Fairytales have an important role in grounding us into the soil beneath us. They act as refiners of the ego, making it humble, imparting warning and learnings that cannot be taught through words and books but only transmitted by images that belong to the depths of the collective unconscious.
Before Disney took hold of fairytale culture, these stories belonged to our ancestors, human and otherworldly. By reclaiming the old tradition of oral storytelling, we reconnect to these ancient riverbeds and weave it back into this world.
"Fairytales are the purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious processes." - Marie Louise von Franz.
The Anima Mundi School invites you to her Fairytale Kitchen. Journey with us through a seasonal immersion in fairytales from around the world. This comes in a set of 3 tales over 6 weeks. The recordings will also be available in case you won’t be able to join one of them.
Dates for our Autumn Edition “The Cold Breath of the Crone”: October 31st + November 14th
The Cold Breath of the Crone
"Then she turned to the gate and shouted: "Ho! Ye, my solid locks, unlock! Thou, my stout gate, open!" Instantly the locks unlocked, the gate opened of itself, and the Baba Yaga rode in whistling on her pestle...."
As the colours of the earth turn, the lush green are replaced by rust reds and earth yellows. The chill in the air heralds the arrival of the blue-white snow. The greys of winter. The blossoming and fruiting giving way to a blanket of withering.
With this transition arrive the crones. Fairytale Kitchen opens once again to honour two crones from the Celtic and Russian traditions:
October 31st: Baba Yaga (Russian and Slavic traditions): The wild witch of the East, the ambiguous mother, she whose riders are the morning, the day and the night, the old woman who lives deep in the forest on a house with chicken legs, goat legs or ram horns, the one who rides on a broom and pestle, who is the guardian of dragons. Baba Yaga is all this and much more. Ask her the right question and you begin to walk the initiate’s path; disrespect or ignore her at your peril. She knows the way of the wild and she knows about sparking that memory in those who can walk the path. She knows life and death; the mysteries of the wild and the precarious paths of the human. Just like the paths into the forest, there is no one tale of the Baba Yaga - to glimpse her, we walk through a prism of 3 stories.
November 14: Cailleach (From the Celtic world): The most ancient of the crones in the Celtic worlds, she was a powerful elemental force of death and renewal from the most ancient times. She is The Blue Hag, The Bear Goddess, The Boar Goddess, Owl-faced, Ancient Woman, The Woman of Stones. She is the guardian of the wild deer and cattle. Some say she is both spring and winter. She is the creatrix - creator of the islands, mountains and lochs at the west of Scotland. She is nature. She is not one; not of one place but everywhere. We honour her, not through one but several short stories from the Celtic world.
“Without the Crone, the task of belonging to oneself, of being a whole person, is virtually impossible.”
- Marion Woodman
Your storytellers: Gauri Raje and Faranak Mirjalili.
Special guest: Alexis Durgee from @alchemicaltoil (instagram)
Gauri Raje is a storyteller and anthropologist. She tells stories in different languages including Urdu, Hindi, English and other Indian languages such as Gujarati and Marathi. She is especially interested in the concepts of witnessing in storytelling, translation, multilingualism and embodied nature of creating stories. She has been working and studying with the Anima Mundi School since 2018.
Faranak Mirjalili is a Jungian analyst, founder and teacher at the Anima Mundi School. She has been on a Sufi path since 2017 and is specialising in Persian mysticism in her research studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her current work focuses on the importance of group engagement in myth, story and the imagination during the analytical process.
Alexis Durgee is a depth psychotherapist whose work emphasizes the importance of becoming embodied through soul work and meaning-making. She is currently in her dissertation process at Pacifica Graduate Institute focusing on the concept of Soul rape and the oppressed/repressed images of Soul as they present in dreams.
WORKSHOP STRUCTURE
Storytelling: at the Anima Mundi School we practice the ancient art of oral tellings, in this part of the workshop you just sit back and tune your ears to the images that speak to your imagination.
Weaving the Threads with Alexis Durgee: our special guest will reflect from a Jungian perspective on the theme of our workshop. We will then take this into a discussion from both a Jungian/psychological as well as an anthropological perspective with Gauri and Faranak. This season we focus on the archetype of the Crone and her role in the individuation process.
Q&A: time to discuss, share and reflect with the entire group.
DETAILS
When: Sunday October 31st + Sunday November 14th. Both 7PM Amsterdam time. (CET)
What: 2 part workshop of 2.5 hours each, including the live storytelling. (Recordings will be available for those that have to miss a date)
Fee: 99,- EUR for both workshops. For those that are in financial difficulty we offer a sliding scale 30 - 50 EUR per workshop session (please let us know in the message below and chose the amount according to your income).
How to register: fill in the form below, and after payment you will receive the Zoom link.
limited places available, register asap for a spot.