Category: In Memoriam

Her banner over me is Love: Remembering Lydia Ruyle

By Gayatri Devi for the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, March 27, 2016

 

Her banner over me is Love.

–adapted from the Song of Songs for Lydia

 

It is with great love and sadness that the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (ASWM) shares the the sorrow of the community of Lydia Ruyle’s family and friends at Lydia’s passing from our world to the world of ancestors. Lydia’s presence, personality, passion and painting enriched our association’s dedicated and evolving work on goddess scholarship and the mythology of the divine feminine for many years in a variety of ways.

 

When most of us visualize the goddess in our mind, in her many incarnations and aspects, we might actually see her in the forms and figures through which Lydia showed the goddess to us. Lydia often referred to the goddesses as her “girls,” a tender apostrophe that illuminated not only Lydia’s motherly care towards her banners, but also the eternal and imperishable purity and power of the timeless goddess herself. Lydia’s banners of the incarnate goddesses, from the many living traditions of goddess cultures from across the world, showed us how to see the energy, playfulness, joy, seriousness, intelligence and beauty of the sacred feminine through paintings that were both abstract and powerfully expressive at the same time.

 

Lydia’s banners of the goddesses literally enveloped our association’s conferences and symposia. Since their first exhibition at Ephesus in Turkey in 1995, Lydia’s goddess banners–paintings of goddesses on nylon flag banners– have traveled all over the world bringing joy, wisdom, and light to all who come across them.  Lydia’s goddess banners were always one of the high points of our association’s conferences. Hanging Lydia’s banners at our conference site was a ritual that several of us have been fortunate to take part in. The meeting rooms, board rooms and other mundane spaces would be transformed in a matter of minutes to sacred structures as we hung up the “girls” in all their rich and golden yellows, bright burning oranges, shimmering earthy greens, dark eyed blacks and blues, and colors of all hues and infinite richness.  We spoke and did our work enveloped in the presence of Lydia’s girls.

 

For the 2010 ASWM conference at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in the Poconos, Lydia taught us how to paint our own scarves. Lydia gave us plain silk scarves and paint and showed us what the paint does on the material, and how to manage the paint correctly. From idea to its imprint, the great teacher in Lydia patiently walked us through what it takes to paint what you see with your inner and outer eyes.  Lydia liked to tell the story of how the girls went “missing” in 2014 for a brief period of time when all forty of the goddess banners were shipped for display to a conference in Seattle. Upon hearing that the goddesses were missing, Lydia tried to find the box of her paintings in the big city of Seattle where they were lost to no avail. Back in Colorado, Lydia and her husband Bob created a despacho to dispel the negative energies surrounding the loss of the goddesses. Lydia heard the good news a week later when the conference organizer called to tell her that the goddesses were returned when a kind old woman saw some teenagers throwing the banners out in the streets and picked them up and returned the box to the conference organizers. The goddesses were once again able to come to all of us who need to see them.

 

Lydia is listed in our 2016 Boston conference program for both a panel on Matriarchal Studies and a solo workshop on Goddess Images from around the world. In place of Lydia’s banners, we are bringing our personal collections of Lydia’s prayer flags–smaller versions of the goddess banners–that we had gathered over the years. We will string them in our conference space in place of the banners. Lydia’s girls will still grace our conference space this Friday and Saturday. Our altar will be graced by the beautiful 2015 Portland Oregon conference poster that Lydia made for us. Our hearts will be full to the brim with the love and loving kindness that embody all that Lydia means to us.

 

 

 

 

Here is a wonderful affirmation that Amejo Amyot wrote for Lydia, which was read at the gathering to celebrate her life.  Thank you, Amejo, for finding the words to say what so many people were feeling.

Dear friends of ASWM,

This is a sad day for all who love Lydia, and who have been touched by her beautiful artwork.  We will have more to say about her life and work in future posts, but for now, we all pause to remember her dedication, intelligence, and generosity, and through our sadness, we celebrate her achievements and her loving heart.

Here is a joyful article about her “living memorial service,” a gathering earlier this month in her home town of Greeley, CO.

 

Aloha, Lydia.

The ASWM Board

In Memoriam Patricia Monaghan

Patricia Monaghan, scholar, author, poet, activist, artist, visionary died early on November 11, 2012 after a two year journey with cancer. She was a Founding Mother of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. ASWM grieves this loss and honors Patricia’s memory as we continue the work she envisioned.

Patricia was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. to Irish-American parents, and maintained dual Irish and American citizenship. She earned her undergraduate and first graduate degree at the University of Minnesota, where she studied English and French literature. She also earned an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from the University of Alaska. She worked as a journalist in both Minnesota and Alaska, writing about culture, nature, and the intersection of the two. Patricia earned her PhD in Science and Literature from The Union Institute in Cincinnati in 1994. In 1995, she joined the faculty of the School for New Learning at DePaul University, where she taught classes in arts and environmental sciences.

ASWM members will remember Patricia for her groundbreaking contributions to the fields of Goddess Studies and Women’s Spirituality. In 1979, she published the first encyclopedia of female divinities, a book which has remained steadily in print since then and was recently republished in a two volume set as The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines. She has also published The Encyclopedia of Celtic Myth and Folklore. She edited a three-volume collection of essays entitled Goddesses in World Culture, published in late 2010. Patricia brought her lifelong interest in Ireland together with her commitment to women’s spirituality in The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit, a travelogue of Irish heritage sites and their relation to goddess figures. Her other books on this subject are The Goddess Path and The Goddess Companion, both introductory books on the subject; O Mother Sun, an analysis of world myths about solar goddesses, Wild Girls: The Path of the Young Goddess, a group of stories for girls about youthful goddesses; and Magical Gardens, a book of garden designs based in mythology that was reissued in early 2012. A revised and expanded edition of Meditation: The Complete Guide was recently published. At the time of her death, Patricia had just finished co-editing with her spouse Dr. Michael McDermott an anthology of writings called Brigit: Sun of Womanhood. She was also revising The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines for a paperback edition. Both can be expected in 2013.

The last few years of her life were devoted to the projects she held the most dear: ASWM, The Black Earth Institute, and Irish folklore study. The Black Earth Institute is dedicated to inspiring artists to serve the causes of inclusive spirituality, protecting and healing the earth and fighting for social justice. She focused her work and travels increasingly on discovering Irish mythology and folklore. The creation and development of ASWM were high priorities for Patricia. She was committed to the importance of reward and recognition, to call attention to Goddess scholarship within academia at large. She was devoted to the mentoring of new and emerging scholars. Through her generosity, she endowed the Kore Dissertation Prize for ASWM; in this way, scholars will continue to benefit from her commitment to excellence for years to come.

Patricia was also an avid gardener with a large organic garden, orchard and vineyard that she tended with her husband. A memorial will be held at the farm on Saturday, December 1, 2012. The same morning, at 11:00 a.m., an additional memorial will be held at the Quaker meeting house in Madison, Wisconsin. Because Patricia was connected to people all over the world, there are many memorials and vigils being held in local communities. ASWM plans a ceremony of remembrance in conjunction with the Symposium in St. Paul, Minnesota in April 2013.

We celebrate and honor Patricia’s life, spirit and work by continuing her vision to develop the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology.

Contributions to continue her work may also be made to the Black Earth Institute, PO box 424 Black Earth, Wisconsin 53515.

For another remembrance of Patricia, see this article in The Wild Hunt.