2023 Panel: Daughters of The Sacred Sea: Aphrodite, Sinead, and the Witches of Lapurdi

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

Registration Links and Conference information here

2023 ASWM Schedule

photo by Maysam Yabandeh

2:15 – 3:45  Saturday May 6  (schedule subject to change)

Panel 14: Daughters of The Sacred Sea: Aphrodite, Sinead, and the Witches of Lapurdi

  • Khrystine Kelsey, “Aphrodite Anadyomene: Aphrodite as Water Goddess”
  • Idoia Arana-Beobide, “The Sea Loving Witches of Lapurdi Lapurdiko Sorginak – Itzasoakin Maite Induak”
  • Martina Cleary, “The Well at the Bottom of The Sea” (via Zoom)

PRESENTERS

Khrystine D. Kelsey is a Ph.D. candidate in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She also holds a master’s degree from Pacifica in Engaged Humanities and teaches undergraduate humanities courses in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her dissertation work explores the figure of Aphrodite through myth, depth psychology, and the humanities.

Idoia Arana-Beobide is a Euskalduna (Basque) dedicated to researching Indigenous belief systems specializing in Basque ancient mythology and its effects on contemporary social and national identity. She holds studies in Museology, a degree in Maedieval History, and a master’s in Religion and Public Life. She is presently conducting her doctoral thesis at the University of Ottawa on the effects of Indigenous Animism on the Basque psyche and cultural instinct.

Dr. Martina Cleary is an artist, researcher and academic lecturing in the Dept of Fine Art & Education at TUS in Ireland. She attended NCAD, Crawford College of Art & Design, the Finnish Academy of Fine Art, Aalto University and the European Centre for Photographic Research e(CPR). Her research areas include; Photography & Memory, Jungian Depth Psychology, Feminist Critical Theory, Technological Innovation in Fine Art and Socially Engaged Practices.

 

 

2023 Panel: Liminal Spirits: Avalon, Mermaids, Yemanjá, and the Lovers’ Leap

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

Panel 5: Liminal Spirits: Avalon, Mermaids, Yemanjá, and the Lovers’ Leap

2:30- 4:00 PM Friday May 5  

  • April Heaslip, “Wayfinding While at Sea: Synchronistic Goddess Orienteering from Yemanjá to Polynesia, from Grief to Regeneration”
  • Katinka Soetens, “Lady of the Lake: mythical methodology of consciousness as activism within the Avalonian mystery tradition”
  • Kirsten Johnsen, “Liminal Women and the Lover’s Leap”
  • Erika Nelson, “Undine in Red Corals: Rewriting the Inheritance of Romantic Mermaid Myths in Judith Hermann’s Summerhouse, Later

PRESENTERS

April Heaslip, PhD, is a mythologist, educator, and artist with a doctorate in Mythological Studies (Pacifica Graduate Institute), master’s in Ecofeminism & Social Ecology (Goddard College) and bachelor’s in Psychology & Women’s Studies (West Chester University). She teaches Interdisciplinary Studies with SNHU. Her forthcoming book Regenerating the Feminine: Chronicling the Rise in Psyche, Culture & Nature (UP Mississippi, 2024) considers this monumental resurgence as healing agent across individual, collective, and environmental realms.

Katinka Soetens is a Ceremonialist of the Goddess, creator of the Path of Love Mystery School and the fully accredited Priestess of Rhiannon training, author, teacher and co-organiser of The Goddess Conference at Glastonbury, and a Director of the new pagan Temple of Avalon.She is a Sacred Sexual Priestess of Rhiannon, tantric practitioner, doula, and a Priestess of Avalon. Katinka works as an internationally renowned holder of ceremonies, workshops, Goddess tours and trainings.

Kirsten Ellen Johnsen, PhD. is a storyteller, spinster and weaver living on Northern Pomo land in Mendocino County, California. Her 2021 dissertation features primary research on the significance of the Lover’s Leap in early American settler culture and women’s history. She is the chief curator of the Morning Glory Goddess Collection, a private collection of over 300 votive images of female sacrality stewarded by Isis Oasis Sanctuary in Geyserville, California.

Erika M. Nelson is Associate Professor of German Studies and Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Union College in Schenectady, New York, where she teaches German language, literature, culture, and film, as well as Narrative Medicine and GSWS courses. Her research has focused on Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry, retellings of the Orpheus myth, transnational literature and film, systemic constellation work, and Doris Dörrie’s work on creative writing, and Buddhism.

 

2023 Panel: Voices of the Rivers: Sacred Traditions

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

Potomac River at Petersburg Gap, WV

 

4:15 – 5:45 pm Friday May 5 (schedule subject to change)

Panel 9: Voices of the Rivers: Sacred Traditions

  • Freia Serafina Titland, “The River Keeper: Can You Still Hear Me?”
  • Laurel Bergsten, “The Water is a Stone”
  • Latonia Dixon, “Osun: The African Orisha of Love, Compassion, Wisdom, Courage, Sensuality”

PRESENTERS

Freia Serafina Titland (M.A. in Theatre, M.F.A. in Film, current PhD in Religion student with a focus in Women’s Spirituality at CIIS) is an adjunct professor who is currently focusing on the intersection between ritual and the performing arts. She is also the founder of a virtual women’s spirituality institute, Dance of the Seventh Daughter, and the Divine Feminine Film Festival. Freia is a Priestess of Inanna-Ishtar and Red Tent facilitator.

Laurel Bergsten is a writer and scholar working towards her Doctorate in Mythology and Depth Psychology. Laurel is from Colorado and has kindled a lifelong passion for the Outdoors, storytelling, and finding new ways of meaning-making.

Latonia Dixon is a mythologist, spiritual teacher, a retired registered nurse, and a United States Army veteran. She is also a doctorate candidate who has been the president of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Student Group and was the chair and visionary of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s First Inaugural Cultural Diversity Day. Her plan after achieving her doctorate is to continue to think from the heart and speak from her soul.

2023 Panel: Reclaiming Water Goddess Wisdom

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Panel 8: Reclaiming Water Goddess Wisdom 

4:14 – 5:45 PM Friday May 5 (schedule subject to change)

  • Tahlia Fischer, “The Sirens Re-Sung”
  • Gülçin Önel, “The Ocean in One Drop – A Journey of Remembrance”
  • Susan Wright, “The Erasure of the Mediterranean Water Goddess and the Rise of Western Misogynist World-View”

PRESENTERS

Tahlia Fischer: A rhetorician by training, my research in the academy focused on American Christian Nationalism. Published by Pro-Quest in 2014, (Re)membering A Christian Nation: Christian Nationalism, Biblical Literalism, and the Politics of Public Memory, enjoys international attention as a downloadable resource for scholars. I taught in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Ithaca College and the Communication and Rhetorical Studies departments at University of Iowa and Syracuse University. (Tahlia is also the founder of All Seated in a Barn, a horse and donkey rescue organization.)

Gülçin Önel continues her Goddess journey that began after a call many years ago, and reminds many women and men what she herself remembers inside. Believing that most of our incompatibilities, unhappiness and separations are caused by forgetting our true nature. Gülçin Önel therefore prefers to call her work a Journey of Remembrance rather than an education or a teaching. She is also working on Archetypal Psychology and completed a Master’s Study in Psychology on “The Use of Mythology in Therapies”. She is the author of Lilith’s Light-11, Rain of Light Oracle Card Decks and Mayan Astrology.

Susan M. Wright, MA is a native of Syracuse where she raised two daughters. She is currently a PhD Student in Jungian & Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. She earned an MA in Theology from Bexley Episcopal Seminary. Her current research includes feminist applications of Jungian depth psychology.

2023 Panel: Healing the Waters: Birth, Pilgrimage, and the Otherworld

ASWM Conference May 5-6, Syracuse NY

2023 ASWM Schedule

Registration Links and Conference information here

Panel 6: Healing the Waters: Birth, Pilgrimage, and the Otherworld

2:30- 4:00 PM Friday May 5  (schedule subject to change)

  • Michelle Boyle, “Frasassi: Primal Source in a Site of Continuous Ritual and Pilgrimage since the Neolithic”
  • Beebe Frazer, “Midwives and the Sacred Waters of Birth”
  • Edel Meade, “Brigid and the Otherworld in the Irish Song Tradition”

PRESENTERS

Michelle Boyle is a doctoral candidate in East West Psychology at CIIS, where her research centers on healing personal and ancestral intergenerational trauma through tracing a lineage of earth-based women’s wisdom in northern Italy from the Paleolithic to the present. Michelle is a mother and grandmother, and currently lives in Texas—in Jumanos, Wichita, Numunuu Sookobitu, Kiikaapoi, and Tawakoni territory—with her youngest child and their hoofed and clawed family.

Beebe Frazer, CNM, D.Min, is a retired midwife who was the primary attendant for 942 birthing mothers. She witnessed the transformation of meek maidens into fierce warriors of love and protection. She honored the power of a woman’s body and blood to create and sustain her infant. Her dissertation, Embodied Birthing: Portal to Transformation, chronicles the history, rites-of-passage, and empowering archetypes of the birthing mother.

Allison Blair Snyder is a mother-scholar. When she isn’t reading or playing in the dirt with her Deaf one-year-old, she is snuggled up with her husband and rescue dogs. She resides on and honors the land indigenously cared for by Lanape Nation. She is a communications professor, academic advisor, and Ph.D. student in Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership. Her research focuses on conscious motherhood as it connects to mother earth.

Edel Meade is an award-winning Irish vocalist, composer and Fulbright Scholar. Her voice has been described as mesmerizing while her music is haunting and powerful. A review in Sunday Business Post says she has “”a fearless delivery that celebrates womanhood.” Her critically-acclaimed album ‘Brigids and Patricias’ explores what it means to be a woman in 21st century Ireland drawing on Irish folklore and mythology as well as Irish history and current affairs.