with Thomas Patrick Lavin, PhD

This episode is the first session of the series Christian Shamanism: Visions of Nikolas of Flue.

A shaman is a person who has been forced by fate to take an inner, awe-filled journey which ultimately gives a new form to the person and to the culture. This journey demands sacrifice, isolation from the collective's expectations, and a particular form of courage which is able to accept new forms of awareness and new forms of the divine.

Every religious tradition has stories of persons who have walked the "shamanic path." Some religious traditions have called shamans by different names: sage, saint, and Bodhisattva are but a few of these names. There is also the little-discussed Christian shamanic tradition in which C.G. Jung stands, both as a visionary and as a healer of souls. This course uses the writings of C.G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz as a basis for discussing the role of the shaman in general and the Christian shaman in particular. It was recorded in 1994.

Thomas Patrick Lavin, PhD is a Zürich-trained Jungian analyst who holds a PhD in clinical psychology and a PhD in theology. He was formerly chief clinical psychologist for the U.S. Army in Europe and is a founding member of the CG Jung Institute of Chicago. He is in private practice in Wilmette, Illinois, and consults internationally on typology, spirituality and addictions.

For the complete series, click here

For more seminars by Dr. Lavin, click here

© 1994 Thomas Patrick Lavin. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may share it, but please do not change it, sell it, or transcribe it.

Music by Michael Chapman

Edited and produced by Benjamin Law