Sue’s presentation is called “The Way of the Heart in Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’: An Ecofeminist Interpretation”
Han Christian Andersen’s tale “The Snow Queen” shows us the power of the heart when it has a deep connection to the natural world. It can melt the icy grip of hyper-rationality, divorced from all feeling. The character Gerda can be seen as an early ecofeminist, able to communicate with rivers, flowers, ravens. and reindeer. Hers is a heroine’s journey in the tradition of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth inspired by love and aided by spiritual powers, both pagan and Christian.
The Snow Queen herself and her palace represent the triumph of Enlightenment values: the cold, utilitarian, left hemispheric outlook that is even more prevalent today. In my presentation we will look at this fairy tale through the lens of ecofeminism, Iain McGilchrist’s hemisphere theory, and the science of heart neurology.
The Snow Queen contrasts the values of cultural creatives (originally those of the Romantics) with the materialist, exploitative mindset that is destroying our planet and our communities. We need the power of the heart to restore our relationship with the Earth and with each other. As a child I loved this story and it inspired me to choose the way of the heart. It can inspire us today.
About Sue
Sue Bayliss is a poet, writer, holistic therapist and trainer. She has always been fascinated by mythology and has written a book entitled The Hero’s Path: Changing the Story of the World by Reclaiming our True Selves, which encourages us to see our lives through the lens of the hero’s journey. She is also an activist who cares passionately about our beautiful planet and about social justice.
Raïna’s talk is called “Unlearning Not to Speak: The Interconnectedness of Women’s Rights and Earth Rights”
To understand the destiny of women is to understand the destiny of the planet. They are the same. They have both suffered from acts of violence and terrorism. When a woman becomes responsible to her Self, to her body, she becomes responsible to the world around her. The role of woman as agent of her fate, not only victim of her destiny, is linked to the destiny of her community and to the earth herself.
There is a long tradition of the Sybil going back to the Oracle of Delphi, where women act as priestesses of Hestia, of Artemis, when they speak on behalf of the Earth, speaking mostly in warnings about the lack of self-regulation and the catastrophic repercussions for our planet, about women’s social and political identity in such a context. Never more relevant in today’s climate, in the United States in particular, where women are still fighting for rights over their own bodies. They carry the fire of the goddess, because the earth is on fire. They carry the warrior instinct of Artemis, because wild things need to be protected from our insatiable predatory consumption. They have left the hearth because it has died from lack of tending and now they must carry the fire within themselves, re-animate the center of home from a feminine perspective.
About Raïna
Dr. Raïna Manuel-Paris has a multicultural background, born of a French father and a Dominican mother. She was raised in France and England until her early 20’s then moved to the United States. She holds a PhD in Mythological Studies with emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and a Masters Degree in Film from Columbia. She taught Magic and Ritual and Myth and Symbol for 17 years at the Art Institute in Santa Monica. She is also a documentary filmmaker.
She is adjunct faculty at PGI and taught at the Relativity Studio School in downtown Los Angeles. She currently teaches online courses, lectures, and gives seminars at the Philosophical Research Society, PRS.org. Her book The Mother-to-be’s Dream Book was published by Warner Books in 2002. She is also a published poet at Raven Books and various publications. Her documentary The Bridges of My Father was selected for the short film corner at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. She has written for Psychological Perspectives, the journal of Jungian thought, and for the Joseph Campbell Foundation MythBlast series. She is part of the Joseph Campbell Writers Room, and has lectured for the Joseph Campbell Roundtable, most memorably in a lecture hall that burned down two days later in the Thomas Fire.
Currently Raïna works with both individuals in a mentorship program, and with groups in a process she calls The Cradle and the Crown, assisting men and women in coming to alignment in body, mind, and soul, developing deep aliveness as well as careful listening to the whisperings of their soul’s desire. This work was birthed as a result of her own explorations with the unconscious, plant medicine, and natural horsemanship. Her latest work is a novel/fairy tale, Arabella and the Wise Women, soon to be published. Her work with students, including many veterans, always emphasizes the ways in which one can hold the tension between the inner world and the outer world in a way that engages curiosity and compassion. For more details on current seminars and lectures please see her website at www.rainamparis.com.
In this panel, Maile Kaku, Orpheus Black, and Marcene Gandolfo address the question, how does myth comment on the possibility of an ecological society where diverse voices and traditions all have space to flourish?
Maile Kaku will present on “Hawaiian Akua: Laka as Living Myth, Science and Ecological Awareness”
The Hawaiian word akua is usually translated by the English word “god.” This is misleading. It compels us to see the Hawaiian akua through Western eyes—that is, as supernatural or divine beings. However, in the Hawaiian cosmovision, the akua are not so much “beings” as “doings,” less nouns than verbs. They are the energies of the earth and sky, the active, ongoing processes of nature. Becoming aware of these akua and their (inter)actions is ecological consciousness par excellence.
Maile’s talk will focus on the akua Laka, known in modern terms as the “goddess of the forest.” Laka’s realm expresses the interconnective energies that sustain us all as living beings. Her divine powers are indeed the very stuff of science. Through the prism of this akua, we will see how the sacred, the mythological, the scientific and the ecological are all interwoven.
Indigenous ways of interbeing-with-the-world have always been deeply rooted in ecological knowledge and practice. Seeing the environment as an ecosphere of living myth and nature through non-Western eyes incites us to self-reflexively question our own ways of viewing and engaging with not only the world but mythology itself.
About Maile
Maile Kaku is on a twisting-turning never-ending learning journey and is grateful to all of the teachers who have nurtured and continue to nurture this wondrous journey. She has lived abroad most of her life, worked as a documentary translator and traveled the world. She holds a French postgraduate degree in Histoire et Sémiologie du Texte et de l'Image from the Université de Paris-Diderot and is currently a doctoral candidate in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Maile is also an ongoing learner in the Ulu Ka ‘Ōhiʻa Hula-Consciousness Seminar as well as a dancer and teacher of hula with Hālau Hula O Mānoa, the only traditional school of Hawaiian dance in France. She divides her time between Honolulu, Hawai’i, and Paris, France.
Orpheus Black will present on “The Missing Myth: The Abduction of the Afro Cultural Unconscious”
Myths and stories are soul-making and speak to cultures about origins and creation. Without mythology, a given group of people may be devoid of archetypes that model survival, familial narratives, and a cultural understanding of self and community, along with the roles that one may play in the wider global lens and the cosmos.
The culture of the African-American has been deprived of inclusion in the collective unconscious, namely with regards to the development and cultivation of culture-specific archetypes. Sustained exposure to the forces of colonization included an intentional archetypal erasure, and this played a major role in the disappearance of these narratives among the African-American population. The mythological and archetypal narratives most cultures adopt as their foundation were deleted from the indigenous African population enslaved into the Americas.
We may consider a multitude of other cultures, such as the Greeks, who have created identifiable archetypes and mythologies that give them reference to who they are as a people. The Greek archetypes are synonymous with who they believe themselves to be. These ancient narratives continue to inform a population and culture to the present day. This cultural isolation would become a type of imprisonment for groups such as African-Amerians who, through colonization, had their stories of who they were as a people ripped from their consciousness.
Joseph Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces” addresses the idea that many cultures share the same hero archetype. Juxtapose these cultures that share a mytho-poetic narrative with one devoid of the hero archetype. It is difficult for the average individual living in the U.S. to name a single hero from African-American history. Consequently, it is difficult for the communities in possession of a hero archetype representation to empathize with the community lacking this connection.
Without mythology, a group of people may be devoid of the cultural unconscious that seeks to produce archetypes. I will discuss the consequences of the African-American population deprived of its mythological inheritance. I aim to guide an exploration of a relevant contemporary phenomenon and propose practices to move forward into a cultural mythos unique to our time, our place, and our people.
About Orpheus
Orpheus Black is a Los Angeles-based public speaker, teacher, thought leader, and somatic visionary who specializes in the application of ancient wisdom in modern day settings. With a helpful practice steeped in spirituality and intimacy, Orpheus is a living bridge between healthy sex and enlightenment. Through a balanced integration of Afro-Buddhism, psycho-sensuality, and Taoist teachings inherent in his martial arts practice, his light-hearted lessons have become sought after internationally, even as counsel to the experts in his field.
Orpheus aims to propel the intellectual and sensual evolution of masculinity both by challenging men to reconnect with its roots and by inviting them to embrace manhood in its fullness, the way strong modern men wish it to be. In this role, he shares insights, offers tools, and speaks against societal norms of shame and repression. He does it all with the earnestness of a therapist, the knowledge of a guru, and the charisma of a stage performer.
Marcene Gandolfo will present on “Ecofeminism and Contemporary Native American Poetry: Linda Hogan’s Mythopoetic Vision”
Native American poet Linda Hogan asserts that mythical narratives depict “the deepest, innermost cultural stories of our human journeys toward spiritual and psychological growth.” Hogan’s poems manifest as contemporary myths, which derive images, themes, and narratives from traditional Native American mythologies and unite the quest for ecological sustainability to the desire for physical and emotional healing and balance. Inspired by ecofeminist theory, Hogan’s work recognizes the connection between the exploitation and degradation of the natural world and the subordination and oppression of women. Hence, Hogan’s poems seek to restore harmonies between the archetypal feminine and the earth.
This presentation explores ecofeminist themes in Hogan’s poetry and includes a close reading of Hogan’s poem “Hunger,” which maps the journey of European fishermen, as they hunt dolphins and sail toward a Native American settlement. Throughout the poem, Hogan creates a juxtaposition between the dolphins and the Native American women that the fishermen violate and subjugate. The poem explores the hunger that compels colonialism, misogyny, and brutality toward the natural world; however, it also explores mythic themes of forgiveness, restoration, and healing.
About Marcene
Marcene Gandolfo’s poems have been published widely in literary journals, including Poet Lore, Bellingham Review, december, and RHINO. In 2014, her debut book, Angles of Departure, won Foreword Reviews’ Silver Award for Poetry. She has taught writing and literature at several northern California colleges and universities. Marcene is currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Mythology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her dissertation explores mythological resonances in the poems of Brigit Pegeen Kelly.
