Remembering the Great Mother
An 'About Consciousness' webinar, January 16, 2025
A remembering of the Great Mother — a Paleolithic/Neolithic vibrational space before the paternalistic turn. Jean Gebser would have considered it a time of archaic consciousness — our deepest and most dream-like creative mind moment...bridging into magical consciousness. Creative, restorative, intuitive. It is not a “woman” thing; nor is it a “then” thing. It is an archaic and magical acoustic of our collective future. This presentation explores the divine feminine and the Great Mother from artistic, archaeological, and philosophical perspectives. It closes with thoughts about how we might embrace and manifest 'femina' in our current times, and the importance of such a 'femina' emphasis.
Webinar Presentation Chapters
0 to 8:25 minutes: Introduction
8:25 to 17:40: Philosophical Background / Calling The Goddess In / Cave Art Video
17:40 to 34:35: The Goddesses (Paleolithic and Neolithic)
34:36 to 45:20: Catalhöyük and the Divine Feminine (An important Neolithic city)
45:21 to 55:06: Goddess or Scientist??
55:06 to 57:20: The Link with Cuneiform Writing
57:22 to 1:04:47: "Virtue" or "Femina" (å¾·) - Where to Next?
1:04:48 to 1:07:31: Invocation to Sophia (Robert McDermott)
1:07:31 to End: Q&A / Group Discussion and Thoughts
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Presentation Powerpoint Slides to Download
Suggested Readings and Presentation Sources
Coming Into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness, William Irwin Thompson
Lao-Tzu Te-Tao Ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered M-wang-tui Texts, Robert G. Henricks
Steiner and Kindred Spirits, Robert McDermott
The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, Marija Gimbutas
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow
The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience, Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson
Natura Naturans, the Romantics, and Sacred Polarity
International Jean Gebser Society Conference 2024
This presentation was given at the 2024 Annual International Jean Gebser Society Conference. The conference theme was "The Dance of the Sacred Feminine and Masculine: Duality or Polarity?" It was held in Sante Fe, New Mexico.
Creative Mind ~ Integral Consciousness
with Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D.
Creative Mind 8, March 7, 2022
Here I join Stephen Gilligan, Ph.D. at the Creative Mind 8 weekend to introduce Jean Gebser to the community and to present a film about Integral Consciousness.
Symbiotic Alchemy and the Language of the Integral
Annual Jean Gebser Society Conference, October 2021
Integral consciousness has irrupted, is irrupting, and will blossom forth. It is noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. Gebser symbolically represents it as a sphere—one that is not static, but moving…rotating and morphing through the time-free, aspacial nature of space-time. It is an ‘intensification,’ a ‘luminescence,’ and a ‘concretion of the spiritual.’ And, it lies outside the comprehension of the mental mind, our native tongue.
This presentation is a foray into the irrupting language of the integral - a language of creativity, nature, ancient ancestors, the numinous, the present unborn, our beloved Gaia, and the cosmos. We are witness to and part of a symbiotic alchemical birthing where nothing is what we knew it to be. And all is in its service. The ancient Chinese referred to it as shen ming—spirit illumination; the Mayans marked it as the end of their tracking of millennia; Gaia speaks of it through numinous events beyond our comprehension. It is a mutation of disparate and vast communities. In the words of Gebser: “Nothing exists for its own sake; it exists only for the sake of the whole.” Let us see, feel, know, and imagine it together.
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For more information visit www.gebser.org.
[Photo credit for the painting — It is one of the wonders of Hilma af Klint, called Evolution, No. 13, Group VI, 1908. She painted it about the same time that Einstein was realizing the Theory of Relativity and confirming the existence of a 4th dimension…that of time, which in space-time is no longer linear, thus totally blurring any distinction between past-present-future!! Welcome to integrality!]
Illuminating the Lingshu—Numinous Pivot Through the Gaze of Gebser and Jung
Annual Jean Gebser Society Conference, October 2019
Gebser and Jung, both Leos, sit as lions at the gate of the Lingshu—Numinous Pivot, the ancient Chinese medical text that lays out the unfolding path of etherial, psychic and spiritual healing. Compiled in the 1st century BC, it reflects the archaic, magical and mythical wisdom of the shamans, diviners, recipe masters and physicians who were the healers of the time. When coupled with the illumination of Gebser’s philosophical and Jung’s analytic insights, it becomes not only timeless, but time-free. Through the lens of their work, it reveals itself as akin to the philosopher’s stone of alchemy, the Self of Jung’s individuation process, and the systasis of Gebser’s mutational fourth dimension leap to integrality. This presentation examines and interprets a portion at the heart of the Lingshu text to reveal its fourth dimensional promise.