This year’s Myth Makers panel features the novelist Jamie Figueroa and the poet Dr. Raïna Manuel-Paris. Jamie and Raïna will share selections from their work, as well as some reflections on myth, healing, and their creative process. We’ll make sure to leave time for audience discussion, so bring your questions for Jamie and Raïna!
About Jamie
Jamie Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and long-time resident of northern New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, Agni and Emergence Magazine among other journals. Jamie received her MFA in Creative Writing from The Institute of American Indian Arts where she is now an Assistant Professor. Recipient of the Truman Capote award, and the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts award, she was also chosen as a Bread Loaf, Rona Jaffe Scholar, and is a VONA alum. Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer(Catapult) is her debut novel.
About Raïna
Raïna Manuel-Paris, Ph.D., born in Paris, France, of French and Caribbean descent, lived in England and then moved to the United States in her early twenties. Her love of transformational story telling has taken her from an MFA in Film from Columbia University to a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. She is a published writer of non-fiction, poetry and several scholarly articles, as well as a documentary filmmaker. She recently completed her first novel, a mythical fairy tale, Arabella & the Wise Women. Her understanding of what gives meaning to daily life has led her to her work with dreams, and to include meditation practice in her classrooms. She is a lecturer and scholar who speaks on several subjects, including “Awakening the Magician Within,” “What Women Want,” “The Goddess,” “Love: Primal Agent of Change,” “Love and Sacred Medicine,” “War, Trauma and Spiritual Transformation,” and “The Major Arcanas of the Tarot as a Sacred Life Path.”
Pamela’s talk is called “Mythic Mapping: A New Way to Use Myth in the Individuation Journey”
Trauma affects over 50% of the population. From sexual abuse to domestic violence, a terrifying number of people will go through some sort of turning point that changes their lives forever. Being a rape survivor and having suffered debilitating postpartum depression, I know this to be true. C. G. Jung himself experienced his own life-altering experience when he split from Freud; after which he went down his own unique individuation path. In my presentation I will share my research on how a traumatic turning-point can open the gateway to a conscious individuation path. My depth psychology dissertation, entitled Mythic Mapping, combines game-design, storytelling, active imagination, and dreamwork into a life-long Self-discovery adventure. Utilizing stories of eight Goddesses of the world as mythic examples of individuation after trauma, Mythic Mapping can be used by individuals who may not have access to therapy. With this revolutionary system that includes a workbook, map, spinner, dice and more, self-discovery is at one’s fingertips. My offering will share how I developed this system, by way of my own active imagination work and paying attention to the synchronicities that have deeply connected me with Myth and Self!
About Pamela
I was raised in the Southern California Mountains (the land of the Serrano People) where I currently reside with my husband and son. I am the Assistant Professor of Spiritual Practice & Care for the Soul at Starr King School for the Ministry, and the Priestess of the Sacred Outpost in Crestline, CA. As a child I found the Divine at the lake near my parents’ cabin. The big pine trees surrounding it were my sacred space—my church. It was there that I began to understand that we are all part of the Divine Web of All Creation. At the age of twelve I sought comprehension of that Web by starting my study of the World’s Religions. While obtaining my B.A. from the University of Redlands, Johnston Center, I delved into Feminist Spirituality, Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism. I moved in and out of different spiritual practices after College, weaving together the energies of all of the Archetypal-Forces with whom I entwine. In 2011 in ritual with the group I led, I heard the call: Nourish others’ understanding of their connection to the Sacred in all things! So off I went to Starr King School for the Ministry (a Unitarian Universalist Seminary) where I received my Master of Divinity, and the Chaplaincy Institute for Ordination as an Interfaith Minister. Having battled a long-time kidney illness, I almost died of an infection after completing Seminary, but found solace in finding my true path of Alchemy and Depth Psychology during this difficult ordeal. After a full recovery I began the adventure to obtain my PhD. in Depth Psychology with a specialization in Jungian & Archetypal Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute, where I am now dedicating my dissertation work towards designing a program for Trauma Survivors to embark on an individuation quest.
To hear Pamela’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!
Dr. A.’s talk is called “The Steward Asks the Question”
Mythology offers intrinsic cyclic opportunities to reconnect, reassess, and recreate our personal, cultural, and global narratives. To accept this eternal invitation to re-creation and rebirth we must begin with the acknowledgement of our place in the natural world. If life as we know it is to survive, humanity must revision itself as one-of-the-many, as a steward, and not overlord of life on Earth. In 2020, increasing extreme weather events and the pandemic gave us a taste of where life out-of-balance is leading. It has also given us a chance to look within and realign our priorities. Mythology was born of human experience and our need for meaning-making amidst the eternal cycles of birth-life-death and rebirth. Myth can lead us into accord with universal principles of life. Myth can lead to the healing of the wasteland, if we ask the right questions. The first question must be, what is our place in the natural world?
About Dr. A.
Dr. A. is a cultural mythologist, women’s mentor and coach, speaker, and writer. Andrea received her Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is the creator of The Midlife Re-Boot! Method, a program developed to guide women to recreate themselves and rediscover their true north at midlife. Her work engages with the current re-emergence of the archetypal feminine, at a time when nature and the earth, themselves symbols, metaphors, and embodiments of the sacred feminine, are under existential threat from climate change. Dr. A. has been a featured workshop facilitator and speaker at women’s events and the College of the Canyons Women’s Empowerment Conference and the Popular Culture, American Academy of Religions, Women in Mythology, and the Mythologium conferences. Dr. A’s mission is to guide, consult, and mentor women to fulfill their potential and become their most authentic selves in service to themselves and others.
To hear Andrea’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!
Brandon’s presentation is called “The Myth of Peace and Conflict Done Well”
Drawing a direct line from a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies to his diversity and restorative justice work in Oakland, CA, Brandon Williamscraig shares the story of accepting the invitation to introduce his research and internationally funded Peace Practices curriculum as a research coordinator and instructor in the Somatic Psychology department at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Direct experience and research make clear that mythic and archetypal literacy are both central to whole system healing and essential to the specific kind of somatic, fully embodied process of legitimate suffering, grief, and recovery that is our survival challenge as a species. To illustrate this, Brandon will introduce participants to a process that moves from the archetypal to the culturally specific by way of mythological study. Discerning core tensions in specific cultural complexes, as well as specific conflicts that result in trauma and a need for healing, the group will receive examples of working through/by way of conflict in order to create responses and practice somatic exercises tuned to address injustice and restore balance. That process, repeated over time, results in healing and power sharing that works through difference. This is the practice of Conflict Done Well, without which bodies politic, and especially their most marginalized members, are profoundly vulnerable to authoritarianism and other deep wounds to the world soul, or Anima Mundi.
Brandon Williamscraig, Ph.D. was co-founder and CEO of the San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit Association Building Community, or ABC. He served as a post-doctoral fellow, fieldwork supervisor, and instructor for all levels of graduate students at Pacifica Graduate Institute in the Depth Psychology Somatics Specialization. He holds an international 5th degree black belt in aikido and has founded learning communities and served as chief instructor. He has extensive experience with private and public institutions, offers leadership, diversity, and facilitation training, and has worked in the study of peace and conflict since 1998 while providing curriculum development, conflict education, and mediation services. His teaching and research focus on the embodied (somatic) psychology of belief, the narrative/mythological construction of culture, and The Myth of Peace.
To hear Brandon’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!
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.
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!
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.
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!
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?
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!
Dante’s presentation is called, “Japanese Folklore’s ‘The Eight-Hundred Years Buddhist Priestess’: Exploring the ‘Gift of Immortality’ in Japanese-Style Animations and Games”
Japanese folklore’s “The Eight-Hundred Years Buddhist Priestess,” featuring the accidental consumption of a ningyo (Japanese mermaid), has been less well-known than equivalent tales in other ancient mythologies (Nicolae, 2020). Despite bringing this tale to life via Japanese-style modern entertainment, it is still less globally recognized due to the cultural and geographical distance (Sever, 2016). This theoretical and qualitative research fills previous studies’ gaps by investigating how this tale depicted the two most significant Japanese media: Japanese anime (animations) and video games. A Qualitative Meta-analysis Review (QMR) was applied to comprehensively investigate the origins of how movie and game directors developed their contents inspired by this mystical tale (Levitt, 2018). The results indicated that anime reflected the positive side of this myth, specifically the potentials of immortality, while video games portrayed its dark truth. Anime such as ‘Lu over the wall’ reflected human’s curiosity about the Earth’s uncharted corners or a caring relationship between the distinct species as described in the anime ‘Ponyo'(Okuyama, 2015). Meanwhile, video games demonstrated the punishments brought by obsessing with ‘eternal life’ (Dumas, 2018), particularly the Corrupted Monk in ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice’or the eternal curse of famine at the Hanuda village in ‘Forbidden Siren.’ These research outcomes contributed significantly to world mythology and encouraged entertainment creators to consider implementing Japanese mythology into their exclusive content.
Quan Dieu ‘Dante’ Luong holds a bachelor’s degree in English Studies at Hoa Sen University (Vietnam). He has participated in numerous research activities that enriched teaching methodologies and learning materials for English Language Teaching. As a result, Dante’s achievements and contributions are widely recognized by his supervisors, professors, and colleagues.
In 2018, he arrived at Concordia University Chicago to pursue his Master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). After graduating, he performed his internship at the Vietnamese Association of Illinois (VAI), where he developed lesson plans and scheduled English and citizenship courses for Vietnamese immigrants. His interest in mythology originated from his childhood dream of becoming a myth hunter, bringing forgotten tales and myths into the modern world, and motivating people to explore and preserve them. After spending his time reading books, watching films, and doing independent research on myths and legends, he realized their essence and influence on human psychology and inspiration. Implementing old tales to develop new ones is the aspect that fascinates him.
In 2020, he experienced the pain of losing his loved ones due to illness and the COVID pandemic. Attending this year’s Mythologium, Dante looks forward to sharing these unforgettable moments, along with his future ambitions in the field of mythology, with fellow professors and conference audiences here.
To hear Dante’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.
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!
