Earth dance with Thomas Berry

Earth Mask, Geneva

"Lake" has become "Moon"

Frederica Chapman, M.S. is a performance artist, celebrant, psychotherapist, sound healer, and author. Along with a Masters Degree in Psychiatric, and Community Mental Health Nursing, she brings 36 years of experience in individual, group and expressive psychotherapy, and 20 years of Jungian dream analysis to her work. 

In 1992, Frederica was invited to Brazil, to the World Conference on Environment and Development. She performed stories of Nature and the Goddess and launched her career as a champion of Nature, and the Feminine principle. In 1993, prompted by another invitation to perform at the Parliament of the World's Religions, in Chicago, Frederica formed Theatre for the Earth. She wrote and produced the archetypal story of a girl entering womanhood in the context and embrace of the Natural world.

“She Greened the Land”, presented over nine years in venues in Ireland, Wales, The Washington National Cathedral, and across the US is now both a play and an enchanting book of the same title. Her passion for offering mentorship to girls inspired her to write “A Girl’s Gateway to Womanhood: A Rite of Passage Guidebook For Girls, Mothers and Mentors”. 

Through her poetry, books, and performance, Frederica brings grace to the feminine principle in us all.

Heather Cowen

 An early career in classical music and a long period of gathering strands from many different healing modalities, Heather is inspired by and responds to the voices and stories ever present in the elements of nature. Violin,voice and sound instruments are played to create music that emerges from the time  and place that is available when one connects to the unity in all creation.

Gabriella Kapfer

"The Task of Tasks"

An autobiographical article by Frederica Chapman

In his later years, Carl Jung said, “I asked myself, 'What is the myth you are living?' and found that I did not know. So…I took it upon myself to get to know 'my' myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks…I simply had to know what unconscious or preconscious myth was forming me.”

If I could, I would ask Dr. Jung what he sees as the difference between a personal myth and one's soul.

The word, myth, is derived from the Greek, "mythos", meaning story or word. Here's what Wikipedia says, "In the field of folkloristics, a myth is conventionally defined as a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form. Myths generally take place in a primordial age, when the world had not yet achieved its current form. The main characters in myths are usually gods or supernatural heroes. By retelling myths, human beings detach themselves from the present and return to the mythical age, thereby bringing themselves closer to the divine. "

That Dr. Jung used the word, "myth" to refer to his personal story is, in itself intriguing, since "myths" are thought to reflect cosmological order. Was he insinuating that his life had an order of cosmological nature and proportions, a "myth" that wanted to be known, wanted to be manifested? From his knowledge of the commitment, (not from arrogance), could he have meant that the undertaking itself was mythical? Divine? (Wonderful–this is so wonderful!)

One's soul has been described as a small particle belonging to greater World Soul that has a destiny, a story to fulfill. Thus, soul, like myth, relates to the cosmos, something much bigger than one's own limited ego sense of self.  Why isn't the "personal myth" that Jung regards as unconscious or preconscious, synonymous with what my soul is wanting, hoping for, expecting of me in this lifetime? My 8 year-old friend, George, was given a homework assignment to write answers for the following, 'What would the lightening say to the tree? What would the sun say to the snowman? What would the rain say to the umbrella?" – all by way of helping the young student to think about relationships, and to write quotation sentences. If I ask, 'What does my soul say to my personna?' The answer is, 'Get on with it. Get down to it. Glean your truth. Keep on expressing your uniqueness."

And if I ask, 'What does my personna say back to my soul, it goes like this, "It's too hard. It's never ending. You want too much. I'll just get something to eat first, or have some wine, or watch t.v., or make money, or fall in love. I'm not listening to you."

Yet, thankfully, I did listen…

When I track my story backwards three primal influences seem to have been informing, and motivating my life: First, My mother, her mother and father, and undoubtedly theirs before them, all wished for a BOY CHILD – the wish being that much stronger because my mother, herself, had wished to be a boy and man, and because my family of origin already had one girl, my older sister. Secondly, influencing my life story was the place in which I was blessed to live my first years. Still, I can feel the warm sun on the field, smell the earthy farm smells, see the brook, lake and forest all around. I was an innocent in the "garden", and abundantly nurtured in the green landscape.Thirdly, atop our nearest mountain was God, at least the nearest thing to Him in my child's imagination – the stony, Old Man of the Mountain of Franconia, New Hampshire.

My sensitivity led me to sensitive questions: Why did the hornet sting me on my budding breast (to my sister's uproarious glee)? Why did the lightening come down from the mountain and send glass shattering into my head? Was I bad? Was I wrong? Was that stone God up over Echo Lake punishing me? I needed to know more than my family could teach. Why did I continually feel ashamed? In college I signed up for religion 101, but met with Yahew, too close to the male figurehead, the stony God of Franconia Notch. Was there a place, a source that accepted, even honored women?

You can see where this is going; my myth has led me to study, to work with, to encourage, and to delight in women, and in the feminine as found in Nature – 66 years getting to it, and it's not about a product, but about the task, sacred, and on-going.

As a prolific dreamer, and having long-written and studied my dreams, when I ask these questions, my dreamer-self flourishes with vivid archetypal images. Without doubt, it affirms this work as "the task of tasks", and I know that I am in soul territory, the land of myth-making, asking, listening, receiving.

The task, my task seems to require that I stay true to one abstract, inner landscape while performing, celebrating, or giving workshops out in an outer, altogether different one. From Jung's perspective, this is marrying the feminine with the more outer masculine sides, known as the conjunctio. I am so grateful for your perspective, Carl Jung.