Category: Presenters

Presenters at the Fates and Graces Mythologium, a virtual conference for mythologists.

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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Sara Lovett

Sara’s talk is called “Archetypal Voices Within the Body—Pre & Post Quarantine”

As a somatic practitioner during this unprecedented time of Covid, I have witnessed how the health of even my most extroverted clients has slowly shifted archetypally. In this time of imposed quarantine, psyche has taken the collective withdrawal and inhaled it into the bone and marrow of a quarantine that is self-imposed on a much deeper level. There has been a shift in the archetypes we were living pre-quarantine and those that have risen to the surface in an effort to save us within quarantine. We have been left unprepared for the forthcoming conditions of walking side by side and inhaling the breath and touch of another. This presentation explores how the archetypal lived experience has shifted and impacted the artist’s health during quarantine. Through the guidance of these archetypes I explore how we embrace them through open dialogue and consciously wash them through the body. In order to cross the threshold into a world post-quarantine the invitation is to greet who we were in order to understand who we are now. With our new boundaries consciously recognized we are better prepared to step into this new ecology of body/mind/spirit and earth.

About Sara

A somatic oriented educator, Sara Lovett is a writer, performer, and teacher whose work sits at the interface of depth psychology, somatics, and ritual. She holds a BFA in acting from The University of Texas at Austin, and an MA in Somatic Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute where she is pursuing her doctorate. Her research question explores the effects of embodied practices in the self-care of the actor.

Using the self-landscaping process (an art based body-mapping modality), authentic movement and embodied writing, Sara works with artists on deepening their mind/body connection towards healthier physical and mental well-being. In preparation to cross over the threshold from Covid-19 seclusion into eventual emergence, her current classes explore the body in quarantine and its impact on our well-being and shifting perspectives. Sara’s lectures and workshops focus on the connection between mind, body, psyche, the relevance of dreams, the imagination, the power of image and the archetypal. She is the author of the memoir, The Invisible Bones, and the upcoming book, The Friendship Index.

To hear Sara’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 Rodrigo Ruiz

Rodrigo’s talk is called “Immortal Mirrors: Homeric Gods as Psychological Personifications”

It would seem the rift between the representation of Iliadic and Odyssean gods is too wide to be reconcilable. And although multiple attempts have been made to address the issue—mostly focused on attributing the divergence to different authorship, or to the time elapsed between their creation, or even to the degree of temporal proximity to pre-Olympic deities—none have been truly satisfactory. The question, then, remains unanswered: Why are Homeric immortals so at odds with themselves? Based on the textual evidence of the Iliad and the Odyssey, this paper aims to provide an answer, the key for which, I suggest, may lie in the parallels found between divine conduct and heroic character.

To test this hypothesis—and following a brief survey of the known quantitative and qualitative differences separating the gods of each epic—this paper focuses on Athene and her relation to Achilles and Odysseus as the focal heroes of the Iliad and the Odyssey, respectively. A few episodes involving other gods help evaluate the results of this case study; the light they bring further dispels the darkness enveloping this godly mystery. In addition, a careful evaluation of Homeric word usage in the Greek text provides further grounds to support our conclusions. The final analysis reveals the Olympians as the personified psychological traits of Achilles and Odysseus, and the heroes as the mirrors and reason for which the immortals appear so changed in the Odyssey, as compared to the Iliad. Divine action, as a corollary, is often the personified consequence of human choice; in other words, the gods being mirrors of the heroic psyche, their actions become reflections of the heroes’ lives. Thus, the weight of moral judgment, if judge we must, is transferred onto the hero whom the gods reflect. Far from judging, though, the aim is to understand the chain of causation that leads each hero to his destiny, which may just be what Homer wished to teach.

About Rodrigo

Rodrigo Ruiz was raised in Tijuana, Mexico, where he enjoyed playing, as all children do, but also loved music and literature. Although barely able to reach the keyboard, he was drawn to a small Steinway spinet at home as if by magic; and it was magic and the wonderful tales of literature and myth that kept him awake many a night.

Hailed as “an astonishing composing talent” (Apple Music), Rodrigo regularly receives commissions from world-class musicians and ensembles. Behold the Stars, his debut, Dante-inspired album for Signum Classics—which features chamber music, including a violin sonata and piano trio performed by Kerenza Peacock, Laura van der Heijden, and Huw Watkins— rose to no. 13 on the Billboard Classical charts.

As an avid reader of classics, he regularly engages with literary and mythical works. One of these intense periods focusing on Shakespeare’s works not only resulted in one of his most recent compositions—”Venus & Adonis,” a song cycle commissioned by Grace Davidson—but also in “Love & Lust,” an archetypal reading of the myth and an attempt to disentangle the hidden meanings behind them. Rodrigo firmly believes that myth is there to teach, and we are here to learn.

Rodrigo holds a Bachelor of Music cum laude from Lawrence University and a Master of Music from the University of Michigan. Thanks to the generous help of the Joseph Campbell Scholarship, he is now pursuing a PhD in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, investigating novel ways to fuse music and myth through opera, programmatic music, and other genre-bending works.

Rodrigo is fluent in Spanish, English, Italian and French. In his spare time, he takes joy in the outdoors, reading, and cooking for family and friends.

To hear Rodrigo’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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Mythologium 2020 welcomes Dr. Katherine Bailes

Katherine’s talk is called, “Hollywood Consults the Oracle: The Delphic Oracle and Its Uncanny Expression in Minority Report“

The Oracle in classical Greece held a sacred place in society, consulted for both important matters of state and seemingly trivial personal matters (if one could pay). The words of the oracular priestess were translated through a priest and ultimately interpreted into action by the inquirer. It was an arm of the law; one could call it the “intuitive branch.” The tragic playwright Aeschylus described the lineage of the Oracle in his prologue to The Eumenides, beginning with Gaia, transitioning through two other goddesses to Apollo, the Olympian son of Zeus. Apollo was the bright god of the sun, and the intuitive side of the Oracle seemed to complete his nature.

In this presentation, I will describe the Oracle of Delphi, its priestesses, enquirers, rituals, fees, and probe Hollywood’s adaptation of the oracle in the 2002 movie, Minority Report featuring Tom Cruise (Apollo incarnate). We will uncover the classical remains of the Greek Oracle now dressed in new genders and new costumes, in a plot where murders are predicted using specialized mutated humans called “Precogs,” who “previsualize” crimes by receiving visions of the future. It is a timely review of society’s desire to know the future, control outcomes and destroy that which it cannot control.

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 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. You can reach Katherine through her LinkedIn profile or email.

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Mythologium 2020 welcomes Claire Savage

Claire’s talk is called, “Lay your burden down: Baubo jests to ease Demeter’s despair”

By studying the mythic character of Baubo and her relationship with Demeter, contemporary women may find the freedom to travel into new psychic terrain, plumb the depths of the soul and embrace their own changing bodies and generative energies. C.G. Jung said, “The process of coming to terms with the unconscious is a true labour, a work which involves both action and suffering.” This presentation looks at three ways in which the relationship between the ailing Demeter and the old lady Baubo work together to facilitate a deeper relationship with the unconscious: 1) through the archetypal realm of their mythical characterizations; 2) through the power of female sexual energy in its fierce expression of life, and 3) through the divine pleasure of full-belly laughter, grounded in the libidinal flow of eros and the regenerative power of the earth. Baubo offers herself in the service of life so that Demeter may feel her own heart, lay her burden down for just that moment, and make way for the mystery of life to shine through.

About Claire

Claire Tiampo Savage is a doctoral student in Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has a master’s degree in educational psychology, is a credentialed teacher and resource specialist, and has taught regular and special education in Milwaukee and the San Francisco Bay Area. Claire has written for The Journal for Career Assessment and Psychological Perspectives and has an upcoming chapter entitled “The soul’s calling in teacher education” in New voices and new visions: Explorations in archetypal pedagogy, edited by C. Mayes, S. Persing, and C. Schumacher.

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2020 Mythologium regretfully announces that Emily Miller’s presentation has been canceled

CANCELED: “The Next Mythogenetic Zone: The Forest”

This presentation explains the circumstances that have led to the Aokigahara Forest in Japan becoming known as “the perfect place to die.” Ancient cultural practices mythologize the Jukai forest, a sacred cultural realm of the metaphorical, liminal, physical, and psychological realm. I will discuss the perception of suicide in Japan. By its very nature, this research requires an examination of the concept of the underworld and deep psychological engagement, especially in the difference between Eastern and Western psychology.

While watching the film The Sea of Trees, written by Chris Sparling, I was profoundly affected by the main character,  Arthur Brennan’s deep psychological pain and his inability to recover without a deep immersion in the physical landscape and his own shadow. The Jukai Forest is a complex alive matrix where old myths are pivoting in place. Forests are both sacred and profane in the individual and collective consciousness. The Suicide Forest, as well as all forests, are living mythogentic zones capable of reciprocity that possess positive implications for humans, and the environmental problems we are now experiencing. Shinrin-Yoku, or forest bathing, is a new form of ritual, spreading throughout the world, sending droves of humans back to the forests seeking communion and healing. As a ritual, forest bathing can create new narratives with matrixial capacities that contain eco-psychological transference fields we as humans may enter and use to address our disassociation from the more than human Earth, offering adaptive theories for the many plagues confronting our suffering contemporary world.

About Emily

Emily E. Miller earned a BA double major in Philosophy and English and did graduate work in the Master of Education program at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, with a Philosophy Department Scholarship. She studied in Ireland in 1992. She owned Greensweep Landscape and Design for 20 years in Nashville. Before returning to earn her MA in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, she was a successful fine artist of acrylics on canvas and board in local galleries and shows in Nashville and Florida, and many of her works are in Nashville private collections. She has published poetry in Rising to the Dawn, “The Writer’s Journal,” and “The Awakening’s Journal” with Chicago Press. Emily is currently working on an autobiography of her struggles before and after finding her father on ancestry.com at 53 titled, When Death Would Not Have Me. She maintains a Joseph Campbell Scholarship and is writing her dissertation on “Eurydice in the Contemporary Female Imagination.”