Tag: Underworld

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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Marialuisa Diaz de Leon Zuloaga

Marialuisa’s presentation is called “Embodying the Mythic Wisdom of the Heart by Reimagining and Amplifying Inanna’s Descent”

“Why has your heart led you on the road from which no traveler returns?” Neti, the gatekeeper of the Sumerian Underworld, asks Queen Inanna. From a physiological perspective, the human heart is an organ central to the circulatory system. From an archetypal perspective, the human heart is an organ central to our imagination, intellect, and aesthetic sensitivity. From a mythological perspective, the heart is at the core of an initiatory journey toward wholeness, central to the individuation process.

This presentation amplifies and reimagines Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld as a contemporary embodiment of the wisdom of the heart; that is, following the heart’s calling requires courage, demands an intention, and involves a descent. The mythical motif of the ‘descent’ is a metaphor that acts as the connective tissue between the realm of the body and the realm of imagination. An experiential practice drawing from somatic movement and expressive arts practices will support participants’ own quest into their heart and journey of becoming whole.

About Marialuisa

Marialuisa Diaz de Leon Zuloaga, MA, REAT, MSME, MSMT is a Mexican-American therapist, movement specialist, mythologist, educator, researcher, and performer. Marialuisa’s professional experience in psychology, somatics, and the arts spans twenty-five years and includes work in education, private practice, and community intervention. Marialuisa is the creator of Mythic Life: Embodying Wisdom, Beauty and Courage where she brings her expertise on facilitating meaningful and transformational experiences to women from all over the globe through a forward thinking integration of myth, arts, somatic movement and archetypal psychology (mythiclife.net). She is on faculty at Tamalpa Institute and at Southwestern College and holds the office of President for the ISMETA Board of Directors.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2020 welcomes Kristina Dryža

Kristina’s talk is called, “The Archetypal Necessity for Descending into Hades”

Exploring the myth of Demeter and Persephone, Kristina will ask: How does the soul come to love Hades and that which lives in the underworld? How are we even acquainted with and initiated into this subterranean realm? Why is it necessary to be abducted from our intense identification with Demeter’s life lived on the surface to encounter Hades, and all that lies below? And how, like Persephone, can we belong to, and partner with, both the upper and underworld?

About Kristina

Kristina Dryža is recognized as one of the world’s top female futurists and is also an archetypal consultant and author. Kristina has always been fascinated by patterns and feels we are patterned beings in a patterned universe. She writes and speaks about the patterning of seasonal, tidal, lunar, and circadian rhythms and their influence on creativity, innovation, and leadership. She also explores archetypes and mythology to perceive the patterns in the collective unconscious and their expression within our psyches, society and media. You can view her TEDx talk on ‘Archetypes and Mythology. Why They Matter Even More So Today’ here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o4PYNroZBY&t=8s

2020 Mythologium program


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Mythologium 2020 welcomes Colleen Salomon

Colleen’s talk is called “The Path of Ashes: Journeying to the Underworld in ‘The Robber Bridegroom'”

The tale, “The Robber Bridegroom,” is a strange and dark story, one collected by the Brothers Grimm in the early 19th century, but with roots that go back thousands of years. Not surprisingly, this eerie account of a young woman’s solitary journey into the forest and her courageous escape after a traumatizing ordeal has not enjoyed the attention of the Grimms’ more popular stories. It is considered by many scholars to be a “Bluebeard Tale”—a warning to young women about the dangers of marriage. While I do not dispute that conclusion, I believe the story holds a great deal more: in fact, it harbors ancient knowledge of the passage into the Underworld. In this presentation, I will demonstrate that there are secrets woven into the story regarding the use of poison and trance that reveal the maid’s motivations for her journey, which link her self-empowerment with a willingness to risk her life for her clan.

About Colleen

Colleen holds a master’s degree in Mythological Studies with Emphasis in Depth Psychology and is current pursing her PhD in the same field. After studying art history and studio arts at Purdue University, including studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, Colleen continued her academic work at the University of Hamburg, Germany. During a decade of living in Europe, Colleen had the privilege of hearing many stories of the trauma of the twentieth century told by the people who had lived through the events. She witnessed the healing that emerged through the telling of the stories. In this way, she learned about the fundamental necessity of myth to the individual. Having returned to the US and earned a master’s degree in psychology, Colleen was drawn to Pacifica to study mythology with a particular emphasis on the role of myth in the healing of trauma. Her dissertation focuses on the ancient knowledge of trauma contained within the old stories still told in Germany.

2020 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2020 welcomes Dr. Dolores Aguanno

Dolores’s talk is called “Tracing the Divine Feminine in the Lands of Oz”

When characters of mythic narratives descend into the underworld, they often return transformed and bearing treasures of the dark, gifts of the Divine Feminine. This presentation will explore various aspects of the Divine Feminine and how its presence through various personifications of the Goddess archetype morphs in the musical narratives of Oz: The Wizard of Oz (1939 film version), The Wiz (1979 film) and Wicked (2003 Broadway musical, film to be released in 2021). As the characters ease on down the road or trip onto their demise, the Goddess also dances and weaves her influence throughout their journeys. Whatever path they take, all are changed. Dorothy’s journey in The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz are both quintessential examples of the mythic structure of the Hero’s Journey. Wicked, the Musical, offers the possibility of another mythic structure: the Eternal Return, a pattern of the cyclical nature of sacrifice, death, and rebirth. In it we follow Elphaba, Dorothy’s shadow persona, in her soul journey, rather than an egoic journey of the hero. She does not return to her community as the Hero with the elixir, but rather she descends back into the Underworld, the unconscious, with her new wisdom. Using audio and video clips, photos, and graphic images in this presentation, we will see how these personified archetypal images of the Divine Feminine act as transformers bringing conscious awareness to what was previously unconscious in the psyche of both the characters and their audience. 

About Dolores

Dolores Aguanno, PhD. is a cultural mythologist, theatre educator, actor, spiritual counselor, student of bioenergetics and yoga, and the mother of two recently married daughters! Dr. Aguanno holds a Ph.D from Pacifica Graduate Institute (2010) in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology where she wrote her dissertation on Musical Theatre and the Mythic Imagination. She is the founder and artistic director of dee-Lightful Productions, a musical theatre education program for kids ages 7-17, in Culver City, California, now celebrating its 20th anniversary. She has produced and directed over 80 productions, with hundreds of children, many of whom have gone on to careers in the performing arts, theatre and film tech, and performing arts education.  She is also an actor and has directed and taught adult actors, having had her training and start as an acting teacher at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York. She has been a licensed spiritual practitioner with the Agape International Spiritual Center in LA, under the mentorship of Rev. Michael Beckwith since 1995, where she has taught numerous workshops on spirituality and the arts. Most recently, she became a Certified Master Trainer of the Energy Codes with the Morter Institute for Bioenergetics, under the tutelage of Dr. Sue Morter, bridging science, spirit and human possibility. Always an avid student and adventurer, her life has been one long mythic journey so far, traveling many different roads. She plans to take the next few decades of her life to continue to weave together and integrate all of the wonderful things that she’s passionate about.

2020 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
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The Mythologium welcomes Dr. Jody Bower

Jody’s presentation is called, “Hero Quests and Heroine Journeys Degendered“

Who embarks on the hero’s quest or the heroine’s journey, and why? Looking at these mythic patterns through the lens of such questions allows us to rename them in non-gendered language. In this presentation, Jody Bower recasts Joseph Campbell’s Hero as the Protector, Maureen Murdock’s Heroine as the Pathfinder, Kim Hudson’s Virgin as the Integrator, and her own Aletis as the Seeker. Bower discusses how the journeys differ in pattern and outcome, and how each allows the journeyer–whatever their gender identity–to heal what must be healed for true Selfhood.

Download Jody Bower’s Four JourneysDownload

About Jody:

Jody Gentian Bower earned her PhD in Mythological Studies with a Depth Psychology Emphasis from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2012. She is the author of Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine Story, a nonfiction book that examines the Aletis (Greek for “wandering heroine”) story that has been told by women—and a few visionary males including Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and J.R.R. Tolkien—for centuries.

You can connect with Jody through her website and LinkedIn.