Date: Friday 22nd August 2025 - Sunday 24th August 2025 Location: High Lea Conference Centre, Lord Street, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire EN11 8SG
Start time: 4:00pm End time: 1:00pm Type: Conference

Dancing with God – Striving for Wholeness: Reflections of Archetypal Patterns in the African Psyche

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.”

The Alchemy of the African Healer
Lynne Radomsky

The amplification of 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.  Here we enter the realms of the unfathomable mystery of the unitary nature of spirit and matter.  In these talks I will describe the archetypal phenomena of the African healer with reference to alchemy and the psychology of C.G. Jung.  It is my hope that in the journey into the world of the African healer, we too, may begin to catch a glimpse of this eternal mystery.  Here we return to instincts, to the tension of opposites between psyche and matter, and spirit in nature.  The talks are accompanied by unique video footage.

Alchemical Retreat in the Sahara Desert: Love Song of a Tamarisk Tree
Maxim Ilyashenko

I am convinced that the word “Allah” is a call in itself… and expresses a deep longing…It is eros and feeling…Allah is a cry in the desert, under an endless sky. It is a call to a Being which is omnipresent, like the wind that one senses everywhere

I will share my recent experience of an alchemical silent retreat in the Sahara desert guided by a Sufi. Though Jung did not write much about Islamic tradition, he encountered it in his active imagination, dreams, and while visiting North Africa. Jung and especially Marie-Louise von Franz wrote about Arabic alchemy, including works of Ibn Arabi. I will look into parallels among Gnostics, Sufism, active imagination, lucid dreaming and Jung’s Red Book experience. I will explore the meaning of an inner desert and the necessity of a vast and still space, as Henry Corbin says, “in order to be encountered, taken, known, that they may speak, otherwise you are alone”. I have been taken myself by a tamarisk tree and the desert which taught me not only about “the Lost speech” and Love but also about “a dark face of divinity” as well.

The African Drums
Robert Mark

Most of the African countries have their own distinct treasure of the drum beat. From the central role of the drum in African initiation ceremonies, through the Slave trade, many instruments and styles have taken long journeys to the Caribbean, South America and the US, where they influenced the development of rhythms and music. This experiential workshop explores the examples of Afro Caribbean rhythms and Afro Brazilian rhythms. Participation is encouraged in a drum circle format. Beginning with simple basic rhythmic concepts and coordination between the hands and the feet, we will then explore some easy to develop African and Afro-Cuban rhythms.