Dear friends,

You are warmly invited into an evening of ceremonial cacao, active imagination and symbolic exploration.

Together we will enter the imaginal realm — or the Mundus Imaginalis — the subtle reality of dreams, archetypes, myth and living symbols

We begin by honoring and drinking ancient plant teacher, Theobroma Cacao, opener of the heart and “food of the gods”, as the Maya used to call it. From there, the evening unfolds through a sharing circle, sound journey and symbolic, creative work inspired by the Jungian practice of Active Imagination.

The gathering is conceived as a kind of alchemical laboratory of the soul. In the spirit of the old alchemists, we enter the symbolic field not to escape the world, but to deepen it — to encounter the images, emotions, memories, ancestors and archetypal forces that move beneath the surface of ordinary consciousness.

For Jung, these figures were not merely fantasies, but living presences of the psyche: autonomous forces that shape our longings, fears, creativity and becoming. Through imagination, dialogue and symbolic attention, what is unconscious may begin to transform within the vessel of our body – and the body of the circle at large. 

How can we – poetically and imaginatively – engage with the depths of our being? Is there a way for us to refine the forces that inhabit our psychic life? And is there a quintessence of meaning and vitality, to be distilled from the chaotic world of our dreams, emotions and symptoms?  

These are some of the questions that we will be exploring experientially during our time together. The intention is not necessarily self-development or -improvement, but rather to create a protected symbolic container in which something hidden in the usual coagulations of thought and identity, may begin to soften, speak, dissolve or take a new form.

This sort of alchemical work lives at the crossroads between psychology, mysticism, philosophy and art. It is as much an aesthetic and poetic practice as a therapeutic or spiritual one — a way of cultivating intimacy with the soul and with the imaginal dimension of existence itself.

No previous experience is needed — only curiosity, presence, and an openness to listen to the voices of the soul.