Category: The Archive

The Story of Niibish with Ann Megisikwe Filemyr and Tahnahga Yako Myers

The Story of Niibish will be told, an ancestral tale of the long-ago handed down through the Oral Tradition of the Anishinaabeg peoples. Ann Megisikwe and Tahnahga both carry this story as part of their role as lineage carriers of the late Keewydinoquay, an Anishinaabe mashkikikwe (Ojibwe herbal medicine woman).

This traditional story carries medicine to help wound the ruptures that can befall families, communities, and nations when division is based on difference and a lack of understanding ensues. It is a sacred story that reminds us of our fundamental interconnection and interdependence on each other and on water and all that lives, grows and flourishes in the waters, fresh or saltwater.

This story helps us recall our fundamental kinship with the other-than-human realms and reminds us that we are all related despite the appearance of surface differences. It helps us reach back into our own ancestral memories to recall the stories in most coastal cultures regarding the finned people. Perhaps they are half human and half fish, but weren’t we all underwater beings conceived in the watery womb of our mother’s bodies? Are Mer stories also tales of our earliest form of becoming? Are they persistent memories that continue to fascinate and intrigue us?

In this time of large scale environmental and social destruction, how do we reclaim the knowledge contained in these ancient tales in order to re-imagine our relationships and re-structure our lives to include the magical?

Join us for this exploration.

We have a wonderful program of presentations this year.  

Below you will find the schedule and here 2016 ASWM Schedule PDF if you want to print it off. 

 PLEASE BE AWARE that the schedule, like life itself,  is subject to change!  

And–here are the Abstracts for those great presentations.

ASWM 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016

 7:30 am: Registration

8:30 am Room 1

Welcome and Opening

SESSION A: 9:00 am-10:15 am

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Dr. Elinor Gadon, History or Mystery: Fact of Fiction?

BREAK

SESSION B: 10:30 am -12:00 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Defiant Mothers, Rebellious Daughters: Patriarchal Family Myths and Matriarchal Mothering

1. Tamara Agha-Jaffar, Demeter, Persephone and Iambe: Three Rebels with Cause
2. Mariam Tazi-Preve, The Mother Trap
3. Molly Claire Benjamin, Magic and Fertility: The Goddess Freya as the Female Orphan Archetype

Room 2

Panel Title: Re-visioning and Hospitality in the Sacred Home of the Feminine

1. Marcella De Veaux, In Search of Home: Summoning the Goddess Ala
2. Gina Belton, The Indigenous Feminine: Fierce Receptivity in Cultivating an Ethic of Radical Hospitality
3. Toni Truesdale, Feminine Centered Dwellings as Areas of Sacred Protection

 Room 3

Panel Title: Matriarchal Studies: Past Debates and Present Practices

Moderator: Joan Cichon

1. Heide Goettner-Abendroth via Skype, Matriarchal Studies: Past Debates and Present New Foundation
2. Lydia Ruyle, Matriarchal Studies: A Visual, Global History
3. Cristina Biaggi, Matriarchy as Inspiration for Art
4. Kim Duckett, Being Audacious: Conceptualizing a Contemporary Goddess Women’s Community as a Matriarchal Culture

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Mama Donna Henes, Mythology, the Matriarchy, and Me “The Story of Us”
2. Alisa Starkweather, The Builder’s Daughter: Out of the land, out of the myths, comes our living work.

LUNCH & KEYNOTE– 12:15 – 1:45

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Dr. Margaret Bruchac, Pudjinskewss: Transgressive Animalities in Algonkian Indian Stories (working title)

SESSION C: 1:45 pm – 3:15 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Artists, Activists, and Scientists and the Lineage of the Goddess

1. Genevieve Vaughan, The Temple of Sekhmet as Harbour and Hearth
2. Simone Clunie, The Representation of Goddess Imagery in Feminist Art
3. Nancy Vedder-Shults, Science and Divination: The Blurring Lines between the Secular and the Sacred
4. Christine Keating, Dickinson, mythopoeia, and the Akasha Paradigm

Room 2

Title: Goddesses of the Americas

(45 minutes each)

1. Anne Key and Veronica Iglesias, Fierce, and Com/Passionate and Protective: Goddesses from Central Mexico
2. Lydia Ruyle, Images and Herstories/ Goddesses of the Americas

 Room 3

Panel Title: Light in the Darkness: Locating The Goddess in Ritual Space

1. Robin Hanson, Acllacunas: Sacred Women or Virgins of the Sun
2. Jessica Bowman, The Dark Goddess
3. Mary Louise Stone, Ancient Andean Mother and Third Millenium BCE Hearths

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Kate Brunner, Becoming Branwen the Peaceweaver: A Meditative Writing Workshop for Personal Healing and Cultural Activism
2. Marie Summerwood, Chanting to Heal the Spiral Everywhere

BREAK

 SESSION D: 3:30 pm: 5:00 pm

Room 1

Panel Title: Ritual, Tradition and Feminine Intuition among the Wabanaki of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes.

Room 2

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Betsy Crane, Implications of the Goddess for Gendered Sexuality: Then and Now
2. Holly Bellebuono, Women Healers of the World

 Room 3

Panel Title: Social Justice as Spiritual Choice: The Transpersonal and Transformative Goddess

1. Shirindokht Nourmanesh, The Transpersonal in Women without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur
2. Keisha Kogan, A Queering of the Waters in the Orisha in Santeria: Yemaya and Oshun through the Lens of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderland
3. Yuria Celidwen, Tonantzin Coatlicue Guadalupe: Christian Symbolism, Colonization and Social Justice

Room 4

Film, to be announced

 BREAK

SESSION E: 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm

Room 1

Panel Title: Embracing Transgression: Women’s Spirituality and Atypical Goddess Myths

1. Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, Liminality, Transgression, and Feminine Empowerment: The case of Kali and Pombagira
2. Marie Lucie Tarpent, The Animal Origins of Medusa and some other Atypical Female Deities
3. Rekha Vijayashankar, Kali’s Roar: The Rise of the Sacred Feminine as Light unto Darkness ( A Story from Indian History and Mythology)

 Room 2

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

1. Mary Beth Moser, Sacred Landscape: Folk Stories, Ancestral Values and the Importance of Place
2. Maryka Ives Paquette, Tracing Roots in Ancestral Lands: Remembering Through Relationship to Place
3. Marion Gail Dumont, Gateways to Submerged Histories: Biographies, Folklore and Place

Room 3

Panel Title: Male-Female Relationships in Hebrew Texts: Three Feminist Analyses

1. Judith Laura, via Skype, Gender Equity in Kabbalah?
2. Rabbi Jill Hammer, The King and the Priestess: Mythic Motifs and Motives in the Tale of Judah and Tamar
3. Judith Maeryam Wouk, Teraphim and the Role of Women

Room 4

Workshops (45 minutes each)

1. Laura Thomae, Drumming in the Dark: Integrating Music Therapy and Traditional Healing Practices in Hospice
2. Laney Goodman, Mother Drum Ceremonial Circle

BREAK – DINNER ON YOUR OWN

SESSION F: 7:30pm – Room 1

Authors read their spiritual stories, from award winning anthology, Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality: Elders and Visionaries

Moderated by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Vicki Noble and featuring: Max Dashu, Starr Goode, Mama Donna Henes, Donna Read, Genevieve Vaughan, Cristina Biaggi, Lydia Ruyle, Miranda Shaw, Elinor Gadon, and Susun Weed

——————————————————————————————————–

 SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2016

 8:30 am – Room 1

Opening and Announcements

SESSION G: 9:00 am – 10:15 am

Room 1

Panel Title: Wheels of the Goddess

1. Alexandra Cichon, Reflections on Reclaiming the Wheel of Ariadne of Bronze Age Crete
2. Joan Cichon, The Forgotten Goddesses of Ariadne’s Wheel
3. Kim Duckett, The Wheel of the Year as an Earth-Based Spiritual Psychology for Women
4. Barb Lutz, Synthesizing Goddess, Nature, Priestess, and Archeomythology: Creating Sacred Space for the Wheel of the Year

 Room 2

Panel Title: Matriarchal Matrix and Patriarchal Overlay: Three Historical Patterns

1. Constance Tippett, Archaeological Evidence of Ancient Women’s Gatherings
2. Elizabeth Kingswood, Gantowisas: The Role of Women within the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and her Influence on the Early Suffrage Movement
3. Laura Truxler, Through the Seer Stone: Cultural Landscape of Ancestral Memory and Four Generations of Early Mormon Progenitors on the Eastern Seaboard

Room 3

Panel Title: Rage, Ravages, and Rapture: Applying Goddess Wisdom to the Grieving Mother

1. Stephanie Zajchowski, Persephone’s Perception: The Paradox of Motherhood
2. Kayden Baker-McInnis, The Rich Dark of Grief: The Myths of Niobe and Demeter
3. Jaffa Frank, Objective Relatedness, Radical Empathy, and Letting Go
4. Angelina Avedano, Raging Grief and Dual Descent

Room 4

Roundtable: Native American Issues and Scholarship

BREAK

 SESSION H: 10:30 am-12:00 pm

 Room 1

Panel Title: Women’s Wisdom and Sacred Rites of Water

1. Mary Beth Moser, Flowing Across Time: Women, Water and the Sacred in the Italian Alps
2. Gayatri Devi and Savithri Shanker de Tourreil, Immersion: Sea and Sexuality in Goddess Myths
3. Jelka Vince Pallua, The Slavic Baba as an Aquatic Goddess

Room 2

Panel Title: Native Artists with Laura Fragua Cota

Presenters: Laura Fragua-Cota and others to be announced

Room 3

Panel Title: Goddess Myths, Nature, Wilderness and the Animal World

1. Kathryn Henderson, Deer, Women, Myth, and Spirit
2. Ingrid Kincaid, Playing by your Own Rules When the Gods Cheat: The Saga of Skadi
3. Kayden Baker-McInnis, Wilderness, Women and Soul-Making
4. Heather Kohser, Heroic Hummingbirds

Room 4

Film to be announced

 SESSION 1: 12:15 pm- 1:30 pm

Room 1

ASWM AWARDS AND NETWORKING LUNCHEON

SESSION J: 1:45 pm – 3:15 pm

Room 1

Panel title: By the Light and the Dark of the Moon – Lunar Knowing: The Cyclic, Dark and Regenerative Moon Nurturing Wisdom, Culture, and Research

1. Vicki Noble, Lunar Cycle Mandala and Its Cross-Cultural Evolutionary Significance
2. Demetra George, via Skype, Dark Moon Life Transitions
3. Marna Hauk, Lunar Inquiry

Room 2

Title: The Story of Niibish: Mer People of the St. Lawrence Seaway & the Great Lakes

Ann Filemyr and Tahnahga Yako Myers

Room 3

Panel Title: Women’s Spirituality, Transformative Scholarship and Personal Quest

1. Diane Jennett, Reweaving the Web: Ancestral Relationships in Research and Life
2. Kate Brunner, Rhiannon, Great Queen of the Mabinogi: Ancient Mythology in Modern Context as a Tool for Personal Healing and Social Justice Activism
3. Natasha Redina, Finding Light in Darkness: The Process of Descent from Ancient Goddesses to Present Day Women

Room 4

Workshop: April Heaslip, Reclaiming ISIS: From Traumatic Othering to Tending and Befriending

BREAK

 SESSION K: 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Room 1

Title: The Distaff: Fates, Witches, and Women’s Power

Max Dashu

Room 2

Title: The Role of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge in an Era of Global Change

Cristina Eisenberg

Room 3

 Panel Title: Sacred Lineages and the Spirit of Place

1. Barbara Daughter, Women are the Revolution: Examining the Lessons of my Motherline while Honoring the Legacy of Deborah Sampson
2. Margaret Lynn Mitchell, Seeking Sanctuary with Saint Brigid of Ireland: A Harbor of Sacred Feminine Divinity
3. Jennifer Smith, Finding the Feminine at MIT: The Great Mother Goddess under the Great Dome
4. Rain Hastings, Vinotok: Cultural Transformation through Community Ritual.

Room 4

Film and Filmmakers Roundtable

 BREAK

SESSION L: 5:15 pm – 6:45 pm

Room 1

KEYNOTE: Women as Visionaries and Healers

Dr. Lucia Ciavola Birnbaum

BREAK—DINNER ON YOUR OWN

SESSION M: 7:30 pm

 Room 1

Special showing: Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil

A film produced/directed by Donna Carole Roberts, directed/edited by Donna Read, and narrated by Alice Walker

 The Candomblé spiritual tradition in Bahia, Brazil, a vibrant African-derived culture that evolved from slavery’s brutal past. Elder women leaders tell stories of Candomblé’s history, social challenges and triumphs, grounded in strong community, and Earth-based wisdom and practice.

Mama Donna Henes (“Mythology, the Matriarchy, and Me” & workshop: “The Story of Us”)

Mama Donna is a ritualist and award-winning writer whose work focuses on healing self, society, and planet. She designs and leads multi-cultural, non-denominational celebrations, using ancient, traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies.

She maintains a ceremonial center, ritual practice and consultancy in Exotic Brooklyn, New York, Mama Donna’s Tea Garden and Healing Haven, where she works with individuals and groups to create personalized rituals for all of life’s transitions. Her story is included in the new book, Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality, whose authors will be featured at the conference.

“2015 was an especially, devastatingly, brutal year for so many people everywhere. The patriarchal powers-that-be have created a complete mess. Clearly, it is up to us women to roll up our sleeves and get busy putting life back together again.  It might be too late, already, but I fervently believe that if there is any hope at all for healing this planet and all who live upon it, that hope is us. What in the world are we waiting for?

“I hereby call on women everywhere to take a stand and use our vast stores of wisdom, experience, creativity, and chutzpah do something positive, each in our own unique and inimitable way, toward creating a better world for us all.  If not us, who? If not now, when?”

Mama Donna will give a workshop and present on the Friday night author panel for the book release for Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement:  Elders and Visionaries.

Demetra George (“Dark Moon Life Traditions”)

“Since ancient times the Moon has been worshipped as the Queen of the Night. Dating to at least 35,000 years ago, artifacts from the upper Paleolithic era (sequences of notches carved into bone, stone, and ivory) are thought to be the earliest lunar phase calendars. By gazing at the Moon and tracking her phases, early peoples regulated their lives according to lunar rhythms. They watched the Moon change place, color, shape, and disappear and reappear each month.”

Demetra George, M.A., looks to classical antiquity for inspiration in her pioneering work in mythic archetypal astrology, ancient Hellenistic techniques and history, and translations from Greek of primary source astrological texts. She is the author of Astrology For Yourself, Asteroid Goddesses, Mysteries of the Dark Moon, Finding Our Way Through the Dark, and Astrology and the Authentic Self. She lives in Oregon, lectures internationally, and leads pilgrimages to the sacred sites in Greece, Italy, Egypt, and India.  She offers personal astrological consultations and mentors individual students in all levels of astrological education.

Demetra will be joining her panel (Lunar Knowing: The Cyclic, Dark, and Regenerative Moon Nurturing Wisdom, Culture, and Research) by Skype from Oregon.

Judith Laura (“Gender Equity in Kabbalah?” )

Judith, author of three Goddess books, has been active in feminist spirituality since the 1970s.  She is Jewish by birth, and Unitarian Universalist and Goddessian by choice.

Her first Goddess writings, “Women’s Celebrations,” first published in 1978 in the journal Womanspirit, became part of her first Goddess book, She Lives! The Return of Our Great Mother: Myths, Rituals, Music & Meditations (1989). The second enlarged edition of her second book, Goddess Spirituality for the 21^stCentury: from Kabbalah to Quantum Physics, won the comparative religion category of USA Best Book Awards 2009.

In her Conference presentation she’ll discuss this book’s analyses of Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah and her more gender-equitable revisioning of their Tree of Life.

Her most recent book, Goddess Matters: the Mystical, Practical, & Controversial, received finalist awards in two categories from the International Book Awards 2012.

She blogs as Medusa on Medusa Coils and is founder of the Asherah yahoogroup.

Of her work she says: “When I first started writing Goddess Spirituality for the 21^st Century, I thought that Kabbalah would be only a small part of the book. Both Tarot, which often uses qabalistic correspondences, and my introduction to Jewish Kabbalah in a DC-area feminist spirituality group played parts in developing my interest in exploring the Tree of Life which is central to kabbalistic forms. But I feel the most important role was played by a divine emanation on the Tree called, in Hebrew, Hokmah. In English, this is Wisdom, and in Greek, Sophia. I believe this spiritual form, which I consider a Goddess, led me to discover that the Tree was not as gender-equitable as many assume and to the re-visioning I did.”

Judith will join her panel, Male-Female Relationships in Hebrew Texts: Three Feminist Analyses, via Skype. 

Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth (“Matriarchal Studies: Past Debates and Present New Foundation”)

Born in Thuringia, Germany, in 1941, Heide is a mother and a grandmother. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy and theory of science at the University of Munich where she taught philosophy for ten years (1973-1983).

She has published extensively on the theory of science, in addition to various books on matriarchal society and culture, and through her lifelong research on matriarchal societies has become a founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies.                                                   

In 1986, she founded the “International ACADEMY HAGIA for Matriarchal Studies and Matriarchal Spirituality” in Germany, and since then has been its director.                            She has also been visiting professor at the University of Montreal in Canada, and the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

In 2003, she organized and guided the “1st World Congress on Matriarchal Studies” in Luxembourg; in 2005, the “2nd World Congress on Matriarchal Studies” in San Marcos, Texas; and in 2011, a major conference on Matriarchal Studies and Politics in Switzerland.

In 2005, she was elected by the international initiative “1000 Peace Women Across the Globe” as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2012, she received the Saga-Award for contributions to women’s history and culture, from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (ASWM).  She is also a member of ASWM’s Advisory Board.

This year, Heide’s presentation comes to us via Skype from Germany.

Holly Bellebuono (“Women Healers of the World”)

“Years ago, my passion for plants and my work as an herbalist and gardener slowly birthed an understanding of and appreciation for feminine spirituality, and I especially gravitated toward its philosophies of duality and cycles. Years later, I was able to fuse herbalism and feminism in my 7-year documentary project in which I interviewed some of the most extraordinary women in the world. This eye-opening project reinforced for me just how amazing women’s accomplishments are and how empowering a grounded spirituality—especially a feminine spirituality—can be. Today I participate in inspiring and down-to-Earth women’s groups that uplift me and keep me in touch with the cycles and rhythms of life, and writing and teaching about the confluence of herbal healing and mythic ideas is a delight in my life. If you are in need of role models or looking for fresh inspiration from incredible women past and present, I hope you’ll join me for Women Healers of the World. You’ll meet your heroes and your friends, and the spunky and courageous gals of science, medicine, conservation, politics, and herbalism who make us proud.”

Marie Summerwood (“Chanting to Heal The Spiral Everywhere”)

“When I finally understood that everything is sacred and that my acting like everything is sacred is part of that, it changed my life.”

We have an amazing lineup of presenters for this year’s ASWM conference.   We want to introduce some of them to you in this blog–so you will know what you can expect when you join us at the Boston Burlington Marriott!

Here are profiles on two of these remarkable women, along with the titles of their presentations:

Rabbi Jill Hammer ( “The Priestess and the King in Biblical Text”)

Jill is the Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion, where she teaches rabbinical and cantorial students ancient and modern tools for spiritual experience, creativity, and growth. She is also the co-founder of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, which trains Jewish women in spiritual leadership in an earth-based, embodied, and feminist mode.  She says, “At Kohenet retreats, we reclaim Jewish women’s traditions of the past, and explore ritual as a transformative force in our lives. ” 

Her recent book with Kohenet co-founder Taya Shere, is The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women’s Spiritual Leadership.  

Of the inspiration for her work, Jill says,

I do what I do in order to awaken awareness of the interconnected nature of Being.   I do what I do to honor my ancestors, who gifted me their treasures of wisdom and consciousness.  I do what I do to rebirth spirit work as an art that can heal and inspire.  Some of my favorite tools are poetry, dreamwork, guided visualization, midrash (creative interpretation of sacred text), chant and dance, gathering and making sacred objects, and ritualcraft.  Another of my favorite tools is academic research, which can aid in the reclamation of ancient knowledge.

I was raised in the woods, and raised to love the earth and the sea and the sky.  I still love the earth and the sea and the sky, and, I now live in Manhattan with my wife and daughter.  We’re urban priestesses.

Nancy Vedder-Shults (“Science and Divination: The Blurring Lines between the Secular and the Sacred”)

Nancy is a long-time ASWM member, storyteller, and goddess scholar who uses music, myth and sacred play in her work. Nancy’s recordings include Chants for the Queen of Heaven and Singing the Promise. She is currently awaiting the publication of her book, The World Is Your Oracle (Fair Winds Press), a compendium of 52 different divination techniques from ancient and indigenous sources, as well as ones she has created based on the needs of contemporary women.

Of her work she says, “Recent brain imaging research has shown what seers and sages have known for millennia, namely that a certain state of mind facilitates new ideas. Empowerment has been the major reason for my work — especially empowerment of women within our patriarchal society. Divination allows us to be the experts in our own lives, tapping into our own inner wisdom.”

Learn more at Mama’s Minstrel