Each card in the suit gives us a glimpse into what it means to be engaged with this creative force, from the initial spark till it eventually snuffs out.

Curiously, the journey begins with a heavenly offering, revealing that the true wielder of the fiery energy of creation is the manus dei (hand of god). The idea that inspiration is self-generated is a misplaced belief at best and a soaring inflation at worst. In actuality, when we tap into the matrix of creativity, we are in the realm of the gods. It is Prometheus, descending from Olympus with blazing torch in hand.

This feels like a radical reorientation for my writer’s block. No wonder each attempt to reignite the spark through my own will alone has felt futile. I’m trying to grasp when I should be opening to receive. The task then becomes: how can I create the proper conditions to do so?

I’m reminded of my relationship to music and how much simpler it feels to weave the inspiring thread. When I am enveloped in a wall of sound, I feel myself dropping in and tuning out, thinking less and feeling more. My whole internal landscape shifts and I trust in what is emerging with total faith in the gods of creation.

For writing, I think that translates to connecting to the creative essence of what I am working on (the heart of the chapter, the deeper meaning in a passage, etc) and then opening myself to inspiration.

What image strikes me then? Which word floats into my awareness? Where is my attention and interest drawn?

Often, when mired in writer’s block, I find myself relentlessly searching for the right word or proper sentence. I try to strong-arm my way through, anything to get things moving again, to feel a sense of excitement or alignment. Now, when things feel stuck and dull, I first loosen my grip. I reach back out to that fiery torch of creative wonder and see which path it is lighting.

Since implementing this approach, my writer’s block has abated. Working on my book has felt more joyous; there is a newfound ease and playfulness. Though I’m sure I’ll face this challenge many times more, I now have a way of relating to the experience that feels more constructive and archetypally resonant.

How do you navigate writer’s block?

Join me in the comments to discuss!

Leave a comment

~ Welcome to The Oracle, a monthly divination to open the archetypal field through a blend of tarot and inner work practices. ~

The court cards of the tarot, the royal figures that preside over the Minor Arcana, are some of the trickiest in the deck. It’s curious, really. You’d think we would find them more relatable than the archetypally concentrated Major Arcana or the situational pips. And though we may feel an affinity or interest in a particular court card (a significator), the most common experience when we draw them in a reading is confusion and uncertainty.

In this approach, court cards become an active psychological force that helps us to explore inner and outer reality through their archetypal perspectives. Instead of beginning with questions like, “Who does the Knight of Swords remind me of?” or, “What relevance does my King of Pentacles-like boss have to this reading?”, we begin from a more vital place: “What is my relationship to the Page of Cups’ themes where new depths of feeling and emotional capacity are emerging? ” Or, “How can I approach this situation with the Queen of Wand’s fiery charisma, fierce devotion, and inspired movement?”

In this form, the court cards and their interpretations have many shades of potential and meanings. Sometimes, it does extend into the outer world, to individuals in our lives who embody the unique qualities of the court. More often than not, though, it turns the focus and inquiry inward, to exploring the vast landscape of our psychological inner workings.

Now, let’s turn towards The Oracle as guidance for the weeks ahead…

Building the Royal Psychic Ground

If the court cards are the royalty of the Minor Arcana, then the Empress and Emperor can be viewed as the ruling monarchs of the Majors. Where the court cards are bound into the limitations of their suit and rank, the Empress and Emperor are boundary-less, encompassing a greater totality of archetypal and psychological experience.

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Like many other curious tarot students, I too was both fascinated and confounded by the court cards when I began learning. I felt most drawn to the Queen of Cups, to her watery reveries and intricate grail in hand. I saw myself reflected in her capacity for emotional attunement and breadth of feeling, an embodiment of relational mastery that I yearned to hone in myself.

Admittedly, whenever the card came up in a reading, I’d claim, “There I am!”… and most of the interpretation stopped there. Soon I began to realize that there was so much more to the cards, that each of the 16 courts offered ways to dynamically explore and refine our inner lives.

Our studies will be anchored by this month’s workshop, which will be live streamed directly via Substack on Saturday, June 13th at 11:00AM PST (a replay will be available)! I’m experimenting with this new format and am excited to see how it compares to our typical Zoom meet ups.

In class, we’ll study the court cards as psychic configurations that reveal distinct modes of being and patterns of expression within the psyche. We’ll explore each card in depth, examining their psychological undercurrents, how to interpret them in readings and utilize them for inner work.

Together, we’ll:

• Deepen your understanding of the relationship between tarot, complexes, and Jungian psychology

• Meet the court cards as archetypal personalities and psychic configurations

• Explore each card’s defining qualities, motivations, strengths, and shadows

• Learn four practical approaches for interpreting court cards

• Identify a relevant court card and explore its significance through a guided reading

Please bring a deck to use in class!

If you’re ready to deepen your understanding of the court cards and explore them through a Jungian and archetypal lens, I invite you to join us! Further details for our studies and workshop are below.

How to join this month’s workshop

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How has your inner work been unfolding this month?

Today, I’m opening up the discussion thread to answer your pressing inner work questions. This is your chance to ask me for guidance, interpretation support, or perspective on something emerging in life currently.

Think of it like my monthly office hours — an opportunity for direct support :)

For example:

• Interpretation help for a dream

• A tarot card or spread you’d like another perspective on

• Guidance on an inner work dynamic you’re trying to understand

• Clarification on concepts, ideas, etc from this month’s studies

• General questions on tarot, dreamwork, Jungian psychology, myth, alchemy, or related subjects

• Requests for inner work or study resources (books, classes, etc)

Leave a comment

See you in the comments!
~Alyssa

Have you watched this month’s workshop?

This month’s workshop on synchronicity is now available to stream! In it, I challenged myself to create a framework members can use to interpret and integrate synchronicity by tracing its archetypal and inner work themes. It’s a fairly simple, 4-step process.

If you try out the technique, let me know how it goes :)

What’s coming up next in the membership…

In June, we will study the court cards of the tarot, some of the trickiest cards in the deck! We’ll approach them as psychic configurations that reveal distinct modes of being and patterns of expression within the psyche. Special attention will be given to working with them in readings.

Subscribe now

Please note: Live classes will return in June. I’ll send an update with more details next week.

Synchronicity is a mind-bending concept, asking us to consider how dynamics that should be squarely internal (like a dream, thought, image, feeling) can be reflected outside of ourselves.

A synchronicity may be dramatic and striking, like dreaming of an event before it comes to pass. Or, it can be subtle and inviting, like a recurring theme we keep hearing about that seems full of meaning.

Oftentimes, we experience these synchronicities without a framework to understand, contextualize, or meaningfully work with them afterward. This workshop remedies that, providing an educational foundation of synchronicity from a Jungian perspective. We examine how synchronicity tends to appear during times of emotional intensity and deep inner work, as well as their link to archetypes and the unus mundus.

You’ll learn how to work with synchronicity practically by identifying archetypal themes, exploring symbolic meaning, and reflecting on what these moments may be revealing or asking of your development.

I hope you enjoy!
~Alyssa

Synchronicity will support you to:

• Understand synchronicity through a Jungian framework

• Identify the symbolic and archetypal themes underlying synchronicities

• Explore how synchronicity emerges during periods of transformation, emotional intensity, and inner work

• Develop practical tools for interpreting and integrating synchronicity into your psychological development and life

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“I have a hard time trusting my intuition. How do I know if it’s real guidance or just my own desires or fears?”

The struggle to connect to, trust, and harness intuition is common. The moment of intuitive insight arises most unexpectedly, perhaps as a sudden knowing, a vision of potential, or a word of caution echoing in mind. Though it may pique our curiosity and grab our attention, we are often left wondering how real the experience was or how much faith we can place in it.

From my perspective, the issue is two-fold:

This is where a Jungian approach becomes useful, grounding the concept of intuition in a psychologically informed framework that we can map onto internal and external experience.

In Jung’s model of psychological types, there are four functions of consciousness2, grouped in complementary pairs:

Rational functions — evaluating and decision making

• Thinking evaluates through logic and concepts, focusing on an objective, rational approach.

• Feeling evaluates based on personal or collective values, focusing on relatedness and a sense of like or dislike, acceptance or rejection, etc.

Irrational functions — perceiving and information gathering

• Sensation perceives through the physical senses, focusing on concrete, tangible experience and material reality as it is.

• Intuition perceives via the unconscious, focusing on possibilities, symbolic insight, and connections that go beyond the obvious.

Our psychological type is made up of all four functions, arranged in various configurations based on a natural hierarchy and preference. For example, a thinking type is someone with a highly differentiated thinking function, characterized by their use of logic, rationality, and objectivity as they navigate life. They still utilize the other three functions, but with less mastery, ease, and conscious awareness than their dominant one.

In this framework, intuition is not a rare gift; it does not arise from magical origins, nor is it exclusive to an elite few. It is a basic mode of psychological functioning, accessible to all.

With that said, intuitive types3 (those who naturally prefer intuition and have it as the most differentiated function) tend to have a special relationship to it. This is where we find the mystics, oracles, visionaries, and prophets, the philosophers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and theorists who have an uncanny ability to see into the fabric of experience and channel it with clarity and symbolic vision.

Intuition is a psyche primed for openness to the unconscious. Insights may arise in any number of ways such as symbols, images, gut feelings, a sense of things “coming together”, dreams or fantasies, the connecting of patterns, or the picking up of emergent potentials. Casting aside concrete reality (the sensation function), the intuitive type immerses themselves in a sea of possibility, drawn to what can be and the archetypal forms that energize these ideas.

Engagement with the unconscious—especially if the material is of a highly archetypal origin—can feel charged with significance and is usually difficult to trace. This is what makes intuition feel beyond us, as coming from some divine or otherworldly source. In reality, what we are meeting is the shadowed realm of the psyche, the unconscious in its many forms.

Of utmost importance, we must remember that intuition is a fundamental building block of psychological life.

Building a deeper relationship with intuition means that we have to refine our awareness of how the unconscious communicates its perceptions. Each person may experience this differently, but there are some general principles that we can keep in mind to help this process along.

Discerning Intuition & the Messages of the Unconscious

This guide sets its gaze on the tension that arises once an intuition flows into our awareness and how to navigate its discernment. If you’re interested in developing the intuitive function in general, I recommend checking out the resources listed below.

First, let’s take a look at this quote from Jung4:

“The utterances of the heart—unlike those of the discriminating intellect—always relate to the whole. The heartstrings sing like an Aeolian harp only under the gentle breath of a mood, an intuition, which does not drown the song but listens. What the heart hears are the great, all-embracing things of life, the experiences which we do not arrange ourselves but which happen to us.”

— C.G. Jung, The Symbolic Life (CW 18)

The biggest takeaways from this passage are that the movements of the deep psyche, which reverberate through intuition and into the heart of our being, happen to us and relate back to something greater and more complete. These words are, along with the theory we touched on earlier, the inspiration for the steps laid out below.

Let’s begin!

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I. — Consider your psychological type.

Before getting caught up in evaluating an intuition, it’s important to figure out your psychological type. As we noted above, intuition is one of four functions of consciousness. Where it sits in your personality dictates how accessible or inaccessible it is.

A simple (though oversimplified) way to explore this is to consider the two axes of the functions. Along each axis, you will have a natural preference for one function over another. This creates a general orientation, such as a preference for perceiving via sensation and evaluating through feeling (a sensate feeling type), etc.

When answering these questions, consider the psychological energy that motivates these actions, rather than the manifest behavior itself.

Rational Functions — Thinking or Feeling?

• Which do you rely most on: logic, rational analysis, and objective or conceptual reasoning (thinking), or on personal/group values, relationality, and what feels appropriate or important (feeling)?

Irrational Functions — Sensation or Intuition?

• Which do you feel naturally oriented towards: what is concrete, tangible, and directly observable (sensation), or possibility, abstract or symbolic connections, and visions of what can be (intuition)?

Keep in mind: If you have a natural preference for sensation over intuition, you might struggle to tap into, trust, or recognize intuitive insight. This doesn’t mean you can’t develop it, but there is a natural disadvantage.

Note: Though it’s not covered in this guide, each of the functions are modified by an extraverted or introverted orientation. See the resources below for more on this!

II. — Examine the quality of the intuition.

Perception via the unconscious means that, for the most part, we are unaware of the source and ways in which we receive information and insight. Rather than being situated in concrete, immediate reality, the intuitive function attunes us to the unconscious—to its images, symbols, and archetypal frameworks.

When discerning your intuitions, examine the quality of the experience. A genuine intuition will often:

• Arise suddenly, without being prompted.

• Feel difficult to locate or trace its source.

• Be emotionally neutral, though emotions likely follow afterwards.

• Have a sense of intensity and command, grabbing our attention.

• Provide insight without explanation.

• Feel profound, otherworldly, or outside of oneself.

• Carry a sense of clarity and certainty.

• Speaks to potential, possibilities, or previously unknown insights.

• Manifest as images, symbols, a knowing, a gut feeling, a clear thought, a profound dream, etc.

Things tend to get muddied because our emotional responses or thoughts get mixed into the experience. Learning to separate these will help you in trusting and identifying a true intuition.

III. — Situate the intuition within a larger context.

Now that you’ve examined the quality of the intuition, the next step is to place it within a larger context. Recall Jung’s words, that intuitions relate to the whole, to a broader pattern, or something more than the immediate situation.

Consider:

• In what context did the intuition arise? Does that seem connected to a current tension, hope, conflict, or transformation?

• Has this sort of intuition appeared before? If so, how might these situations be related?

• How might this intuition be compensating, shifting, or balancing your current way of seeing a situation?

• Do you notice patterns in how your intuitions are expressed? How might you lean into and develop this further?

• What might the intuitions be asking you to recognize, engage, or change?

• How might this intuition be tied to a broader arc of your individuation?

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An example of the steps in practice…

Recommended Resources

Books

• Chapter 10, “General Description of the Types” in Psychological Types (CW 6) by C.G. Jung

• Lectures on Jung’s Typology by Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman

• Personality Types: Jung’s Model of Typology by Daryl Sharp

At The Artemisian

• Developing Intuition (workshop)

• Intuition and the Bridge of Perception (article)

• You’re Not Just an Extravert or Introvert (article)

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Let’s chat about intuition!

What is your relationship to intuition? Is it something you readily trust or struggle to navigate? How do you recognize and work with it usually?

Leave a comment

~ Welcome to The Oracle, a monthly divination to open the archetypal field through a blend of tarot and inner work practices. ~

Synchronicity is another Jungian term that pervades the collective conscious sphere, yet continues to hang in the shadows of our understanding. It’s often spoken about as striking moments we encounter in our daily lives, such as a repeating number we can’t stop seeing or an unusual sign that we are on the right path. But the Jungian idea is much richer, much stranger, and more elusive.

Simply defined, synchronicity is a moment of meaningful connection, where an event in the outside world coincides with a psychological state of mind, with no detectable causality at play.

Synchronicity is a concept that squarely situated Jung as a metaphysician, a role he constantly denied and side-stepped throughout his lengthy career. In his later years, emboldened by his unending excavation of psychological phenomena, he put forth his theory:

“Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. The synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this direction, for they show that the nonpsychic can behave like the psychic, and vice versa, without there being any causal connection between them...”

Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

Synchronicity is a commentary on the nature of reality, that at some point beyond the seemingly disparate worlds of inner and outer, psyche and matter, the realms are actually one. For this reason, they can mirror each other, materializing in both our psychological conditions and in the external world at the same time, or relatively close together. The most critical aspect of the synchronicity relationship is an undeniable sense of meaning and connection.

Synchronicity arrives to break open the fabric of existence, allowing us to pierce into the veil of the unus mundus. These experiences can be astounding, challenging our notions of what we thought was real or possible (for an exceptionally striking example in my life, see the article The Hounds of Diana). But not all synchronicities arrive in this manner. Some are subtle, unfolding around us like a gentle message from the beyond.

We oft speak of synchronicity as something that happens to us, something we become aware of as it arises in our lives. But one thing we should keep in mind is that we can invoke synchronicity; we can tap into the deep layer of unified reality. One of the simplest ways to do this is to practice the art of divination.

The Oracle, this blended offering of tarot and dreamwork, is exactly that. By focusing on a charged inner aspect (in this case, our monthly inner work theme, but it can also be a question or tension in life) and then drawing cards or incubating dream material, we open ourselves to the cosmic mysteries of the unconscious, creating a portal to see it reflected in the outer world.

In the case of the tarot, it’s the random draw of the cards, a material item flush with symbols, that seems to uncannily mirror our inner state. In the case of dreamwork, we appeal to the unconscious for images and commentary on our lives that we can then trace into outer experience. The divination and the activation of synchronicity hold us in an archetypal constellation of wonder and intrigue.

But first we turn towards The Oracle, to the cards and dream images that straddle the borderlands of psyche and matter, as guidance for the weeks ahead…

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Jung poetically described synchronicity as events that “fall together in time”.

It’s those near unexplainable moments of life when an inner state (like a dream, intuition, thought, fantasy, etc) is mirrored in the outer world. Their link is not through causality—i.e., cause and effect—but through meaning.

Join me in the comments and share your synchronicity or ask a question (today’s discussion is open to all)! I’ll be offering reflections, insights, and interpretation support as needed.

Leave a comment

See you in the comments!
~Alyssa

Want to study and explore synchronicity further?

When we experience synchronicity, there’s often a deep sense of significance, wonder, and mystery. Many of us stop there, not knowing how to integrate or interpret what occurred.

This month inside The Artemisian membership, you’ll learn how to uncover the deeper meaning of synchronicity. Grounding our studies in Jung’s theory, we’ll explore how these moments link back to archetypal patterns, and how to situate them within your individuation and ongoing inner work.

Our focus includes:

• Jung’s concept and theory of synchronicity

• Using synchronicity to orient and deepen the individuation process

• Recognizing when synchronicities are occurring in your life and what they are reflecting about the current moment in time

• How to interpret synchronicities symbolically and practically for insight and guidance

Join the membership

Hello members, how has your inner work been unfolding this month?

Today, I’m opening up the discussion thread to answer your pressing inner work questions. This is your chance to ask me for guidance, interpretation support, or perspective on something emerging in life currently.

Think of it like my …

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One of my goals is to get back into teaching in-person this year! There’s something special about holding space together, engaging in live discussion, and feeling the energy and co-creation of all participants.

I’ll be returning to teaching at The Alembic once my maternity leave is over, but in the meantime, you can check out the recording of the tarot class below. It includes an introductory lecture on tarot fundamentals, a great taster of my style and approach to working with the cards. For deeper learning, you can check out the Tarot for Beginners and The Art of Tarot Interpretation classes here at The Artemisian.

Please forgive some of the streaming blips through out, this was a live class with slightly finicky tech :]

~Alyssa

I’m excited to bring it back this month with Hekate, the liminal goddess and key-holder of dark mysteries who leads us through the crossroads. In this workshop, we explore her archetypal expressions as Great Mother, Sorceress, Psychopomp, and Crone, considering how we can build a relationship to her in these different expressions. Meet Hekate in her many forms, dive into her rich symbols, and uncover her potency as initiator, transformer, and underworld guide.

Archetypal Encounters: Hekate will support you to:

• Understand Hekate as a figure of liminality, unconscious power, and transformation through a Jungian lens

• Recognize the psychological significance of her four archetypal forms: Great Mother, Sorceress, Psychopomp, and Crone

• Interpret the key, torch, crossroads, and dog as symbols of access, illumination, transition, and instinct within inner change

• Apply Hekate’s archetypal themes to guide you through current transitions, changes, and thresholds of life

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Many of the powerful, transformative, and healing moments of my life have come from meeting the unconscious and the great archetypal energies that animate the psyche.

Perhaps the earliest example of it was when I was a small child, under 5 years old. I was plagued with night terrors, dreams of being stalked by a vampiric figure as I raced through the backyard of my home. Then I would awake, dazed and emotionally charged, to a scene of horror…spiders crawling all over my bed. Was it a hallucination? A continuation of the dream itself? It was viscerally real, overwhelming, stretching for what felt like hours in a timeless state. Eventually, they’d disappear, no trace of them left except for the imprint of fear I felt deep in my bones.

One day I went to my grandmother, a Sicilian immigrant whose old-world ways always shimmered with a kind of magic and awe. She was a devout Catholic who practiced ancestral folk healing, an intuitive with the kind of clairvoyant sight that shocked any who witnessed it; a liminal, reality-shifting individual in herself. She listened intently and instructed me to say the Lord’s Prayer when I awoke, to seek a higher power when I felt I had nowhere to turn.

And so I did, signing the cross, whispering the words, even as the spiders raced around me. In that contemplative space, I felt that I entered a different reality. Prayer was the vehicle but I was the conduit, an act that allowed me to touch into the otherworldly realm of the beyond. The night terrors and visions faded but my curiosity grew deeper. From that moment on, I’ve strived to maintain that connection. Not to a God I read about in religious texts, but to the numinous energy found within, the mystery of the inner landscape.

I continued to find it in all sorts of surprising ways. Deep in meditation, I was visited by mythic figures — howling wolves and mystical sorceresses — who gave me advice and helped ground me in times of overwhelm. A series of dreams kept urging me to leave behind my Jungian analysis and begin therapeutic somatic work, a decision I never anticipated that brought profound healing. Striking synchronicities and intuitive realizations appeared at the most sudden of moments, telling me to leave a job, move away, look where I didn’t think to look, and there I found a part of myself that was in need.

Each time the underworld of psyche opened up, through its images, symbols, and liminal states, I felt that same sort of awe. A presence that is always there, just below the surface; awesome in its ability to move, inspire, frighten and cure. It has been the baptismal waters, drawing me in to tend to my wounds and initiate me to a new way of being. It has been the cave of shadows I fear to enter, the haunting voices calling out, and though I resist, I know I must go forward. It has been my greatest teacher, instructing me on how to be more present, giving me new eyes to see.

In this quote, von Franz says, echoing Jung, that all their efforts in therapy are to help clients open to an archetypal experience, the only true healing factor, which cannot be forced. I agree to an extent, that by the grace of the Fates we may receive such an experience when we are most in need.

But what I have learned throughout my life is that the veil between psychic realities can always be engaged.

All my earliest and formative meetings with the unconscious happened naturally, spontaneously. But as I grew older, I began to experiment with reaching out, with cultivating a receptive inner state. Different practices and modalities proved to be fruitful; a bridge could be built to the depths if I did so with intention, if I sharpened my ability to read its messages and notice its influences.

This aligns me with the traditions of the ancient diviners, oracles, mystics and seers, those who traversed the borderlands of psyche, meeting godly presences and bringing their words of mystery, command and wisdom forth. Although we cannot will the gods, just as we cannot will the unconscious, we can appeal to it.

It begins with tending the link to the deep psyche and touching into the archetypal realm.

What do we mean when we say archetypal?

The word archetype brings to mind common motifs and characters found in myth and fiction, gods of the pantheon, tricksters, heroines, cycles of death and birth. But these are not archetypes, they are the products, cultural artifacts that point back to the psychic forms which they rest upon.

Archetypes are the dynamic forces of the psyche, foundational structures that reveal themselves through image, symbol, and patterns of experience. They are the vessels of creation that energize life, timeless and eternal. To be in relationship with them is to meet the generative field of the soul.

Archetypal perspectives give us a way to see into the fabric of experience, where symbolic threads weave through seemingly disparate moments, coalescing into a world rich with depth, meaning, and insight. In this stratum of the psyche, we encounter metaphors and images that awaken the imagination, that expand our sense of being.

This builds the vital link between conscious and unconscious, making us a being of the liminal worlds — the seen and unseen, the literal and the symbolic, within and without. No longer do we feel alone, rather, we are held in an archetypal constellation. It is here that integration becomes possible, where individuation unfolds and a steady center of the personality is formed.

For example, what at first appears as sudden depression, listlessness, and emotional overwhelm might, through an archetypal lens, be understood as a descent to the underworld (aka, the unconscious). The individual is at first gripped by the experience — clouded by its intensity, unable to find direction or meaning. So they turn toward the tarot and draw The High Priestess. Sitting at the veil between worlds, she counsels us to venture into the mystery, that a threshold is present. They notice pomegranates upon the veil, a symbol that recalls Persephone’s underworld journey into shadow and sovereignty.

The experience begins to take new shape. With the High Priestess as guide and Persephone as the mirror, the individual starts to understand that the descent (and its accompanying symptoms) are essential. If met consciously, the seeds of transformation could take root as they interact with the unconscious in its many forms. The experience becomes imbued with mythic meaning, the archetypal patterns help them feel supported while offering keys for action and deeper seeing. What was once unbearable is now recognized as purposeful, an important step in the growth and development of self.

How will you reach out?

Following the path of the diviners, I have found two necessary requisites for this work.

1. Lowering the field of conscious awareness: Reflective, meditative, and liminal states that relax the grip of the ego create the proper conditions to access unconscious material. This includes deep meditation or engaging in active imagination, drifting between sleep and waking (or being fully asleep), trance or flow states, noticing intuitive insights and sitting with the information/symbols that arise, etc.

2. Utilizing symbolic or archetypal tools/systems: The psyche naturally “speaks” in a symbolic language. Anywhere we find concentrations of symbol and image, a portal to the unconscious opens. Divinatory systems such as tarot, runes, and the I Ching, along with archetypal frameworks like astrology and myth, help us enter into meaningful dialogue with the deeper layers of psyche.

There are countless combinations and ways to do this work. After all, the art of divination can be practiced with just about anything. This is exciting because it means you can shape the path as best fits your psychic landscape. Methods you feel drawn to (or maybe even resistant to) are great places to start.

Here at The Artemisian, you see a weaving of my cherished archetypal systems, those with the strongest voice that have called me to their altar. They include:

• Mythology and Fairytales: Stories arising from the collective unconscious, where archetypes are expressed in symbolic and narrative form. Fairytales often remain closer to the raw expressions of the unconscious, while myths, having been elevated to cultural or national status, can lose some of their original psychic purity (and strangeness).

• Tarot: A symbolic set of 78 cards, where each one reflects universal patterns of experience, from the deeply concentrated archetypal energies of the Major Arcana to the more personal and situational themes of the Minor Arcana.

• Alchemy: A tradition that sought to explore the mysteries and transmutations of nature. The alchemist’s efforts (which were both concrete and psychological) activated the collective unconscious, giving alchemy a double face: its materials, procedures, and images express both the transformations of matter and the archetypal dynamics of the psyche.

• Dreams: Direct expressions of the unconscious that arise when the ego is dimmed in sleep. Dreams reveal the unique images, symbols and patterns of our inner world, while also tapping into deeper archetypal frameworks.

You can also try out practices that lean more into lowering the conscious field and less so on working with image and symbol. Reading palms, utilizing a pendulum, scrying, ecstatic dance or free writing/drawing can move one into a liminal state. This opens the same divinatory portals, where unconscious material flows higher towards the ego.

The Artemisian is a home for archetypal inner work

In my writings and teachings, I strive to make the path of archetypal inner work accessible, showing that the potential to see archetypally and meet the unconscious is latent within each of us. We do not need to outsource this work to another; we are the living channel through which psyche’s images and expressions move.

Finding that path alone, however, can be disorienting. Where do we begin? What resources should we turn to? How do we make sense of the flood of images, symbols and experiences that flow from the unconscious?

The Artemisian stands at the threshold of the psyche and these mysteries. My hope is that the offerings here will help you to explore the influences shaping your inner and outer life, learn the symbolic language of the unconscious, and deepen your journey of growth and becoming.

The membership is where we do the most powerful form of this work — monthly classes, a wealth of educational resources, and a community of thoughtful fellow seekers walking the path of individuation together.

Join the membership today

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts and reflections on these ideas…

Do you practice any forms of divination or related modalities? Are you interested in building a relationship to the unconscious? Have you had similar experiences to the ones mentioned here? Join me in the comments to discuss!

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What unconscious insights can we uncover during heightened emotional experiences?

There is no one path to discovering unconscious material within. Insights and perceptions can be gleaned in a variety of ways, from the images in our dreams to patterns of impulsive behavior or mysterious somatic symptoms. We can also inquire into our shifting emotional states, especially ones that came upon us suddenly: “Where did this intense rage come from? Why am I in tears and feeling so sadly? What brings forth this rush of joy and connection?”

Something deeper brews within the psyche during these times. The temptation to minimize the experience, to sweep it under the rug, or rationalize it away is strong. What if we instead saw these moments as messages emanating from the unconscious?

The main takeaways from Jung are:

• Heightened emotions cause altered states of consciousness (where ego dims).

• The contents of the unconscious intensify and break through the surface.

• This reveals structures of the psyche, like complexes, and more deeply, the archetypal foundations they sit upon.

Let’s take a look at this further…

Consider this Jungian diagram2 that depicts the strata of the psyche. On the left side, we see the typical mode of psychic organization. The bright outer ring is the conscious sphere, all the psychic contents that are explicit, obvious, and accessible. It includes the thoughts, memories, images, emotions, and sensations we’re aware of (or can become aware of) in the moment. It also contains the ego, the autobiographical “I,” which provides a sense of identity and continuity.

Beneath this lies the personal unconscious, where complexes, repressed material, and emerging aspects of self reside. Deeper still is the collective unconscious: the universal, inborn layer of the psyche that contains archetypal frameworks, primordial symbols, and psychic drives shared by all of humanity.

During times of psychic disruption, the lower unconscious layers flood into consciousness (see the expansion of the dark unconscious rings in the diagram). As the levee fails, as material from the personal and collective unconscious spills in, we experience a profound sense of disorientation—an altered state of consciousness.

This is a remarkable moment, a piercing into the psychic veil, something that often takes an incredible amount of effort and focus to achieve. Jung tells us that the process is being driven by complexes. Loosely, we can define a complex as clusters of related images, ideas, and experiences held together by a common emotional tone and an archetypal core. They form the basic elements of the personal unconscious, acting as fundamental building blocks of the personality. They are not inherently negative or positive, but range in quality depending on their genesis.

Complexes are sometimes referred to as “splinter psyches3,” which speaks to their semi-autonomous nature and the quality of personhood they carry. They are not a mere emotion or memory exiled away into psychic shadow, they are rich and dynamic, with thoughts, feelings, yearnings, and drives unto themself. Reclamation of a complex strengthens and fleshes out our psychological makeup. It is an essential task of individuation, one that supports a deepening sense of selfhood and wholeness.

This guide is designed to help you meet a complex during times of emotional activation. Doing so illuminates the unconscious in new light, allowing you to access the personal unconscious threads of your inner world, and, perhaps most importantly, the archetypal center that shapes it.

Exploring and Integrating a Complex

Many of the intractable patterns of behavior, thought, and orientation we find most frustrating are rooted in our complexes. Their autonomy, their capacity to overwhelm consciousness, to subtly or explicitly drive our actions, speaks to their incredible power and influence.

Intention to engage a complex is not enough. Understanding the psychic landscape, all of the surrounding associations, its origins, the role it plays within the psyche, the archetype at its heart — this is what gives us the best chance to truly meet and integrate complex material.

Below are 3 steps and guidelines to support you through this process.

I. — Choose a Situation

Consider a recent time of emotionality. It may encompass a spectrum of possibility such as:

• A fit of jealousy that overcame you

• An overreaction to being let down that you can’t make sense of

• Feeling infatuated by a new individual for reasons you cannot place

• A pattern of behavior you find frustrating but cannot seem to overcome

• A rigid belief such as, “I’m not good enough”

• Anytime you come out of an experience and think, “I was not myself”

Write about the situation briefly.

II. — Elements of the Complex

The next step in the process is to discern the elements of the complex. Try to place yourself back into that state, to recall what it felt like inwardly and outwardly as you explore the landscape of the complex.

The elements of the complex are:

• Emotions (the array of feelings present)

• Images (mental pictures, symbols, or visual representations)

• Thoughts (beliefs, judgements, and ideas)

• Memories (recollections of past events)

• Physical sensations (noticeable bodily impressions)

Step two often needs to be repeated many times over, especially around compulsive reactions and behaviors we cannot seem to change. Each time we engage in the exercise, we gain more insight. It may take several repetitions to fill out the list completely. With consistency, the general patterns start to reveal itself.

If you use the guide often enough, you can try to do step two when a complex is activated (meaning you are doing so in the moment). This is a task, however, that requires considerable ego stability and nervous system resilience, so you may struggle with the process. The more often you try, the easier it becomes! If you’re not able to catch much during the moment, record as much as you can immediately afterward, when you have come back to yourself.

III. — Reflection and Integration

Once you’ve fleshed out the web of the complex, it’s time to engage in reflection and sketch paths towards integration. Here are some prompts and considerations to help you do so:

• Which elements from step two have the most energy and intensity? Try ranking them from most to least activating or intense.

  • Why do you think one element (such as a feeling of abandonment or an image of a crashing plane) is more powerful than the others?

• Can you make any connections back to past events? If so, what happened during that time of your life that may be unresolved?

• If the complex were to tell its life story, what would it say?

• What purpose or role does this complex serve? How is it trying to support you or compensate for something?

• Are there certain qualities, experiences, or aspects of self the complex wants you to claim, acknowledge, or attend to?

• What might the complex need to feel resolved, heard, and welcomed?

• Based on your reflections, which archetype would you guess sits at the center of this complex?

Lastly, what is 1 - 3 practical actions you can implement based on the insight you’ve gained from the complex?

Here’s an example of this process at work in my life.

I. — Choose a Situation:

A mixup with my scheduling system at work led to a double booking for my clients, with one individual missing their session completely. It wasn’t clear till well after the session concluded what had happened. When I realized it, I felt deeply upset, to a clearly overblown extent. My distress was confusing—sure, it’s important to recognize and learn from my mistakes, but the anguish and guilt I felt seemed to indicate a deeper isue.

II. — Elements of the complex:

• Emotions: Remorse, disappointment, guilt, frustration, anger at myself.

• Images: Wandering through a dark and chaotic storm.

• Thoughts: “I should have caught this.” “It’s my job to foresee these events.” “I failed."

• Memories: Times in school when I was unprepared for a group project. Working as a waitress and forgetting orders. Feeling like I letdown someone in my family.

• Physical sensations: Tightness in the chest and my body feeling on high alert.

III. — Reflection and Integration

The memories I uncovered in step two really stuck out to me. I was surprised to find myself moving back in time, to past events that seem unrelated, yet clearly have a connection. At the center of these memories is a driving emotional current: a high level of conscientiousness that quickly becomes persecutory. I am not giving myself any grace, no room for mistakes, or to account for factors out of my control. I wonder, “Why do I hold myself to such unrealistic standards?”

I believe the complex is presenting me with an opportunity to develop more compassion, grace, and understanding. I readily offer this to others, often without question. My inability to do so for myself, the resistance I feel, clearly speaks to a tension within.

What role does this persecutor play? On the one hand, it helps me attend to others with incredible attention and care. My ability to anticipate needs, to give freely, and naturally attune to others is one of the gifts of my personality. But it clearly goes too far, my own well being or self-compassion is sacrificed.

The main archetypal pattern that came up for me is The Caretaker. The sense of failure is less about perfectionism and more so about letting other people down. When someone else is involved, there is a heightened need to handle a situation correctly, so that things go smoothly and the needs of others are met. The archetype clearly drives a lot of meaning, but its lacking nuance and balance. I believe this is tied to a learned behavior that began at a very young age.

Practical actions:

• When the complex is activated, try to say “this is The Caretaker” to slow down my reactions and build more awareness.

• Practice more self-compassion and grace at all times, not just when situations like this come up.

• Do a tarot reading with “The Caretaker” as the focus to explore its desires and needs further.

Recommended Resources

Books

• “A Review of the Complex Theory” in Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (CW 8) by C.G. Jung

• Complex, Archetype, Symbol in the Psychology of C.G. Jung by Jolande Jacobi

• Chapter 2, “The Populated Interior” in Jung’s Map of the Soul by Murray Stein

At The Artemisian

• Mythic Inner Work (workshop)

• The Inner Fire: Erupting Forces of Psychological Renewal (article)

Join the conversation

Do you have any thoughts or questions on complexes? Have you used other techniques to navigate and work with complexes in your life? What main complex are you grappling with currently?

Leave a comment

~ Welcome to The Oracle, a monthly divination to open the archetypal field through a blend of tarot and dreamwork ~

Hekate — great goddess of the night, mistress of the crossroads, keeper of dark and magical mysteries, she is the focus and guide for our studies and inner work this month.

Of all the Greek mythic figures, she seems to exhibit a unique kind of draw for the modern psyche, especially those navigating spiritual and psychological inner work. It’s curious, for as Titaness, Hekate is older and more primordial than her Olympian brethren. Further, she lacks the large body of mythic stories that many other gods have. Rather than narrative allure, it is Hekate in practice, Hekate in ritual, Hekate as a living archetypal force that truly captures our imagination.

She is, however, most famously associated as an alternative psychopomp in the story of Persephone’s abduction. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, it is the sun and moon, the heavens and the chthonic depths through Helios and Hekate, who hear Persephone’s cries as she is drawn into the underworld. Torches bared in hand, she guides Demeter to her long-lost daughter, and eventually becomes companion to the Underworld Queen.

Then Hekatē approached them, the one with the splendid headband.

And she welcomed back the daughter of holy Demeter with many embraces.

And from that day forward, the Lady [Hekatē] became her [Persephone’s] attendant and substitute queen.

— Homeric Hymn to Demeter

From the hymn, we can gather that Hekate is seen as a sort of secondary underworld authority. Where Hades and Persephone rule explicitly, Hekate rules from the shadows. Thus we see her worshipped and honored in all sorts of dark and liminal spaces. As archetypal presence, she captures these marginal, borderline areas of life, acting as Goddess of:

• The waning and dark phases of the moon

• Thresholds, doorways, and crossroads

• Magic, witchcraft, and occult arts

• The underworld and death

In this, Hekate dissolves rigid boundaries of archetypal categorization. She rules many realms and is ambivalent as both helper and provoker.

For our studies this month, we will explore the goddess in these many forms: as Great Mother, Sorceress, Psychopomp, and Crone. We will reflect on her symbols: the key, the crossroads, the torch, and the dog.

But first, we invoke Hekate in our divinatory work, appealing to her unconscious wisdom. Hekate is calling, through the images of the tarot and in the symbols of our dreams.

With Hekate in mind, let’s see what The Oracle has to say…

Hekate’s Call…

The Moon — Thresholds, Magic, & the Night World

Read more

I’m away on maternity leave in April and May, which means that our first two workshops will be pre-recorded and sent directly to your inbox to enjoy. I’ll be returning to live teaching in June!

Our monthly inner work experience continues on as usual though. Here’s what you can expect:

• The Oracle — We kick off our inner work with a blended tarot and dreamwork divination to open the archetypal field.

• Workshop — Mid-month, I’ll send out the workshop for you to watch.

• Office Hours Discussion Thread + Q&A — We close out with an office hours style discussion thread. Bring your pressing inner work questions, tarot/dreamwork interpretation requests, etc!

I’ve also added something new…a suggested text or book related to our monthly theme (listed below). This is completely optional, but a great addition if you’re wanting to deepen your studies.

Let’s take a look at our workshops and monthly studies schedule for the next three months!

Join the membership to participate

Archetypal Encounters: Hekate

Explore the archetypal themes of the liminal goddess

In April, we will explore the dark mysteries and liminal realms of the goddess Hekate through a Jungian and mythic lens, reflecting on her many psychological functions. We’ll work with her archetypal forms and key symbols as a guide through our current transitions, initiations, transformations, and underworld journeys.

Our focus includes:

• Hekate’s archetypal themes and psychological functions as Great Mother, Sorceress, Psychopomp, and Crone

• Her key symbols: key, torch, crossroads, and dog

• How Hekate can help us navigate liminal states, change, and inner transformation

Suggested reading:

• The Homeric Hymn to Demeter

• The Orphic Hymn to Hekate (see below)

“Hekate Einodia, Trioditis [Trivia], lovely dame, of earthly, watery, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander through the shade; Perseis (daughter of Perses), solitary goddess, hail! The world’s key-bearer, never doomed to fail; in stags rejoicing, huntress, nightly seen, and drawn by bulls, unconquerable queen; Leader, Nymphe, nurse, on mountains wandering, hear the suppliants who with holy rites thy power revere, and to the herdsman with a favouring mind draw near.”

Orphic Hymn 1 to Hecate (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.)

Synchronicity

Learn to recognize and interpret synchronicity in your life

In May, we will explore Jung’s theory of synchronicity, where inner psychic states and outer events meaningfully align without direct cause. We’ll work with synchronicity as an expression of the unus mundus (one world) and as the bridge between psyche and matter, learning how to interpret these moments as signals from the unconscious within the individuation process.

Our focus includes:

• Using synchronicity to orient and deepen the individuation process

• Recognizing when synchronicities are occurring in your life and what they are reflecting about the current moment in time

• How to interpret synchronicities symbolically and practically for insight and guidance

Suggested reading:

• Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle by C.G. Jung

Court Cards

Meet the archetypal personalities of the tarot

In June, we will study the court cards as psychic configurations that reveal distinct modes of being and patterns of expression within the psyche. We’ll explore each card in depth, examining their psychological undercurrents and how they emerge in readings and inner work.

Our focus includes:

• Meeting each court card as an archetypal personality or psychic pattern

• Understanding the court card’s unique psychological dynamics and expressions

• How to interpret each court card with nuance, clarity, and depth in readings

Suggested reading:

• Chapter 5, “The Many Faces of the Tarot Court,” and Chapter 6, “The Court Cards,” in Tarot and the Psychology of the Soul by

Please note: Live classes will return this month! I’ll send an update on this closer to the date :)

If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to drop it in the comments below!

Leave a comment

Hello members, how has your inner work been unfolding this month?

Today, I’m opening up the discussion thread to answer your pressing inner work questions. This is your chance to ask me for gui…

Read more

Images of springtime (flowers in bloom, the gentle warmth of the sun) were nowhere to be found. And that, in and of itself, is an essential lesson to hold close: transitions are rarely gentle. Emergence from darkness requires adjustment; the light feels harsh and bright, even if it brings promise of new life.

Would Persephone agree with this sentiment? What was it like for her to be forcefully drawn underground and then called back to the upper world? Caught between the yearnings of the Mother and the dark initiations of the Underworld, she oscillates in a rhythmic dance. Each turn of the cycle sharpens her capacity to shift modes of being and realities — Queen to Maiden and back again. Each time is a loss and a gain, a withering and an unfurling, a death and a rebirth. The pain and ecstasy of these experiences are part of her mysteries.

So much time, energy, and interpretation is given to her capture, to her time in Hades. But in recent years, I’ve felt more and more drawn to her ascent, to the conditions that need to be met for one to successfully complete the journey to the underworld, to return. As the seasons shift, as Persephone rises once more, I invite you to be held in the archetypal constellation of her myth.

How might you navigate your own descents and confrontations as Persephone would? What needs to be sacrificed in service to becoming and stepping deeper into self-hood? What are the guiding symbols that will bring you back to life?

For the next week, I’m opening access to Persephone’s Ascent & Springtime Renewal, a class I taught last year that explores these very themes. Let it be the mythic guide through your current descent cycle, the map that helps you navigate the underworld and ascend into new awareness.

If you enjoy this sort of mytho-artchetypal exploration, I invite you to join us in The Artemisian’s membership.

Each month is curated to support a deepening relationship with the psyche and its symbols, to learn the skills of archetypal awareness through a blend of dreamwork, alchemy, tarot, myths and fairytales — all grounded within the profound framework of Jungian psychology. Classes, educational resources, discussion threads, and more await those who feel called to the archetypal mysteries — I hope to see you there!

Join the membership today

I’ve always been a vivid dreamer. From a young age, the dreamworld bled into ordinary life. Caught somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, images and visions would flood in—sometimes terrifying and overwhelming, other times, wondrous and awe-inspiring. These experiences primed me to be especially receptive and open to the dreaming psyche.

The quality and types of dreams I have vary quite a bit. Often, they’re highly symbolic or mythic in tone, like casting protective magic and interactions with wild animals. Others are incredibly mundane, like a recurring stress dream of being back at my old restaurant job with too many tables to handle. There are times when I dream of others I know, about their lives or some sort of dynamic. These dreams always have a special quality to them, as if the boundaries of reality have melted away and I’ve stepped into their psyche.

As I grew older, I felt the draw to develop my dreamwork skills more intentionally. In my studies and explorations, I naturally stumbled upon Jung’s work, which completely revolutionized my practice. Dreams became the via regia, the royal road to the unconscious, and the main guide for my inner work.

The more I worked with my dreams, the more acquainted I became with the treasure trove of inner symbols teeming within my psyche. I began to notice interesting patterns, like how recurring dream imagery reflected my waking interests and identifications (e.g., sorceresses and wolves). Or, how particular dream themes only shifted after I made meaningful changes or adaptations. The link between consciousness and the unconscious was so much richer than I ever realized. Meeting the dreaming psyche each night has truly been an incredible gift.

If you feel called to work your dreams, this list will be the perfect primer. The books are squarely situated in the Jungian and Archetypal psychology approach, and range in complexity and levels of difficulty, so my hope is you’ll find something to fit your interests.

Alright, let’s dive in!

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#1 — Inner Work by Robert A. Johnson

The first three recommended books are from the classic Jungian school, starting with the most beginner-friendly, and ending in the most advanced. We kick off the list with Robert Johnson’s Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth. What sets this book apart from most Jungian texts is its accessibility and simple four-step method for working with dreams.

This is not a common occurrence; most Jungian books tend to stick in the theoretical sphere or are highly academic, geared towards practitioners in the field. As an analyst, Johnson references case history and client work, but it is always presented in a relatable way. Further, his four-step approach offers structure that takes the elusive nature of dreamwork and grounds it in practical action.

The book kicks off with an introduction to the unconscious and its symbolic expressions. Johnson references and defines typical Jungian terms—individuation, ego, archetypes—without losing its accessible tone and language. It is a book clearly written for the everyday individual, an essential resource for anyone embarking on a dreamwork practice.

#2 — Dreams, A Portal to the Source by Edward C. Whitmont & Sylvia Brinton Perera

A step deeper takes us to Dreams, A Portal to the Source, a collaborative text from two key Jungian analysts, Edward C. Whitmont and Sylvia Brinton Perera. It’s described as “a practical primer for the analyst-in-training.” This might sound intimidating, and though it may be a departure from Johnson’s beginner-friendly Inner Work, I encourage you to give this book a try if you want to immerse yourself in Jungian theoretics.

Though it is designed as a handbook for therapists, you do not need to be one to read this book and find it valuable. Because it systematically moves through the Jungian approach and understanding of the dreamscape, it works as a powerful guide to developing your own dreamwork practice. As a teaching text, it breaks down essential Jungian concepts from compensation and amplification to recognizing mythological motifs and understanding the dramatic structure in dreams.

Some of the material may feel irrelevant (like working with dreams in clinical practice), but consider this perspective as you read through the book: you are both practitioner and client. With inner work, you are the one dreaming and the dream interpreter; you are tasked to record your dream material and have the skills to decode its deeper meanings. Dreams, A Portal to the Source gives you those skills and perspectives.

#3 — Dreams by C.G. Jung

Now we enter into the most difficult of the Jungian offerings—an anthology of Jung’s writing on dreams from various volumes of the Collected Works (CW). In all areas of Jungian interest, it is worthwhile to build up to reading him directly. For most of us curious seekers, Jung’s writing comes off as nearly impenetrable—overly dense and exhaustive texts sprinkled with technical jargon, Greek and Latin terms (usually with no definitions)…you get the picture! Keep in mind, these publications were written for the larger medical and scientific community; books designed for the public (like Man and His Symbols) are very different in tone.

Jung’s core writings—the Collected Works—span nearly 60 years. In that time, Jung’s thoughts, concepts, and interests naturally evolved and deepened. Some find that exceedingly frustrating, because in one essay, he will speak of the Self or archetypes in one capacity, and then in another essay, it changes. The same is true for Dreams; this anthology begins with writings from his early career, when he was developing his psychiatric practice and embedded in Freud’s psychoanalytic community.

The later chapters display his psychological refinement and archetypal prowess. Some of them (e.g., “General Aspects of Dream Psychology”) are as straightforward and instructional as it gets for Jung (explorations of different functions of dreams from prospective—how the unconscious images what the psyche is moving towards or anticipating—to compensatory—how dreams offer a complementary perspective that balances the one-sidedness of ego consciousness). I especially enjoyed the final section, “Individual Dream Symbols in Relation to Alchemy”, where alchemical motifs in physicist Wolfgang Pauli’s dreams are examined and interpreted.

#4 — The Dream and the Underworld by James Hillman

Although I am most closely aligned with the classic Jungian school, I often dip into James Hillman’s work and approach, an offshoot called Archetypal psychology. Together, Jung and Hillman provide a broad and expansive exploration into psychological experience. Where Jung sees the psyche as innately attuned to the individuation process—the drive towards wholeness and becoming via the linking of consciousness and the unconscious—Hillman encourages the art of “soul-making,” where we deepen into the imaginal ground of the psyche.

In Hillman’s approach, the monomyth of individuation is cast aside, allowing psyche’s images and archetypal presences to become a revolving door of psychic inspiration that offers new ways of seeing, appreciating, and imagining. His seminal text, The Dream and the Underworld, shakes loose any rigid tendencies to view dreams as compensations or individuation messages. In fact, he mythically situates dreams in the underworld and in death. Doing so means we journey into the dark House of Hades each night, that dreams are an imaging of the soul’s descent.

Hillman further criticizes the knee-jerk interpretative tendencies of many dream workers. When we jump to interpreting the ocean as a symbol of the unconscious or a dream character as a configuration of a power complex, we lose the image and all it has to offer. For Hillman, they are true psychic presences to be engaged and listened to, not symbolic depictions of our psychodynamics or psychological concepts.

Jung and Hillman’s approaches, which may seem contradictory, are profoundly complementary. They naturally broaden and refine one’s approach to the psyche and its inner workings. Though challenging, I think Hillman’s book is an essential read for anyone committed to a depth psychological approach to dreams.

#5 — The Book of Symbols by ARAS

I am often asked about dream dictionaries or any sort of resource that can help with interpretation of symbols. This is a tricky question because for most individuals, their dreams are composed of images that draw upon their own personal experiences and associations. Reference books, especially mass produced ones, reduce the complexity of dreaming life to simple definitions—most of which are usually wrong or based on stereotypes.

Say you dream often of a peacock. Looking it up on popular websites says it’s a warning about vanity or vague ideas of intuition and protection. These interpretations completely discount the personal layer of dreams. Created through your own inner landscape, dreams are images filled to the brim with your psychic material. The better questions to ask are, “What does the symbol of the peacock bring up for you? What does it remind you of or seem to speak to?”

For one individual, it may bring up a memory of seeing a peacock at the zoo when they were a child, an experience filled with wonder and intrigue. For another, the peacock has always felt odd and otherworldly, its feathers like many staring eyes that bore into the soul. The interpretation of this dream symbol would differ vastly for each of these dreamers.

What a book can do is offer archetypal explorations of dream images, meaning it traces the manifestation of the symbol across time and cultures—from world mythologies, folklore, religion, art, symbolic systems, and more. The Book of Symbols is just that, a mapping of how a particular image bursts from the unconscious and into the collective. Each essay explores these different perspectives, giving you a chance to explore the archetypal richness of psychic images.

In their essay on the peacock, for example, we get excerpts on how early Christian art utilized the peacock as a symbol of resurrection or how the bird was closely associated with the Greek queen of the heavens, Hera. These offerings may or may not hold relevance for your personal dreams, but they are likely to stimulate something within, especially if you’re struggling to understand a dream image or place it in the context of your life.

Dreamwork resources at The Artemisian:

Workshops

• Jungian Dreamwork

• Dreamwork Foundations: Introduction & Mapping the Dreamscape

• Prophetic Dreams

• Nightmares and Nigredo

• Dreamwork & Divination: A Jungian Approach to Dream Incubation

• Tarot & Dreamwork

Articles/Audio Posts

• Three Steps to Strengthen Dream Recall

• The Value of a Dreamwork Practice

• Animals in Dreams

Resource Library

• Full list of recommended dreamwork books

• Archetypal Symbols Glossary

• Dream Motifs

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What’s your favorite book on dreamwork?

Have you read any of the books on this list? Which subject should I cover next — let me know your thoughts!

Leave a comment

Yesterday, we gathered for an archetypal deep dive into elemental dream symbols and their link to alchemy. This is the perfect primer if you’re curious to begin your alchemical studies and sharpen your dreamwork skills.

I’m heading on maternity leave soon (you can read about that here), so live classes are on pause till June. However! the monthly membership experience will continue with pre-recorded workshops alongside the Oracle and Q&A threads.

Keep an eye out for an update in a few weeks where I’ll be announcing the next 3 months of inner work topics and classes. In the meantime, this workshop will immerse you in alchemical wonder as you explore the transformative currents in the elemental symbols of your dreams. Enjoy!

~Alyssa

Discover how elemental dream symbols reveal the alchemical transformations moving through your psyche

Have you ever dreamed of catastrophic floods, cooking with a roaring fire, flying freely through the open sky, or descending deep into the earth?

Dreams of this nature reflect the elemental operations of alchemy — symbolic and practical processes rooted in fire, water, air, and earth. They arise during times of profound psychological change, highlighting essential themes and dynamics that help us navigate growth and evolution.

In this month’s workshop, we explore elemental dream imagery through an alchemical lens, learning how the operations of calcinatio, solutio, sublimatio, and coagulatio illuminate the forces shaping our lives, and how we can work with them consciously to support clarity, insight, and personal transformation.

In this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Understand elemental dreams through a Jungian and alchemical lens

• Recognize fire, water, air, and earth imagery in dreams and how each element relates to inner and outer dynamics

• Identify which alchemical operation (calcinatio, solutio, sublimatio, or coagulatio) is active in your dream life

• Work with dream symbolism to gain clarity and orientation for your inner work

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🌹Hello members and readers of The Artemisian🌹

The weather where I live has taken a noticeable turn in the past weeks. Sunshine and bright blue skies, the smell of budding flowers on the wind, warmer and longer days — Springtime is nearly here!

Over the long fall and winter months, I have also been gestating new life. Our second child is due soon, so I’ll be heading on maternity leave in the coming weeks :)

Navigating motherhood, postpartum, and time away is a tricky balance when you’re self-employed. My hope is to give myself a bit more time and space to adjust to life with two young children (if you have advice or thoughts, I’d love to hear it!!!) while maintaining the work that I love so much.

What can you expect during my leave?

Member benefits and our monthly inner work experience will continue as usual — except that the workshops will be pre-recorded and not taught live. I plan to return to live teaching in June. I’m also working on preparing articles and other material ahead of time so that you can continue to enjoy archetypal and inner work insights and resources while I’m away.

To summarize:

• Members will receive the Oracle and a discussion thread each month

• Mid-month I’ll send out a recorded workshop (members-only)

• This will last through April & May, with live sessions back in June

• Other educational content (like articles) will continue to be posted on The Artemisian

Share your feedback! Which topics should we cover over the Spring months?

I’d love to know which topics you’d like to see covered over the next few months. Below is a short form you can fill out to make your requests.

Share your requests

If you have any questions or reflections, just comment below!

Thank you all so much for your support and understanding as I enter this next stage of life.

Until next time,
Alyssa

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