“Pantheon of Paradoxes”:
Archetypal Imagery in the Ancient Egyptian Pantheon

Jacqueline Thurston, M.A.

Friday, November 20, 2020; 7:30-9:30 pm Pacific Time.

Jung’s understanding of synchronicity, the intersection between the inner world of dreams and the imagination and the outer physical world, and his exploration of cultural and personal archetypal imagery both inform and guide this presentation.

Drawing from images from Thurston’s book Sacred Deities of Ancient Egypt, we will examine the archetypal nature of the divine feminine and the divine masculine, with attention to the presence of dualities and opposites contained within a single deity, and to the role paradox plays in the dynamic relationships between individual deities. We will explore how the vicissitudes of nature, such as our current pandemic, shaped the very essence of the gods of ancient Egypt. Our contemporary interest in gender and identity makes the exploration of attributes of both feminine and masculine deities in the ancient Egyptian pantheon both intriguing, informative, and relevant.

Jacqueline Thurston, M.A., is an artist, writer and Professor Emerita in the School of Art and Design at San Jose State University, where she taught for over forty years.  She is twice a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholar to Egypt. In 2017, her first book of art was purchased by the Library of Congress for their Rare Book Collection. Thurston’s photographs are in major national and international museum collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Library of Congress; the International Museum of Photography; the Carnegie Museum of Art; the Albright-Knox Museum; the Cantor Museum; the University of New Mexico Museum of Art; the Center for Pho­tography at Arizona University; the Bibliothèque Nationale, France; and the Bibliothèque Alexandria, Egypt.