25th Annual Jungian Conference
The Wisewoman Archetype
In the Culture and Collective Unconscious
featuring
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.
best selling author of The Tao of Psychology,
Goddesses in Everywoman, and Gods in Everyman
also
an afternoon workshop
The Remarkable Hildegard of Bingen
presented by
Nancy Fierro, Ph.D.
Saturday, April 18, 1998
8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Chapman University,Argyros Forum 206
333 North Glassell, Orange, California
Morning Keynote Address
The Wisewoman Archetype In the Culture and Collective Unconscious
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.
Two significant events are about to intersect: the millennium approaches and a huge generation of women’s movement-empowered women are entering the third phase of their lives. Some forty million American women will turn fifty in the few years preceding and following the year 2000, joining the generation that began the women’s movement, who passed this mark earlier. This personal time of menopausal transition coincides with an archetypal time of expectation that brings an openness to change.
This is a critical mass of women with the potential to change their world and the world, and reclaim and rehabilitate the archetype of the wise-woman. In the major mythologies of the world, these were goddesses of wisdom, who were diminished or demonized, as older women also were. In Greek mythology, it was Hecate, goddess of the crossroad, and goddess of the waning moon, who represented the third face of the trinitarian great goddess. Hearing Jean Shinoda Bolen tell us of Hecate, offers us the opportunity to muse upon what it could mean to have this archetype emerge into our individual consciousness and into the culture.
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst in private practice, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California Medical Center, and an internationally known lecturer. She is the author of The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, Ring of Power, Crossing to Avalon, and Close to the Bone. She is currently working on Goddesses in Older Women: The Third Phase of Women’s Lives.
She brings an emphasis on the quest for meaning and the need for a spiritual dimension in life to all aspects of her work, while also taking into account the powerful effects of archetypes within us, and family and culture upon us. She has been an advocate for women, women’s issues, and ethics in psychiatry. She is in two widely acclaimed documentaries: “Goddess Remembered,” the first of the Canadian Film Board’s trilogy on women’s spirituality, and the academy award-winning anti-nuclear documentary, “Women—For America, For the World.” Her words are published in many anthologies and recorded on many audiotapes. She lives in Northern California, practices in San Francisco, and has a son and a daughter.
Afternoon Workshop
The Remarkable Hildegard of Bingen
with Nancy Fierro, Ph.D.
O form of woman, sister of Wisdom, how greatis your glory!
~Hildegard of Bingen
Nine hundred years after her birth, Hildegard of Bingen has re-emerged as one of the most dynamic heroines in our time. Women seeking strong role models have discovered that this 12th-century Abbess has shining relevance in their lives. Born in Germany’s Rhineland, Abbess Hildegard became a brilliant star in the spiritual and intellectual world of her day. A renowned Benedictine leader, mystic, composer, social reformer, poet and author of treatises on theology, natural science and medicine, Hildegard lectured widely in Europe and kings, emperors and popes sought her advice. In this afternoon workshop, we will encounter this wise and gutsy woman who achieved her best work after midlife. The story of her transformation from depression to leadership brings both inspiration and practical help for our own lives.
Nancy Fierro, Ph.D. is a lecturer, author, and concert pianist who has given presentations on Hildegard of Bingen throughout the United States. She will be a keynote speaker at the International Hildegard Network Conference in Salisbury, England in July of 1998 and has accepted an invitation from the Mayor of Bingen to repeat her lecture in Bingen, Germany as part of the 900th anniversary festivities celebrating Hildegard’s birth.
Dr. Fierro published a monograph and audio cassette on the abbess entitled “Hildegard of Bingen and Her Vision of the Feminine.” A concert pianist, she recorded several albums of music by women composers and appears regularly as a pre-concert lecturer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Music Center. Dr. Fierro received her doctorate in music with a secondary area in feminist theology from the University of Southern California and a postgraduate Certificate in Music from the American Conservatory of Fine Arts in France.