Creating Buddhas, The Making and Meaning of Fabric Thangkas
a film by Isadora Gabrielle Leidenfrost
Creating Buddhas is a documentary film by Isadora Gabrielle Leidenfrost featuring an artist who makes Buddhas out of silk, Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo. Trained in Dharamsala, India for nine years, Leslie is one of the few female fabric thangka makers in the world.
At work on the Green Tara Thangka
Thangka, which means a rolled up image made of silk cloth, helped spread Buddhism throughout Asia. Viewing a thangka sacred image is a Buddhist spiritual practice which helps sentient beings move in the direction of enlightenment.
In the Tibetan cultural tradition, fabric thangka making is the highest form of art. Thangkas are made of precious materials; pure silk, gold threads, ornaments. There is a geometrical, artistic and spiritual canon to follow. It is a challenge to learn and practice the art form.
The beautiful film follows the process of making a Green Tara thangka from its beginnings to completion over six months later. The process is both a spiritual one and an artistic one–both the making of thangkas and the making of movies.
One of the most thrilling moments of the first national ASWM conference in April, 2010, was the world premiere of the documentary “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican” by California filmmaker Jules Hart.
Women priests featured in film
Four years in the making, this surprising and moving film traces recent developments within the Roman Catholic Church. Catholicism holds that priests must be ordained “in apostolic succession,” meaning that each priest is ordained by a bishop whose heritage can be traced all the way back to the original apostles of Jesus Christ—a two thousand year link to the founding fathers of the church. Continue reading “Review: “Pink Smoke Over the Vatican””
ASWM’s mission is to promote the study of mythology. Myths about animals are essential to our ability to explain our humanity to ourselves. And they are based on observation of the wonders and magic of living species. We can’t isolate ourselves from our animal “relations” whose wisdom we celebrate. We have an obligation to promote their welfare along with our own.
Bee Goddess of Rhodes
We chose the image of the Bee Goddess as our logo and central metaphor for ASWM for very good reasons. It is not only that bees are great collaborators and communicators. The honey they produce is a magical substance unlike any other, sweet beyond compare, more often given through cooperation than taken by competition. Honey is also associated with shamanic travel and physical healing. Myths of bees are intimately related to the myths of goddesses in many traditions, and more often associated with women than men. Continue reading “A Note about Bees”
A Woman to Match A Mountain: Neal Forsling and Crimson Dawn.
Film review by Sid Reger, Ed. D.
Neal Forsling
Are myths and legends only available from ancient sources? This charming biographical film proves that it’s possible for a modern woman to single-handedly build a myth tradition that continues to thrive in Wyoming 80 years after its creation. Neal Forsling was herself the stuff of legend, a young woman who divorced in the 1920s and moved with her two girls to homestead on a mountaintop in the rugged land near Casper. There she not only defied convention as a writer and artist, but in 1930, at her Summer Solstice party, she started a living myth tradition: the Witches of Crimson Dawn.
Witches and lanterns, N. Forsling
Through telling and enacting stories for the children of the mountain, Neal and her friends created an ongoing celebration of fairies, witches, and other mythic characters. She maintained that the Crimson Witch approached her when she moved to the land, and told her to protect the beautiful mountain and pass its stories on to willing visitors. As the Bohemian group of artists in Casper grew, so did the energy for creating the stories of the witches, (benevolent spirits) elves, and woodcutters. Continue reading “Review: A Modern Mythmaker in Wyoming”
The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (ASWM) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission of supporting scholarly and creative endeavors in topics of the sacred feminine, women and mythology. Founded in 2007, ASWM is led by a volunteer Board of Directors and Advisory Board and is supported entirely by dues, donations and conference fees.
We believe that we all have much to say to one another, and that sharing ideas and resources strengthens the work we do. We value diversity in scholarship and community.
What We Do
ASWM holds biennial conferences in the U.S., and at times holds off-year symposia. We publish volumes of conference proceedings, and are in the stages of curating an online library of member-only resources, including research, bibliography, dissertations, artworks, reviews and abstracts.
We began as a handful of scholars and artists, many from the Midwest, who first met ad-hoc in 2002 to discuss our work in mythology and goddess studies. The group grew over time and after a few years we concluded that the best way to advance such scholarship was to form our own organization.
You must be logged in to post a comment.