Threshold : Doorways into Nature and Psyche.

I’d like to make an announcement - the Sussex School of Imaginal Ecology presents “THRESHOLD - doorways in nature and psyche”

This is the inaugral event of the Sussex School of Imaginal Ecology.  It’s an in person half day intro to imaginal ecology, looking at the concept and application of Threshold.  It’s open to adults interested in inquiring into how a practice of the imagination can be rooted in the living world in times like these.  

https://www.ticketsource.com/imaginal-doorway/threshold-doorways-into-nature-and-psyche/2026-10-31/12:30/t-xdyxgjd

Seems right to start off with an inquiry into the threshold, and on what the Welsh call Nos Galan Gaeaf, the eve of winter, which we have tended to call All Hallows Eve, 31st October.  A threshold moment in the year.  

If you are interested, or know someone who would benefit, let them know.  Here is the invite:

The Sussex School of Imaginal Ecology is a small hedge school based in Stanmer- one dedicated to the arts and ecopsychology. Located in Stanmer Park, its philosphical principles are rooted in imaginal ecology - that we have lost touch with a proper understanding and practice of the imagination and that this is central for the redemption of culture, psyche and self.

With that lost, we lose touch with the deeper beauty and reality of the living world.

Our days combine seminars, discussion, experiential learning, creative practice and communal reflection. We hold a space that offers a chance to make you think, stimulate creativity and reflect together. Communitas, veritas, poesis.

Our introductory class is called “THRESHOLD”. The imagination is a liminal space - a paradoxical space that is both between and within. Each time we create we cross a threshold into the imaginal. Thresholds abound in the mythic imagination - a dark hole in an gnarled wet tree, a sky coloured gateway that stretches up into the clouds, a wardrobe in a quiet room that has no back.

Thresholds create containers, and so are a cruicial ingredient in the observation that art as ritual quality to it. Therefore, paying attention to thresholds allow us to start to make art that can be transformational rather than entertaining. It allows us to separate from an overwhelm of images in order to value the ones that matter to us.

Nature provides thresholds both it’s the structure of its days, seasons, and years. Thresholds within life, between life and death. In the old stories, the threshold between this world and the imaginal was sometimes understood a mirror of the threshold between life and death. The Dream and the Underworld, as James Hillman put it.

Gathering on 31st October—the traditional eve of Samhain—we will be working on a day when the concept of the ‘threshold’ carries a particularly deep, ancient resonance, a time to remember and imagine those we love who have died.

For this day you will:

Be introduced to key ideas in imaginal ecology
work with the pattern of an old initiatory fairy tale
create your own threshold
work with it in the Great Wood of Stanmer.

Core information and Reading List:

The Architecture of Attention : sensory gating and orientation to the imaginal
The Matter with Things Iain McGilcrist
Myths we Live By By Mary Midgely
The Soul of the World : Re: visioning a psychology of the image
Re:Visioning Psychology by James Hillman
The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World by James Hillman
The Intelligence of the Heart : the heart as an organ of imaginal perception
The Secret Language of Plants and Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm by Stephen Harrod Buhner
The Shadow and the Wild Twin : tracking the shadow of the wild through creative practice
Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw
Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales by Marie Von Franz
A Little Book of the Human Shadow by Robert Bly

At the core of these classes are a commitment to experiential learning, creative practice through immersion in nature, the mythic imagination, facilitation of a group and individual process.

About your facilitator

Toby is the author of “into the dreaming dark: 33 poems of imaginal ecology” a book of poems about finding the
He began his work by training as a dramatherapist, in a programme that specialised in adapting ritual theatre into a structure that offers psychological healing.
From this he has practice established that now stretches back over 20 years, mostly working with families affected by substance misuse and leading a team of arts therapists there working with families in trouble, leading their Outdoor Arts programme, and conducting original research into the role of the archetypal imagination in the psychotherapeutic process.
He has been part of the team that creates Explorations in Climate Psychology for the Climate Psychology Alliance and has co-faciliated their Through the Door training.
He is a storyteller and a musician and a partner in the Ecomusicology Project, and creater and writer of The Imaginal Ecologist newsletter.