Category: Presenters

Presenters at the Fates and Graces Mythologium, a virtual conference for mythologists.

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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Sue Bayliss

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.

2023 Mythologium program
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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 2023 welcomes Dr. Jody Bower

Dr. Bower’s presentation is called “The Heart of the Hero: How Superhero Movies are Re-Imagining the Hero’s Quest Story”

Joseph Campbell tells us in The Hero With a Thousand Faces that once a hero has faced all his trials and succeeded in completing his quest, he can earn the boon of being loved by the feminine, as represented by the Princess—a vague figure who represents “the goddess who is incarnate in every woman . . . mother, sister, mistress, bride.” She is all women, not an individual in her own right.

Marie-Louise von Franz warns us that feminine figures in folk and fairy tales and myths are usually “not a woman’s idea of femininity but rather what Jung called the anima,” and so represent the psychology of men. When Campbell’s hero wakes the sleeping woman, he is awakening his own feminine side that he has suppressed. But awakened or not, he still projects it onto someone else. The feminine remains Other while the hero perceives love as coming from outside him, a gift bestowed on him. He is passive, receiving; love is not something he does.

And yet the archetype of the hero is all about doing!

Our modern myth-making modalities of comic books, film, and television are redressing this issue in origin stories about superheroes. In the new version, love is no longer a reward given to the hero—or the heroine, for modern female superheroes follow a similar story arc—after the quest is finished. Instead, the climactic moment often hinges on the heroic person’s ability to draw upon their innate capacity for love.

In her presentation, cultural mythologist Jody Gentian Bower looks at the origin stories of superheroes, including Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Starlord, Diana the Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Jake Sully, and Harry Potter, as examples of this new version of the hero whose greatest power comes from the heart.

About Dr. Bower

Jody Gentian Bower is a cultural mythologist who earned her PhD in Mythological Studies with a Depth Psychology Emphasis from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2013. She is the author of Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine Story (Quest 2015), based on her dissertation about how women (and some men) have been telling a similar story about female protagonists in novels since the 15th century. She also wrote The Princess Powers Up: Watching the Sleeping Beauties Become Warrior Goddesses (Mandorla 2020), which traces the evolution of fantasy heroines over the last century. She lectures and leads workshops on hero/heroine journeys and blogs about popular culture on jodybower.com.

2023 Mythologium program
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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 2023 welcomes Dr. Margaret Mendenhall

Dr. Mendenhall’s presentation is called “Mr. Spock from Star Trek: A Popular Culture Icon as Symbol for the Importance of Accepting the Eros Within”

Sometimes wisdom from the heart can come from aliens. Specifically, I believe that the character Mr. Spock from Star Trek can be seen as a symbol of the importance of the integration of material from the Eros-driven unconscious, the heart if you will, into the Logos-driven conscious rational ego. When we first meet him in Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock is introduced as the half-Vulcan science officer. Vulcans are a race that long ago decided to forgo emotions entirely in order to save their species, and Spock tries to suppress all emotions from his troubling half-human self. Yet, in his last appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation, we see an older and wiser Spock who has learned the importance of integrating emotions into his persona, and not only on a personal basis. This paper will argue that the appeal of Mr. Spock and the Star Trek television series and films is one way to spread the idea that emotions of the heart are as important as logic.

About Dr. Mendenhall

Margaret Mendenhall, PhD resides in Long Beach, California and is a graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies Program. Her blog, My Daily Soul Trek, analyzes Star Trek episodes and films chronologically from a depth psychological perspective (https://mydailysoultrek.com/). Additionally, she has written, performed, and produced two myth-based one-woman shows, and produced and hosted the public access television series Myth Is All Around Us. Margaret is currently at work on her second dissertation which explores how the individuation process is illustrated by Star Trek.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Helen Slater

Helen’s presentation is called “Images of Refuge and the Awakened Heart in the Demeter Myth”

There are four archetypal images of refuge laced throughout the Demeter narrative from the Demeter and Persephone myth. The path to Eleusis, the olive tree, the well, and the temple highlight how Demeter awakens to her calling as a custodian of the Mysteries.

Using a depth psychological lens, specifically James Hillman’s writings, to understand how refuge is linked with contemplative heart practice, this presentation seeks to bring insight into refuge as a necessary collective experience. The images of refuge that are discussed are then amplified in other sacred texts and myths.

About Helen

Helen Slater is currently a doctoral student in the Myth program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her dissertation, Taking a Seat in the Awakened Heart: The Archetypal Nature of Refuge, examines the collective need for refuge, which is found in myth, fairytales, and sacred texts. She is an actress who has worked in film, television, and stage for the last four decades. As a songwriter, she has composed six original albums, three of which are based on myths and fairytales. For more information, please visit www.helenslater.com.

2023 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2023 welcomes Allison Stieger

Allison’s presentation is called “The Archetype of Dionysus and the Heart in Balance: Following Ariadne’s Red Thread”

Ariadne’s path through her own story provides a wonderful archetypal resonance of the loving and growing heart. Her myth begins in the court of her father, where she is treated as an object to be owned and traded for wealth and power. Her partnership with Theseus allows her to escape, and he captures the heart of her youth, then leaves her behind on the beach in Naxos, allowing her to meet and marry Dionysus.

This paper will examine the labyrinthine turns of her journey, and the heart guidance that allowed her to move from a place of stasis governed by the toxic masculine into a place of balance and wholeness in her marriage with Dionysus. The archetype of Dionysus holds a beautiful balance between masculine and feminine energies, and between love and ecstasy. Ariadne’s journey provides wonderful guidance for modern women on how to achieve such a balance in our own lives, whether partnered or not.

About Allison

Allison Stieger, M.A., is a writer, speaker, coach, and workshop leader, focusing on the movement of archetypal energies in modern life and working with women on how to understand and change their narratives. She lives in Seattle with her husband of 20 years and two teenage sons.

2023 Mythologium program