Category: Conferences & Symposia

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

Panel 8: Reclaiming Water Goddess Wisdom 

4:14 – 5:45 PM Friday May 5 (schedule subject to change)

• Tahlia Fischer, “The Sirens Re-Sung”
• Gülçin Önel, “The Ocean in One Drop – A Journey of Remembrance”
• Susan Wright, “The Erasure of the Mediterranean Water Goddess and the Rise of Western Misogynist World-View”

PRESENTERS

Tahlia Fischer: A rhetorician by training, my research in the academy focused on American Christian Nationalism. Published by Pro-Quest in 2014, (Re)membering A Christian Nation: Christian Nationalism, Biblical Literalism, and the Politics of Public Memory, enjoys international attention as a downloadable resource for scholars. I taught in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Ithaca College and the Communication and Rhetorical Studies departments at University of Iowa and Syracuse University. (Tahlia is also the founder of All Seated in a Barn, a horse and donkey rescue organization.)

Gülçin Önel continues her Goddess journey that began after a call many years ago, and reminds many women and men what she herself remembers inside. Believing that most of our incompatibilities, unhappiness and separations are caused by forgetting our true nature. Gülçin Önel therefore prefers to call her work a Journey of Remembrance rather than an education or a teaching. She is also working on Archetypal Psychology and completed a Master’s Study in Psychology on “The Use of Mythology in Therapies”. She is the author of Lilith’s Light-11, Rain of Light Oracle Card Decks and Mayan Astrology.

Susan M. Wright, MA is a native of Syracuse where she raised two daughters. She is currently a PhD Student in Jungian & Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. She earned an MA in Theology from Bexley Episcopal Seminary. Her current research includes feminist applications of Jungian depth psychology.

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

Panel 6: Healing the Waters: Birth, Pilgrimage, and the Otherworld

2:30- 4:00 PM Friday May 5  (schedule subject to change)

• Michelle Boyle, “Frasassi: Primal Source in a Site of Continuous Ritual and Pilgrimage since the Neolithic”
• Beebe Frazer, “Midwives and the Sacred Waters of Birth”
• Edel Meade, “Brigid and the Otherworld in the Irish Song Tradition”

PRESENTERS

Michelle Boyle is a doctoral candidate in East West Psychology at CIIS, where her research centers on healing personal and ancestral intergenerational trauma through tracing a lineage of earth-based women’s wisdom in northern Italy from the Paleolithic to the present. Michelle is a mother and grandmother, and currently lives in Texas—in Jumanos, Wichita, Numunuu Sookobitu, Kiikaapoi, and Tawakoni territory—with her youngest child and their hoofed and clawed family.

Beebe Frazer, CNM, D.Min, is a retired midwife who was the primary attendant for 942 birthing mothers. She witnessed the transformation of meek maidens into fierce warriors of love and protection. She honored the power of a woman’s body and blood to create and sustain her infant. Her dissertation, Embodied Birthing: Portal to Transformation, chronicles the history, rites-of-passage, and empowering archetypes of the birthing mother.

Allison Blair Snyder is a mother-scholar. When she isn’t reading or playing in the dirt with her Deaf one-year-old, she is snuggled up with her husband and rescue dogs. She resides on and honors the land indigenously cared for by Lanape Nation. She is a communications professor, academic advisor, and Ph.D. student in Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership. Her research focuses on conscious motherhood as it connects to mother earth.

Edel Meade is an award-winning Irish vocalist, composer and Fulbright Scholar. Her voice has been described as mesmerizing while her music is haunting and powerful. A review in Sunday Business Post says she has “”a fearless delivery that celebrates womanhood.” Her critically-acclaimed album ‘Brigids and Patricias’ explores what it means to be a woman in 21st century Ireland drawing on Irish folklore and mythology as well as Irish history and current affairs. 

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

10:45 AM Friday May 5  (schedule subject to change)

Panel 3: Cosmic Waters: Origins of Life, Death, and Transformation

• Jonathan Vaughn, “The Age of the Water-Bearer”
• Patricia Robin Woodruff, “Swan Maidens, Selkies, the Duck and the Devil”
• Rev. Areeya Marie Sharpe, “Water Whispers of the Desert”

PRESENTERS

 

Jonathan Vaughn, MA, MPA, is doctoral candidate in Depth Psychology—Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is an experienced nonprofit and university fundraiser, as well as an actor, writer, and photographer. His current research focuses on the psychology of place, particularly in an age of climate crisis.

Patricia Robin Woodruff is a polymath, author, artist and Priestess. Her Łemko heritage from the remote Carpathian mountains started her on a path of intense study of Slavic Pagan beliefs resulting in her spirit-led initiation as a Łemko bosorka (a type of shamanic witch). Having read over 4,000 sources on the subject, Woodruff can provide new insights into the indigenous beliefs of the European/ Slavic continent and surrounding lands.

 

Areeya Marie  is a Priestess in Residence, co-caretending at The Goddess Temple Dedicated to Sekhmet, in Cactus Springs, NV.  She describes herself as “an Interfaith Minister, Priestess, Artist, Vegetarian Chef, Multicultural Ceremonialist and Medical Qigong Practitioner who has worked in large scale Themed Prop Construction and Fabrication, Visual/SacredSound Art, Sacred Scent Creation and Private Chef venues.”

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

10:45 Friday May 5  (schedule subject to change)

Panel 2: Vital Seas: Lessons from Water-Centric Philosophy and Pedagogy

• Maya Vassallo Di Florio, “Aphrodite Mother Sea: Love that Unifies”
• Allison Blair-Snyder, “Witnessing an indigenous pedagogy for healing the sacred waters: The interconnectedness of mother earth, a mother’s womb, and the future of our planet”
• Sofia Batalha “D. Marinha – Water-centric Forgotten Wisdom” (via Zoom)

PRESENTERS

Priestess founder of the Tempio della Grande Dea, a research center and sacred place, Maya Vassallo Di Florio  trains Priestesses of Aphrodite and teaches Aphroditic Philosophy and Spirituality and Sacred Sexuality. She founded the Roma Goddess Conference, and wrote the bestselling book “Afrodite Svelata.”

Allison Blair Snyder is a mother-scholar. When she isn’t reading or playing in the dirt with her Deaf one-year-old, she is snuggled up with her husband and rescue dogs. She resides on and honors the land indigenously cared for by Lanape Nation. She is a communications professor, academic advisor, and Ph.D. student in Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership. Her research focuses on conscious motherhood as it connects to mother earth.

Sofia Batalha   is a designer by academic background, a teacher by chance, a writer by visceral need, and an independent (re)searcher by natural curiosity. She calls herself “a mammal, author, mother-woman and question weaver, a wanderer between interior and exterior landscapes, remembering ancient earthly practices in radical presence, active listening, ecopsychology, art, ecstasy, and writing.”

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

10:45-12:15 Friday May 5 (schedule subject to change)

Panel 1: Mother Waters: Stories of Sacred Well Springs and Land

• Kay Retzlaff, “Straddling Liminal Space and Time: Ireland’s Goddesses Survive”
• Judith Maeryam Wouk, “Women and Wells in the Hebrew Bible: Husbands, Sisters, and Community”
• Maria Guadalupe Urbina, “The Sacred Feminine in the Waters of Abya Yala”

PRESENTERS

Kay Retzlaff, professor of English, University of Maine at Augusta, has published two books on mythology: Ireland: Its Myths and Legends and Women of Mythology. Her most recent work, Duet, is a book of poetry, in collaboration with Maine artist Susan Camp. She published Redefining Irishness in a Coastal Maine City, 1770-1870: Bridget’s Belfast (Routledge) in 2022.

Judith Maeryam Wouk is a retired Canadian public servant who worked in human rights and refugee policy and now indulges in her passion for research and writing about goddesses and lesser-known women of the Bible.  She has presented about these subjects at Cactus Kallah, Palm Tree Kallah, JFS 50+ and the Ottawa School of Theology and Spirituality, as well as for several years at ASWM.  In this article, she is thrilled to be moving from PowerPoint to publication.  Her other passions are the Kohenet Jewish Priestess program, frame drumming, traveling, women and peace, walkable neighbourhoods and green burial.  She lives in Ottawa, Canada.

Guadalupe Urbina is a singer and composer, a researcher of the oral tradition of her region but has ventured into painting, children’s stories and poetry. She has published four books in Costa Rica and Spain; has recorded ten albums and appears on collections from various labels such as Putumayo Records, Rough Guides Music, and Culture Records. Guadalupe has performed on various stages in the three Americas, Europe and Central Africa.