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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Nicole K. Miller

Dr. Miller’s talk is called “The Wisdom of Scheherazade: The Power of Narrative to Heal the Heart and Mind”

As her childhood friend, Sultan Shahryār, grows more and more unstable and deadly, Scheherazade knows that she alone has the knowledge of how to heal him. As a storyteller, she courageously embarks on a “fool’s journey” to employ her considerable narrative skills as she attempts to restore sanity and peace to his heart and mind. Scheherazade aims for the heart of his core stories, and each night in their marital bed, instead of lecturing him directly on the harmful and delusional ramifications of his current state of mind, she engages him mythically, slowly unraveling and addressing his pain through masterful storytelling, provoking a profound healing. This presentation will look at how Scheherazade the Storyteller from “One Thousand and One Nights” demonstrates a mythic understanding of the power of stories to heal. This faith in mythic narrative as healing device has implications in our modern world as well, as it has become more vividly evident how the potent use of narratives can be used to confuse, misdirect, and incite to violence, but can also be used to bring clarity of mind, healing of heart, empathy, and personal awareness.

About Dr. Miller

For the past 20 years, Dr. Miller has taught K-8 classes in the humanities, the performing arts, and social emotional learning, and classical and world mythology and general humanities at the university level. She has also presented papers and workshops on mythology, depth psychology, narrative thinking, mindfulness, and the arts at conferences nationally and internationally. Dr. Miller is the founder of The Unstoried Self, offering a systems-thinking, narrative-based process for personal and organizational transformational change aimed at breaking out of dysfunctional patterning in order to cultivate more meaningful and authentic interpersonal relationships and dynamics in groups, schools, and other organizations. Using a combination of influences, from mythological motifs, archetypal psychology, mindfulness, non-dual philosophy, systems-thinking, and storytelling, a Ph.D. in Mythology and Depth Psychology, and a Masters in Education, Dr. Miller strives to combine her love of teaching with her passion for the power of narratives.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Rosalie Nell Bouck

Rosalie’s presentation is called “‘Held Embrujadas’: Reading Mesoamerican Myths of Femininity as a Radical Response to Contemporary Colonialism”

This paper presents a portion of my doctoral research on the cycles of waste land and borderland spaces in Mesoamerican myth. I will share an example of how an unusual reading of key Mesoamerican myths helps us move through collective shadow spaces (waste lands) into periods of reorientation (borderlands) to the whole in order to regenerate culturally and environmentally.

This exploration focuses on the critical role of feminine figures in Mesoamerican myth, which are often direly misunderstood by the Western mind. These strange, beautiful/hideous, death-adorned maternal figures shapeshift throughout myths and over time but they always serve a similar purpose: To guide us through our necessary death/life cycles and into regeneration of our collective psyche and landscape. Cultivating a deep understanding of the waste land/borderlands motif and the “dark” feminine figures at the heart of the Mesoamerican worldview is more than just an exciting mythological adventure, it is part of a radical approach to “decolonizing” the American mind.

As an educator and community organizer I use these narratives to combat the pervasive ideologies of racism, patriarchy, and American exceptionalism. I will share how I read and teach Mesoamerican femininity as a piece of a greater conversation of “Corn Consciousness,” a social philosophy I have adapted using and honoring poorly understood Indigenous epistemologies. I use these teachings in community and organizations as a guide to consciously stepping out of a hyper-masculinized mentality and into a feral feminine alignment to explore, wade through, and emerge reoriented to our collective spaces.

This presentation is part of a special panel on Confronting Colonialism and White Supremacy in Myth, sponsored by the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association.

About Rosalie

Rosalie Nell Bouck has degrees in Mythological Studies, Philosophy, and Political Science and over a decade of experience as a community organizer, nonprofit project developer, and educator among under-served populations. She has spent time living in Mexico and in Guatemala among the k’iche Maya. Her current work is as a narrative consultant for decolonizing projects and draws from her academic education, lifelong activism, and unique cultural perspectives.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Sea Gabriel

Sea’s talk is called “Who’s Your Daddy? The Norse, the Nazis, and the World Stage”

In this presentation, we look at the re-mything of the Norse pantheon, as we delve into the history of Norse Mythology as a tool of supremacist propaganda, and discuss opportunities for healing.

This presentation is part of a special panel on Confronting Colonialism and White Supremacy in Myth, sponsored by the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association. Thank you, PGIAA!

About Sea

Sea Gabriel is a storyteller via audio, video, text, and interactive media. She is currently finishing her Pacifica dissertation on the potential to combat oppression through storytelling, specifically concentrating on Norse Mythology and its relationship to white supremacy and gender. Her relevant background is in shamanism, graphic design, and advertising.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Darlene Maggie Dowdy

Maggie’s talk is called “Demeter’s Way: The Journey through Grief Towards Healing in Homer’s Hymn to Demeter“

Homer’s Hymn to Demeter offers a glimpse into the often circuitous pathways traversed through the fog of grief. Separated from her beloved daughter, Demeter aimlessly wanders the Earth cloaked in a shadow of despair. The shock of separation and loss causes her to disengage from everyday life, she is physically present, but psychologically absent. And this absence causes all of Earth to wither.

I saw my own story mirrored in Demeter’s archetype of a grief-stricken mother’s search for meaning and some re-connection with life. For even in isolated sorrow, Demeter is drawn to life in Eleusis. Her demeanor embodies the psychological trauma caused by separation and loss.

Studies in neuroscience demonstrate the diminished neuroactivity of the human brain when afflicted with grief and depression. This diminished neural activity mirrors the individual’s psychic sense of isolation from the current of life, even as others attempt to offer comfort. Still, as Demeter demonstrates in her encounter with Iambe’s novel dance, those numbed synapses in our brains can reignite in the stimulation of the unexpected, in the challenge of learning, or seeing something anew.

Demeter’s ability to negotiate and eventually engage with the nature of what is, and what even a goddess cannot change, offers us a model for acceptance and resilience towards healing.

About Maggie

Darlene “Maggie” Dowdy received her Ph.D. in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her dissertation, Harbingers of Change: Images and Archetypes of Imminent Transformation, explores the co-creative relationship between psyche, soma, and an ever-changing environment. A variation of her dissertation, “Birds as Nature’s Harbingers,” was presented at the 2018 conference for the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. Maggie co-presented on a panel concerning gender identity at the first Mythologium conference in 2019 with her essay “Metamorphoses of Gender and Identity in Ancient and Modern Myth.”
As vice-president of an independently owned industrial rubber company, Maggie has recently engaged in an exploration of alternatives for industry to contribute to social equity and environmental sustainability, while still making a profit. She combines her passion for myth and literature with a practical application towards furthering these pursuits.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Jody Gentian Bower

Jody’s talk is called “The Beautiful Fruits of Barrenness”

Most of the synonyms for barren begin with “un”—indicating not what it is, but what it is not: unfertile, unproductive, unfruitful. Or they are adjectives like empty, arid, sterile, desolate, indicating a lack of value. But what are we missing when we define barrenness only in terms of what it is not? Ann Zwinger tells us that to see the beauty of the tundra, the seemingly lifeless areas of the cold high places in the world, “takes close looking, a scaling down of anticipations . . . a getting down on hands and knees—or even stomach—to examine.” In her presentation, Jody Gentian Bower will take a close look at barrenness, arguing that not only can it be a thing of beauty in itself, but may enable different and innovative ways of being creative and nurturing.

About Jody

Jody Gentian Bower, PhD, is a cultural mythologist and the author of “Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine Story” and “The Princess Powers Up: Watching the Sleeping Beauties Become Warrior Goddesses.” She has lectured widely over the past decade about hero and heroine stories, and blogs about myths and archetypes in popular culture at jodybower.com. She is currently at work on a book about barrenness as well as a work of historical fiction based on a family legend.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Jamie Figueroa and Dr. Raïna Manuel-Paris to the Myth Makers panel

This year’s Myth Makers panel features the novelist Jamie Figueroa and the poet Dr. Raïna Manuel-Paris. Jamie and Raïna will share selections from their work, as well as some reflections on myth, healing, and their creative process. We’ll make sure to leave time for audience discussion, so bring your questions for Jamie and Raïna!

About Jamie

Jamie Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and long-time resident of northern New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, Agni and Emergence Magazine among other journals. Jamie received her MFA in Creative Writing from The Institute of American Indian Arts where she is now an Assistant Professor. Recipient of the Truman Capote award, and the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts award, she was also chosen as a Bread Loaf, Rona Jaffe Scholar, and is a VONA alum. Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult) is her debut novel.

About Raïna

Raïna Manuel-Paris, Ph.D., born in Paris, France, of French and Caribbean descent, lived in England and then moved to the United States in her early twenties. Her love of transformational story telling has taken her from an MFA in Film from Columbia University to a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. She is a published writer of non-fiction, poetry and several scholarly articles, as well as a documentary filmmaker. She recently completed her first novel, a mythical fairy tale, Arabella & the Wise Women. Her understanding of what gives meaning to daily life has led her to her work with dreams, and to include meditation practice in her classrooms. She is a lecturer and scholar who speaks on several subjects, including “Awakening the Magician Within,” “What Women Want,” “The Goddess,” “Love: Primal Agent of Change,” “Love and Sacred Medicine,” “War, Trauma and Spiritual Transformation,” and “The Major Arcanas of the Tarot as a Sacred Life Path.”  

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Rev. Pamela Dawn Hancock

Pamela’s talk is called “Mythic Mapping: A New Way to Use Myth in the Individuation Journey”

Trauma affects over 50% of the population. From sexual abuse to domestic violence, a terrifying number of people will go through some sort of turning point that changes their lives forever. Being a rape survivor and having suffered debilitating postpartum depression, I know this to be true. C. G. Jung himself experienced his own life-altering experience when he split from Freud; after which he went down his own unique individuation path. In my presentation I will share my research on how a traumatic turning-point can open the gateway to a conscious individuation path. My depth psychology dissertation, entitled Mythic Mapping, combines game-design, storytelling, active imagination, and dreamwork into a life-long Self-discovery adventure. Utilizing stories of eight Goddesses of the world as mythic examples of individuation after trauma, Mythic Mapping can be used by individuals who may not have access to therapy. With this revolutionary system that includes a workbook, map, spinner, dice and more, self-discovery is at one’s fingertips. My offering will share how I developed this system, by way of my own active imagination work and paying attention to the synchronicities that have deeply connected me with Myth and Self!

About Pamela

I was raised in the Southern California Mountains (the land of the Serrano People) where I currently reside with my husband and son. I am the Assistant Professor of Spiritual Practice & Care for the Soul at Starr King School for the Ministry, and the Priestess of the Sacred Outpost in Crestline, CA. As a child I found the Divine at the lake near my parents’ cabin. The big pine trees surrounding it were my sacred space—my church. It was there that I began to understand that we are all part of the Divine Web of All Creation. At the age of twelve I sought comprehension of that Web by starting my study of the World’s Religions. While obtaining my B.A. from the University of Redlands, Johnston Center, I delved into Feminist Spirituality, Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism. I moved in and out of different spiritual practices after College, weaving together the energies of all of the Archetypal-Forces with whom I entwine. In 2011 in ritual with the group I led, I heard the call: Nourish others’ understanding of their connection to the Sacred in all things! So off I went to Starr King School for the Ministry (a Unitarian Universalist Seminary) where I received my Master of Divinity, and the Chaplaincy Institute for Ordination as an Interfaith Minister. Having battled a long-time kidney illness, I almost died of an infection after completing Seminary, but found solace in finding my true path of Alchemy and Depth Psychology during this difficult ordeal. After a full recovery I began the adventure to obtain my PhD. in Depth Psychology with a specialization in Jungian & Archetypal Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute, where I am now dedicating my dissertation work towards designing a program for Trauma Survivors to embark on an individuation quest.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Dr. Andrea Slominski, aka Dr. A.

Dr. A.’s talk is called “The Steward Asks the Question”

Mythology offers intrinsic cyclic opportunities to reconnect, reassess, and recreate our personal, cultural, and global narratives. To accept this eternal invitation to re-creation and rebirth we must begin with the acknowledgement of our place in the natural world. If life as we know it is to survive, humanity must revision itself as one-of-the-many, as a steward, and not overlord of life on Earth. In 2020, increasing extreme weather events and the pandemic gave us a taste of where life out-of-balance is leading. It has also given us a chance to look within and realign our priorities. Mythology was born of human experience and our need for meaning-making amidst the eternal cycles of birth-life-death and rebirth. Myth can lead us into accord with universal principles of life. Myth can lead to the healing of the wasteland, if we ask the right questions. The first question must be, what is our place in the natural world?

About Dr. A.

Dr. A. is a cultural mythologist, women’s mentor and coach, speaker, and writer. Andrea received her Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is the creator of The Midlife Re-Boot! Method, a program developed to guide women to recreate themselves and rediscover their true north at midlife. Her work engages with the current re-emergence of the archetypal feminine, at a time when nature and the earth, themselves symbols, metaphors, and embodiments of the sacred feminine, are under existential threat from climate change. Dr. A. has been a featured workshop facilitator and speaker at women’s events and the College of the Canyons Women’s Empowerment Conference and the Popular Culture, American Academy of Religions, Women in Mythology, and the Mythologium conferences. Dr. A’s mission is to guide, consult, and mentor women to fulfill their potential and become their most authentic selves in service to themselves and others.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Brandon Williamscraig, PhD

Brandon’s presentation is called “The Myth of Peace and Conflict Done Well”

Drawing a direct line from a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies to his diversity and restorative justice work in Oakland, CA, Brandon Williamscraig shares the story of accepting the invitation to introduce his research and internationally funded Peace Practices curriculum as a research coordinator and instructor in the Somatic Psychology department at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Direct experience and research make clear that mythic and archetypal literacy are both central to whole system healing and essential to the specific kind of somatic, fully embodied process of legitimate suffering, grief, and recovery that is our survival challenge as a species. To illustrate this, Brandon will introduce participants to a process that moves from the archetypal to the culturally specific by way of mythological study. Discerning core tensions in specific cultural complexes, as well as specific conflicts that result in trauma and a need for healing, the group will receive examples of working through/by way of conflict in order to create responses and practice somatic exercises tuned to address injustice and restore balance. That process, repeated over time, results in healing and power sharing that works through difference. This is the practice of Conflict Done Well, without which bodies politic, and especially their most marginalized members, are profoundly vulnerable to authoritarianism and other deep wounds to the world soul, or Anima Mundi.

This presentation is part of a special panel on Confronting Colonialism and White Supremacy in Myth, sponsored by the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association. Thank you, PGIAA!

About Brandon

Brandon Williamscraig, Ph.D. was co-founder and CEO of the San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit Association Building Community, or ABC. He served as a post-doctoral fellow, fieldwork supervisor, and instructor for all levels of graduate students at Pacifica Graduate Institute in the Depth Psychology Somatics Specialization. He holds an international 5th degree black belt in aikido and has founded learning communities and served as chief instructor. He has extensive experience with private and public institutions, offers leadership, diversity, and facilitation training, and has worked in the study of peace and conflict since 1998 while providing curriculum development, conflict education, and mediation services. His teaching and research focus on the embodied (somatic) psychology of belief, the narrative/mythological construction of culture, and The Myth of Peace.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes the sponsored panel, Myth and Restoring Ecological Consciousness

Kayden Baker-McInnis will present on Rewilding the Cultural Imagination to an Ecological Consciousness.

Craig Chalquist, PhD will present on Storied Nature: When Myths Heal the Split Between Us and Everything Else.

Jennifer Degnan Smith will present on The Shape of Water: Restoring Ecological Consciousness.

This panel is sponsored by iRewild. Thank you, iRewild!

iRewild is a global institute for thought leaders who are working to bring the human soul back into conscious relationship with nature.

2021 Mythologium program