Greek Tragedy -- April 2010

 Jungian wise man and author Robert A. Johnson once wrote that if you want to learn psychology you must read Greek tragedy, read Jung or watch.  Watching, he felt, was the best of the three but in this course we will be attending to the first by reading and exploring together the astounding works of two of the most revered tragedians of Classical Greece---Aeschylus and Sophocles.

We will be begin by exploring the only surviving trilogy from Classical Greece---the Oresteia by Aeschylus.  The three plays that form the trilogy --- Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides ---have inspired many works of art including Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle.  The plays explore the end of the curse on the house of Atreus and through them we can learn much about family dynamics, the interplay of masculine and feminine energies in the world and in ourselves and how end cycles can teach us about the death of the "conscious dominant".

 We will then turn to the superb three works that comprise Sophocles's The Theban Plays which although not a trilogy, are nevertheless linked thematically.  The most well known of this trio is Oedipus Rex --the much celebrated work that gave name to Freud's Oedipus complex. Together with the other two works ---- Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus --- the Theban plays provide us with a journey into the heart of ourselves.

 Join me for four weeks of dipping into the metaphorical zone where we step outside of our left brains in an attempt to make ourselves whole.

The date for this Sophia Cycle will be Tuesdays at either 10:30 in the morning or 7:30 in the evening beginning on April 13th.

 For information, please email info@sophiacycles.com