| Biographies in (somewhat) Alphabetical Order |
| AfraShe
Asungi
AfraShe Asungi, HHHAS, MFA, LCSW, is a published and exhibiting Social Justice & Gender Activist, Visionary Image Maker, ordained Wimmin's™; Spiritual Teacher and Inner-SheMystae™; for over 4 decades. AfraShe is also a clinical psychotherapist in Los Angeles, CA. After graduating from University of Chicago, AfraShe soon became active in the Late and Post L.A. Black Arts Movement. Her original works have been shown and featured in numerous private and public collections and organizations across the country. During the late 1970's, AfraShe founded Positive Images in Print by Asungi , by inaugurating a body of visual images and unique written philosophies, including a collection entitled, The Goddess Series . . .™; - to publicly honor and affirm Black Wimmin™; , Our cultural uniqueness, and Herstorical Self-Determination, "as a positive norm". The Goddess Series… was significant for its positive mythic restructuring, delineation and depiction of Strong, Self-Contained and Self-governing Afrikan Goddesses during the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Her landmark work has been included in numerous Women’s and Goddess Spirituality journals and presentations; Woman of Power magazine--authors Merlin Stone, Gloria Orenstein, Hallie Austen Iglehart, and Elinor Gadin among them. Of her work, it has been said, "In her depictions of powerful Black Goddesses, AfraShe has created a spiritual home for Black women seeking a renewed vision of themselves." AfraShe broke new ground when she coined a modern Afrikan Womin-Affirmative™; language, including terms MAMAROOTS®, Afracentrik®, Afrakan® & AfraKamaat® and other wordage which uses the root prefix "Afra™" , to depict a MatriNubian™ SpiraCultural™; origin, which once affirmed that the genetic ancestry of all huminkind originated in Matriarchal Nubia. AfraShe also founded the landmark spiritual organization and publication , MAMAROOTS®: Ajama-Jebi Sistahood™;. She explains, ". . . to proactively reclaim and acknowledge Our ancient iconography, fragmented and lost Herstory and to encourage us to brazenly acknowledge, and honor Our forgotten practices when we actively celebrated the essential, life-affirming Womin™;-bonding and day-to-day recognition of Ourselves as "Living Reflections of Our Mamas" "as a positive norm" ". © MAMAROOTS/ Asungi Productions. Permission to quote, cite, reprint granted if source, contact info, trademarks and copyrights are included in the body of the reproduction. All rights reserved. http://afrasheasungi.com
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| Hallie
Iglehart Austen
Hallie Austen Iglehart grew up on a farm and has lived close to the earth for most of her life. Her lifelong interest in goddesses began at the age of twelve when she started studying ancient Greek language and mythology at Bryn Mawr School. After graduating from Brown University, she drove from England to Nepal and back again over the course of a year. This journey, described in her book, Womanspirit, led to her synthesis of spirituality and feminism, which she first started teaching in 1974. She has led workshops, rituals and conferences at the University of California, United Nations International Women’s Conference, and Graduate Theological Union among others. She created Womanspirit Meditations and collected worldwide Goddess art, myth and meditations in her book, The Heart of the Goddess. She is the author of Womanspirit: A Guide to Women’s Wisdom (1983) and The Heart of the Goddess: Art, Myth and Meditations of the World’s Sacred Feminine (1990 and 2018). lShe is currently working on a book and essence cards, Slowing To the Speed of Love. In 2001, driven by her love of marine life, she co-founded Seaflow: Protect Our Living Oceans to educate people about the dangers of active sonars and other ocean noise to whales, dolphins and all sea life. Hallie continued her passion for sustainable living by building two model green homes, one in bamboo. In 2010, she initiated All One Ocean, Cleaning Up the Oceans, One Beach at a Time. Hallie lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and offers private consultations on dreamwork, life transitions and Wisdom Healing QiGong. www.heartgoddess.net
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| Nancy
Azara
Nancy Azara is an artist who has widely exhibited in galleries, institutions and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad. Her work has been reviewed in such publications as the New York Times, Art In America, Artforum, and Sculpture Magazine. Azara is known for her artwork that encompasses feminism, healing and individual connection to the divine. She developed her political views and signature style as a part of the 1970’s feminist art movement in the United States. In 1979, Azara co-founded a feminist art school, The New York Feminist Art Institute 1979-1990. She was included in the feminist publication Heresies and most recently in the Women's Art Journal. She is the author of the book "Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art" and an essay, "In Pursuit of the Divine" for "The Kensington and Winchester Papers: Painting, Sculpture and the Spiritual Dimension". She has been a visiting artist in the United States, Europe, Taiwan, and India. She also co-organizes REPRESENT, a series of inter-generational dialogues to encourage discussion across generations about contemporary issues, for women in the arts and feminism in the arts. She is the recipient of many awards. Among them, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, the Susan B. Anthony Award from the National Organization for Women (NOW) (1994), and a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship. Azara's work is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the MoMA, Yale Museum, Cincinnati Art Museum, and Milwaukee Art Museum, among others. www.nancyazara.com/
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| Ruth
Barrett
Ruth is an ordained Dianic high priestess, a seasoned ritualist, teacher, and author, dedicated to the propagation of Women’s Mysteries and female sovereign spaces. Her critically acclaimed Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries: Intuitive Ritual Creation (Llewellyn, 2007,and soon to be re-published by Tidal Time Publishing) was 2008 finalist for best Wicca/Pagan book by The Coalition of Visionary Resources. Ruth and has contributed to several anthologies, including Stepping Into Ourselves:An Anthology of Writings of Priestesses, (Goddess Ink, 2013) and Foremothers Of The Women’s Spirituality Movement:Elders and Visionaries (Taneo Press, 2015). Most recently, Ruth was contributor and editor of the 48-voice anthology, Female Erasure – What You Need To Know About Gender Politics’ War on Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights (Tidal Time Publishing, 2016). She has taught ritual arts at festivals and conferences across the United States, in Canada, and Great Britain since 1980. In 1997 she was honored as recipient of the L.A.C.E. award for outstanding contributions in the area of Spirituality from the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles. She is co-founder of Temple of Diana, Inc., and national Dianic temple with groves in California, Michigan, Sicily, and Wales, and co-facilitator for The Spiral Door Women’s Mystery School of Magick and Ritual Arts. Ruth Barrett is also a musician/priestess, internationally known mountain dulcimer recording artist and singer. Ruth’s 20-year musical partnership with Cyntia Smith produced five critically acclaimed albums in the pagan, women’s, and folk music worlds. Ruth’s 1990 first solo release, Parthenogenesis, won an INDIE award from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors in the category of Women’s Music. Since then, Ruth has produced several more recordings of seasonal and magical music and chant. She has been a featured performer at numerous festivals nationally including the Michigan Women’s Music Festival, the National Women’s Music Festival, Pantheacon, Pagan Spirit Gathering, and The Glastonbury Goddess Festival. Ruth was the director of the Candlelight Concert at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival every August since 1991 until the festival closed in 2015. At the National Women’s Music Festival, Ruth was presented with the 2011 Jane Schliessman Award for outstanding contributions to women’s music from Women in the Arts. In 2015 Ruth was honored to give a special concert performance as part of the Parliament of the Worlds Religions in Salt Lake City, Utah. https://www.templeofdiana.org/ |
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| Cristina
Biaggi, PhD
Cristina Biaggi, Ph.D.is an artist, author, lecturer and activist who has achieved significant recognition for her varied contributions to the field of Goddess-centered art and scholarly studies. She is a respected and recognized speaker on the subjects of the Great Goddess, Neolithic and Paleolithic prehistory, and the origin and impact of patriarchy on contemporary life. Her works are a reflection and an extension of her lifelong interest in art, archaeology, women studies, literature and classics, acquired at Vassar, Harvard and New York University. Dr. Biaggi has written Habitations of the Great Goddess and edited and contributed to In the Footsteps of the Goddess: Personal Stories and The Rule of Mars: Readings on the Origins, History, and Impact of Patriarchy. She has recently completed her fourth book (for which she is seeking a publisher.), an autobiography, Art and Activism, a reflection on her life and activism, and the art it inspired. Dr. Biaggi has spoken on a variety of subjects at the Smithsonian Institute, the Glastonbury (England) Conference, the Beijing Women’s Conference, and, in New York City, at The 92nd Street Y, The American Museum of Natural History, and The Society of Women Geographers. Her artwork has focused on creating bronze portraits of people and their animal companions, and abstract collage. When she isn't preparing new pieces for an exhibition, Dr. Biaggi is writing and lecturing. She continues her studies in Kung Fu (Black Sash) and teaches Tae Kwon Do as a 5th Degree Black Belt. http://cristinabiaggi.com/about-the-author/the-goddess-and-the-goddess-mound/
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| Jean
Shinoda Bolen, M.D.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, activist, "Episco-Pagan" and author of thirteen books influential books in close to one-hundred foreign editions. She is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, and a past board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women. She was in the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film Women—For America, For the World, the Canadian Film Board's Goddess Remembered and FEMME: Women Healing the World. The Millionth Circle Initiative was inspired by her book and led to her going to the UN to become a persevering advocate for a UN 5th World Conference on Women (5WCW India 2022 is on the horizon). Her books began with the Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self (1979), followed by Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes in Women’s Lives (1984), and Gods in Everyman;. Archetypes that Shape Men’s Lives (1989) Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over 50 (2001). Other books include Crossing to Avalon: A Woman’s Midlife Quest for the Sacred Feminine, 1994, Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness as a Soul Journey. The Millionth Circle: How to Change Ourselves and The World (1999), brought her to the UN, while Urgent Message From Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World, (2005) and Moving Toward the Millionth Circle: Energizing the Global Women’s Movement, (2013) resulted from being there. She wrote the first draft of a memoir-based book in 2017. She became 80 years old on June 29, 2016, which seemed a major looming number until it passed. www.jeanshinodabolen.com
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| Z
Budapest
Zsuzsanna Emese Budapest was born in 1940 , in Budapest. Hungary. Her mother, Masika Szilagyi, was a medium, a practicing witch, and a professional sculptress whose work reflected themes of Goddess and nature spirituality. In 1956, when the Hungarian Revolution broke out Z left Hungary as a political refugee. She emigrated to the United States in 1959, became a student at the University of Chicago, married, and gave birth to two sons. In Chicago she studied with Second City, an improvisational theatrical school, the only one in the country at that time. When she entered her Saturn cycle at the age of thirty, she became involved with the women's liberation movement in Los Angeles and became an activist herself, staffing the Women's Center there for many years. There she recognized a need for a spiritual dimension so far lacking in the feminist movement and founded the Susan B. Anthony Coven Number l, the first feminist witches' coven, which became the role model for thousands of other spiritual groups being born and spreading across the nation. She wrote The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries (1989) which was originally published in 1975 as The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows. This book served as the first hands-on book to lead women into their own spiritual/Goddess heritage. Her other books include: Grandmother of Time (1978) Grandmother Moon (1981)Goddess in the office(1986) Goddess in the bedroom (1989), Summoning the Fates(1992) Celestial Wisdom (1995) these book comprise a good amount of the lost Goddess culture from around the globe. Z was arrested in 1975 for reading Tarot cards to an undercover policewoman. She lost the trial but won the issue, and the law against psychics was struck down nine years later. She is the founder and director of the Women's Spirituality Forum, a nonprofit organization featuring lectures, retreats and other events, Z has led rituals, lectured, taught classes, given workshops, written articles tirelessly, and published in hundreds of women's newspapers across the country. She has powerfully influenced many of the future teachers and writers about the Goddess. https://www.zbudapest.com/
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| Jane
Hardwicke Collings
Jane Hardwicke Collings is an iundependent midwife, teacher, writer and menstrual educator. She has been attending homebirths since 1984. She is herself a homebirth mother of four, a grandmother and a teacher of the Women’s Mysteries. She gives workshops internationally on mother and daughter preparation for menstruation, the spiritual practice of menstruation, and the sacred dimensions of pregnancy, birth and menopause. Jane founded and runs The School of Shamanic Womancraft (formerly The School of Shamanic Midwifery), an international Women’s Mysteries School. She is the author of Thirteen Moons: how to chart your menstrual cycle, Spinning Wheels (a guide to the cycles), Becoming a Woman (for girls approaching menstruation) and Ten Moons: The Inner Journey of Pregnancy. Jane has trained in Shamanic practices with James M Harvey, aka Blackbear and has had many wonderful teachers including Midwife Maggie Lecky Thompson, Birthkeeper Jeannine Parvati Baker and Teacher and Author Cedar Barstow. Jane lives in the country of NSW with her husband, some of her children and many animal friends. As Jane says, she’s working for the Goddess. www.janehardwickecollings.com
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| Max
Dashu
Max Dashu has been a land witch all her life, a feminist, history sibyl and artist as well. In 1970 Dashu founded the Suppressed Histories Archives to research and document women's history and cultural heritages across the full spectrum of the world's peoples. She has built a collection of 15,000 slides and 30,000 digital images, and has created 150 slideshows on female cultural heritages across human history. Dashu's work bridges the gap between academia and grassroots education. Her legendary slideshows bring to light female realities usually hidden from view, from the ancient female figurines to women leaders, priestesses, clan mothers, philosophers, warriors and rebels, female shamans, witches, and witch hunts, all with attention to patterns of conquest and domination. For 45 years, she has presented her slide talks at universities, community centers, feminist bookstores, schools, libraries, prisons, galleries, festivals and conferences around North America and in Mexico, Germany, Ireland, Britain, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Australia, Belgium, and Austria. She has keynoted at conferences (Feminism in London, 2015; Women's Voices for a Change at Skidmore, 2013; Association for Women and Mythology, 2010; Pagan Studies at Claremont University, 2008, and Domestic Violence Conference at Rutgers, 2005, among others). She has presented at the Women’s Centers of Northwestern University, Stanford, Princeton, University of California at Berkeley and many others, as well as at Trinity College – Dublin, the Museo de San Miguel de Allende, the Frauenmuseum (Wiesbaden), and the State Library of Queensland, Australia. Her book Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700-1000 (Veleda Press, 2016) has been acclaimed as a valuable resource for reconstructing ancestral European heritages. It is part of the 15-volume series Secret History of the Witches. Vol II will be Pythias, Melissae and Pharmakides, on women’s spiritual cultures in Greece and the Aegean (forthcoming in 2018). Deasophy Coloring Book of Goddesses .:. Spirits .:. Ancestors (Veleda, 2017) features 50 icons from around the world, with Max’s drawings and commentary. She also teaches via webcasts and online courses. Her daily posts on the Suppressed Histories Facebook page are followed by 164,000 people and her work and remains in the top 1% on Academia.edu. |
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| Miriam
Robbins Dexter Ph.D
Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a Ph.D. in ancient Indo-European languages, archaeology, and comparative mythology, from UCLA. Her first book, Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990), in which she translated texts from thirteen languages, was used for courses she taught at UCLA for a decade and a half. She completed and supplemented the final book of Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses. (1999) Her 2010 book, co-authored with Victor Mair, Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia, won the 2012 Association for the Study of Women and Mythology Sarasvati award for best nonfiction book on women and mythology. In 2013, Miriam and Victor published a new monograph, "Sacred Display: New Findings" in the University of Pennsylvania online series, Sino-Platonic Papers. With Vicki Noble, Miriam edited the anthology, Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries (2015) It won the Susan Koppelman award for best edited feminist anthology, 2016. Miriam is the author of over 30 scholarly articles and 11 encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures. She has edited and co-edited sixteen scholarly volumes. For thirteen years, she taught courses in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages in the department of Classics at USC. She has guest-lectured at the New Bulgarian University (Sophia, Bulgaria) and "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University (Ia?i, Moldavia, Romania). https://www.archaeomythology.org/about-the-institute-of-archaeomythology/governance-of-the-institute-of-archaeomythology/miriam-robbins-dexter/
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| Heide
Göttner-Abendroth
Dr. Heide Göttner-Abendrothl, born in Thuringia, Germany, in 1941, is a mother and a grandmother. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy and theory of science at the University of Munich where she taught philosophy for ten years (1973-1983). She has published extensively on matriarchal society and culture, and through her lifelong research on matriarchal societies has become a founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies. She lectured in Europe and abroad, and her main work Matriarchal Societies. Studies on Indigenous Cultures across the Globe has been published in German, English, Italian, and Spanish. She has been visiting professor at the University of Montreal in Canada, and at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. In 1986, she founded the International Academy HAGIA for Matriarchal Studies and Matriarchal Spirituality in Germany, and since then has been its director. In 2003, she organized and guided the "1st World Congress on Matriarchal Studies" in Luxembourg; in 2005, the "2nd World Congress on Matriarchal Studies" in San Marcos, Texas; and in 2011, a major conference on Matriarchal Studies and Politics in Switzerland. In 2005, she was elected by the international initiative "1000 Peace Women Across the Globe" as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2012, she received the Saga-award for her scholarship from The Association for the Study of Women & Mythology in San Francisco. Internationale Akademie HAGIA: www.hagia.de
About references made in the Interview:
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| Starr
Goode, MA
Starr Goode, MA, teaches literature at Santa Monica College. She is the producer and moderator for the cable TV series, The Goddess in Art. The programs are now housed in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum and are currently available on YouTube. She is also a recipient of The Henri Coulette Memorial Poetry Award from The Academy of American Poets. She has been profiled for her work as a cultural commentator in the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. Her latest essay, "Adventures She Has Brought My Way" appears in the anthology Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries. Her latest book, Sheela na gig: the Dark Goddess of Sacred Power, won the 2018 Sarasvati Award for Best Non-Fiction Book presented by the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. |
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| Judy
Grahn, PhD
Judy Grahn, Ph.D is internationally known as a poet, writer, and cultural theorist. Her writings helped fuel, globally, second wave feminist, gay, and lesbian activism, as well as women’s and queer spirituality. She has received the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature and Community Service; two American Book Awards, two Lambda literature awards, a Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Triangle Publishers, who also established the Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award in 1996. In 2014 she was Lifetime Achievement Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. Grahn has published fourteen books with several more in process; publications include two book-length poems, several poetry collections, The Judy Grahn Reader from Aunt Lute Press, an ecotopian novel, and five non-fiction books. Among them are Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds; Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World; and her memoir, A Simple Revolution: the Making of an Activist Poet. A collection of nine-part poems, Hanging On Our Own Bones, is her latest, from Red Hen Press. http://judygrahn.org/
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| Paula
Gunn Allen
Paula Gunn Allen (née Paula Marie Francis in Albuquerque, New Mexico) was an American poet, novelist, scholar, and critic whose work combines the influences of feminism and her Native American heritage. Of mixed European, Lebanese-American, and Laguna Pueblo background, Paula centered her work as a critic and biographer on foregrounding and setting in context Native American writing. She was one of the preeminent literary critics and historians of Native American literature. Her essays described many, if not most, Native American pre-colonial peoples as matrilineal, if not matriarchal; she also wrote biography of the lives of Native women, including Pocahontas. Her poetry and scholarly work pulled from Native American mythology, especially stories of Spider Grandmother and Thought Woman. She held an MFA as well as a PhD; after teaching at San Francisco State University, Paula was appointed professor at UC Berkeley and then at UCLA. Paula Gunn Allen published six books of poetry and one collection, Life is a Fatal Disease: Collected Poems 1962-1995; five books of essays including The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions and Grandmothers of the Light: A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook; two biographies including Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur and Diplomat; a novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows; and four edited collections and anthologies. Paula’s grounding in the Laguna and Plains Indian mythology of Grandmother Spider as creatrix, and of "Thought Woman" (as she thinks, we are) is a significant contribution to Women’s Spirituality. That a female creatrix "thinks reality into being" places consciousness in the intellectual sphere of the cosmos and is in line with all those who practice divination, astrology, and energy healing, aura reading, and other interactions with spirits, ancestors, visions and what Paula called "sendings." She also drew from the Algonquian concept of the Manito, a life circle relating to every dimension of paranormal experiences of consciousness, consisting of both time and space in continual interaction. Paula’s work is of inestimable value with regard to understanding of world-views of Native peoples from the North American continent. The fact that her work drew from living traditions, and emphasized powerful female presence, makes her a crucial contributor to the field of Women’s Spirituality. Paula was married three times to men and also lived with two women-lovers, of whom I was one. We moved in together in spring of 1981 and for five years carried on daily intense exhilarating conversations, about colonialism, matrilineality, the paranormal, science, and much else. I wrote about our sexual visions, both seeing a goddess-figure, in my 1984 book, Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds, and again in 1985 I compared lines of her poetry to those of other lesbian poets, in The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition. -- by Judy Grahn, PhD Wikipedia page https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paula-Gunn-Allen
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| Donna
Henes
Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, contemporary ceremonialist spiritual teacher, award-winning author, popular speaker and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies to millions of people in more than100 cities since 1972. She has published five books, a CD, an acclaimed Ezine and writes for The Huffington Post, Beliefnet and UPIReligion and Spirituality Forum. A noted ritual expert, she serves as a ritual consultant for the television and film industry. She has authored several books, including The Queen of My Self: Stepping Into Sovereignty in Midlife (2005) and Bless This House: Creating Sacred Space Where You Live, Work & Travel (2018). Mama Donna, as she is affectionately called, maintains a ceremonial center, spirit shop, ritual practice and consultancy in Exotic Brooklyn, NY where she offers intuitive tarot readings, spiritual counseling and works with individuals, groups, institutions, municipalities and corporations to create meaningful ceremonies for every imaginable occasion. Unofficial Commissioner of Public Spirit of NYC. - The New Yorker "For 35 years Ms. Henes has been putting
city folk in touch with Mother Earth."- New York Times
https://www.facebook.com/mamadonnahenes/
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| Kathy
Jones
Kathy Jones is a Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of Goddess, Founder of Glastonbury Goddess Conference, Founder, Creative Director and Temple Weaver of Glastonbury Goddess Temple, Goddess Hall and Goddess House and Motherworld Initiator. She has lived on the Isle of Avalon in Glastonbury for 40+ years and loves this sacred land of Goddess. She is a ceremonialist, teacher, writer, wounded healer, initiator, Temple Melissa and sacred dramatist. She is the author of several acclaimed Goddess books, including Soul & Shadow - Birthing Motherworld;Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess; The Ancient British Goddess and In the Nature of Avalon.. Kathy offers, with Priestess Luna Silver, a 3 year training to become a Priestess or Priest of Avalon, and other Goddess and Soul Healing trainings. www.kathyjones.co.uk
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| Mara
Lynn Keller, PhD
Mara Lynn Keller (PhD Philosophy, Yale University) is Professor of Philosophy, Religion and Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she served as director of the Women’s Spirituality graduate program for ten years, producing dozens of special events on women’s sacred arts and scholarship. Her research and writing center on the ancient Goddess cultures of Crete and Greece; and on Women’s Visionary Culture, with a focus on women’s visionary poetry, fiction, and film. Her plenary speech for the Parliament of World’s Religion in 2015 voiced the theme: "The Freedom of Religion to Worship Goddess is a Social Justice Issue!" Previously she taught Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University California at Riverside, where she co-founded Women’s Studies; and at San Francisco State University, where also she co-founded and coordinated the Global Peace Studies program. She co-led educational tours for the International Women’s Studies Institute. Her articles include "Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone," "Ritual Path of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries," "Ancient Crete of the Earth Mother Goddess," "Goddesses around the World," "Women’s Spirituality and Higher Education," and "Archaeomythology as Academic Field and Methodology;" they can be found at http://www.ciis.edu/faculty-and-staff-directory/mara-lynn-keller. http://www.ciis.edu/faculty-and-staff-directory/mara-lynn-keller.
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| Glenys
Livingstone, PhD
Glenys Livingstone has been on a Goddess path since 1979; this has included diverse spiritualities and a scientific perspective, inner work as well as academic scholarship. Glenys is the author of PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion, which is an outcome of her doctoral work in Social Ecology at the Western Sydney University. Her practice of PaGaian Cosmology fuses seasonal ceremony with contemporary Western science, feminism and a poetic relationship with place. For over three decades she has facilitated Seasonal ceremony, taught classes, and mentored apprentices. Glenys is a contributor to Goddesses in World Culture edited by Patricia Monaghan (2011), and to Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement edited by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Vicki Noble (2015), and several other publications. In 2017 Glenys co-edited Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom with Trista Hendren and Pat Daly. She is author of the children’s book My Name is Medusa. In 2014, Glenys co-facilitated the Mago Goddess Pilgrimage to Korea with Dr. Helen Hwang. Glenys has produced PaGaian Cosmology Meditations CDs, and teaches a year-long on-line course "Celebrating Cosmogenesis in the Wheel of the Year" for both hemispheres. She is currently writing a new book and is a regular contributor to Return to Mago E-magazine. http://pagaian.org
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| Audre
Lorde
Audre Lorde was a poet, biomythographer, and essayist, She was born in New York City of Caribbean immigrants. Initially she did factory work, then became a librarian and ultimately a professor. Her writing has powerfully influenced a generation of activists and scholars alike. Audre wrote about civil rights and feminist issues and defined living at the conjunctions of being female, lesbian, and Black, as well as being an activist, mother, and health system critic. She considered herself a "warrior poet." She is an original model of intersectionality and wrote much about difference, especially about one’s differences as an opportunity for developing strength. She was active with women in the United States and also South Africa and Germany, where she helped organize Afro-Germans, a term she created. In addition to essays, she published several poetry books including, after a trip to Africa in the mid-1970s, The Black Unicorn, followed by Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, which she called a "biomythography." Both of these books use Yoruba traditional stories. Audre Lorde published at least nine poetry collections, a biographical novel, and collections of essays, including Sister Outsider; The Cancer Journals; A Burst of Light: Essays; Uses of he Erotic: the Erotic as Power; and Sister Love: The Letters of Aude Lorde and Pat Parker, 1975-1989. Films made about her include Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years 1984-1992 and A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde. Here are some of her well-known quoted lines: "The Erotic is Power." "Your silence will not protect you." "The master’s tools can never dismantle the master’s house." "Each time you love, love with all your heart." "Our problem is not in our differences but in our refusal to acknowledge them." "I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy." "I am other in every group I am in." "…for the embattled / there is no place / that cannot be home/ nor is." "Without community…there is no liberation…." "When I dare to be powerful, use my strength in service to my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." I was lucky enough to meet Audre Lorde because I lived in a Bay Area lesbian activist household with someone who had gone to high school with her in NYC. I attended a poetry reading she did in SF, probably in late 1970, and then invited her to Gay Women’s liberation meetings that we were holding. She visited the West Coast and stopped by to cheer on our women’s press. She took my first book back to New York, and a couple of times when I was on tour in the East, invited me to stay with her and her longtime lover Frances Clayton and their two children on Staten Island. On West Coast visits, Audre would stay with me and my lover Wendy Cadden and also stayed over in San Pablo when I lived with Paula Gunn Allen in 1985. We were frequently at conferences together as well as staying at each other’s houses, dancing together, and attending each other’s readings. She was a deeply loved colleague and I continue to miss her. -- by Judy Grahn, PhD Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audre_Lorde
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| Vajra
Ma
Vajra Ma is the leading exponent of women’s womb awakening in Feminist Spirituality. Inspired by her work with women’s subtle bodyknowing since the mid-1980’s, she originated the devotional moving meditation The Tantric Dance of Feminine Power®. This is the womb-sourced moving meditation practice of her mystery school and Priestess lineage Woman Mysteries of the Ancient Future Sisterhood®. Vajra Ma is author of From a Hidden Stream: The Natural Spiritual Authority of Woman (2010) and co-author of The Women’s Collective (2018). Her essays are published in numerous anthologies including Foremothers of the Women's Spirituality Movement (2015), Voices of the Sacred Feminine (2014) and Daughters of the Goddess (2000) and Female Erasure; What You Need to Know About Gender Politics' War On Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights e (2016). Vajra Ma’s (movement) work has been the subject of scholarly papers presented at national conferences on religion. Rev Vajra Ma is an ordained Dianic Priestess of Women’s Mysteries since 1992, with ministerial credentials through The Temple of Diana, Inc. She is an accomplished actress, appearing in numerous plays, film, TV movies. She has an extensive background in dance, vocal studies as well as a BA and two years graduate work in theatre arts. She is co-founder and president of the Shakti Moon Foundation which educates and advocates right relationship with the Source of Life in its many forms, specifically the Earth, and Woman as the holder of community and future generations. IT does so through publications, lectures and production of public presentations. The projects of The Shakti Moon Foundation
include:
www.GreatGoddess.org
Specific videos on The Tantric Dance of
Feminine Power
Technical note: In Vajra Ma's interview video footage of hostess Ruth Barrett does not pick up until 2 minutes in to video. |
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| Mary
Mackey
Mary Mackey, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus of English at California State University Sacramento and the bestselling author of fourteen novels, including The Earthsong Series—four novels which describe how the peaceful Goddess-worshiping people of Prehistoric Europe fought off patriarchal nomad invaders (The Village of Bones, The Year The Horses Came, The Horses at the Gate, and The Fires of Spring). Mary’s novels have been praised by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Pat Conroy, Thomas Moore, Marija Gimbutas, Maxine Hong Kingston, Marge Piercy, and Theodore Roszak for their historical accuracy, inventiveness, literary grace, vividness, and storytelling magic. They have made The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists, been translated into twelve foreign languages and sold over a million and a half copies. Mary has also written seven collections of poetry including Travelers With No Ticket Home and Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and finalist for the Northern California Book Awards. Mary’s literary papers are archived in the Sophia Smith Special Collections Library, Smith College, Northampton MA. At https://marymackey.com/ you can get
the latest news about Mary’s books and public appearances, sample her work,
sign up for her newsletter, and get writing advice. You can also find her
on Facebook and follow her on Twitter @MMackeyAuthor.
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| Brooke
Medicine Eagle
Brooke Medicine Eagle is a legendary Earthkeeper, wisdom teacher, healer, visionary, singer/songwriter, shamanic practitioner, catalyst for wholeness, and ceremonial leader. She is the best selling author of the Native American literary classic, Buffalo Woman Comes Singing and of The Last Ghost Dance. Over the last 40 years, her many music recordings, teachings, writings, conference appearances, and wilderness spiritual retreats have touched the hearts and minds of people all over the world. Her current focus is on health and empowerment for women. Decades ago, she brought forward ancient, native traditional ways of moontime and women’s mysteries; and continues to feel strongly about the importance of moontime practice for women’s health, spirit, leadership and service to the world. Her work with White Buffalo Woman gives foundation to the power and magic of the Feminine. Brooke is also a sacred ecologist with a focused interest in living a harmonious, sustaining lifestyle, as well as dedication to the preservation of our sacred waters. Blossoming Into Harmony, the primary ongoing resonance of her work, promotes a heart-centered, ecologically sound, healing way for the flowering of Mother Earth and All Our Relations. She is now traveling and teaching internationally, enjoying the experience of being a world citizen. www.medicineeagle.com/
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| Musawa
Musawa came to the Goddess naturally, as she says, roaming free in the woods and lake country in rural Michigan in the summers of her youth, where she discovered that magic was afoot. She was raised in a non-religious semi-matriarchal household as the middle of 5 children with a (mostly) single mom. Women’s land community therefore became her adult family of choice. Academically, she earned a BA from Harvard in 1966 and an MA in Human Development from the University of Chicago in 1969. But her activist education grew from the liberation movements of the1960’s. Musawa was active in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi , taught in a school for African revolutionaries in exile in Tanzania , engaged in Anti-Vietnam War protests in the streets of Chicago (that was around the ‘68 Democratic Convention) and attended the first national Chicago Women’s Liberation Union conference in1969. In the ‘70’s, Musawa came out as a lesbian. She helped start and taught Women’s Studies at Portland Community College and co-founded one of the first women’s land communities in Oregon (1973), now known as We’Moon Land. Musawa’s work in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s was dedicated to creating and producing the We’Moon publications, which she co-founded with her partner, Nada, in France in 1981. Now, after 36 years, she has ‘retired’ from carrying the business of We’Moon, she is devoting more time to the non-profit organizations that grew from it: The We’Moon datebook, We’Moon Land Trust, We’Moon Homestead which manages the land and We’Mooniversity which sponsors events on the land. www.wemoon.ws
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| Mayumi
Oda
Mayumi Oda is an artist, author and social activist. "Through my creative process, I have been creating myself. Goddesses are a projection of myself and who I want to be. Each picture represents a stage of my development, the influences I was feeling, and events that were going on around me." Mayumi’s life as an artist began as a small child as Mayumi's mother sought to bring a joyful creativity early in her daughter's world. That nurturing instilled a desire to make her mother happy and so, becoming an artist was born of mutual love and an innate knowing rather than a conscious decision. Drawing for twelve hours each day for three years in school formed a discipline while honing Mayumi's eyes, hands, and mind to draw anything that she wanted. As a Zen Buddhist, Mayumi’s father also imbued the importance of concentration and being present – things she embraced even more as an adult practicing Zazen meditation. Mayumi graduated in 1966 from the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and from 1966 to 1968 studied at the Pratt Graphic Center in New York. From 1969 to the present, Mayumi has presented more than 50 solo shows internationally and has numerous private and permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the U.S. Library of Congress and more. She has always painted authentically, from the heart, never for commercial appeal. her art has been inspired by female beauty. Painting Goddesses contributed to an inward self-awareness while presenting an outward, positive expression of feminism. By the age of 50, Mayumi had reached unparalleled artistic success for a Japanese woman of her time. She has become known as the "Matisse of Japan". Her memoir Sarasvati’s Gift (soon-bo-be publishd as of 2018) is a wildly colorful artist’s retrospective, dharma teaching, ode to the divine feminine, and manifesto to a peaceful future. From her memoir: "I was four years old when atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The horror of seeing blackened, ash-covered bodies and the shadow images of people imprinted on concrete affected me deeply. I could hear the screams of survivors crying for help. These paintings are the work of my heart—a way for me to share my love and remind the world of the importance of life." In 1992, Mayumi co-founded Inochi.us (Life Force) under which she established the organization Plutonium Free Future chartered to educate Japan's nuclear policy makers. She spoke to the United Nations World Court of Justice in the Hague and received recognition for her commitment to a nuclear-free world over the past 25 years at the 2016 Bioneers Conference in Berkeley, CA. By 2000, she founded Ginger Hill farm on
the Big Island of Hawai'I where she educates about organic and sustainable
farming.
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| Arisika
Razak, RN MPH
Arisika Razak, RN, MPH is Professor Emerita, and the former Chair of the Women’s Spirituality Program, at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She has also served as CIIS Director of Diversity. She is a former President of the American Academy of Religion -Western Region, and is a regular contributor to academic texts and journals. Arisika is also a dancer who has performed nationally and internationally. She has led embodied healing circles for women for over 30 years, and currently teaches at East Bay Meditation Center in inner city Oakland. Her film credits include "Fire Eyes," the
first full length feature film by an African woman on female genital cutting;
"Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth"; and the documentary "Who Lives, Who Dies"
on American health inequities.
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| Spider
Redgold
Spider Redgold is a Caucasian woman of spirit descended through her motherlines to the Travellers. Through her fatherlines she can trace her blood to the Viking invasions of Yorkshire around 900CE. Born on Choctaw land, in USA, she was taken to Yorkshire when her parents returned there and then brought to Australia in her teens. Her life experiences have delivered to her a global perspective on ceremonial work. She has been given spirit teachings in Cherokee, Choctaw, Luo (Kenya) and 3 Aboriginal Nations.She created and wrote The Shemoon Cycle of Days – A global Witches Almanac; published from 1987 -1993 and now in the collection at National Library of Australia. She had a regular talkback segment, The GoodWitch of Oz, on Radio JJJ in the early 1990’s, appeared on Steve Vizard’s ‘In Melbourne Tonight" and in 1993 debated exorcism with the Archbishop of Melbourne on ABC Radio National. She now spends her days busy about the tree of life drumming, making art and ceremony and doing academic research in art and anthropology on images of goddesses, warrior women and monsters. http://www.spiderredgold.name/rg_art
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| Miriam
Robbins Dexter Ph.D
Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a Ph.D. in ancient Indo-European languages, archaeology, and comparative mythology, from UCLA. Her first book, Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990), in which she translated texts from thirteen languages, was used for courses she taught at UCLA for a decade and a half. She completed and supplemented the final book of Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses. (1999) Her 2010 book, co-authored with Victor Mair, Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia, won the 2012 Association for the Study of Women and Mythology Sarasvati award for best nonfiction book on women and mythology. In 2013, Miriam and Victor published a new monograph, "Sacred Display: New Findings" in the University of Pennsylvania online series, Sino-Platonic Papers. With Vicki Noble, Miriam edited the anthology, Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries (2015) It won the Susan Koppelman award for best edited feminist anthology, 2016. Miriam is the author of over 30 scholarly articles and 11 encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures. She has edited and co-edited sixteen scholarly volumes. For thirteen years, she taught courses in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages in the department of Classics at USC. She has guest-lectured at the New Bulgarian University (Sophia, Bulgaria) and "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University (Ia?i, Moldavia, Romania). https://www.archaeomythology.org/about-the-institute-of-archaeomythology/governance-of-the-institute-of-archaeomythology/miriam-robbins-dexter/
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| Charlene
Spretnak
Charlene Spretnak is a professor emerita in philosophy and religion and the author of nine books on cultural history, social criticism (including feminism and Green politics), and religion and spirituality. She authored one of the first books of the Women’s Spirituality movement, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece (1978), and is editor of the anthology The Politics of Women’s Spirituality (1982). She also wrote about Goddess spirituality in States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age (1991) and about preChristian elements in the spiritual presence of the Virgin Mary in traditional Catholicism in Missing Mary (2004). In 2012 she received the Demeter Award as "one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time" from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. Several of her books proposed a "map of the terrain" of emergent social-change movements and an exploration of the issues involved, seen through an eco-social frame of reference. Since the mid-1980s, her books have examined the multiple crises of modernity and engaged with the corrective efforts that are arising. Her book Green Politics was a major catalyst for the formation of the U.S. Green Party movement, of which she is a cofounder. She is also cofounder of two other movements: the women's spirituality movement and ecofeminism, both branches of the feminist movement. Her book The Resurgence of the Real was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1997. In 2006 Charlene Spretnak was named by the British government's Environment Department as one of the "100 Eco-Heroes of All Time." In 2012 she received the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement as "one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time" from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. |
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| Luisah
Teish
Yeye Luisah Teish, is a teacher, dancer, storyteller, and a respected elder in te Ifa/Orisha tradition of the African diaspora. Yeye Teish is one of the most well known Yoruba priestesses worldwide, who is celebrated internationally in Goddess circles as a writer and ritual-maker. She is the author of several books on Africana spirituality and culture, most notably Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals a women’s spirituality classic, which has been translated into German, French and Spanish. And On Holy Ground: Commitment and Devotion to Sacred Land (co-authored with Leilani Bireley). Other writing credits include contributions to thirty-five anthologies and articles, in Essence, Ms., Shaman’s Drum, and the Yoga Journal. Teish designs and directs ritual theater performances. She has performed in venues such as St. John the Divine Cathedral, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York) Te Praises for the World and Concert for All Beings (composer, Jennifer Berezan) San Francisco. And at venues in Auckland, New Zealand; Caracas, Venezuela, and London, England. She is the Founding Mother of Ile Orunmila Oshun ( the House of Destiny and Love) a community of multi-racial, multi-cultural artists, ritualists and activists who are committed to addressing eco-spiritual issues such as the sacredness of water and honoring the indigenous cultures of the world. Teish conducts workshops and delivers lectures and keynote speeches on a variety of subjects including Africana Cultural History, Women's Spiritual Education, and the confluence of Spirituality, Science, and Culture. She has lectured at Harvard University (Boston), UCLA (Los Angeles, Ca.), Reed College (Portland, Oregon), Tulane University (New Orleans, LA.), and Spelman College (Atlanta Ga.) She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 40 years and travels to Africa, the Caribbean and Central and South America and other countries to sit in conversation and prayer with Indigenous Mothers. She is quite literally a legendary woman of great character and exceeding positive impact for this generation and all time. http://www.yeyeluisahteish.com/
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| Kay
Turner, PhD
Kay Turner's interest in women's spirituality began at a Presbyterian church summer camp in Michigan when she realized she would rather worship trees. In 1974 she went on a year long journey through Mexico and Guatemala to trace the her-story of Ix Chel, the great moon goddess of the Mayan people. In 1975 she founded Sowing Circle Press collective for the publication of Lady-Unique-Inclination-of-the-Night, a journal of the Goddess, published between 1976 and 1983. Lady Unique published a range of artists, writers, poets, and scholars—including Nancy Azara, Olga Broumas, Chris Downing, Mary Beth Edelson, Barbara Hammer, Donna Henes, Gloria Orenstein, Arlene Raven, Betye Saar, and others interested in exploring goddesses and women in all cultures. Turner received her PhD in Folklore at the University of Texas and published her dissertation as Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women's Home Altars (1999). She is currently working on a book and performance project What a Witch!: Rethinking the Witch Figure in Folklore and Art. Turner lives in Brooklyn, NY. https://www.afsnet.org/page/KayTurner
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| Genevieve
Vaughan
Genevieve Vaughan (b. Texas 1939) is an independent researcher who lives between Italy and the USA. She has studied and attempted to practice the gift economy for many decades. She created the international feminist activist Foundation for a Compassionate Society (1987-2005) based in Austin, Texas, which offered many woman-led projects for social change according to women's values. Among these was Stonehaven Ranch, a retreat center in operation from 1985 - 2005 where many women's spirituality events were held. In 1992, she founded the ongoing Temple of Goddess Spirituality dedicated to Sekhmet, near the nuclear test site in the Nevada desert. In 2001,she initiated a network: International Feminists for a Gift Economy. Her books, many of which are translated into several languages, are For-Giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange (1997) homo donans (2006), The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning (2015) and three anthologies Il Dono/the Gift: a Feminist Analysis (2004), Women and the Gift Economy: a Radically Different Worldview is Possible (2007) and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy (2018). She has also written several children's books. Many of her articles and other material including videos of conferences and a film on her life Giving for Giving, are available free at www.gift-economy.com. http://www.genevievevaughan.org/about-genevieve-vaughan/
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| Susun
Weed
Susun S. Weed is the voice of the Wise Woman tradition, where healing is nourishing. She is known internationally as an extraordinary teacher with a joyous spirit, a powerful presence, and an encyclopedic knowledge of herbs and health. For more than fifty years she has opened hearts to the magic and medicine of the green nations, restoring herbs as women's common medicine, and empowering women to care for themselves. Susun is founder of the Wise Woman Center, editor-in-chief of Ash Tree Publishing, a high priestess of Dianic Wicca, a member of the Sisterhood of the Shields, a Peace Elder, and happy herder of her dairy goats. Her five books: Healing Wise; New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way; Breast Cancer? Breast Health! the Wise Woman Way; Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year; and Down There: Sexual and Reproductive Health the Wise Woman Way are used by more than a million women throughout the world. She writes a regular herbal column for SageWoman Magazine and hosts the Wise Woman website and forum at www.susunweed.com created by her amazing daughter Justine. Susun continues to train apprentices, initiate green witches, work with her correspondence course students, and write books. http://www.susunweed.com/
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