Sex, Religion, Power and Politics

Join me and Phyllis Curott tonight as we discuss Modern Paganism, a broad subject, during which we'll share a wide range of thoughts, pet peeves and the hope we believe Goddess and Earth-based Spirituality holds for the future of humanity.  Phyllis will share her social justice activism in the Parliament of the World's Religions, the Women's Task Force, the Women's Speakers Program co-sponsored with Tibed House and the Foundation for Women's freedom and Spirituality she's establishing with like-minded allies.....and much, much more

Tonight I'm pleased to present a Tribute to the Red Tent Movement with several of the facilitators of Red Tents across the United States,.....Alexis, De'Anna, Oceana, Lushanya and Astrid - including the documentary film maker of Things We Don't Talk About, Isadora Leidenfrost. Each of these women has a different relationship to the Red Tent movement and no doubt listeners will identify with one, if not all these women blazing a trail to help women toward health, wholeness, happiness and joy!  Please tune in and listen.

Dr. Stuart Mark Berlin is a self-described mystic who created how own path of Tantric Kabbalah as a response to the losses in his life.  He explains....Tantra means to weave and Kabbalah means to receive and I wove together what I have received which is Jewish mysticism, evolutionary biology, quantum mechanics and neurobiology into a unique and new form of Hieros Gamos or sacred marriage of Elohim.  We'll be discussing Stuart's three books:  Sex Magic for the Bar Mitzvah Boy, Sexual Secrets of Tantric Kabbalah: Making Love and Everywoman a Goddess: Everyman a Hero in Her Service.  We'll delve into his visions from the Elohim, the integration of sexuality and meditation, the brain state of orgasm and a new concept of Elohim or Divinity...and much, much more

With us today is Alexis Martin, Ph.D. student in Women's Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies.  Alexis has been dedicated to Goddess Herstory for over a decade and helps us examine the artifacts and figurines of Malta, where the oldest standing stones on Mother Earth exist.  We'll be discussing discoveries on the small islands off the coast of Sicily, the cloud of male bias in Academia, Marija Gimbutas, and symbology of the artifacts found in the temples and Hypogeum.  Be sure to check out the slide show!

Betsy Chasse is an internationally known author, filmmaker, and speaker.  She's the co-creator of the film What the Bleep Do We Know?! and the author of 3 books, including Tipping Sacred Cows, Metanois - A Transformative Change of Heart and the companion book to What the Bleep...Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality.  She blogs for Huffington Post, Intent.com and other sites and continues to make films exploring human potential.  In our discussion tonight discussing her book Tipping Sacred Cows, we'll ask Betsy when she realized she didn't have it all figured out, the trends or themes discovered about the stories we tell ourselves and see if Betsy believes she has it all figured out now - including what she's learned about love! Crossing the threshold, Sharon Riegle Maynard is with us discussing A Mystic's View of Goddess which has us delving into perhaps a different view of Goddess and the Burning Times.  Sharon believes we can stand in our present and look back or we can look at the beginning place and look ahead.  We'll discuss how Sharon's quest to go to the cause of humanity's entrapped state of pain was the beginning of a journey that required the capacity of a Mystic....a she sees herself as a curious one at that!

Astrologer, Cathy Pagano is back with us to deliver the Cosmic Story of the moon energies for the coming month..... Followed by internationally known drumming facilitator, Rowan Storm who will discuss the Frame Drum, archetypal women's instrument of the Middle East.  She will discuss the ongoing, continuous women's frame drum traditions throughout a huge geographic territory based on women's agrarian practides for millennia.  We'll talk about her new symmetrical playing method which introduces a new stroke and playing modality which promotes equal creative expression by both hands, and balances the rational and intuitive capacities of both brain hemispheres....Rowan will explain how waking up the non-dominant hand and the corresponding brain function is like opening a box of treasure which has been hidden for lifetimes.  

Scholar Laura Miller will discuss with us Female Driven Culture in Japan, including examples of the Himiko (Shaman Queen of Ancient Japan or Wa) boom, hunting for female empowerment/spirituality spots, Cat cafes, Otome road where there are shops for female manga and costume play fans and demographic power: male beauty work and herbivore men. Laura Miller is Ei’ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has published widely on Japanese culture and language, including topics such as English loanwords in Japanese, elevator girls, the beauty industry, girls’ slang, self-photography, and divination. She teaches courses on Japan and linguistic anthropology and works to promote Japan Studies through a variety of campus and community programming. She is the author or co-editr of four books on Japan. Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics (University of California Press, 2006), Bad Girls of Japan (Palgrave, 2005) Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan (University of California Press, 2011), and Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2013).    

Beloved Foremother, Anne Baring, author of some of the books you probably have in your library, The Divine Feminine and Myth of the Goddess,  will join me this morning at a special time as she calls in from Across the Pond to discuss her new book, The Dreams of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul.  We'll chat about her definition of the Divine Feminine, Her Resurgence, and Anne's thoughts about the imperative of elevating the consciousness of humanity and rejecting our patriarchal obsession with domination and exploitation.  

Opening the show tonight we have Safron Rossi, Ph.D. a scholar whose writing and studies focus on archetypal psychology, western astrological tradition, goddess traditions and feminist studies.  Our topic tonight is Joseph Campbell and Goddess Mythology as Dr. Rossi edited Campbell's new book Goddesses, Campbell's first book focused on Goddess mythology. Next up, Dianne Collins, author of Do You Quantum Think? New Thinking That Will Rock Your World.  We'll find out what Quantum Thinking is all about and how we can create better lives using this method of thinking.  We'll talk about "allowing,"  "intent," and "infinite possibility" among other things including how to maintain peace of mind in chaotic and uncertain times.

Opening tonight's show is Cathy Pagano, giving us her interpretation of the Cosmic Story - what the new and full moon energies have in store for us in the coming month. Next up tonight is Heather Mendel, author of The Syzygy Oracle:  Transformational Tarot and the Tree of Life - Ego, Essence and the Evolution of Consciousness bringing together art, calligraphy, myth and mysticism.  Tonight we'll discuss what the Tarot, Kabbalah and the Sacred Feminine have in common....our heroic journey to conscious evolution.  We'll talk about "coincidence", the mystery of the Hebrew letters and sacred geometry and much, much more.

At the top of the hour Sr. Greta Ronningen of the Community of Divine Love will talk about the Spirituality of the Beguines, a 13th century Women's Movement.  With this being Women's History Month, let us improve the dearth of women's history out there be shedding light on this group of women living love both in mystical union and in the world, risking death to speak and write their experiences.  Discover how they can inspire us today. Crossing the threshold into the second half of the show Gus diZerega is back with us discussing his newest book, Faultlines: The Culture War & the Return of the Divine Feminine, an indepth study of the crisis in American society and government from a Pagan perspective and how the return of the Divine Feminine offers answers to our many problems.

Contemporary bard, Teresa Moorehouse, creatively called a  narrative sculptor of multicultural women's stories chats with me about her first book, Soul Stories, about how stories are vehicles toward awareness.  We'll look deeply into how we acquire knowledge through the use of stories and what symbols such as the hand represents, why the tree of life represents our hopes and dreams and we'll explore the lions (how we face challenges)  - how we feed the lions and what happens when we ignore them.   Teresa will no doubt gift her with some of her stories!  

Glynda-Lee Hoffman, author of The Genesis Code: Your Key to Unlocking Hidden Genius delves into the magic and patterns of energy within the Hebrew Letters.  Hoffman believes the letters form a complex code of information about the fundamental properties of energy at the heart of all life in the universe.  She also realized this info represented a revelation that pertains to the human brain that was historically understood and experienced by Abraham, Moses, Jesus and others.  Tune in and learn more about the Qabalah as a hidden code within the text of Genesis, who Adam and Eve really were, and why she believes the Garden of Eden was a story about the brain - and what all this means to us today! In the second half of the show we have with us, Eileen Workman, author of Sacred Economics:  The Currency of Life discussing her spiritual awakening that led her to quit her job as a financial manager when she saw her job DID NOT SERVE LIFE.  She examined the biggest problems facing the global economy and knows how we might change our economic system.  She'll give us ideas about what individuals can do to protect themselves.

At the top of the show we have with us Cathy Pagano, an astrologer, dream-worker, Wisdo Coach and storyteller.  She's the author of Wisdom's Daughters: How Women Can Change the World.  Tonight Cathy is introducing her semi-regular offering The Cosmic Story....here on VSF...combining astrology, storytelling and symbolic language.  Each month the sky speaks to us about how the energy of life is moving and changing and she's going to share it with you, dear listeners. Then....Barbara ThreeCrow  is with us.  Barbara was born into a family of seers, palm readers and spirit communicators, herself having been born with a Caul, indicating a child born with visionary and psychic gifts.  She shares her Medicine Story, a time of great challenge as a spiritual test with unexpected outcomes that changes a person's life.  In our conversation Barbara will share her insights about how we fulfill the original instructions given at birth, the significance and prophecy of the return of the Sacred Feminine and the shattering of patriarchal dominator rule.  We'll explore why women and the indigenous way were always silenced and her recent visions of the Holy Mother, a sign for all humanity.  Learn about the power we hold, understanding ancestral knowledge and energy/frequencies of thought, feeling, prayer, offerings and sacred sound to harmonize the Divine Matrix and the Sacred Web of All Life

Miriam Robbins Dexter, Ph.D., feminist scholar and advocate of Maria Gimbutas' theories, discusses the most important NEW RESEARCH on sacred female display objects -- what they represented to ancient people and  the various manifestations around the world - as well as the little known sacred display female in Catal Hyouck, Turkey and the Chauvet Cave of Forgotten Dreams - and did you know, new findings show the hands in the cave were those of women!