Randy’s talk is called “Odin’s Eye: How Ancient Mytho-Poetics Inform Today’s Eco-Conscious Biofield Awareness”
Wondrous and mystical, nature has much to offer. Of particular interest and fascination are natural patterns and shapes that afford intrigue and provide the imaginal taproot for mythmaking and poetics. In delving into the fascinations of sensoria and the patterning of beings in a patterned universe (via the lens of the “mytho-poetics of ancient wisdom”), more of the empirical presence of nature’s manifest rhythms can become apparent.
This presentation will explore several “biofield” interactions — like the migrating robin’s “Odin eye” and the narwhal’s precisely straight, counterclockwise tusk organ spiral — as these relate to organs of perceptual awareness and, arguably, may have informed the mytho-poetic traditions of ancient long-distance water-bearing travelers. Participants will also be introduced to the nascent field of Transductive Anthropology, an anthropology that listens through and across the ear-centrism of many sound studies, positing vibration as only one vector of inter-sensory connection.
Underscored in this talk is how myth, subsumed in cultural models, still possesses a compass bearing and a calibrated sense of volume, as well as a “revelatory range” of variation that can only go so far in exploring a culture’s boundaries of deviance. Some of these mythic facets can help us balance thinking and perceiving and lead to a mythically eco-sustainable flow of being.
About Randy
Raised as a dual-citizen in Southern Ontario, Canada, and Western New York, Randy Eady spent his formative years on the legacy land of the Pikwàkanagàn and the Tuscarora of the Six Nations near Niagara Falls. Eady left Canada to go to school in New York at SUNY Oswego, where he double-majored in anthropology and sociology with a minor in linguistics. With Dr. Richard Loder, currently Director of Native American Studies Program at Syracuse University, Eady co-presented a thesis on Indian Land Claims and Congressional Backlash at the New York State Sociological Association Conference and went on to obtain a graduate degree at Montana University in Human Development and Therapeutic Counseling. He has served as Assistant Professor and Course Chair of Cultural Anthropology at the USAF Academy in Colorado and as Federal Special Observance Committee Chair for American Indian Heritage cultural programs.
At the USAF Academy he was awarded Outstanding Behavioral Science Instructor for his innovative behavioral approaches to trauma recovery. He created Ko~Sha~Rey Rhythms (KR) Terrapeutics and held positions in the U.S. Defense Department as a trauma therapist and counselor for combat veterans with PTSD and mobility conditions, such as amputee phantom pain phenomena and Parkinson’s disease. He has practiced in residential assisted living treatment facilities and speaks on inter-generational mind/body/spirit issues, animal-assisted therapy practices, and attachment/trauma. In addition, he has fashioned numerous therapy gardens for balance and movement disorder conditions which are advancing research on symptom relief and recovery from a myriad of conditions.
To hear Randy’s talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!
The Mythologium is a conference and retreat for mythologists and friends of myth, held July 29 – 31 via Zoom in the Pacific time zone.