News & Articles – Page 52

May 16, 2010January 9, 2024

A Note about Bees

by ASWM President Sid Reger

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.

big-bee-goddess_bm_gr18604-1234 — 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”

May 14, 2010January 9, 2024

Review: A Modern Mythmaker in Wyoming

A Woman to Match A Mountain: Neal Forsling and Crimson Dawn.

Film review by Sid Reger, Ed. D.

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.

Forsling.Witches — 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”

About ASWM

Who We Are

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.

Our members are people who:

- conduct research
- create artworks or music
- teach at the university level
- teach at K-12 levels
- make documentaries
- mentor students
- write (scholarship, plays, poetry, fiction, autobiography)
- perform & create performances
- pursue graduate studies
- publish
- translate primary sources
- lead rituals and religious services
- teach classes & workshops
- lead tours to sacred sites
- conduct/interpret archaeological studies
- develop education resources
- interpret contemporary literature and artwork

How To Get Involved

We welcome you to support the work we do through volunteering, donating, or becoming a member today. Membership is open to anyone over the age of 18.

August 25, 2009January 9, 2024

Review: Textbook on Women and Goddesses

Women and Goddesses in Myth and Sacred Text: An Anthology, Tamara Agha-Jaffar, editor. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005.

Reviewed by Johanna H. Stuckey, Ph.D., York University, Toronto, Canada

A-Jafar.book — Women and Goddesses in Myth and Sacred Text

When I was teaching Goddess courses in the 1970s to 1990s, I would have been really grateful to have had access to this textbook. It does what few other such books do: it provides key selections in translation from religious and mythical material pertaining to the goddess/woman being studied. Thus, students can dip into, among others, such works as the Babylonian creation story, the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, the Qur’an, and the Ramayana.

The goddesses and sacred women Agha-Jaffar treats are as follows: Isis, Inanna, Tiamat, Demeter and Persephone, Circe, Medea, Sita, Kali, Amaterasu, Kuan Yin, Lilith, Eve, Virgin Mary, Hawwa, Maryam, Oshun, White Buffalo Woman, and Corn Mother. If I had been picking the ones to include, I probably would have left out two of the sacred women (Circe and Medea) and added the Canaanite/Israelite Asherah and another Greek or Asian goddess or both. However, Agha-Jaffar’s choices reflect the course she was teaching and for which she devised this textbook.

Continue reading “Review: Textbook on Women and Goddesses”