Richard Tarnas

A cultural historian and philosopher, Richard Tarnas draws together the history of ideas, depth psychology and archetypal astrology. At CIIS in San Francisco (the California Institute of Integral Studies) he founded the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness programme and taught there for some thirty years, on the evolution of consciousness, Jungian and archetypal psychology and archetypal cosmology; he is now Professor Emeritus. Earlier, he spent ten years at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, rising to director of programmes and education, and he has been a regular lecturer at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

The Passion of the Western Mind, widely used in universities, follows Western thought from ancient Greece into the postmodern era. In Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View he argues for correlations between planetary cycles and archetypal patterns, both in history and in individual lives; the Scientific and Medical Network named it its Book of the Year. Prometheus the Awakener, a shorter essay, looks at the archetype of Uranus. He was once president of the International Transpersonal Association. These days he teaches mostly online, with courses at the Kosmos Institute and, alongside Stanislav Grof, the Psyche & Cosmos programmes on The Shift Network.