When I was at the Parliament of the World's Religions in October, I had the pleasure of hearing Drake Spaeth speak briefly. Drake is a clinical psychologist and professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. His professional interests include existential and humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, Jungian psychology, and shamanism. Drake is a also an ordained Pagan minister and ritual facilitator of the Sacred Hunt, an ecstatic ritual of consciousness transformation, which has become a fixture at Pagan Spirit Gathering and other festivals.
At the Parliament, Drake caught my attention when he said that "Carl Jung was not entirely kidding when he called himself a polytheist." Drake was responding to the notion that seeing the gods as expressions of Jungian archetypes diminishes the gods, an idea which he said results from a misunderstanding of what Jung wrote. When I got home, I listened to some of Drake's earlier interviews. This one, with T. Thorn Coyle, was interesting, as Drake discusses gods and archetypes -- a frequent topic on this blog. A portion of the interview is excerpted here. (You can listen to the entire interview by following this link.) My own understanding of gods and archetypes parallel's Drake's.
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