“When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix”
with Monica Mody
Thursday, October 6, 2022 at 3 PM Eastern DaylightTime
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Other-than-human animals often appear alongside anthropomorphic goddesses and gods in Hindu iconography, as their vahan (mounts). This syntagmatic placement can, within an anthropocentric conception of the divine, suggest not only an unequal relation between deity and animal, but also that beneficence flows from deity to animal, unidirectionally. The lineages of these depictions of the relationship between animal and divinity go back to ancient Harappan cultures. The iconography of Yoginis in the medieval period continues these motifs: Yoginis are often shown as theriocephalic figures or with animals. Bringing together scholarly commentary and original poetry, this presentation will wonder at some of the likely dimensions of the relationship between animal and Yogini (aspecting/manifesting the Goddess in her totality, as per tantric understandings). Could these dimensions orient us to an implicate order that holds a structure of presence which is both in an animistic relationship to an intersubjective other, and, at the same time, dissolves its outside-inside, inside-outside, becoming oneness? Might such a relational non-dual orientation help us create more vibrant interplanetary futures?
Monica Mody is a transdisciplinary feminist scholar, poet, and educator. Her academic writing has been published in The Land Remembers Us: Women, Myth, and Nature, and Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis. An article is forthcoming in Tarka Journal. Dr. Mody has presented her work widely, including at the Parliament of World Religions; American Academy of Religion Western Region; Association of Writers & Writing Programs; Association for the Study of Women and Mythology; and Oakland Summer School. Her doctoral dissertation, which investigated decolonial feminist consciousness in South Asian borderlands, was selected for the Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology from ASWM. She serves as Core Faculty in the Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership Ph.D. Program at Southwestern College Santa Fe, and Adjunct Faculty in the Women’s Spirituality Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She holds a Ph.D. in East-West Psychology from CIIS and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame.
Save these dates for the next ASWM Salons:
October 20, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time
“Pongala, a woman’s festival: Cooking up joy!”
Dianne Jenett
November 3, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Standard Time
“Becoming Birds: Crane Maiden and Conservation ”
Brenda Peterson
November 17, 2022, 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time
“Matriarchal Landscape Mythology”
Andrea Fleckinger and Heide Goettner-Abendroth
The Salon recording will also be available to members after the event.
In 2018 I attended the Gatekeepers Conference on sacred sites & pilgrimage and made a personal pilgrimage to Avebury, Silbury Hill, Glastonbury, and other sites. EARTHSPEAK explores a mythic, historical, poetic and subjective response to these geomantically potent sites, in particular Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric monument in Europe, with research that suggests it was at one time a representation of the body of the Earth Mother. EARTHSPEAK also suggests that Geomantic reciprocity occurs as human beings bring intentionality to a particular place, making it a holy or sacred place. Numinous communion with “spirit of place” can become increasingly active as it accrues mythic power in the memory of the people, and in the land. Sacred places have both an innate and a developed capacity to bring about altered states of consciousness, especially if people come prepared within the liminal state of pilgrimage. 
Yoga Nidrā Śakti is a South Asian Goddess of sleep, rest, and liminal spaces between dreaming and waking. A key figure in The Greatness of the Goddess (Devī Mahātmyam, c600BC), her Sanskrit name literally means ‘power of sleep’. She features in many images and indigenous story rituals, all describing her power to send every being (including gods) to sleep; she restores right relationship to cyclical rhythms of rest that hold life in balance. Wherever she appears, Nidrā Śakti counters transgressions of those who refuse to sleep, returning all beings to right relationship with natural cycles. Yoganidrā is also a state of yogic rest that supports healing for out-of-balance human experiences such as insomnia, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Sadly, the presence of Nidrā Śakti has been marginalised and eradicated from commercial and traditional yoga schools profiting from methods of the popular practice bearing her name: yoga nidrā. Through stories and exquisite images, we explore the liminality of Nidrā Śakti as goddess of thresholds between sleep and dream. 
Cristina’s video explores the intimate connection between the most prevalent
“When the Goddess calls, she’s fierce, and real. And you better pick up the phone. The goddess who wants you is the one who finds you, and sometimes she arrives with more questions than answers. The goddess who found me was Austeja, bee goddess of Lithuania. And she didn’t make it easy. In fact, she swarmed me with bees, repeatedly, until I wrote a novel about her.
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