Spotlight on Goddesses and the Sacred Feminine
ITP is one of the few accredited institutions in the world that offers a broad range of Masters and Ph.D. level courses in various fields related to Transpersonal Psychology. The following is a list of courses related to Goddesses and the Sacred Feminine that have been offered in the past. The particular electives offered by the Institute vary at any given time. The school tries to be responsive to the particular interests of the current student body and aims to have the curriculum reflect those interests. Information on current classes can be found in the academic catalog.
In addition to course offerings, the Institute's Center for the Divine Feminine supports education of feminine-based consciousness and the nurturing of a healthier balance between masculine and feminine principles in our culture and society. Through lectures, workshops, research, scholarships and ritual, the Center for the Divine Feminine offers you the opportunity to explore and celebrate all aspects of the Divine Feminine in your life.
Introduction to the Goddess: Essence & Development of Goddess Spirituality
This course is open to men and women who seek a psycho-spiritual and cultural introduction to both the ancient and modern traditions of Goddess in order to begin an exploration of what the Divine Female means for westerners today. Through the application of cross-disciplinary methods and a class on Organic Inquiry, it will also facilitate an increased capacity to understand the function of the archetypal Feminine in Self and World. How does She inform contemporary consciousness? What is Her history and place in society today? What does reclaiming Goddess mean for women and men raised with patriarchal norms, attitudes, habits, and behaviors?
Our starting point will acknowledge the Sacred Female as a worldwide presence, one that is life-affirming and has the potential to be deeply transformational for individuals and societies. With a variety of culture-specific guises, forms, and names, Goddess is multiplexic. We will engage Her using a variety of lenses, noting the symbolic, metaphoric, and iconographic levels of human connection expressed and experienced through image, form, myth, and dreams. Whether called Demeter, Isis, Kali, Cerridwen, Mary, Pele, Oya, Amaterasu, Freya, Spider Woman, or by other names, the Divine Female is a powerful and empowering force, one that remains with us today despite negative patriarchal overlays of meaning and active subjugation/suppression.
In this class, we will delve into the mysteries of Goddess consciousness using ritual, small group engagement, class discussion, personal exploration, story, myth, literature, poetry, and spiritual techniques for uncovering Her embodied presence. Learnings will be immediately applicable to students’ daily lives and work as we together evoke what She means to us as individuals committed to finding meaning, truth and beauty through the transpersonal. By revaluing concepts of the sacred to include women and the Sacred Female, we will together help catalyze the motion of personal and planetary healing.
Dark Goddesses of East and West
This class will give an historical and cultural introduction to the traditions of the Dark Goddesses of East and West as particularized through Kali and the Black Madonna. Together, participants will begin an exploration of what dark images of the divine mean for westerners today. The class starting point will acknowledge the Dark Goddesses generally as life-affirming and deeply transformational, with a variety of culture-specific guises, forms, and names. Despite culture of origin, both Kali and the Black Madonna are gathering worldwide appeal in today’s climate of globalization. Participants will explore the antinomian and chtonic elements of these Divine Female forces through class readings, small group engagement, ritual, discussion, and personal exploration. Evoking and invoking the power of these goddesses through feminist (embodied spiritual) theory and method, we will together help catalyze the motion of personal and planetary healing.
Tales of the Goddess
Using the ancient art of storytelling, this class explores an approach to empowerment through the feminine divine. The class will focus both on the tales told and on one’s personal response to the tales. Each individual will be both storyteller and one who listens and reflects on the stories told by others.
Reclaiming the Feminine Divine
A revolution in archeological methods and outlook has reveled that cultural history did not begin with Abraham. The Goddess-centered cultures of old Europe, 6000 years ago present a picture of high culture committed to partnership between men and women rather than the competitive warrior cultures which replaced them 2000 years later.
This course begins with a foundation of the new scholarly research on the evolution and significance of these ancient Goddess cultures and then explores the personal implications of the experience of the feminine divine both with artwork and with a night alone with the full moon.
What is the difference between feminist and feminine studies? How does the masculine relate to the feminine divine? How is the sacred feminine reemerging? What are the myths and legends that carry the old traditions into our time? How can the work encourage empowerment instead of anger? How do these ancient cultures serve as models for a transpersonal community?
The Triple Goddess and Personal Feminine Narrative
The class will be a marriage of the archetypal, spiritual, and the worldly; a class about spiritual practice and about research methods. We will study the concept of the Triple Goddess as well as specific goddesses who represent her three aspects: Virgin, Mother, and Crone. We will explore our personal experience of the subject by telling stories from our own lives. Further, we will make the connection between personal feminine narrative as spiritual practice and storytelling as an aspect of contextual research. The class will include teaching and discussion of the assigned books and topics, but will be largely experiential as we explore the personal meanings of our own and others’ stories in the context of the Triple Goddess.
The Feminine in World Spiritual Traditions
This course explores the feminine in world spiritual traditions from prehistory to the present, as well as from a cross-cultural perspective. The sacred feminine is considered through several lenses. The first views the female as divine, as the Goddess: worshipped almost universally in prehistory and by primal peoples. A second will look at the lives and writings of some saintly women who exemplify feminine spirituality. A third will be those characteristics we identify as feminine in world spiritual traditions.
