Online 7-Week Reading Course
Please note: The initial section of this course offered on Wednesdays 10am Pacific Time has filled.
A new section has been created being held on Thursdays at 5pm Pacific Time, beginning January 4th.
For seven weeks in January and February, I will hold a small online seminar (limit of 19 participants) and we will read the entirety of Homer’s masterwork, The Odyssey. It is one of my favorite texts, worthy of a lifetime of reflection and surely of luxuriating in a slow read over a couple of months.
The Odyssey is an incredible story, full of wondrous creatures of the unconscious of all shapes and sizes, sung and written in a way very hearable by a modern ear. If you are an astrologer, this is a way of connecting directly with the mythic mycelium and consciousness that nourished astrology beyond relying on the interpretations of others.
Each week, we will read a few chapters, supplemented occasionally with interpretive essays, art and imagery, and the many creative re-imaginings of the story from both classical and modern times (such as contrasting translations, chapters of Madeleine Miller’s Circe, the modern Greek poets Cavafy and Seferis, and some other innovative takes). I will also share some of my original written and video material.
In our meetings, we will discuss the stories and figures together, amplifying especially those with astrological connections (there are many!). And we will explore such characters as Penelope, Mercury/Hermes, Neptune/Poseidon, Athena, Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, the Scylla and Charybdis, the Cyclopes, and many others in the charts of participants through planets, asteroids, stars and even eclipse cycles (there is even an eclipse referenced at the time of Odysseus’s return home that archaeo-astronomers have identified and dated, in the same area of the zodiac as our present eclipse season). In addition to work in words, we will also engage the material experientially through movement, dreamwork, and active imagination.
We will hold a space for patient, thoughtful reflection together, our discussions weaving and woven by the stories, dreams, active imagination, and life experiences. Much like Penelope, who famously raveled and unraveled the threads of a funeral shroud, we will patiently follow the threads, keeping the suitors of the mind at bay, discovering the tapestries that result.
Dates:
Section 1: Wednesdays, January 3 - February 14, 2024 10am-12pm Pacific Time: this section has now filled, please email me to join wait list if other section doesn’t work for you
Section 2: Thursdays, January 4 - February 15, 2024 5pm-7pm Pacific Time: this section has now filled, please email me to join wait list
Commitment: Reading 3-5 hours per week
Cost: $345/person (also buy copy of the Odyssey, translations will be recommended)