Not I, But the Wind

Oracular Poetics in Creative, Spiritual, and Healing Practices Oracular instruments, such as the Tarot and the I Ching, along with practices such as trance, vision questing, seance, dream incubation, and active imagination have long been utilized by artists, mystics, and healers as a means for receiving guidance from forces and beings beyond our day-to-day reality. Highlighting the lives and work of a select group of artists, mystics, and healers, this talk will examine a variety of divinatory techniques which have been known to offer messages and instructions to the conscious mind prepared to receive them and act upon them. An “Oracular Poetics” includes not only listening and receiving, but also action–the making of something from the instructions that one receives. Mary Antonia Wood is Associate Professor and Chair of the Depth Psychology & Creativity program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. Wood is also a visual artist and writer who has drawn inspiration from her Mexican American heritage, as well as from multicultural mythologies, philosophies, and spiritual traditions, for the past thirty years. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions and collected by individuals, institutions, and public arts programs in the US. Image: Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, The Baleful Head, Public Domaine