Shipwrecks, citizen science and archaeomythology

Dr. María Suárez Toro

Scholar Salon #56 is a special presentation by María Suárez Toro  to discuss her underwater archaeology program in Costa Rica and to celebrate the birth of a new collaborative project. She has invited two partners to discuss this exciting interdisciplinary effort to combine principles of archaeomythology with the investigation of shipwrecks–and identity– in Costa Rica and in South Africa. To our knowledge, this is the first time that these concepts of archaeomythology have been applied to a myth-making program of citizen science like Maria’s underwater archaeology work with young adults. 

Dr. María Suárez Toro

María Suárez Toro (Puerto Rican and Costa Rican), “feminist, teacher, activist, writer, fisherwoman and scuba diver,”  is the co-founder of Ambassadors of the Sea in Costa Rica’s Caribbean. As research coordinator of its community underwater archaeology program, she works with young people searching for identity in a project stewarded by citizen scientists, through their exploration of  sunken slave ships. The project researchers are Afro and native youth, the direct inheritors of the legacies of untold stories of their coastal communities. Maria has created a literary and mythic ancestral Yoruba character,  Tona Ina, “sea light” in Yoruba. Tona Ina is the storyteller who recovers the cultural stories and the mythologies found in the wrecks being researched.

Joan Marler Portrait
Dr. Joan Marler

Joan Marler is the executive director of the Institute of Archaeomythology who earned her doctorate in Philosophy and Religion and Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. She is the editor of The Civilization of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas and the Journal of Archaeomythology, among other publications, and has authored numerous articles on archaeomythological themes. Her collaboration with María Suárez Toro applies the interdisciplinary nature of archaeomythology to include the multi-generational underwater excavations of possible slave ships discovered off the coast of Costa Rica, linking scientific studies of ongoing archaeological discoveries with the deep memories of afro-descendent communities residing along the coast.

Aaniyah Martin

Aaniyah Martin is a South African graduate student in the caring of the hydrocommons and marine environment in post apartheid South Africa, addressing the injustices of apartheid legacy and co-creating care for the hydrocommons.It is  now 30 years after democracy in South Africa, yet the history and legacy of apartheid continues and  has an effect on Black and Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC) by excluding them from the ocean  and other spaces. Her ancestors were brought to the Cape as slaves from Indonesia in the late 1600s. Her walking and  swimming takes place along the False Bay coastline of Cape Town, which is the city where she was born. The False Bay coastline is “laden with stories, both shared and erased,” and Aaniyah’s research focuses on re-telling and re-mapping stories that have been forgotten.” Her study is also being informed by a recent visit to Costa Rica’s Southern Caribbean where she met María Suárez Toro and Tona Ina in the “diving with a purpose” youth project where she learned a Caribbean pedagogy about connecting ancestry to present day search and research about sunken ships of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. 

Benefit of Membership - ASWM

Scholar Salons are a member benefit of ASWM. Save this date for the next ASWM Salon:

Salon 57 : September 7, 2023, 6 PM Eastern Time

A PaGaian Cosmology: Celebrating Goddess and Cosmogenesis”                  with Dr. Glenys Livingstone

Upcoming Salons are at 3pm Eastern Time, on September 21 (Hawaiian mythology) , October 5 (Artemis), October 19 ( Wheel of the Year), November 2  (Kurdish Shahmaran) & 16 (Legacy of Lydia Ruyle).

Scholar Salons: Registration and Recordings

 

 

Scholar Salons are invited presentations by major scholars and researchers, in which they discuss their work with ASWM members. Salons are offered as a member benefit. We do not schedule Salons with individuals whose work has been submitted in the same cycle for our awards program. In addition to contributions of foremothers and established scholars, Salons also focus on important emerging work by doctoral students, artists, and award winners. There are only 100 seats available per Salon, so please register early!

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Symposium: Arts and Culture Hall ~ Lauren Raine and Yoga Nidra Network

Meet Presenters in Our Arts and Culture Hall:

Lauren Raine, Yoli Maya Yeh and Umā Dinsmore-Tuli 

We are excited to offer Arts and Culture Hall “booths” where some of our great presenters will share their work through videos and links, and maybe even in face-to-face conversations with you! There are also booths for academic programs and other resources. You may access these booths any time from April 3 to April 18m,  by signing in after you register and selecting the Culture Hall at the top menu. Sign up at the booth to receive news about their work, see their videos, leave messages, and meet other attendees at the “table” at each booth.  Two of these feature work by: Lauren Raine (Earthspeak) and Yoli Maya Yeh and Umā Dinsmore-Tuli (Yoga Nidra Network) Lauren Raine: “Earth-speak: Envisioning a Conversant World” In 2018 I attended the Gatekeepers Conference on sacred sites & pilgrimage and made a personal pilgrimage to Avebury, Silbury Hill, Glastonbury, and other sites. EARTHSPEAK explores a mythic, historical, poetic and subjective response to these geomantically potent sites, in particular Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric monument in Europe, with research that suggests it was at one time a representation of the body of the Earth Mother. EARTHSPEAK also suggests that Geomantic reciprocity occurs as human beings bring intentionality to a particular place, making it a holy or sacred place. Numinous communion with “spirit of place” can become increasingly active as it accrues mythic power in the memory of the people, and in the land. Sacred places have both an innate and a developed capacity to bring about altered states of consciousness, especially if people come prepared within the liminal state of pilgrimage.
Lauren Raine Portrait
Lauren Raine
Lauren Raine MFA is a cross-disciplinary artist best known for her Masks of the Goddess collection. She was resident artist at Henry Luce Center for the Arts & Religion, an Aldon B. Dow Fellow, and Resident Artist for Cherry Hill Seminary. Her work can be seen at: www.laurenraine.com. Yoli Maya Yeh and Umā Dinsmore-Tuli:  “Please, Humans – Get Some Sleep!” Listening to Yoga Nidrā Shakti Devī – Goddess of Rest Yoga Nidrā Śakti is a South Asian Goddess of sleep, rest, and liminal spaces between dreaming and waking. A key figure in The Greatness of the Goddess (Devī Mahātmyam, c600BC), her Sanskrit name literally means ‘power of sleep’. She features in many images and indigenous story rituals, all describing her power to send every being (including gods) to sleep; she restores right relationship to cyclical rhythms of rest that hold life in balance. Wherever she appears, Nidrā Śakti counters transgressions of those who refuse to sleep, returning all beings to right relationship with natural cycles. Yoganidrā is also a state of yogic rest that supports healing for out-of-balance human experiences such as insomnia, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Sadly, the presence of Nidrā Śakti has been marginalised and eradicated from commercial and traditional yoga schools profiting from methods of the popular practice bearing her name: yoga nidrā. Through stories and exquisite images, we explore the liminality of Nidrā Śakti as goddess of thresholds between sleep and dream.
Yoli Maya Yeh
Yoli Maya Yeh is a Yoga & Shiatsu Therapist & Educator in Comparative Religions & Global Studies, working at intersections of Indigenous Preservation, Healing Arts & Social Justice through her experiential education-based Decolonization Toolkit. Raised in her family’s Native American spiritual teachings, she spent 12 years of young adulthood studying language, yoga, tantra, healing arts & meditation in India.  
Uma Dinsmore-Tuli
Umā Dinsmore-Tuli and Yoli Maya Yeh are collaborative educators from the Yoga Nidra Network, a radical post-lineage organisation training yoga nidrā facilitators to make yoga nidrā freely accessible to all humans in their mother tongue. Umā is a yoga therapist and writer whose books include Yoni Shakti, Nidrā Śakti, and Yoga Nidrā Made Easy.

Symposium: Arts and Culture Hall ~ MamaDonna and Pegi Eyers

Meet Presenters in Our Arts and Culture Hall:

MamaDonna Henes and  Pegi Eyers

We are excited to offer special Arts and Culture Hall “booths” where some of our great presenters will share their work through videos and links, and maybe even in face-to-face conversations with you! There are also booths for academic programs and other resources. You may access these booths any time from April 3 to April 18m,  by signing in after you register and selecting the Culture Hall at the top menu. Sign up to receive presenter news, see their videos, leave messages, and meet other attendees at the “table” at each booth.  Visit these great presentations by:

Booths with MamaDonna Henes and Pegi Eyers

MamaDonna Henes: Wisdom Delivered By Wing: Me & My Birds”

Multi cultural bird mythology, folk lore and contemporary stories. Bird goddesses and bird familiars. bird omens and bird teachers.Avian visitations, inspirations, lessons trance-formations. Bird dreams, bird omens, and lots of amazing true stories!

MamaDonna with Ola

MamaDonna Henes is an internationally acclaimed urban shaman, popular speaker, and award-winning writer specializing in multi-cultural ritual celebrations of the cycles of the of the seasons and the seasons of our lives. (cityshaman@aol.com)

Pegi Eyers: “Deep Time Wisdom” 

Embracing ways of thinking that pre-date Empire is a good starting point for all endeavors that revive the eco-self, and our re-connection to matristic community bonded to the land. Shifting away from the patriarchy is possible, and from pre-colonial, Indigenous or egalitarian models, the worldview and values we need are just waiting to be re-kindled. Also known as “decolonization,” we all have access to a well of deep knowing, or ancestral knowledge, that can be revived with immersion in nature, and by focusing on the “old ways.” Compiled from years of experience and research, Deep Time Wisdom will weave through a comparison chart that identifies the habits of modernity we take for granted, and alternatives in holistic patterns of thought and action. As just one example, “modern thinking/western mind” regards humans as separate from nature, bounded by the ego, self-absorbed, material and having a sense of linear time; whereas “ancestral thinking /Indigenous mind” views humans as part of nature, connected, empathic, physically grounded and embodied. I conclude with a statement on combined intelligences, or the “entwining of heart and mind” that fulfills our potential as true human beings. It may be a daunting task to “read our own souls” as women dwelling in an animist universe once again, but the outcome is clear that by activating Deep Time Wisdom, we align with the sacredness of the Earth, and the love and respect for nature that dwells at the heart of our lives.

Pegi Eyers is the author of the award-winning book Ancient Spirit Rising, a survey on social justice, nature spirituality, and the holistic principles of sustainable living. Pegi self-identifies as a Celtic Animist, and is an advocate for the recovery of ancestral wisdom and traditions for all people. She lives near Peterborough, Canada, on a hilltop with views reaching for miles in all directions. (Pegi-eyers@hotmail.com)

2022 Sarasvati Award Goes to Judy Grahn and Nightboat Books

Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power

We are pleased to announce that Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn has won the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology’s Sarasvati Nonfiction Book Award.  The award letter to Nightboat Books, which will be read at our symposium on April 10,  reads as follows:

The clarity of Grahn’s prose, enlivened by flights of poesy, makes this a work of scholarly heft and intellectual precision a literary delight.

Grahn takes feminist, queer, and literary approaches to varied sacred narratives, eliciting the ethical vision implicit in each and restoring goddess/woman/womb to the rightful place of centrality and seat of power, whether revered or contested. The author also brings geographic, astronomical, and lexical considerations to bear on her interpretations, resulting in stunning revelations on virtually every page.

Eruptions of Inanna offers original insights on a spectrum of literary sources and associated cultural patterns. The book reveals something that generations of biblical scholars combing the Hebrew scriptures for Sumerian elements have failed to discover, namely, the profound indebtedness of the Book of Job to the hymns of Inanna in its moral premise, narrative frame, dialogic exchanges, and specific phrasing and theological formulations. Beyond this towering contribution, readers are rewarded with fresh perspectives on any material already familiar to them, such as the Gilgamesh epic, the Greek pantheon, Helen of Troy, and South Asian goddess traditions, as well as the titled Inanna. Those immersed in study of Inanna and the excellent scholarship already available will find in Eruptions of Inanna more majesty, lavish beauty, and all-encompassing power than previously envisioned as the book integrates the diverse and seemingly divergent aspects of Inanna into a cosmic whole.   

While focusing on Near Eastern and Mediterranean materials, the inclusion of South Asian examples and cases further afield (Native American, African) gives the work a global sweep. The pressing ethical concern at the heart of the book is the conflictive value system of gender-based violence and oppression that now threatens life on the planet. Drawing on sacred stories spanning millennia, the author elicits an inclusive, cooperative worldview based on earthly, celestial, and human female bodily cycles of creation, transformation, and regeneration. The book steers us toward the goal of an equitable, compassionate world of collective harmony and flourishing.

We congratulate Nightboat Books on producing a beautiful book whose design allows the lapidary prose of the brilliant author to shine on its pages.

Judy Grahn

Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist. Her works include seven books of nonfiction, two book-length poems, five poetry collections, a reader, and a novel. An early Gay activist who walked the first picket of the White House for Gay rights in 1965, she later founded Gay Women’s Liberation and the Women’s Press Collective. Her intention with writing is to replace obsolete philosophies with better ones.

See the Symposium page for more information.

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  • Questions? Ask us: symposium@womenandmyth.org