We will serve a meal to those who have purchased a meal prior to the date of the Merlin Stone Memorial.
Cost is $10. Use the payment button to the RIGHT to reserve your meal.
NO REFUNDS!
Last date to order a meal is Sept. 19th. Meals are not Gluten-free and are not Vegetarian.
NO meals will be sold at the Memorial event, so BUY your NOW please. Use that button to the right.
Merlin Stone Memorial
SHOUT OUT TO FLORIDA & THE WORLD!!!
GRAB YOUR FRIENDS AND SHOW UP!!!
We are nearing the time of Merlin Stone’s Benefit Memorial Celebration on September 24, 2011 in Clearwater, Florida.
In an effort to serve the general Goddess community, 200 seats are being set aside for those who would like to attend at no cost. Though we would greatly appreciate any donations you can make to help defray the cost of this event. These 200 general seating seats will be first come-first serve and will not include a meal.
We will also be posting soon about how to reserve a seat and meal with a payment option to pay in advance as soon as we get our system set-up for it right after the Kickstarter ends.
For those who made a donation plus $1 via our Kickstarter Fundraiser, we will have your reserved seating and meal available for you. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbiegrennier/in-search-of-merlin-stone
The Benefit Memorial Celebration will take place at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 2470 Nursery Road, Clearwater, FL 33764. Uupdated information will be posted on this website.
You may also donate to Merlin Stone’s Memorial Fund at the www.MerlinStone.net website. All donations are thankfully welcomed!
Also, for those who cannot attend… we will be providing a live video stream from the memorial out to the Internet. We will begin streaming Merlin Stone’s memorial live at 11:30am on Z Budapest’s Ustream channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/merlin-stone-memorial . Gather your groups or participate individually, but we are working to make sure that the whole world can participate in some way.
We will continue sharing more information with you on the MerlinStone.net website. So, mark you calendars for September 24th!
Posted in Goddess by .
July 8th we’re hitting the road again for a few hours drive to the home of Riane Eisler to interview her for In Search of Merlin Stone. She is the author of The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, and milestone book for women’s spirituality. Will be lovely to capture Riane and Z meeting in person for the first time!
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RIANE EISLER is a social scientist, attorney, and author whose work on cultural transformation has inspired both scholars and social activists. Her research has impacted many fields, including history, economics, psychology, sociology, and education. She has been a leader in the movement for peace, sustainability, and economic equity, and her pioneering work in human rights has expanded the focus of international organizations to include the rights of women and children.
Dr. Eisler is internationally known for her bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, now in 23 foreign editions, including most European languages and Chinese, Russian, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, and Arabic.
Her newest book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics – hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking,” by Peter Senge as “desperately needed,” by Gloria Steinem as “revolutionary,” and by Jane Goodall as “a call for action” – proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and planet.
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Dr. Eisler keynotes conferences worldwide, and is a consultant to business and government on applications of the partnership model introduced in her work.She has spoken at the United Nations, and International venues have included Germany at the invitation of Prof. Rita Suessmuth, President of the Bundestag (the German Parliament) and Daniel Goeudevert (Chair of Volkswagen International); Colombia, invited by the Mayor of Bogota; and the Czech Republic, invited by Vaclav Havel (President of the Czech Republic). |
Other books drawing from her multidisciplinary research include the award-winning The Power of Partnership and Tomorrow’s Children, as well as Sacred Pleasure, a daring reexamination of sexuality and spirituality, and Women, Men, and the Global Quality of Life, documenting the key role of women’s status in a nation’s general quality of life. Her earlier books, drawing from her legal experience, include Dissolution and The Equal Rights Handbook, widely used in the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Riane Eisler was born in Vienna, fled from the Nazis with her parents to Cuba, and later emigrated to the United States. She obtained degrees in sociology and law from the University of California, taught pioneering classes on women and the law at UCLA, and now teaches in the Transformative Leadership Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a founding member of the General Evolution Research Group (GERG), a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and World Business Academy, a Councilor of the World Future Council, and a commissioner of the World Commission on Global Consciousness and Spirituality, along with the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders. She is co-founder with Nobel Peace laureate Betty Williams of the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV), www.saiv.net and president of the Center for Partnership Studies, www.partnershipway.org, dedicated to research and education.
Eisler has written over 300 articles in publications ranging from Behavioral Science, Futures, Political Psychology, The Christian Science Monitor, and The UNESCO Courier to Brain and Mind, the Human Rights Quarterly, The International Journal of Women’s Studies ,and the World Encyclopedia of Peace.
Dr. Eisler is the only woman among 20 great thinkers including Hegel, Adam Smith, Marx, and Toynbee selected for inclusion in Macrohistory and Macrohistorians in recognition of the lasting importance of her work as a cultural historian and evolutionary theorist. She has received many honors, including honorary Ph.D. degrees, the Alice Paul ERA Education Award, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2009 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, and is included in the award-winning book Great Peacemakers as one of 20 leaders for world peace, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King.
Her personal website is www.rianeeisler.com.
Please add your support to this her-storically important project. It is the biggest undertaking for the Women’s Spirituality Movement in the last decade. Your support counts! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbiegrennier/405714144
Rev. Shirley A. Ranck, Ph.D.
Rev. Shirley A. Ranck, Ph.D. is an Accredited Interim Minister for the Unitarian Universalist Association, has been a Unitarian Universalist Minister for over twenty years and is internationally known as the author of Cakes for the Queen of Heaven.
She’s also our next interview on July 1st.
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“I like to think that we are the artists of our own lives, the heroines of our own adventures as we journey. That means to me that the personal is interwoven with the professional as our lives unfold”, says Shirley.
YOUR FAITH HAS MADE YOU WHOLE
by Shirley Ann Ranck
READINGS: Demeter and Kore
adapted from Merlin Stone
The Mysteries of Demeter were known throughout the land. Some tell of winding passageways that the waters had cut deep into the rocks, and women making their way through these damp caves filled with unknown terrors—to recall the darkness that the Maiden must have seen, to recall the fright that the Maiden must have felt. Some speak of the opening at the other end of the darkness, the green and gold of the fields, where wreaths of flowers and myrtle leaves were placed upon each woman as she once again emerged into the wondrous sunshine, to dance and sing on the Rarian Field, the first field in Greece ever to be ploughed and sown, near the Well of Kallichoros where women first danced for Mother Demeter to bring the harvest.
So the memory was kept alive, the memory of the time that Death took the young Maiden to a land beneath the earth, and the Mother grieved and searched. Holding back the rain, parching the summer’s crops, Demeter caused the land to lay in unproductive drought. So frightened were the deities of Olympus that the Maiden was returned to be reunited with Her Mother, and those who loved Demeter joined Her in joyous song and dance to celebrate the coming home. Yet even this joy was dampened by the knowledge that the Maiden had partaken of the pomegranate seeds, some say four, some say six, and for the seeds that were eaten, the Maiden was to return each year to the Land of the Dead—one month for each seed.
So it came to be that the women carried sacred molloi cakes, the honey and sesame that was shaped and baked in the image of that sacred part of the body from which each and every human life emerges. Carrying the sacred molloi that symbolized the arrival upon earth, each year it was remembered that the Maiden must part from Her Mother, yet each year She would return—in the midst of laughing, dancing, singing, celebration.
Please add your support to this her-storically important project. It is the biggest undertaking for the Women’s Spirituality Movement in the last decade. Your support counts! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbiegrennier/405714144
Gloria Orienstein
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Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies
Professor Gloria Orenstein researches women’s studies in contemporary art, literature and culture; ecofeminism in the arts; surrealism; women and surrealism; shamanism and Jewish women artists. Her first book, The Theater of the Marvelous: Surrealism and The Contemporary Stage, paved the way for her pioneering work on the women of surrealism. She has recently written The Reflowering of the Goddess, a feminist analysis of the movement in the contemporary arts that reclaims the Goddess as a symbol of a paradigm shift and a change in our mythos and ethos. More recently she has become a Contributing Editor to FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to critical and creative works in the realms of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, surrealism, myth, folklore and other supernatural genres. She is currently at work on pieces about other women in the surrealist movement in Mexico whose work has, as yet, been unrecognized. She hopes to extend the article on Jewish women artists into a book. Finally, Professor Orenstein plans to write a monograph on Surrealist artist Alan Glass, who will have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City in Fall 2008.
Please add your support to this her-storically important project. It is the biggest undertaking for the Women’s Spirituality Movement in the last decade. Your support counts! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbiegrennier/405714144
Jun 11
23
We interviewed Vicki Noble
Vicki Noble
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We interviewed Vicki Noble the other day for In Search of Merlin Stone, asking her to share with us the impact Merlin Stone’s body of work has had on her own career. We loved what she had to say and think you will enjoy her comments too.
Vicki Noble is a radical feminist healer, author, independent scholar and wisdom teacher who teaches Women’s Spirituality at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Born in 1947 and raised in Iowa, she awakened to the Goddess and Women’s Spirituality on her arrival in Berkeley, California in 1976. Through a ‘shamanic healing crisis’, she opened psychically to the healing, art, yoga, and divination processes that led to the creation of the Motherpeace tarot. Since then she has written several books, including Shakti Woman (a handbook for healers) and The Double Goddess (a history of female shamanism). She has developed a powerful ritual healing process, teaches and lectures internationally, and has led tours of women on pilgrimage to sacred Goddess sites around the world.
Please add your support to this her-storically important project. It is the biggest undertaking for the Women’s Spirituality Movement in the last decade. Your support counts! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbiegrennier/405714144
Ruth Barrett
PLEASE LEND YOUR SUPPORT: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbiegrennier/in-search-of-merlin-stone
Ruth Barrett is an award winning fretted dulcimer recording artist, singer, and songwriter with numerous releases to her credit. She is also an author of Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries: Intuitive Ritual Creations (Llewllyn, 2007) and co-founder of the Temple of Diana, a national Dianic Wiccan tax-exempt religious organization.
Ruth’s compositions are counted among the pioneering musical works in the Goddess Spirituality Movement. For almost three decades she has shared traditional folk music and her original and traditional Goddess songs with audiences throughout the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain.
From 1981-2000, with musical collaborator Cyntia Smith, Ruth co-produced five critically acclaimed recordings: Aeolus, Music of the Rolling World, Deepening, A Dulcimer Harvest, and The Heart is the Only Nation. As a solo artist, Ruth’s 1990 release, Parthenogenesis won an INDIE award from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors in the category of Women’s Music. In 2002, Ruth’s original composition, “Romp of the Canyon Kitties,” was released as the opening track on Masters of the Mountain Dulcimer, Volume Two. In 2003, Ruth released a two-volume CD set The Year is a Dancing Woman: Goddess Chants, Songs and Invocations for the Wheel of the Year. Her song, “Every Woman Born,” is included in the popular CD compilation, The Best of Pagan Music (Serpentine Music, 2004).
Ruth Barrett has performed at numerous venues and festivals nationally and internationally including the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the National Women’s Music Festival, Winter Festival of Acoustic Music, the Harvest Festival of Dulcimers, The Glastonbury Goddess Festival, and Pagan Spirit Gathering. Ruth has directed the Candlelight Concert, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s closing spirituality concert since 1993.
Other credits include Ruth’s transcriptions of Joni Mitchel’s dulcimer arrangements for the songbooks, Hits and Misses (Warner Brothers) with Joellen Lapidus.
Ruth is also an ordained Dianic High Priestess, ritualist, and author of Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries: Intuitive Ritual Creation (Llewellyn 2007). Her writings on women and ritual are included in Daughters of the Goddess, (Wendy Griffin, editor), Lesbian Rites: Symbolic Acts and the Power of Community (Ramona Faith Oswald, editor), and Creating Circles and Ceremonies (Oberon and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart).
Since inheriting Z Budapest’s Los Angeles ministry in 1980, Ruth has taught magic and ritual arts at women’s festivals and conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. She served the Los Angeles Goddess community of Circle of Aradia for two decades before relocating to Wisconsin in 2000 where she co-founded Temple of Diana, a national and federally recognized Dianic religious organization.
With her partner Falcon River, Ruth co-facilitated The Spiral Door Women’s Mystery School of Magick and Ritual Arts, a national Dianic clergy training program.
In 1997, Ruth was honored as recipient of the L.A.C.E. award for outstanding contributions in the area of Spirituality from the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles.
http://www.dancingtreemusic.com
PLEDGE $50
You get a DVD of the film. In addition to this, you get the emailed file of the director talking about some of the interesting events in the filming of In Search of Merlin Stone. You get a big “Thank You” on Twitter and your name on the website. You also get all the updates via email.
KICKSTART IN SEARCH OF MERLIN STONE: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbiegrennier/405714144
Want to attend the Memorial on Sept 24th? Go to our Kickstarter page and pick your support amount that has the $1 plus the amount, those reserve you seats. Space is limited and this is going to be a filmed event with footage included into the documentary. Make her-story by attending! The Women’s Spirituality Movement is coming out for this event in remembrance of our beloved sister Merlin Stone whose contributions to the Movement were monumental. We will honor her and we will honor each other. Be a part of it!
PLEASE LEND YOUR SUPPORT: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbiegrennier/in-search-of-merlin-stone
In Search of Merlin Stone filming production goes to Southern California June 18-20.
Our filming schedule is a little more relaxed than the New York trip was, but again we are interviewing an amazing group of women who all have something wonderful to share about the impact of Merlin Stone’s life and about the other sacred women who have also passed. We will be sharing clips from some of these interviews at the Merlin Stone Memorial Benefit Celebration.
Ava of Goddess Temple of OC
June 18th we travel to The Goddess Temple of Orange County where we will interview Reverend Ava and ask her to speak to the impact that Merlin Stone’s work had upon her life and her calling.
Later that evening, The Goddess Temple of Orange County has graciously offered to allow us to film their evening ritual. This is an important offering because it allows us to share with world a real Goddess ceremony founded in the thealogy that Merlin Stone reclaimed for women’s spirituality. We are very grateful to the Goddess Temple for this gift.
Certainly many women’s groups do not have such a fine temple to worship in, but we feel that The Goddess Temple of Orange County hearkens back to an ancient time when such matriarchal temples did exist and thrive. There are few temples like this in existence. Perhaps documenting its existence will inspire others to create their own Goddess Temple.
For more information, you can visit: www.goddesstempleoforangecounty.com
Miri Hunter Haruach
We’re also interviewing Dr. Miri Hunter Haruach, an Adjunct Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. She is also a Lecturer in the LEAP Program at St. Mary’s College (Los Angeles Campus). Dr. Haruach did her doctoral work on the Queen of Sheba. Through her research, teaching, writing and performing she connected with her ancient ancestral roots by tapping into streams of genetic memory. Taking the Wisdom stories of the Queen of Sheba as well as studying various other Wisdom traditions throughout the world, she re-searched and developed an oracle and meditation system which grounds the individual in the present moment while connecting to the multidimensionality of the Divne, thereby opening the student to an awareness of his/her own unique creativity, strength, freedom and, of course, beauty. http://www.projectsheba.com
As an actress, Miri has toured nationally with her one woman shows “Grandmothers of the Universe” and “The Queen of Sheba? Yes I Am!” She has performed in various stage productions such as Jacques Brel at the Actors’ Ensemble in San Francisco, 15 Minutes of Fem and Comedy Union, both of which ran in Los Angeles. She has also performed with the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival for two consecutive years.
June 19th we will interview Karen Tate, host of the Voices of the Sacred Feminine radio show. (www.KarenTate.com)
An independent scholar, speaker, radio show host, published author, and sacred tour organizer, Karen’s body of work blends her experiences of women-centered multiculturalism evident in archaeology, anthropology and mythology with her unique academic and literary talents and travel experience throughout the world.
We’ve asked Karen to share with all of us the importance and impact of Merlin Stone’s work for her and the people Karen works with.
Also on June 19th, we will catch up with Gloria Orenstein, author of Ecofeminism for which Merlin Stone wrote the foreword. We’ve asked Gloria to share with us what having Merlin writing the forward in her book meant to her. (http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~orenstei/)
Gloria is also promising a good Merlin tale or two!
Professor Orenstein researches women’s studies in contemporary art, literature and culture; ecofeminism in the arts; surrealism; women and surrealism; shamanism and Jewish women artists. Her first book, The Theater of the Marvelous: Surrealism and The Contemporary Stage, paved the way for her pioneering work on the women of surrealism. She has recently written The Reflowering of the Goddess, a feminist analysis of the movement in the contemporary arts that reclaims the Goddess as a symbol of a paradigm shift and a change in our mythos and ethos. More recently she has become a Contributing Editor to FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary feminist journal dedicated to critical and creative works in the realms of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, surrealism, myth, folklore and other supernatural genres.
Our final stop as we head back to Northern California is at the home of Charlene Spretnak.
Since the mid-1980s, all of her books have been an engagement with modernity, its discontents, and the corrective efforts that are arising. She is a co-founder of the Green Party movement in the United States and is a professor of philosophy and religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a graduate institute in San Francisco. In 2006 Charlene Spretnak was named by the British government’s Environment Department as one of the “100 Eco-Heroes of All Time.” (www.charlenespretnak.com)
California Institute of Integral Studies is the school that gave Merlin her honorary Doctorate.
We will bring you more tastes of this goddess-goodness as we progress. Please bookmark this Merlin Stone website and share the link. Help to get the word out about Merlin’s Memorial. Help us to create her-story! Blessed be the life of our beloved sister Merlin!
In Search of Merlin Stone filming production is coming to New York the first week of June.
Our filming schedule is intense, but we are interviewing an amazing group of women who all have something wonderful to share about Merlin Stone’s life and about the other sacred women who have also passed. It’s going to be an emotional journey, and one we will take you on along with us when we release In Search of Merlin Stone on DVD. We will be sharing clips from some of these interviews at the Merlin Stone Memorial Benefit Celebration.
Susun Weed
The first stop is Woodstock. We’ll be at Susun Weed‘s Wise Woman Center from June 3-5 where Z Budapest is doing her Prophetic Oracles of the Goddess workshop. While there we will interview Susun who knew Merlin and had hosted her there many years ago doing the same workshop Z is going to be doing in honor of Merlin. Before we leave that area, we’re running up to Carol Clement‘s Heather Ridge Farm to visit her and get her insights regarding the impact of Merlin’s work.
Kate Millett
June 6th we travel to Poughkeepsie where we will interview feminist and author Kate Millet at her Women’s Art Colony Farm, which is open to the public at various times of the year. While in Poughkeepsie we will also film one of Merlin Stone’s larger art pieces that has survived through the years!
Then, it’s on to Brooklyn that evening, where we are being hosted by the Urban Shaman herself, Donna Henes at MAMA DONNA’S TEA GARDEN AND HEALING HAVEN. We asked Donna to bring together the women who were part of a sacred circle with Merlin and here’s who RSVP’d so far: Cristina Biaggi, Kay Turner, Mary Beth Edelson, Anne Healy and of course Donna herself. What an evening of memories this will be!
Donna Henes
June 7th and 8th we’re in New York City proper. On June 7th we’re starting our day by visiting….
Phyllis Chesler
Our first stop is to the home of Phyllis Chesler who knew Merlin back in the day. Phyllis will have just under gone spinal surgery, but still as political and controversial as ever, she’s insisting she wants to contribute to this project and include her memories of Merlin.
Gloria Steinem
Next we visit the home the woman who is the face of feminism for most of us. We will be interviewing the gracious Gloria Steinem. Gloria agreed to talk about the significance of Merlin’s work as an author influencing the feminist community. We also asked Gloria if she would talk a little about her beloved Willma Mankiller who passed recently.
Margo Adler
Then it’s off to the home of Margo Adler, longtime friend of Merlin Stone, respected Pagan elder and news correspondent to NPR. Margo has some great memories of her beloved Merlin, and we can hardly wait to capture them for all of you on film.
June 8th is our last day in New York if our itinerary stays the same as it is right now. We do have a few more requests for interviews that haven’t been confirmed, like one with radio producer Linda Perry Barr and we’ve even requested a few minutes of time from Yoko Ono. Both of these interviews are yet to be confirmed at this writing.
Mary Beth Edleson
Our first stop on this last day is to the home of artist and goddess feminist, Mary Beth Edelson. We can hardly wait to enter this sacred goddess space filled with Mery Beth’s goddess imagery! Wow!
We are busy preparing for this trip of a lifetime. We will bring you more tastes of this goddess-goodness as we progress. Please bookmark this Merlin Stone website and share the link. Help to get the word out about Merlin’s Memorial. Help us to create her-story! Blessed be the life of our beloved sister Merlin!
