Announcing Scholar Salon 104: Register for October 22

“How I Found the Lost Goddesses of Early Greece in the Emergence of the Women’s Spirituality Movement”

with Charlene Spretnak

Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time

REGISTER HERE

During the mid-1970s, interest in women’s spirituality bubbled up in feminist communities across the country. One of the major nodes (the other was Boston) was the San Francisco Bay Area. Charlene Spretnak reflects on the energizing sense of discovery; the collective thrill of exposing the patriarchal grip on our cultural, social, and spiritual history (and pre-history!); and the synergistic flow of creativity and mutual support that yielded diverse works and paths into women’s authentic spiritual experience.

Among the many early books, gatherings, and personal practices that emerged was her book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece (1978), which she feels owes much to that heady time and place. Charlene Spretnak will read a few of the pre-Olympian, pre-patriarchal myths from the book, reconstructed for the first time in more than 2500 years. The first ebook edition of the book was recently published by Women’s Spirituality Studies Press. She will also discuss her article “Goddess Time,” commissioned for The Brooklyn Rail in 2025, which continues the story that began fifty years ago, particularly regarding a prominent scholar and a pioneering Women’s Spirituality artist.

Charlene Spretnak is the author of nine books on cultural history, religion and spirituality, feminism, Green politics, and ecological thought. Her first book, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, was among the initial books that sparked the emergence of the Women’s Spirituality movement in the mid-1970s. Goddess spirituality was one of the four orientations presented in her book on modernity and religion, States of Grace (1991). In 2011 her article “Anatomy of a Backlash: Concerning the Work of Marija Gimbutas” was published in the Journal of Archaeomythology. She has brought a focus on dynamic interrelatedness to her engagement with the pre-Olympian mythology of Greece; the emergent Women’s Spirituality movement; the ecofeminist movement; the emergent Green Party movement in Europe and the United States; the spiritual dimension of Green politics; the rising tide of eco-social solutions to the crises of modernity; the cancellation of the symbolic, cosmological, and mystical dimensions of the Virgin Mary when the Catholic Church modernized itself; new discoveries that have led to the Relational Shift in many fields; and the vast spiritual dimensions of modern and contemporary art, which are largely unacknowledged by the professional art world and art history. Her book The Resurgence of the Real was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1997. In 2012 she received the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement as “one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time” from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. She is a professor emerita in religion and philosophy. She lives in Ojai, California. Website: www.charlenespretnak.com .

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Upcoming Salon

Scholar Salon 105:

Thursday, November 5 at 3 PM Eastern Time

Marija Gimbutas: A Model of Grace and Courage in the Face of Adversity

with Joan Marler and Susan Moulton

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

September 22, 2026September 22, 2026

(VIDEO) 2021 Program: Music by Kalnas Ensemble

New Compositions Inspired by Lithuanian Folk Music

Our 2021 program is enhanced by the inclusion of performances by accomplished musicians and composers. These performances are included during interludes between sessions, and are also available to view at any time in our PUBLIC LIBRARY.

We are pleased to be able to present new works performed by the Kalnas Ensemble. The Ensemble, which began performing right before the pandemic shutdowns, has happily recovered from that hiatus to be able to record recent concerts. The Ensemble is a string quartet focusing on Lithuanian musical roots, exploring compositions of Stanley Chepaitis with improvisatory overtones, as well as performing standard quartet repertoire. The ensemble is a diverse group of multi-talented individuals with a commitment to engaging audiences with a dynamic approach to live performance. In addition their wide spectrum of knowledge and interests allows them offer workshops and other interactive presentations that enhance the meaning and experience of the music they perform.

Dr. Chepaitis has provided these original folksongs that inspired his compositions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeEnhlRteiA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah5GBBNkt6Y

The Kalnas Ensemble is:

Dr. Stanley Chepaitis, founder, composer, and Violinist, holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree and a Master of Music, as well as a Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. He is a versatile performing and recording artist who is at home in a classical string quartet, a jazz band, and anything in between. His career spans fifty years in which time he has performed nationally and internationally, composed and premiered his own works, and recorded seven CD’s mostly of original music. Dr. Chepaitis has been at the forefront of the Alternative Styles Movement having had a leading role in ASTA Alternative Styles Conferences.

Swana Chepaitis, Violinist, received a diploma in Violin Performance and Pedagogy from the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen Germany. She studied with Maria Grevesmühl and Baroque violin specialist Christoph Heidemann. She has been a member of L’arco (a professional Baroque orchestra based in Hanover, Germany), the Litton String Quartet. Mrs. Chepaitis currently performs with the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra, does freelance performance as a baroque violinist in the Pittsburgh area, and maintains a studio of 20+ violin students in Indiana, PA.

Simon Maurer, Violin, Baroque Violin, Viola ,studied violin at the Conservatory in Biel, and continued his studies in the U.S. with Geoffrey Michaels, Joyce Robbins and Claire Hodkins. He is the founder and artistic director of Sunday Sinfonia, a String Orchestra of enthusiastic amateur string players, based in Lancaster, Pa. Mr. Maurer is the artistic director of the Gabriel Chamber Ensemble, a group that takes pride in bringing classical music to underserved areas. In 2010 the Gabriel Chamber Ensemble took over the leadership of the Schuyllkill Youth Orchestra, newly renamed Gabriel Youth Orchestra. Mr. Maurer also ventures in the practice of jazz and freestyle improvisation. He has been a featured soloist in Philadelphia area jazz clubs, has performed at “Jazzfest” in Schuylkill County and Reading Pa.

Nancy Baun, Cellist, has performed over 1,000 events throughout the United States, including three appearances at Carnegie’s Weil Hall, as well as in Switzerland, France, Italy, Iceland, and Canada. She appears on nine piano trio recordings, including a series on the Naxos International label “Home for the Holidays”, a favorite of Public Radio audiences. Her favorite highlights also include judging the semifinals of the renowned Koussevitzky Competition in New York City, and performing in a World Music Institute event at Merkin Concert Hall. She has been an elementary music teacher for over 10 years in urban Buffalo, where she designed curriculum for her passion, “collaborative connections with music”. She has received a national Young Audiences grant for her education workshops integrating music with drawing. She currently presents S. T. E. A. M. training to elementary teachers, as well as using music to teach life skills to formerly incarcerated.

September 22, 2026September 22, 2026

(VIDEO) 2021 Program: Music by Ruth Barrett

Songs in Honor of Goddesses and Amazons by Ruth Barrett

Our 2021 program is enhanced by the inclusion of performances by a variety of accomplished musicians and composers with connections to the work of Marija Gimbutas. These performances are included during interludes between sessions, and are also available to view at any time in our PUBLIC LIBRARY.

A foremother of feminist spirituality in the US, Ruth is the author of Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries, and has contributed to several other anthologies celebrating goddess spirituality. Ruth, who calls herself a “musician/priestess,” is also a songwriter and is internationally known as a mountain dulcimer recording artist and singer.

Ruth is best known for works that focus on magically themed traditional folk songs inspired by folklore, goddess mythology, celebration of women, and the spirituality innate in the natural world. Her most recent album, Once And Future Amazons (2020), incorporates African, Middle Eastern and Celtic folk rhythms in a “powerful celebration of women’s embodied mysteries, ancient sovereign goddesses, and the seasonal cycle of Mother Nature.” Learn more about Ruth at Dancing Tree.

September 22, 2026September 22, 2026

(VIDEO) 2021 Program: Jazz from Simona Smirnova

Jazz and Vocal Improvisation with the Lithuanian kanklės

Simona Smirnova is a Lithuanian born jazz vocalist, composer and kanklės player based in New York City. She’s a fixture in the New York live scene with her quartet when she’s not touring the world, including Australia, New Zealand and Europe.

Simona’s genre-bending style has a unique theatrical flavor and uncanny vocal improvisation techniques. She deftly implements chamber music, Lithuanian zither – kanklės – and folkloric chants into foundations of jazz and rock.

Simona’s latest album, Joan of Arc, for String Quartet, is an original composition written as a soundtrack for the classic Carl Dreyer silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). The album is a cinematic landscape of chamber pop, jazz and folklore.

Classically trained on the kanklės, Simona earned her BA in jazz vocals at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater. Shortly after receiving the European Touring Scholarship, she moved to the United States to study at Berklee College of Music where she earned a degree in Contemporary Composition and Production.

Our thanks to Giedrė Elekšytė-Knieža, Chair of Lithuanian American Community Cultural Affairs, for her help in connecting us with Simona’s work.

September 11, 2026

Announcing Scholar Salon 103: Register for October 8

“The Land is Our Mother: The Indigenous Euro-Slavic Beliefs”

with Patricia Robin Woodruff

Thursday, October 8, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time

REGISTER HERE

In the Carpathian mountains the spiritual molfar (magician/healer), Mikailovitch Nechay, stated “Earth is our mother, she holds us all.” This is not a figurative expression. In the native belief preserved in Slavic lands the earth is literally viewed as one’s mother, grandmother, or Primal Ancestor and indeed the same belief runs throughout other indigenous cultures of Old Europe and beyond. Archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas wrote on this concept of Mother Earth/ the Great Goddess in the 1970’s and 80’s.

Patricia Robin Woodruff was unaware of Gimbutas’ work when she began her research. By tracing the beliefs preserved in the Slavic religions, she found these beliefs extended in a continuous line back tens of thousands of years into the Paleolithic. Her research provides an independent confirmation of Gimbutas’ work and branches off into unexplored territory with insights into Paleolithic and Neolithic spiritual beliefs. This presentation explores the multiplicity of Goddesses that have been shaped by dividing cultures tracing back tens of thousands of years, combined with the ancient belief in the power of the word. These factors brought about the various “names”/ titles used for the Feminine Divine. As the material is presented the facts reveal that the Earth was viewed as our Mother to whom we are connected by an umbilical cord (or omphalos).

Carpathian Mountains photo by Iryna Palok

“This presentation points out that the primarily monotheistic, patriarchal culture of today has a male-centric (and Christian-centric) preconception that creates a blind spot when it comes to the word origins of lands. By using comparative plausibility and the variation of land, country, or town names from cross-cultural comparisons, i will lay out the facts that most of our countries today (and many cities) stem from the local titles of the Earth Mother.”

Patricia Robin Woodruff is an independent scholar of ancient spiritual beliefs. Classes in Wicca started her exploring the pre-Christian beliefs of her maternal culture, a little-known ethnicity of Lemko from the Carpathian Mountains. This resulted in her spirit-led initiation as a Lemko bosorka (a shamanic witch) that derives from the Euro-Slavic indigenous beliefs. Woodruff has read over 7,000 academic papers related to the topic and is an author of several books including Slavic Deities & their Worship: Book 1.

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Upcoming Salon

Scholar Salon 104:

Thursday, October 22 at 3 PM Eastern Time

How I Found the Lost Goddesses of Early Greece in the Emergence of the Women’s Spirituality Movement

with Charlene Spretnak

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