Welcome to November!

In five days, things will get very intense here in the United States. I voted by mail in mid-October. Now we all wait to see what happens. Meanwhile, the temperatures cool outside.

I took the photograph above at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, which I visited after lecturing on ecoresilience, imagination, and story at Harvard. The lecture was well-received, and it was a delight to deliver it at Harvard Radcliffe surrounded by images of Helen Keller, Mae Jemison, and other illustrious graduates.

There was also a strangeness to it. After our ecoresilience working group met (we will continue to meet: reports to follow down the road), we watched images of the storm destruction in North Carolina and nearby areas. I saw no news with the courage to say: Welcome to the new normal. Internal memos at Exxon say victory equals creating public doubt about climate change. So climate disasters in my novels are named after large oil companies. Perhaps our group can help convince Harvard to divest from fossil fuels.

Thanks to Cassidy Melvin, I got in a quick tour of Boston. I had never been there before. We found the approximate site of the Boston Tea Party, then went to Bunker Hill (actually Breed’s Hill), Old North Church (“one by land, two by sea”), the beginning of the trail Paul Revere rode, Boston Common, the Freedom Trail, and a few other sites. Boston feels Promethean to me, Concord like the place of the remembered dead. Cambridge belongs to Athena.

Walking around Walden Pond taught me why Thoreau had gone there: it feels intensely spiritual. Most of the people I saw there had halted to reflect and appreciate. The pond seemed to reflect on itself. The trees around it were turning brilliant colors.

Before visiting Harvard, I presented “Archetypes of Place and Planet” and did a workshop for the Friends of Jung in Eugene, Oregon. Gratitude to them and most of all to Josiah Spencer for bringing me there. I always customize that presentation to reflect mythic motifs I’ve been able to uncover in the place I’m visiting.

In the last newsletter I mentioned being tempted to found a new kind of deep learning institute. I also mentioned speculating about some of the issues raised in my Lorecast podcast “Transformative Learnings Beyond Higher Ed”. I’m imagining a certificate-awarding hybrid resource—part online, part in-person—that draws on multiple fields (including depth psychology, terrapsychology and the other organismic psychologies, ecotherapy, leadership studies, the arts, mythology, creativity science, and philosophy) to train a new kind of change-maker.

This institute would also serve not only as a think tank to study the personal and cultural lore (guiding stories, myths, and archetypes) behind how things are and could be, but an imagination, feeling, intuition, and bodily wisdom tank as well. Projects would include the possibility of cultural creatives weaving together a new planetary mythology, prospects for a Human Potential 2.0 movement, ecospirituality studies and practices, and what would be needed for locals to build a terrapsychological map of the world one place at a time: a map made out of story, nature, history, diversity, and presence.

The idea is beginning to burn, which is a good sign. It’s also showing up in my dreams. Feel free to let me know what you think about it. I’ll keep you posted on it.

During flight delays I worked on Lamplighter, the third novel in the Lamplighter Trilogy. On Oct. 21st, I finished the first draft. Now I have to let it sit a while before I edit it. I’ll publish it late this year or early next. Soulmapper featured a man with a secret history trying to get his memory back in California sixty or so years from today. Heartlander is told by a disenchanted professor given a device that creates visions, for better or worse. Kay, the male narrator of Lamplighter, highlights spiritual leader Mariam Najjar and the religion she builds from her visions and dreams, and her struggle to keep it alive against multiple opponents. In all three, the Dreamvale, a layer of imaginal reality where fictions and fantasies live, features prominently.

Starting Oct. 10th, I began teaching a four-session Jung Platform class called When Echo Meets Narcissus. It was recorded. Why do so many empathic and sensitive people end up battling narcissists at home, at work, in relationships? I included a close look at identifying and dealing with covert narcissism. It is much harder to spot than the grandiose type. Covert narcissism shows up as thoughtful and empathic, and one feels truly seen and understood—at the beginning.

My most recent podcasts for The Lorecast, available for free at my website and through Apple Music, Spotify, and several other venues, are “Encountering Covert Narcissism” and an episode on why the collective unconscious is important to work with. Email me if you have any ideas about a topic you'd like to hear covered in a podcast.

What I'm reading: The Journals of Abraham Maslow.

My free book Tales of Terrania Rising is available online.