Category: Events

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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Rick Alexander

Rick’s presentation is called “Tantra and the Erotic Heart of Individuation”

For Carl Jung, the chakra system represents a symbolic theory of the psyche, displaying its evolution as it moves through various levels of consciousness. While the west tends to associate psyche solely with the intellect or mind, Kundalini presents an image of psyche that is not only spread throughout the body, but even reaches beyond it. This puts the western-minded person in a precarious situation. “We are confronted with a paradox; for us consciousness is located high up, in the ajna chakra, so to speak, and yet muladhara, our reality, lies in the lowest chakra” (Jung, Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, 60). To further complicate the matter, Jung understood the level of consciousness most associated with individuation, the goal of his analytical psychology, as occurring at the anahata (heart) chakra. Within each person then, lies an inherent division that must be reconciled in order to “become whole.” This requires Eros—an embodied relational capacity wherein our own longing can be seen as the driving force toward individuation—bringing disparate elements of the psyche together in a sacred marriage.

The Vijñāna-Bhairava Tantra, a collection of sutras that originate in Kashmir, India circa 800 CE, offers additional Tantric images by which one can imagine the work of psychic development. It is a conversation between lovers, Shiva and Shakti, who have been separated since creation and who long for reconciliation in the human heart. Here, the body itself is imagined as a container where the original cosmogonic romance is recapitulated. This presentation dreams forward the dialogue between Tantra and Jungian psychology, exploring its implications on the body, the development of the personality, and ultimately, one’s place within the cosmic order itself.

About Rick

Rick Alexander is an author, speaker, and coach. He is also currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Pacifica Graduate Institute where he studies comparative mythology and depth psychology, following the path of thinkers like Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung. His written material, lectures, and personal client work draw heavily from contemplative spiritual traditions of the east and west and are centered in depth and archetypal psychology. He speaks and writes predominantly on psychological wellness, the Hero’s Journey, and the quest to find meaning in life. Recently, he taught workshops and lectured for organizations around the world including the United States Air Force and Bell Canada, as well as for specialized retreats, private events, and academic conferences.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Amy Beth Katz

Amy Beth’s talk is called “The Heart of Mythic Mirroring”

Mythology heals, teaches, empowers. But how? There is a way of listening from the heart; an ancient, cross cultural way of listening on mythic levels that elevates spirit and marries the forces of nature to the storyteller within. There is a way of “jumping through the portals” of experiences and retelling from the heart, which both reflects and invokes the deepest, mythic and archetypal core of a quester’s experience.

When we listen from the heart and speak from the heart in sacred story telling council, we mythically amplify the mundane; we elevate mere human experience to that of the archetypal Gods and Goddesses. Our stories then become infused with all the deities, demons and angels, heroes and villains, animals and mystical creatures that dwell in collective imagination. Whether we mirror in word, song, silent gesture, art, ritual— we speak the most beautiful spontaneous poetry directly to the initiate’s soul, and these poems herald us into new consciousness; they heal and transform them, and us.

Through demonstration and examples a tool set will be offered for bringing together one’s knowledge of myth (gained through academic studies, faery tales, film, pop culture and Mythologiums!) with the every day occurrences of self and other. Mythologists, rites of passage guides, therapists, parents and friends can use these techniques subtly or explicitly to bring myth to life from the inside out: over coffee with your besties, with clients in consulting rooms, in the forest sitting in sacred group ceremony, and anytime with yourself to overcome trauma, amplify dreams, and re-story your life for greater meaning and vision.

About Amy Beth

Amy Beth Katz, M.A. is Founding Director of The School of Living Dreams, Santa Barbara Psychics and Living Dreams Press. She is a vision quest guide, clairvoyant, tarot reader, depth-crisis counselor, and soul guide. Her dreams and intuitions led her to become a photojournalist, contracted with Zuma Press. She utilizes dreams, synchronicities and signs that emerge in cyberspace, nature and casual conversation to get the “winning image,” and her captioned photographs and video clips appear in over 70 print and media publications, including the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Independent, Time magazine, ABC News, NBC, Good Morning America, New York Daily News, People Magazine Royal’s Edition, China News, and more. She specializes in protests, environmental crisis and recovery efforts, social movements, nature and celebrity Red Carpets.

Amy has published three books of poetry. She is currently finishing her book CyberDreamWeaving™ about her methods and experiments with “Intentional and Applied Synchronicity”, online and out in the world. Amy is the 2022 Recipient of the “Tikkum Olam” Community Service Award through Congregation B’nai B’rith for her leadership in serving the homeless during the Covid Pandemic. Amy holds a Master of Arts Degree from Southern Illinois University and was granted a special “Certificate of Completion” from Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Community, Liberation and Eco-Psychology doctoral program.

For more information, see http://www.schooloflivingdreams.com and
http://www.photojournalist.us.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Alyssa Herzinger

Alyssa’s presentation is called “A World of One’s Own: How Fantasy Facilitates the Development of the Inner Voice of Women”

This presentation will explore how the liminality of the fantasy genre and the labyrinthine Heroine’s Journey support the development of women’s inner voices and identities. Both provide space for women authors to explore new worlds of possibility while also providing examples and role models for women readers to emulate in their own lives.

Fantasy is where a woman can create not only a “room of one’s own,” but an entire imaginary world of her own. This space of possibility — for writers, readers, and characters, is inherently a liminal one, reflected in the physical settings of many of these stories. It is not a coincidence that so many myths, fantasy stories, and tales of women finding themselves happen so often in extreme parts of nature, especially where the earth meets the sea — where a cliff and a breeze threaten a fatal fall.

About Alyssa

Alyssa Herzinger, MFA is a writer, actor, musician, researcher, and creative facilitator focused on women’s experiences and identities. Her career has spanned academia, the arts, startups, social work, and tech, which she has brought together through her focus on helping women find and use their voices to advocate for themselves and others.

As a Master’s student in Actor-Musicianship, she co-developed a compositional and divinatory technique called Musicomancy, which she used to compose the Tarot-based album, Lilies in the Bardo. She is the author of Pioneer: Creating Your Own Path After Mormonism, and she has written and co-written several plays, including Devout, an autobiographical story about leaving a high-demand religion; Killer Boss, a musical comedy about modern workplaces, and Full Fathom Five, a musical prequel to The Tempest. She is currently developing an actor-musician play about a 19th-century composer.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Julie Ciecior

Julie’s presentation is called “The Self-Care System of Helen of Troy: Dividing of a Soul”

The enigmatic heart of Helen of Troy has been the subject of our projections for thousands of years. She has lived in our minds in shame as the too-beautiful whore who caused the Trojan War. Perhaps there is more mythos waiting to unfold?

This presentation will utilize Euripides’ play, Helen, as well as Donald Kalsched’s work, “The Inner Word of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit.” I propose that traumatic experiences in Helen’s life may have caused Helen to psychologically divide into the eidolon in Euipidies’ play, Helen. This is to say that psychologically speaking, Helen retreats with Paris in eidolon form, while her physical form remains in Egypt. Kalsched notes that the term, ‘daimonic’ comes from daiomai, which means to divide.” Her eidolon appears to be what Kalsched defines as “the self-care system,’ which arises to protect the heart and soul of the traumatized person. I will explore the function of this protective system and how it may soften our own hearts towards Helen’s plight.

The presentation will end by investigating how her reunion with her love, Menelaus, supports the process of her psyche coming back together and healing the psychological divide she has endured.

About Julie

Julie Ciecior, MA, LPC, is a Colorado based depth psychotherapist, adoptee, mother, mythologist, writer, and tireless seeker of meaning making. She is currently pursuing a MA/PhD degree in Mythology with an Emphasis on Depth Psychology through Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is particularly interested in the intersection between creativity, mythology, psychology, and soul. When these elements meet in the alchemical cauldron that we call life, the real magic arises and this is where her heart leads her research.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Beth Anne Boardman

Beth Anne’s talk is called “A Poetics of Silver”

This poetry workshop flows from ideas of ecopsychology, developing a theme of nature as alchemical container for the silvering of human artistic, emotional, psychic transformation.

In “Silver and the White Earth,” James Hillman writes about the albedo phase of the work. After the dissolving and fermenting of the nigredo, when we may explore our deepest shadows and pain, a phase of drying and cooling comes along, which Hillman says fosters reflection, like silvering on a mirror. During the albedo we take stock, observe, without judgment or passion. A rest from the rigors of diving into our darkness and bringing up materials to cook and render, the albedo distills, giving us time to separate the fluid of emotions from the sparkling powdery substance left behind. These are not hardened insights or spiritual truths, but different kinds of reflections which have dimensions and shadows of their own, like shadows on snow. Hillman sees them “as blues, as creams, as the wan and pale feelings of grey.”

This workshop offers participants a chance to explore their own silvering through writing about nature, poetry, fantasy, whatever mystic realm calls. We will use prompts, images, poems as starting points for our own silver word-dance.

About Beth Anne

Beth Anne Boardman, RN, MA, PhD lives in California and New Hampshire. She travels and lectures on the Mythology of Sport, Women and Myth, and the Alchemy of Adolescence (her dissertation topic), in addition to consulting as a writer to websites.  Recently, Beth has served on the board of the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association and as Regional Coordinator for local alumni. Her career spans work as a registered nurse, the study of world dance and music, and the profound joy of raising two children. Beth’s writings may be found at http://otherworldpoetry.blogspot.com and https://mythmuse.wordpress.com.

2022 Mythologium program

 

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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Kathryn Makeyev

Kathryn’s talk is called “More Than”

Our first dimension begins with either/or, and our second expands to both/and. I suggest there is a third dimension, the more/than.

Imagine either/or as one black circle and one white circle. Both/and connects these separate two into a mandorla whose eye sees into both, and thus begins one’s awareness of the other. When we evolve to the more/than 3D, the yin/yang tajitu, our consciousness shifts again to a mystical statement of unity, an entanglement that promises to better understand our connections to each other, our environment, and our cosmos.

Mythologists compare a shift of consciousness to walking a labyrinth instead of a maze. Whereas a maze is a bunch of spots that are not connected, seeming like a random play for survival, a labyrinth lays out a path of organized dots to invite contemplation. The drama of twenty-first century life challenges us to survive and to contemplate. But we require more than that to thrive and evolve. When we mythologists remember Plato’s nous and Heraclitus’ flow, Teilhard de Chardin’s omega point and Thich Naht Hanh’s interbeing, we begin a conversation that entangles them all and invites. Let’s also conjure Iain McGilchrist.

About Kathryn

Kathryn has lived for over 30 years in San Luis Obispo, home of the Slo Transit Company, the Slo Real Estate Development Company, and the Slomotion Film Festival, and she likes it more each day. She is finishing a novel (slo-style) about reincarnation through history.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Jonathan Vaughn

Jonathan’s talk is called “Seeking the Seven: The Lenape myth of Ansisktayèsàk (Pleiades) and Wisdom for a Changing Age”

This paper explores the Lenape myth of Ansisktayèsàk, the constellation known as Pleiades in English and Greek, and looks at four specific symbols that pervade the ancient record and ancestral lands of the Lenape—namely Awèn, Ahsën, Hìtëkw, and Alànkw—or Human, Stone, Tree, and Star (Lenape Language Preservation Project, 2021a; Speck, 1931, pp. 170-173; Hìtakonanu’laxk, 2012, pp. 86-87, 128).

The myth of Ansisktayèsàk reflects the Lenape creation myth, wherein the Great Turtle rose above the waters and on whose back emerged a Great Tree that sprouted both a man and woman, from whom “all humanity descended” (Miller, 2017, p. 1). Furthermore, the myth of Ansisktayèsàk illuminates a belief that humans should be in relationship with Stones, Trees, and Stars. These powerful beings are ancestors whose wisdom and mediation should be sought. Looking at and reflecting on this myth offers both a potent meditation on the importance of human relationships with other forms of life and a model for how to thrive in an age of ecological crisis.

About Jonathan

Jonathan Vaughn, MA, MPA, is doctoral candidate in Depth Psychology—Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is an experienced nonprofit and university fundraiser, as well as an actor, writer, and photographer. His current research focuses on the psychology of place, particularly in the age of climate crisis.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Kate Rittenhouse

Kate’s talk is called “Memories of the Ice Age in Beasts of the Southern Wild: Climate Change and Adaptation”

In her play Juicy and Delicious, Lucy Alibar’s heroine is a child facing a herd of aurochs, “as seen in cave paintings at Lascaux.” A metaphor for the child’s overwhelming fear at the imminent death of the father, the aurochs evoke the helpless terror of childhood nightmares. Alibar and director Behn Zeitlin adapted the play for the feature film Beasts of the Southern Wild, in which the theme of world-ending loss is extended to the passing of a way of life due to global warming. In both the play and the film, events in which all is about to be lost necessitate confrontation with the beast from the prehistoric caves. Impossibly distant from the contemporary world in terms of time, the painted images in the prehistoric caves hold memories and messages from the cave painting culture. This presentation reflects on the vision of the world between worlds that the play and movie offer, and on the advice that our civilization could take from the cave painters: adapt or die out.

About Kate

Kate Rittenhouse is an independent scholar and thinker now living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College with a primary area of study in ancient art and culture. After leaving a successful career as a corporate manager (Saturn opposition), she studied couture sewing techniques and has pursued a career in theatrical costuming, working in theatre and film. Fulfilling a lifelong interest, in 2009 she completed a doctorate (Saturn return) in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her dissertation, Isis by Any Name: A Study Of All’s Well That Ends Well, explores the animating force of the divine feminine in the mythic and metaphoric structures of the play. Currently a chairperson of the Mythology in Contemporary Culture area of the Popular Culture Association, she writes and speaks on modern epiphanies, revisionings, and reinterpretations of ancient mythological elements.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Kirsten Ellen Johnsen, PhD

Kirsten’s talk is called “Unsettling our Understandings of Place”

What does it mean to “understand place?” I suggest it is a position of humility and reception. The land holds real spiritual power. The places we live contain and embody ancestral personality. To be in true relationship with place is to recognize the independence of these personalities and ancestries: it is to respect their otherness and agency.

Jung dreamt of a descent through the layers of a house and down through the sediments of the earth below as a way to connect with ancestral and archetypal energies. After visiting America, he noted how white settlers faced a gap in this descent, owing to the discontinuity of ancestry on the land. Several contemporary Jungian scholars also recognize the cultural grief and confusion that settler cultures experience due to ancestral discontinuity, and its deleterious historical effects on both settlers and indigenous peoples.

This workshop is oriented toward the settler-colonial experience. It will discuss the ancestral gap that Jung identified and address how to navigate it with consciousness, compassion, and commitment to counter oppressions.

About Kirsten

Kirsten Ellen Johnsen lives in relationship with Northern Pomo land in what is now known as Mendocino County. The life-journey this land has asked her to undertake has led her into honest reckoning with deep ancestry. She holds a PhD in Mythology and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Raïna Manuel-Paris

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.

2022 Mythologium program