Tag: Hestia

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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Dr. Darlene Maggie Dowdy

Dr. Dowdy’s presentation is called “Homily to Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth-Heart Space”

Homer tells us that the goddess Hestia has a seat in the homes of all gods and men. All feasts begin and end with a honey-wine toast to Hestia (“Hestia I,” Homeric Hymns). Her presence is as ubiquitous as the hearth fire she personifies, yet the myths of ancient Greece say little about her.

This mythography proposes a brief socio-cultural exploration of Hestia’s archetypal spirit as an essential hearth-heart center that beckons the individual to gather around the warmth of family and community.

About Dr. Dowdy

Darlene Maggie Dowdy received her PhD in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2016.  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.  She 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,” and again in 2021 with “Demeter’s Way: The journey through grief towards healing in Homer’s Hymn to Demeter.” Although Maggie’s day job as vice-president of an independently owned industrial rubber company has little to do with myth as literature, she is constantly reminded of how the archetypal energy of the gods informs our everyday experiences.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2021 welcomes Jennie Wiley

Jennie’s presentation is called, “Hosting Radical Other-ness: Hestian Consciousness and Non-Binary Gender”

Gender is breaking out of the two-sided paradigm we tend to imagine as more people identify with non-binary or gender fluid expressions, challenging the myth depth psychology uses to imagine gender and the psyche. Jung situated psyche in a binary model of gender, and post-Jungians worked to loosen the cultural biases about that bisexual gendered understanding but left it in place as a binary model. As we grapple with how best to discuss gender, counsel and support non-binary and gender-fluid persons, and even understand gender in relation to psyche itself, we need a myth, a style of consciousness, in which to ground ourselves so we can begin to welcome all possibilities toward healing the wounds of gender. Hestia, the goddess who hosts, listens, and welcomes all is ideally suited for conversations about our first and most enduring home, the body, and its primary resident, the psyche. This paper advocates for Hestian consciousness in conversations and interactions about, and with, non-binary, gender-fluid persons as well as binary gendered concepts pertaining to the therapeutic relationship and the psyche itself.

About Jennie

Jennie Wiley holds an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh and an MA from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is currently studying in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies PhD Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

2021 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2020 welcomes Dr. Andrea Slominski

Andrea’s talk is titled “Social Distancing and Our Return to Hestia: Our Collective Heroine’s Journey to the Underworld, to Heal, Liberate, and Reclaim the Archetypal Feminine”

Hestia’s realm and energies spring from the archetypal feminine. Attributes contained within the archetypal feminine include relationship, intuition, creativity, nurturance, compassion, the cycles of the natural world, nature itself, and the immanence of divinity.

The world has been driven back to Hestia when our lack of relationship and compassion are destroying the ecosystems that sustain our lives.

At home, in retreat from a deadly pandemic, we are face to face with our own mortality. We are terrified for those we love. Confronted with our frailties and personal faults, fear, panic, and uncertainty are forcing us into the mythic underworld of our worst nightmares.

Our collective Heroine’s Journey, launched from the realm of Hestia, is forcing us to evaluate our relationships with each other and the planet. We are being taken together, down, and within. Covid-19 forced us to see that we are all connected and dependent on one another for survival.

The conscious feminine must be honored and reestablished in our experience of life. We must embrace intuition, creativity, compassion, nurturance, relationship, and the ecological balance of nature if we are to survive.

About Andrea

Andrea M. Slominski, Ph.D. is a cultural mythologist, women’s midlife coach, author, teacher, and speaker. “Dr. A.” 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. She has been a featured workshop facilitator and speaker at women’s events and conferences. “Dr. A.” also teaches women’s entrepreneurship for Women’s Economic Ventures in Santa Barbara, CA. Her most recent published work includes a guest blog, “The Rise of Regency,” for Dr. Carol Pearson, and “Bearing the Unbearable,” an essay in  If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings, edited by Amye Archer and Loren Kleinman. You can find her via social media and her new website, www.drandreaslominski.com. Her podcast “ The Regent’s Room,” is launching soon.

2020 Mythologium program