heart-center Archives - Fates and Graces Mythologium

Katie’s presentation is called “Embracing the Sacred Heart and Tasting the Ecstasy Within: Exploring the Spiritual Practices of the Beguines and Saint Lidwina of Schiedam”

The experience of desire, whether arising from physical sensuality or spiritual transcendence, finds its abode within the vessel of the heart. As articulated by Hadewijch of Brabant, a 13th-century Beguine from the Netherlands: “For love has no need for sadness, It shall know and understand all—Sweetness and cruelty, Joy and sorrow.” The Beguines, a community of laywomen in the Late Middle Ages in the Low Countries of Europe, defied societal norms by choosing neither marriage nor convent life. They fostered self-organization, engaged in active prayer, and devoted themselves to serving the world. Rejecting the established authority of the church, these women, grounded in a heart-centered spiritual practice, embodied a non-dualistic love for God.

Drawing upon the writings of female Beguine authors and the hagiographies of Lidwina of Schiedam, a lay Dutch mystic, this study delves into the spiritual practices of the heart that resonate within Christian mythology, exploring the transformative power of suffering’s initiation into the realm of ecstasy. Employing a feminist, depth psychological, and Buddhist lens, we examine these subversive mystical women as agents of a quasi-trauma therapy for the collective feminine, shedding light on their profound capacity to facilitate healing and growth.

About Katie

Katie Szymanski is a dedicated psychotherapist, scholar, artist, and CEO of the mental health company “The Couch.” She is a Ph.D. candidate in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Currently, she is working on her dissertation, a corrective history of Saint Lidwina of Schiedam, offering a feminist perspective that challenges traditional narratives and the male gaze found in exploitative hagiographies of female mystics. Through her therapeutic expertise, knowledge of mysticism, and artistic sensibilities, she explores the placement of humanity within the broader context of history, the psyche, and spirituality.

To hear Katie’s talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!

The Mythologium is a conference for mythologists and friends of myth. This year’s Mythologium will be held July 28-30 in-person and online in the Pacific time zone.

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Dr. Scott’s presentation is called “All Roads Lead to the Heart-Center: A Study of a City’s Circulation System“

A city’s road network system is the circulatory system of the built environment. In fact, city planning vocabulary literally describes a city’s road system as its circulation element, where access is often provided by a major arterial or a local bypass. Thinking of the city’s networks of roads, streets, and highways in this way makes me wonder where might be the heart-center to where all this circulation leads? My talk for this year’s Mythologium is a blending of the physical nature of a city’s circulation with a psychological approach of finding one’s own heart-center. Using examples from my own hometown of San Diego, CA, I hope to lead the audience down a road toward finding the heart-centers in the places and cities they hold close to the heart.

About Dr. Scott

Bob holds a BA in Cultural Geography and, after 30 years in the city planning profession, received his MA and PhD in Mythology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. In his 2022 dissertation, entitled “Encountering San Diego: A City Planner’s Search for a City’s Soul,” Bob examined how geography, history, and the mythic imagination, by way of archetype, metaphor, and image, inform a city’s soul and spirit of place. Through the primary lenses of depth, archetypal, and ecopsychologies, Bob’s approach to city planning implies a reinterpretation (or revisioning) of how a planner might assess the making of a city by cultivating a psychological vision for how one might engage more fully and more symbolically with the cityscape.

To hear Dr. Scott’s talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!