Interest in 'the sacred feminine' will bring women from several continents to Co Louth this weekend, reports Adrienne Murphy.

Love it or loathe it, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has ushered an awareness of "the sacred feminine" into popular culture. And a major international "womanspirit" event, starting next weekend in Termonfeckin, Co Louth, attests to new interest in the "divine fem" theme.

Celebrating the Landscapes of Woman-Soul is the name of the week-long conference, organised by the Irish-based Institute for Feminism and Religion, a non-profit educational company run by a board comprising theologians and women religious activists.

Guided by the principles of "reclaiming the lost treasures of women's spiritual heritage, nourishing the divine within ourselves and forging new directions for future generations", the event - aiming to integrate mind, body and soul - will be grounded in the fruits of academic research, while at the same time offering experiential workshops led by facilitators from many fields.

Co-organiser Mary Condren is a teacher at Trinity College Dublin and the Milltown Institute of Theology and Religion and is author of The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland. She will also be one of the speakers at the Woman-Soul event.

"We're bringing together the best of international contemporary academic work on feminism and religion, coming from theology, spirituality, ethics, anthropology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and the most up-to-date resources - theoretical and practical - from each of those disciplines," she says.

"Nothing like this has been held before. Conferences are usually either academic or movement-based, but we're trying to do both. This is not just a 'head' event, it's an event that's going to be integrating body, mind and spirit. In the mornings there'll be academic presentations; in the afternoons there'll be body-soul events like ritual, dance, singing, movement, meditation and art work, to help people integrate what they're hearing; while the evenings are for cultural sharing and music and poetry.

"The main speakers are highly politically aware. Rosemary Radford Reuther, for example, a US professor of theology and pioneer feminist liberation theologian, is internationally recognised for her activism on behalf of liberation struggles around the world, and has written over 20 books and hundreds of articles."

Also speaking at the conference will be Australian environmental activist Kathleen McPhillips, a senior lecturer in humanities whose recent books include Local Heroes: Australian Crusades from the Environmental Frontline.

An American professor of anthropology, Peggy Reeves Sanday, one of the founders of the anthropological study of sex and gender and author of Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality (1981), is another speaker.

"In 2002 Reeves published a book called Women at the Centre, based on her 20-year study of a society in Indonesia called the Minangkabau, a modern-day matriarchy comprising four million people," says Condren.

"Reeves understands the word 'matriarchy' not as the opposite of patriarchy, but as 'arche', as in 'the beginning'. Ithe beginning the mother-child unit was the origin. In the Minangkabau society, the mother-child unit is the central organising principle, and everything is organised around supporting it, with whole different legal and ethics systems."

Irish speakers at the conference include the eco-activist, psychotherapist and former Green member of the European Parliament, Nuala Ahern, who is researching Celtic ritual, mythology and spirituality. Others taking part are theologian, singer and musician Nóirín Ní Ríain and Dr Margaret MacCurtain, formerly of UCD, who lectures on Irish women's history and was general editor of the section on religion in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Women's Writing, Vol 4.

Why the need for a specifically "feminist" take on religion? "Whenever the Irish church talks about 'the church'," says Condren, "what they mean is the male clerical hierarchy. Women are not included at any level, so the Institute for Feminism and Religion provides a space where women can hear themselves think through issues that are central to their lives. Many women in Ireland and internationally have been silenced and excluded by the traditional churches, so the institute gives them an opportunity to explore these issues."

Celebrating the Landscapes of Woman-Soul takes place from July 1 to 7 at An Gríanán, Termonfeckin, Co Louth. On Fri, June 30, Rosemary Radford Reuther speaks on The Sacred Feminine as Ideology and History: Is the Goddess A Feminist? at 7.45pm in the Walton Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin. For further details, go to www.instituteforfeminismandreligion.org