“At the Heart: Honoring Palaeolithic Matrifocal Human-Animal Connection”

with Susan Moulton

Thursday,  October 30, 2025 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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Influenced by First Nation Indigenous concepts, Nature and animal behavior, this research expands the foundational idea of “personhood” to include all forms of life, especially the behavior and central role of the “sacred female/mother” in diverse species, including Paleolithic Hominins, and the role of the wise, older “lead” females in free-ranging mammalian herds and plant communities as key to the early understanding of human social structure and expression. To understand the complexity of the remote past we must consider the experience of the first Hominins who lived in synchrony with all sentient aspects of their natural environment, including animals and plants.

Few scholars have demonstrated an expanded awareness of the interconnectedness of life within Nature or the impact of the sentience and behavior of animals on the earliest human cultures, or how the diversity of life within ecosystems has functioned to influence human beliefs, symbols, stories, mythic systems and other forms of expression. This study challenges truncated archaeological methodologies of inherited patriarchal Eurocentric overviews and biases with their Cartesian opposition between Nature and human “civilization,” presuming humans have culture whereas non-human life forms do not.

 

Susan Moulton  has lived with animals from an early age and began riding horses at the age of three. For the past 52 years she has lived in rural Sonoma County, California on a small farm with an array of rescued animals. Susan has learned a lot from each species, using what she has learned from them to raise her two sons. To support her lifestyle, Susan was a university professor (Art/Art History) for 44 years, teaching over one hundred courses, and chairing the Art and Art History Department, and the University Faculty. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Susan has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Carnegie Foundation Research Grant. She is the co-founder, with Joan Marler, of the International Institute of Archaeomythology. Susan has sponsored many M.A. students and PhDs, and has been blessed to share her ideas in publications and conferences globally, including numerous experiences with Indigenous Peoples in the US and abroad. Currently she is finishing a book that combines everything she loves: animals, art history, archaeology, and ecology, which is the subject of her Salon.

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Upcoming Scholar Salon (3pm Eastern Time):

October 30, 2025:  From the Heart: the Human Animal Connection with Susan Moulton

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

 

“Using the Past to Give Girls a Voice Today at Girl Museum“

with Ashley E. Remer

Thursday,  October 16, 2025 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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Girls are “the most marginalized group of people throughout time and space,” says Girl Museum founder Ashley Remer.  While there have been many individual girls who have achieved a level of notoriety and achievement, they are still not seen as serious contributors to history and culture. Giving girls space to speak, to create, to simply grow up at all is not a guarantee in any society even today. To address this gap, the Girl Museum (founded in 2009) gives girls a platform to raise their voices.

As a museum, we have scope to elevate girls of the past to provide inspiration and precedent for girls of today. We use many creative pathways to share knowledge, ideas, thoughts, and actions of girls in history to ensure our audiences understand that girls have always been present and a part of making our world. These include exhibitions, podcasts, educational activities, and other collaborative projects. We work with students, teachers, NGOs, scholars, volunteers, activists, and refugees to showcase the significance and power of girls in the world. In my talk, I will discuss Girl Museum and how offering opportunities and a place for girls to connect to each other and the past, we are building a better future.

Ashley E Remer is the founder and Head Girl of Girl Museum, the first museum in the world dedicated to celebrating girlhood and advocating for girls’ rights. She recently completed her PhD at the Australian National University on girls’ representations in fine art and how they are interpreted in public museums. Ashley is an interdisciplinarian working over 30 years across many artistic fields, including museums, art galleries, and theatres, in exhibition content production, non-profit management, and creative entrepreneurship with scholars, artists, NGOs, educators, and youth globally. She co-authored the book, Exploring American Girls’ History through 50 Historic Treasures. Currently based in New Zealand, Ashley is a lecturer in Museums Studies at Massey University.

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Upcoming Scholar Salon (3pm Eastern Time):

October 30, 2025:  From the Heart: the Human Animal Connection with Susan Moulton

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

 

“The Deer Mother and the Winter Solstice – A Heritage of Care and Rebirth“

with Kathryn Henderson

Thursday,  October 2, 2025 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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Long before traditions of a red-clad elf, traversing the night sky with flying Reindeer, the Deer Mother brought the gift of the returning Sun on Her antlers. 

          The Image of the Deer Mother transcends time and cultures – from the tundra of the ancient arctic north, through the steppes of eastern Europe to the frozen lands of contemporary Nordic reindeer herders. Depictions of sacred deer date from Paleolithic cave paintings to Mongolian Deer Stones, through Scythian art (800 BCE – 300 CE) and beyond.

          Golden Scythian sculptures portray deer rebirthing new life. Attacked by a predator, her antlers blossom into birds, representing rebirth. This imagery is also found in tattoos on frozen female and male mummies, preserved by ice. Through time the Deer Mother becomes an antlered Goddess, as depicted on a Scythian mirror handle, her antlers composed of the predators that follow the migrating herd.  The mirror, a shamanic tool, represents the sun she carries on her antlers. Contemporary Nordic peoples tell of the Deer Mother bearing the returning Solstice sun on her antlers.

          The myth of the contemporary Reindeer-herding Saami tells a story of the earth created from the loving heart of the Doe with golden hooves, in a planet that quakes when her children engage in violence against one another.  The Deer Mother’s message is one of keeping balance, of reverence for the earth’s life-giving nurturance, death and rebirth.  Hers is a message for all time – one that the world sorely needs today.

 

Kathryn Henderson, Professor Emerita in Sociology andWomen’s Studies, is an Ordained Priestess of the Reformed Congregation of the Goddess
International and a Founding BOD Memberof the Association of the Study of Women and Mythology. An early version of her Deer Mother research appeared in Goddesses in World Culture, ed. Patricia Monaghan, 2011. Her research interests include the contemporary representation and spiritual importance of Deer around the world and the significance of the Octopus in ancient Cretan sarcophagus art and cultural practice.

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Upcoming Scholar Salon (3pm Eastern Time):

October 16, 2025:  “Using the Past to Give Girls a Voice Today at Girl Museum“  with Dr. Ashley Remer

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

 

“Tanit: her mother- and sister- lines. A foray into the mythological and linguistic relations of the Phoenician-Carthaginian goddess“
with Miriam Robbins Dexter
Thursday,  September 18, 2025 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time 

   Facebook Live Promo Interview on 9/18/25:

In Vergil’s Aeneid, Dido, queen of Carthage, maddened by the Trojan hero Aeneas’ flight from her Queendom, is about to take her own life.  She prays,

“Oh, Sun, you who illuminate all the works of the earth with your flames, and you, Juno, interpreter and sharer of these woes of mine, and Hecate, [whose name is] howled in the nocturnal crossroads by the cities, and you, avenging Furies, and you gods of the dying Elissa [Dido], receive these [words], and as is worthy, turn your divine influence to my ills and hear our prayers.”

The Romans gave the names of their own deities to the deities of foreign countries such as Carthage; the Roman Juno Caelestis and Juno Moneta were the Roman names given to the Carthaginian Great Goddess Tanit.

 

This presentation excavates the history and posits the prehistory of the Great Goddess Tanit. Through her iconography and that of related divine female figures, as well as my translations of texts in Phoenician, Linear B, Classical Greek, Ugaritic, Egyptian, and Sumerian, I hope to illustrate the constellation of related functions and imagery of these goddesses, as well as the possible origin of Tanit, giving evidence for the transmission and relationship of these divine female figures through time. Tanit was very likely borrowed from the earlier Ugaritic (Syrian) Anat and related linguistically and functionally to the Mycenaean and Classical Greek Athena and very likely the Egyptian Neith as well.  Further, I will demonstrate that the name of Tanit as well as her functions can be traced back to the earlier Sumerian Great Goddess Inanna, and through her, ultimately, to the multifunctional Neolithic Great Goddesses.

 

Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a PhD in ancient Indo-European Studies from UCLA. Her books include Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990); Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia (2010, with Victor Mair) (2012 ASWM Sarasvati award); and Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries (2015, with Vicki Noble) (Susan Koppelman award, 2016). Miriam is the author of over thirty scholarly articles and nine encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures, and she has edited and co-edited sixteen scholarly volumes. For thirteen years, she taught courses in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages in the department of Classics at USC. For the following sixteen years, she taught courses in comparative myth at UCLA.

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Upcoming Scholar Salon (3pm Eastern Time):

October 2, 2025:  “The Deer Mother”  with Dr. Kathryn Henderson

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

“The Tlacuache (Opossum), a protector and guardian of humankind“

with Verónica Iglesias

Thursday,  September 4, 2025 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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In this presentation, we will talk about the opossum, as a guardian of human beings, and its symbolism within the Mesoamerican worldview. Opossums are one of the few marsupials that exist in the Americas, and because of the care they provide for their young, they have been symbolically considered the great mother,  guardian and protector. There are myths where the opossum was the one who brought fire to humans, even though it had to sacrifice its tail when doing so. In general, the opossum was a very important animal; it was considered an ancient, wise, cheerful, and mischievous being.

It is also said that it was the one who brought knowledge to humans. Along with tobacco and liquor, and together with fire, they made human life more bearable and gentle. In its role as guardian, the opossum has been considered a being that cares for small children, especially babies. As the guardian mother, it was sometimes left next to the sleeping baby for protection. In myth and in reality, the opossum is a being that has greatly supported humanity, even against the will of certain deities or higher beings.

 

Verónica Iglesias was born in Mexico City, Mexico. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Library Sciences and a Master’s Degree in Mesoamerican Studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). She studied ancestral medicine with different indigenous healers in Mexico, learning about the temazcal (“steam house”), plants, minerals, rituals and ceremonies. She has been initiated as a priestess of Ix´Cheel, the Mayan deity of medicine. She is the author of 6 books, two of them about Medicinal Plants. She is co-creator of the Jade Oracle, a deck of 52 cards with Mesoamerican deities and symbols.

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Upcoming Scholar Salon (3pm Eastern Time):

September 18, 2025:  “Tanit: her mother- and sister- lines. A foray into the mythological and linguistic relations of the Phoenician-Carthaginian goddess” with Dr. Miriam Robbins Dexter

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