Category: Blog

Posted on

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
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes John Bonaduce, PhD

John’s talk is called “Second Sinai: How Covid-19 Fulfills Campbell’s Fourth Function of Myth”

In former times, civilization was held to principles expressed in foundational myths. As mythology relaxes its grip on our post-Copernican imaginations, a plague has intervened to exercise the same function. Indeed, as I see it, Covid-19 fulfills Joseph Campbell’s fourth function of mythology, the teaching function, the function which integrates the individual to a society.

The fourth function is the psychological force pulling us into community and even nationhood. It has been operant throughout human history: We knew, if we were Pacific Coast Saanish People, that the salmon must be propitiated with song and prayer, otherwise, they might not come back next year. Egyptians knew that the human heart would be weighed against a feather and good deeds must outnumber the bad deeds. If not, the soul would be devoured, consumed at once by a monster. This accountability held the people’s feet to the fire throughout life. In my experience, the behavior of Catholics is a calendar-driven thing of beauty, fasting here, celebrating there and, in accordance with the understanding that a certain hell awaits transgressors, the myth kept us in line, modified us, and above all, identified us. Fourth function, all.

These myths are dying. Egyptians stopped building pyramids a long time ago. Salmon still return to the Pacific Northwest but with a lot less ritualistic fanfare. Catholics, increasingly, think of hell as something more or less symbolic, a not too subtle reminder to be decent.
And now, I suggest we have arrived at the Second Sinai moment. Only this time, everyone is invited to the party. Every is called to join with the “Chosen People.” In fact, some will elect not to. The Second Sinai is about two things: The recognition of nature over the patriarchal God, and the behavior modifications expected of us in the light of our subordination to this awesome and greater power.

In the second part of my presentation, I rehearse some of the foundational statements of our ecopsychological community and come to the inescapable conclusion that Covid-19 has a psychic autonomy and has interjected itself in human history with precise intention just as Elohim’s intervention at Sinai had a precise intention. In both cases, we witness the birth of a new consciousness and of a new people.

And, if we are not too busy dancing around the golden calf, we may find we may find we’re part of it.

About John

After a successful career as a television writer in the 1970’s and ’80s with such credits as M*A*S*H and Maude, John’s interest in story became increasingly academic. He transitioned to a new field, with a master’s degree in Conducting, then earned a PhD in Mythology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. His lectures on mythobiogenesis continue to attract interested academics in several fields. More information can be found on his website: johnbonaduce.com.

2022 Mythologium program
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Amy Lawson

Amy’s talk is called “Octopus as Other: Lessons We Can Learn from an Underworld Consciousness”

The past decade has brought a resurgence of the octopus. Documentaries, books, and scientific exploration seem to have rediscovered these intelligent-yet-otherworldly beings. What can we learn from them? Turning to myth gives us diverse answers. Norse myth sees the Kraken as a fearsome monster, Native Americans of the Northwest tell stories of the octopus making mortal man her husband, and ancient Hawaiian and Tahitian myths depict Octopus as god of the underworld or as a remnant from an ancient universe. So what is behind this long-held fascination?

This presentation makes the case that Octopus is a symbol for Other and for the unconscious, an alien consciousness that we can experience but never fully understand. We will examine some of the evidence for Octopus intelligence and consciousness, drawing parallels between our conceptions and prejudices about Octopus and the Jungian concept of the Unconscious. When we view Octopus through the lens of ecological consciousness, shining a light on relationships and connections, we can learn more about our relationships with poorly understood parts of nature and of ourselves.

About Amy

I’m a practicing pediatrician with a Master’s in Jungian and Archetypal Studies. I live in San Francisco, and I love interpreting dreams, attending local theater, and experiencing life through a mythological lens.

2022 Mythologium program
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Chrissy Stuart

Chrissy’s talk is called “The Dark Light of Duende: The Phosphorescence of Death”

At the heart of the mythological and ecological lies ambiguous paradox. The profundity of life and death is bridged by an invisible dimension of experience that we can safely navigate through the mythopoetic image. This presentation will investigate the mysterious eco-theoretical terrain of death through an archetypal analysis of the mythology of light and darkness, as represented in the traje de luces–or “suit of lights” worn by Spanish matadors.

The way death is perceived as an “unseeable” image is a prevalent idiosyncrasy in western and American cultural psyches. This can be witnessed in our lack of community traditions, rituals, and consciousness surrounding death and grief, as illustrated in the global events of the COVID-19 pandemic and the environmental crisis. My objective is to enumerate the many ways in which the pathologized image of death illuminates the beyond. Through the ontological lens of elemental light–a brief presentation of recent light sculptural work and transdisciplinarity research in my field of holography–I will demonstrate the ecological power of the pathological in its capacity for interconnection by bridging light and darkness, the visible and invisible, and life and death. This generative process creates new ways of seeing and being in the world.

About Chrissy

Chrissy Stuart is a light sculpture artist, depth psychological scholar, holographer, and transdisciplinarity researcher. Stuart utilizes light optics and glass casting techniques to record light waves–not ordinarily visible to the human eye–onto transparent objects to explore the invisible dimension of experience tied to the realm of death, the imagination, and the unknown. In her quest to understand the hidden forces beyond our control, complexities of multidimensional reality and universal interdependence are unearthed. Stuart views working with the unconscious as a form of research inquiry, and her light sculpture praxis perpetually reveals that consciousness is transformed by an encounter with the unknown. Stuart’s transdisciplinarity work addresses the notion that it is only in working with the darkness that a luminosity specific to transformation can emerge.

2022 Mythologium program
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Mary Murphy

Mary’s talk is called “Myth and Mother Earth: Exploring the Landscape of the Psyche Through the Eyes of Gaia”

Mother Earth and humans’ relationship to her have been revered and widely recognized throughout time and across cultures. However, she and our relationship with her gradually became shrouded by reductionistic thinking, patriarchal ideologies, and narrow mechanistic mindsets. C. G. Jung esteemed the natural world and was deeply convinced of the psyche–nature kinship and its essentiality to individuation, yet he withheld asserting his sentiments because he could not prove them empirically.

In an era when the planet and her people are imperiled, this presentation calls attention to the archetypal nature of the unconscious and its implicit interconnectedness with the natural world. Considering this relationship through the lens of depth psychology and feminist theory, the presentation also illuminates the reciprocal relationship between psyche and nature, and the critical need to cultivate it, and considers how the ill-treatment of the earth and women are connected. Consequently, it helps deepen our psychological and ecological sensibility, expands the idea of individuation, highlights our biased social structures, and elucidates how the treatment of the feminine is tied to the exploitation of the planet.

About Mary

Mary Murphy is a depth psychologist and life coach in Northeastern, MA, where she maintains a private practice focused on women’s issues that begins with building a relationship with the Self. Mary holds both a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Depth Psychology with emphasis in Jungian and Archetypal Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute and an M.B.A from Northeastern University. She can be reached at mary@hercoach.com or via her website at www.hercoach.com.

2022 Mythologium program
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Scott Neumeister

Scott’s talk is called “Myth as a Bridge: The Power of Archetypal Autocritography”

I will illustrate the transformative combination of archetypal analysis and autocritography I have developed as a means of building critical consciousness and empathy across differences of identity. While Henry Louis Gates, Jr., coined the term autocritography, Michael Awkward has employed it provocatively as I have learned and used it—an academic yet intimate critique of literature that uses the personal (autobiographical) to approach the scholarly (critical) along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other areas of difference. Rooted in black feminism, this intersectional critique, united with self-reflection and empathetic imagination, produces autocritography’s dynamism in what Paulo Freire terms “conscientization.”

After elucidating autocritography’s liberatory power, I will demonstrate how, after learning this approach in my graduate English studies, I merged it with Jungian/archetypal criticism—developing an approach that deepens the transpersonal, empathetic lens through which one sees Self in Other, in both literature and life. Having employed this method and taught undergraduates with it, I will attest to its efficacy in fostering allyship via the recognition of our fundamental connectedness with each other, despite identity differences. My presentation will contain both the theory and practice of my technique for scholars, teachers, helping professionals, or anyone interested in “liberatory consciousness.”

About Scott

Scott Neumeister is a literary scholar, author, TEDx speaker, and mythic pathfinder from Tampa, Florida, where he earned his PhD in English from the University of South Florida in 2018. His specialization in multi-ethnic American literature and mythology comes after careers as an information technology systems engineer and a teacher of English and mythology at the middle school and college levels. He is coauthor of Let Love Lead: On a Course to Freedom with Gary L. Lemons and Susie Hoeller, as well as a facilitator for the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Myth and Meaning book club at Literati.

2022 Mythologium program
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Margaret Ann Mendenhall, PhD

Maggie’s talk is called “The Inner Light”: The Alienation and Re-Membering of soma in Star Trek: The Next Generation

This paper will discuss the idea of soma, the appeal of Star Trek, and how in both the television series and films, soma has been alienated — designated to be illustrated in non-human characters. It will then use the episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Inner Light,” to examine how soma has been dismembered from the ideals of Starfleet, but how it can also be re-membered. In this episode, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is sent to live out a lifetime in a now extinct culture that died when it became too hot for life to exist. That culture’s idea to preserve its existence was to send a probe into space in order to find a teacher to tell others about their civilization. Reflecting that sentiment, this paper will discuss the importance of myth and depth psychology – including soma, and how Star Trek reflects our culture in all its imperfections.

About Maggie

Margaret (Maggie) Mendenhall, PhD, currently resides in Long Beach, California and is a graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies program. She is also currently a student in Pacifica’s Depth Psychology program, specializing in Jungian and Archetypal Studies. Margaret has presented papers on Star Trek-related topics at various conferences, including past Mythologiums; the Science Fictions, Popular Culture Academic Conference; the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (ASWM); and Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA), for which she also serves as Area Chair for Psychology and Popular Culture. She writes a blog, My Daily Soul Trek, analyzing each Star Trek episode and film from the beginning in chronological order through a depth psychological perspective. She has written, performed, and produced two myth-based one-woman shows: Dancing to the Edge of a Cliff: A Mythical Journey Toward Wholeness, and Soul Trek: My Sci-Fi Journey Toward Wholeness, and produced and hosted the public access television series Myth Is All Around Us.

2022 Mythologium program
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Randy Eady

Randy’s talk is called “Odin’s Eye: How Ancient Mytho-Poetics Inform Today’s Eco-Conscious Biofield Awareness”

Wondrous and mystical, nature has much to offer. Of particular interest and fascination are natural patterns and shapes that afford intrigue and provide the imaginal taproot for mythmaking and poetics.  In delving into the fascinations of sensoria and the patterning of beings in a patterned universe (via the lens of the “mytho-poetics of ancient wisdom”), more of the empirical presence of nature’s manifest rhythms can become apparent.

This presentation will explore several “biofield” interactions — like the migrating robin’s “Odin eye” and the narwhal’s precisely straight, counterclockwise tusk organ spiral — as these relate to organs of perceptual awareness and, arguably, may have informed the mytho-poetic traditions of ancient long-distance water-bearing travelers. Participants will also be introduced to the nascent field of Transductive Anthropology, an anthropology that listens through and across the ear-centrism of many sound studies, positing vibration as only one vector of inter-sensory connection.

Underscored in this talk is how myth, subsumed in cultural models, still possesses a compass bearing and a calibrated sense of volume, as well as a “revelatory range” of variation that can only go so far in exploring a culture’s boundaries of deviance. Some of these mythic facets can help us balance thinking and perceiving and lead to a mythically eco-sustainable flow of being.

About Randy

Raised as a dual-citizen in Southern Ontario, Canada, and Western New York, Randy Eady spent his formative years on the legacy land of the Pikwàkanagàn and the Tuscarora of the Six Nations near Niagara Falls. Eady left Canada to go to school in New York at SUNY Oswego, where he double-majored in anthropology and sociology with a minor in linguistics. With Dr. Richard Loder, currently Director of Native American Studies Program at Syracuse University, Eady co-presented a thesis on Indian Land Claims and Congressional Backlash at the New York State Sociological Association Conference and went on to obtain a graduate degree at Montana University in Human Development and Therapeutic Counseling. He has served as Assistant Professor and Course Chair of Cultural Anthropology at the USAF Academy in Colorado and as Federal Special Observance Committee Chair for American Indian Heritage cultural programs.

At the USAF Academy he was awarded Outstanding Behavioral Science Instructor for his innovative behavioral approaches to trauma recovery. He created Ko~Sha~Rey Rhythms (KR) Terrapeutics and held positions in the U.S. Defense Department as a trauma therapist and counselor for combat veterans with PTSD and mobility conditions, such as amputee phantom pain phenomena and Parkinson’s disease. He has practiced in residential assisted living treatment facilities and speaks on inter-generational mind/body/spirit issues, animal-assisted therapy practices, and attachment/trauma. In addition, he has fashioned numerous therapy gardens for balance and movement disorder conditions which are advancing research on symptom relief and recovery from a myriad of conditions.

2022 Mythologium program
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Kristina Dryža

Kristina’s talk is called “Redeeming the Wasteland”

We are in a wasteland ecology. Both externally and internally. The spiritual emptiness, as T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” suggests. The land is ravaged, there’s increasing desertification, ocean acidification, the forests are being decimated, and wildlife are dying. We can no longer separate the individual from the collective. All life breathes together. It’s a symbiotic journey.

The wasteland is not just the metaphor of an inner desert, but a world in which barren desolateness is visible all around us. So how do we redeem the inner wasteland? And reawaken a sense of awe, wonder, and reverence for the natural world?

First, we must question why and how the mechanical view of the world came into dominance. When did we eradicate the perception of earth, nature, or matter as sentient? Second, it requires sensing the earth and nature as enspirited, and enquiring how we each individually engage with the world’s aliveness. How do we perceive life in a sacred, animated, ensouled world? Which are the myths that exemplify nature’s self-revealing aliveness? And how can we embody mythic wisdom to experience the soul consciousness of nature?

About Kristina

Kristina is recognized as one of the world’s top female futurists and is also an archetypal consultant and author. Her work focuses on archetypal and mythic patterns and the patterning of nature’s rhythms and their influence on creativity, innovation, and leadership.

2022 Mythologium program
Posted on

Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Lynlee Lyckberg

Lynlee’s talk is called “Earth as Self-Adjusting Organism: Anima Mundi as Healing Force in the Physical World”

Plato viewed the cosmos as a single organism that was vitalized by a force greater than its inhabitants. Known as the anima mundi, this force was the mothering soul of the world, responsible for the order and purposiveness of nature, and was believed to be the mediating influence of the stars at a distance. In the 1960s, James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis initiated a contemporary renewal of interest in the environment as a living organism and asserted that all species in the planetary biomass act symbiotically to enhance the life-giving potential of the planet, where the goal of life was global homeostasis with the earth as a self-regulating organism. The Gaia hypothesis helped restore the anima mundi as divine intelligence who heals through self-regulation.

This presentation seeks to elucidate theories like Lovelock’s that contribute to planetary psychology, and explores contemporary healing modalities emerging from Earth as living organism theories. Of particular interest is the work of mycologist Paul Stamets, who explores using mushrooms to heal toxic environmental sites as well as trauma in individuals.

About Lynlee

Lynlee Lyckberg is a California-based artist/educator who maintains a studio and teaching practice in the Nevada City foothills of northern California. She earned her B.A. in Studio Art/Art History from Cal State East Bay, and her M.F.A. in Painting (Consciousness Studies) from John F. Kennedy University. In 2016 she completed her doctorate in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. She also studied Traditional Chinese Arts and Healing at the University of Hangzhou, China, in 2001. She is currently completing a PsyD, and will begin an art therapy licensing program in the fall.

Her teaching philosophy is that a creative practice is one of the best ways to enhance problem solving skills, and often connects one to deeper ways of knowing and being in the world. Core elements of her teaching practice include the use of dreamwork, myth, and the symbolic image to enhance thinking skills and open the doors to personal creativity.

2022 Mythologium program