My Speaking Engagement and Seminar Reviews

Review of Talk to the APC, By Joe McNair, November 6, 2009 Entitled The Plain of Silver

The evening began in a delightfully relaxed mood. Joe told us that we would hear typical Irish humor and homilies. This was as promised but beyond the wit was the depth and significance of the imagination, conveyed in Joe’s inimical manner. For a few hours we were transported into a world where silver freed from its place in leaden ore can be experienced as enchantment even problem solving In Irish history when disputes took place among leaders the preferred solution was to consult the imagination. Joe explained how storytelling was understood as healing because the story, coming from our imagination, serves as a container for our experience. “Once upon a time…” can serve as an entrance into the realm of fiction and has a definite place in our psychological vocabulary but Joe reminded us that Von Franz taught that it is important at the end of relating the story to add that after all it is “…just a story”. The realm of silver/imagination is entered at twilight. This transition from day to night has such magnetic influence on us. I was reminded, as Joe was relating to the significance of twilight, of how many of us are drawn to the sunset. Up and down our coast line when the sun is swallowed by the night we witness the event as if it is the first time it has ever occurred, symbolically taking us between the realms of conscious and unconscious. In the handout Joe refers to the Plain of Silver as “the place of vision, magic, and enchantment. It is the place we enter naturally at twilight, when the worlds mesh and meld at the between light”. Throughout his talk Joe masterfully wove three strands into a braid: One strand was the history and culture of the Irish. A second was the way alchemy and the white tincture serves as a dear bridge and way to understand the third focus which was the psychological experience of depression. The Voyage of Bran was explained and led to the description of the Silver Plain where “Splendours of every coulour glisten…”. In addition the Danaan folk or “fair folk” also known as “fairies” seemed to almost enter the room, had there been a whirlwind we might have had thern with us as we listened to Joe tell us about the Irish way. The white tincture also known as silver in alchemy was described, as Jim Hillman might have, to relate to the release from the depression we so often experience in our life as we struggle with fantasy and imagination in 21″ Century Los Angeles. If all of this was not enough we were treated by a series of sublime photographs depicting silver in nature and ending with the ice breaking and reflections of gold finding its way into life.

– Mark Troedson, Jungian Analyst 

Splendor Solis – Summer Alchemy Intensive

The first Boulder Association of Jungian Analysts (BAJA) Boulder Jung Seminar Summer Intensive on Alchemy was held at Boulder’s Hyatt Place over the weekend of June 24-26, 2016, on the beautiful and complex 16th century text Splendor Solis with Jungian Analyst Joe McNair. 

Joe’s approach to this well studied text brought the participants slowly and inexorably through one plate at a time, at a pace that gave room to open each image within the psyche, and allow it to work on the group as a whole.  Pensive reflection on the central theme and the intricate web of symbols in each plate (22 in all), coupled with consideration of the bordering motifs, left everyone enriched, satiated, if not a little overstimulated. “I need to go back and look at my notes,” someone said at the end. “There was so much to this seminar.” “It was dynamic–we were steeped in it,” said another participant.

Joe has a truly magical way of entering into the feeling content of each plate, circumambulating them from the perspectives of Jung’s functions, astrology, the alchemical colors, the alchemical substances being transformed (lead, mercury, salt, etc.), the operations and the stages, and more.  The group engaged in rich discussions and explorations. They experienced alchemical solutio, and when coagulatio happened the insights were unmistakable and profound.

For me, alchemy has to be lived and experienced.  We can read all we like, but to “get it,” we have to step into the relationship with the image, experience the alchemical group process as it moves with the images,  and feel what the alchemists were feeling: in other words, one has to experience the alchemical field. Because Joe’s workshops are both oratory and laboratory, one emerges having actively worked yet also acted upon and transformed; one is in the alembic and watching the reactions within.  Joe has a unique way of inducing the layers of the alchemical field so that no matter where you are with alchemy you feel you have been able to stay with the image yet he brings it alive through contemporary psychological conditions, challenges and stories.

For many this was a first experience of Joe’s teaching style, for others it was a repeated experience.  Either way, we can all agree that it removed us from the “Trumped Up” drama of the outside world, and allowed the intensive space for internal work with the unconscious, which is what Jungian work is all about.  Thanks Joe!

Stephen Foster, Jungian Analyst