TONIGHT: Let's attend a C.G. Jung Society lecture in Clayton

Feminine Initiation Rituals, Planned and Unplanned: What the Plights of Persephone, Inanna, and Psyche Teach Us About Journeying into the Underworld (In Person)
Friday, November 15, 2024 | 7 PM – 9 PM (Central)
Location: First Congregational Church UCC, 6510 Wydown Blvd, Clayton, MO 63105 (fully accessible)

This event will be livestreamed via Zoom. This product listing is for in-person attendance.
If you wish to view the livestream/participate via Zoom instead, please register here.

Registration price: $25 for all participants

*2 CEs are available for participation in this event. CE-seeking participants must apply separately for CEs
Journeys to the underworld are associated with transformation, depression, and/or facing great difficulties. Someone depicted as “being in the underworld” is most assuredly struggling. The journey can be sudden and unexpected, such as the death of a loved one, a serious health crisis, or a disaster, natural or otherwise. These individuals may relate to Persephone, who is abducted by Hades and forcebly taken to his kingdom in the underworld, her life torn asunder.

One can choose this arduous journey, such as volunteering for humanitarian relief in an area torn apart by war, disease, or natural disaster. This journey is like Inanna’s, who travels to the underworld of her own volition to rescue her dead husband. This journey is undertaken consciously.

Lastly, one may encounter the underworld when faced with impossible choices. This is like Psyche, who when punished by Aphrodite, must descend into the underworld—or die by Aphrodite’s hand—to borrow Persephone’s beauty box. We can understand these journeys as feminine initiation rituals.

In mythology the underworld is not synonymous with the Christian view of hell. It is simply a place for the dead. But one does not travel there lightly. Anyone who travels to the underworld is forever changed.

So how do we understand these journeys to the underworld? They are certainly feminine rites of initiation. Although the content remains secret, the initiation rituals surrounding the mysteries at Eleusis helped people grapple with issues of life and death, transformation and initiation.

In current times, analysis, art, and numinous experience help initiates move through these challenging experiences and assist people as they grapple with life’s
difficulties and complexities. In this presentation, Francesca will examine how encounters with these archetypes impact the way individuals face adversity, and ways to interface with them.

Attendees will:

Be able to verbalize how planned or unplanned adversity may serve as psychological initiations
Recognize the various ways that Persephone’s initiation (unplanned), Inanna’s (planned), and Psyche’s (forced choice) differ and the impact that has on individuals
Come to understand how analysis, encounters with the numinous, art, and personal exploration can serve as the conduit for self-understanding

Francesca Ferrentelli, Ph.D., is a Jungian-influenced psychotherapist, mythologist, author, and storyteller in St. Louis, MO. In her private practice, she specializes in trauma, eating disorders, addictions, adult children of alcoholics, and EMDR therapy. She is a certified EMDR Clinician and a Certified EMDR Consultant. She received her doctorate in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2003, and her M.A. in Professional Psychology from Lindenwood University in 1993.
She has led multiple study groups for the St. Louis Jung Society. Her children’s book, The Zebra and the Black Pony, was released in 2020, and her upcoming book Izzy and the Chicken will be released next year.