“Pongala, a Woman’s Festival: Cooking up Joy!”

with Dianne Jenett

Thursday,  October 27, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern DaylightTime 

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Each spring, Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, India, shuts down for a day while more than a million women of many religions, communities, and classes joyously line the streets and fill courtyards with their pots to cook porridge as an offering for Attukal Amma (Mother). They are performing a women’s ritual deeply rooted in ancient Kerala mythology and cultural tradition which also has powerful meaning for women today, as evidenced by its rapid growth during the past forty years.

In 1993, when Dianne first went to Kerala, a small state in southern India whose policies in education, health care and social programs give its people an extremely high quality of life without high per capita income, she wanted to know:   What are the beliefs and practices which make this society successful? What stories guide and inform them?

During thirty years of annual visits cooking with, living with, and talking with women who offer pongala, she found the answers for herself in the largest annual women’s ritual in the world and the themes of: the essential equality of all people and religions, the necessity to share life-sustaining resources, the inherent power of women who demand justice, the emotional support offered by women’s community, and the recognition of immanent divinity in each girl and woman.

 Dianne Jenett retired as co-director and core faculty in the Women’s Spirituality MA program at New College of California and Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (Sofia University). She earned her Ph.D. in Integral Studies at California Institute of Integral studies and M.A. in Transpersonal Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She practices transformative education and is the co-author of Organic Inquiry: If Research Were Sacred, a qualitative research method based on the telling and writing of stories. Her current work and writing centers on researching, documenting, and telling the truth about her ancestors who were enslavers. She is a member of Coming to the Table and the Linked Descendants Working Group. Almost every year she returns to Kerala, India to offer pongala.

Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:

November 3, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Standard Time  
“Becoming Birds: Crane Maiden and Conservation ”
Brenda Peterson

November 17, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Standard Time  
“Matriarchal Landscape Mythology”
Andrea Fleckinger and Heide Goettner-Abendroth

January 13, 2023, 3 PM Eastern Standard Time  
“Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power”
Judy Grahn

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

 

“When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix”

with Monica Mody

Thursday,  October 6, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern DaylightTime 

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Other-than-human animals often appear alongside anthropomorphic goddesses and gods in Hindu iconography, as their vahan (mounts). This syntagmatic placement can, within an anthropocentric conception of the divine, suggest not only an unequal relation between deity and animal, but also that beneficence flows from deity to animal, unidirectionally. The lineages of these depictions of the relationship between animal and divinity go back to ancient Harappan cultures. The iconography of Yoginis in the medieval period continues these motifs: Yoginis are often shown as theriocephalic figures or with animals. Bringing together scholarly commentary and original poetry, this presentation will wonder at some of the likely dimensions of the relationship between animal and Yogini (aspecting/manifesting the Goddess in her totality, as per tantric understandings). Could these dimensions orient us to an implicate order that holds a structure of presence which is both in an animistic relationship to an intersubjective other, and, at the same time, dissolves its outside-inside, inside-outside, becoming oneness? Might such a relational non-dual orientation help us create more vibrant interplanetary futures?

Monica Mody is a transdisciplinary feminist scholar, poet, and educator. Her academic writing has been published in The Land Remembers Us: Women, Myth, and Nature, and Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis. An article is forthcoming in Tarka Journal. Dr. Mody has presented her work widely, including at the Parliament of World Religions; American Academy of Religion Western Region; Association of Writers & Writing Programs; Association for the Study of Women and Mythology; and Oakland Summer School. Her doctoral dissertation, which investigated decolonial feminist consciousness in South Asian borderlands, was selected for the Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology from ASWM. She serves as Core Faculty in the Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership Ph.D. Program at Southwestern College Santa Fe, and Adjunct Faculty in the Women’s Spirituality Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She holds a Ph.D. in East-West Psychology from CIIS and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame.

Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:

October 20, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Pongala, a woman’s festival: Cooking up joy!”
Dianne Jenett

November 3, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Standard Time  
“Becoming Birds: Crane Maiden and Conservation ”
Brenda Peterson

November 17, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time  
“Matriarchal Landscape Mythology”
Andrea Fleckinger and Heide Goettner-Abendroth

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.