Modern Matriarchal Studies Week at the Academy Hagia
by Joan Cichon
This past July I was privileged to attend a special week long seminar taught by Dr. Heide Gottner-Abendroth at her International Academy Hagia (www.hagia.de) in Bavaria, Germany. Entitled “Modern Matriarchal Studies,” the seminar was attended by sixteen women from Africa, Europe and North and South America. Among the participants were politicians, activists, scholars, academicians, and artists.
We came to Bavaria for Dr. Gottner-Abendroth’s first seminar in English on Modern Matriarchal Studies, a field which she originated.
Any independent scholar can tell you of times she has researched a topic on the web and been stopped at the gate of JSTOR or other institutional databases. It’s frustrating to locate articles that are relevant to one’s research and then be denied access to them. Ken Mondschein explores the issues surrounding digital access in his essay “The Ivory Firewall” on the Academic Politics web site.
One of the most thrilling moments of the first national ASWM conference in April, 2010, was the world premiere of the documentary “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican” by California filmmaker Jules Hart.
Women priests featured in film
Four years in the making, this surprising and moving film traces recent developments within the Roman Catholic Church. Catholicism holds that priests must be ordained “in apostolic succession,” meaning that each priest is ordained by a bishop whose heritage can be traced all the way back to the original apostles of Jesus Christ—a two thousand year link to the founding fathers of the church. Continue reading “Review: “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican””
The Green Goddess, Our first biennial multi-day conference, was held April 23 to 25, 2010, at Kirkridge Retreat Center, Bangor, PA.
Labyrinth at Kirkridge
Keynote speakers included Max Dashu of Suppressed Histories with a tour de force presentation on female icons, Cristina Eisenberg (a wolf biologist who is actively engaged in ecological restoration that supports sustainability of wildlife communities and of the human spirit), Dr. Ann Filemyr on healing from the nature/culture divide, and Cristina Biaggi on the Great Goddess as a green goddess, through the lens of art and history.
Margot Adler was honored with our first Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality, and the Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Goddess Studies went to Dawn Work-Makinne, Ph.D.
Lydia Ruyle’s inspiring goddess banners graced the meeting space, and she will offered an art workshop. Our film series premiered “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican,” about the ordination of Catholic women priests, and featured ethnologist Sabine Jell-Bahlson’s film on Mammywata.
Topics included lady of the beasts, publishing goddess scholarship, spiritual geometry and the goddess, archaeomythology, the divine feminine as vortex, finding your sacred language, the wheel of the year as spiritual psychology, frog mysteries, and much more.
Poet Annie Finch gave a masked reading; novelist Elizabeth Cunningham read from her Maeve novels; storyteller Diane Wolkstein presented The Monkey King; and singer Ruth Barrett gave a “concert for Gaia.”
The 2010 conference took place at the beautiful Kirkridge Retreat Center, atop the Pocono mountain ridges near the Delaware Water Gap. Kirkridge is located about 90 minutes from both New York City and Philadelphia.
ASWM’s mission is to promote the study of mythology. Myths about animals are essential to our ability to explain our humanity to ourselves. And they are based on observation of the wonders and magic of living species. We can’t isolate ourselves from our animal “relations” whose wisdom we celebrate. We have an obligation to promote their welfare along with our own.
Bee Goddess of Rhodes
We chose the image of the Bee Goddess as our logo and central metaphor for ASWM for very good reasons. It is not only that bees are great collaborators and communicators. The honey they produce is a magical substance unlike any other, sweet beyond compare, more often given through cooperation than taken by competition. Honey is also associated with shamanic travel and physical healing. Myths of bees are intimately related to the myths of goddesses in many traditions, and more often associated with women than men. Continue reading “A Note about Bees”
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