Fairytales have an important role in grounding us into the soil beneath us. They can act as refiners of the ego, helping the ego find it’s place within the whole and imparting warnings 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 opened her Fairytale Kitchen in 2020 and has worked with several themes over the years: the Cinderella motif, the theme of Longing, the Crone and more. Journey with us through a seasonal immersion in fairytales from around the world. This Spring our Kitchen opens for a 3-part storytelling journey. The recordings will also be available in case you won’t be able to join one of them.
Dates for our Spring Edition “Daimons, Djinns & Spirits of the Depths”: April 28th, May 12th and 26th
Daimons, Djinns & Spirits of the Depths
“A book of mine is always a matter of fate. A creative person has little power over his own life. He is not free. He is a captive and is drawn by his daimon.”
Four things that never meet do here unite
To shed my blood and to ravage my heart,
A radiant brow and tresses that beguile,
And rosy cheeks and a glittering smile.
–From 1001 Nights - The Story of the Bird Maiden
From ancient Greece to modern psychoanalysis, daimons have been explained in a variety of ways: as chthonic spirit, ghosts, inner guides, love itself, natural spirit, archetypal defence. What can we learn from Eastern stories when it comes to these powerful spirits of the depths? What is the daimonic world and how can it relate to the human world?
From the lands of daimons and djinns, we bring 3 stories. These stories are portals into conversations with the inner world. In most stories with spirits, djinns and other daimons, we have seen fit to either bind them to us as helpers or to destroy them for their alien-ness.
But are all daimons, djinns and spirits the same? How varied is this mysterious world? What joys, beauty and pain exist in that world?
The 3 tales we bring in this Spring - Summer edition take us into these worlds of the depth and beyond. We journey to discover a world of betrayals, beauty and blessings.
1) Ghaddar the Ghoul (Palestine): Who is Ghaddar? What does it take to stop him from
harassing the city of the humans? Who will walk into his world, and will they return
unchanged? What makes a hero in Ghaddar’s world? In this folk tale from Palestine, walking into Ghaddar’s world is a journey of a very special kind of ‘courage’ (lion-heartedness).
2) The Bird Maiden (Arabia): What does it take to love and make a home with a daimon? Who is the bird-maiden? What does it take to bring her home? What is the Island of the Warrior Women? From the Thousand and One Nights, this is a story akin to Eros and Psyche in reverse, where the task of retrieving the daimon-lover and helping her incarnate is the burden of the human male protagonist.
3) Moshkel Gosha (Sufi/Iranian/Asian): It is a well-known Iranian custom to pray and share food when faced with a knot in our lives, an "unsolvable problem". Moshkel Gosha, the handing out of nuts, berries and dates on the eve of Friday is still a practiced custom. What does the story of Moshkel Gosha teach us at times when we are faced with a collective crisis so immense, that we turn to stone and are struck helpless? What does it mean to turn to the supernatural helpers and nourish that relationship in times of need and in times of abundance?
The Qur’an tells us that when God created man from clay, he created a second race of beings - Jinn - from smokeless fire. Jinn are not ghosts, that is, they are not spirits of the dead. Far from it. They are living entities, just like us. They are born, get married and die like humans. Some are good, others are bad, some ugly, while others radiantly beautiful…..The difference between us and them is that they have magical powers and can decide whether to be visible or not. They can fly through air, change their form and are capable of magical feats.
- Tahir Shah, Foreword to Legends of the Fire Spirits, Robert Lebling
Your storytellers: Gauri Raje and Faranak Mirjalili.
Jungian story-analysis and discussion with Alexis Durgee.
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 analytical therapist, storyteller, and the founder and teacher at the Anima Mundi School. She works with women around the world to help regenerate the feminine principle through weaving a personal experience of psyche in analysis with group-work in the imaginal realm. 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.
Q&A: time to discuss, share and reflect with the entire group.
DETAILS
When: Sunday April 28th and Sunday May 12th and 26th . All 8PM Amsterdam time. (CET) Recordings available within 2 days.
What: 3 part workshop of 2 hours each, including the live storytelling.
Fee: 149,- EUR for all 3 workshops or 50,- for a single session. For those that are in financial difficulty we offer a sliding scale 35 - 50 EUR per workshop session (please let us know in the message below and chose the amount according to your income). We will be donating a significant part of the fee to a children’s relief fund for Gaza.
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.