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| As a creative visionary, Laura explores the
liminal boundaries between the known and the unknown, the
literal and the metaphoric, the visible and the invisible,
in search of evidence that imagination, spirit, and beauty
are still alive in our world. |
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Psychopomp Stories: Contemplating
Death in a Spiritually Diverse Society is
Laura's PhD dissertation, which examines the archetypal
role of the psychopomp, and how these mythical afterlife
guides are returning to Western consciousness at this
time to lead us towards a better relationship with death
and dying.
Throughout history psychopomps have been imagined
in a diverse array of forms, including: the Greek god
Hermes, Egypt’s
jackal-headed god Anubis, the Australian morning star
Barnumbir, the Aurora Borealis of Labrador Eskimos, the
Zoroastrian guide named Daena, the Valkeries of Northern
Europe, the Japanese Bodhisattva Jizo, angelic beings
including Islam’s
Azrail and the Christian Archangel Michael, and a number
of different animal guides and natural phenomena. In
addition to exploring the stories of these escorts to
the afterlife, this dissertation looks at how mythology
and the archetypal images it contains, may be used to
help facilitate conversations about such difficult subjects
as death in today's spiritually diverse and multicultural
world. |
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| To find out more about this work,
see
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| Additional scholarly articles and papers are
available on such subjects as:
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| A small sampling of my paintings and photographs. |
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Website designed by Studio
Strong. © 1999-2008 Laura Strong. All rights reserved
worldwide. Images may not be reproduced without permission
of the artist. |
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“Myth is the
primordial language natural to [the] psychic processes, and
no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near
the richness and expressiveness of
mythical imagery.” |
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Carl Gustav Jung |
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