Category: Presenters

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

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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Olivia Happel-Block

Olivia’s talk is called “Climb Every Mountain:  Rethinking Ecological Expeditions in Project Possible”

In 2019, Nepalese and Gurkha soldier Nirmal (Nims) Purja decided to climb fourteen of the highest mountains in the world in seven months in order to demonstrate the power of possibility, to bring light to the indigenous Sherpa people, and to highlight the devastating effects of climate change in the highest places in the world. This presentation examines Purja’s journey as told through the documentary 14 Peaks and his book Beyond Possible through a mythological and psychological lens to assess how his perspective allowed him to achieve these record-setting climbs and work for social ecological change.

Climbing tall mountains is a motif found throughout mythology and history, but what happens when the symbolic world of myth meets the real world? Why is it that humanity finds the need to “conquer their mountain”? How does the natural world impact human psychology? This presentation aims to answer these questions and consider how our own mindset can shift towards possibility and how social movements such as Project Possible are able to shift perspectives towards indigenous peoples and the environment.

About Olivia

Olivia Happel-Block, PhD, is a Mythology, IB Theory of Knowledge, AP English, and Film Studies teacher at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, CA. There she serves as the Extended Essay Coordinator, Site Council Chairperson, and union representative. She has created her own curriculum for both the Mythology and Film Studies courses at DPHS. Her dissertation That Which Is Not Yet Known: An Alchemical Analysis of Michael Maier’s Arcana Arcanissima explores themes of mythology, alchemy, and religion. Olivia serves as the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association’s President. She has presented at the American Academy of Religion Regional Conference as well as the Pop Culture Association’s Regional and National Conference. Her academic interests include myth, religious studies, alchemy, and classics. She seeks to pursue the #immutablediamondbody throughout her life, scholarship, and career. Follow her on Instagram @doctorhappel.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Arthur George

Art’s talk is called “The Social and Psychological Origins of Myths Denying Climate Change”

Myths have always had social and psychological origins and functions. These narratives help a community interpret the world, achieve identity and unity, and give it and its members meaning and purpose. Myths inevitably stray from the objective verifiable facts needed to make public policy and enact laws. An example is myths denying climate change, e.g., that climate change is not real or not caused by humans; that temperature increases are due to a natural climactic cycle; and that climate scientists cannot be believed, being in league with liberals. My presentation will analyze the rise, function, and circulation of climate change myths in certain communities from the standpoint of depth psychology and sociological dynamics.

About Art

Arthur George is a mythologist, cultural historian, blogger, and winemaker; formerly he was an international lawyer. He has written three mythology books: The Mythology of Eden, The Mythology of America’s Seasonal Holidays, and The Mythology of Wine. His more recent work has focused on myth in contemporary society and politics. He has a mythology blog, frequently speaks at scholarly conferences, institutes, JCF Roundtables, and other audiences on mythological topics, and authors articles on the same. You can find his blog and connect with him at www.mythologymatters.wordpress.com.

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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Maria Felice Cunningham

Maria’s talk is called “Eco-Psychologically Transform The Climate Crisis by Accessing the Force”

Story making, storytelling, and story listening are human superpowers. Seemingly, humankind’s ability to imagine the impossible and make it a reality changed evolutionary history. Yet today, humanity has crossed over the bridge of mystery and into a glacial river of truth–meaning we need to be honest about our rapidly warming Earth.

Yet, the same mythologies from our early beginnings that knitted us into nature’s awe and abundance are what we could be turning into modern narratives. 

A new mythology for living into the future will come forward through the tales we imagine today. And needed are the heroes or heroines who are the story makers and story carriers—those who can gallop full speed into the mouth of danger and change where humanity is heading.

A hidden path has appeared that negates living as we always have, and today’s younger generations are creating actionable plans for slowing climate change and re-arranging their futures. From another perspective, we don’t have much time to act, so I suggest preparing for adventures. 

All our collective stories are needed to conjure the one perfect solution. A Force so powerful a thousand other ideas get birthed.  

As humanity stands at the mythical Crossroads of Fate, our tribal collective seeks kind, generous, and courageously compassionate eco-psychological responses that could bind us into collective action. 

About Maria

Maria Felice Cunningham is a story writer, storyteller, and re-seeder of curiosity. She believes hope lives in our ears and courage in our hearts, while wisdom requires listening to the natural world. She is a connector who passes on whispers heard in seashells and she uses stories as her currency.

Maria Felice spent decades in corporate America creating stories and advertising campaigns for capital growth while partnering with targeted non-profits. She is an eco-psychologist, board-certified culture and leadership coach, author, journalist, and doctoral candidate at Viridis Graduate School. Her primary focus is promoting stories, myths and fairy tales to face the challenges of a warming Earth.

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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Leon Aliski

Leon’s talk is called “Visions of a City on a Hill: A Mytho-Historic Perspective in this Age of Global Crisis”

We will explore the roots of inspiration for John Winthrop’s A Model of Christian Charity, an obscure text written to inspire residents of a largely Protestant England to uproot themselves and embark on a journey to the unknown North American continent. “We shall be as a city upon a hill; the eyes of all people are upon us,” Winthrop wrote in 1629.

In more recent times, the phrase “as a city upon a hill” has proliferated in evangelical Protestantism and contemporary political rhetoric to express the hope and promise of the American Dream. Yet, other parts of the text expressing concern about social inequality and community have been largely forgotten.

How has this text that originates from England’s Puritan past morphed into inspiration for what has become known as American exceptionalism and nationalism? Does its political appropriation mark a turning point, a reframing of our colonial myth in this age of global crisis? We will explore these questions and more, with deep reflection on how mythology and history are interwoven.

About Leon

Leon Aliski, PhD holds a doctorate in cultural mythology and depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. His dissertation, Wild Bison and the Buffalo People: Reimagining ‘The Heart of Everything That Is’, explores the cultural and historical significance of the buffalo as expressed through sacred narratives, songs, visions, and ceremonies. He is a supporter of Cloud Horse Art Institute, dedicated to Lakota traditional arts, performing arts, and culture camps, and the Reel Jobs Film School located on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Rebecca Migdal Kilicaslan

Rebecca’s talk is called “Climate Cassandras and the Psychology of Believing”

Scientists and environmental activists are modern-day Cassandras, desperate to convince world leaders that drastic action must be taken immediately to avert disaster. In this polarized time, have we lost our sense of a shared myth of progress, crippling our ability to act collectively and avert the coming climate catastrophe? Can depth psychology set us back on track towards psychological and cultural effectiveness and resolve?

Looking at the Cassandra myth through an archetypal lens reveals a story of the rupture between unconscious instinct, represented by Cassandra, and conscious rationalism, in the guise of her spurned lover Apollo, who has cursed her to foresee the future but never be believed. While most of us are convinced that our beliefs are formed by conscious choice, the process of belief formation is rarely rational, whether these beliefs originate in childhood, are encoded into the social fabric of our communities, or are constructed by imposing unconscious contents onto the random stream of information encountered on the internet. Using the insights of depth psychology to correlate the Cassandra myth to Q-anon, Ken Keyes’s The Hundredth Monkey, and the film Don’t Look Up, this paper strategizes a more conscious attitude towards belief in inconvenient facts.

About Rebecca

Rebecca Migdal Kilicaslan, MA, MFA is an artist, performer, and author who works with dreams, myths, and folktales. In 2017 she co-founded Book & Puppet Co., a bookstore and puppet theater in Easton, Pennsylvania. She is a doctoral candidate in Jungian Psychology and Archetypes at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Rebecca studied with Steve Aizenstat, and is a certified Dreamtender™. She teaches in the Art + Design department at East Stroudsburg University.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Jennifer Degnan Smith

Jennifer’s talk is called “Mythic Places of Greece Speak of our Ecological Ills”

The ancient Greeks recognized the deep connection between myth and place. The sacred places of myth were often the locations of rituals to honor the gods and goddesses. Perhaps there is something about these places that, even in modern times, holds the archetypal energies of the deities who were worshipped there.

Engaging the mythic places that hold archetypal energies around ecological consciousness through a terrapsychological lens (Chalquist, 2007) may provide insight into modern-day ecological and psychological ills. Terrapsychology explores how our outer landscapes reflect our inner landscapes, and vice-versa. We can access a place’s wisdom by listening empathetically to it through its symbols and images.

Engaging with mythic places may reveal the “health” of the archetypal energies of the gods and goddesses who were once worshipped there. For instance, Eleusis, once the place of the sacred mysteries of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, is now a major industrial area with severe environmental issues. The River Ilissos in Athens, once the river of the gods, has been cemented over. These sacred places may provide wisdom about our ecological crisis and consciousness if we pay attention. 

Work Cited
Chalquist, C. (2007). Terrapsychology: Reengaging the soul of place. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books.

About Jennifer

Jen Degnan Smith has a Ph.D. in Jungian and Archetypal Psychology. She explores sociocultural issues, particularly healing and empowering the feminine within individuals and the collective. Her 20-year career in organizational consulting and university teaching spans the United States and Europe. She spent eight years traveling extensively to Greece exploring ancient myth and the modern economic crisis.

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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Dr. Geoff Berry

Geoff’s talk is called “Ecomythic Light”

Our relationship with our more-than-human kin–the other animals, plants and elements we share this planet with–has been inscribed in countless animistic myths. Cosmologies of a living world can help us to practice deep listening to other forms of intelligence, creating breathing space for our embodied forms of consciousness as self-aware primates.

But we humans also dream up visions of a realm beyond the physical universe. In this endless imaginal dreaming of life beyond the limits of materiality, light holds a special place for the metaphorical potential it embodies. Light is both physical phenomena and a vehicle of meaning. This presentation offers an “ecomythic” way to balance and clarify our focus on these two streams of embodiment and gnosis at the same time. On the one hand, we consider the spiritually liberating nature of light, as it symbolises freedom and hope; and on the other, we breathe into the body of our physical paradigm, exploring how we might live in “right relation” with our kin on planet earth.

About Geoff

Dr. Geoff Berry’s PhD dissertation traced the way human relationships with nature could be interpreted through the way we inscribe meaning upon light (Monash University 2010). His previous MA explored the nexus between personal dreams and collective mythologies, again from an ecophilosophical perspective (Deakin University 2005). Geoff trains psychotherapists and ecotherapists with the Metavision Institute. He is the Australian Representative to the International Ecopsychology Society and has served as the Chairperson of the Melbourne Zen Group and CEO of the South Coast NSW Aboriginal Elders organization.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Rosalyn Fay

Rosalyn’s talk is called “Expanding Empathy and Cultures of Care by Re-centering the Mother Archetype”

Our planet is in crisis due to the devaluing of the Mother archetype. From the minimal support human mothers are given for raising children, to the mass exploitation of farm animal mothers, to the endless extraction from our Mother Earth, we can see this devaluing everywhere. The culture of commerce, and hero-based narratives idolizing the individual over the collective have effectively replaced ancient narratives of how to live in harmony with the earth and each other. This has bred a narcissistic mindset where we see a dangerous decline in empathic ways of being. No other archetype symbolizes communal care and empathy more than the life-bringing and nurturing Mother. Mother, by very definition, is “life creator.”

Many myths depict the wastelands that ensue when gods or people fail to honor the feminine, including the Lady of Llyn-y-Fan Fach (Celtic mythology), Demeter (Greek), and Nuwa (Chinese). These stories demonstrate the vital importance of re-balancing the feminine with the masculine as well as returning the Mother archetype to her rightful place at the center of communal life. This restoration of the natural order is a key part of the healing process and the rebuilding of cultures of empathy and care.

About Rosalyn

Rosalyn is a writer, herbalist, and ritualist. She resides in the coastal redwoods of northern California where she makes herbal medicines and body care products foraged from the surrounding forest. She also facilitates community grief and earth-based healing rituals. She believes it is women’s grief and anger that can fuel real global change, but she believes women must first reconnect with the earth and re-establish that relationship before they can speak to what is fundamentally missing and leading humanity off course. To that end, she is passionate about leading women back to nature and to their natural, deeply feeling, intuitive states. To learn more, visit www.rosalynfay.com.

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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Danielle Alexander

Danielle’s talk is called “Remembering Eve: How the Myth of Seven Sisters Connects Homo sapiens and Could Be an Avenue for Empathy Across Cultures”

The mythology surrounding the Pleiades is almost canonical, despite tales emerging from various cultures across time and space. Myths of the Seven Sisters are found in ancient Greece and Aboriginal Australia, and variants of the tale are found in Incan, Mayan, and eastern European cosmology. Even in locations where the story is not clear, such as in the Canary Islands, the Lascaux caves, and pre-Islamic Arabia, the Pleiades were culturally influential features of the sky.

It has been proposed that this mythos predates the Homo sapiens migration out of Africa 100,000 years ago when the tale of the Seven Sisters began crossing Europe and Asia. This would mean that the mythos of the Pleiades is one of if not the oldest story told by humans. The tale could be a means for all of humanity to connect to their shared ancestry, regardless of culture, politics, or religion. I seek to highlight how this mythos could encourage empathy by creating a space where diverse voices and traditions can connect through shared mythology and ancestry.

About Danielle

I am an English woman who lives in near Glastonbury, Somerset, United Kingdom. I have received a first-class Bachelor’s degree in Ancient Civilisations and I am currently studying for a Master’s in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology; both degrees are with the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter. Mythology has been a keen interest since I was young, and going to university to study the ancient world only affirmed my love for the mystical tales, practices, and traditions from around the globe. My main interest lay in architecture and the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age periods. I am also a cat-lover and enjoy sky-watching, both day and night.

2022 Mythologium program
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Mythologium 2022 welcomes Reise Eiseman-Sanchez Tanner

Reise’s talk is called “Baba Yaga and the Dark Forest: Engendering Truth and Wildness at the Thresholds”

Mythologist Martin Shaw has written that “myth is a wild way of telling the truth.” In these challenging times, both truth and the wild—in ourselves and the natural world—are endangered. Might the old stories be a way to preserve them and find our way forward? With their symbolic images and archetypal figures, myths are doorways to the collective unconscious. They are the voices of wild nature and the ancestors telling us who we are and how to be in the world even when we seem to have severed our connections to them.

Echoes of mythic figures are everywhere—embedded in pop culture, media and merchandise—reminding us that they are still present and can’t be silenced. One such figure that seems to be appearing is Baba Yaga, a wild witch of the woods in Slavic cultures. Depicted as an old woman or hag, her ambiguity, association with natural cycles, and status as a psychopomp inhabiting threshold locations suggest a connection with more ancient goddess traditions and an ecological consciousness. Perhaps her image shows up because it is time to listen rather than attempt to control and contain, to risk the unknown of apprenticeship with truth and wildness.

About Reise

Reise Eiseman-Sanchez Tanner is a PhD student focused on the practices of decolonial depth psychology, ecopsychology, and applied mythology at the crossroads of women’s spirituality, Indigenous traditions, and liberatory methods. Her research positions birthwork as sacred activism and mothering in feminist discourse while exploring archetypes of the Feminine, centering what has been marginalized, and finding ways to reconnect with the natural world. She is also a mother, storyteller, seasoned doula, perinatal educator, Certified Empowerment Coach, Maya Abdominal Therapy practitioner, and creator of multiple group programs who has attended hundreds of births and supported thousands of people through initiations and life cycle events.

2022 Mythologium program