Welcome to the first edition of Deluge.
Deluge started, as do many things in the world, as an idea. Six years ago, when we were just beginning to consider the possiblity of having Archetypal Dreamwork manifest in other ways besides personal work done in the intimacy of the one-on-one relationship between client and therapist, I was on the phone with Christa Lancaster talking about the idea of starting a website. She was living in Montpelier, Vermont and I was living in Meridan, New Hampshire.
I remember I was sitting on the back of the couch while talking with Christa on the phone. Our friendship was just beginning to blossom as we talked about the possibilities of creating a website for the work. My daughter, who was still a toddler at the time, was upstairs having a nap, so I had a few minutes to talk.
Six years ago, we had no website, we had no books, we had no North of Eden.
We talked about the website, about what it could be, but then our talk turned to our own writing. Christa was working on her memoir at that time, her memoir that is now called Vessel and is part of Sex, Trauma and Conjunctio. I was working on my MFA in Poetry.
As we talked about the site and about our writing, it suddenly struck me. What about doing a creative journal.
The baseline question of why do a website, why do a journal was also part of the conversation. Why take our very personal work, our very personal process of working toward becoming ourselves and from that place coming into our relationship with the Divine, however that looked, and make it public? Why would we want to become so visible.
But being both writers, we knew why. It is not enough to just write.
Just as it is not enough to do personal work without, at some point, manifesting who we are in the world.
At the heart of working with our dreams is the intention of becoming ourselves and of manifesting who we are in the world. This means being true to that creative process, no matter how it manifests.
Six years later, our website has been going strong for five years and North of Eden, founded by Marc Bregman and Christa, has become an organization. Six years later, we have a retreat center where we have been having retreats for five years and we are launching our school, The Center for Archetypal Dreamwork.
Six years later, I have been joined by Karla VanVliet, writer, poet, painter, singer/songwriter, in bringing this dream into a reality. It is such a thrill for me and for all of us at North of Eden, to launch Deluge.
Deluge is a place to make visible the creative procoess of manifestation. A place for people to become visible in their process as well as visible in their creatives selves. A place for this community of widely diverse people to show off their wildly creative diversity.
The definition of deluge is inundation, to be inundated. The root meaning of deluge is to wash, to cleanse, away. Our intention? To create a place for the abundance, the inundation of the creative energy that blossoms inside when we work with our dreams. To be awash in that creative energy, the energy that comes from finding the soul and finding our own particular and individual and quirky relationship with the Divine. The manifestation of that connection with the Divine.
Let us know what you think - you can email us directly at deluge@northofeden.com.
We hope you feel awash.
Sincerely,
Susan Marie Scavo
CoEditor-in-Chief