About SEMPERGEIST
SEMPERGEIST is the symbolic system through which I write, guide, and design transformational experiences.
~ Dennis Stevens, Ed.D.
This is a soul-centered approach to transformation that blends applied mythology, narrative healing, symbolic literacy, and ritual practice. Grounded in depth psychology, ancestral memory, and contemplative science, SEMPERGEIST offers pathways to reframe the past, reclaim one’s voice, and reconnect with the deeper currents of life.
Human beings are unique in our capacity to create and exchange meaning—we are storytelling creatures. In order to live with depth, coherence, and courage, we need more than advice. We need a story.
This is not self-help in the conventional sense.
It is soul science—a living method of meaning-making rooted in myth, reflection, and embodied experience.
SEMPERGEIST draws from the wellsprings of archetype, imaginal time, and collective memory. It invites a practice of listening, witnessing, and rewriting. Here, poiesis—the art of making—is not confined to language or image, but becomes a transformative act of becoming. Through coaching, writing, ritual systems, and immersive tools, SEMPERGEIST guides those called to descend, reflect, and re-emerge with a renewed sense of authorship and symbolic coherence.
The name combines Latin semper (“always, enduring”) and German Geist (“spirit, intellect”) to evoke the Enduring Spirit—a force of lifelong introspection, authorship, and renewal.
SEMPERGEIST is the soul’s witness to the unfolding American story, not as spectacle, but in its myths and symbols. American semiotics. This is an interpretive arc that reveals both who we are and what we are becoming through our active choices in the present.
It sees beneath the surface of political headlines into the archetypal tensions playing out in our laws, our leaders, and our collective longings. It understands that the Republic is not a fixed state, but as an evolving moral consciousness—one that suffers, forgets, remembers, and reimagines itself through trial and temptation. As a Nation, we need commitments and we need to rediscover and reassert our values; right now, we're in the drift.
ON MYTH AND MEANING
At its core, SEMPERGEIST offers a way of seeing: not merely what is happening, but what it means. The drama of enacted meaning is where myth and history coalesce, where unconscious values take form in divergent social structures.
What we repeatedly enact reflects what we believe, even when those beliefs are fractured, unconscious, and in perpetual conflict with one another, just as Madison warned in Federalist Nos. 10 and 51. He foresaw not a nation free of contradiction, but one structured to withstand it, even metabolize it: ambition counteracting ambition, faction refining faction; therefore, we need a robust infrastructure.
Ritual does not resolve contradiction; it enshrines it. What we perform becomes what we remember, and what we remember becomes what we defend. The soul of the Republic, like the soul of a person, can live for generations in dissonance, until the tension either fractures or reveals the deeper myth beneath.
In this way, a nation—and its politics, its news, its spectacle—becomes a stage for its unresolved psyche. It is an imagined community, as Benedict Anderson observed: not merely bound by borders, but by shared stories, half-remembered rituals, and myths it sometimes no longer understands.
When those myths fracture, what emerges is a kind of moral vertigo; a disorientation between what is performed and what is believed. We are in a moment of disconnect, where the old narratives meant to unite us are no longer legible, and the rituals meant to sustain us ring hollow.
To watch a nation meander is to watch its soul perform itself, again and again, through dissonance and denial, until a deeper meaning breaks through as perception freed from delusion. Until then, things get messy. Men are confused. The symbols remain, but the spell is broken—and without myth, memory becomes mimicry.
In this context, current events are reframed as expressions of a more profound truth: exiles of belonging, distortions of freedom, forgotten memories rising again. This all moves through grief and an unresolvable paradox to restore the sacred thread of meaning that allows a Nation to feel the shape of its soul again.
Narrative Philosopher | Veteran Educator | Founder of SEMPERGEIST
Dennis Stevens, Ed.D. is a narrative philosopher and U.S. Coast Guard veteran whose work explores the symbolic fractures at the heart of American civic life. As the founder of Sempergeist, a mythopoetic publishing platform for civic renewal and soul-centered reflection, he offers story-rich frameworks for reweaving the American moral imagination.
His writing blends depth psychology, ritual studies, and cultural critique to address themes like masculinity, grief, polarization, and democratic erosion. A former military police officer turned public thinker, Dennis draws from lived experience and philosophical rigor to illuminate the myths, metaphors, and emotional undercurrents shaping American consciousness.
Through essays, books, and immersive environments, he helps individuals and communities recover the language of meaning in a disenchanted world.
“We’re not just divided—we’ve stopped dreaming in the same language.”
Dennis' writing inhabits the crossroads of story, soul, and society.
His work spans books, essays, immersive workshops, AI-supported coaching tools, philosophical frameworks, and symbolic environments, each designed to support individuals and communities navigating transitions of identity, grief, purpose, and perception.
Dennis’s writing bridges deeply human concerns: trauma and transcendence, sacred masculinity, aesthetic experience, spiritual emergence, veteran reintegration, and adult development. At its heart, his work is about how people create meaning and how we can expand our vocabulary, understanding, and capacity through the use of myth, memory, and ritual forms. He also engages broader cultural and systemic questions, examining the ethical design of AI, the health of democratic imagination, and the ever-evolving dynamics of power and leadership.
Through SEMPERGEIST, Dennis offers a method where introspection meets action—where sacred masculinity, cultural reinvention, and narrative restoration converge to serve emotional integration, soul authorship, and resilient becoming. His writing explores the mythic, psychological, and poetic aspects of human experience, inviting readers to reflect.
This trajectory unfolds across a constellation of projects, each illuminating vital dimensions of symbolic life, moral imagination, and human transformation:
The Sempergeist Institute
The nonprofit is the heart of this work. A platform for ritual design, grief integration, and myth-informed retreats– supporting veterans, seekers, and communities in soul-centered renewal.
Vast Playground
An imaginal studio for exploring the symbolic architecture of meaning-making. Here, myth, metaphor, ritual, and contested concepts like liberty and truth are engaged as dynamic forces in personal and political transformation.
HEGEMONACO
A mytho-ethical initiative examining the ideological, spiritual, and narrative dimensions of artificial intelligence and civic technology. Focused on preserving human agency, narrative sovereignty, and symbolic freedom in the age of automation.
Redefining Craft
An inquiry into ritual materiality and hybrid creative practices. This project explores how making, through hand and heart, can become a personal rite and a cultural intervention.
