Author: joanna

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Patricia von Papstein and Kristina Dryža

Patricia and Kristina’s talk is called “Trickster Energy as a Healing Force?”

The Trickster is a beautifully iridescent archetypal character in mythology. In contrast to its liberating behavior qualities, it’s been much maligned and demonized throughout history. By decrypting the Trickster archetype in its multi-dimensional ability to peek behind the curtains, the two presenters will discuss how those in the business world can engage mythology and psychology to ensure that their products and services are ‘Trickster worthy.’

Drawing on the archetypes of the goddess queens Aphrodite and Persephone, Patricia and Kristina will illustrate how both, facing growing and decaying are essential for meeting the Trickster at the threshold. We live in a time where we experience ourselves and the world as fragmented – outside perhaps solid, but on the inside atomising. Travelling between the upper world and the under world like a trickster, not like a charlatan, is a fresh approach to healing.

About Patricia and Kristina

Patricia von Papstein is a business woman, a clinical and organizational psychologist and a lover of technology and the arts. Following through to her credo “Bliss to Business!” she challenges business and capital owners to refine their unconventional talents and to market products that keep a secret, spread self-irony and celebrate the spirit of contradiction. Currently she has accepted to become a jury member of the Berlin science fiction festival. You can visit her website at www.blisstobusiness.com.

Kristina Dryža is recognized as one of the world’s top female futurists and is also an archetypal consultant and author. She has always been fascinated by patterns and feels we are patterned beings in a patterned universe. Her work focuses on archetypal and mythic patterns and the patterning of nature’s rhythms and their influence on creativity, innovation and leadership.

To hear this talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!

The Mythologium is a conference and retreat for mythologists and friends of myth, held July 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Olivia Happel-Block

Olivia’s talk is called, “The Therapy of Prythian: Writing Psychological Trauma and Dealing with it in New Adult Literature”

Sarah J. Mass’ inventive 2015 New Adult fantasy novel, A Court of Thorns and Roses, plays on familiar fairy tale archetypes such as Beauty and the Beast, Hades, and Persephone. Despite putting her characters through challenging tasks, adventures, and the occasional torture session, Mass answers the question of what happens after the trauma of returning from the underworld. In this series, the reader is taken through an imaginative faerie realm where magic powers the universe, humans fear their fae neighbors, and an evil queen has cast a plague upon the land. This presentation examines the powerful mythic images present within Mass’ universe along with the inclusion of mythic themes and archetypes to create a psychologically compelling narrative in the bourgeoning genre of New Adult. Mythical ideas and concepts have long been a fantastic resource for authors, but this emerging genre provides a vehicle for telling stories that acknowledge and process the traumatic events of life. What mythical truths can these New Adult novels provide to audiences? Where and how do these novels fit within the “canon” of academic literature? What value might they hold for entertainment and scholarship?

About Olivia

Olivia Happel-Block, PhD, is a Mythology, Theory of Knowledge, English, and Film Studies teacher at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, CA. There she serves as the Extended Essay Coordinator (a four thousand word research essay composed by IB students over the junior and senior year). She has created her own curriculum for both the Mythology and Film Studies course at DPHS. Her dissertation, That Which Is Not Yet Known: An Alchemical Analysis of Michael Maier’s Arcana Arcanissima explores themes of mythology, alchemy, and religion. Olivia serves as the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association’s Vice President. She has presented at the American Academy of Religion Regional Conference as well as the Pop Culture Association’s Regional and National Conference. Her academic interests include myth, religious studies, alchemy, and classics. She seeks to pursue the #immutablediamondbody throughout her life, scholarship, and career. Follow her on Instagram @doctorhappel.

To hear Olivia’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 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Katherine J. Bailes

Katherine’s talk is called “Healer and Bringer of Plagues“

Grace Dammann, physician and survivor of a near-death accident once said in an interview: “…I know healing when I am in the presence of it. It’s mysterious, magical and God-given.” Healing is numinous and so, it seems, is sickness; they are part of the same archetypal process. In this presentation, we will explore mythic expressions of ancient divinities known for their gifts of healing and plagues such as the Hebrew god Yahweh-Rapha, the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, the Greek god Apollo and the Fir Bolg, early chthonic inhabitants of Ireland. We will follow this unitive thread through contemporary perspectives on medicine, vaccines, and viruses to ask: What is the message of the plague as it swirls through humanity? What is the unasked question that can heal us now, individually and collectively?

About Katherine

Katherine J. Bailes, JD, PhD is a practicing attorney and an adjunct professor of mythological studies at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. Dr. Bailes holds a BFA in painting from the University of North Texas and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Kansas, School of Law. She later obtained a master’s degree and Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California. Her dissertation topic entitled “The Themis Principle: Mystery and Irrationality in the U.S. Legal System” focused on the mythological aspects of the law as expressed in ancient cultures through goddesses such as Athena, Themis, Inanna and Maat. She has received numerous awards and served in a variety of leadership positions in art, law and teaching, successfully combining these fields through her understanding of story and the human capacity for myth making.

To hear Katherine’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 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Karin E. Zirk

Dr. Zirk’s talk is called, “Tackling the Great Divide in American Culture from a Mythological Perspective”

Where logic, reason, and argument fail, mythology provides new possibilities for healing by engaging with individuals using imaginal methods that reveal the deities and/or archetypes at work. Only when we know who is there, can we create relationships that heal the great divide in American culture.

Dr. Zirk conducted a research survey using a mythic questionnaire that collected perspectives on culture, society, and the great challenges of our time. The questionnaire used a combination of free-form and multiple-choice questions that were text and image-based. Then using the methodology of Mythic Amplification on the survey responses, the results were analyzed to identify trends, cultural beliefs, and areas of contention in archetypal motifs.

The mythic artifacts used in the questionnaire are not necessarily grounded in their cultural lineage, but are floating through a multi-cultural, often polytheistic, postmodern world of mix-and-match beliefs and reveal themselves through film, art, fiction, music, and sacred texts. In other words, the responses to the questionnaire were provided by laypeople who used their own knowledge to provide responses to deep questions of identity, “the other,” and the world around them. This often results in cultural appropriation, misunderstandings of cultural mores, and a method of providing mythic responses to the survey questions. However, Dr. Zirk relies on the socio-historic context of the actual mythic figures in the process of Mythic Amplification.

This presentation intends to provide mythologists with methods on using mythic questionnaires in the field of cultural mythology to understand the great divide in American culture and its underpinnings in our mythic perspectives.

About Dr. Zirk

Dr. Zirk earned her doctorate in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute where her dissertation focused on enhancing well-being in family caregivers using mythological methods. Her research has been presented at the American Academy of Religion Western Region and National Conferences as well as at the Fates and Graces Mythologium — a conference for mythologists. Her article “The Rainbow Gathering and COVID-19” appeared in Communities: Life in Cooperative Culture, Winter 2020. Her novel, Falling From The Moon, came out early last year. Her recent workshops include “Covid-19 and Mythic Monsters;” “Re-Imagining Our Relationship with Mother Earth;” and “Imaginal Mythology and Climate Change.”

To hear Dr. Zirk’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 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. John Bonaduce

John’s talk is called, “The Healing Power of the Lullaby”

Trace the lullaby backward in time from, say, Billy Joel’s “Goodnight, My Angel,” to lyrics found on a five-thousand-year old Sumerian cuneiform tablet and you realize that the texts have more to do with the anxieties and existential dread of the singer than of the baby. Even the word “lullaby” suggests a broader application. A widely accepted folk etymology traces the nightly practice of the lullaby to “Lilith-Abi,” Hebrew for Lilith Begone! Without such precautions, there was always the risk of the demon herself showing up to steal the soul of the child. Mothers have feared such abductions since Hades/Pluto grabbed Persephone and whisked her to the underworld. They fear still.

Protection against demons does not have a place in modern child caregiving, but emotional health is still front and center. According to Dr. Mark Tramo of UCLA’s famed neurology department and, significantly, a lecturer at the Herb Alpert School of Music, preterm babies responded favorably to the sustained presentation of lullabies which not only induced sleep but ameliorated the pain normally experienced after, say, a heel stick procedure (which is how blood is drawn from neonates).

I would suggest that, as mythologists, we have underestimated not only the significance of the lullaby as generative of story, myth, and even scripture, but the significance of sound itself. The experience of intrauterine sound, I will argue, is the fertile field from which image arises in perinatal consciousness.

If that doesn’t disturb your sleep, nothing will.

About John

John has a PhD in mythological studies and a Master of Music in conducting. He knew this day would come. His studies are briefly merged.

John and his wife Eileen direct the well-known sacred ensemble Shantigarh (a Hindi word meaning “House of Peace”). John is also the curator of resources for the Joseph Campbell Foundation.

To hear John’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 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Margaret (Maggie) Mendenhall

Maggie’s talk is called “Healing Science Fiction: Hillman’s Revisioned Psychology as seen through the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Darmok'”

Carl G. Jung uses myth to expand upon his depth psychological teachings about how to heal one’s psyche, or soul, by becoming more whole through individuation, an ongoing process of acknowledging, accepting, and integrating different aspects of our unconscious with our conscious ego. James Hillman expands upon Jung’s use of myth by introducing four moves he believes one’s psyche goes through to heal itself, in his concept of Re-Visioning Psychology: personifying, pathologizing, psychologizing, and dehumanizing or soul-making. This presentation will use the episode “Darmok” from Star Trek: The Next Generation to illustrate Hillman’s thesis. In this episode, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is stranded on a planet with the captain of an alien ship–from a race that communicates only through metaphor and uses each of Hillman’s four moves in order to save his own life and that of the crew of the Enterprise.

About Maggie

Margaret (Maggie) Mendenhall, PhD, currently resides in Long Beach, California and is a graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies Program. She is also currently a student in Pacifica’s Depth Psychology Program, specializing in Jungian and Archetypal Studies. Margaret has presented papers on Star Trek related topics at various conferences, including last year’s Mythologium, the Science Fictions, Popular Culture Academic Conference, the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, Mythgard Institute and the American Academy of Religion, Western Regional Conference. She writes a blog, My Daily Soul Trek analyzing each Star Trek episode and film from the beginning in chronological order through a depth psychological perspective. As an edutainer, she has written, performed and produced two myth based one-woman shows: Dancing to the Edge of a Cliff: A Mythical Journey Toward Wholeness and Soul Trek: My Sci-Fi Journey Toward Wholeness, and produced and hosted the public access television series Myth Is All Around Us. Margaret has also been published in legal journals and Pacifica’s Mythological Studies Journal (online) and the Between literary review.

To hear Maggie’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 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Edward M. Smink

Edward’s talk is called “What Have I Done to Deserve This? Are the Gods or God Punishing Me?”

My intention in this discussion is not to go into a psychospiritual or philosophical discussion about the meaning of suffering. Rather, I want to focus on the fact that this question still resonates to this day, a question steeped in the human experience of the ancients and in their mythology. Somehow, we inherited the notion that only the gods or God heals. No wonder we ask the above question. I want to explore with you these ancient mythologies and how they affect us centuries later. I will also bring into perspective some of the depth psychologists that have addressed these issues.

About Edward

Edward M. Smink, PhD defended his doctoral thesis, “Thresholds of Afflictions: The Heroic Journey of Healing,” at Pacifica in May of 2010 and graduated with a PhD in Depth Psychology. He has over forty years of experience in healthcare as a nurse, crisis and pastoral counselor, executive leader, facilitator of mission, ethics, value and leadership formation and community health. Since his last presentation at the Mythologium in 2019, titled “Who Hugs the Hugger, A Mythology of Self-Care,” Edward has reached out to caregivers suffering from compassion fatigue as a life coach, presenter, and speaker, and promoted his book The Soul of Caregiving, A Caregiver’s Guide to Healing and Transformation. He has been a guest on several bogs on Caregiving and is in the process of coming out with a revised edition of his book and creating an on-line webinar course. More about him and his work can be found on his website.

To hear Edward’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 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Fee Mozeley

Fee’s talk is called “‘Being’ Emplaced: Restorying Earth-Felt Belonging”

Writer, psychologist and mythologist Sharon Blackie observes that for many people living in contemporary neoliberal societies, “our relationship with place has become demythologised—a fact which is both an explanation for and a consequence of our sense of alienation from the world around us” (2020, np). She argues that processes and practices that remythologize place are not only “an interesting intellectual exercise, but an act of radical belonging” (2020, np). Heeding Blackie’s (2020) call to remythologize place, I restory what I call Earth-felt belonging.

Drawing on Elspeth Probyn’s (1996) emphasis on the ontological ‘beingness’ of belonging and Donna Haraway’s (2003) theorising of ‘natureculture’, I situate Earth-felt belonging through embodied, relational and emplaced entanglements that nurture a sense of interconnectedness alongside recognition and respect for the agency and vitality of Mother Earth and her Earth-kin (Matthews, 2011). More specifically, this presentation examines longing and belonging through intimate engagement with storied meaning making processes. It draws from fieldwork undertaken on Darkinjung Country (Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia) with five women (myself included) living in Australia’s colonial and patriarchal present. Together, we restory what it is to belong, through inhabiting the mythic landscapes of a Selkie folktale from the Outer Hebrides.

About Fee

Fee Mozeley is an environmental feminist who lives in Mulubinba (Newcastle) on Awabakal Country. She designs and facilitates feminist-popular-education workshops and retreats for self-identifying women on story-making, transformative leadership, and intuitive approaches to social change. Her research brings together more-than-rational ways of knowing and being in the world, lived praxes that actively challenge and dismantle patriarchy, and the agency and social power of stories and storytelling.

To hear Fee’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 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Lucy Dolan

Lucy’s talk is called “A Contemporary Re-imagining of the Ancient Irish ‘Vessel of Everlasting Abundance’: Symbol of Inspiration, Transformation, Healing and Regeneration”

The “Clay-Cup Symbol and Worldview” offers a contemporary re-imagining of the ancient Irish mythological vessel of everlasting abundance: a symbol of inspiration, transformation, healing and regeneration. This numinous vessel symbol resides in the deep ecological roots of the Irish psyche.

This work puts forward that there is an absence of such symbols of wholeness in the modern Western psyche. This has led, in part, to the emergence of the humanitarian, ecological and climate crises of our times. This unique project re-imagines this vessel through a synthesis of the arts, sciences and humanities, conceptualizing the Earth as an earthen vessel broken into many pieces with each broken shard representing an aspect of life: ecology, biology, psychology and mythology.

The work seeks to re-form the vessel, to bring these disparate shards back together into meaningful relatedness in an endeavor to heal the modern fragmented mindset and acknowledge the everlasting nourishment and renewal that their inter-relatedness provides the individual, community, culture and planet. The mythic imagination has the capacity to constellate renewal and healing in the psyche, helping cultures to adapt and evolve in challenging times. This re-imagined vessel symbol is offered in service to the healing, health, and well-being of the whole.

About Lucy

Lucy Dolan holds a B.A. in Ceramics, an M.A. in Ecopsychology, Viridis Graduate Institute, and is currently undertaking a research Ph.D. Her work synthesizes her academic interests in Irish arts, symbols, myth, and culture, as well as depth and ecopsychology, with her practical ceramic work. Lucy lives in County Kerry, Ireland.

To hear Lucy’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 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes the sponsored panel, Confronting Colonialism and White Supremacy in Myth

Rosalie Nell Bouck will present on “Held Embrujadas”: Reading Mesoamerican Myths of Femininity as a Radical Response to Contemporary Colonialism.

Sea Gabriel will present a talk called, “Who’s Your Daddy? The Norse, The Nazis, and The World Stage.“

Brandon Williamscraig will address “The Myth of Peace and Conflict Done Well.“

This panel is sponsored by the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Assocation. Thank you, PGIAA!

PGIAA’s motto is, “Through soul, community thrives.”

To hear this panel and many others, join us at the Mythologium!

The Mythologium is a conference and retreat for mythologists and friends of myth, held July 30 – Aug 1 via Zoom. Register here!