Patrick Harpur's The Philosopher's Secret Fire explores a forgotten understanding of imagination. Not fantasy or invention, but a living realm where myth, psyche, and world meet. This article reflects on imagination in psychotherapy, creative practice, and the imaginal dimension of reality.

Last week I visited the west country, during a spell of unusually prolonged warm and sunny weather for the British Isles during spring. This journey was not planned as a guide, but as an encounter with the mythic and magical in Devon and Cornwall, following a sense of place rather than a fixed route. Entering the Landscape - The Power Of Dartmoor The granite Tors of Dartmoor. I found these places profoundly strange and powerful, with the unusual forms of rock that occupy the

I offer both Art Psychotherapy, and Mentoring / Coaching sessions. There are many similarities and overlaps, for a start, in all my work with people I am interested in the life of the soul, and how difficulties or challenges can be guides and openings to depth, meaning, and transformation. Or in other words, the lifelong task of becoming yourself. However, Mentoring and Psychotherapy are not the same thing, and it is important to understand how they differ. There are many dif

There are certain books that feel less like something we simply read, and more like something we return to when a particular kind of understanding is needed. Martín Prechtel’s The Smell of Rain on Dust is one of those books. Its central insight is both simple and deeply challenging. That grief, in its fullest sense, cannot be separated from praise. If there is ever to be any real peace on earth, all people need to relearn and reestablish the now diminished and hidden arts of

The condition of this book tells a story, it has lived a life. A sign of its importance to me during the past decade, and no doubt beyond. In Crossing the Unknown Sea, David Whyte is drawing us towards a deeper and lasting shift in how we attend to our inner world of desires and dreams for a life well-lived, face the world and its demands, and truly engage in the conversational nature of reality. Pretending To Be Alive We may do the same work and do it well, but we may do it

There are certain ideas that seem to sit just beneath the surface of modern life, recognised in fragments, but rarely given their full significance. Imagination is one of them. In Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, Gary Lachman explores how imagination has been misunderstood, marginalised, and often reduced to something trivial or unreal within Western culture. What emerges instead is a very different picture. One in which imagination is not a secondary function of the mind,

There are certain books that feel less like something to be read from beginning to end, and more like something to return to, to open at any page and enter a particular world. Alchemy & Mysticism is one of those. I have returned to this Taschen volume many times. Each encounter offers something slightly different, not only in what is seen, but in how the images seem to work upon the imagination. The Opus as Image What strikes me most in these pages is that even where the mate

An exploration of material becoming living presence in the art object. Jungian analyst Warren Colman explores the formation of archetypes as derived from human engagement with their social and material environment. This is a phenomenological approach which sees psychic life as emergent from embodied action in the world, in contrast to a classical Jungian perspective which would view archetypes as pre-existent, either “inborn” biologically, or metaphysically a priori. As I und

There is a particular tension that many artists and creatives will recognise. A sense of something wanting to be expressed, alongside the realities and limitations that shape how, or whether, that expression can take form. This tension is not only practical. It is often deeply personal, touching on questions of identity, purpose, and what it means to bring something of oneself into the world. ...in a world that is more often than not associated with a harsh and destructive bo

There are times in life when the sense of direction we once had begins to falter. What once felt clear may no longer feel like our own, and the question of how to move forward becomes less certain. At these points, it is not always a lack of options that troubles us, but a deeper uncertainty about which path, if any, truly belongs to us. Traveller there is no path. The path is made by walking. These lines from a poem by Antonio Machado are often encountered at moments when we

If explanation is the self-cure for curiosity, we have a lot of explaining to stop doing; if desire is the refuge from wide-angled attention, we have a lot of wanting to relinquish. In Attention Seeking, Adam Phillips offers a way of thinking about attention that moves beyond the obvious. Attention is something we give and receive, and is in turns needed, wanted, and feared in its various forms. In psychotherapy, we notice that a symptom, or a state of mind, is something that

The work of James Hillman can feel both compelling and difficult to approach. His writing does not sit easily within conventional ideas of psychology, and often asks something different of the reader. Less a system to be understood, and more a way of seeing to be entered into. This copy of A Blue Fire has been with me for the best part of twenty years. It was one of the first ‘psychology’ books I owned, and it has lived a life. The cover is worn, the pages marked by time and

Carl Jung’s reflections from Bollingen reveal a psyche that is not confined to the individual but flows through nature, ancestry, and the deep roots of life. This expanded post explores Jung’s vision of the interconnectedness of self, soul, and the living world.

The First Encounter I discovered the work of Carl Jung during my mid-to-late teens, when I plucked this text from a shelf in a local bookshop. Having no idea at the time who this man was, or about psychoanalysis, I imagine I was attracted by the title. A Timely Passage in a Culture of Speed I find the following passage especially fascinating today, in a world where we are so often required to ‘know’ quickly. Alluding to a way of working that seeks not to impinge upon the...

Cecil Collins is an artist I have a great appreciation for. This book documents the thoughts and reflections of many of those who knew him, whether as a collector, curator, student of his unique teaching methods, or through other connections. Collins’ work carries a particular quality that is difficult to define, yet unmistakable when encountered. It speaks from a place that feels both ancient and immediate, personal and universal. Images arise from the fountainhead of human

An introduction to Soul-oriented Mentoring & Coaching. One to one online sessions. Art | Spirituality | Work & Purpose | Nature & Psyche.

'The Unquiet Land' has been selected for this year's exhibition. Click the image above for further details on the RWA annual exhibition...

In the center of Newport you will find this gallery specialising in visual art and crafts, made predominantly by artists living in the...

Memory Of Ancient Light will appear in this exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. Celebrating their 100th year, this...

The winter exhibition at this excellent Cardiff arts space is now open. I'm pleased to be showing my painting 'At The Roots Of Silence',...