“Spirit Talks to Us, But How Do We Know? Encountering mutual consciousness in tiny forms“
Panel: “Dethroning Human Hubris”
2026 Online Symposium, May 3 2026
“Reimagining Goddess Scholarship: At the Edges of Sacred Knowledge”
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. In 2022, her book Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power won ASWM’s Sarasvati Award for Best Nonfiction Book. 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.”
“I’ve been trying to locate, experience, and express goddess stories, energies, mysteries since 1972. Coming from an almost completely suppressed tradition has made every opening a wild ride of terror and joy. I’ve written several books on goddess traditions from ancient written sources and from experiencing public rituals for village goddesses in South India. Every part of my life it seems has taught me something about spirit, from my many minor illnesses, to love-making, to poetry, to asking my parents the right questions, to creature encounters. For the 2026 Symposium panel I will draw from my 2023 book, Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit.”
Abstract: The modern world would have us individuated, living in separated cocoons of self that communicate solely through our sense organs. The existence of psychic sea of energy permeating all beings and enabling nonverbal, nonsensory communication implies that we are part of a community of being. Not separated except to the degree we shut ourselves down and withdraw from the permeating mind and heart vibrations of nature.
Finding a way into those streams requires taking some steps; while I am by no means an expert in any of this, I have made the attempts and had some successes that I have written about. In my panel presentation and discussion I will draw from these including some methods of freeing myself from the material science I was taught as a young person. One method is understanding how we receive information in three ways, from sensory (body) organs; from cellular (microbial) communication; and from radiant (spiritual) energetic consciousness.
Learn more about Judy’s work on sentience in her ASWM Scholar Salon: “Living in a Sentient World.”
“B is for Bat and for Brilliant Judy Grahn” Nan Brooks’ blog post on Judy’s “Living in a Sentient World.”