Future Primitive

Osprey Orielle Lake, MA is an artist, writer, and lifelong advocate of social and environmental justice issues. She is the Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus and on the governing Board of Praxis Peace Institute. She is the Founder/Artist of the International Cheemah Monument Project, creating 18 foot bronze sculpture monuments for locations around the world, where people can ponder a better future for the earth and humanity. Her themes concern new cultural narratives and the way public imagery and stories either enhance or distance our relationship with the Earth. Osprey studied Ancient History and Biology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon where her focus was on an Ecological Impact Study of the Oregon river system. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz where her reports on the use of phenoxy herbicides and alternative methods for pest management played a central role in Santa Cruz County’s re-evaluation of herbicide use. She received her MA in Culture and Environmental Studies from Holy Names University in Oakland, California. Her recent book, Uprisings for the Earth: Reconnecting Culture with Nature (2010), delves into a new kinship with nature while acknowledging the treasures of urban life and the unique stake each person has in resolving critical and timely challenges.

www.ospreyoriellelake.com

Orielle speaks with Joanna about reconnecting with Nature in urban life, the balance between high technology and hand-made things, women leadership and climate situation, indigenous wisdom and partnership model, Nature as teacher, open to the beauty and awe of the “big conversation”, Frau Holle and other female archetypes of Nature, art and environmental awareness, honoring the rights of the Earth…

Music:”Sanza” (from Echoes Of The Forest – Music of the Central African Pygmies)

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Tim Ward is the author of the newly released Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess. This is the first book that explores the Goddess from an explicitly male perspective, and how the loss of the feminine divine has affected men and women’s relationships. Tim believes it is in men’s enlightened self interest to work together with women to move beyond patriarchy, and this is the conversation he will engage his audiences in as he shares his experience of exploring Goddess sites and ruins of the ancient Europe throughout 2006-07.

Tim is the author of three previous books: Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess, Arousing the Goddess: Sex and Love in the Buddhist Ruins of India (where he first encountered the Goddess) What the Buddha Never Taught (about life in a Thai Monastery), and the Great Dragon’s Fleas (his search for living Bodhisattvas). He has lectured in colleges and institutions across North America, and all of his books have been used as texts in various schools and universities. Tim has a degree in Philosophy from the University of British Columbia, in his native Canada.

Tim now lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his wife and their two children where he teaches communications courses for international development organizations in Washington D.C. and globally. (See www.intermediact.com for this very different side of his professional life).

http://www.timwardsbooks.com/

Tim speaks with Joanna about his life-changing experiences with the archetypes of the Goddess and the rising awareness of our interconnectedness with the Earth, “what the Buddha never taught”, a new non-patriarchal relationship between fathers and sons, our responsibility in the creation of a new ecological society…

Music: “Prayer to Goddess Saraswati – Raga Kalavati”  by Pt. Shivkumar Sharma

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An award winning writer, Teri is the author/co-author of ten non-fiction books, including The Fiery Muse: Creativity and the Spiritual Quest (Random House of Canada) and one for young adults, The Canadian Junior Green Guide (McClelland & Stewart). Written in conjunction with the highly respected environmental watchdog, Pollution Probe, it became a Canadian best-seller.

After completing two books on the environment, Teri began to focus much of her writing on topics related to creativity and contemporary spirituality, subjects of deep personal interest to her. Teri first began studying yoga in her twenties in Paris with a teacher who had lived in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram for more than twenty years. Several years later she traveled to India to meet Gopi Krishna – considered by many to be the world’s leading authority on kundalini. Since then she has been a student of the philosophy behind yoga and has been involved in researching the link between creativity, inspiration, and mystical experience. Both her latest book, The Divine Feminine Fire: Creativity and Your Yearning to Express Your Self (Dreamriver Press), and The Fiery Muse deal with this topic; she has also written a number of articles and spoken widely on the subject.

Her workshops on creative writing and the link between creativity and spirituality have met with great success, and she now divides her time between leading workshops and writing.

She is an active member of PEN Canada, the Writers’ Union of Canada, and the Institute for Consciousness Research, and she was one of the founders of the Kundalini Research Network in the United States.

http://www.teridegler.com/

Teri speaks with Joanna about the serpent power as an evolutionary force of transformation, longing & fear, Shakti/Shekinah/Sophia, creativity and the Divine Femenine…

Introductory music: ”Amazon Beginnings”

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‘s unusual path focuses on the hand-held frame drum, the world’s oldest known drum. For fifteen years, she researched the history of this drum in religious and healing rites in the ancient Mediterranean world culminating in her book, When The Drummers Were Women. Layne has been featured in many music festivals including the Touch Festival in Berlin, Seattle Bumbershoot Festival, the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, Tambores do Mundo in San Luis, Brazil, as a soloist at the World Wide Percussion Festival in Salvador, Brazil. Her recordings include: The Wave of Bliss, Invoking the Muse, Trance Union, Since the Beginning, and she has two instructional videos: Rhythmic Wisdom and A Sense of Time.

Layne speaks with Joanna about her music…and the spiritual tradition of women drummers and her resurgence today / yoga of sound / the ancient Mysteries / Kashmir Shaivism: Doctrine of vibration / musical experiences in Brasil, Cyprus… www.layneredmond.com

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Anne Baring is a writer and retired Jungian analyst, is author and co-author of five books including The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, The Mystic Vision, The Divine Feminine, and a book for children, The Birds Who Flew Beyond Time. Anne’s website www.annebaring.com explores the deeper issues facing us at this crucial time of choice.

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Glenys Livingstone is the author of PaGaian Cosmology, Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Glenys’ doctoral research at the University of Western Sydney in the School of Social Ecology was an experiential study of the three phases of ‘Goddess’ – Virgin, Mother, Crone – as Creative Cosmological Dynamic.

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Riane Eisler is an eminent social scientist, attorney, social activist and best known as author of the international bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, hailed by Princeton anthropologist Ashley Montagu as “the most important book since Darwin’s Origin of Species“. She is also president of the Center for Partnership Studies, dedicated to research and education.

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Canadian-born author of books on spiritual/travel literature including Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess.

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Joanna Harcourt-Smith interviews Vicki Noble, feminist shamanic healer, author, scholar and wisdom teacher.

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