Description: 
We tend to think of fiction as something we just make up. Why, then, do so many authors converse
with their characters? Why did alchemists of old describe imagination as a medicine? In this
presentation we will consider fiction and imagination as sources of knowledge, doorways for deep
transformation, and tools for making change in the world, brought about not by pushing and
shoving, but by inviting and inspiring. We will also hear about loreology, a methodology for exploring
and expanding the guiding fictions by which we navigate in life. Story, fiction, and imagination can
also work as a kind of therapy (“lamplighting”) for worldviews that are sometimes more deeply
troubled than the people who hold them. We cannot assemble a better world until we can first
imagine it.

Bio:
Craig Chalquist, PhD, PhD, is Academic Program Director of Consciousness, Psychology, and
Transformation at National University. His background is in depth psychology, ecopsychology,
philosophy, mythology, and consciousness studies. He is also the author of the near-future
Lamplighter Trilogy. Visit his website at Chalquist.com.