Announcing Scholar Salon 85: Register for June 12

“Reign Of Power: How the Mythological Horse Holds the Tension of Balance and Transformation”

with Dr. Heather A. Taylor

Thursday, June 12, 2025 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time

REGISTER HERE

Domesticating horses created a major shift in societies as humans climbed on top of the animal for a broader view of the physical world. Harnessing the horse’s power led to crossing boundaries, exploring new terrains, advancements in agriculture, technology, and service. Inevitably conflict arose as cultures clashed when riders ventured into expanding territories, leading to disputes and wars, especially for those who prioritized conquering or controlling people, livestock, and land. Sovereign powers and the wealthy created calvaries as a sign of military strength while individuals who excelled on horseback performed heroic acts, either in battle or as solo warriors. These actions infiltrated our stories, resulting in the rise of the hero archetype.

This shift in civilization created many advantages throughout history and into modern times but the pendulum has swung too far, leading to an overemphasis of the Cartesian mindset in which power over nature and humans is prioritized. Those who do not fit into a narrow definition of what constitutes the best, brightest, strongest, richest, and most powerful in society are often dismissed and disenfranchised. Money, conquering, and domination on a linear and hierarchical level have gained precedence in many aspects of modern daily life, including how we treat and interact with horses. Yet horses symbolize life force, spirit, and balance. Reflected in mythologies throughout time, horses accompany humans, gods, and goddesses, across the realms. Amplifying the physical traits and behavior of the horse can bring an archetypal and metaphoric quality to myth and story, potentially facilitating integration, relatedness, balance, nature, and embodiment.

Hades and Persephone in the Underworld, red-figure krater c 4th B.C.

In this presentation, Dr. Heather Taylor will highlight how Hades’ four immortal horses, who emerge from the ground in the abduction of Persephone, play a role in the goddess’s transformation where she reigns as Queen of the underworld. The images of the horse add movement to the myth illustrating their importance as a symbol of change at a time when we must rebalance, and re-story, our relationship to the earth and showcase different forms of power.

Dr. Heather A. Taylor has a Ph.D. in Mythology with an emphasis in depth psychology and a Masters in Producing film and video. Her award-winning documentary, Breaking Through The Clouds: The First Women’s National Air Derby(BreakingThroughTheClouds.com) earned top honors at many film festivals and continues to air on PBS across America. Dr. Taylor is the co-founder of the International Society of Mythology (SMythology.com).

Dr. Taylor was awarded the Kore Dissertation of Merit at ASWMs conference in April 2025 for Re-Storying A Sense of the Sacred With A Mythological Herd: An In-Depth Study of Horses in Mythology.

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Upcoming Scholar Salons (both at 3pm Eastern Time):

June 26 2025: “Flourishing Kin: Loving the World in Complex Times” with Dr. Yuria Celidwen

August 21, 2025: “Inanna’s Descent: Re-wombing Menstrual Sacrality” with Dr. Annalisa Derr

Save these Salon dates: September 4, September 18, October 2

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.

May 8, 2025May 25, 2025

Announcing Scholar Salon 84: Register for May 29

Finding Ourselves “In Our Right Minds”

with Dale Allen

Thursday, May 29, 2025 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time

REGISTER HERE

“The way Dale educates is entertaining and so evocative that it bypasses the left-brain, over-thinking part of ourselves, and instead, we are touched in a very direct, very impactful way.” –Vicki Noble

Dale Allen has for 25 years shared the healing energy of the sacred feminine through her work: “In Our Right Minds,” which has been widely acclaimed at universities, conferences, corporations, theaters, and expos across the US, Canada, from Kauai to Dubai, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and the Parliament of World Religions. Her new book of the same name, is an Amazon International Bestseller, and the film version has been awarded in 19 Independent Film Festivals worldwide.

“In Our Right Minds,” is “a sweeping journey covered efficiently and clearly,” that in short order judiciously illuminates the history and relevance of the Goddess archetype, as well as its connection to our right-brain intelligence. “In Our Right Minds” garners praise for being well-researched, organized, clear, level, balanced, without blame, and inclusive of all the human family. Dale also presents “In Our Right Minds,” for book clubs, film screening events and as a 6-week course. The Dale Allen Podcast ranks in the top 10% globally.

We are all looking forward to hearing more about Dale’s insights, theatre work, film–and so much more–to articulate the essential story of goddess history, right-brained thinking, and re-balancing society.

Dale Allen is a veteran of corporate, commercial, and creative communications. Her extensive resume includes hundreds of voice-over, on- camera, theater and live presentation projects. Described as having the energy of “a Cape Canaveral lift-off,” Dale thoroughly engages and inspires her audience, which ranges from highly educated corporate leaders to teenage girls seeking their place in the world. “Dale’s warmth, empathy and knowledge inspires the wisdom within each of us. That seed is encoded with an intelligence, and we are each its sacred gardener, necessary to futurize our world.”

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Upcoming Scholar Salons (both at 3pm Eastern Time ):

June 12 2025: “Reins of Power: Re-Storying A Sense of the Sacred with A Mythological Herd” with Dr. Heather Taylor

June 26 2025: “Flourishing Kin: Loving the World in Complex Times” with Dr. Yuria Celidwen

Save these Salon dates: August 21, September 4, September 18

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.

April 2, 2025May 9, 2025

2025 Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts: Lauren Raine

Awarded on Saturday, March 29, 2025, Westward Look Inn, Tucson Arizona

2025 Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts Awarded to Lauren Raine

This award given in recognition of her decades of creative endeavor as a temple mask-maker, creatrix of art installations, sculptress, ritual theatre performer, painter, author, visionary, and mythographer.

The award letter for Lauren reads in part:

The Masks of the Goddess Project, perhaps your best-known work, consists of stunning masks crafted in the tradition of Balinese temple-masks. These masks were created to reclaim the stories of female deities from across the world’s cultures, and to empower women to explore each archetype within themselves With the Masks of the Goddess you collaborated with dancers, ritualists, playwrights, storytellers, priestesses, and activists to bring the Goddesses into the world through the words of the women who wore their masks and wrote their stories. Since their creation in 1998, the Masks of the Goddess have traveled throughout the US and abroad, touching and transforming the lives of hundreds of women.

We honor you also for the shrines and icons you have created. Your ongoing series entitled: Earth Shrine, is a product of your lifelong conversation with the numinous intelligence in nature.

Out of that conversation you have also created NUMINA: Masks for the Elemental Powers which is your elucidation of the magical sense of communion with place. As you said, “In the past “Nature” was not a “backdrop” or a “resource” – the World was a conversation.”

In Our Lady of the Shards, you celebrate the forgotten women of history: midwives, wise women, weavers, spinners, Goddesses and priestesses. In Shrine for the Lost: the Sixth Extinction (2022), you created a book, and art installation for the 2023 World Parliament of Religions, emphasizing the magnitude of the loss our biosphere has suffered.

With your four sculptures The Guardians, which symbolize and invoke the Guardians of the Four Directions, as well as the Four Elements, you cast a circle of protection to safeguard us from further ecological loss. In Spider Woman’s Hands you weave, reveal, and remember a vision of a unitive, co-creative world through sculpture, weaving, and performance.

Writing about mythology you have observed: “We’re dancing the future into the world by the stories we tell: like the web of the Native American creatrix Spider Woman, the threads of myth are spun far behind us, and weave their way far into the futures of those not yet born.

“May we dance empathy instead of despair, may we tell the stories that make life sacred and loving, profound and reverent.”

April 1, 2025March 23, 2025

2025 Saga Award for Contributions to Women’s History and Culture: Cristina Biaggi

Awarded on Saturday, March 29, 2025, Westward Look Inn, Tucson Arizona

2025 Saga Award for Contributions to Women’s History and Culture: Cristina Biaggi PhD

ASWM’s Saga Award is given to individuals whose work cuts across disciplines, traditioins, and generations to create work that centers women’s history and promotes the advancement of an all-inclusive, life-affirming feminist culture. This year’s award recognizes Cristina Biaggi, PhD, for her contributions to the world as an artist, scholar, author, teacher, and feminist activist.

The award letter to Cristina reads in part:

The titles of your four major books: Habitations of the Great Goddess, In the Footsteps of the Goddess, The Rule of Mars: Readings on the Origins, History and Impact of Patriarchy, and Activism Into Art Into Activism Into Art give some idea of the vast scope of your scholarship, interests, talents, and vision.

As an author and scholar, you are a respected and recognized authority on Goddess mythology, prehistory, and the origins and impact of patriarchy. Your knowledge of these subjects is rooted in your studies of the classics, art, art history, archaeology, literature, and languages acquired at Vassar, the University of Utah, Harvard, and NYU. For over five decades, you have been conducting ongoing, in-depth research that has broadened and deepened your passion and abiding interest in the Goddess and antiquity.

For many of us, our first introduction to the Goddess and to the great Goddess monuments of ancient Malta and the islands of Scotland, came through your 1994 work Habitations of the Great Goddess. Your 2000 book In the Footsteps of the Goddess, which is a collection of personal stories inspired by the Female Divine, is a first in the field of spirituality. In The Rule of Mars (2006), you bring together an outstanding group of scholars to tackle the questions of when and where the change from a matriarchal to a patriarchal societal structure occurred and what the results of that change were. This pivotal collection not only heightened our understanding of pre-patriarchal societies, but left us with hope and thoughtful suggestions for real change.

In addition to publishing these works, you have spoken about the Goddess, prehistory and the origins of patriarchy throughout the world, bringing these neglected topics to such prestigious venues as the Smithsonian Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, the World Archaeology Conference, the Brooklyn Museum, and the New York Times.

Those of us who know you as a scholar of the Goddess and antiquity can sometimes forget that you are an internationally renowned artist as well. All of your art is entwined with activism in celebration of the Great Goddess. In addition to your figurative sculpture in bronze and wood, you have created political and abstract collages and paintings, constructed large outdoor sculptures from materials found in the natural world. You have created the Goddess Mound, which will be both a sacred place in itself, and a long overdue link to the sacred earthworks that were on this continent long before Europeans arrived.

You have also provided a strong role model as a dedicated athlete: a mountain climber–hiking to some of the most awe-inspiring peaks in the world, including Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Shasta, Mount Rainier, and the active Gorely volcano in Siberia; a world-class swimmer, crossing the Bosphorus, and a 5th degree Blackbelt in Taekwondo sharing that skill as a teacher of Taekwondo with women and girls.

We are happy to honor you as a foremother of the Women’s Spirituality movement, a pre-eminent artist, author, scholar, and tireless feminist activist. You have been and continue to be an inspiration to ASWM members and to women throughout the world.

Past winners of the Saga Award include Dr. Heide Goettner-Abendroth, Genevieve Vaughan, Dr. Peggy Sanday, Z Budapest, Arisika Razak, Donna Read, and Dr. Mara Keller.

April 1, 2025March 23, 2025

2025 Sarasvati Special Recognition: Tona Inna, the mysterious light of the sea in the Caribbean

Saturday, March 29, 2025, Westward Look Inn, Tucson AZ

Sarasvati Special Recognition for Best Visionary Book:CIDICER

**for Tona Inna, the mysterious light of the sea in the Caribbean, by Maria Suarez**

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The Sarasvati Awards Committee has chosen to issue a Special Recognition for a Visionary Book to CIDICER for Tona Inna, the mysterious light of the sea in the Caribbean, by Maria Suarez Toro. This book highlights African and Caribbean myths, and a knowledge of the powers of the sea, in order to inspire new generations to understand Costa Rica’s history and the future of its youth.

The letter of recognition was written by Verónica Iglesias, MA, a long-time ASWM member, curandera, and co-author of The Jade Oracle. The English translation of her letter says in part:

From the pen of María Suárez we travel through the Caribbean from ancient times, when the indigenous people were the only ones who reigned and existed in the territory, and then we also learn about part of the history of colonization, and later the arrival of people brought by force from Africa through two ships, mainly whose shipwreck brought these enslaved people to the coasts of Costa Rica.

This book has taken me to the Caribbean, specifically the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, and has made me travel in time learning about those indigenous groups of the area and their connection with African roots and the way in which these human beings, torn from Africa through slavery, arrived at the coasts. It has certainly been a journey of much learning.

As a woman born in Mexico, this work has made me feel part once again of the entire history of the continent, and of these issues that can sometimes still be painful. I speak of the periods of colonization and the loss of indigenous knowledge. these type of works are what allow us to heal these wounds, to remember it, to talk about it and to embrace the result of all these experiences, of why the inhabitants of this wonderful continent are who we are.

It is a wonderful work that I would love to recommend to all those who want to learn more about the history of this continent and specifically of Central America, the role of the indigenous people, the role of black history, the role of the colonizers, the role of the slave traders, all of this is part of who we are, it is part of our DNA in a certain way, so by embracing our history, we also embrace our total and complete existence, knowing that open wounds still exist in this continent.