Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation by Patricia Damery

A psychological and spiritual reckoning, 'Farming Soul' questions theories and assumptions that date back to the early 1900's and the days of Freud, assumptions which have too often separated spirituality from psychology. Suffering the trials of her own individuation process, Patricia Damery finds answers through a series of unconventional teachers and through her relationship to the psyche and to the land-answers that are surprisingly deeply intertwined. One strand of 'Farming Soul' is about redeveloping a relationship to the land-Mother Earth-being rooted in a particular place and being guided by the tenets of Rudolf Steiner's Biodynamic(TM) agriculture. Another strand is about Patricia Damery's professional path of becoming a Jungian analyst, which includes an exploration of four aspects of the body: the physical, the etheric, the astral, and the mental. We are acquainted with and have similar assumptions about the physical body, but we are mostly unfamiliar with these three supersensible bodies. Jung and two of his closest and well-respected colleagues, Marie Louise von Franz and Barbara Hannah, address the subtle body in their writings, but analytical psychology (and psychology in general) has avoided this aspect of Jung's work. 'Farming Soul' is a courageous offering that will help reconnect us to our deeper selves, the often untouched realities of soul, and at the same time ground us in our physical relationship to self and Mother Earth.