Art and Psyche: The Illuminated Imagination, April 4-7, 2019, University of California at Santa Barbara

“Healing Encounters with the Objective Psyche as Imaged in San Rock Art”

a presentation by Frank N. McMillan

April 4, 2019, UCSB

Abstract: Many contemporary individuals are strangers to both nature and themselves.  An organic prototype for a healthier way of being at home in the universe exists, however, embodied by Africa’s San people.  For 100,000 years, the San’s ancestors lived in balance with their environment, leaving no mark upon the land except for exquisite rock paintings that depict their dreams and healing visions almost as deftly as the brush of the cosmogonic consciousness that created them.  Through an exploration of San rock art that depicts numinous encounters with the objective psyche, we will examine these early ways of “dreaming the dream on.”