Tag: Dionysus

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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Allison Stieger

Allison’s presentation is called “The Archetype of Dionysus and the Heart in Balance: Following Ariadne’s Red Thread”

Ariadne’s path through her own story provides a wonderful archetypal resonance of the loving and growing heart. Her myth begins in the court of her father, where she is treated as an object to be owned and traded for wealth and power. Her partnership with Theseus allows her to escape, and he captures the heart of her youth, then leaves her behind on the beach in Naxos, allowing her to meet and marry Dionysus.

This paper will examine the labyrinthine turns of her journey, and the heart guidance that allowed her to move from a place of stasis governed by the toxic masculine into a place of balance and wholeness in her marriage with Dionysus. The archetype of Dionysus holds a beautiful balance between masculine and feminine energies, and between love and ecstasy. Ariadne’s journey provides wonderful guidance for modern women on how to achieve such a balance in our own lives, whether partnered or not.

About Allison

Allison Stieger, M.A., is a writer, speaker, coach, and workshop leader, focusing on the movement of archetypal energies in modern life and working with women on how to understand and change their narratives. She lives in Seattle with her husband of 20 years and two teenage sons.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Dr. Katherine Bailes

Dr. Bailes’s presentation is called “Death, She Sings a Heart Red”

The title is a quote from Toni Morrison’s book, Beloved.  In the story, one of the characters, Paul D., describes his heart as a “rusted shut tobacco tin lodged in the place where his heart should be.”  This description resonated with me after reading the book in 1998.  I first read the book in Dr. Dennis Slattery’s Epic Imagination course and revisited it after the recent death of my father. 

In this presentation, I will explore the concept of storing, hiding and/or preserving one’s metaphorical heart, as expressed by Morrison’s characters in Beloved, Hesiod’s Pandora, Greek myths of Zagreus Dionysus, and my own experiences.  After summarizing the examples from literature, I will explore the ritual performed by Baby Suggs in Beloved, and the background for such trauma-inspired rituals found in the worship of Dionysus.  I will offer up sample rituals and/or a simple guide for creating a personal ritual for those who want to open the “box” where their own heart might be stored.  

About Dr. Bailes

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 obtained a master’s degree and PhD from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California. Her dissertation entitled “The Themis Principle: Mystery and Irrationality in the U.S. Legal System” focuses on the mythological aspects of the law as expressed in ancient cultures through goddesses such as Athena, Themis, Inanna, and Maat. She serves 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.

To hear Dr. Bailes’s talk and many others, join us at the Mythologium!

The Mythologium is a conference for mythologists and friends of myth. This year’s Mythologium will be held July 28-30 in-person and online in the Pacific time zone.

Learn more and register
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Kayden Baker-McInnis

Kayden’s talk is called “Pan, Animal Encounters and Mythic Eco-Consciousness”

Myths are stories that can function as ecosystems that further soul and ground consciousness. The climate crisis, in part, is a mythless engagement with the natural world that erodes eco-consciousness. Our unending climate crisis is fueled by the insistence that humans are separate from nature and the more-than-human world.

The inclusion of animal mythologies to the already potent god / goddess mythologies cultivates a mythic eco-consciousness connected to land and place. Mythically engaging animals unearths our vitality and grounds us in the body as mythic images bring us in touch with life force, instinct, and ecology. Participating in the sensual, natural world enables synchronicity and archetypal encounters with the more-than-human. In Animal Presences, James Hillman reminds us we have forgotten that animals were once gods. We need the animal gaze.

Animal mythologies and encounters will be explored through a mythic eco-consciousness lens that sheds light on the impact of the shadowed Pan and Dionysus archetypes, both gods of nature, that play out in our treatment of the environment and influences our capacity for sustaining a mythic eco-consciousness. It is a mythic eco-consciousness that can move us to what Thomas Berry calls dreaming a new story for the earth.

About Kayden

Kayden Baker-McInnis is a PhD candidate in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology working on an ecological dissertation focusing on the Greek figure Dionysus in relation to nature, body, and gender. She teaches language arts to school-aged students and offers adult myth classes. Her workshops in Salt Lake City include a humanities-based writing process engaging comparative mythology, cultural studies, and depth psychology.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Sophie Strand

Sophie’s talk is called “Myth and Mycelium”

I have been thinking of myths as the “fruiting body mushrooms” of underground mycelial mythic systems. I have come to the conclusion that you can only understand a myth in its particular ecosystem. Just like mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of underground mycelial systems, so are myths the particular above-ground mushrooms of a specific ecology. We can think of mythologems and mythic figures as being like the giant (perhaps 7,000-year-old) honey fungus in Oregon. It stretches for miles underground and fruits up as mushrooms that superficially look like individuals.

The cattle cults that spread across the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age are like the honey fungus. Orpheus and the Orphic hymns are now treated more as a title than a specific mythic figure. Lyric prophets stepped into the role of Orpheus. Perhaps my favorite example is Dionysus. Dionysus “fruits” up across the Mediterranean, in different cities, often looking different, offering a variety of fermented beverages as suited to the different ecologies. But the real Dionysus is the mycorrhizal system of vegetal gods underground, weaving a net that is ready to pop up and proliferate wherever nature-based, ecstatic wisdom is needed.

About Sophie

Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published by Inner Traditions in Fall 2022 and is available for pre-order. Her eco-feminist, historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023. Subscribe for her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com, and follow her work on Instagram (@cosmogyny) and at www.sophiestrand.com.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2020 welcomes Kayden Baker-McInnis

Kayden’s talk is called, “Tracking the Dionysus Myth in The Goldfinch Film and Modern Life”

At the heart of the film, The Goldfinch, aspects of the Dionysus myth emerge guiding us back home from loss and death to renewal. Donna Tartt’s substantial novel won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, now adapted for film. This coming of age story follows the lives of Theo and Pippa, teenagers who survive a bombing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and who continue to live in the deafening aftermath. Through a mythological and depth psychological lens, the underlying mythic structure of this film is explored as a living, vital encounter with Dionysus, what Rafael Lopez-Pedraza calls a culturally repressed and misunderstood archetype. Within Donna Tartt’s carefully curated characters and the director’s choices for image and silence, an archetypal resonance emerges. Central to the storyline is a seventeenth century painting functioning as the archetypal image of irrepressible life, the essence of Dionysus. Theo’s dream to face his mother echoes Dionysus’s journey to the underworld to immortalize his mother. When asked where she found inspiration for this book, Tartt indicates that it is The Odyssey and the Greek tragedians that continue to inspire her. This presentation makes the case that cultivating a mythic consciousness continues to be a modern imperative. 

About Kayden

Kayden Baker-McInnis is a PhD candidate in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology working on an ecological dissertation focusing on the Greek figure Dionysus in relation to nature, body, and gender. She teaches language arts to school-aged students and offers adult myth classes. Her workshops include a humanities-based writing process engaging comparative mythology, cultural studies, and depth psychology in Salt Lake City.

2020 Mythologium program