the Anima Mundi School research center

our research objective

We are living in unprecedented times. The emergency of the climate and ecological breakdown as well as the impending collapse of many structures we have been dependent on over the past centuries, can all-together be overwhelming to acknowledge, and to include in our every day reality. Some of us are now living in places where climate crisis is directly felt and experienced one way or another, and this continues to increase rapidly. With the coming of the pandemic, our lives changed rapidly and globally in a short amount of time. What does it mean to live in a world that is facing such an enormous scope of crises, and what is our place in this unfolding uncertainty?

Our place individually— as citizens, colleagues, friends, parents & partners—as well as our place collectively; as human beings. Carl Jung said more than 50 years ago, that human beings have lost their innate connection to the World Soul, what the ancient alchemists called the Anima Mundi; the living breathing spirit of nature and the cosmos. He foresaw the dangers and that the only way of ‘saving’ our world from destructive patterns, was for each of us to reclaim this innate, ancient connection in the roots of our psyche, the ground of our soul.

While there is a story of destruction and extinction unfolding, some of us are also drawn to witness a new story emerging from the depths. ‘A new story’, is what is often said these days as a solution to our problems. But can we conjure up a new story and impose it onto life, because we do not like the old story any longer?

The ancients knew that stories and myths emerge from the inner worlds. They come from the world of images, the Mundus Imginalis and the archetypal patterns of creation. They knew that to heal, be it the individual or the community, they had to ‘tend to the gods and goddesses’ —the true meaning of the word ‘therapeia’. But how far is today’s therapeutic world from this ancient way of communion and kinship? Most of humanity has forgotten, and denied, that it is these primal powers that are the ones holding the future of humanity, either destructive or regenerative. Our way through is if the old stories become the compost and chrysalis of these primal powers who can start weaving humanity back into that ancient being, the axis mundi, the cosmic world soul.

We believe that there is a certain work and research to be done that’s ‘bottom-up’. Meaning: we have to go into the depths of our psyche—our roots—to reclaim and reconnect to what has been lost and forgotten. In this way, we can contribute to the healing and voicing of the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World.

The theories and tools of depth-psychology as developed by Carl Jung give us a contemporary, yet ancient framework to work with our own unconscious material, and a compass to navigate the personal and collective unconscious. Carl Jung’s major work was to bridge soul and psychology, and it is this legacy that we work with to find out what is needed at this most critical time, both individually and collectively. Our methodology is grounded in the phenomenological philosophy, rooted into the soil, ecology and every-day life of which we are part.

The long-term courses and training are held within the framework of our research center. The Anima Mundi School started as a place for women only, an incubation time that was much needed, but has now grown into a place of learning for all, while being firmly rooted in the Feminine. This growing community is individually dedicated to uncovering their deep roots, place and creativity in the world, while reconnecting in the attitude of service to the Anima Mundi. Collectively, we listen, witness and research old myth, fairytales and new emerging stories that arise from the spirit of the depth in our work with the mythic imagination.

core values

The Anima Mundi School holds a trinity of core values around which all the learning and research programs are crafted.

• Personal in-depth growth: our courses are first and farmost designed to help you reach within yourself and your psyche. For this reason, our work is based on the scientific work of Carl G. Jung and his later colleagues in depth psychology and alchemical psychology. All of our long-term courses are coupled with individual Jungian therapy with a strong emphasis on dreamwork.

• Braiding from the roots: finding our roots, grounding in the soil and soul and reclaiming a feminine wisdom is woven not only through our teaching modules, but in the very fabric of our organisation and how we grow and evolve. We strive to work in collaboration with the inner worlds and the mythic imagination—weaving realities together—watching the story evolve without imposing any long-term “goals” onto our organisation. We initiate, create and collaborate but distance ourselves from the colonial attitude of extraction, leverage and imposition. Rather, we weave the present with the past and follow a bread-crumb path into the future as to grow within the ecology of which we are part instead of imposing ourselves into the landscapes of the future. That future we all long for, where human beings can live in harmony with the natural world and each other, only arises from the presence of the moment, and our full participation in it.

• Independent & Interdependent: we believe in the importance of science and the academic world, and yet it is our core value that the way of the feminine is first and far-most the way of nature. We use the academic approach in our learning experiences when it is in tune and pulse with the way of nature and the way of the soul, and respects all of life as a sacred, living essence that is the Anima Mundi herself. It is for these reasons we have chosen for an independent, yet interdependent connection to academia and institutional structures within our research and learning center. To be able to decolonize and re-enchant academia and education in general, we need to find our place and belonging outside its structures, while not rejecting it as a whole.

  There are exciting new fields within academia that are in harmony with the natural world and seek a deeper, embodied and soulful relationship to the more-than-human world. We welcome cross-pollination with these fields and strive to bring them into our learning experiences.

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“To propose a psychology of Anima Mundi is to invite oneself to a relationship of intimacy with the Soul of the World and its objects. From this point of view, the psychic reality of the World’s Soul becomes available from the images. There is no way to separate our soul from the souls of others – and by “others” I mean people as well as everything that we can consider an environment. It is, thus no longer possible to work with the classical notion of individuation and its rhetoric of “my travel,” “my process,” “my journeys,” the blind frenetic pursuit of an inner Self, and to ignore the individuation of the Soul of the World and its objects. The care of the soul does not necessarily mean introversion or denying the reality of the world, its substance, and objects. There is no way to engage in soul-making if we keep ourselves attached exclusively to the Self, and exclude the world.”

— Marcus Quintaes on James Hillman’s Polemics in Archetypal Psychologies (Marlan, 2008)