The Grail Legend

Emma Jung
and Marie-Louise von Franz

Softbound

$19.95

Emma Jung who, in addition to being married to Carl Jung was also a student of Rudolf Steiner's, made the legend of the Holy Grail her life's work. When she died before completing her work, Marie-Louise von Franz (Carl Jung's best student) took up the task and bought the work to completion. The result is The Grail Legend.

Writing in a clear and readable style, the authors present the Grail legend as a living myth that is profoundly relevant to modern life. We encounter such universal figures as the Fool (the naive young Perceval), the Wise Old Man (the Hermit Gornemanz), the Virgin Maiden (Blancheflor), the Loathly Damsel, and such important theses as the Waste Land, the Trinity, and the vessel of the Grail. Weaving together narrative and interpretation, the authors show us how the legend reflects not only fundamental human problems but also the dramatic psychic events that form the background of our Christian culture.

This is a book that I have found rewarding in both the depth of its insight and the pleasure of its story. A rare combination! Very highly recommended.

Theatre of the Imagination
Volume 1

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

6 audio CDs - approximately 7 hours

$69.95

I have learned more about the language of the soul and the language of the world's great stories from Theatre of the Imagination than from any other single source. Reviewing them for our bookshop was one of the great joys of my life - really!

Clarissa Pinkola Estés is one of the world's greatest story tellers, and also one of the great seers into the human heart. Raised in a remarkable extended family that gave her two world traditions (and their stories!) - Mestizo and traditional Hungarian - and the stories and understanding that make her a true contadora, a keeper of the old tales.

In each of these six lectures, Dr. Estés treats us to a captivating, luscious telling of a rich, traditional story and then invites us through poetry, conversation and clear seeing into the heart of the tale, into it's message for the human soul and the healing that is particularly its own. This is a journey which I urge you not to miss - a journey which will take you to the interior of your own heart and lead you out again to a deeper compassion and understanding others.

Highlights from this first volume, tape by tape:

• Tape One: "La Calavera" (Godmother Death) - The cycles of Life and Death - Our Mother Tongue - The language of symbols - "A Newspaper Interview" poem - The images of the moon landing - Aesculapius - The Aztec Goddess Txati - The symbolic 13 - much more
• Tape Two: The Lost Mother Moon - On the longing to return to the home within - the importance of community - Healing the homesickness of the soul - nostalgia - "Information-gorge Syndrome" - Wounds and the "violet light" - "The Rose Tree" story - "Abre la Puerta" chant-poem - much more
• Tape Three: Vasalisa and the Baba Yaga - On intuition, consciousness, and the loss of innocence - Claiming your strength - The meaning of "blessing" - Schmertzenreich (richness of sorrow) and tikkun olam (repair of the world) - "How to Silence a Woman: Retrieving Her Voice" poem - much more
• Tape Four: Bluebeard and the Forbidden Key - Naiveté and the predator in the psyche - Waking the 1000 eyes of intuition - Reclaiming your true life - "The Initiate" story - How to stop the destructive inner critic - much more
• Tape Five: The Ugly Duckling - On the gifted child - The "triumph of exile" - The Mistaken Zygote Syndrome" - Hephaestus and the 12 Women Made of Silver and Gold - The meaning of self-identiy - Finding where you really belong - Active imagination - "The Tenth Father" poem - much more
• Tape Six: The Joyous Body - La Mariposa/The Butterfly Woman - The female body of God - Sappho's poetry constructed - Procrustes' Bed - The negative shadow - Reclaiming the bodies we were born with - "Old Big Mother" poem - much more

Theatre of the Imagination
Volume 2

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

6 audio CDs - approximately 7 hours

$69.95

Volume 2 continues and concludes the lecture series begun in Volume 1. What an adventure!

Highlights from Volume 2, tape by tape:

• Tape Seven: "Las Tres Osas Viejas" (The Three Old Ones) - Agelessness - the "aerial view" of the elder - "Crossing the crone line" - "The Grandmother Blessing" poem - The alchemical conjunctio (melding of opposites) - "The Three Old Women Bears" story - much more
• Tape Eight: The Fisherman's Wife - On fatherhood and "positive patriarchy" - Repairing the inner feminine in men - "Boy Who Married an Eagle" story - The "Silver Fish in the Pink Polka-dot Dress" story - "Drain Pipe" story - King Lear - much more
• Tape Nine: Skeleton Woman - Eros and Death - Facing the cycles of change in relationships - on staying in love - "Sedna and the Dog-Man" story - "The Wedding Night" poem - much more
• Tape Ten: The Crescent Moon Bear - On anger and the God of Love - Transforming relationships through forgiveness - Four vital steps to forgiveness - Pandora's Box - Watching Yourself exercise - Biographical Desconso exercise - "Balaam Chilam" poem - much more
• Tape Eleven: Sealskin/Soulskin - La Placita/the home place - On the marriage of the sacred and secular - The homecoming - "What have you done with your soul skin? - Overcoming loneliness - The power of the divine child - Soul as the individual mysterium - much more
• Tape Twelve: Wolfen - On courage and the sacred center of the psyche - Receiving the "pleasure of lushness" - "If You're Lucky" poem - The meaning of sweet - "Five Olde Praying Women" poem - "The Creation" poem - much more

Theatre of the Imagination
Volumes 1 & 2

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

12 audio CDs - approximately 14 hours

Very special price - save $29.95 compared to purchasing separately!

$109.95

Bedtime Stories

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.

CD, 1 hour

$15.95

How wonderful! Bedtime stories for grown-ups! Just the thing for those of us who love stories but no longer have anyone who tells them to us.

This is a beautiful CD - an exquisite introduction to how the world of sleep and the world of stories intertwine to help us stay healthy, happy, sane and sound. If you have never heard Clarissa Pinkola Estés tell a story before, you are in for such a joyous discovery. I would call her a 'master storyteller,' except that she is so much more than that. I actually can't find the words to tell you how much warmth, depth and love she brings to each story she tells - and how magical even well-known tales become as she weaves them again for us.

As a child growing up in a family of storytellers, Dr. Estés learned firsthand how a story told at bedtime can soothe away the troubles of the day, and prepare the way for the night's dreams to follow. "Adulthood is only a disguise we wear during the daytime," she teaches. At night, we are all children.

In addition to learning how stories can open an "aperture" into the world of dreams and the meaning of such archetypal figures as Mother Night and the Sandman, you will also be treated to amazing retellings of:

• Sleeping Beauty (this is one that we all can learn from and then use what we learn to share with the children in our lives)
• The Mouse and the Lion
• The Jumping Mouse
• Winken, Blinken and Nod
• and more

You'll love this CD - even if you never have trouble sleeping! And once you hear these stories told so beautifully, I predict that you'll be rounding up the children in your life and treating them to stories yourself. Sweet dreams!!

Archetypal Imagination
Glimpses of the Gods in Life and Art

Noel Cobb

Introduction by Thomas Moore

Softbound

$16.95

This unique book is about freeing psychology's poetic imagination from the dead weight of unconscious assumptions about the soul. Whether we think of hte soul scientifically or medically, behaviorally or in terms of inner development, all of us are used to thinking of it in an individual context, as something personal. In this book, however, we are asked to consider psychology from a truly transpersonal perspective as a cultural, universal-human phenomenon.

Noel Cobb teaches us to look at the world as the record of the soul's struggles to awaken, as the soul's poetry. From this point of view, the true basis of the mind is poetic. Beauty, love, and creativity are as much instincts of the soul as sexuality or hunger. Thus these essays praise the value and nobility of the imagination, and instead of the usual masters of psychology the exemplars here are the artists and mystics of the Western tradition: Dante, Rumi, Rilke, Munch, Lorca, Schumann, Tarkovsky.

I like Noel Cobb's outcries on behalf of ferocity, loneliness, anxiety, "the hideous hag of life," beauty sitting in the lap of terror, Edvard Munch's paintings and Garcia Lorca's panther-like poems - let's have more.

- Robert Bly

Alice O. Howell

Hardbound

$24.95

This is an engaging story that should keep teenagers and adults glued to their chairs as they turn page after page. The author has succeeded wonderfully in creating a fantasy tale that portrays great truths through a highly readable story.

The Beejum Book offers a journey into a world of fantasy that, deep down, each of us knows and longs for. It tells the story of Teak, a child living abroad between the two World Wars. Teak’s mother tells her not to worry about being left alone, because every night, when she goes to sleep, they can meet in Beejumstan.

Teak’s travels to this magical realm bring her face to face with Lonesome, a well-attired rabbit, and Beejumstan’s “ambassador without portfolio”; Figg Newton, the alchemist; the witches Rudintruda and Idy Fix; Gezeebius, the Wise Old Man; and many other fascinating characters.

In the end, Teak discovers that all the inhabitants of Beejumstan live within her - together they are Teak. This discovery in no way lessens her enthusiasm for her nightly adventures, but instead warms her heart and heightens her love of all the Beejums (even the annoying ones!).

This is a book you'll read and pass on. And then you'll ask for it back so you can read it again!

Cool Water
Alcoholoism, Mindfulness and Ordinary Recovery

William Alexander

$12.00

Cool Water is a beautiful book about Ordinary Recovery, a path that approaches alcoholism not from the perspective that anyone so addicted needs first to relinquish their struggle to a Higher Power (thought this, too, is a wonderful path for many). Rather, in Ordinary Recovery (which is based in Zen Buddhism), the key to ongoing freedom from alcoholism is right before us, in the here and now, in the ordinary and perfect present moment. As Alexander sees it, most addictions are the result of our efforts to escape living in the present in the first place. His unique approach uses mindfulness, story and meditation to help alcoholics and others learn to come back to the moment and to find healing there. I think his approach is a healing art - simple, true, effective.