Author: joanna

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Jennifer Degnan Smith

Jen’s presentation is called “The Shape of Water: Restoring Ecological Consciousness”

Despite the scientific evidence that we are in an environmental crisis, many people have not significantly changed their behavior. This suggests that the crisis cannot be addressed simply through rational arguments and logical means. There is something deeper at play, something powerful in the unconscious level of the collective. Jeffrey Kiehl argued that the “fundamental psychological roots” of the crisis need to be uncovered to solve the problem.

Myth and fairy tales provide a direct route to the unconscious aspects of the collective and can help to identify a path of transformation. One recent fairy-tale film provides insights into the environmental challenges that we are facing. Guillermo del Toro’s, The Shape of Water, brings to life Richard Tarnas’s two “suitors” who demonstrate different ways that we can relate to the world around us. One will keep us on our path of destruction. The other, exemplified through the main character, princess Elisa, provides a new way of relating to the world and transforming our current ecological crisis. Through Elisa’s relationship with the mysterious sea creature, we find an image for a new ecological myth.

This presentation builds on my paper published in the journal of Ecopsychology, March 2019.

This presentation is part of a special panel on Myth and Restoring Ecological Consciousness, sponsored by iRewild. Thank you, iRewild!

About Jen

Jen Degnan Smith, Ph.D. in Archetypal and Jungian Psychology, explores sociocultural issues, particularly those where psychology and economics merge. Her 20-year career in organizational consulting and university teaching spans the US and Europe, and her Ph.D. dissertation examined the modern Greek Economic Crisis through a mythological lens. She is focused on healing and empowering the feminine within individuals and the collective.

To hear Jen’s presentation 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 Kayden Baker-McInnis

Kayden’s presentation is called “Rewilding the Cultural Imagination to an Ecological Consciousness”

In The Great Derangement, writer Amitav Ghosh suggests our current climate crisis stems from a crisis of culture and cultural imagination. This lack of imagination furthers our disconnection from the natural world and justifies exploiting ecosystems. As depth psychologists and mythologists have discovered, consciousness deepens and heals by engaging the mythic imagination. Our refusal to embrace myths, what James Hillman calls our soul stories, keeps us in a state of denial with our archetypal reality which our current environmental situations reflect. The mythologies of Dionysus and Artemis in particular can contribute to a healing of this disconnection by way of rewilding and cultivating an ecological consciousness. Both Greek mythic figures offer an entry into the universal archetypes of wilderness, the communal cultivation of the vine and the wild feminine essential to reclaiming our relationship with nature and the wild. A Dionysian and Artemisian consciousness are explored as one way into the ecological consciousness and ecological thinking that is resisted in our current cultural expression. “Seeing through” the ensouled world in this way changes our relationship with the nonhuman and expands our own human ecology to include the world we live in.

This presentation is part of a special panel on Myth and Restoring Ecological Consciousness, sponsored by iRewild. Thank you, iRewild!

About Kayden

Kayden Baker-McInnis is a PhD candidate in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology working on an ecological dissertation focusing on the Greek figure Dionysus in relation to nature, body, and gender. She teaches language arts to school-aged students and offers adult myth classes. Her workshops include a humanities-based writing process engaging comparative mythology, cultural studies, and depth psychology in Salt Lake City.

To hear Kayden’s presentation 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. Craig Chalquist

Craig’s presentation is called “Storied Nature: When Myths Heal the Split Between Us and Everything Else”

Stories tell us who and where we are. Myths are, among other things, stories that tell us how to relate wisely to the natural world. When we ignore the myths, we tend to relive them darkly, as when oil spills igniting rivers inadvertently but powerfully recall Phlegethon, the fiery river from Greek mythology. Myths from many lands contain warnings and wisdoms for how to live as one species among many.

My presentation will address the following questions:

– How do fossil fuels bring with them the mythology of the Underworld gone crazy?

– What myths do psychologies detached from nature tend to reenact?

– What do the old tales tell us about the consequences of losing alignment with the rules of nature?

– What do they tell us about healing the split in consciousness that opens when we consider ourselves masters of the natural world?

– What does the research methodology Terrapsychological Inquiry offer for healing our relations with Earth as a living animate presence?

This presentation is part of a special panel on Myth and Restoring Ecological Consciousness, sponsored by iRewild. Thank you, iRewild!

About Craig

Craig Chalquist, Ph.D. is core faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies and former Associate Provost of Pacifica Graduate Institute. His books include Myths Among Us (World Soul Books, 2018) and Terrapsychological Inquiry: Restorying Our Relationships with Nature, Place, and Planet (Routledge, 2020). Visit his website Worldrede.com.

To hear Craig’s presentation 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 Smith

Lucy’s talk is called “Greek Goddess Archetypal Healing”

Have you ever wondered how the Greek goddesses can personally heal you? In “Greek Goddess Archetypal Healing,” we’ll explore the strengths and weaknesses of seven of the most well-known Greek goddesses: Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Hera, Hestia, and Persephone. Each goddess, corresponding to an area of a woman’s life, can empower you to transform your life into one of mythic proportions.

About Lucy

Lucy Smith (Moore College of Art & Design B.F.A. Illustration ’16, Delaware College of Art & Design A.F.A. Illustration ’13, West Chester University B.A. Theatre ’11 cum laude) is the lady behind Persephone’s Jewels, a life coaching experience of self-esteem building and identity exploration through the lens of the Greek goddesses. She maintains a popular face painting business, Colorful Kingdom Entertainment; models, and babysits dogs. In her spare time, Lucy studies astrology, tarot, and life drawing.

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 Dr. Drew Smith

Drew’s talk is called “Trimming Iron John: Alchemical Healing of the Masculine Soul Through the Barber’s Chair”

In the German fairy tale “Iron Hans,” as recorded by the Brothers Grimm, we watch as a wild man initiates a young prince into adulthood. Made popular by Robert Bly and helping to spawn the mythopoetic men’s movement of the 1990s, the tale has become synonymous with a call for modern men to embrace the intense and shadowy inner masculine energy, their own lost psychic “wild man,” and thus embark on a journey toward individuation and finding one’s authentic identity. This myth, culminating with the golden-haired prince marrying the princess, ends with an unexpected twist not often explored: The wild man Iron John appears at the wedding feast, no longer a hair-covered beast but transformed into a noble king.

This nearly instantaneous transformation from wild man to nobility through the removal of Iron John’s hairy coverings provides an opportunity to explore how the physical act of growing one’s hair out and then cathartically cutting it off has the potential to transform a man internally and externally, physically and psychically, by shedding identity and image and stepping into a new way of viewing himself. We investigate the shamanic role of barber as well, who acts as counselor, mentor, and agent of change, and the barber’s chair as the alchemical alembic in which this transformation takes place.

About Drew

Drew H. Smith, Ph.D. is the Director of Online Learning at Walsh College in Troy, MI, where he oversees the design, development, and technical support for all of Walsh’s online and hybrid courses. He has a passion for moving higher education forward into a new pedagogical model focused on transformation rather than information. Dr. Smith earned his Ph.D. in Depth Psychology which focuses on the unconscious and transpersonal aspects of the human experience. His research interests include men’s psychology, mindful masculinity, spirituality and Christian mysticism, the current sociopolitical climate surrounding gender in academia and culture, and scotch.

To hear Drew’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 Jennie Wiley

Jennie’s presentation is called, “Hosting Radical Other-ness: Hestian Consciousness and Non-Binary Gender”

Gender is breaking out of the two-sided paradigm we tend to imagine as more people identify with non-binary or gender fluid expressions, challenging the myth depth psychology uses to imagine gender and the psyche. Jung situated psyche in a binary model of gender, and post-Jungians worked to loosen the cultural biases about that bisexual gendered understanding but left it in place as a binary model. As we grapple with how best to discuss gender, counsel and support non-binary and gender-fluid persons, and even understand gender in relation to psyche itself, we need a myth, a style of consciousness, in which to ground ourselves so we can begin to welcome all possibilities toward healing the wounds of gender. Hestia, the goddess who hosts, listens, and welcomes all is ideally suited for conversations about our first and most enduring home, the body, and its primary resident, the psyche. This paper advocates for Hestian consciousness in conversations and interactions about, and with, non-binary, gender-fluid persons as well as binary gendered concepts pertaining to the therapeutic relationship and the psyche itself.

About Jennie

Jennie Wiley holds an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh and an MA from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is currently studying in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies PhD Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

To hear Jennie’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 Jennifer L. Kautz

Jennifer’s talk is called “Return to Turtle Island: Imagination, Nature, and Myth Woven into an Ecopsychological Story and Process: Seeds of Renewal for the Future”

Healing for ourselves and our planet will only evolve if we have the symbols and images embedded in myth that evoke energies of renewal, reciprocity, and ecological belonging. I have created an ecopsychological mythopoesis based on a dream of two flying brachiosauruses carrying Mother Turtle to our small farm in Michigan. This story is a journey of renewal and remembering of primal images from the Iroquois Great Lakes creation myth of Skywoman. How does this new story help us reimagine and connect to our ecological selves? What is missing in modern culture that has closed our perceptions to our ecological birthing as an individual, community, and the larger culture? I hope you will join me in learning about this story and the images that have journeyed to reconnect us to our souls and our purpose in the natural world.

About Jennifer

Jennifer L. Kautz, MA, is a Doctoral Candidate in Ecopsychology and Environmental Humanities at Viridis Graduate Institute in Ojai, CA. Her doctoral project is a mythopoetic story and ritual of renewal and remembering, evoking primal imagery in modern times. Jennifer’s own journey began at General Motors, with a 20-year career in engineering design and process. In 2000, she began working with Jean Houston and Peggy Rubin, engaging with the realm of myth, archetype, and ritual. Jennifer left corporate life and began her educational path in community counseling and ecopsychology. Her work is influenced by her research experience in Detroit urban farming and the 16-acre farm she owns with her husband. Jennifer is interested in connecting modern culture with the power of myth and ritual as tools for accessing the mythic self.

Jennifer is a certified Master Gardener and Yoga Teacher. Spirit Garden is her first published work of poetry. Her email is: jennifer.kautz@viridis.edu

To hear Jennifer’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 Bernie Taylor

Bernie’s talk is called “Origin of the Mythic Centaur”

In Greek mythology, the centaur Chiron is the iconic mentor to great heroes such as Achilles, Hercules, and Theseus, among others. Siberian shamans in a parallel tradition psychologically transform into a horse through a trance dance in order to enter another dimension. This joining of human and animal beings to gain strength is not characteristic of agricultural peoples, but rather from much earlier animistic traditions. This study explores images of half men/half horses in European Upper Paleolithic cave art through the lens of animism to better understand the origins of ancient mythical centaurs, the role of the centaur on the journey of the hero, and our early psychological relationships with other animal beings.

About Bernie

Bernie Taylor is a naturalist, author, and archaeoastronomer whose research explores the origins of mankind’s creativity and awareness of the natural world. His works in these areas include Biological Time (2004) and Before Orion: Finding the Face of the Hero (2017) which explore a deep root to mankind’s creative capacity by looking at how hunter-gatherers viewed themselves through Paleolithic cave art approximately 40,000 years ago. Bernie proposes that select cave paintings are fundamental pieces in the human journey to self-realization, the foundation of astronomy, and a record of biological knowledge that irrevocably impacted some of the artistic styles, religious practices, and stories that are still with us. Bernie is widely interviewed on podcasts, presents interactive programs at high school through graduate level classes, and gives engaging talks at popular conferences and academic symposiums across a wide range of social and physical science disciplines.

To hear Bernie’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 our keynote speaker, Dennis Patrick Slattery, PhD

Our Mythologium 2021 keynote speaker will be Dennis Patrick Slattery, PhD. In keeping with our theme of myth and healing, Dennis’s talk is called “Healing into Wholeness: Healing as Myth and Method.” If you already know Dennis’s work, you’ll understand why we’re so thrilled to have him join the program. If you don’t know his work yet, your soul is in store for a treat.

Healing into Wholeness: Healing as Myth and Method

Indeed, healing may not necessarily be identical with saving or preserving life. – Edward Whitmont, The Alchemy of Healing

We are each a series of paradoxes — patient and  healer, infected and inflected, afflicted and blessed, a wound and a wonder. At times it seems that most mythologies and stories that accrue from them are concerned with qualities of being bloodied and blessed, scourged and saved at the same time.  Each of these ands involves a myth seeking expression, shaping our plot-line and infusing our embodied blood-line, a vehicle for the flow of our life’s energy. Every healing is haunted by the shadows of an earlier infection.

This presentation will explore the power of a contagion as a large encompassing metaphor, to heal as it wounds. Such a pollution can be an occasion, even opportunity, for the gods to enter the arena to provoke us into a level of awareness that we could not have understood without an invasive infection that inflects our lives into a greater mytho-spiritual consciousness.

About Dennis

Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D. has been teaching for 52 years, the last 26 in the Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, where he is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 30 volumes, including 7 volumes of poetry and one novel co-authored with Charles Asher. His most recent titles include Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit, co-authored with Deborah Ann Quibell and Jennifer Leigh Selig, and From War to Wonder: Recovering Your Personal Myth Through Homer’s Odyssey. His most recent collection of essays is An Obscure Order: Reflections On Cultural Mythologies. In addition, he has published over 200 articles, book reviews and op-ed pieces. He offers writing retreats on C.G. Jung’s The Red Book as well as on Writing One’s Personal Myth through the works of Joseph Campbell and other mythologists. He has been taking painting classes in water color and acrylics for the past 8 years. For recreation he enjoys the pleasures of walking in nature, lap swimming at a local recreation center, and riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle with his sons Matt and Steve in the Texas Hill Country.

Dennis’s email is dslattery@pacifica.edu and his new website is available at www.dennispatrickslattery.com.

To hear Dennis’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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Save the date for Mythologium 2021

Attention, mythologists! The 2021 Fates and Graces Mythologium will be held July 30 – Aug 1, 2021. Location and logistics are still TBD, but go ahead and mark your calendar — and start thinking about next year’s theme, Myth and Healing.

Our CFP opens on January 1, 2021. All proposals related to the study of mythology will be welcome, but this year we are especially interested in proposals about myth and healing. Stay tuned for more details.

2021 Theme: Myth and Healing

Healing happens. We heal physically, mentally, emotionally. And healing can be collective: relationships, families, cities, countries, rivers, forests, and even planets can heal. What does myth — be it ancient or contemporary — say about the mystery of healing? What archetypes visit when healing happens, and how do they play a role? How does mythic healing show up in art and popular culture?