“MEETING LILITH, THE FIRST WOMAN and amulets to counter Her, borne of patriarchal fears & rabbinic fantasies”

with D’vorah J. Grenn

Thursday,  November 19, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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In Lilith, the first mythological woman before Eve, we see the power of an archetype. The change in public perception of Lilith as a Mesopotamian goddess, to someone later painted as a demonic figure, came about as patriarchy took root; her portrayal grew worse over time. However, starting in the last third of the 20th Century many returned to seeing Lilith as a goddess, as a positive feminist role model, or as a paradoxical figure embodying some of our best and worst qualities.  

As we’ll see, through literature and amuletic images starting in the 2nd  millennium BCE, Lilith was once a deity on whom women could call for protection during pregnancy, childbirth and at other times. But Her later image became that of a child-stealing witch, a succubus, one who made children sick, or worse. Did both women and men support the demonized version of Her?  

Today some still envision Lilith as a negative force; for others, She personifies self-sovereignty, and a free-thinking, sexually autonomous being. However we picture Her, Lilith remains alive in our imaginations, in popular culture, in art, writing, film, music, across the globe. She leads us to question authority and the status quo. That is Her power.

D’vorah J. Grenn, Ph.D is a Yoreshet/lineage holder of a female Kabbalist tradition, En-Kohenet/priestess and ordained Mashpi’ah/spiritual guide. She founded The Lilith Institute (1997), co-directed the Women’s Spirituality MA Program at ITP/Sofia University and has taught at Napa Valley College and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area on women’s rituals, feminist thealogy and philosophies, sacred arts and literature, and Jewish mysticism. She co-teaches on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life with Reb Nadya Gross; they recently co-produced their second symposium, “Wisdom of the Mothers: Honoring Our Ancestral Roots” and will offer a “Wisdom of the Mothers: Sacred Arts, Embodied Knowing” Virtual Symposium on May 16-17, 2027.

 D’vorah’s publications include: Lilith’s Fire: Reclaiming our Sacred Lifeforce; Talking to Goddess, an anthology of writings from 72 women in 25 traditions; “Lilith’s Fire: Examining Original Sources of Power”, Feminist Theology Journal; Jewish priestess and Lilith entries in Encyclopedia of Women in World Religions; “For She Is A Tree of Life: Shared Roots Connecting Women to Deity”, her dissertation on beliefs and rituals among U.S. and South African Lemba women of Jewish ancestry, and “Spiritual Brokenness and Healing Presence of the Sacred Feminine”, FEMSPEC feminist journal. She has been a guest on podcasts including the Revelation Podcast Project and Breaking Down Patriarchy; was a featured speaker in the “Crones, Hags and Elder Wise Women” Summit, and co-hosted 50 episodes of the “Tending Lilith’s Fire” broadcast with Kohenet Annie Matan.

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Check back for Salons beginning on January 14, 2027

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event. 

“Marija Gimbutas: A Model of Grace and Courage in the Face of Adversity when Pursuing the Truth”

with Joan Marler and Susan Moulton

Thursday,  November 5, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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For most of human history the principle of the sacred feminine cycle of life, death and regeneration fundamental to all sentient life in Nature prevailed. Since the shift from Matrifocal to Patriarchal cultural values however, women and Nature have been dismissed, subordinated, and their voices are often silenced or ignored.  Marija Gimbutas and other women of distinction in history who have achieved remarkable insights in all fields have had their achievements appropriated by men while they have been publicly  demeaned, ignored or dismissed.

We would like to discuss the practices women have developed to  circumvent obstacles in their paths, in order to have their wisdom heard and to stand up for the truth. Gimbutas, remarkable women from the past like Mileva Maríc (Einstein) who actually made the scientific breakthroughs her husband claimed, and many of us today have found ways to model behavior, courage, strength  and grace in our search for truth in the face of hostility, disrespect and disregard. We would like to honor those brave, wise foremothers and share  some of their methods and responses to help us during this time of growing misogyny and global ecological crisis as we engage in our own search for truth.

Dr. Joan Marler earned a BA in Dance and the Liberal Arts, Mills College, Oakland; MA in Archaeomythology, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park; PhD in Philosophy and Religion, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. She edited The Civilization of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas and has lectured internationally on Gimbutas’s life and work. Joan taught dance and archaeomythology for more than 30 years and is the Director of the Institute of Archaeomythology and edits its online Journal. She is the winner of the 2025 ASWM Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology.

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Upcoming Salon

Scholar Salon 106:

Thursday, November  at 3 PM Eastern Time

MEETING LILITH, THE FIRST WOMAN: Amulets created to counter Her, patriarchal fears & rabbinic fantasies

with Dr. D’vorah Grenn

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event. 

“How I Found the Lost Goddesses of Early Greece in the Emergence of the Women’s Spirituality Movement”

with Charlene Spretnak

Thursday,  October 22, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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During the mid-1970s, interest in women’s spirituality bubbled up in feminist communities across the country. One of the major nodes (the other was Boston) was the San Francisco Bay Area. Charlene Spretnak reflects on the energizing sense of discovery; the collective thrill of exposing the patriarchal grip on our cultural, social, and spiritual history (and pre-history!); and the synergistic flow of creativity and mutual support that yielded diverse works and paths into women’s authentic spiritual experience.

Among the many early books, gatherings, and personal practices that emerged was her book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece (1978), which she feels owes much to that heady time and place. Charlene Spretnak will read a few of the pre-Olympian, pre-patriarchal myths from the book, reconstructed for the first time in more than 2500 years. The first ebook edition of the book was recently published by Women’s Spirituality Studies Press. She will also discuss her article “Goddess Time,” commissioned for The Brooklyn Rail in 2025, which continues the story that began fifty years ago, particularly regarding a prominent scholar and a pioneering Women’s Spirituality artist.

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Charlene Spretnak is the author of nine books on cultural history, religion and spirituality, feminism, Green politics, and ecological thought. Her first book, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, was among the initial books that sparked the emergence of the Women’s Spirituality movement in the mid-1970s. Goddess spirituality was one of the four orientations presented in her book on modernity and religion, States of Grace (1991). In 2011 her article “Anatomy of a Backlash: Concerning the Work of Marija Gimbutas” was published in the Journal of Archaeomythology. She has brought a focus on dynamic interrelatedness to her engagement with the pre-Olympian mythology of Greece; the emergent Women’s Spirituality movement; the ecofeminist movement; the emergent Green Party movement in Europe and the United States; the spiritual dimension of Green politics; the rising tide of eco-social solutions to the crises of modernity; the cancellation of the symbolic, cosmological, and mystical dimensions of the Virgin Mary when the Catholic Church modernized itself; new discoveries that have led to the Relational Shift in many fields; and the vast spiritual dimensions of modern and contemporary art, which are largely unacknowledged by the professional art world and art history. Her book The Resurgence of the Real was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1997. In 2012 she received the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement as “one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time” from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. She is a professor emerita in religion and philosophy. She lives in Ojai, California. Website: www.charlenespretnak.com .

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Upcoming Salon

Scholar Salon 105:

Thursday, November 5 at 3 PM Eastern Time

Marija Gimbutas: A Model of Grace and Courage in the Face of Adversity

with Joan Marler and Susan Moulton

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event. 

“The Land is Our Mother: The Indigenous Euro-Slavic Beliefs”

with Patricia Robin Woodruff

Thursday,  October 8, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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In the Carpathian mountains the spiritual molfar (magician/healer), Mikailovitch Nechay, stated “Earth is our mother, she holds us all.” This is not a figurative expression.  In the native belief preserved in Slavic lands the earth is literally viewed as one’s mother, grandmother, or Primal Ancestor and indeed the same belief runs throughout other indigenous cultures of Old Europe and beyond.  Archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas wrote on this concept of Mother Earth/ the Great Goddess in the 1970’s and 80’s.  

Patricia Robin Woodruff was unaware of Gimbutas’ work when she began her research. By tracing the beliefs preserved in the Slavic religions, she found these beliefs extended in a continuous line back tens of thousands of years into the Paleolithic.  Her research provides an independent confirmation of Gimbutas’ work and branches off into unexplored territory with insights into Paleolithic and Neolithic spiritual beliefs.   This presentation explores the multiplicity of Goddesses that have been shaped by dividing cultures tracing back tens of thousands of years, combined with the ancient belief in the power of the word.  These factors brought about the various “names”/ titles used for the Feminine Divine.  As the material is presented the facts reveal that the Earth was viewed as our Mother to whom we are connected by an umbilical cord (or omphalos).  

“This presentation points out that the primarily monotheistic, patriarchal culture of today has a male-centric (and Christian-centric) preconception that creates a blind spot when it comes to the word origins of lands. By using comparative plausibility and the variation of land, country, or town names from cross-cultural comparisons, i will lay out the facts that most of our countries today (and many cities) stem from the local titles of the Earth Mother.”  

Patricia Robin Woodruff is an independent scholar of ancient spiritual beliefs.  Classes in Wicca started her exploring the pre-Christian beliefs of her maternal culture, a little-known ethnicity of Lemko from the Carpathian Mountains.  This resulted in her spirit-led initiation as a Lemko bosorka (a shamanic witch) that derives from the Euro-Slavic indigenous beliefs.  Woodruff has read over 7,000 academic papers related to the topic and is an author of several books including Slavic Deities & their Worship: Book 1.

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Upcoming Salon

Scholar Salon 104:

Thursday, October 22 at 3 PM Eastern Time

How I Found the Lost Goddesses of Early Greece in the Emergence of the Women’s Spirituality Movement

with Charlene Spretnak

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.