Bookings
Bookings for all forthcoming retreats are now open .
For further information and bookings please contact Muriel DawDownloads
FOR July 2008 Retreat Brochure:
FOR Recommended Reading List:
FOR 'Themes for the season':
Forthcoming Retreats
18 September 2008 - Thursday
Wrecks and Reconciliation - Shakespeare's Magic Island (An exploration of ‘The Tempest’)
Shakespeare’s play The Tempest would, in the view of certain critics, have been better named The Island for, while the storm of the title lasts only a few minutes, the magician Prospero’s unnamed island is central to the entire drama. An island, rather like a stage, is an arena for focused attention and in this strange and hauntingly beautiful play what we are asked to attend to is nothing less than the culmination of one complex human being’s struggle for maturity. In fact, in Jungian terms, we witness, by the end of the play, the fruition of Prospero’s life-long battle for ‘individuation’ and see how what was, for him, once lost and estranged is rediscovered as a living unity and how those once despised and abused, by him, finally receive acceptance and their rightful recognition and respect.
Here, on this enchanted island, thanks to Prospero’s and Shakespeare’s art, we see multiple opposites coming together and, as spectators, we gain renewed and deepened insight into our own potentialities. During our retreat we shall be contemplating this captivating drama - Shakespeare’s blueprint for wholeness - and trying to discern what significance it might have for each one of us.
