Tag: 2022 symposium

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Right Relations with Horses, Insects, Seals, Goddesses (2022 Symposium)

“Restoring Right Relationships with Sentient Beings”

2022 ASWM Symposium Panel

April 10th at 3PM Eastern Daylight Time

 

This panel addresses issues of crucial importance today: the survival of our ecosystems and wild animals, manifesting meaningful change, and reweaving the bonds among spirituality, nature, and human beings.

Seal pup, Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge

Brenda Peterson, “Silkies in Myth and on the Beach,” delves into silkies and seals in legend, song, story, and science. Her focus is on those stories that call us into a sustainable and more spiritual bond with these beings.

Wild horses, US Bureau of Land Management, 2014

Melissa Rosati,”The Horse: A Gallop through its Creation Myths and Agency as Visionary, Warrior, Savior, and Healer in Human Relationships,”  highlights the opportunities for the reawakening of divine feminine values through the equine archetypes of visionary, warrior, savior, and healer in myths surrounding Demeter/Ceres, Artemis/Diana,Athena/Minerva, and Epona/Rhiannon.

 

Windswept, JW Waterhouse (1903)

Andrea Fleckinger, “Frau Holle: In the Footsteps of the Great Goddess: Recalling Europe’s Indigenous Roots,” draws on Heide Goettner-Abendroth’s work on Matriarchal Landscape Mythology, examining how the ancient sacred meanings of landscapes can be decoded to restore the relationship between humans, spirituality, and nature.

honeybee

Judy Grahn, “Insects in Our Everyday Lives,” will present information on the importance of insects to the ecosystems of the earth, and tell some anecdotes about their intelligence and interactions with each other and with humans.

See the 2022 Symposium page for event information.

REGISTER HERE:

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Relating to Animals, Plants, and the Divine (Symposium 2022)

“Other Ways of Knowing and Relating: Animal-Plant-Divine” 

2022 ASWM Symposium Panel

Sunday, April 10th, 2022 at 3:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time 

This panel explores relationships at various levels: the non-dual relationship between animals and divinity, the interconnections between humans and the landscape, the fluid relationship (that is possible) between humans, the divine, and the animal and plant worlds when the natural world is not objectified, and ancient relationships between the human and plant world, and how they can be re-established in the present day.

Yogini Vrishanana, 10th century, National Museum Delhi

Monica Mody “When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-dual Matrix,” weaves together scholarly commentary and original poetry to wonder at some of the likely dimensions of the relationship between animal and Yogini.

Emma Dymock, “The Living Cauldron: Transformative Landscapes in Celtic Mythology” explores the interconnected relationship between humans and the living landscape through the lens of Celtic mythology, with specific focus on the story of the Goddess Cerridwen.

Nereides, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Barbara Crescimanno, “Siciliian Nymphs. Animal, Human, Divine Creatures”  traces the survival of Nymphs–Goddesses who can appear as sacred trees, medicinal gardens, caves and sacred waters as well as herbalists, beekeepers, and midwives in the still living cultural traditions of Sicily.

photo by Julien McRoberts, 2020

Reagan Wytsalucy, “The Land Still Bears Fruit: Restoring the Navajo Peach through Strengthened Community Traditions” recounts her journey to return an important traditional food source, and its cultural story, to her people’s land in the Four Corners region of the Southwest.

See 2022 Symposium page for registration and event information.

REGISTER HERE:

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Dancing with Celestial Cycles and Earthly Rhythms (Symposium 2022)

“Celestial Cycles and Earthly Rhythms”

2022 Symposium Panel 

Sunday April 10th 1PM Eastern Daylight Time

How do the rhythms of the seasons inform our earthly activities? How do celestial cycles expand our sense of belonging to one another and life on earth? This panel, which explores deep connections with celestial and planetary ecologies, features the work of these four scholars who are also poets and dancers.

Dancing Women, Greek Bronze, 800 BCE

Laura Shannon: “Basil, apple, and rose: women, plants, and protection in Greek folk songs” explores the wisdom of old European dance songs that highlight the healing power of herbs, and of the dances themselves.

Moon among the Clouds

Ann Filemyr:“Celestial Ecologies: Living Within the Solar & Lunar Wheels Rhythmic Cycles of Change”examines conscious relationships to our nearest cosmic companions, the Sun and Moon–long believed to bring blessing, healing, inspiration and balance to our lives.

Hygieia, Roman copy of Greek statue, 360 BCE

Marna Hauk: “Hygeia, Green and Shealing: Cultivating and Embodying Green Healing Energy with Asteroid, Dream, and Myth” investigates mythos and practice around Hygeia: asteroid; healer & animating energy of nature retreats, alternative medicine, and dream healing; as well as the origin of our word,“hygiene”.

Roman copy of portrait of Sappho

Annie Finch: “Riding Meter’s Magic Language Home: How an Ancient Poetic Technology Can Help Reunite Us with The Earth, the Divine Feminine, and Each Other” explains how meter bridges body and mind, secular and divine, individual and collective, drawing on ancient prayers and sacred literature that use meter to induce a liminal state and bridge the gap between ourselves, nature, and the divine by healing our language.

See the 2022 Symposium page for registration and event information.

REGISTER HERE:

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Listening to Bears, Horses, and Seal Folk (Symposium 2022)

“Listening to and Speaking with–Animals and Other Sentient Beings”

2022 Symposium Panel

Sunday April 10th, 1PM Eastern Daylight Time

Current threats to an eco-socially sustainable future require that we re-introduce myths and rituals that reflect an understanding of humans’ interdependence with the community of sentient beings. Drawing on ancestral traditions and understandings, these four authors provide excellent examples of such relationships.

Seal Woman Stamp, Faroe Islands, 2007

Rebecca Vincent “Why We Need Selkies” addresses our need for more than just technological fixes and cerebral solutions to the environmental crises as she examines the role selkies and mythic water spirits could play in helping catalyze a shift into a new dream. As the Achuar People of South America say we need to truly solve our environmental crises

Kaarina Kailo “The Woman who Married the Bear and Original Instructions” explains through the story of the Woman Who Married a Bear the importance of Finno-Ugric cultures’ rebirth rituals such as Spring festivals with bear goddess Brigit, celebrating, gifting, feasting as life returned and further, allows us to see how the attitude towards mother and bear worship changed in the shift to patriarchal cultures.

Grizzly Bear, US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2012

Barbara Mann “Thinking Yours Doesn’t Stink: Dis/Respect for Others”    explores tales of women who marry bears in Native North American tradition, which typically begins with violations of protocol, from working alone in the woods and being disrespectful of bears to two-timing their human husband with the bears. The powerful bears can shape-shift, read thoughts, put thoughts and images into human heads, foretell the future and will sacrifice themselves to hunters, but resuscitate from their bones.

Wild horses, US Bureau of Land Management, 2014

Susan Moulton “WILD vs DOMESTIC” focuses on equus caballus, to explore communication and mutual reliance among species along with the wisdom embodied by the central “lead” female. This mare functioned as a repository of information at the heart of complex interactive plant and animal communities, starting with the earliest visual records of feral horses on cave walls in the Palaeolithic, and distinct from later cultures with animal “domestication” in the Bronze Age.

See the 2022 Symposium page for event information.

REGISTER HERE:

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Call for Proposals: ASWM 2022 Symposium

 

 “Hearing the Invisible: Lessons from Sentient Beings and Inter-relational Ecosystems”

Call for Proposals: ASWM Online Symposium: Sunday, April 10, 2020

“The Caretaker of the Precious,” Denise Kester (2001)

Jane Goodall has pointed out our own contemporary lesson that human global disregard for nature brought on the current pandemic, documenting that mistreatment/exploitation of sentient beings can result in an exponential crisis for the whole planet.

Our 2022 biennial Symposium focuses on meanings found in the relational reality among science, culture, and mythology in regards to animals, the green world, and ecosystems.

We especially encourage proposals from Native American/Indigenous scholars and women of color.  We welcome scholars from all fields with contributions to further expanding our understanding of our universal relatedness in the community of sentient beings.

With our primary focus on interconnectedness, we welcome academic and artistic presentations concerning ecological and scientific scholarship. In particular we seek work that addresses collaborations between humans and other sentient beings, foundational myths about earth’s response to misuse, and scientific solutions to transgressions against the balance of nature. 

Such topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • Dialogues  between “Western” scientific findings and indigenous science and insights
  • Cautionary tales of animal guardians redressing human greed and over-consumption
  • Examples, in Haraway’s terms, of “staying with the trouble” of ecological devastation
  • Women’s roles in promoting justice for land, animals and climate
  • Patterns of Cross-species Companionship in Science and Contemporary Fiction and Arts
  • Our Cousins the Bears: Myths of Cross-species Relationships
  • Selkies and Crane Wives: What Shapeshifting Women can teach us
  • Goddesses and Sea Creatures: Wisdom from the Deep
  • Comparative mythologies and science about pollinator-plant symbiosis
  • Mythologies and goddesses of origins, transitions, liminalities, and migration
  • Divine interventions for healing out-of-balance human behaviors
  • Myths of reciprocity and partnership among sentient beings
  • Feminist spiritual traditions that inspire earth-centered activism

Proposal deadline: January 20, 2022

For questions, contact submissions@womenandmyth.org .

Click here to view a detailed Call for Proposals with guidelines and submission form

 

About the artwork: “The Caretaker of the Precious,” a monoprint by Denise Kester  of Drawing on the Dream (2001) beautifully conveys the intention and spirit of our program.