Bill Plotkin, PhD, is the founder of the Animas Valley Institute in Durango, CO. He is author of Soulcraft: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche, Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World, Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche, and The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries.

Here he explains his use of the term “soul” as relating to an individual’s unique ecological niche in mythopoetic terms. He points out that soul initiation is not the same as a vision quest, a hero’s journey, psychotherapy, nor a rite of passage. It can be a very lengthy process involving a dissolution of the ego. He shares many details of the process, relating it to the biological transformation of a caterpillar to butterfly. He also describes Carl Gustav Jung’s soul initiation as documented in the Red Book.

(Recorded on February 24, 2021)

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Published on September 24, 2026