As summer reaches its crescendo, we are starting to think about autumn and what the colder months will bring. For me, the falling of leaves and the chill mists on the evening air always draw me back to Middle-earth, with the desire to journey again through the imaginal realm.
Thus, it is my delight to announce that with Nura Learning I will again be teaching the course Journey to the Imaginal Realm: Reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. For those who were unable to attend last year, we gladly invite you to join us. We have also heard that some class participants from last year wish to repeat the annual journey, and we welcome you back with open arms. It will be such a pleasure to go on this adventure together with new and old travelers alike. We are also offering the course on a weekend this time, and at an earlier hour of the day, to be able to accommodate more people’s schedules both in terms of work commitments and time zones!
Learn More and Register
Course Description
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien has been a beloved story to several generations since its publication in the mid-1950s. The story has a timeless quality to it, and engages with a complex struggle between good and evil, death and immortality, power and freedom. The Lord of the Rings blends otherworldly romance with the high rhetoric of epic mythology, at times interwoven with the internal depths of the nineteenth century novel and the political climate of the twentieth century. As Tolkien’s close friend and colleague C. S. Lewis once said: “Nothing quite like it has been done before. This book is like lightning from a clear sky . . . here are beauties which pierce like swords and burn like cold iron.”
The Lord of the Rings is a text treated by many as a sacred text, one to be returned to year after year, or read aloud with loved ones. The Lord of the Rings has become a myth for our time. This course, now in its second year running, offers a journey through Tolkien’s magnum opus in a community of learning, guided by a scholar who has spent more than two decades engaging Tolkien’s writings and artwork. This course is designed both for newcomers to Tolkien’s narrative, and for veteran travelers through Middle-earth’s many realms. Together we will explore the grand themes and hidden nuances of Tolkien’s epic story, connecting The Lord of the Rings to the larger mythology of Middle-earth, and situating Tolkien’s process of writing within his own powerful experiences of the imaginal realm.
We are welcoming back students who took the course in Fall 2018, who might like to journey once more through the imaginal realm in a company of fellows, continuing the tradition of reading The Lord of the Rings as an annual ritual.
To learn more and register, please visit: Nura Learning: Journey to the Imaginal Realm
Becca Tarnas 
Hey Becca, I participated in the course last year, and would love to do so again, just wondering if there is a discounted rate for past students? Thanks! Ryan
Yes Ryan, we do! Jeremy Johnson will be emailing the prior students (and there is a post about this on the FB page). Let me know if you don’t hear from him soon!