Executive Director
Representative of the Planning Committee
Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang
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Coordinators/Speakers/Participants/Presenters
Rev. Marjean Bailey (Maine, USA)
My name is Marjean (a combination of Margaret and Jean a friend of my mother had used). I grew up in Pittsburgh. PA, went to Allegheny College and on to Union Theological Seminary, not because I wanted to be a minister but because I wanted to study Theology with Reinhold Neibuhr. Met my husband there and we were married in 1954. We went to Germany and Switzerland for four years; while he got at doctorate and I had two children. Came back to Colorado College for three years and another child. Went to Kenya for four years where he taught New Testament to men studying for the ministry. We were terrible missionaries! But we had life altering experiences. Came back to U. of Michigan in 60’s and 70’s where I began to realize that the feminine had been greatly damaged. We adopted an African American son. In the late 70’s I was in the ordination process in the Episcopal Church to modernize the educational offerings. My husband died in ’80 so my life changed. As a priest from ’82 until 2003 I served in the church in MA. and NH, building a church from bottom up, which was fascinating, creative and wonderful. When ordained I asked what I was bringing to the church as a woman that was different from a man and special. This has led me all sorts of places and themes including lots of travel and study of the Black Madonna and the ancient Goddess tradition. The church is on the whole not very interested, particularly not interested in achieving inclusive language. It is my belief that if we do not include the feminine mother at a very deep level in our understanding and being we shall never solve either the violence problems or the environmental problems in our society or world. I am looking forward to more learning in south Korea in June.
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Mary Ann Columbia (U.S. East Coast Coordinator)
MaryAnn Columbia is an Obstetric Nurse and Holistic Healer at Massachusetts General Hospital, an academic teaching hospital and an international birthing center in Boston, MA. MaryAnn’s model of care is guided by Western academic evidence based and mind/body practice as well as a spiritual mosaic of traditional healing practices which include; Korean and Eastern energy healing, yoga, principles of Q’ero/Andean shamanism, Buddhism, Sanskrit mantra therapy, meditation and interfaith clinical spiritual care. I believe that I am a healing bridge or conduit for integration of East and West, Feminine and Masculine, academic and metaphysical, ancient and modern. I believe that we are co-creating the future of our planet with every birth.
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Eleanor Decker (CA, USA)
Eleanor Decker teaches at several schools in the Valley of the Moon. She plays guitar and sings with children, teaching them songs about peace, loving the earth and cross-cultural understanding. She has published three cds of children’s music and one children’s book. After graduating from Wellesley and Colombia, she and her husband headed west and raised five children in Marin County and on a small farm in Sonoma County (Northern California). She spent many years leading hikes for children on a Audubon nature preserve near her home. Eleanor directs the Valley of the Moon Threshold Choir, who sing songs of comfort and peace at the bedsides of those who are dying.
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Jayne DeMente (U.S. West Coast Coordinator)
Jayne Marie DeMente received a Masters Degree in Religion and Philosophy from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, with a specialty in Women’s Spirituality. She attended Antioch University Los Angeles, as an undergraduate – the emphasis of her studies was psychology, with a speciality in moral development. She spent her youth in the field of entertainment and is the daughter of home maker and educator Jeanne Peterson DeMente and Evangelist, William Thomas DeMente. She is also the founder/director of Women’s Heritage Project and Spiritual Cultural Arts Endowment Program, which gives grants and scholarships for women’s research topics, Co-hosts the online radio program Creatrix Media Live! and has created Harlots Film Consortium. She has written a textbook, Feminine Reformation; a goddess meta narrative – Volume I and Matreya; the return of the dark goddess, a rock opera.
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Dr. MAG (Mary Ann Ghaffurian, Australia/New Zealand Coordinator)
Creator of Primordial Psychology and researcher of the archeology of human consciousness. Well regarded in the fields of human consciousness, spirituality, energy medicine and the psychotechnologies by which we have lost and can regain our implicate awareness, with the wisdom of history and memory restored.
Dr Mary Ann trained in Australia first in visual art and psychology, working analytically in Mental Health before turning to publishing, managing visual and editorial contracts for international publishers. During the publishing decade, she gained certification and worked within the emerging wellness industry, continuing her involvement in the physical, mental health and human unfoldment movement.
Lecturing and producing written course and video material on Images from Psychoanalytical Perspectives for Deakin and La Trobe Universities, Melbourne, Dr Ghaffurian completed a postgraduate BEd Hons in anthropology, psychology, culture and consciousness. This led to coursework MA, before transferring to Doctoral research in The Modes and Structures of Human Consciousness. Expanding the metaphysics and exploration of the depth psychology of Carl Jung, Julian Jaynes and Jean Gebser, the anthropological questions of Marija Gimbutas, the religious search of Elaine Pagels, the alchemic world of the Renaissance, and the ancient systems of the East and Near East, she asked the questions: “If there is a nightmare of history and consciousness from which this planet is trying to awake, and be transformed out of,, why can’t we just wake up?” She graduated in 2003.
With the opening of the Energy Medicine Clinic, of which she is co-Director in 2003, Dr Ghaffurian began to apply a synthesis of her experience, knowledge, theory and practice, together with science and spirituality, into a structured process based on her original research PhD, Search for Origin, an Enquiry into the Metaphorical Mind-Space Container; Alchemic Vessel of Nightmare and Awakening. Several books are being prepared for publication. She resides in Melbourne, Australia.
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Anne Hilty, PhD, is a cultural health psychologist with interests in cultural preservation, sustainable development, social inclusion, gender equality, and trauma resolution in post-conflict societies. A native of New York, Dr. Hilty has lived in Korea since 2005 and now resides on Jeju Island, where she is affiliated with Ieodo-Sana cultural organization as a social science researcher. She has published more than 100 articles on Jeju culture and is lead author of “Jeju Island: Reaching to the Core of Beauty” [2011; Korea Foundation series]. Currently, she is developing a book about Jeju’s goddess mythology in collaboration with Jeju mythologist Kim Soonie, and a series of articles on Jeju shamanism with Jeju culture researcher Hong Sunyoung.
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Bong-Jun Kim (Korea Co-organizer)
Artist, Sculptor, Founder of the Art Museum of Ancient Future Myths, Wonju: Korea.
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Vana Kim Hansen, Ed.D. (Korea, Brazil, and USA)
Vana studied art and fashion design, in Sao Paulo, Brazil; studied western and eastern philosophy at University of Toronto, obtained Master’s degree from University of Chicago, obtained Doctoral degree in Philosophy of Education from Harvard University.
Ever since she was a child and a refugee in the Korean War, her primary interest has been connecting with the Divine. Her life-long pursuit is restoring the mystery of cocreative relationships between couples, individuals, groups and nations. Her 10 years of marriage to Eric Hansen was a happy manifestation of her dream of a divine marriage. Their home Laughing Dragons Lodge (a timber frame home built by an Amish master carpenter in an Asian Ozark style) was a temple to which all were invited for a spiritual regeneration. Since Eric passed away in 2010, Vana continues to offer her personal awakening coaching to people around the world to sharpen their sense of mystery of co-creation based on divine self awareness.
Vana is a free thinker, visionary alchemist, healer, catalyst, spiritual revolutionary, cocreation life artist, film maker, peace missionary. A lover of the Divine.
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Dr. Sarah Milledge Nelson (CO, USA)
Sarah Milledge Nelson, PhD is an archaeologist/Anthropologist who specializes in East Asia, especially Korea and China, where she has done much of her archaeological fieldwork. “The Archaeology of Korea,” “Shamans and the Origin of States,” and “Gender in Archaeology” are among her authored books. Edited books include “Ancient Queens” and “Handbook of Gender in Archaeology.” She is a John Evans Distinguished Professor at the University of Denver, and was presented with a Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award in 2011. Her most recent project, at the site of the “Goddess Temple” in Niuheliang, China, was funded by the National Geographic Fund for Exploration and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Her novels about Korea and China are distributed by Left Coast Press.
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Lydia Ruyle
Lydia Ruyle is an artist, author, scholar emerita of the Visual Arts faculty of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado where The Lydia Ruyle Room for Women’s Art was dedicated in 2010. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, a Master of Arts from UNC and has studied with Syracuse University in Italy, France, Spain, and with the Art Institute of Chicago in Indonesia.
She works regularly at Santa Reparata International School of Art in
Florence, Italy and Columbia College Center for Book and Paper in
Chicago. Her research into sacred images of women has taken her around the globe. For twenty years, Ruyle has led women’s pilgrimage journeys to sacred places. Ruyle creates and exhibits her art and does workshops throughout the U.S. and internationally. Since 1995, her Goddess Icon Spirit Banners, which made their debut at the Celsus Library at Ephesus, Turkey, have flown in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, France, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, Iceland, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica, Japan, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, China, Cambodia and the U.S. spreading their divine feminine energies.
A book about her work, Goddess Icons Spirit Banners of the Divine Feminine, was published in 2002. Turkey Goddess Icon Spirit Banners of the Divine Feminine was published in Istanbul in 2005. Ruyle welcomes inquiries and dialogue at:
LYDIA RUYLE
2101 24th Street
Greeley, Colorado 80631
Phone: 970-352-1643
EMail: LYDIARUYLE@aol.com
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Mr. Ryu Tae Hee
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World Section Coordinators
USA/Canada: Jayne DeMente and MaryAnn Columbia
Australia/New Zealand: Dr. MAG (Mary Ann Ghaffurian)
Korea: Dr. Vana Kim Hansen, Mr. Ryu Tae Hee, Mr. Bong-Jun Kim