MYTHIC WOMAN DANCES
A Restoration of Psyche Through Story and Movement
This course will be offered as a weekend immersion in Copenhagen Denmark
Sep 17- 19 2021 (details TBA)
and an online course, dates TBA
With Stefana Serafina
All artwork on this page by Autumn Skye
Mythic Woman. We do not have to call her by the same name to recognize her.
Wild or Wise Woman, Bone Woman, Inanna, Wolf Woman, Big Turtle, First Mother, Spider Woman, the Well Maiden, Samodiva, Persephone, Mad Woman, Witch....
In stories and scripture, the Mythic Woman comes in many expressions and faces, but regardless of the oral tradition of her origin, her heirloom is unmistakable––the wild, the instinctual, the intuitive, the earthly and the cyclical, the poetic, the mysterious, the sensuous.
Inside us, she is DNA, both personal and collective, that keeps the codes for what is never-to-be-lost of the feminine earthly spirit–– and she is most easily evidenced in our bodies when we feel, sense, and move with freedom, dancing on the edge between our mythopoetic identity and our mundane lives.
At important intersections of our lives, Mythic Woman finds us to infuse us with a new role, give us a torch to carry, entrust us with the carving out of a new path, induce us into a necessary life-and-death passage, or gives us a new “assignment”. But whatever she conjures up in our lives, her greater mission is one and the same: To make more soul for the world. To put the loose ends together and repair the broken tapestry of a world that has forgotten her but has gone mad without her.
The Series' Invitation
In this series, you will be invited to explore both your longing and your responsibility to revive aspects of the mythic feminine and bring them into the ecosystems of a world starved for her soul and genius– and for yours.
After the popular pilot edition of this series earlier in 2021, Stefana has redesigned it into a deeper and more complete descent into the soul of the mythic feminine– and one's personal myth, adding more time to the sessions as well as an infusion of personal rituals and in-nature soul prompts in-that will be invited in-between live meetings.
The series has two parts, WAKING and EMERGENCE, each consisting of 3 archetypes in 3 sessions.
In each of the sessions, we will weave a web of stories that tell of formative Mythic Woman characters who center a specific role and purpose as carriers of deep feminine psyche. We will "move inside of the story", as we say in this body of work, and you will be guided through unique movement and deep-body® practices to investigate how you uniquely embody the qualities of the respective mythic women, how they inform your soul story at this time, and what specific keys and assignments they have for your personal heroine’s journey forward.
How to Take the Series and What to Expect
We most strongly recommend taking the whole series as a powerful mythopoetic journey in its entirety. If you have taken parts of the series before, we still encourage you to take the whole journey, revisit stories, get a new angle, and let the material work you deeper. Each session is designed for potency and transformation on its own, but together they make for a complete descent into the soul of the mythic feminine– and into your personal myth. You can, however, sign-up for Part One or Part Two only (each one working of 3 different mythic archetypes).
After each session, you will be sent the full call recording as well a special 'key'– a personal ritual, practice, or in-nature inquiry to further invite and enhance the "mythological acupuncture" of the stories and archetypes on your personal journey.
All recordings and materials will be available to you indefinitely, so yo can revisit the course at any time of your life. After the end of the course, we will refine and edit the recordings for clarity and potency, and you will be given access to the edited versions as well.
Dates and Schedule
To Be Announced
Learn more about your guide Stefana Serafina here
Part One:WAKING
The Witch, the Sleeping Lady, Madwoman/Woman in the Tower
All artwork on this page is by Autumn Skye
The Witch
Rendered by mainstream folklore as an ugly old woman, often evil and always scary, the Witch lurks from the oldest stories of the world as a prominent and powerful hag to be afraid of and avoided at all cost. But the vital legacy of the Witch, her true medicine, her ability to conjure the power of nature through her own body, and her indelible presence in our own psychies have not been obscured– even after centuries of mistelling her stories and fiercely punishing women who carry her torch. In this session held during the “witch hour” on Friday the 13, we will call her name, enter her enchanted forest, request her magic tools and discover her as… ourselves: One who knows nature as herself. An oracle, a seer, a transformer. Slayer of the ‘Good Girl’. Bringer of little deaths that wake a more authentic and ferocious life. One who knows her Body as a portal to power and truth. Guardian of pleasure, laughter, good food, and generous curves. Keeper of the untamable, unconventional, gregarious womanness. Whisperer of the invisible knowledge.
The Sleeping Lady Vs. The Sleeping Beauty
The Sleeping Lady is an ancient sculpture of a grand, voluptuous, ample-bodied woman, found in the prehistoric temples of Malta, the oldest standing structures on Earth. Her scrumptious largeness has baffled historians and anthropologists who have called her the Fat Lady and even deemed her obese...In this session we will enter the mythic body of the Sleeping Lady and wake up her grand, voluptuous bigness inside us, in full contrast to the Sleeping Beauty, the pretty skinny princess who waits for the knight to rescue her. What can the Sleeping Lady give us back from our curvaceous, uninhibited, deep-bellied power? Who are we when we are unafraid of our curves, our age, and our largeness? Who wakes up in us when we’re done being the Sleeping Beauty and instead give body to the soft giant of feminine power?
She who sleeps in our wombs and in the curve of our waists. She whose hips are round and spacious enough to hold the whole Earth. The grand woman of eternal impact.
Madwoman and the Girl in the Tower
Countless stories from around the world, heroines are locked up in a tower, often to prevent them from following their heart, loving who they love, or doing what they want–– or when they are deemed mad or wild, they are sent to hiding in the Tower so that ‘normal’ can go on.
Here, we will seek to find abandoned and forgotten parts of our psyche and deeper lives that have been locked-up in our inner Tower, by our cultures, people in our lives, and, especially, by ourselves, in order to banish parts of the wild feminine within–– and in the world. We will climb up into our own inner Tower to find and rescue the woman in us who has been locked there to be protected, punished, or hidden, and we will begin to restore the psyche of the one inside us framed as Mad Woman. She is: Keeper of Wild Woman legacy. Mad genius. Guardian of the messy, the emotional, the irrational. The buoyant, unrestrained feminine. Wild creator. Destroyer of fake facades. Bringer of true vulnerability. One whose deep heart must be rescued.
Part Two: EMERGENCE
The Wellmaidens, Samodiva, Bone Woman
Wakame and the Well Maidens
Wakame the Seaweed was once a young woman punished for the crime of knowing the language of forest, plants, and ocean. Transformed by the ocean into a sea plant to save her life, Wakame still keeps preserves her knowledge so that all who undulate and flow like her can remember the feminine ways in their bodies. The Well Maidens were the guardians of the wells of wisdom and abundance, until….
Join us for the telling of stories of women who preserve the knowledge of how to live in harmony, reciprocity and reflection to the lands and the seas. Stories of very different mythological origin, they introduce us to the one inside us who is:
Keeper of flow. Protector of deep sensuousness as intelligence. Bridger of the visible and invisible worlds. Knower of the Underworld. Guardian of the deep well of feminine wisdom.
Samodiva, the Wild Dancing Women of the Forests
We weave a web of stories from the ancient folklore of Eastern and Northern Europe, including the samodiva, iele, elf, and huldra, who, in a myriad of languages and cultures are told to be the mysterious forest dwelling women who dance under the moon, in the mist, amidst the trees, in the dark night, often naked, sometimes around the fire. Skilled at magic, at home in the forest, seductive and dangerous, they are: Keepers of the mystery of dance. Guardians of the sanctity of the female body. Preservers of nature’s knowledge. Knowers of herbal medicine. Archivists of the untamable wild spirit. Embodiments of erotic superpower.
Bone Woman: La Huesera, Anima, She Who Knows
We will move with a convergence of stories about a woman older than time who often lives in a deep, dark cave that everyone has heard of but no one has seen. She has been sitting there for thousands of years, outside the reach of the world’s busy affairs, and although few know of her mere existence, she has been keeping the world turning, preserving the Earth’s intrinsic knowledge, weaving it into a garment or a rug or a spider web, or cooking it into soups and stews that contain the seeds and roots of all wisdom, or singing bones back to life. She sees in the dark, often keeps a fire as old as her, and in this way preserves all stories that have ever been told around a fire.
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