Speakers
Presenting Live in Ascona
Our colloquium features six invited scholars in residence throughout the five-day gathering. Two extended lectures will be presented each day during the event's central days—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Gary Lachman
Gary Lachman is the author of numerous books exploring the evolution of consciousness, the history of the Western esoteric tradition, existential philosophy, and the cultural influence of the occult. His works include acclaimed biographies of figures such as Aleister Crowley, Rudolf Steiner, Carl Gustav Jung, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emanuel Swedenborg, P. D. Ouspensky, and Colin Wilson, as well as studies of Hermeticism, consciousness, and the intersections of esotericism, culture, and politics.
Lachman writes for journals and publications in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Europe, including Fortean Times, Quest, Strange Attractor, and Fenris Wolf, and his work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Guardian, Sunday Times, and other major outlets. He lectures widely across Europe and North America, and his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He serves on the adjunct faculty in Transformative Studies at California Institute of Integral Studies.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Lachman studied philosophy, managed a New Age bookshop, taught English literature, and worked as a science writer for UCLA. Earlier still, under the name Gary Valentine, he was a founding member of the pop group Blondie, with whom he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Born in New Jersey, he has lived in London since 1996.
Daniel Joseph Polikoff
Daniel Joseph Polikoff, PhD, is a poet, translator, essayist, and internationally recognized Rilke scholar whose work ranges across literature, depth psychology, anthroposophy, and the history of consciousness. He teaches at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is the author of numerous books of poetry, criticism, translation, and creative nonfiction, including In the Image of Orpheus: Rilke—A Soul History, his translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, Rue Rilke, and the recent Reset or Renaissance volumes.
Holding a PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University and a diploma in Waldorf Education from Rudolf Steiner College, Polikoff has long worked at the confluence of literary rigor and spiritual intelligence. His writing and teaching draw deeply on world literature, archetypal psychology, anthroposophy, and Neoplatonic thought, consistently seeking to illuminate the relation between the sensible and spiritual dimensions of human life.
Lisa Marchiano
Lisa Marchiano is a Jungian analyst, award-winning author, and podcaster whose work brings depth psychology into fruitful conversation with fairy tale, women’s inner life, and the symbolic work of psychic transformation. She is the author of The Vital Spark and Motherhood, books that draw on the healing intelligence of story and psyche to illuminate the challenges and possibilities of contemporary womanhood. She is also a host of the widely acclaimed depth-psychology podcast This Jungian Life, which has reached a broad international audience and become an important public forum for Jungian thought.
Marchiano received her BA from Brown University, holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, and a Master of Social Work from New York University, and trained at the Inter-regional Society of Jungian Analysts. In addition to her books, her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Journal of Analytical Psychology. A sought-after lecturer and workshop facilitator, she has taught and spoken widely in the United States and abroad.
Laurence Hillman
Laurence Hillman, PhD, is an internationally respected archetypal astrologer, consultant, and teacher whose work has been devoted for nearly five decades to illuminating the symbolic patterns that shape human character, vocation, and destiny. Born and raised in Zürich, he began his study of archetypes at the age of sixteen and went on to become one of the leading contemporary voices in archetypal astrology. As a professional archetypal coach, he helps individuals discern deeper purpose and life calling; as a consultant, he advises leaders and organizations in recognizing the archetypal forces that underlie culture, strategy, and long-range decision-making. He is also the co-creator of Archetypes at Work™, an innovative methodology for assessing and developing both individuals and institutions.
Hillman has lectured and led workshops internationally in distinguished settings, including the Globe Theatre in London, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Findhorn, Jean Houston’s Mystery School, the Faculty of Astrological Studies at Oxford Summer School, and Washington University in St. Louis, and he now also teaches through Kosmos Institute. He is the author of Planets in Play and co-author of Alignments and Archetypes at Work. With a PhD in psychology focused on Transformative Leadership, along with advanced degrees in business, construction management, and architecture, Hillman brings together depth psychology, symbolic imagination, and practical wisdom in a body of work that is at once intellectually rigorous and broadly applicable to both inner and collective life.
İpek S. Burnett
İpek S. Burnett, PhD, is a Turkish-American author, cultural critic, and educator. She is the author of A Jungian Inquiry into the American Psyche: The Violence of Innocence (Routledge, 2020) and the editor of Re-Visioning the American Psyche (Routledge, 2024). She is a contributing writer at CounterPunch and a published novelist and essayist in Turkey. In addition to her scholarly and literary work, she serves on the boards of organizations dedicated to social justice, human rights, and democracy, including PEN America, 826 Valencia, and the Human Rights Watch Executive Committee of San Francisco. Her professional affiliations include the International Association for Jungian Studies, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and APA Peace Psychology Division
Aaron Cheak
Aaron Cheak, PhD, is a distinguished scholar of comparative religion, philosophy, and esotericism whose work moves with unusual fluency across the boundaries of rigorous scholarship and the living currents of the Hermetic tradition. Educated at the University of Queensland, where he studied classical Sanskrit, German, Greek, religious studies, philosophy, and classics, he received his doctorate in Religious Studies in 2011 for his research on the French Hermetic philosopher René Schwaller de Lubicz. His intellectual range encompasses the phenomenology of consciousness, nondual streams in Eastern and Western thought, and the traditional hieratic sciences—alchemy, magic, theurgy, and tantra—fields in which he has become a widely respected interpreter. He also served as president of the International Jean Gebser Society from 2013 to 2015, further establishing his place as an important contemporary voice in the study of consciousness, symbolism, and integral philosophy.
Cheak is perhaps best known for the rare depth and refinement with which he brings neglected esoteric lineages into serious contemporary discourse. He is the editor of Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the Avant-Garde, the author of The Leaf of Immortality, and the founder and guiding force behind Rubedo Press, an independent publishing house devoted to works animated by what he calls the “sophianic fire.” His scholarship has been marked by sustained engagement with figures such as Jean Gebser and Schwaller de Lubicz, while his lectures and conference presentations have addressed subjects ranging from alchemical symbolism and primordial trust to Egyptian esotericism and the evolution of consciousness. Based in New Zealand, Cheak has cultivated a body of work distinguished not only by intellectual seriousness but by aesthetic sensitivity, philological care, and a rare capacity to recover the spiritual and metaphysical dignity of the world’s wisdom traditions for the present age.
Gelareh Khoie
Born in Tehran, Iran, Gelareh Khoie, PhD, is an artist, writer, scholar, and DJ whose work moves at the intersection of depth psychology, culture, education, and the imagination. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), she serves as an adjunct professor in the Depth Psychology and Creativity program at Pacifica Graduate Institute and is the founder of Kosmos Institute, an emerging school devoted to the renewal of wisdom-centered higher education. Her work is guided by a commitment to reuniting intellectual rigor, symbolic life, and transformative learning in service of a more soulful and humane culture.
With more than three decades of experience as an entrepreneur, creative leader, and institution builder, Dr. Khoie has founded and led successful ventures that have made a lasting impact on the communities they serve. She now brings that breadth of experience into her academic and cultural work, drawing on scholarship, leadership, and visionary practice to challenge reductive educational paradigms and help shape new models of higher learning capable of cultivating deeper forms of consciousness, creativity, and human flourishing.
Andrea Biasca-Caroni
Andrea Biasca-Caroni is Director of Hotel Ascona, the family-owned hotel and seminar center his family has stewarded for three generations, and a longtime cultural organizer whose work is deeply connected to the intellectual legacy of Monte Verità. Trained in hospitality management at the Hotel Management School in Geneva, he has for decades conceived and led international events in art, cinema, culture, and interdisciplinary dialogue.
He is also President of the Archivio Luigi Pericle, the nonprofit association dedicated to the preservation and study of the rediscovered Swiss artist Luigi Pericle, whose work he helped bring back to international attention. A scholar of Theosophy, esotericism, and art, Andrea has lectured at institutions including the Warburg Institute, the Royal Drawing School, and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and has published widely on these themes.
Presenting Online
In addition to our distinguished in-person speakers, several scholars will deliver online lectures on the colloquium theme in the months leading up to the gathering in Ascona.
Becca Tarnas
Becca Tarnas, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She received her doctorate from CIIS, where her dissertation, The Back of Beyond: The Red Books of C. G. Jung and J. R. R. Tolkien, brought depth psychology, literary imagination, and archetypal inquiry into a richly original dialogue. Her work moves at the intersection of philosophy, literature, ecology, and consciousness studies, with a particular gift for illuminating the imaginal dimensions of human experience.
She is an editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology and the author of Journey to the Imaginal Realm: A Reader’s Guide to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Her scholarship and public work reflect a sustained engagement with C. G. Jung, Tolkien, archetypal studies, and the ecological imagination, and she is currently researching and writing a biography of Stanislav Grof, co-founder of transpersonal psychology.
Mary Antonia Wood
Mary Antonia Wood, PhD, is a visual artist, mythologist, and educator whose work stands at the fertile intersection of depth psychology, creativity, and the imaginal life. She serves as Chair and Professor of the MA program in Depth Psychology and Creativity with Emphasis in the Arts and Humanities at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she has played a significant role in stewarding a distinctive form of graduate education devoted to soul, symbol, and the transformative vocation of art.
Dr. Wood holds both an MA and a PhD in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is the author of The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create (Routledge, 2022), a work that brings scholarly rigor and psychological depth to the question of what it means to create in conscious relation to the archetypal dimensions of imagination. Across her teaching, writing, and mentorship, she has become an important voice in articulating a vision of creativity as both a psychological practice and a mode of soul-making.
With more than twenty-five years of experience as a visual artist, Dr. Wood has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, and her work is held in both public and private collections. She is also the founder of Talisman Creative Mentoring, through which she supports artists and creators in cultivating a more authentic relationship to the deeper sources of their work. Her approach integrates mythology, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and contemplative traditions in service of a richly textured understanding of artistic vocation, one that joins erudition, imagination, and lived transformation.
Daniela Boccassini
Daniela Boccassini, PhD, is Professor of Italian at the University of British Columbia, where she teaches and writes in Italian and Romance Studies with a particular focus on the medieval and Renaissance worlds. Her scholarship moves across Dante studies, Jungian thought, Hermetic and gnostic traditions, alchemy, ecology, and the imaginal dimensions of culture, bringing philological rigor into dialogue with visionary and symbolic modes of knowing. Educated at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and the University of Milan, she has developed a body of work marked by unusual range, intellectual originality, and deep historical sensitivity.
Her work is guided by two central concerns: gnosis, understood as knowledge grounded in lived experience rather than abstraction, and “wildness,” the indomitable interconnectedness of ecology, culture, and spirit. She is the author and editor of numerous books and essays, including Il volo della mente, Via nova: Emergences of the Beyond from Lascaux to Today, and Oikosophia: From the Intelligence of the Heart to Ecophilosophy. Across her writing, Boccassini traces the esoteric, feminine, and visionary dimensions of Mediterranean and European intellectual history with rare erudition and depth.
Kali Nyima Cape
Kali Nyima Cape, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Georgia State University. A historian of Buddhist philosophy, she focuses on transnational Tibetan Buddhism, contemplative traditions, women in Buddhism, and the philosophical literature on ultimate reality, meditation, and esoteric practice. Her work brings rigorous historical and philological inquiry into dialogue with questions of embodiment, gender, resilience, and multiple ways of knowing, with particular attention to the fourteenth-century formation of Tibetan contemplative canons.
Cape received her PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia, where her dissertation focused on women and sexuality in esoteric Tibetan contemplative literature, especially Great Perfection (rdzogs chen). Drawing on decades of immersion in Tibetan Buddhist communities across India, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and North America, she writes with unusual depth at the intersection of Buddhist philosophy, contemplative pedagogy, feminist and decolonial theory, and the study of religious transformation. Her current manuscript, Yoginīs in Tibet, recovers the neglected history of women in Great Perfection traditions and contributes a vital new perspective to Buddhist studies, gender studies, and the history of consciousness.
Richard Tarnas
Richard Tarnas, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he was the founding director of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness department. During his thirty years there, he taught courses in the history of ideas, depth psychology, archetypal cosmology, cultural history, and the evolution of consciousness. He has also frequently lectured on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and was formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a narrative history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern that is widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network. He is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and was a long-time member of the Board of Governors for the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.
A Mythical Setting Worthy of the Conversation
A gathering of this kind requires more than a beautiful venue. It calls for a place capable of holding depth, seriousness, and transformation. Monte Verità offers precisely such a setting: historically resonant, naturally sublime, and uniquely suited to the caliber of exchange this colloquium seeks to cultivate.
