Taught online via Zoom
Thursdays, June 22 through August 24 (Skipping June 29 & August 10)
7-9 pm ET (Final class might run longer to accommodate final projects)
$145 Patreon Members / $165 General Admission

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

This class will explore a variety of deities known for their complex ambivalence. Often identified with the earth, death and danger, they also, paradoxically, present transformative possibilities for fertility, prosperity, and rebirth. Found all around the world and throughout history, these dark figures challenge our binary distinctions between dark and light, good and evil, and benevolent and malevolent. They also suggest the importance, and potential for generativity, of the darker aspects of life.

Over the course of seven illustrated talks by scholars from around the world, we will look at a variety of such deities, alert to reoccurring themes and commonalities:

• The pantheon of dark and troubled personalities of Classical Greece and Rome who ruled a cavernous Cthonic world underground, who were appeased and coaxed through secretive cults and legends, with artist and lapsed classicist Eleanor Crook

• The Chinese concept of Metal in the Five Element philosophical system of correspondences, in which it represents death, decay, loss, purification and the return to source, with Emily Rowe, MD, Master of Oriental Medicine

• Santa Muerte, the wildly popular Mexican skeletal skeleton folk saint venerated by millions around the world, by award-winning filmmaker Eva Aridjis, director of La Santa Muerte

• Pan and the Devil, cousins in carnality and the deep dark woods and the promise of a life more delicious, with resident mythologist Liz Andres

• The ecstatic ambivalence of the Greek god Dionysos, a “dying god” of inspired and dramatic paradoxes, hybrid companions, and the intoxicated allure of madness and freedom, with Artist-mythologist Devon Deimler, PhD

• Dark deities in the Vodun tradition, with Dr Louise Fenton of the University of Wolverhampton

• Chthonic deities in the life and work of Carl Jung, with Jungian analyst Patricia Llosa

• And one more talk, tba!

As a final project, students will be invited to create artwork or written response inspired by what they have learned, deliver a presentation delving into a tradition not covered, integrating what they have learned over the course of this class; or share any other response they would like.

SCHEDULE

Class 1 (June 22) Sculptor and lapsed classicist Eleanor Crook on the pantheon of dark and troubled personalities of Classical Greece and Rome who ruled a cavernous Cthonic world underground, and were appeased and coaxed through secretive cults and legends.

June 29: SKIP

Class 2 (July 6) Emily Rowe, MD, Master of Oriental Medicine, a conventionally trained allopathic physician turned acupuncturist, will discuss the Chinese concept of Metal in the Five Element philosophical system of correspondences. The elements can be interpreted as energetic vibrations which dynamically interact, balance, transform and generate reality. Metal represents death, decay, loss, purification and the return to source. 

Class 3 (July 13): Eva Aridjis, director of La Santa Muerte, on the Mexican skeletal skeleton folk saint venerated by millions around the world

Class 4 (July 20): Scholar and Morbid Anatomy resident mythologist Liz Andres on Pan and the Devil, cousins in carnality and the deep dark woods and the promise of a life more delicious.

Class 5 (July 27): Artist-mythologist Devon Deimler, PhD will present the ecstatic ambivalence of the Greek god Dionysos, a “dying god” of inspired and dramatic paradoxes, hybrid companions, and the intoxicated allure of madness and freedom

Class 6 (August 3): Dr Louise Fenton of the University of Wolverhampton on the dark deities in the Vodun tradition

August 10: SKIP

Class 7 (August 17): Jungian analyst Patricia Llosa on chthonic figures in the life and work of Carl Jung

Class 8 (August 24): Final projects

BIOGRAPHIES

Liz Andres is a museum professional and scholar based in Los Angeles. She holds degrees in Art History, Classical Archaeology, and Museum Studies from U.C. Berkeley and the University of Leicester and specializes in museum education and exhibitions. Her current research focuses on hybrid and liminal creatures in ancient Greek art and mythology, museum taxidermy, and representations of death and nature in western art. Follow her on Instagram!

Eva Aridjis is an award-winning filmmaker and writer. She wrote and directed the narrative features The Favor and The Blue Eyes and the documentaries Children of the Street, La Santa Muerte, Chuy, The Wolf Man and Goodbye Horses. She also wrote on Narcos: Mexico.

Eleanor Crook is a sculptor in wax, bronze, and lifelike media who makes work about anatomy and mortality. She studied Classics and ancient art history which instilled a fascination for statues, effigies and mummies which she found was better explored by making them. Whilst studying sculpture at Central St Martins and the Royal Academy Schools she learned anatomy from medical museums and sculpting from Victorian textbooks, adopting neglected techniques. Later she trained as a medical sculptor alongside medical students at Guy’s Hospital. She is artist in residence at the Gordon Museum, teaches classes and workshops for Morbid Anatomy and Camberwell School of Art, and works internationally with many medical museums. She has a special interest in learning the expressive techniques of former times whilst employing contemporary technology to bring her creatures to a kind of life.

Devon Deimler, PhD is a Los Angeles-based writer, artist, and scholar. She is adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute (PGI), where she teaches courses on dreams, altered states, image/film theory, aesthetics, and folklore. She earned her PhD in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology from PGI with an award-winning dissertation, Ultraviolet Concrete: Dionysos and the Ecstatic Play of Aesthetic Experience. Devon is also a Contributing Artist-Scholar at the Philosophical Research Society and Curator at OPUS Archives and Research Center (home to the collections of eminent mythologists and depth psychologists including James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, and Marija Gimbutas).

Devon’s background in the arts includes holding a BA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, founding an independent record label and collaborative event project, Wildfire Wildfire Productions, and serving as Assistant to the Director at the Dennis Hopper Art Trust.

Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer, curator, photographer and graphic designer. She is the creator of the Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series, and was co-founder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn. Her books include Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy, Death: A Graveside Companion, Frederik Ruysch and His Thesaurus Anatomicus: A Morbid Guide, and The Anatomical Venus. You can watch her TedX Talk—Death as You've Never Seen it Before—here.

Dr Louise Fenton is a senior lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, and a cultural and social historian and anthropologist. She teaches contextual studies in the School of Art and supervises PhD students; she is also an artist and illustrator and uses drawing within her research. Her interest in Haitian Vodou began when studying for her PhD which she was awarded from the University of Warwick in 2009. Most recently Louise has appeared as a panellist on the UK BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘Beyond Belief’ and is a consultant on a new drama for BBC 3, 'Domino Day'. Her research covers West African Vodun, Haitian Vodou, New Orleans Voodoo and Witchcraft, especially curses and cursed objects. She leads small expeditions to experience Vodun in Benin each year for Gone with the Wynd tours, do enquire if you would like to join her.

Patricia Llosa, MFA, LP, is a Peruvian-American Jungian analyst in private practice in New York City. She earned her undergraduate degree in archaeology and art history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and did graduate work at The School of Visual Arts. For more than 20 years she worked as an administrator and educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A graduate of Marion Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms® Leadership Training Program and has taught her workshops in Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Peru and Spain. A member of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis she serves on their Gradiva Awards Committee. She is also on the board of ARAS, the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism.

Emily T. Rowe, MD, L.Ac, graduated from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in 2004 with a doctorate degree in medicine. After a brief time in the field of Internal Medicine, she became frustrated with the conventional medical approach to illness. She realized that she was being trained to treat the symptoms of disease and its end-stage complications, while failing to address its root cause. Inspired to find a comprehensive and definitive way to heal her patients, she went back to school and completed her Master’s Degree in Chinese Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture (Master of Oriental Medicine) in 2009. She and her husband, Christopher M. Estes MD, opened the Miami Beach Comprehensive Wellness Center in 2017.

Utilizing an individualized approach, she digs deeply into the root causes of diseases, using cutting-edge laboratories and awareness of how ecological toxins can effect health. As she has personal experience with medical issues related to environmentally acquired illnesses, she embodies empathy for her clients. Treatment plans for her clients are individually customized, combining a variety of methods including physiological detoxification strategies, eradication of stealth infections, vibrational resonance healings, meditation, hypnotherapy, medical astrological analysis, and ancient wisdom practices, such as Shamanism, acupuncture, and herbal medicines.

Images: Satan in his Original Glory: ‘Thou wast Perfect till Iniquity was Found in Thee’, William Blake, c. 1805; Santa Muerte in a shrine in Mexico City