Announcing Scholar Salon 101: Register for September 10
“The Goddess of Burning Hair: 37 Poems Giving Voice to Gaia the Great Mother”
with Mary Mackey
Thursday, September 10, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time
REGISTER HERE
The Goddess of Burning Hair is the first complete collection of Mary Mackey’s goddess poems. Written from 1972 to 2025, the thirty-seven poems in this book emerge from a lifetime Mackey has spent studying, listing to, respecting, and giving voice to the spirit of Gaia the Great Mother in all her forms. Stunningly imaginative, beautifully written, intensely lyrical, mysterious, and sometimes powerfully prophetic, these poems take us into worlds both ancient and not-yet born.
Here you will find poems about goddesses from Europe like Medusa and Aphrodite; Afro-Brazilian goddesses like Iemanjá, and Yansã; goddesses Mackey has invented like The Goddess of Burning Hair; goddesses who have created themselves and goddesses who are a combination of the research of scholars like Marija Gimbutas and Mackey’s own imagination taken from her four novels about the Goddess-worshipping/Earth-centered cultures of Neolithic Europe. You will encounter prophets like Cassandra who speak warnings no one believes; and last, but by no means least, poems that celebrate those moments when the power of the Divine enters us, moments when we mortals become transformed into something greater and more powerful, and the Earth our Great Mother speaks through us.
“Reading Mary Mackey’s poems in this book is like listening to the Delphic Pythia utter her prophecies from her sacred chasm. With stark fluidity Mary exemplifies the poet as prophet. Her poems are rich and spare—like haikus.” Cristina Biaggi, Author of Habitations of the Great Goddess
Mary Mackey became a writer by running high fevers; visiting the ruins of the neolithic, goddess-worshiping cultures of Old Europe; tramping through tropical jungles; being swarmed by army ants, and reading. Her novels and poems have been praised by by Marija Gimbutas, Marge Piercy, Jane Hirshfield, Maxine Hong Kingston, Annie Finch, Judy Grahn, Cristina Biaggi, Vicki Noble, Starhawk, Wendel Berry, Thomas Moore, Rafael Jesús González, and Pat Conroy for their beauty, precision, gripping plots, originality, and extraordinary range. She is the author of 10 collections of poetry, including Sugar Zone, winner of a PEN Award; and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Best Book Published by a Small Press; as well as 14 novels, including The New York Times bestseller A Grand Passion and the Earthsong Series, four novels about the Goddess-worshiping people of Old Europe. In December 2026 and January 2027 Open Road Media will reissue the Earthsong Series novels in new editions in both paper and electronic form. The Goddess of Burning Hair, the first complete collection of Mackey’s goddess poems, will be published by Women’s Spirituality Studies Press in September 2026.
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Upcoming Salon
Scholar Salon 102:
Thursday, September 24 at 3 PM Eastern Time
Collective Goddesses in Northern Europe, part 1, The Matronen
with Dawn Work-Makinne
This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.
2027 Graduate Student Participation Scholarship
For the 2027 conference, ASWM has one scholarship available for a graduate student whose proposal is accepted and who is presenting in a field related to Women’s Spirituality.
The Dr. Mara Lynn Keller Graduate Student Conference Participation Scholarship is made possible by a bequest from pioneering scholar, teacher, and visionary, Dr. Mara Lynn Keller, whose life’s work helped shape the field of Women’s Spirituality studies as we know it today. The scholarship includes a fee waiver and $500 to offset costs for attendance, and requires that a longer proposal be submitted for consideration.
Women’s Spirituality is a transdisciplinary field that explores the intersection of feminism, religion, and spirituality, and encompasses three different areas of emphasis: Women and World Religions; Feminist and Ecofeminist Philosophies and Activism; and Women’s Mysteries, Sacred Arts, and Healing.
Applications will be accepted starting on September 1, 2026.
To apply for the scholarship, which includes a fee waiver and $500 to offset costs for attendance for the 2027 ASWM Biennial Conference, please do the following:
- Submit your 250 word proposal abstract and short (70 word) biography per the information through the ASWM 2027 Call for Proposals announcement: “Wisdom in the Thin Places: Thinking and Talking about the Liminal.” Your paper proposal must be in a field related to Women’s Spirituality.
- Complete the Graduate Student Participation Scholarship Application to affirm that you are a graduate student at an accredited institution of higher education in one of the disciplines encompassed by Women’s Spirituality.
- Attach an expanded 750 word proposal to the form, further amplifying your proposal, and submit the completed form as instructed.
If your proposal is accepted by the ASWM Program Committee, the Scholarship committee will consider your application. The scholarship awardee will be chosen by late February/early March of 2027.
For more information please contact: scholarship@womenandmyth.org
About Dr. Mara Lynn Keller
Dr. Mara Lynn Keller co-founded the Women’s Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies 30 years ago with Eleanor Gadon. Dr. Keller is past professor of Philosophy and Religion and Women’s Spirituality, and for 10 years served as Director of the Women’s Spirituality M.A. and Ph.D. programs at CIIS. Dr. Keller was a scholar-practitioner for whom spirituality was an embodied phenomenon. She was a philosopher and theologian, whose numerous writings include articles about the Goddesses of Crete and Greece, such as “Sacred Arts and Ritual in Crete of the Mother Goddess” and “The Eleusinian Mysteries: Ritual Path of Initiation.” In all aspects of her teaching she put her students first and took great joy in their successes. She passed away on 12/23/23, one day following the Winter Solstice.
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