Mythologium 2023 welcomes our keynote speaker, Dr. Emily Lord-Kambitsch

We are thrilled to announce that the keynote speaker for the 2023 Mythologium will be Dr. Emily Lord-Kambitsch. Building on last year’s theme of ecological consciousness, and directly addressing this year’s theme of Myth and the Heart, Emily’s presentation will discuss Ovid’s Metamorphoses from an ecopsychological and posthumanist perspective. We appreciate how posthumanism takes humans and non-humans into account, embracing a world far bigger than just us people. Read on for the abstract of Emily’s talk.

Becoming Heart-less: Mythic Metamorphoses and the Posthuman

As humans, we are heart-carriers, and there is a certain anthropocentrism inherent in the human quest for a heart-centered relationship with the world through story. But the world we inhabit contains countless sensate organisms who do not have hearts, but whose subjective experience is nevertheless imagined, recorded, and transmitted through myth and folklore in sensory, psychological, moral, and spiritual terms that we can understand.

The Roman poet Ovid’s epic, Metamorphoses, offers many tales of human or humanoid creatures undergoing transformation into non-human (and some heart-less) beings. Treating examples from this text through a dual perspective of ecopsychology and posthumanism, we will seek to understand how myths offer a way for us to observe ourselves in contact with the mysterious subjectivities of the “heart-less” beings in our world, from plants and stones to the ever-listening Amazon Alexa housed in the corner of the living room, through the capacities of the human heart.

About Emily

A lifelong poet-storyteller and student of ancient Mediterranean languages and literature, Emily Lord-Kambitsch, PhD is Co-Chair and Associate Core faculty in the Mythological Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She teaches courses in Greco-Roman myth, ritual studies, memoir and self-writing, research approaches, and dissertation formulation. Outside of Pacifica she leads workshops in “Mythic Movement,” a practice of personal myth-making through deep listening and intuitive movement. Emily is passionate about supporting students’ connection with the perennial stories that call to them through academic, artistic, and personal lenses.

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Raïna Manuel-Paris

Raïna’s talk is called “Unlearning Not to Speak: The Interconnectedness of Women’s Rights and Earth Rights”

To understand the destiny of women is to understand the destiny of the planet. They are the same. They have both suffered from acts of violence and terrorism. When a woman becomes responsible to her Self, to her body, she becomes responsible to the world around her. The role of woman as agent of her fate, not only victim of her destiny, is linked to the destiny of her community and to the earth herself.

There is a long tradition of the Sybil going back to the Oracle of Delphi, where women act as priestesses of Hestia, of Artemis, when they speak on behalf of the Earth, speaking mostly in warnings about the lack of self-regulation and the catastrophic repercussions for our planet, about women’s social and political identity in such a context. Never more relevant in today’s climate, in the United States in particular, where women are still fighting for rights over their own bodies. They carry the fire of the goddess, because the earth is on fire. They carry the warrior instinct of Artemis, because wild things need to be protected from our insatiable predatory consumption. They have left the hearth because it has died from lack of tending and now they must carry the fire within themselves, re-animate the center of home from a feminine perspective.

About Raïna

Dr. Raïna Manuel-Paris has a multicultural background, born of a French father and a Dominican mother. She was raised in France and England until her early 20’s then moved to the United States. She holds a PhD in Mythological Studies with emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and a Masters Degree in Film from Columbia. She taught Magic and Ritual and Myth and Symbol for 17 years at the Art Institute in Santa Monica. She is also a documentary filmmaker.

She is adjunct faculty at PGI and taught at the Relativity Studio School in downtown Los Angeles. She currently teaches online courses, lectures, and gives seminars at the Philosophical Research Society, PRS.org. Her book The Mother-to-be’s Dream Book was published by Warner Books in 2002. She is also a published poet at Raven Books and various publications. Her documentary The Bridges of My Father was selected for the short film corner at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. She has written for Psychological Perspectives, the journal of Jungian thought, and for the Joseph Campbell Foundation MythBlast series. She is part of the Joseph Campbell Writers Room, and has lectured for the Joseph Campbell Roundtable, most memorably in a lecture hall that burned down two days later in the Thomas Fire.

Currently Raïna works with both individuals in a mentorship program, and with groups in a process she calls The Cradle and the Crown, assisting men and women in coming to alignment in body, mind, and soul, developing deep aliveness as well as careful listening to the whisperings of their soul’s desire. This work was birthed as a result of her own explorations with the unconscious, plant medicine, and natural horsemanship. Her latest work is a novel/fairy tale, Arabella and the Wise Women, soon to be published. Her work with students, including many veterans, always emphasizes the ways in which one can hold the tension between the inner world and the outer world in a way that engages curiosity and compassion. For more details on current seminars and lectures please see her website at www.rainamparis.com.

To hear Raïna’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.

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Lynlee Lyckberg

Lynlee’s talk is called “Earth as Self-Adjusting Organism: Anima Mundi as Healing Force in the Physical World”

Plato viewed the cosmos as a single organism that was vitalized by a force greater than its inhabitants. Known as the anima mundi, this force was the mothering soul of the world, responsible for the order and purposiveness of nature, and was believed to be the mediating influence of the stars at a distance. In the 1960s, James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis initiated a contemporary renewal of interest in the environment as a living organism and asserted that all species in the planetary biomass act symbiotically to enhance the life-giving potential of the planet, where the goal of life was global homeostasis with the earth as a self-regulating organism. The Gaia hypothesis helped restore the anima mundi as divine intelligence who heals through self-regulation.

This presentation seeks to elucidate theories like Lovelock’s that contribute to planetary psychology, and explores contemporary healing modalities emerging from Earth as living organism theories. Of particular interest is the work of mycologist Paul Stamets, who explores using mushrooms to heal toxic environmental sites as well as trauma in individuals.

About Lynlee

Lynlee Lyckberg is a California-based artist/educator who maintains a studio and teaching practice in the Nevada City foothills of northern California. She earned her B.A. in Studio Art/Art History from Cal State East Bay, and her M.F.A. in Painting (Consciousness Studies) from John F. Kennedy University. In 2016 she completed her doctorate in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. She also studied Traditional Chinese Arts and Healing at the University of Hangzhou, China, in 2001. She is currently completing a PsyD, and will begin an art therapy licensing program in the fall.

Her teaching philosophy is that a creative practice is one of the best ways to enhance problem solving skills, and often connects one to deeper ways of knowing and being in the world. Core elements of her teaching practice include the use of dreamwork, myth, and the symbolic image to enhance thinking skills and open the doors to personal creativity.

To hear Lynlee’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.

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!