“The Woman who Married the Bear and Original Instructions”

with Kaarina Kailo

Thursday,  February 23, 2023 at NOON Eastern Time 

RESCHEDULED FOR MARCH 23, 2023

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The Spring festivals with, among others, bear goddess Brigit at the forefront celebrated gifting, food and collective merry-making as life returned. The Bear gave a woman the original instructions. Gifting ensured people did not overuse their resources of the commons. It is by comparing variants of the story of the Woman Who Married a Bear that we can see most clearly how the attitude towards mother and bear worship has changed in the shift from pre-christian to Christian and patriarchal cultures. The current threats to an ecosocially sustainable future require that we re-introduce ecomyths and rituals that reflect an understanding of humans’ interdependence with the community of sentient beings and Inter-relational ecosystems. I describe how the original instructions of matricultures in northern Finno-Ugric cultures have been appropriated and changed to serve patriarchal values.

Watch for the forthcoming (June 2023), The Woman Who Married the Bear. The Spirituality of the Ancient Foremothers by Barbara Alice Mann and Kaarina Kailo (Oxford UP; see Mann-Kailo book).  This book surveys Indigenous traditions across the global North, including North America and Eurasia, with matriarchal traditions of Women marrying the Bear in both, sporting caves as wombs, water as earth’s amniotic fluid, and birth-renewal as the point of thanksgiving. In North America, traditions stretch back to the Bölling−Allerød warming, 15,000 BP and come forward into historical times. In Eurasia, starting with the earliest “Venus” figurines of bear-headed women, 35,000 BP, traditions connect fire, water, earth, forest, and “Bear-Women” spirits to matriarchy. In both instances, women and bears originally collaborate through time-keeping star configurations and winter cave-dwelling, as symbolized by the spring awakening from hibernation followed by the birth of “cubs.” 

Dr. Kaarina Kailo has worked as prof. or senior scholar of Women’s Studies in Finland and Canada. Her expertise includes Northern indigenous studies, ecomythology and bear spirituality. Her hundreds of publications, books, articles, edited or co-edited volumes include Wo/men & Bears— Nature, Culture, Gender; Finnish Goddess Mythology and the Golden Woman; Mothering, Gift and Revolution and studies on sauna spirituality.

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Save the date for the next ASWM Salon:

March 9, 2023 To Be Announced

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

“Searching for Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ancestors in Italy”

Luciana Percovich with Elvira Visciola

Thursday,  February 9, 2023 at NOON Eastern Time 

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My presentation is an introduction to a women’s research project about a neglected sector of archaeological and palethnological studies in Italy during the long Pleistocenic millennia of ice and immediately after, before the coming of the Indo-European peoples, known as the Italici.

Pioneer paleontologist Luigi Pigorini (1842-1925), who was the first in Italy to teach paletnology and to inaugurate a prehistoric and ethnographic museum, determined that a Paleolithic archaeological layer didn’t exist in Italy– even if the most remote traces of human presence go back 750.000 years (homo aesernensis Isernia, Molise).

For a long time, Pigorini’s prejudice reflected and affected the Academy, and excavations rarely reached the primary layers on which Etruscan, Greek, Latin and Christian monuments have been erected. But today, one of the most renowned of Italian goddess figurines, the Lady of Savignano (Upper Paleolithic), is displayed in the Roman museum named after him.

Honoring Marija Gimbutas’ centenary, we inaugurated www.preistoriainitalia.it, a free association of scholars of various disciplines, indipendent researchers and artists disseminated all over the Italian regions. Our goals are to collect and give a vision to myriad discoveries and manufacts preserved in small local museums and in variegated specialistic reviews and bulletins.

The presentation is based on the current state of this groundbreaking research, which is proving rich beyond expectations. The work is largely supported by images and divided into 5 topics: Caves, Ancestresses, Burials, Goddess figurines, and findings in Sardinia/Sicily.

Luciana Percovich  The Encyclopedia of Women describes her as “a traveller between worlds and a weaver of space-time connections for her ability of embracing distant wide horizons with a loving insight.” A member of the Italian Women’s Movement since the Seventies, she has lived and worked in Milano as a teacher, an editor, a translator, activist and an author. She has introduced, and made their books available to Italian readers, the works of important feminist authors including Mary Daly, Marija Gimbutas, Vicki Noble, Tsultrim Allione, Starhawk, Genevieve Vaughan, Phyllis Currott, Kathy Jones, Heide Goettner-Abendroth among others. As an essayist she has published widely on such topics as women’s health, science, anthropology and mythology. With the Laima Association, she helped to organize the International Indigenous Cultures of Peace conferences in Torino and Rome. She is a member of the Libera Università delle Donne di Milano.

Luciana’s main publications include La coscienza nel corpo. Donne, salute e medicina negli anni Settanta; Oscure Madri Splendenti. Le origini dl sacro e delle religion; Colei che dà la vita, Colei che dà la forma. Miti di creazione femminili; and Verso il Luogo delle Origini. Un percorso di ricerca del sé femminile.

Her E-book is available in English: She who gives Life, She who gives Form. Female creation myths.

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Save the date for the next ASWM Salon:

February 23, 2023, 12 NOON Eastern Standard Time  
The Woman who Married the Bear and Original Instructions
Kaarina Kailo

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

“Matriarchal Landscape Mythology”

with Andrea Fleckinger and Heide Goettner Abendroth

Thursday,  January 26, 2022 at NOON Eastern Time 

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Dr Andrea Fleckinger on Principles of Matriarchal Landscape Mythology: The Matriarchal Landscape Mythology (MLM) is a theory and a practice that allows rediscovering the matriarchal art of landscape formation and decodes landscapes in their ancient, sacred meaning. The methodology of the MLM had been developed by Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth. The MLM allows to restore the ancient meanings of the sacred places, the great goddesses, the spiritual symbols, and the rich mythology of Central Europe. The analytical process consists of ten steps: 1) Walking the landscape, 2) Discovering sacred hills, 3) Individuating sightlines according to archaeo-astronomy, 4) Research for cult lines/ paths, 5) Archaeological analysis, 6) Linguistic analysis, 7) Research in churches 8) Research of legends and myths 9) Folklore research 10) Research of retreats and cultural niches. The single steps of the methodological process will be deepend during the presentation and illustrated further by concrete examples during the salon.

Dr Heide Göttner-Abendroth on Sacred Landscape and Landscape Temples: With the cosmological references of the Neolithic tombs and other sacred places and their meaningful emplacements, people created not only a social but also a symbolic landscape. They projected their religious symbolism onto the landscape, turning it into a sacred one. As the landscape was always regarded as a manifestation of Mother Earth who, depending on the local area, may have had different forms with different names: this results in many different landscape goddesses but they always refer to the one Mother Earth. The sacred landscape is shaped by her divine forms and forces. Until now, this symbolic relationship between sacred monuments and the landscape has not been taken into consideration in archaeology because of the ideology of “taking over and possessing the land by elites.”

However, the Neolithic people not only emphasized the natural landscape with their religious buildings, but also transformed the landscape itself into a symbolic one, with large earthworks. The formation of sacred landscapes in the image of Mother Earth, occupying an area with places of worship in a particular arrangement, is a widespread feature in Neolithic cultures. It led to the phenomenon of “landscape temples.” These characteristics of Matriarchal Landscape Mythology will be illustrated by examples and pictures.

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Dr. Andrea Fleckinger is a sociologist, social worker, lecturer on Modern Matriarchal Studies, and founder of the MatriForum. an organization that aims to encourage constructive dialogue between science and the public at large regarding “alternative, egalitarian forms of society supported by the latest findings in the scientific fields of modern matriarchal research, economics, sociology, political science and cultural studies.”  Among other areas.In her research, she focuses on gender equality, gender-based violence, social work, mothering, and the possibilities for social transformation.

Dr. Heide Göttner-Abendroth is a mother and a grandmother, and the founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies, who has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy of science at the University of Munich where she lectured for ten years. She has published on philosophy of science, and extensively on matriarchal society and culture.. Her many publications include The Dancing Goddess. Principles of a Matriarchal Aesthetic, Matriarchal Societies. Studies on Indigenous Cultures across the Globe, and The Goddess and Her Heros. Matriarchal Religion in Mythology, Fairy-Tales and Poetry. In 1986, she founded the International ACADEMY HAGIA for Matriarchal Studies in Germany, and since then has been its director. She also guided three World Congresses on Matriarchal Studies. In 2012, she received ASWM’s Saga Award for Contributions to Women’s History and Culture.

Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:

February 9, 2023, 12 NOON Eastern Standard Time  
Searching for Palaeolithic and Neolithic Ancestors in Italy
Luciana Percovich

February 23, 2023, 12 NOON Eastern Standard Time  
The Woman who Married the Bear and Original Instructions
Kaarina Kailo

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

“Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power”

with Judy Grahn

Thursday,  January 12, 2023 at 3 PM Eastern Time 

REGISTER HERE

“My forty-year love affair with Sumerian goddess Inanna continues with the 2021 publication Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power, with interpretive retelling of eight of her stories. I address her depth, her longevity (now!), and a beginning take on her thealogy. This salon will allow even more complex and relevant understandings of who She is, and how we access Her. Because if, as I argue, She is goddess of Life itself, and we are blessed to have lush material from the ancient poets who first described Her, then what can we perceive of the ethical as well as the psychological teachings in Her stories?”

“From the translations and interpretations of Noah Kramer and Diane Wolkstein, Betty De Shong Meador, and a dozen more, we already know much of the psychological value of Inanna’s literature. For fourteen years my colleagues and I used her Descent myth to frame the journey students took through our MA program in Women’s Spirituality. Researching and writing Eruptions allowed me to address my own questions: why is a goddess of love and beauty also so violent–or is She? How do Her androgyny and cross-gendered priesthoods fit? Were the writings of her greatest poet, Enheduanna, the central axis of the Book of Job? And how, if She is goddess of Life itself, how do we have an intimate, even everyday, relationship with Her?   Using two of her lesser-known stories, I plan a presentation with illustrations enhanced by your questions and experiences to deepen our connection to Her vivacity and love.”

Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist. Her works include seven books of nonfiction, two book-length poems, five poetry collections, a reader, and a novel.  Audible just released two audiobooks if her works: Judy’s first forty years memoir, A Simple Revolution, and The Judy Grahn Reader, which also includes The Queen of Swords, read by six readers as a raucous verse play on Inanna’s Descent Myth. Grahn’s eco-essays, Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit: Living in a Sentient World came out in print in 2021, as did Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power. The latter has won two awards for scholarship, from ASWM (the Sarasvati Award for Best Nonfiction) and from PENOakland. Coming next: an updated version of The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition with commentaries by seven younger writers. Judy’s lifework has fueled LGBT movements, feminism, and Women’s Spirituality. For more information about her work see the Commonality Institute, a community for artists and scholars engaged with Judy’s work.

Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:

January 26, 2023, 12 NOON Eastern Standard Time  
“Matriarchal Landscape Mythology”
Andrea Fleckinger and Heide Goettner-Abendroth

February 9, 2023, 12 NOON Eastern Standard Time  
Title to Be Announced
Luciana Percovich

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