Aizenstat on Hillman 20111027
Dear Pacifica Community,
As many of you now are aware, James Hillman died peacefully this morning at his home in Connecticut. He was 85. His wife Margot said he was true to his character to the end, even as he moved into that place between day and night beautifully pulling the two into one. During these last several months, despite his illness, James had managed to finish the many projects he'd been intensely committed to completing before he left. As Margot said, the seasons change
May I just add, in tribute to him as a friend and mentor to many of us here at Pacifica, how deeply James has enriched us with his unending flow of insights, placing so many things in new light -- and in shadow. In his many seminars here at Pacifica and the time he cherished when interacting with students he brought his depth of soul along with his trickster wit, extraordinary intelligence and individualism to all he touched. Yes, he will be deeply missed, but his work continues. Each of us now, in our own particular way, is asked to dream the work forward. James has left so much for us to work with, to integrate, to consider deeply. In the last years/months of his life he was making notes, offering hints, planting seeds that only the future can nourish.
It was just over thirty years ago that I attended a seminar he offered in San Francisco where James presented what would later become his profound and influential essay, "Anima Mundi: The Return of the Soul to the World" -- a turning point in depth psychology, as well as an essential impulse that informs Pacifica Graduate Institute. Our motto, our institutional soul roots in this ground of conviction.
"Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi."
Next Thursday, November 3rd at 3:30 we will gather as a community in Barrett Hall to honor the work of James Hillman and what it has meant to Pacifica and to many of us personally and professionally. We will share dreams, feelings, stories, images, and embrace the time together.
In addition, tomorrow there will be Alters placed on both campuses to make offerings of any kind that moves the heart and soul. Also, Pat, will be in her office tomorrow afternoon to be present and „talk story,‰ share feeling, and offer a witnessing presence to what is just so. From the radiance of her being, Pat is open to what lives between worlds.
An Elder has passed. May his soul join its clan, be in peace, and continue to animate our ways of being, as he would have wished.
Steve