“Sacred Stones and the Immanence of Life in the Alpine Folk Traditions”

with Mary Beth Moser

Wednesday, March 24, 2021 at 3 pm Eastern Daylight Time 

REGISTER HERE

The importance of rocks in the traditional culture of the Italian Alps is evident in the archaeology, folk stories and everyday practices. Rock surfaces scraped smooth by receding glaciers in Valle Camonica, a UNESCO world heritage site in northern Italy, bear hundreds of thousands of engravings dating from across the millennia. Direct contact with certain rocks by sliding or rubbing was believed to promote fertility, a practice still remembered in the popular culture. The location of shrines, chapels, and churches in and on rocks acknowledges a continuity of sacred sites. In Piedmont, the chapel that holds the highly venerated statue of the Black Madonna of Oropa is built directly upon a rock.

In the folk stories once told in villages throughout the mountains, rocks are associated with power in the spiritual realm. Imprints on erratics, large boulders left from the ice age, are said to be of saints and the Virgin Mary – or the devil and witches. So-called witches once danced around rocks before the Council of Trent banished them and turned them into stone. A folk remedy for epilepsy, considered a spiritual sickness, utilizes the powder of a certain rock as medicinal. Spring water coming from the rock characterizes sites of fertility rituals. Water held within indentations in the rocks was considered blessed.

Drawing from my on–site research, folk literature, and interviews, I will present specific examples and visual images of rocks in northern Italy that have been regarded as sacred and even life-giving in the folk practices.

Mary Beth Moser is passionate about her ancestral homeland of Northern Italy. She holds a Ph.D. in Women’s Spirituality from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she has taught and lectured. Her dissertation, “The Everyday Spirituality of Women in the Italian Alps,” received ASWM’s 2014 Kore Award. Her publications in ASWM proceedings include: “Wild Women of the Waters” (2016) and “Submerged Spirituality in the Italian Alps” (2020). Mary Beth lives on an island in the Salish Sea in the Northwest US where she serves as president of the Seattle Trentino Club.  See her work on Trentino ancestry and culture at Ancestral Connections  and on the Black Madonnas Resource Center at DeaMadre.

.

Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:

April 7  at NOON Eastern Daylight Time
“Daughter of the Goddess, Sister of Man: Matriarchal Patterns in the International Fairy Tales”
Heide Goettner-Abendroth

April 21 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
“Bringing The Civilization of the Goddess to Life in The Four Novels of The Earthsong Series”
Mary Mackey

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

“Daughter of the Goddess, Sister of Man: Matriarchal Patterns in the International Fairy Tales”

with Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth

Wednesday, April 7, 2021 at 12 Noon Eastern Daylight Time 

REGISTER HERE

The general matriarchal patterns of the goddess and her partner, the holy king or “heros”, which abound in mythology, are also to be found in the international fairy tales. This reveals these folklore traditions as hidden matriarchal myths, made anonymous and passed on through millennia. The matriarchal structures in the fairy tales are demonstrated using some examples, which refer to the relations of the goddess to the woman and of the woman to the man. At the end, it will be shown, how the matriarchal patterns in fairy tales have been systematically transformed into patriarchal patterns. Heide says, “This way of analyzing fairy tales is based on a new method and may guide to a new understanding of this important folk tradition.”

See  Heide’s book: “The Goddess and her Heros”, Part II, available for free on her website. 

Dr Heide Goettner-Abendroth  is a mother and a grandmother. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy of science at the University of Munich where she lectured for ten years (1973-1983). She has published on philosophy of science, and extensively on matriarchal society and culture, and through her lifelong research on matriarchal societies has become a founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies. Her magnum opus: Matriarchal Societies. Studies on Indigenous Cultures across the Globe, (New York 2013, Peter Lang) defines scientifically this new field of knowledge and provides a world tour of examples of contemporary matriarchal cultures. She has been visiting professor at the University of Montreal in Canada, and the University of Innsbruck in Austria. She lectured extensively at home and abroad. In 1986, she founded the “International ACADEMY HAGIA for Matriarchal Studies” in Germany, and since then has been its director. She guided three World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies: 2003 in Luxembourg, 2005 in Texas, U.S., and 2011 in Switzerland. In 2012, she received ASWM’s Saga Award for Contributions to Women’s History and Culture. She was twice a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2005 by a Swiss initiative, 2007 by a Finnish initiative.

(The Sterrett illustration is from Art Passions, an encyclopedic website of works by 19th and 20th century illustrators.)

Save these dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:

April 21 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time
“Bringing The Civilization of the Goddess to Life in The Four Novels of The Earthsong Series”
Mary Mackey

May 5at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time
Title TBA: Paleolithic Animal Mysteries
Susan Moulton

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

“Women’s Mythologies: Is mythology relevant today?”

with Tova Beck-Friedman

Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 3 pm Eastern Standard Time

REGISTER HERE 

“Over the last decade, I have been gleaning legends from vast archives of ancient Biblical stories to Greek and Roman mythologies, recounting them as cine-poems. This presentation combines, art, poetry and video to illustrate the relevance of mythic stories of antiquity in present day society, in particular as it pertains to women’s social status. These cinepoetic videos are put in context of women’s selfhood, authority and strength.”

View Tova’s videos through the links below:

Medusa’s Head depicts a universal cultural narrative of blaming the victim, an ancient #metoo story.

Gaia Regards Her Children  laments the most pressing issue of our time, climate change.

Lot’s Wife & Jephthah’s Daughter draw from ancient Biblical myths to tell of women’s historical invisibility and insignificance.

Ashera, one of the most ancient of mother goddess symbols, laments the fate of the earth.

the Pythia – the powerful oracle of Delphi, the arbiter of wisdom.

Wisdom – “Hochma” the Hebrew goddess of wisdom gives account of women’s strength and power.

Tova Beck-Friedman is a mythological artist, filmmaker and a writer.  Presenting in festivals, museums, galleries and television, including the International Artists’ Museum; 50th Venice Biennale; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC; FIVAC, Cuba and Jerusalem Cinematheque.   Her documentary, “ At the Altar of Her Memories” was broadcast on Israeli Television, and “A  Portrait of the Artist as an Old(er) Woman” aired on PBS. She presented her works at the Women and Mythology East Coast Symposium in 2011.  See all of her work on her website.

.

Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:

March 24 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time
“Sacred Stones and the Immanence of Life in the Alpine Folk Traditions”
Mary Beth Moser

April 7  at NOON Eastern Daylight Time
“Daughter of the Goddess, Sister of Man: Matriarchal Patterns in the International Fairy Tales”
Heide Goettner-Abendroth

April 21 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
“Bringing The Civilization of the Goddess to Life in The Four Novels of The Earthsong Series”
Mary Mackey

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

“Signs Out of Time” Honoring the Life and Work of Marija Gimbutas

with Starhawk and Donna Read

Wednesday, February 24, 2021 at 3 pm Eastern Standard Time

Registration is Now Closed for this Salon 

In this special Salon in honor of the centennial of Marija Gimbutas, , Starhawk and Donna Read reflect on the  importance of her work and the making of “Signs Out of Time,” their influential documentary about Gimbutas’ life and research. 

“Marija Gimbutas asserted, from the evidence she found, and from her extensive first-hand knowledge of her place – including its folklore and traditions – that the earliest layers of Western culture were peaceful, and that the primordial Deity in this place was female. Gimbutas says of the Deity of these Old Europeans: ‘She is a metaphor of living Earth – nothing else.’

“Signs Out of Time,” the documentary film about the life and work of Marija Gimbutas, made by Donna Read and Starhawk, combines a wonderful collage of images – both photographic and animated – from the extensive excavations that Gimbutas conducted over decades, with story and photos of her life – who she was and what enabled her unique perspective and synthesis.

“Gimbutas’ method was the application of a rigorous scientific mind in combination with an intuitive sensuous indigenous relationship with her material. And so it is for this great documentary of her life and work, of her theories and her critics, and of her influence on scholarship and consciousness studies. It is itself a document of the complexities and confluences of all these aspects, and pleasurably presented with narration, interviews and animated graphics.”

Excerpts from review of “Signs Out of Time” by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. on the PaGaian Cosmology blog.

Donna Read is an editor and director, best known for The Women’s Spirituality Trilogy (The Burning Times, Full Circle and Goddess Remembered),  Permaculture: The Growing Edge, and (with producer/director Donna Roberts) Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil. In 2016 she received ASWM’s SAGA award Saga Award for Special Contributions to Women’s History and Culture. The award honors Donna’s role in making feminist scholarship and the history of spirituality visible and accessible to a wide audience.

Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and a prominent voice in modern earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism. She is the author or co-author of thirteen books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess and the ecotopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, and its sequel City of Refuge. Her most recent non-fiction book is The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups, on group dynamics, power, conflict and communications. 

Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:

March 10 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
“Women’s Mythologies; Is mythology relevant today?”
Tova Beck-Friedman

March 24 at 3pm Eastern Daylight Time
“Sacred Stones and the Immanence of Life in the Alpine Folk Traditions”
Mary Beth Moser

April 7 at NOON Eastern Daylight Time
“Daughter of the Goddess, Sister of Man: Matriarchal Patterns in the International Fairy Tales”
Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event. 

“Living in a Sentient World”

with Judy Grahn

Wednesday, February 10, 2021 at 3 pm Eastern Standard Time 

REGISTER HERE

“For forty years I’ve been thinking and writing about the intense psychic connections we can experience with creatures, including insects, that live around us, incorporating them into my poetry and my novel, Mundane’s World, as well as in stories and essays.  This paper will discuss how to recognize and induce these connections of inter-species consciousness (shared sacred space), how to record and believe the experiences, and then how to write them.  My goal is to share these accounts with more skeptical humans in order to reduce both cynicism and romanticism, to strengthen bonds between people and creature life, to encourage recognition of shared minds, and to amplify the value we place on beings who share space with us. I’ll illustrate the topic with selections from my forthcoming book, Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit: Living in a Sentient World. (Red Hen Press, Pasadena, California, May 4, 2021). “

Judy Grahn is internationally known as a poet, author and cultural theorist. She has published fifteen books, with two more forthcoming in May, 2021. Judy holds a Ph.D. in Integral Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she often teaches. She is retired co-director and core faculty of the Women’s Spirituality MA program at New College of California, and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and Sofia University. The Commonality Institute,  an international community of scholars and changemakers, promotes and teaches her work.

Art by Helen Klebesadel   Helen is an artist, educator, and activist working in Madison WI.

.

Save the dates for upcoming ASWM Salons:

February 24 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
“Signs Out of Time: Honoring the Life and Work of Marija Gimbutas”
Starhawk and Donna Read

March 10 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
“Women’s Mythologies; Is mythology relevant today?”
Tova Beck-Friedman

March 24 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time
“Sacred Stones and the Immanence of Life in the Alpine Folk Traditions”
Mary Beth Moser

The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.