A short video (12 mins) introducing the Magnum Opus Programme by our Head of Learning, Stephen Anthony Farah MA
Student Testimonials
The Centre’s creation and space holding for all the modules/applications here are profoundly alchemical. I have been altered by each and every exploration through this coursework. It has truly gone beyond catharsis and several of my complexes have shifted: the hyper-vigilance [Tracker-Detective], drinking patterns [The Midnight Caller], my obsessive internet activity [Narcissus’ Mirror], and not being able to sleep [The Night Owl] have quieted and slowed. I sleep deeply since Nigredo and feel much more at peace than 10 months ago. My agoraphobia has lifted quite a bit as I find myself outside more, exploring some of the amenities city life provides. It’s also been easier to make art again.
Sue Ann Autrand
I am feeling heaps of gratitude and this electrical excitement after having connected more to my Myth, previously expressed, and what the Telos more clearly is for each archetype. I am thrilled at the understanding of my life I am receiving now! How incredible that just the initial application has opened up my understanding of myself so tremendously. I feel really empowered and compassionate towards so much of what I have experienced in my life up until now. I am sooooo nourished on so many levels learning about archetypes and Jung’s work!!
Kassandra
This is my third Magnum Opus course. It continues to surprise me how powerful the applications are. Each time I dive into the dark waters and instead of drowning, I return with little gems of insight about myself. I am very grateful for the opportunity to do this work. I also notice how this process is gentle and organic. Things are shifting for me in a way that feels whole and expansive. It feels like missing pieces have been installed and restored to their rightful place.
Terri Vernon
Thanks so much for the lessons and teaching. It truly has been life changing.
Emma Stradling
Thank you participants and the facilitators for this journey. This was a great way to walk with us and to guide us. A lots of sign posts, inviting and providing sense of direction. I wish the Centre all the best, you are doing great work, work that touches the essence of our individual and collective development. With love
Jos Niesten
It’s hard to believe that this course is coming to a close. I recall that at the end of 2016 I was feeling quite lost and somewhat lonely and tossing up between doing a writer’s retreat, a zen meditation retreat or another kind of less demanding spiritual retreat. Then I saw a promo for this course and I signed up for it with barely a second thought. What a brilliant decision it turned out to be! The Nigredo and Albedo stages were the most intense and through them I was able to release ghosts of my past that had been haunting me for much of my life. To try and summarise briefly what this means to me would be very difficult but suffice to say that I feel like I have been released from the curses of both witches and ogres. How can I possibly express the gratitude I feel? It seems impossible but my hope (and also my confidence) is that the healing I have done personally and that we have done collectively here has the ability to positively affect the whole in ways that we cannot comprehend. There is no doubt in my mind of the importance of the work being done at the CAJS and all who participate in what is offered, so thank you Stephen, Anja, Max and all participants from the bottom of my heart.
Gloria Oleman
SUCH a Magnificent Course. SUCH an unexpected journey. One of the most impactful experiences because it was just the right time, the course chose ME. Realise that Alchemy isn’t about making life better, and more about uncovering, engaging and embracing the complexity of our journey towards Individuation.
Hanlie Raath
Thank you so much Stephen, Anja and Max. It’s like you’ve been guardians of my soul for the past year. I’ve been hanging on your every word and eagerly awaiting your every deliberation. I would also like to thank everyone else, who took part in this course for all their help, insights, shared stories and heartfelt concerns and attention along the way. You were all a joy to be on this journey with. I loved all the feedback.
Michael Stevens
What a great class. We have had a tremendous run and will probably never be the same. It has been very powerful and educational in sharing the applications to a group. I want to thank everyone in assisting me make the transition to the next and final stage in my Individuation Process. I now have a much better appreciation on how the Symbolic Life can help me with my everyday literal and physical life.
Rick Williams
To the whole centre of applied Jungian studies school, I am so happy you exist. You are shifting the world, one person at a time, allowing the space and the safety for each person to go through their own journey. Thank you times a million. One of the best decisions I took in my life.
Klara B
I have to admit I am feeling sad that this epic journey is coming to an end, mainly because I will miss the group, knowing you are there and I can reach out and share my strange dreams and weird thoughts and experiences and you all will understand. Even though I’ve never met any of you, I haven’t ever felt this comfort with anyone, anywhere. I thank you Stephen Anthony Farah Max Machanik Anja van Kralingen from the bottom of my heart, I am not the same person I was before I started this. I am profoundly changed.
Terrie Scultz
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Thank you to everyone I went through this journey with in the past year. While my sharing of the exercises slowed down as my life opened up, I gained tremendous self-understanding through the readings and applications. I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the forum here and knowing that many of us are in a similar place in life. I have really appreciated the programming, which I often promote to others. For me the last year has been a true gift, an eye-opening journey and I will be forever grateful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! I wish everyone the best and hope to hear from you in the future. Be well!
Lori Ersolmaz
There’s not much conflict going on in any area right now due to COVID isolation. But I did realize there is one “mild” issue that needs resolution: the need to accept the reality that my wife and I will very likely have to move over the next four or five years, due primarily to her slowly growing infirmity due to fibromyalgia, back issues and COPD. The BOOMERANG is what popped into my head (it really did, I’m not reverting to it out of familiarity). And I realized, wow, what goes out comes back… I’ve been trying to get her to take seriously the idea that we may not—and in fact, probably won’t—be able to live and eventually die in the house we have now. And to wrestle with the question a bit more than by just saying, “no way I’m going into a nursing home.” So, I took a deep breath at our next meeting (we have fairly regular meetings about “business” matters of one kind or another) and said, we need to talk about longer-term care and residence issues. To my delight, she came right out and outlined all the logical alternatives that we face. In my perception, we made more progress on that issue in that five minutes than we had over the previous that many years. So, the seriousness “came back.” I was serious about it, and she finally became so as well! Great assignment.
David Low
This sounds all a little unbelievable, but there’s definitely been a shift within me. Quite a profound shift regarding “the event”. It really does feel like a healing of sorts.
Justin Hosking
Immediately after writing this, I paused a moment to reflect upon what my symbol would be….
As the week passed, I tucked the idea of the symbol away in a comfortable little spot in my head. I waited patiently for the painful memories of my father to return so that I could try the exercise but they never came. A week later, I’m still wondering what happened. The only thing I can deduce is that the simple action of writing down my feelings in regard to the situation has helped unbury the hurt and assisted in trying to set it free. I have the symbol now and am ready to use it if necessary.
Michale Raab
Coming to CAJS and going through the Magnum Opus program has given me a structure and logic I woefully needed and a hope I couldn’t have imagined. Although I had been working with my inner world for most of my life in my development as a writer and poet, this has given me new ways not only in continuing in my creative endeavours, if I so choose, but maybe more importantly, has given me hope as a person.
–Linda
Albedo opened me up to listening more closely to my dreams and connecting with my ego. I’ve always been a dreamer and able to remember the convoluted, symbolic messages, awakening and writing out as much as I can recall. The exercises helped me recognize myself better on the material and spiritual plans. They opened doorways during my varying cycles of hope and despair, clarity and illusion, success, and failure, while I sought my inner balance while being propelled to grow and transform… Thank you to Stephen, Anja, Caleb, Tasha, Johann, and my fellow travellers on this journey.
– Marly
Looking back over the year during Magnum Opus it was to be one of the darkest periods in my life, not due to the course itself, but due to the myriad factors in my life. We were in the second year of the COVID 19 epidemic. I was losing touch with everything I knew before about engaging with life due to the forced isolation. I was well into my own private isolation when the course started… Magnum Opus is a wholly different level of turning inward and the compost I needed for an awakening. This course was the life raft I grappled with during these significant life changes while lost at sea. It gave me a container to do the deep inner work with the structure I needed to do it. I believe this last year to be the darkest night for my soul simply because of the largess of the areas in my life in which I was affected. In addition, I was struck to the core with my disenchantment in my relationships and ultimately the relationship with myself, which was transformed through Magnum Opus.
– Susan
It was so lovely to connect with you all in person [on the webinar]! I’m really going to miss the forum and community here and am eternally grateful for what we’ve shared, learned, and uncovered together. Thank you all!
–Carla
Thank you, Stephen. I felt the same and so much gratitude to you and Tasha and Johann for guiding us through this profound process of self-exploration. I couldn’t have done it without you or my fellow dearly cherished companions.
–Kristen
Thanks Stephen Anthony Farah for the phrase “thank you for entrusting us with your soul’s care.” That’s what it was you all did, and I did not have the words for it but now I do. Keep doing what you do. It’s beautiful!
–Sushmita
My experience with the Magnum Opus (MO) has been very useful and powerful. I really enjoyed it. I had worked with the Jungian concepts before in my artistic journeying but with this program I got a clarification about the system and I got a language that works for me.
– Ilona
Albedo and Symbols. This part was probably my second biggest field of new discoveries. That there is on language in my life, I have heard/seen a lot, but what I cannot speak nor read – language of symbols. That my life is full of them and… there is part of my life what is consisting only of them – my dreams. Discovery, that I need to learn to speak that language ASAP! And I started and it gave me immediate results. Thank You and Your team for the Journey, hope to meet You again.
–Ville
So perhaps this is the place I have come to on this MO journey. Not a destination, no fanfare, the work of a life continues, but with more awareness and capacity to explore the inner and deeper realms of this existence. And the acknowledgement that this is the real work of a life, and that it requires dedication, confidence in one’s capacities and resources, the ability and commitment to see the gold in the seemingly mundane experiences of this extraordinary thing we call life.
Thank you to Stephen Anthony Farah, Tasha Tollman, and Johann Mynhardt, and thank you to all of you my collaborators on this journey. I look forward to more adventures with some of you in the exploration of the golden flower, and to the others, may your own explorations and journeys go well through both the darkness and the light.
And now at last, to sleep perchance to dream.
–Michael
Thank you all for all that you have offered and been on this amazing journey.
–Nick
Time goes so fast and here we are at the end of an incredible journey as a community and the beginning of the rest of our lives.
Thank you everyone, fellow students, facilitators, admin, course writers and seminar leaders. You have devised a course of such depth that will reverberate throughout the rest of my life.
I have learned so much from the writings, the seminars, and the sharing of all of our depths. I cherish the revelations everyone has encountered and shared. I’ve been in mourning this last couple of weeks for the ending of this amazing group. Thank you everyone and much love and blessings to you all.
–Yvonne
