“Decoding Delphi: Reconstructing the Technology of Divination“

with Dr. Vivien Monroe

Thursday,  September 12, 2024 at 3 pm Eastern Time  

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In ancient Greece there was an oracle so famous for her accurate,  enigmatic, and poetic pronouncements that kings, generals, and pilgrims flocked  from across empires to consult her. The oracle remained in operation for more  than 1,000 years and counted among its supporters the philosopher Socrates and  the mathematician Pythagoras. She was the Pythia of the Delphic Oracle. 

My research questions are: What were the spiritual technologies used at  the Delphic Oracle? How did the Greeks understand that the Oracle worked, and  what role, if any, did gender play in the successful operation of the oracle? In  order to answer these questions, I explore living divination traditions from West  Africa. My decision to explore African systems of divination stems from my  experience of witnessing numerous divinations in the tradition of the Dagara  people of West Africa over a five-year period, including my own initiation as a  diviner within this tradition.  

Over the course of my exposure to Dagara divination technology, I noticed  striking parallels between the Dagara tools and artifacts and chronicles of Delphic  tools and artifacts. Because writers living contemporaneously with the Delphic  Oracle did not discuss the details involved in the process of prophecy, we need to use living traditions to help reconstruct those that have been lost over the course  of time. As I show in my dissertation, there is a scholarly tradition for utilizing  comparative analysis. 

I use archaeomythology and feminist theory to provide an original interpretation, deeper exploration, and advanced understanding of those archaeological artifacts that pertained to divination at Delphi. I offer one theory of the spiritual technologies in use at Delphi and hypothesize how these technologies may have facilitated one of the ancient world’s most accurate oracles. The significance of my findings is that by better understanding the spiritual science of divination at the Delphic Oracle, the modern West can better understand its ancient epistemological connection with divination and possibly reintegrate divinatory tools and practices into more of our modern life.

Vivien Monroe, PhD is an accomplished scholar and educator with a Ph.D. in Women’s Spirituality. Her area of expertise is divination, specifically focusing her dissertation on reconstructing the spiritual technology of the Delphic Oracle. Vivien’s experience extends beyond academia, as she is also a practitioner of divination, having been initiated into three styles of divination within the Dagara tradition, and is also a gifted tarot reader. She remains committed to continuing to learn and share about various divinatory practices. Vivien lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her two doggie fur babies, Luke and Lilith.

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Save the Dates for future Salons:

Thursday, September 26, 3 PM Eastern Time

“Feasting on a Hekate Supper at the Crossroads,” with Kay Turner

Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 12 NOON

“Exploring Matriarchal Societies:  Encounters and Insights from Around the World,” with Maria Haas

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

“Of Golf Courses and World Heritage Sites“

with Dr. Barbara Mann

Thursday,  July 25, 2024 at 12 NOON Eastern Time  

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In 2023, UNESCO announced that the “Newark Earthworks,” a major collection of Tsalagi (“Cherokee”) sacred mounds dating back at least 2,000 years, sitting southeast of Columbus, Ohio, is now a World Heritage Site. This was a stunning development, given that the Moundbuilders Golf Club has sat atop these mounds since 1911.

The Native American Alliance of Ohio had fought for over forty years to protect the mounds, as golfers chunked up and sent pieces of them flying with every swing of their clubs. The mounds were built by women, bringing basket loads of soil from their home sites and mounding it up to solar and earth coordinates, so as to enable the Breathmen to read the equinoxes, solstices, and standstills of the moon.

The Mounds’ establishment as a World Heritage Site finally helped Ohio Indians kick the golfers off the mounds. The full significance of this new status becomes clear only once the Indigenous significance of the mounds, their shapes, locales in relations to one another and the landscape, and their mediation of Breath/sky and Blood/earth is understood.

“Of Golf Courses & World Heritage Sites” goes into the details of the mounds, their Indigenous meaning, their desecration, and finally (finally!) their recognition as a treasure from antiquity. 

Barbara Alice Mann, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita of Humanities, Jesup Scott Honors College, of the University of Toledo, in Toledo, Ohio, USA. Including encyclopedias and bibliographies, she  has produced seventeen books and over 500 articles. Her latest work is The Woman Who Married the Bear (Oxford University Press, August, 2023) co-authored with Finnish scholar Dr. Kaarina Kailo. Mann’s most recent monographs include President by Massacre: Indian-Killing for Political Gain; Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath: The Twinned Cosmos of Indigenous America; The Tainted Gift: The Disease Method of Settler Advance; Daughters of Mother Earth; and Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas (Lang, 2000, 2004, 2006).

A Bear Clan, Ohio Seneca, community recognition, Barbara is the co-director of the Native American Alliance of Ohio. She lives in her Ohio homeland on the tail (western tip) of Lake Erie where she works for the rights of the people indigenous to Ohio, living in Ohio. (“Erie” is Seneca for “panther.” The Lake is a “water panther,” an important spiritual potency.)

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Watch our Newsletter for announcements about upcoming Salons in our Autumn Series.

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

“Harriet Tubman and the Combahee Raid“

with Dr. Edda Fields-Black

Thursday,  July 11, 2024 at 3pm Eastern Time  

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Harriet Tubman’s legendary life is widely known: escaping enslavement, leading others to freedom via the Underground Railroad, and tirelessly fighting for change. But a crucial chapter often overlooked is her daring Civil War service as a spy for the US Army, detailed in Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black’s groundbreaking book, COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.

A direct descendant of a soldier who fought in the raid, Dr. Edda Fields-Black unveils Tubman’s command of spies and pilots and intelligence gathered from freedom seekers, which led to a raid that liberated 756 enslaved people from bondage on seven rice plantations. It was the largest slave rebellion in US history. Through unexamined documents, she brings to life the Combahee River Raid and the untold stories of those freed, their resilience, and the lasting impact of Tubman’s heroism.

Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black teaches history at Carnegie Mellon University and has written extensively about the history of West African rice farmers, including in such works as Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. She was a co-editor of Rice: Global Networks and New Histories, which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.  She has served as a consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture’s permanent exhibit, “Rice Fields in the Low Country of South Carolina.” She is the executive producer and librettist of “Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice,” a widely performed original contemporary classical work by celebrated composer John Wineglass.

Edda Fields-Black is a descendent of Africans enslaved on rice plantations in Colleton County, South Carolina; her great-great-great grandfather fought in the Combahee River Raid in June 1863. Her determination to illuminate the riches of the Gullah dialect, and to reclaim Gullah Geechee history and culture, has taken her to the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia to those of Sierra Leone and Republic of Guinea in West Africa.

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Watch our Newsletter for announcements about additional Salons in our summer series.

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

“Women, arts and love“

with Guadalupe Urbina

Thursday,  May 30, 2024 at 3pm Eastern Time  

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BLUE AUGUST: To my country and her people

August, the thirty first,

in the train, going home

the window turns into night

the clouds appear as mountains

in this land of plains and water.

I yearn for you,

blue tropics of rain,

fireflies,  frogs,

little ripe guava,

cascading Reventazón,*

chorequita** from the ground,

moonlight savanna

I yearn  for you. . .

 

*River  **local fruit

Join us in this Salon as Lupe shares her music and paintings, and engages us in conversation on the love for the earth, women, and traditional wisdom.

Guadalupe Urbina  is internationally known for her work as a singer and songwriter, and as a researcher of the oral tradition of her Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. To tell her story of identity and culture,  she has ventured into painting, children’s stories and poetry as another extension of her musicality. She is an activist for the rights of women and girls, for Earth Rights. She is the founder of Casa Madremonte, an independent center dedicated to art, agroecology and spirituality inspired by the rainforest. She has published four books and recorded ten albums.

Guadalupe has performed in diverse venues in the three Americas, Europe and Central Africa, such as the Círculo de Bellas Artes or the Centro Cultural de la Villa in Madrid, the Hot Brass and the Maison de l’Amerique Latine in Paris, the Demba Diop Stadium in Senegal, Biarritz Film Festival, a One Woman Show in New York, and the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in Canada. And of course at many theaters, squares, streets, community halls, cafes and World Music festivals.  She has received awards from the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid, the América Prize from Radio France International, and the Association of Authors and Composers of Music  ACAM has awarded some of her works; the album Trópico Azul de Lluvia in 2001, special recognition for her work compiling oral tradition in the album “Sones Afromestizos de Amor y de Humor” in 2018. She received the Reca Mora Award for a life dedicated to music in 2021 and the Song of the Year award for her song “La Cumbia de la Niña” in 2023.

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With gratitude to our presenters and volunteers, we are taking a break in offering Scholar Salons until later this year. Watch our Newsletter for announcements about the next series. 

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