Author: WomenandMyth

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Wabanaki Women: “Ritual, Tradition and Feminine Intuition”

 

At our 2016 conference in Boston, we were honored to have three speakers from the Wabanaki Confederacy present this healing, thought-provoking panel.

“Ritual, Tradition and Feminine Intuition among the Wabanaki of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes” was a discussion by Patricia Saulis (Maliseet), Miigam’ agan  (Mi’ Kmaq), and Sherri Mitchell  (Penobscot). We are pleased to offer this video of that panel. Although most of our conference videos are offered in the member-only section of the website, we feel strongly that this presentation deserves a wide audience, and so we offer it to the public as well.

At the close of this presentation, the speakers honored us with a traditional song of thanks and friendship. At their request, that song has been deleted from this video. It was a special gift for our members who were present that day, and it was not given to be shared with a wider audience through recordings. We honor their request with gratitude for their offering.

In a time when everyone captures images and words so easily, please remember that some gifts are given for one occasion, for one moment only. It is especially important in witnessing Native American and Indigenous cultural events to ask permission before pulling out a phone to record events. Let us be good, respectful allies to one another; never record speakers or events without first receiving permission.

As you view this video, we invite you to consider the importance of the speakers’ messages and also the need to grow an authentic conversation with contemporary Native American and Indigenous women. Let us create opportunities to join together in as many settings as possible. And for those of us who wish to be good allies, let’s remember that we have much to learn in all such meetings.

To learn more about the speakers’ work for justice for people and the land, see the Land Peace Foundation and read Sherri Mitchell’s book Sacred Instructions.

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Remembering Elinor Gadon

We note the passing of feminist cultural historian Elinor Gadon with sadness but also with great gratitude for her work and her influence on research into goddesses and strong women.  On this post we will assemble remarks from those who knew her and also from those who benefitted from her work.  We will add comments as they are received.  To contribute your thoughts, email us at the “contact” address.

 

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Starr Goode, who interviewed Elinor for her Goddess in Art television series, says of her

The essential quality of Elinor’s work and what she felt was so important was to resacralize women’s bodies. Thank Goddess, this value has found its way into the spirit of our times. Elinor’s work with artists offered us a foundation from which to rise.
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Miriam Robbins Dexter says,
I have a sweet memory of Elinor from the ASWM conference.  Toward the end of the Boston ASWM in 2016, I joined Vicki Noble and Donna Read at breakfast.  Shortly afterward, Elinor joined us.  The four of us ended up having a very long breakfast with wonderful conversation.  It is my last memory of Elinor, and I am very happy to remember her that way.
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Eleanor’s longtime friend and colleague Dianne Jenett wrote:   A feminist cultural historian and scholar, she was also an extraordinary teacher and the founder of the first academic program in Women’s Spirituality, at The California Institute of Integral Studies, in SF. Her 1989 book The Once and Future Goddess: A Symbol for Our Times remains an important feminist work in the field of women and religion.  With stamina and passionate intellectual curiosity which inspired many of us, in her seventies and eighties Elinor returned to the India she loved in order to do research on the village goddesses of Orissa.  Her son John said after he read letters women from all over the world sent to her, “I had no idea she changed so many lives.” She will be sorely missed.
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Farewell to Elinor Gadon

Elinor Gadon, 92, died peacefully at her home in Cambridge, MA on May 8th.

As an art historian specializing in the art and culture of India, she taught at Harvard, Tufts and the California Institute of Integral Studies, and held an appointment as a Life Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center. Her 1989 book, The Once and Future Goddess, became an essential text for the women’s spirituality and Goddess movements, and for college courses on Women and Mythology around the world.

Longtime friend and colleague Dianne Jenett says that her research continued to the end of her life:

With stamina and passionate intellectual curiosity which inspired many of us, in her seventies and eighties Elinor returned to the India she loved in order to do research on the village goddesses of Orissa.  Her son John said, after he read letters women from all over the world sent to her, “I had no idea she changed so many lives.” She will be sorely missed.

Born on September 17, 1925 to Maurice H. Weiner and Jean (Kaplan) Weiner, Elinor grew up in Reading, PA, where her parents were the proprietors of Weiner’s Men’s Clothing store on Penn Street. She graduated from Reading High School in 1942 and from the University of Michigan in 1945. She later obtained her doctorate in History of Culture from the University of Chicago.

She was the recipient of the Honor Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts from the Women’s Caucus for Art, and of the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology in 2016.

When she received the Demeter award, she responded,

“I have tears in my eyes… how nice of all of you to recognize my work. I really did what was in my heart and on my mind, and how wonderful to have it reach so many people. Let’s keep on with this vision because it’s women who are going to save the world.”

 

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2018 Conference Presentations

We are pleased to include public links to papers and presentations that are published elsewhere on the web. Additional material will be posted to our Member-only  Resources page.

2018 Conference papers:

#1 Genevieve Vaughan on the Gift Economy:

“We are born into a Gift Economy practiced by those who mother us, enabling us to survive. The economy of exchange, quid pro quo, separates us from each other and makes us adversarial, while gift giving and receiving creates mutuality and trust.”

Beyond Capitalist Patriarchy: the Model of the Maternal Gift Economy

The two parts of this paper were presented on March 17, 2018, at the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology Conference in Las Vegas, and on the following day, March 18, at the associated Modern Matriarchal Studies Day.

The paper presented on March 17 was part of the panel “Motherhood, Resistance, and Matriarchal Politics,” with co-presenters Vicki Noble and Heide Goettner-Abendroth.

 Genevieve also presented an earlier version of this paper on March 12, 2018, to the Cambridge Realist Workshop, Clare College, Cambridge University, in Cambridge, England in a shared Session with Professor Rajani Kanth.

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Kathy Jones Receives 2018 Demeter Award

Kathy Jones Receives 2018 Demeter Award from ASWM Board

At the 2018 Conference, the ASWM Board of Directors was pleased to present the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality to Kathy Jones, author, teacher, and creatrix of the Glastonbury Goddess Conference and the Goddess Temple of Glastonbury.  The award letter reads, in part,

“As a writer, healer, teacher, Priestess of Avalon, visionary, and scholar, we recognize the important roles that you have played in restoring the divine feminine to modern culture. Your tireless work for thirty-plus years, bringing the awareness of Goddess back to the U.K., Europe, the U.S., and the world, has provided not only important original scholarship but also the creation of a vital energetic container for explorations of Goddess archetypes and practices.

“Your considerable body of written work explores the mysteries of sacred land, mythology, and healing: Soul and Shadow: Birthing Motherworld, 2017; Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, 2006; In the Nature of Avalon: Goddess Pilgrimages in Glastonbury’s Sacred Landscape, 2007; The Ancient British Goddess: Goddess Myths, Legends, Sacred Sites, Present Revelation, 2001; Chiron in Labys: An Introduction to Esoteric Soul Healing, 1997; Breast Cancer: Hanging on by a Red Thread, 1998; On Finding Treasure: Mystery Plays of the Goddess, 1999; Spinning the Wheel of Ana: a Spiritual Quest to Find the Primal British Ancestors, 1994; and The Goddess in Glastonbury, 1990.  

“We thank you for all of your work to restore Goddess Spirituality to a modern world much in need.”

In accepting the award, Kathy joins a select group of prior winners and foremothers: Margot Adler, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Charlene Spretnak, Elinor Gadon and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum.