We will begin our program at Eranos, the renowned lakeside retreat on the shore of Lago Maggiore in Italian-speaking Switzerland, before moving on to nearby Monte Verità, the Mountain of Truth, for our Main Conference. Ascona and the surrounding area was a major focal point for creative individuals seeking alternatives to the repressed world of late 19th century Europe.

It was at Monte Verità in the first two decades of the 20th century that the Western counterculture was born as spiritual rebels were escaping what Max Weber called the ‘Iron Cage’ of materialistic and nationalist thinking that was foreshadowing the First World War. At Monte Verità, figures such as Hermann Hesse, Isadora Duncan and Rudolf Laban gathered to explore a return to nature, vegetarianism, free love, expressive dance, Eastern and Western esoteric traditions, fresh developments in psychology and much more. They embraced the journey to freedom in a place where you could breathe true utopia and begin to create a different world. This laboratory of a new culture offered a path to transcend bourgeois conformism, and drew philosophers, theosophists, writers and artists from many countries who were dedicated to Lebensreform, or life reform.

Monte Verità, situated among the luxuriant woods and gentle hills overlooking Lake Maggiore, prophetically anticipated themes that are vital today, including the ecology of living and the ecology of the soul. And it was at nearby Eranos, starting in the ‘30s, that so many brilliant figures – from C.G. Jung to Mircea Eliade and Henri Corbin – gathered to form a cultural stream that can be said to constitute an alternative intellectual history of the 20th century – an extraordinary challenge given the gathering gloom in Europe at that time.

Please join us for what is sure to be an unforgettable experience as we explore the hidden history of esoteric Switzerland and mark the passage of 30 years since we began our series of Quests for the depth, beauty and wisdom of the best of Western culture.