“Goddesses” Performance at Conference

Goddesses—their stories often inspire us, well into the 21^st century. But what happens to a modern woman when six Greek goddesses compete within her for control of her psyche?  How will she respond to the strong, assertive personalities of these archetypal divinities?  These are the questions posed in Dorotea Reyna’s play, Goddesses, based on the groundbreaking concepts found in Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen.

Goddesses premiered at the Festival of One Act Plays at Dominican University of California, and went on to be produced at the Live Oak Theatre in Berkeley, Mills College, and live on KPFA 94.1 on the radio drama program, Act One.

At the ASWM conference, Goddesses will be presented as a one-woman performance by the playwright.  Following the performance, there will be a panel discussion.  In alphabetical order the panelists are:

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M. D, is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and an internationally known author and speaker who draws from spiritual, feminist, Jungian, medical and personal wellsprings of experience. She is the author of many books that explore women’s life passages, including Goddesses in Everywoman, Crossing to Avalon, Close to the Bone, Goddesses in Older Women, Crones Don’t Whine and, most recently, Like a Tree.

Mara Lynn Keller, PhD (Philosophy, Yale University) is a Professor of Philosophy, Religion, and Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a philosopher, thealogian, and specialist on the Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone. As director of the Women’s Spirituality graduate program from 1998-2008, she produced special events on women’s sacred arts and scholarship, including an art exhibition on Ineffable/Woman with CERES Gallery in New York.

Arisika Razak, RN, MPH is the Chair of the Women’s Spirituality Program at CIIS. For five years she co-chaired the Womanist-Pan African Section of the American Academy of Religion-Western Region, and she is a regular contributor books and journals. Her film credits include Fire Eyes, the first full length feature film by an African woman on female genital cutting; and the forthcoming Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth where she is interviewed on Alice Walker womanism.

 Dorotea Reyna. MA, received her Bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University and her Master’s in English with a concentration in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin.  Her poetry has appeared in New Chicana/Chicano Writing published by the University of Arizona Press and in Imagining Worlds published by McGraw-Hill.  She has read her poetry in venues across the San Francisco Bay Area,and has been awarded two grants from the Marin Arts Council for her writing.

Featured Speakers for Conference: Ana Castillo

Ana Castillo is a Mexican-American Chicana novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer. Her work centers on the essential issues of identity, race, gender, and class.

Dr. Castillo has won over twenty awards for literature, including the 1993 Carl Sandburg Literary Award in Fiction (So Far From God) and the 2000 Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Commended Title My Daughter, My Son, The Eagle, the Dove:  An Aztec Chant.  Castillo’s work explores Chicana feminism, which she names “Xicanisma.”

She edited Goddess of the Americas, a unique collection of personal affirmations for the Virgin of Guadalupe.  Her essays in The Massacre of the Dreamers are powerful correctives to the omission of Amerindian and Chicana women from political history in the US.  In the Fall of 2012 she will serve as Visiting Poet and Writer at Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT.

Featured Speakers for Conference: Miriam Robbins Dexter

Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a Ph.D. in ancient Indo-European languages, archaeology, and comparative mythology, from UCLA.  She has published Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990) and Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia (2010) as well as scholarly articles and encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures.  She edited and supplemented Marija Gimbutas’ The Living Goddesses (1999.)  She teaches at UCLA.  Additionally, she serves on the Advisory Board for ASWM.

“Sacred Display”: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia

Depictions of erotic and magical goddesses and heroines occurred in numerous ancient cultures from about 8000BCE into historic times, from Asia to western Europe.

Featured Speakers for ASWM Conference: Judy Grahn

We are fortunate to be able to offer excellent keynote presenters at the 2012 Conference!  Watch for updates in the coming days.

Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, writer, and social theorist.  Her work underpins several movements, including Gay, Lesbian, and Queer; Feminist/Woman-Centered; and Women’s Spirituality, but it has spread far beyond any of these.  She currently serves as Associate Core Faculty for the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, in their Women’s Spirituality Master’s Program.

Her presentation is titled:  Goddess Is Alive! But How Do We Know…?

We have gathered the images and myths, the rock art and the archeological speculations, the myriad clues in ancient literature and contemporary ritual. Practitioners from living traditions have surfaced to teach and demonstrate. Many if not most of us have felt the presence of a living goddess energy at some time in our lives, and maybe we have students who hunger for this or have experienced “something” from a different dimension. How do we track these occasions, how do we teach methods for recording and analyzing rare happenings, how do we know, “this time it’s real—?”   And just what is “real”? Some thoughts on Organic Inquiry methods, art-based research, teaching divination as a method of gathering data. 

To learn more about Judy’s work, see her web site.

Voices of the Mothers: A Ritual-in-progress

The arts of ritual are as old as humanity, and still have a profound impact on those who witness them.  We’re proud to include in our conference a ritual in progress, Voices of the Mothers, created by Macha NightMare and employing sacred goddess masks especially created for this event by  Lauren Raine.  (See below!)

At the conference you will have a chance to experience elements of this powerful ritual, which combines rhythm, movement, and chant with scientific knowledge.  You will also be able to go behind the scenes to learn about the process or creating of a large public ritual that brings ancient goddesses into the present day.

Pachamama mask by Lauren Raine

Modern Matriarchal Studies Panel

Matriarchal Studies  Max Dashu writes of early feminist theory, “In 1970 we began asking, where are women free? Where are the egalitarian cultures, and why don’t we know about them? How can we access a fuller record of human experience, that acknowledges female sovereignty, elders, wisewomen, and spheres of power?”

Academics in the US tend to avoid the term Matriarchy to describe these cultures, because it is seen to project a mirror image of Patriarchy, with women dominating society. In Europe, however, the term has been brought into clear focus through the work of Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth and others.  This panel at the ASWM conference will explore the development of modern Matriarchal Studies and efforts at serious study of non-patriarchal, egalitarian societies past and present.  The panelists will be Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth, Max Dashu, Lydia Ruyle, and Vicki Noble.

Click here for a complete description of the panel and panelists:  MS Panel ASWM 2012

And–continue reading for information about these presenters and their topics.

Charlene Spretnak Wins 2012 Demeter Award

Charlene Spretnak is the 2012 winner of the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality. Her presentation for the ASWM conference is entitled, Modernity, Mythology, and the Elusive Gestalt.

Ms. Spretnak’s work is internationally recognized in the areas of spirituality, cultural history, feminist and other social criticism, and ecological thought (Green politics, ecofeminism, ecophilosophy). In 2006 she was named one of “100 Eco-Heroes of All Time” by the publication of the British government’s Environmental Department.

She is one of the founding mothers of the Women’s Spirituality movement, through her work in the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s.  Her first book, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths reconstructed pre-Olympian myths for the first time in more than 2500 years; the Los Angeles Times called it “a poetic revelation.”

Fellowship Deadline for OPUS Archives

Here’s a reminder for students in doctoral programs writing within the fields of depth psychology and mythology:  The Christine Downing FellowshipYou are eligible if your proposal and /or first two chapters of the dissertation has been accepted by your dissertation committee.  You must demonstrate that your work will be enriched by  in-depth use of the collections at OPUS for a significant amount of your research.

Deadline for proposals is June 30, 2012.  The fellowship will be awarded September 15, 2012.

For more information see the fellowship Announcement.

Special–Single Day Rates for Conference

There is a special rate for those who would like to attend only one day of the ASWM conference. This rate includes the $30 membership fee (the student/low income level).

One day rates with special membership offer:

If you register before May 4^th:  $130 (this will include lunch)

If you register May 5^th – May 11^th: $150 (this will not include lunch, as the catering order will already be set).

To register for the One Day rate, don’t use the Registration Page!  Instead,

1. Go to: Join Now 

2. Fill out membership form.

3.  Go to the Pay Pal screen. Input the full amount (whether $130 or $150).

4. Under “Other,” indicate which day you want to attend.

A reminder: Your registration must be paid before 5/4 to be included in the luncheon.

See you there!

Treasures of San Francisco

One of our blessings in ASWM is the wonderful folks on our advisory board!  They often have wonderful resources to share.

In anticipation of the Matriarchal Studies Day (May 10) and our National Conference (May 11-12), Lydia Ruyle has assembled a guide to her favorite museums and sites in San Francisco.

Whether you can join us for the conference, or get to the Bay Area another time, check out this link:  San Francisco Treasures : ASWM 2012.

Thanks, Lydia, for sharing these resources with us all!

Conference Schedule

Here at last is our conference schedule–subject to changes, of course, as life intervenes.  Come and join us for this exciting program, and don’t forget about the Matriarchal Studies Day which occurs the day before our conference.

Our unbelievably amazing  Schedule

Early Birds, Heads Up!

 You can still save money by registering for the conference before May 4. What better way to celebrate the blooming of spring than to join the rest of the flock in San Francisco?

Registration here!