Friday, 8 December 2017
6.30pm Annual used-book Sale
7.00pm End-of-Year Fellowship & Presentations
8.00pm Guest Lecture
The Beauty & Power of Ceremony
Reassuring Wellspring for the Unconscious
“A ritual is the enactment of a myth... Since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, you are being put in accord with....wisdom that is inherent within you anywhere. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”
Ceremony has always been a powerful expression of culture all over the world. There is a human longing for the experience of transcendence within both religious and secular events. We expect them to be highly structured and inspirational. Yet we are more uncertain of our attitudes to personal ceremony — namings, weddings, commitments, funerals, anniversaries, or the more rare rituals such as ‘coming of age’. Quality secular ceremony is primarily an Australian phenomenon that has now spread to other Western countries. Tonight Dally will present this history along with considerations regarding the impact of the public witness of ceremony and the implications for the individual unconscious.
DALLY MESSENGER III in 1974, Attorney-General Lionel Murphy, appointed him one of the first civil celebrants and Secretary of original celebrant association. As the program progressed, insights and skills were acquired. This distilled experience became the syllabus for training through the International College of Celebrancy. Dally has continually sought to explain the profound implications of ceremony to the wider community. He was founding publisher-editor of the magazine Dance Australia to this day as Australia’s oldest performing arts publication. He has written six books including the classic Ceremonies and Celebrations and Murphy’s Law and the Pursuit of Happiness, history of Celebrancy.