"I am the form of the immensity. From me the world arises as Nature and as Person." ---Devi Upanishad, India
"I am that which is, which will be, and which has been." ---Inscription at Temple of Neit, Sais, Egypt
What does Goddess mean? Few of us grew up learning about this oldest spiritual heritage. Its profound teachings have been passed over in silence, and even attacked as heresy. They are often unwritten, and of a different order than the rigid certainties of theology. They are Deasophy, Goddess Wisdom. Max Dashu presents a comprehensive global vision of Goddess as Source, Creatrix and Lifegiver, and as divine Law, as Maat (Egypt), Tao (China), Wyrd (Britain), Aluna (Colombia). We gaze upon ancient Spider Grandmother and the mighty Fates who spin out the lives of all beings, and delve into the Mother Essence that pervades all beings. We survey sacred signs and cosmic maps -- the Tree of Life, the Four Winds, spirals and labyrinths -- encoded in ancient and indigenous art, including Australian bark-paintings, Mexican murals, Kongo gourds, Lithuanian distaffs and the stone tablets of Adena, Ohio.
Bio: Thirty-eight years ago Max Dashu founded the Suppressed Histories Archives to research women from an international perspective. She has built a collection of some 15,000 slides and created a series of 100 presentations on global women's history, archaeomythology, shamanic arts and Goddess veneration. Titles include Goddess Cosmologies; Woman Shaman; Mother-Right and Gender Justice; and Female Rebels and Mavericks. (See www.suppressedhistories.net.) Max is a founding mother of the Women's Spirituality resurgence, and an artist whose paintings re-envision bold and spirited women (www.maxdashu.net).
Tantra is an ancient and complex spiritual system that today conjures up images of enhanced sexual experience in the western mind. In this evening presentation you will learn about the roots of modern western interpretations of Tantra and the various Tantrick paths available to spiritual seekers, including the non-dualistic traditions where sex is a ritual component. Together we will explore the veneration of Devi (Goddess) at the core of some disciplines and learn techniques for discovering Her essence within the body. The evening will be participatory and will conclude with a Yoni Puja, a worship celebration honoring the Divine Female, Her human counterparts, and the feminine within all of us.
Bio: Chandra grew up in New York City and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in psychology and philosophy.She holds an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio School of Management and a doctorate in Asian & Comparative Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Additionally, she holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Wisdom University (formerly the University of Creation Spirituality). She is fluent in French and a dedicated Sanskritist.
Chandra Alexandre is Founder & Executive Director of SHARANYA (www.sharanya.org), a 501(c)(3) devi mandir (goddess temple) located in San Francisco that serves as a sanctuary for all spiritual seekers.
Women’s spirituality is a powerful force for peacemaking. The values and practices of this spirituality can contribute to our own healing, the transformation of anger and conflict and the creation of peaceful, inclusive communities. Through ritual, creative exercises, meditation, movement and group reflection, we will explore one of the central values of women’s spirituality, our empowerment as women, as well as consider what gets in the way of claiming our power-within. We will then reflect on and celebrate the many ways that we, and other women, are making peace throughout the world.
Bio: Cindy Preston-Pile is co-author and co-coordinator of Traveling with the Turtle: Women's Spirituality and Peacemaking Program. She has offered numerous nonviolence workshops with Pace e Bene and worked with Pax Christi, the Nevada Desert Experience, and the Catholic Worker movement. She co-founded Magdalene House for homeless women and children and helped organize low-income seniors. Cindy is a creative and published liturgist who holds a master of divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology.
Miraculous birth stories form the foundation of many major religions, and the Greek tradition is no exception. In this provocative presentation, Marguerite Rigoglioso draws on her pioneering doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies to make the case that special colleges of priestesses dedicated to virgin birth were at the core not only of Greek religion, but of Greek civilization itself. Whether the idea of miraculous birth is something we may embrace today or not, Marguerite provides plentiful evidence that many Greeks, including some in the highest intellectual echelons, believed that such a phenomenon was real and was the primary means by which Greek foundational heroes, holy people, and leaders were brought to incarnation.
Marguerite posits a trajectory for divine birth priestesshoods with the advent of patriarchy, suggesting that virgin holy women, or parthénoi, were believed to transition from conceiving children completely parthenogenetically, in the manner of the original Virgin Mother goddesses, to conceiving primarily sons through "spirit sex" with the Olympian gods. She presents evidence for the possibility that the oracles of Dodona and Delphi, in particular, were originally locations of divine birth priestesshoods, and she traces the phenomenon through its expression into historical times in the miraculous birth stories of Pythagoras, Plato, and Alexander the Great.
In positioning holy virgins as they once may have been seen in the ancient world –– as purposeful agents in the miraculous birth process rather than accidental bystanders or merely the rape victims of gods –– Marguerite's work suggests that women may have been considered far more central to the founding of Greek culture than ever imagined. It also has tremendous implications for our understanding of the Virgin Mary and women's sacred mysteries beyond the Graeco-Roman world.
Bio: Marguerite Rigoglioso holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy and religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and an A.B. in psychology from Vassar College, where she graduated with high honors. An instructor at Dominican University of California, she specializes in female deities and women’s religious roles in the ancient Mediterranean world. Her scholarly papers have appeared in a variety of academic journals and anthologies, including the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, where in 2005 she received honorable mention for the journal’s New Scholar Award for her pioneering paper on the Graeco-Roman cult center to Persephone at Lake Pergusa in Sicily.
The embodiment of the Feminine is a focus on the deepening of one’s connection to Feminine psychological consciousness through the body, thoughts, feelings, and sense of self providing a deeper sense of self understanding and integration. It is a process of experiencing, envisioning, imagining, and redefining the Feminine and how it is manifest within the cultural and personal conscious, as well as reclaiming our connection to the Divine Feminine as an essential part of our spiritual nature. Valerie Sher, Ph.D., will give a presentation on the importance and value of the embodiment of the Feminine and its impact to overall well-being as found in her study on Women’s Embodiment of the Feminine: An Exploration through Movement. This study was based on an 8-week movement group exploration through the lenses of the Maiden, Mother, Crone, Lover, Warrior, Virgin, Dark Goddess, and Madonna archetypes.
Through this process, one can gain a better understanding of the positive and negative aspects of key Feminine archetypes within them; develop a healthier relationship with repressed aspects of the body; begin to heal the splits of the Masculine/Feminine polarity within themselves, the culture, and the collective unconscious. The results of such a process include greater integration and wholeness, connection to the transpersonal, personal well-being, and raising the collective conscious through cultural/sociopolitical balance.
Exercises will allow participants to experience for themselves, the nature of embodied Feminine consciousness through the exploration of cultural, personal, and psychospiritual myths.
Bio: Valerie Sher, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Center for the Divine Feminine at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) and a Mind/Body Wellness Coach in private practice in Redwood City, California. She received her clinical psychology degree from ITP where she is an Adjunct Faculty at ITP. Dr. Sher also teaches at John F. Kennedy University and Kaiser Permanente, a private healthcare organization. Her work is focused on healthy embodiment, wholeness, creativity, enlivening and empowering the human spirit, and a fuller expression of the self.
Walking the labyrinth is being embraced as an important form of meditation for many people, especially those of us carrying so many responsibilities that we are unable to quiet our minds. The labyrinth also serves as a portal to the wisdom of the Divine Within. Walking the Medieval Eleven Circuit labyrinth invites us into our deep intuitive world where we can find guidance, discernment and wisdom. Join us for this evening lecture and discussion. We will end with a labyrinth walk.
Bio: Lauren Artress is a Canon of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and author of three books on the labyrinth. Her first book was instrumental in launching what is now known as The Labyrinth Movement. Her work includes speaking on the contemporary spiritual issues we are confronted with in our daily lives. Laurance S. Rockefeller recognized her visionary work and he funded her creation of Quest: Grace Cathedral Center for Spiritual Wholeness in 1987. It was out of the spiritual programming she did through Quest that she taught herself large group spiritual work. This work eventually led her to the labyrinth.
Valentine McKay-Riddell is a contemporary shaman with extensive experience in various forms of Native American, Hawaiian, and Celtic shamanism. This workshop will begin with a brief report on her work with adolescent girls at a “last chance” school in the San Francisco Bay Area, include an experiential component for those who are curious about shamanic practices, and conclude with a question and answer session on further applications of practical shamanism.
Bio: Valentine McKay-Riddell is the founder and Executive Director of Orenda Healing International, a 501c.3. non profit organization devoted to promoting individual and community health and well being. Born a “Navy brat” in Orlando, Florida, she has lived in Canada, Mexico, and much of the United States, and has traveled in England, Ireland, and the British West Indies. She studied creative writing, education and child psychology at the University of Texas in Austin, painting and sculpture at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, and Arts and Consciousness at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California. She holds a PhD in Transpersonal Psychology and a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, and a BFA in painting and sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Drum Amazonz take a stand, utilizing mastery of the drumz saving our planet with poignant percussive dexterity…riveting drumbeats… soulful incantation…ancient stories… and heart opening miracles of love. Rooted in a core belief that we are the miracles we are searching for, Afia Walking Tree brings us together.
Bio: Afia Walking Tree, M.Ed, PhD is a world-class percussionist, cultural ambassador, spiritual activist, empowerment facilitator, leadership development advocate and trainer. Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, she is currently based in Oakland, California. A self-taught musician, Walking Tree has studied and performed with many masters within West African, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian traditions. Walking Tree serves as visionary and director for her brainchild, Spirit Drumz, an international liberation movement for women and youth of all cultures that uses drums of the African Diaspora to activate empowerment and healing.
My recently published book, The Serpent and the Cross; Healing the Split through Active Imagination (2006,) contains 62 archetypal paintings and related commentaries dealing with the early loss of my mother and the compensatory responses to that loss. This is the documentation of a thirty year journey of intense inner work on the individuation process. Bio: Katherine M. Sanford, M.A., M.F.C. is a Jungian analyst in Del Mar, California. She studied at the Jung Institute in the mid-1050s in Zurich, Switzerland and trained at the Los Angeles Jung Institute where she received her certification in 1978. Her real education came through the life experience of sixty seven years of marriage, children, grandchildren and a great-grandchild. The rendering of this produced several papers- most recently The Muddled Milk of Motherhood (Psychological Perspectives, 2006), and her book The Serpent and the Cross; Healing the Split through Active Imagination (2006) which documents her archetypal journey through the individuation process. Katie is a founding member of the San Diego Friends of Jung, a member of the Los Angeles and San Diego Societies of Jungian Analysts, and over the years has lectured nationally and internationally on issues concerning the feminine individuation process.
The Sumerian high priestess Enheduanna (2300 B.C.E.) lived in the gipar, the sacred women’s quarters of the Ur temple to the moon god Nanna, for the almost forty years of her tenure, presiding over the ritual calendar and tending the moon goddess Ningal in her temple within the Ur compound. Enheduanna was a princess, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, a priestess in the most prestigious religious office in the land, and a poet. Work attributed to her includes three long poems written to her personal deity Inanna and forty-two hymns to each of the prominent temples in Sumer. Betty De Shong Meador, who has translated all of Enheduanna’s work, will present the life story and the writing of this remarkable woman, the first author of record.
Bio: Betty De Shong Meador, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst, member and past president of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. Her translations of the poetry of Enheduanna appear in her book Inanna - Lady of Largest Heart, and the forthcoming On Your Radiant Site - the Sumerian Temple Hymns of Enheduanna.
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