Demeter – ASWM

May 17, 2023January 9, 2024

Hallie Iglehart Austen Receives 2023 Demeter Award for Leadership

In 2010, when ASWM held its first biennial international meeting, we established the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality as a lifetime achievement award. At this year’s conference, the recipient ie author-activist Hallie Iglehart Austen. Our letter to her reads as follows:

The 2023 Demeter Award is given in recognition of your decades of visionary scholarship as a founding mother of feminist art, culture, and spiritual practice. We recognize your work as a teacher, bringing the message about the Goddess through conferences, workshops and writing. We also recognize your commitment to sustainable living, and your activism for the protection of marine life and the ocean. We honor your celebration of the connections among all things, and the hopeful message you bring at this time of crisis.

Your first book, Womenspirit, A Guide to Women’s Wisdom, published in 1983, grew out of your voyage of discovery, promoting the practice of meditation and the creation of a personal mythology. For your second book, The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine, you collected remarkable images and symbols of goddesses from world cultures. It has been hailed as “an exultantly female-centric text whose wisdom is universal.” First published in 1991, this beloved book has now been released in a new edition by Monkfish press.

In the 2000s you were inspired by your work with the divine feminine to focus on initiatives for the protection of oceans and sea life. In 2001 you co-founded Seaflow: Protect Our Oceans to educate people about the dangers of active sonars and other ocean noise to whales, dolphins, and all sea life. In 2010 you initiated All One Ocean: Cleaning Up the Oceans, One Beach at a Time. This work of organizing people to come together on local projects of habitat restoration sets an example of how forming grassroots initiatives can make a difference for the fate of the planet, its oceans and sea creatures.

Your work has combined your knowledge of indigenous Goddess wisdom with activism for the environment in a way that is truly inspirational. Our board and members honor you as one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time, and thank you for your scholarly, literary, healing, and cultural leadership.

The ASWM awards program was established by our co-founder, Patricia Monaghan, to advance the best work in the field of goddess studies. Previous honorees for the Demeter Award have included Margot Adler (2010), Charlene Spretnak (2012), Jean Shinoda Bolen (2014), Elinor Gadon and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum (2016), Kathy Jones (2018), and Vicki Noble and Judy Grahn (2020).

March 27, 2020January 9, 2024

2020 Demeter Award for Leadership (2): Vicki Noble

vicki noble receives Demeter award for leadership in women’s spirituality

This year the ASWM Board of Directors has chosen to grant the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality to two outstanding women, in recognition of their lifetime achievements in forging new paths for women. Vicki Noble is this year’s recipient, along with Dr.Judy Grahn.

This award is given in recognition of Vicki’s intellectual leadership as a feminist writer, scholar, and wisdom teacher. Her teaching career began at Colorado College in the women’s interdisciplinary program that she created, and continued as scholar in residence in the Women’s Spirituality graduate program at New College of California and California Institute of Integral Studies, where she explored matriarchal and goddess studies. Drawing on her work with archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, Vicki has lectured and taught internationally at the graduate level on female shamanism and the healing arts, as well as having written several books that articulate ritual healing processes.

With the1981 publication of the first feminist-inspired tarot deck, Vicki placed in women’s hands the now famous “Motherpeace Tarot Deck,” which was conceived, researched, and published with artist Karen Vogel. This influential deck has sold over 200,000 copies, internationally. With the deck and accompanying book, she has inspired and supported women in the quest for a feminist-inspired spiritual practice.

Vicki’s scholarly and widely translated book The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power (2003) provides a synthesis of archaeology, prehistory, and mythology of ancient Goddess cultures, revisioning the role of women as central to shamanism and tantric practice in all of AfroEurAsia for at least ten millennia. Her exploration of cross-cultural images and icons of sacred double females in Asia, Africa, and Old Europe reveals a lineage of women’s leadership and social power that runs forward from prehistoric times. Translated into Spanish, French, Italian, The Double Goddess received the 2003 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Women-Centered Literature.

Previous honorees for the Demeter Award include Margot Adler (2010), Charlene Spretnak (2012), Jean Shinoda Bolen (2014), Elinor Gadon and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum (2016), and Kathy Jones (2018).

Read the 2020 Demeter Award letter and learn more about Vicki’s work at vickinoble.com.

March 27, 2020January 9, 2024

2020 Demeter Award for Leadership (1): Dr. Judy Grahn

Judy Grahn Receives Demeter Award for leadership in women’s spirituality

This year the ASWM Board of Directors has chosen to grant the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality to two outstanding women, in recognition of their lifetime achievements in forging new paths for women. Dr. Judy Grahn is this year’s recipient, along with Vicki Noble.

The award is given to Dr. Grahn in recognition of her decades of writing, activism, visionary scholarship and leadership as a founding mother of feminist philosophy, literature, theory and poetry in action. As an internationally celebrated poet, author, mythologist, cultural theorist, teacher, she exemplifies tireless intellectual leadership in poetic expression of feminist ethical and spiritual values, and wide-ranging contributions to feminist infrastructure and culture.

Judy’s poetry has fueled both the Feminist and Lesbian-Feminist movements, in the US and numerous other countries through such works as the mythic-history Another Mother Tongue (1984, 1991) which was vital to the Lesbian/Gay movement during the 1980s and 1990s. We honor her poetic growth through Lesbian literary activism to encompass women’s spirituality – acknowledging the inseparability of feminist politics and women’s spirituality. Her work has resulted in fourteen published books with two more in process, including two book-length poems, several poetry collections, a reader, an ecotopian novel, and five non-fiction books.

In other foundational contributions, an award in her name is given every year to a notable Lesbian author. ASWM joins the many other organizations honoring her significant contributions; she has received over twenty awards, including Lifetime Achievement Awards from Triangle Publishing, Golden Crown Trailblazers Award, and San Francisco Gay Pride Parade Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshall, 2014 as well as two Lambda Literary Awards, two American Book Awards, a Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality Award, a Stonewall Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Award.

In recent works such as Simple Revolution: the Making of an Activist Poet (memoir), 2012; her poetry as the subject of a dedicated issue of The Journal of Lesbian Studies; and the collection, love belongs to those who do the feeling, 2008, she particularly draws forth women’s power to see and change the course of their lives and society. We also look forward to Judy’s upcoming book of poetry: Living in a Sentient World, which, no doubt, will continue to advance her vision of a more egalitarian and peaceful world.

Read our 2020 Demeter Award letter and learn more about Judy’s current work at judygrahn.org

March 29, 2018January 9, 2024

Kathy Jones Receives 2018 Demeter Award

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.

January 28, 2017January 9, 2024

Dr Elinor Gadon Receives Demeter Award in 2016

E Gadon Photo 2

At our 2016 Conference, the ASWM Board of Directorspresented Dr. Elinor Gadon with the Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality.* The award recognizes Dr. Gadon’s lifetime contribution to understanding the cultural and visual history of religion and myth.

With this Award, we honor and cherish her long career of feminist scholarship, education, and inspiration for generations of women artists. As an art historian specializing in Indian art and beyond. Dr. Gadon has analyzed myth and visual imagery in their cultural context and has provided an informed transmission of images related to the sacred feminine and women’s experience.

Her 1989 book, The Once and Future Goddess: A Symbol for Our Time, is a visual chronicle of the history of the sacred female and her re-emergence in the cultural mythology of our time. This work introduced scholars, feminists, artists and interested women to the astounding array of images of the female divine, culled through rigorous research from cultures across history, up to and including the work of contemporary women artists. This ground-breaking beginning was followed by numerous articles and lectures across the globe about art, gender, and the goddess, especially in India.

The award honors her widespread teaching and lectures at universities and conferences across the globe. Through scholarly publications, lectures, and curation, Dr. Gadon has contributed her expertise on religion and gender to wider international audiences. Her leadership also includes training the next generation; she founded the first graduate program on Women’s Spirituality.

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*In a break with tradition, this year’s award was also awarded to Dr.Gadon’s good friend Dr. Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum..