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Free Online Talk · Eranos, Gathering Place of Mysticism: Light of the Numinous in History's Dark Night with Teddy Hamstra, Ph.D
7pm ET (NYC time)
Monday, January 19, 2026
RSVP with email at checkout
PLEASE NOTE: Video playback of free events is only available to Patreon members. Become a Member HERE.
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org.
As the shadows of the Third Reich gathered in the late 1930s, a small coterie of scholars engaged in the esoteric began gathering in Ascona, Switzerland, in the hopes of generating a counterforce, a mystical response to history's dark turn that would light a new path. Lofty though this ambition seems, the intellectuals who participated in the Eranos Conferences believed that through their interdisciplinary exchange of wisdom, the storm clouds of totalitarianism might encounter the power of mysticism as a source for hope and care.
By drawing together luminaries such as Carl Jung, Gerschom Scholem, Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell, Henri Corbin and D.T. Suzuki (among many others), Eranos became mysticism's premier midcentury space. The insights of psychoanalysis, mythology, religious studies, literary criticism, cultural history, and even the sciences, were brought to bear for a common purpose beyond mere intellectual exchange.
This lecture draws upon the instructor’s archival research into Joseph Campbell's role as the editor of The Eranos Yearbooks, along with primary and secondary sources to suggest that the legacy of Eranos remains a provocative and rich text for contemplating mysticism's relationship with history. In anticipation of the upcoming Morbid Anatomy class on this topic, this lecture will serve as an introductory overview to the project of Eranos, from its ambitions to its shortcomings, as a crucial episode in the history of spirituality itself, and how its insights might offer us a model for what a "commons" grounded in the mystical may entail for our contemporary moment.
Teddy Hamstra, Ph.D., is an author, professional mythologist, and creative consultant based in Los Angeles. A graduate of the University of Southern California's PhD program in English Literature & Visual Studies, his dissertation was entitled "Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mysticism." Currently, he works with the Joseph Campbell Foundation on research initiatives and is at work on a full-length book.
7pm ET (NYC time)
Monday, January 19, 2026
RSVP with email at checkout
PLEASE NOTE: Video playback of free events is only available to Patreon members. Become a Member HERE.
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org.
As the shadows of the Third Reich gathered in the late 1930s, a small coterie of scholars engaged in the esoteric began gathering in Ascona, Switzerland, in the hopes of generating a counterforce, a mystical response to history's dark turn that would light a new path. Lofty though this ambition seems, the intellectuals who participated in the Eranos Conferences believed that through their interdisciplinary exchange of wisdom, the storm clouds of totalitarianism might encounter the power of mysticism as a source for hope and care.
By drawing together luminaries such as Carl Jung, Gerschom Scholem, Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell, Henri Corbin and D.T. Suzuki (among many others), Eranos became mysticism's premier midcentury space. The insights of psychoanalysis, mythology, religious studies, literary criticism, cultural history, and even the sciences, were brought to bear for a common purpose beyond mere intellectual exchange.
This lecture draws upon the instructor’s archival research into Joseph Campbell's role as the editor of The Eranos Yearbooks, along with primary and secondary sources to suggest that the legacy of Eranos remains a provocative and rich text for contemplating mysticism's relationship with history. In anticipation of the upcoming Morbid Anatomy class on this topic, this lecture will serve as an introductory overview to the project of Eranos, from its ambitions to its shortcomings, as a crucial episode in the history of spirituality itself, and how its insights might offer us a model for what a "commons" grounded in the mystical may entail for our contemporary moment.
Teddy Hamstra, Ph.D., is an author, professional mythologist, and creative consultant based in Los Angeles. A graduate of the University of Southern California's PhD program in English Literature & Visual Studies, his dissertation was entitled "Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mysticism." Currently, he works with the Joseph Campbell Foundation on research initiatives and is at work on a full-length book.