The Many Faces of Mary Magdalene: Everywoman: Mary Magdalene as the Mirror of the Archetypal Feminine

In July 2015 Brigid’s Place will host a monumental, first-ever national month-long festival to reshape the legacy of Mary Magdalene.

The Many Faces of Mary Magdalene invites all people to celebrate and re-imagine the beloved disciple of Jesus, the one who received the first revelation of his resurrection from the dead.

Through art, scholarship, spiritual practices, and dynamic teaching about Mary Magdalene, a new vision of the Magdalene will form as we find our own story intertwined with a woman of immeasurable beauty and faith capable of turning hearts toward the good.

July 23, 2015 Brigid’s Place and Jung Center of Houston present Everywoman: Mary Magdalene as the Mirror of the Archetypal Feminine at The Jung Center, 5200 Montrose Blvd., Houston, TX 77006. Featured speaker Dr. Kayleen Asbo.

Trace the evolving path of the Mary Magdalene myth across history and culture and discover how her story reflects elements of the archetypal feminine in this multi-disciplinary evening.

In her influential essay “Structural Aspects of the Feminine Psyche”, Carl Jung’s longtime collaborator and lover Toni Wolff articulated four archetypal aspects of the feminine: the Mother, Heteira, Amazon and Medial (or Mystic). Despite a brief, narrow and very consistent depiction of Mary Magdalene in the New Testament as a faithful witness and disciple, the mythic Mary Magdalene has adopted elements of each and every one of Wolff’s archetypes in different periods of history through art, literature, legend and drama.

We will explore the surprising history of how Mary Magdalene has carried the shadow of each successive age in her evolving image–and we’ll discuss how the current fascination with Mary Magdalene as “Mrs. Jesus” may be revealing the unconscious collective yearnings of our own time.

Kayleen Asbo, PhD, weaves myth, music, depth psychology, history and art with experiential learning as a faculty member of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Osher Life Long Learning Institutes at UC Berkeley, Sonoma State University and Dominican University.

Educated at Smith College, Mills College, the San Francisco Conservatory, Pacifica Graduate Institute and the University of California, Dr. Asbo holds three master’s degrees: in music (piano performance), mythology, and psychology. She has presented interdisciplinary lectures on Mary Magdalene at Oxford University in England, the Assisi Institute of Depth Psychology Conference in Italy, Chartres Cathedral in France, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and as resident mythologist for the San Francisco Opera.

“Kayleen Asbo is one of the best mythologists I have ever met in my life. She is a star who has brought so much to all of us who are looking and seeking to understand what spirit is. She has a way of creating a confluence between love, passion and scholarship”- Dr. Michael Conforti