Tune your ears and attend to the bones with us Wednesday October 17th* when Helping Friendly Book Club 29 meets at The Wild Detectives to discuss Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ storytelling masterpiece, “Women Who Run With The Wolves.”
The Path of Initiation is a recurring thread in our Quest for #SEJNES (think of Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”, Coelho's “The Pilgrimage”, “The Little Prince” and the Mystery Schools, etc.) and Estes elucidates it beautifully in this book. As a male member of the wolf pack of humanity, I’ve already learned an enormous amount of helping friendly information from this book, and not just about women, although a lot about women. I should have read it a long time ago. Seriously, guys, read this book.
One of the most popular and influential studies of the “Path of Initiation” in the relatively recent Western Canon is Carl Jung’s “Process of Individuation.” Dr. Estes is a Jungian psychologist, but she’s also a fantastic storyteller. She tells archetypal stories that resonate deeply with the collective unconscious in each of us, and then she squeezes so much meaning out of them, she extracts so much brain honey with you, it genuinely shifts the mind.
As I started reading this book, I quickly began to understand why it has such a mystical “following” of sorts. So many people I’ve mentioned to that we’re reading this book already have such a strong, emotional opinion of it. Either they’ve read it and it touched them deeply, or they’ve been meaning to read it for years, because everyone they know that read it told them to read it too. It’s just one of those Helping Friendly Books, you know? We hope you’ll join us Tuesday evening October 16th at 8:15pm at our favorite place The Wild Detectives for an evening of insight, friendship, and convivial sociability.
Plan to do some howling. We will also seek to keep expanding on our panel discussion format and livestreaming skills from last time. Come for the mental pollination, stay for the brain honey.
*Originally scheduled for October 16th we had to push it by one day to the 17th. We hope this still works for everyone!
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“When seeking guidance, don't ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.” - Dr. Estes in “Women Who Run With The Wolves” #SEJNES
