Spiritual Democracy ─ The Wisdom of Early American Visionaries for the Journey Forward

Exploring what the author calls the "shaman-poets"—Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson—this book demonstrates how far ahead of their times these writers were in forecasting developments of our current time. It was Whitman who first wrote of "Spiritual Democracy" as a vision of transformation and global equality. Steven Herrmann delves deep into the visionary expressions of this idea of Spiritual Democracy—"the realization of the oneness of humanity with the universe and all its forces"—in these early American writers, showing the influence the groundbreaking work of the geologist and thinker Alexander Von Humboldt had on Whitman and others. Writing that every member of the global community regardless of color, gender, or sexual orientation can realize these freedoms, the author explores how one can tap into the vitalizing source of equalizing, vocational energy to bring a sense of purpose and peace. Although the book shines as a work of literary criticism, the author's insights as a Jungian psychotherapist take the reader ever deeper into the creative impulses of Whitman, Melville, Dickinson, and other poets in their crafting of the seminal notion of Spiritual Democracy. In addition, Herrmann offers practical methodologies for personal and global transformation in the section, "Ten Ways to Practice Spiritual Democracy."

Table of Contents
Visions of Spiritual Democracy - Introduction
1. Cosmos
2. Spiritual Democracy as a Science of God
3. From Humboldt to Jung
4. Jung on Spiritual Democracy
5. Healing the National Complex
6. Whitman's "New Bible": The Foundation of a Religious Vision
7. Walt Whitman's Global Vision
8. The Bi-Erotic as Transcendent Sexuality
9. Shamanism and Spiritual Democracy: A Post-Humboldtian
10. Notion of the Cosmos
11. Whitman as a Preserver of the Psychic Integrity of the Community
12. Moby Dick: The Evolution of a New Myth for our Times
13. Herman Melville: The Quest for Yillah
14. Towards a Hypothesis of the Bi-erotic
15. Moby Dick and the Trickster
16. The Marriage of Sames: "A Bosom Friend"
17. Moby Dick: The Characters Behind the Names
18. The Fall of the Dictatorships as Portrayed in Moby Dick
19. Metamorphosis of the Gods
20. The Re-emergence of the Feminine
21. Afterward: A Bi-Erotic Model for The Way Forward
a) Ten Ways to Practice Spiritual Democracy

STEVEN HERRMANN has taught on Whitman and Melville at the C. G. Jung Institutes of San Francisco, Chicago, and Zurich, as well as at the Washington Friends of Walt Whitman, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz. Herrmann's expertise in Jungian Literary Criticism makes him one of the seminal thinkers in the international field and the foremost authority on Whitman and Melville in post-Jungian studies. Herrmann practices as a Jungian psychotherapist in Oakland, California.