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Jo Carson
Jo Carson graduated from the UCLA Film School with a BA and MFA in Film Production. She worked for 25 years in the film industry as a camera person, during part of which time she also served as president of "Behind the Lens", a Los Angeles-based association of professional camera women. Her camera work may be seen in Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, in various installments of The Matrix, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Star Trek. She has won two Clio Awards for her lighting and camera work in commercials. In addition to Dancing With Gaia, Jo's directing work includes two documentaries, A Dance for the Goddess, and the award winning Himalayan Pilgrimage. She lives in the woodland forests of Northern California, where she calls on the faeries and imagines merging with waterfalls.
Director's Statement
Dancing With Gaia is about the nexus of earth energies, sacred sexuality and the return of the goddess as Gaia. It has taken twenty years to create. Its' message is timeless, but uniquely appropriate to our time. Dancing With Gaia features the insights of authors, teachers and mystics whose lives are dedicated to the earth and the Goddess. I believe this film makes available their most important perceptions about how to connect with our earth and the larger cosmos in a spiritual and physical way. I traveled throughout Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, Greece, Malta, Crete, Turkey and the US to shoot imagery of ancient sacred sites. For me, this was partly a personal pilgrimage; but it was also an opportunity to share with others the powerful beauty of these places of earth centered religion. Dancing With Gaia is an interweaving of deeply magical places with the words of these profound teachers.
Fred Charles-McLaren Adams
Born in 1928, Fred Adams was one of the first people in recent times to celebrate the Goddess in art, poetry and ritual. He grew up in the foothills suburb of Altadena, Southern California. Fred showed an early talent for drawing, and as a youth was inspired to make innumerable sketches of the Madonna and child. Educated at Stanford in pre-med studies, he was drafted to the army and made an officer; at which point he made a successful vow to never issue a direct command.
Returning to college, he had a life-changing vision of the Goddess one day in 1956 as he walked across his college campus. From this profound event (he calls it his "thunderbolt experience"), he was inspired to found a the Hesperides Fellowship, a Goddess and nature worship group which he eventually incorporated in 1967 under the name of "Feraferia," a joining of two Greek words meaning celebration and wildness.
For about eight years Feraferia published a newsletter called "Korythalia", meaning a branch of the Maiden, featuring Fred's art and ideas, and that of many other contributors to Feraferia, especially Svetlana Butyrin, Richard Stanewick and Jon Beggs. In the early '70, Fred and Oberon (then Tim) Zell envisioned a pan-pagan support group; Fred designed up some flyers and invitations, and the Council of Themis was born.
Fred and his life partner Svetlana moved to Nevada City, CA in the '90s, but continued to create art and ritual. They sponsored a Reunion of the Council of Themis at their home which was well attended and fun for all. Sadly, Fred succumbed to an aggressive form of melanoma in August, 2008; Lady Svetlana followed him in death a year and a half later.
The original Feraferia has continued in Northern California (see https://feraferia.org/), and has influenced two Feraferia-inspired groups, one in New Mexico and one in Amsterdam. Most of Fred's collected books and writings are in a Feraferian library now, where others can research and become inspired by some of the same sources that were so important to Fred. An art historian and archivist has collected museum-grade digital copies of most of Fred's art, so that it will be more accessible to all in the future. A number of Fred's paintings can be seen now, along with a time-line of Feraferia, on Facebook (see https://www.facebook.com/Feraferia#)
North America:
https://feraferia.org/joomla//
Europe:
www.phaedrus.dds.nl/fera.htm
Notes
Much can be found on the internet about the early work of Fred and his group, and 10 years of copies of his beautifully illustrated newsletter, Korythalia, are archived in the Fred Adams/Feraferia Collection at the University of California Santa Barbara's American Religion Collection; contact: gartrell@library.ucsb.edu
Also, The Church of the Hermetic Sciences has republished a beautiful edition of Fred's gently erotic "Nine Royal Passions of the Year: Seasonal Celebrations of Cosmic Love Play" which is available for purchase at feraferia.org
Francesca De Grandis
Francesca De Grandis, author of Be a Goddess! (Harper San Francisco) and The Modern Goddess' Guide to Life: How to be Absolutely Divine on a Daily Basis (Sourcebooks), is the founder of Faerie Nation, a global village of wild mystics, poets, clowns, and other healthily-mad folks. De Grandis teaches Faerie shamanism for the Goddess's children. She also offers Another Step, a curriculum for people of any faith (or happy lack thereof) who want to live their core truths and desires 100%. Her classes are tele-seminars, a simple technology whereby individuals around the world participate in class simply by dialing the phone. No computer or special equipment is needed.
Francesca's song White Lady Goddess Invocation is used in Dancing With Gaia, and is on her music CD, Pick The Apple From The Tree. The CD is available at www.outlawbunny.com
NOTE: Francesca prefers phone calls over emails; her number is:
814-337-2490 (no texts)
outlawbunny@outlawbunny.com
Web Site
www.well.com/user/zthirdrd/index.htm
Notes
Francesca has physical difficulty with keyboards and vastly prefers phone calls!
Dr. Serena Roney-Dougal
Serena Roney-Dougal did a PhD thesis in Parapsychology at Surrey University. There are only about 50 people in Britain who have this qualification. She has had over 30 years of study and experience in scientific, magical and spiritual explorations of the psyche, has lectured and taught courses, seminars and workshops in America, Britain and Europe; and has written numerous articles, both technical and popular, and two books; Where Science and Magic Meet and The Faery Faith. She is a founder of Friends of Bride's Mound and The White Spring Trust. Please contact Serena if you have any questions or if you wish to learn about psychic phenomena, yoga, meditation and related areas. If you would like to book Serena for a lecture, class or workshop, or are interested in buying any of her writings or CDs or tapes, please contact her at the addresses below.
Address
PSI Research Centre 14, Selwood Road Glastonbury, Somerset, BA6 8HN, Britain
serena@psi-researchcentre.co.uk
Web Site
Cerridwen Fallingstar
Cerridwen is a shamanic Witch and Priestess who has taught classes in magic, ritual and metaphysics for thirty years. Her lectures tie psychology, spirituality, history, contemporary issues and politics into an entertaining, enlightening and humorous experience.
Since childhood, Cerridwen has had the ability to time-travel, entering alternate realms and distant times at will through the use of shamanic trance (hypnosis). She has published a book called The Heart of the Fire, a historical novel about Witchcraft in sixteenth century Scotland, and will shortly be publishing a second past-life novel called White as Bone Red as Blood. This novel is set in twelfth century Japan and details the clash between the Heike and Genji clans which ushered in the Samurai period.
Cerridwen was married to Elie Demers for twenty-five years, until his death in 1996. They have a son who has recently graduated from college. She regards her experience of creating a sacred marriage and raising a conscious, healthy young man to be her greatest accomplishments, and while she has studied with spiritual teachers from a wide variety of traditions, including Native American, West African, Tantra, Reiki, Zen, Kundalini Yoga, Wiccan and New Age, she regards her husband and her son as her greatest teachers.
Cerridwen is devoted to synthesizing the best of the old ways with the new, creating magic, ritual and relationships that work. She is a psychic and spiritual teacher who is adept at creating sacred space-within the stone circles and henges, and within the circle of each participant's heart.
Cerridwen offers classes, including a year long Apprenticeship program. She also works as a professional psychic, offering readings and trance journeys (hypnotherapy in a shamanic context). For information on classes, rituals and private sessions or to set up workshops and lectures in your area, please contact her by email.
Cerridwen's Web Site
Richard Feather Anderson
Richard Feather Anderson, B.S. Architecture, Feng Shui Master, is an internationally recognized pioneer in the revival of geomancy, feng shui, sacred geometry, and labyrinths, and is one of the longest practicing geomancers in America. He founded the first comprehensive training program in multi-cultural geomancy and feng shui, was design consultant for the influential Chartres labyrinth replicas at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, taught sacred geometry in their pilgrimage program at Chartres Cathedral in France, and was feng shui advisor for Esalen Institute's sustainability plan. Since the mid-1980's he has studied Feng Shui with Professor Lin Yun, Rinpoche; sacred architecture with Keith Critchlow, Professor Emeritus of the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture, and Earth Mysteries with the world's leading authorities. Richard has taught at Globe Sound Healing Institute in San Francisco, and in the EcoDwelling program at New College of California. Through workshops, feng shui consultations, and building design, Richard continually creates new applications for ancient wisdom to create a more harmonious world. He generously shares his knowledge with passion and humor.
rfa@richardfeatheranderson.com
Web Site:
www.richardfeatheranderson.com
Monica Sjoo
Monica Sjöö died on 8 August 2005, after a long illness and is sadly missed by many people. There were tributes to her in Goddess Alive! magazine, and there is also a tribute from Starhawk online here.
There is also an obituary in the Guardian of Friday 23rd September, 2005.
Monica Sjöö is a radical anarcho/eco-feminist and Goddess artist, writer and thinker involved in Earth spirituality. Born in Sweden in 1938 she has lived mostly in Bristol since the late 1950's and has been active in the Women's Liberation Movement since the 60's. Her paintings are inspired by the veneration in ancient cultures of the Great Mother, the Earth. They have been exhibited throughout Europe and in America. Monica reflects her politics and spirituality not just in her art but also in her writing. She's author of the Great Cosmic Mother, Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (with Barbara Mor) and Return of the Dark/Light Mother, or New Age Armageddon? plus many of articles in newspapers and magazines. She is also an active speaker who has toured many countries expressing her anarcho-feminist philosophies in universities, conferences, festivals and camps.
This conscience is also reflected in Monica's activism, taking part in many campaigns and causes.
As an artist her most famous work is "God giving birth" (1968) which has become a feminist icon because of its meaning and also because of the repression against it as it questions by itself all that this system is based on: patriarchism and racism. This painting depicts God as a Black woman and the human creation as a real birth (A revolutionary painting in back in those days, for she was threatened several times with legal action on the ground of "blasphemy").
Many of her paintings have also been used in books, covers and cards.
- From the Catalogue of One of Her Art Exhibitions
Monica's Web Site
Joan Marler
Joan Marler is the Founder of the Institute of Archaeomythology and is currently its President and Executive Director. She is a Consulting Editor (former Executive Editor) of ReVision Journal, Washington, D.C., and is the editor of The Civilization of the Goddess (1991) by Marija Gimbutas and From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas (1997). She worked closely with Marija Gimbutas as her personal editor from 1987-1994 and lectures internationally on Prof. Gimbutas' life and work. Joan Marler initiated courses in Archaeomythology at two graduate schools in San Francisco: New College of California and the California Institute of Integral Studies where she is a member of the adjunct faculty. From 1975-2001 she taught modern, folk and ethnic dance through Santa Rosa Junior College in northern California. From 1982-1996 she worked as an independent producer and radio journalist for KPFA FM, Berkeley, California.
Address
c/o Institute of Archaeomythology P.O. Box 1902 Sebastopol, CA 95473
jmarler@archaeomythology.org
About Joan Marler on Archeomythology
Cheska Potter
Cheska has been a prolific artist and was the illustrator of a beautiful Tarot pack called Celtic Shaman's Pack by John Matthews and Cheska Potter. In recent years she has retired from public life, and so is not available for teaching at this time. The Celtic Shaman's Pack is out of print, but it directly inspired the newer Wildwood Tarot, which features a similar approach to imagery and interpretation.
Kathy Jones
Kathy Jones is a Priestess of Avalon, a writer, healer, ceremonialist, teacher and initiator. She is the author of many well-loved Goddess books, including her latest Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess as well as The Ancient British Goddess, In the Nature of Avalon and Spinning the Wheel of Ana: A Spiritual Quest to Find the Primal British Ancestors. She is the creator and teacher of 3 year trainings to become a Priestess of Avalon in Glastonbury, England and other advanced priestess courses.
Kathy is the web master/organizer of the internationally famous Glastonbury Goddess Conference. She also teaches Esoteric Soul Healing, based in the teachings of Alice A. Bailey. She is cofounder of the Glastonbury Goddess Temple, the first Goddess Temple in Europe in a thousand years or more, and of the Isle of Avalon Foundation, an esoteric teaching centre. You can find information about her and her work on the web sites below.
Web Sites
www.kathyjones.co.uk
www.goddessconference.com
www.goddesstemple.co.uk
Leila Castle
Leila Castle has studied and taught Sacred Feminine traditions since 1967, when at 16 she became a professional belly dancer, a featured dancer of the legendary Bal Anat company with Jamila Salimpour. After living in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1975 she began traveling to sacred sites, going on to research the Glastonbury Zodiac in Somerset, England 1979-84. There she met and collaborated with pioneers of the British Earth Mysteries including Christopher Castle, with whom she co-directed Spotted Fawn Geomantic Arts in Pt. Reyes, California 1986-90, and John Steele, cofounder of The Dragon Project, with whom she studied and worked closely for many years.
In 1991 she made a pilgrimage to sacred feminine sites in Tibet with Tsultrim Allione. As editor and a contributor she published Earthwalking Sky Dancers - Women's Pilgrimages to Sacred Places, 1996. She is a contributing author to The World of Aromatherapy, 1996, (Rose & Earle), Goddess Traditions and Aromatherapy, and Teonanacatl - Sacred Mushrooms of Vision, 2004, edited by Ralph Metzner. She has continued her love of perfumery by creating natural botanical perfume for over 20 years.
leilacastle@earthlink.net
Leila Castle on Facebook
Alex Champion, Ph.D.
Alex Champion received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and practiced science for over 20 years. His interested shifted to sacred geometry, more appropriately known as natural geometry, in the 1980's. He started making labyrinths and symbolic mazes into earthworks in 1987, and founded his business EARTH SYMBOLS. Being an amateur gardener all his life, it became natural for him to transform earthworks into sculptured gardens. This type of garden fits in with his naturalist philosophy, where the earthworks are in harmony with the environment.
He applies the principles of sacred geometry and geomancy in his designs and work. As an experienced dowser, he uses dowsing to look for energy lines before, during and after each earth symbol is constructed.
During the past 13 years, Alex has made over 70 installations in the U.S., representing 30 different symbolic designs. He has constructed more than 40 earthworks, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area and Mendocino County in California.
Dr. Champion lectures on mazes, labyrinths, and other symbols. He speaks to the history of labyrinths and mazes, the concept of the labyrinth, sacred geometry, archetypal symbols, his research on subtle energies and stories of his work. He has been a regular speaker at the annual West Coast Conference of the American Society of Dowsers since 1988, where he annually puts up one or two labyrinthine designs for the attendees to experience. He has dowsed and built five labyrinths and symbols located on his property in Mendocino County.
abchampion71@gmail.com
Web Site
www.earthsymbols.com
Jill Smith
Born in London, Jill trained as an actress at RADA, and did Performance Art in partnership with Bruce Lacey; evolving through science fantasy and alchemy, the performances were spectacular, largely outdoor, ceremonial and ritual celebrations of the turning cycles of earth and cosmos. Her wonderful costumes were a form of living sculpture, worn to evoke the spirits and energies of the elements and forces she was honoring. The performances were at venues all over Britain; and sometimes alone at ancient sites - the documentation of these being later exhibited with installation and performance at major exhibitions.
Moving to an old farm in Norfolk and living the real cycles of nature for the first time, Jill realized that her performances had been a self-initiation into her woman-magic and deep Goddess spirituality, and there she received profound teachings from all aspects of nature. She made several lengthy landscape journeys, including "Awakening" in 1982 from Lands End to the Hebrides and "The Gipsy Switch" - a year-long journey round England, Wales and Ireland in 1984-85. In Australia in 1984, she spent a month at Uluru which profoundly clarified her understanding of the inter-relatedness of cosmos, humans and earth and the patterns they weave together. She settled for ten years in the Hebrides, where she honored the turning cycles at the ancient sites and the sacred landscapes of those magical islands. The Ancestors there honored her with a deeper understanding of the integration of past, present and future. Her high spiritual experiences were mellowed by the day-to-day, year-by-year tasks of turfing, cutting, drying and getting home the peat for winter fires, and home-educating her youngest child. In 1996 she moved to Glastonbury; needing a time to reflect on the experiences of the previous 20 years, and to write her books. She hopes one day to return to live on the Isle of Lewis.
Jill's Web site
Martin Gregory, Composer
Composer Martin Gregory is also a musician, artist, dowser, and archer. He visits ancient sacred sites for inspiration, composing music to celebrate precincts of mystery, memory and power. Originally from England, the landscape of Celtic Britain excites his creative imagination. His inspiration comes from the stories, the buildings, the undulations of the land, and the haunting impressions collected during many journeys to ancient landscapes and sacred places in Britain and France. In Medieval Cathedrals he hears sacred geometry echoing the mathematical foundations of music itself. His compositions deftly craft memory, passion, and spirit of place into music which is meditative yet lively, moving and transformative. Incorporating Celtic, symphonic and jazz motifs, he layers sweeping harmonies and engaging melodies into a musical experience that transports the listener.
Martin has played recitals for the Sacred Space Foundation in Cumbria, England, the American Society of Dowsers, and in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. He performs at art galleries, conferences, festive gatherings and labyrinth walks internationally, and can often be found entertaining for Art Works Downtown Gallery receptions and candlelit labyrinth walks on Winter Solstice. His compositions have been used for meditation, film, and multimedia projects.
He met his wife, Cindy Pavlinac, at Kalamazoo College in Michigan
when they were both earning art degrees over 30 years ago. His company,
Boatload of Dogs, designs highest end digital camera scanning software.
Website: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/martin-gregory/253023335
Magnolia Dawes
Magnolia Dawes' professional voice was heard every day at Venetia Valley School, where she taught first grade for many years. She reports that her first recording job, doing the narration for Dancing With Gaia, was an engaging and rewarding experience! In the past, she sang with The Park Vista Social Club and the Marin Community Chorus. Currently, she sings with The Starlings, and the Marin Urban Harmony Acapella singers. Magnolia loves recording and hopes to branch out to dialect work or Foley work.
Clare Hedin
Clair's statement: I create and sing songs to awaken our hearts, to affirm our lives and to bring us together .Singing is, for me, a sacred act of communion and celebration. It has the power to alter, to transfigure. When I sing, I experience immense gratitude, joy and vitality...feeling completely alive, married in my heart, body and soul, to Spirit. I notice that, as I sing, people around me seem to remember who they are, they also connect to their joy, their pain, their humanity, to each other and to their beauty. Something happens. A collective is born. Suddenly we all belong.I feel that life is a creative opportunity, that it is our gift to take it upon ourselves to find out what brings us joy and to pour our energy fully into it...there is an actual responsibility in its' fulfillment. This is, to me, a creative meditation to undertake with deep focus and awareness and, as it invites us in, we can become more and more aware of ourselves. As such it is a vital contribution to world peace and harmony...because as we continue to satisfy this calling to know ourselves, our complexity dissolves and we become one with all that is, over and over again.
Come join me on a journey, your journey, our journey. Check out my appearances for an opportunity for us to come together, to sing, to listen...to connect.
Upcoming appearances and more info are at my website:
Cindy Pavlinac
Cindy A. Pavlinac is a fine art photographer who specializes in images which convey the beauty, mystery, and power of place. She works on location throughout Europe and North America photographing ancient sanctuaries and modern expressions of the sacred. A multimedia presenter and exhibiting artist since 1974, her images have won numerous awards and appeared in over 500 publications, including Time Magazine's Pictures of the Year 2002, Martha Stewart TV, and as Principal Photographer in the books Labyrinths and Sanctuaries of the Goddess. Her Sites of Spirit and Grace Photo Library has 45,000 original images, and she creates site specific interactive installations for labyrinth walk events and overnight Dream Quests, projecting hundreds of images onto 50 foot hanging silk veils.Cindy earned a Masters Degree in Arts and Consciousness Studies focusing on the use of art and dance for healing in ancient cultures, and a B.A. in Fine Art Photography, minoring in astrophysics, with foreign study in Athens and Rome in archaeology. She is Certified as a Veriditas Labyrinth Facilitator and Institute for Movement Psychology Instructor. She has been visiting special places ever since Apollo hollered at her in Delphi in 1977, continually striving to bridge the ancient with the modern, and to inspire people through images, words, music, and performance.
She travels the world and especially the sacred sites with her musician husband, Martin Gregory.
Email: CindyP@ sacred-land-photography.com
Website: https://www.capavlinac.com/