Demeter Award

The Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology is delighted to present to Kathy Jones, the 2018 ASWM Demeter Award for Leadership in Women’s Spirituality.  As a writer, healer, teacher, Priestess of Avalon, visionary, and scholar, we recognize the important roles that you have played in restoring the divine feminine to modern culture.  Your tireless work for thirty-plus years, bringing the awareness of Goddess back to the U.K., Europe, the U.S., and the world, has provided not only important original scholarship but also the creation of a vital energetic container for explorations of Goddess archetypes and practices.

Your work to found and organize the annual international Glastonbury Goddess Conference—six days of sacred ceremony, processions, presentations, workshops, and performances—has created a cauldron for the birth of new perspectives and scholarship.

Established in 2002 at Imbolc, the Glastonbury Goddess Temple is a registered place of worship, and the first temple in Britain to be built in honor of Goddess Spirituality in 1500 years. Your creative work has inspired and encouraged others to found new Goddess Temples, and there are now Temples in the UK, Europe, the U.S., Mexico, and Australia. You have further expanded the presence of Goddess Spirituality year round with the establishment in 2016 of Goddess House, a holistic, natural health and education center.

Your considerable body of written work explores the mysteries of sacred land, mythology, and healing: Soul and Shadow: Birthing Motherworld, 2017; Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, 2006; In the Nature of Avalon: Goddess Pilgrimages in Glastonbury’s Sacred Landscape, 2007; The Ancient British Goddess: Goddess Myths, Legends, Sacred Sites, Present Revelation, 2001; Chiron in Labys: An Introduction to Esoteric Soul Healing, 1997; Breast Cancer: Hanging on by a Red Thread, 1998; On Finding Treasure: Mystery Plays of the Goddess, 1999; Spinning the Wheel of Ana: a Spiritual Quest to Find the Primal British Ancestors, 1994; and The Goddess in Glastonbury, 1990.

Through teaching the three-year Priestess of Avalon training for the past twenty years, in conjunction with Erin McCauliff*, you have passed inspiration and knowledge to many modern women who take leadership roles of their own. In addition, your courses in Esoteric Soul Healing have offered a path to healing and wholeness to individuals and communities for forty years.

Most recently, you have expanded your healing work to promote important restoration of earth-centered living. With a groundswell of others of the Glastonbury community, you are creating the Motherworld, whose vision is: “a society where Mother Earth, mothers and the values of mothering – love, care and support for each other, are placed in the centre of life, rather than being left out on the periphery.”  The Motherworld Vision was grounded and activated ceremonially at the 2013 Glastonbury Goddess Conference.

In recognition of your work to inspire, to heal, and to teach, we present you with the 2018 Demeter Award.  In accepting the award, you join a select group of prior winners and foremothers:  Margot Adler, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Charlene Spretnak, Elinor Gadon and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum.  We thank you for all of your work to restore Goddess Spirituality to a modern world much in need.

Sincerely Sid Reger, President, The ASWM Board of Directors

* Also recently with Ruby Ward and Luna Silver.