Pantheon of Paradoxes: 

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Archetypal Imagery in the Ancient Egyptian Pantheon

 

Presented by
Jacqueline Thurston, MA

 

Sunday, October 18, 2020, 4:00 - 6:00 pm PT

link to video

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Artists are drawn to Jungian concepts because these concepts illuminate their personal working experience with the creative process. Jung’s understanding of synchronicity, the intersection between the inner world of dreams and the imagination and the outer physical world, and his exploration of cultural and personal archetypal imagery, inform and guide this presentation. The ideas and the images in the presentation are drawn from Thurston’s Sacred Deities of Ancient Egypt, illustrated with 185 of her photographs. As a Fulbright Scholar, Thurston had access to many tombs traditionally closed to the public. The memorable nature of the photographs, many of which have never before been reproduced, springs from the personal vision in these intimate, interpretive photographic portraits of the deities.

 

The richly illustrated presentation will explore the archetypal nature of the divine feminine and the divine masculine with attention to the presence of dualities and opposites contained within a single deity and to the role that paradox plays in the dynamic relationships between individual deities. Our contemporary interest in gender and identity makes the exploration of the attributes of both feminine and masculine deities in the ancient Egyptian pantheon intriguing, informative, and relevant. To create a bridge between our contemporary world and the world of an earlier civilization, the presentation will explore how the vicissitudes of nature, like the pandemic through which we are living, shaped the very essence of the gods of ancient Egypt. Finally, this presentation provides a rare opportunity to ask new questions about the inherent nature of archetypal imagery that formed the bedrock of a civilization that spanned more than three thousand years—a mythology that differs dramatically from our Greco-Roman heritage.

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Learning objectives:  

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• Give examples of how the archetypal nature of the divine feminine and the divine masculine in the pantheon of ancient Egypt can manifest in psychotherapy.

• Identify examples of the fusion of animal and human form in the gods or goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon and how this metaphor can present in psychotherapy.

• Describe examples of how animal dreams inspired by the masculine and feminine deities in the Egyptian pantheon might support psychotherapeutic goals.

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Jacqueline Thurston, MA, is an artist, writer, and Professor Emerita in the School of Art and Design at San Jose State University, where she taught for over forty years. She is twice the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship and was a Fulbright Scholar to Egypt. Her first artist’s book was purchased by the Library of Congress for its Rare Book Collection. Thurston’s photographs are in major national and international museum collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Library of Congress; the International Museum of Photography; the Bibliothèque Nationale, France; and the Bibliothéque Alexandria, Egypt.