Category: News & Articles

General ASWM news and organizational updates

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Plenary Panel April 10: Engaging Interconnectedness

Engaging Interconnectedness: Lessons from Sentient Beings/Ecosystems

  We are honored to present this panel of scholars whose presentations highlight the unique contributions of ecosystems, people, and other sentient beings to the dialogue of life on earth. In particular, their work teaches us how to listen well to the words and wisdom of others. This panel will be followed by an opportunity for panelists to respond to one another, as well as a Q & A with attendees.

 

Creation Story by Lisa Levart

 “From Techno-Capitalist Domination to Eco-Social Partnership,”  Asoka Bandarage

This presentation describes and compares the worldview of domination underlying the contemporary capitalist technological paradigm and the worldview of partnership that would underlie an alternative ecological paradigm. Drawing from both western academic disciplines and alternative philosophical approaches, especially Buddhism, I will explore the fundamental shift in consciousness, public policy and social action needed for ecological and social protection.

 

Cucuteni female figurines in circle

“Honoring Reciprocity: Collaborating with Indigenous Peoples on Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” Cristina Eisenberg

Dr. Eisenberg, who is of mixed Raramuri and Western Apache heritage, will share the basic tenets and ethical principles that enable effective, respectful intercultural collaboration with Indigenous peoples in Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Examples include harvesting medicinal plants, sharing stories, and learning about and participating in ceremonies. She will provide guidelines for best and most respectful ways of engaging with Indigenous peoples and learning from us.

 

Dancing Women, Greek Bronze, 800 BCE

“Blurring boundaries and disturbing dichotomies,”  Denise Mitten

Many fields of study operate in dualities helping humans retain a western heteropatriarchy worldview. This construct of dualities, including culture/nature, body/mind, human/animal, human/technology, and human/posthuman, causes and strengthens hierarchical ways of thinking and behaving. Language can help decolonize Eurocentric approaches to understanding human life including the phenomenon of being human as a part of the natural world.

 

Big Sky by Juliana Lightle

“Manuakepa – Reawaken Our Power to Connect,” Apela Colorado

Thirty years of research has unveiled a web of sacred sites that evince the mysteries of conception, birth, death, and rebirth, and reveal a lineage of Hawaiian and western women carrying the stories and caring for associated sacred sites. Manuakepa , Owl Woman and Chief of the White Springs (Woman’s) Temple, is a mythical, shapeshifting Owl who confronts invaders, frees village prisoners, and takes them into the underworld. The journey encoded in the Manuakepa sites prepares the villages to confront patriarchy and the spirit of death.

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Right Relations with Horses, Insects, Seals, Goddesses (2022 Symposium)

“Restoring Right Relationships with Sentient Beings”

2022 ASWM Symposium Panel

April 10th at 3PM Eastern Daylight Time

 

This panel addresses issues of crucial importance today: the survival of our ecosystems and wild animals, manifesting meaningful change, and reweaving the bonds among spirituality, nature, and human beings.

Seal pup, Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge

Brenda Peterson, “Silkies in Myth and on the Beach,” delves into silkies and seals in legend, song, story, and science. Her focus is on those stories that call us into a sustainable and more spiritual bond with these beings.

Wild horses, US Bureau of Land Management, 2014

Melissa Rosati,”The Horse: A Gallop through its Creation Myths and Agency as Visionary, Warrior, Savior, and Healer in Human Relationships,”  highlights the opportunities for the reawakening of divine feminine values through the equine archetypes of visionary, warrior, savior, and healer in myths surrounding Demeter/Ceres, Artemis/Diana,Athena/Minerva, and Epona/Rhiannon.

 

Windswept, JW Waterhouse (1903)

Andrea Fleckinger, “Frau Holle: In the Footsteps of the Great Goddess: Recalling Europe’s Indigenous Roots,” draws on Heide Goettner-Abendroth’s work on Matriarchal Landscape Mythology, examining how the ancient sacred meanings of landscapes can be decoded to restore the relationship between humans, spirituality, and nature.

honeybee

Judy Grahn, “Insects in Our Everyday Lives,” will present information on the importance of insects to the ecosystems of the earth, and tell some anecdotes about their intelligence and interactions with each other and with humans.

See the 2022 Symposium page for event information.

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Relating to Animals, Plants, and the Divine (Symposium 2022)

“Other Ways of Knowing and Relating: Animal-Plant-Divine” 

2022 ASWM Symposium Panel

Sunday, April 10th, 2022 at 3:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time 

This panel explores relationships at various levels: the non-dual relationship between animals and divinity, the interconnections between humans and the landscape, the fluid relationship (that is possible) between humans, the divine, and the animal and plant worlds when the natural world is not objectified, and ancient relationships between the human and plant world, and how they can be re-established in the present day.

Yogini Vrishanana, 10th century, National Museum Delhi

Monica Mody “When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-dual Matrix,” weaves together scholarly commentary and original poetry to wonder at some of the likely dimensions of the relationship between animal and Yogini.

Emma Dymock, “The Living Cauldron: Transformative Landscapes in Celtic Mythology” explores the interconnected relationship between humans and the living landscape through the lens of Celtic mythology, with specific focus on the story of the Goddess Cerridwen.

Nereides, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Barbara Crescimanno, “Siciliian Nymphs. Animal, Human, Divine Creatures”  traces the survival of Nymphs–Goddesses who can appear as sacred trees, medicinal gardens, caves and sacred waters as well as herbalists, beekeepers, and midwives in the still living cultural traditions of Sicily.

photo by Julien McRoberts, 2020

Reagan Wytsalucy, “The Land Still Bears Fruit: Restoring the Navajo Peach through Strengthened Community Traditions” recounts her journey to return an important traditional food source, and its cultural story, to her people’s land in the Four Corners region of the Southwest.

See 2022 Symposium page for registration and event information.

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Dancing with Celestial Cycles and Earthly Rhythms (Symposium 2022)

“Celestial Cycles and Earthly Rhythms”

2022 Symposium Panel 

Sunday April 10th 1PM Eastern Daylight Time

How do the rhythms of the seasons inform our earthly activities? How do celestial cycles expand our sense of belonging to one another and life on earth? This panel, which explores deep connections with celestial and planetary ecologies, features the work of these four scholars who are also poets and dancers.

Dancing Women, Greek Bronze, 800 BCE

Laura Shannon: “Basil, apple, and rose: women, plants, and protection in Greek folk songs” explores the wisdom of old European dance songs that highlight the healing power of herbs, and of the dances themselves.

Moon among the Clouds

Ann Filemyr:“Celestial Ecologies: Living Within the Solar & Lunar Wheels Rhythmic Cycles of Change”examines conscious relationships to our nearest cosmic companions, the Sun and Moon–long believed to bring blessing, healing, inspiration and balance to our lives.

Hygieia, Roman copy of Greek statue, 360 BCE

Marna Hauk: “Hygeia, Green and Shealing: Cultivating and Embodying Green Healing Energy with Asteroid, Dream, and Myth” investigates mythos and practice around Hygeia: asteroid; healer & animating energy of nature retreats, alternative medicine, and dream healing; as well as the origin of our word,“hygiene”.

Roman copy of portrait of Sappho

Annie Finch: “Riding Meter’s Magic Language Home: How an Ancient Poetic Technology Can Help Reunite Us with The Earth, the Divine Feminine, and Each Other” explains how meter bridges body and mind, secular and divine, individual and collective, drawing on ancient prayers and sacred literature that use meter to induce a liminal state and bridge the gap between ourselves, nature, and the divine by healing our language.

See the 2022 Symposium page for registration and event information.

REGISTER HERE:

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Listening to Bears, Horses, and Seal Folk (Symposium 2022)

“Listening to and Speaking with–Animals and Other Sentient Beings”

2022 Symposium Panel

Sunday April 10th, 1PM Eastern Daylight Time

Current threats to an eco-socially sustainable future require that we re-introduce myths and rituals that reflect an understanding of humans’ interdependence with the community of sentient beings. Drawing on ancestral traditions and understandings, these four authors provide excellent examples of such relationships.

Seal Woman Stamp, Faroe Islands, 2007

Rebecca Vincent “Why We Need Selkies” addresses our need for more than just technological fixes and cerebral solutions to the environmental crises as she examines the role selkies and mythic water spirits could play in helping catalyze a shift into a new dream. As the Achuar People of South America say we need to truly solve our environmental crises

Kaarina Kailo “The Woman who Married the Bear and Original Instructions” explains through the story of the Woman Who Married a Bear the importance of Finno-Ugric cultures’ rebirth rituals such as Spring festivals with bear goddess Brigit, celebrating, gifting, feasting as life returned and further, allows us to see how the attitude towards mother and bear worship changed in the shift to patriarchal cultures.

Grizzly Bear, US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2012

Barbara Mann “Thinking Yours Doesn’t Stink: Dis/Respect for Others”    explores tales of women who marry bears in Native North American tradition, which typically begins with violations of protocol, from working alone in the woods and being disrespectful of bears to two-timing their human husband with the bears. The powerful bears can shape-shift, read thoughts, put thoughts and images into human heads, foretell the future and will sacrifice themselves to hunters, but resuscitate from their bones.

Wild horses, US Bureau of Land Management, 2014

Susan Moulton “WILD vs DOMESTIC” focuses on equus caballus, to explore communication and mutual reliance among species along with the wisdom embodied by the central “lead” female. This mare functioned as a repository of information at the heart of complex interactive plant and animal communities, starting with the earliest visual records of feral horses on cave walls in the Palaeolithic, and distinct from later cultures with animal “domestication” in the Bronze Age.

See the 2022 Symposium page for event information.

REGISTER HERE: