Category: News & Articles

General ASWM news and organizational updates

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Her banner over me is Love: Remembering Lydia Ruyle

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.

 

 

 

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For Lydia with Love

 

Lydia's unforgettable smile
Lydia’s unforgettable smile

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.

Lydia, in Celebration of  your Life
And so the Great Goddess said unto Lydia, as she entered the wise woman time of her life,  “what dear one will you do with your one wild and precious life?” 1
And Lydia looking up to the Great Mystery, straightening her spine and opening her crown chakra, she breathes:
Oh Blessed one:  I will travel all over the world.  I will visit all the sacred sites, the caves and temples and ruins.  I will feel what the women felt who honored the Goddess of their lands. I will come to know in my bones what was being honored here.  I will bring this back to the women of my world so that they too will remember.  And then I will lead tours so that hundreds of women can see and feel for themselves the wonders of ancient ruins like Gobekli Tepe.
And so she did!
And oh Blessed One:  I will lead women in ceremony and create sacred space before all our meetings, assemblies, classes and conferences.  I will call in the goddesses of the East, the South, the West, and the North,  the Above and the Below and all the goddess energies of the Middle World.  I will call in Kali, Guadalupe, Pele, Sedna, Skywoman and Pachamama.  And the women will remember to bring spirit back into the mind.
And so she did!
And oh Blessed one:  I will create great large banners to honor hundreds of Goddesses from all over the world.  I will help women to know and remember their ancestors and the deities that were honored thousands of years ago when the world was a matriarchy and all things essential to women were honored.  And these banners will fly all over the world, wherever people are gathered to celebrate Goddess.  And so the banners have graced many a conference and the women remember.
And oh Blessed One, as I transform to the world of spirit, I will teach the women how to celebrate life as I call us all together to celebrate my one wild and precious life. I give thanks and gratitude for allowing the divine feminine force to flow through me and I’m grateful that you Oh Great Goddess have trusted me to be your messenger on Earth.
And so it was!
Blessed be
Amejo Amyot, Ph.D.
1.  Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
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The Passing of Lydia Ruyle

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

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Conference Panel: “Hearing the Call of the Ancestors”

Hearing the Call of the Ancestors through Myth, Lineage, and the Spirit of Place

A panel by three women seeking their Ancestors – who found each other along the way. Their paths met on the shores of the Salish Sea at a time when each was in graduate school. In sharing the experiences of their journeys with each other, they witnessed the transformational power of being willing to listen to the call of the Ancestors.

We find our Ancestors – and they find us – in many ways. It can be through an intentional ancestral journey, a “chance” opportunity to visit another city, detailed genealogical research, or focused scholarly study. By leaving clues to guide our path, the Ancestors seem to want us to discover them, if we are willing to pay attention – to hear their call. This panel features the presentations of three women who have made ancestral journeys to learn who they are by knowing where they come from. Their quests employ many ways of knowing as they retrieve the values transmitted in the folk stories, recover traditional knowledge held in the land itself, and reveal submerged histories through scholarly research.

Mary Beth Moser: “My story begins decades ago when I first walked on the land of my grandparents in what is now called northern Italy. Having been raised without explicit knowledge of my cultural heritage, I felt a sense of belonging, a genetic resonance that I had not felt before. This experience led to years of genealogical research and study trips. Through luck, or perhaps ancestral intervention, I met Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, who became my mentor in the Women’s Spirituality doctoral program. Using the methodology of feminist cultural history, a field for which Lucia was a pathfinder, opened my eyes to the fullness of my culture, including what had been suppressed, submerged or unwritten. In my research, I learned of an animate land with an oral history of indigenous goddesses, magical women, and folk women and men who lived sustainably and harmoniously with Nature. Always a spiritual seeker, I have found great meaning in the values conveyed in the folk stories, in the enduring customs of the folk culture and in the rituals of the folk religion. Serving as president of the local cultural club, Circolo Trentino di Seattle, enables me to have an ongoing engagement with those who share my ancestral heritage. Through my writing and presentations, I hope to inspire others to seek their own indigenous roots.”

Maryka Ives Paquette, of Franco-Norse ancestry, is a cultural and environmental specialist whose ancestral research laid the foundation for her professional work to support indigenous peoples’ voices in environmental management and policy. She holds an MA in Indigenous Mind from Wisdom University and an MPA in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University. She currently resides in Mannahatta, present day Manhattan.

“My presentation examines identity and the recovery of knowledge through multidisciplinary research I conducted for my Master’s thesis that draws on indigenous ways of knowing, genealogy, and cultural history, and culminates in a journey to Armorica, present day Normandy. My research is founded on the ancient premise that humans are equal and active participants in creation, a worldview maintained and passed down by indigenous peoples and traditional societies to this day. I trace the origins of a family line back to earth-based traditions honoring the yew, acknowledging the effects of colonization on cultural memory, to recover wisdom hidden in plain view across the Norman landscape. This research not only grounds my own sense of identity in the story of humanity, it also sheds light on aspects of traditional Gallic culture that can strengthen values and build connection among all peoples through a renewed relationship to place.”

Marion Gail Dumont: I was born in Thiereville-Sur-Meuse, Lorraine, France and named after Marion, Montana where my paternal Grandparents had a cattle ranch. Life has been shaped by the many places that I have inhabited. My French heritage has always been important to me and it is only recently that I have discovered further details of my ancestral lineage, including Irish, Scots-Irish, and African-American. In this discovery, I have come to recognize the life-changing significance of knowing our ancestors. As I approach the 60th year of my life, I yearn to find a way to bridge the land of the living with the land of the ancestors. My life has been graced by women: three daughters and a six-year old granddaughter. As a registered nurse, mother, and grandmother it is not surprising that the focus of my work over the past 34 years has been women’s health and development. I have additional training as a childbirth educator, lactation consultant, and doula. Today, I offer non-religious and personalized attention to the spiritual needs of women as they step across a life threshold. As a spiritual midwife, I work with women to create a space to celebrate or mourn life-changing events and transitions. Hearing the call of our ancestors through lineage, myth, and place can gain us access to knowledge and create connections that help us in the crossing of life thresholds. My presentation shares my experience of the discovery of my Irish ancestry that came about through my doctoral research and a visit to a particular place in East Tennessee.