Eight week class taught live, online, via Zoom

Wednesdays, January 15 - March 5, 2025
7-9 pm ET (NYC TIME) (* Last class will run longer to accommodate final projects)
Admission: $175 Paid Patreon Members / $195 General Admission

Please note: All classes will be recorded for those unable to attend

Join Morbid Anatomy founder and Creative Director Joanna Ebenstein and seven special guests as we explore—in concept and practice—ego-free co-creation in collaboration with that elusive “beyond self” all creatives seek.

Each week, we will welcome a guest speaker/ practitioners from a variety of traditions, each of which will speak about—and lead us through—their own techniques for making contact. Topics will include the Muses and Daimons of the ancient world with artist Eleanor Crook; Using the Tarot as a means of reaching beyond the conscious mind with Dannielle Tegeder, co founder of Hilma's Ghost; Automatic drawing or writing with medium Tiffany Hopkins; Visioning with the third eye with meditation teacher Bryan Melillo; Finding the hidden meanings and resonances of an image we are attracted to with Rebecca Purcell; Expanding our consciousness through breathwork with Jennifer Patterson; and making and activating your own altar with witch Heather Greene.

Students are invited to bring an idea or image they wish to work with to class, or be open to one that emerges over the course of our exploration. In the final session, students will have an opportunity to share a creative work they produced utilizing some or all of these systems and speak about their experience.

In doing this work, we will take inspiration from our ancestors, who viewed creativity not a willful act of ego, but as a mysterious phenomenon with links to the divine. They sought the support of The Muses when embarking on a new project, and the in-spiration they longed for meant “influence of a god." Psychologically, this approach allowed for a distancing of ego from creative product, decreasing the likelihood of personal inflation, and engendering a sense of humility, gratitude and appreciation of the mystery.

SCHEDULE

(Class One) January 15: Join artist and lapsed classicist Eleanor Crook to learn about the Muses and Daimons, whose powers brought inspiration to our ancient Greek and Roman ancestors, and how we can channel them, too. Eleanor will recite hymns and spells of the ancient world, and invite you to channel Classical themes and archetypes.

(Class Two) January 22: Artist, witch, and co-founder of Hilma's Ghost Dannielle Tegeder will share methods for how utilizing the Tarot as a means to accessing that which lies beyond our conscious mind.

(Class Three) January 29: Medium Tiffany Hopkins will teach us a few of the classic medium’s tools for moving our thinking self aside for use with automatic drawing or writing. She’ll provide technical and cultural overview and guide the group in a meditation-like exercise.

(Class Four) February 5: Meditation teacher Bryan Melillo will introduce us—through lecture and practice—to the famed sixth chakra, the glorious upside down, pyramidal flaming eye. We will explore the psycho-physical event that may have prompted the visions St. Teresa of Ávila, St Faustina, the glorious St Hildegard of Bingen, and be led through a meditational technique developed to help access it.

(Class Five) February 12: Artist Rebecca Purcell, whose work revolves around the hidden power of the images we are attracted to, will guide participants in exploring the hidden meanings and resonances of an image they have a strong attraction to, with an eye towards its both light and dark aspects, and what it can teach us about our deepest selves.

(Class Six) February 19: Join breathwork facilitator and writer Jennifer Patterson for an embodied exploration of what can open up creatively in an expanded state of consciousness through active breathwork. Jennifer will share a breathwork practice followed by a writing prompt. 

(Class Seven) February 26: Witch and author Heather Greene will guide students in the construction, activation and use of their own altar.

(Class Eight) March 5: Final project

PRESENTER BIOS (In alphabetical order)

Joanna Ebenstein is a Mexico-based artist, writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the founder and creative director of Morbid Anatomy. Her books includeMemento Mori: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life, Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy and Death: A Graveside Companion.

Heather Greene has been studying and practicing witchcraft for over 30 years. She is a editor at Llewellyn Worldwide, a journalist covering occult topics, and a film historian.Heather is author of the book Lights, Camera, Witchcraft: A Critical History of Witches in American Film & Television. In her spare time, Heather is a doll restorer who cares for dolls of all ages, including a few that are haunted.

Tiffany Hopkins moved into her great-great grandmother’s cottage in Lily Dale​​ while starting a research and design firm in 2018. She has since worked with some of the world's largest companies, non-profits, and government agencies, completely renovated the house, and, surprising herself as much as everyone else, became a medium. As a voice for the next generation of people who connect with the beyond, she started Normalize Talking To The Dead, a website, podcast, and residency. Her forthcoming book, Beyond, about how to find your own approach to mediumship, will be published next year by Union Square & Co. Tiffany has degrees in Cognitive Science, Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts & Music, and Business.

Bryan Melillo has studied meditation in the Jñana and Bhakti yoga traditions for the last 25 years. Experiencing a Kundalini experience in 1997, his path eventually led to Tiruvannamalai, India, where he has studied with the same teacher since 2001. Here, he began learning (and eventually teaching) a variety of breathing (pranayama) and mantra-based meditation techniques. Bryan completed an End of Life Doula certification training with the goal of integrating eastern understandings of death with the growing Western end of life care and the death with dignity movement. Bryan is also a professor at NYC’s Parsons School of Design and Rhode Island School of Design.

Dannielle Tegeder is a New York-based Tarot practitioner, artist, and educator. She has been working with Tarot in her own art practice, grounded in painting, combining legacies of hard-edge abstraction with spiritual wisdom. Dannielle’s magick-centered pedagogy empowers students to confidently use the power of Tarot to find guidance and enhance creativity.

Jennifer Patterson of Corpus Ritual is a grief worker who uses plants, breath, and words to explore survivorhood, body(ies) and healing. She is the author of The Power of Breathwork: Simple Practices to Promote Wellbeing and editor of the anthology Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti- Violence Movement. A graduate of Goddard College’s MA program, Jennifer is finishing a book project focused on translating embodied traumatic experience through somatic practices and critical and creative nonfiction.

Rebecca Purcell's artistic practice merges her multiple aesthetic interests and creative exploration with theories on the nature of consciousness. Through in-depth investigations into the objects and images we are drawn to and collect, Purcell re-contextualizes our relationship with material culture. She asks us to dig deeper, past our simple attraction to aesthetics and their associated memories and conventional meanings, and into the psyche as an imaginal space of personal potential and creative growth. She has immersed herself in the world of styling, art, design, writing, and handcraft for over forty years, serving as visual director of the renowned A.B.C. Home during the nineties and set designer for Anthropologie.

Images: The Ten Largest, №7., Adulthood, Group IV, Hilma af Klint, 1907 ; Agnes Pelton, Winter, 1933