Our regular newsletter is published in Dutch, and send by email to our subscribers.

But it also can be read (without images) in English and Italian on this website.

If you wish to contribute, please contact us with your idea or proposal: newsletter@selmasevenhuijsen.com

Content / Contenuto Nr. 1 (August 2025)

The common thread in Selma’s work / Il filo conduttore del lavoro di Selma (Margo Kistemaker)

Encounters in Selma’s Italy (Eng) / Incontri nell'Italia di Selma (Jan van Beersum)

Enjoy reading / Buono lettura ! Margo Kistemaker & Jan van Beersum (Editor), Amsterdam 2025

The common thread in Selma's work

Margo Kistemaker

I met her for the first time in February 2008. I had heard her name before, even read something about her, and now, in person: Selma Sevenhuijsen. She attended a series of seminars that I organized, given by the Peruvian anthropologist Juan Nuñez del Prado and his son Ivan. I had been following their annual lessons on the spirituality of the Inca or Andean tradition since 2003 and had taken on the organization of the Dutch seminars as of 2008. Selma had attended their seminars about the same number of times in her beloved Italy, where she often was. We shook hands, I asked: "Are you that Selma..." and she interrupted me with "in a previous life...". That was that. No more words were spent on it. Looking back, I think we were friends at that moment.

My own scientific background and the fact that Selma had been a professor attracted each other, and we soon started talking during breaks. And after the seminars we sought each other out, discussed the lessons, our own vision of them, and many other things that we wanted and could share with each other.

The very next year, Selma and I prepared the lecture that opened the six-day seminar on Friday evening together. We used the lessons we knew and applied the ideas to the present, the world in which we lived here in Western Europe. Lessons about a tradition that is hundreds of years old are interesting, but they are most effective if we can benefit from them now and here in our own lives and work. And that was (and is) the case.

Selma had a down-to-earth attitude towards spirituality, and that clicked with my vision of the knowledge and experiences that we gained in the seminars. Together we created a framework for the lecture based on a theme, and Juan and Ivan joined in at the last moment, with their extensive experience in giving lessons. That first lecture in this way was a great success and tasted like more. We did this together every year until 2016, when the last Inka Pad workshops were organized by me.

In the meantime, I got to know Selma better and better. I read her book ´Citizenship and the Ethics of Care´, she talked about her time at the university when she taught Women's Studies, and I read her book ´The Smile of the Siren´, which had just been published (only in Dutch and in Italian, no English version available). When we had known each other for a few years, I traveled to Pitigliano, where she rented an apartment in the summer. From there, we traveled for about ten days to as many special places as possible to visit caves, the "egg", sunken roads and large and small sirens. You can read more about this in 'The Smile'...

At the end of that long week we were at Lake Bolsena and had the chance to explore the island of Isola Martana on foot. We meditated, made mandalas of flowers and twigs, and did Inca exercises to make our energy and the energy of the island clear and powerful. It was not only a very beautiful time, it was also a deepening of my acquaintance with the way Selma “did her thing”.

To write it down in a more structured way: from her experiences, dreams, ideas and observations a theme formed at a certain moment, which she started to investigate further. This did not come out of the blue, but had everything to do with her personal (and spiritual) development, the things she experienced (in waking life and in her dreams), and the investigation of what she found interesting. Selma always had her notebook with her, and took a lot of photos, especially in Italy, where all her books were created. In all sixteen years that I have known her, Selma was constantly writing a new book: I have seen several come into being, and to my pleasure I was regularly her sparring partner in critically reviewing the texts. I saw how the books came into being: an idea, a feeling, an experience or a dream gave the first impulse to start a new book. Then came the hard work: reading books by others on the theme and all kinds of related subjects; traveling in Italy in search of new insights, confirmation of her ideas, inspiration through chance encounters, and experiences that turned out to be connected by synchronicity, something Selma had a keen sense for. She made contact with other writers of books on the same and similar subjects, she formulated hypotheses about connections, developments and relationships between events that took place centuries ago, and she discovered images and insights in churches, on walls, in paintings and in books that she again incorporated in her testing of her assumptions. She made journeys both internally and in the visible world that first inspired her, then gave her ideas that had not been explored before, and after at least one but sometimes several long summers on the road in Italy she formulated her experiences, findings and theory about specific events and meanings in a new book. A wonderfully beautiful process.

From her past as a feminist, left-wing political scientist, teacher and later professor at the university, Selma had ample experience in finding the core of an argument, new insights in a book, and the translation of experiences and feelings into a structured framework. She had not been raised religiously or spiritually and was not particularly interested in them, until her inner experiences with impressive content and impact led her to conclude that there was more between heaven and earth. In Italy, on her search for the Siren, the double-tailed mermaid, she also met the Peruvian teachers and she immersed herself in the lessons of the ancient Incas. It did her good and gave her a clear framework for experiences and insights that she gained during her travels, lessons that she followed (also with other teachers), and in her dreams. Her dreams became more important to her and her personal and spiritual development eventually led her in the direction of religion, Christianity, and the ancient Etruscan tradition. Because of all the knowledge she gathered, her travels became more purposeful, and she discovered connections between places, theories about history and observations in churches or church rituals, for example, that had not been described before.

People who knew Selma from her university days were surprised. At that time, spirituality was not yet as widely present and accepted as it is now (and that is not entirely the case now either). It seemed, from a 'distance', that Selma had lost herself to vague and woolly ideas and theories, and that she had taken a completely different path than in the first two-thirds of her life.

But nothing could be further from the truth, in my opinion.

When I studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam, the somewhat harder, experimental approach to psychology was popular. The time of Jung and Freud seemed to be a bit over, and we as students learned the methodology of empirical research. An area of ​​interest, more or less extensive literature research on the subject, and finally a focus on a specific question, the research question. Formulating a hypothesis: how do you think, based on the literature research (and possibly experiences in daily life) that the issue is constructed? Is there really a connection between X and Y, and if so, how, and what does that mean for the knowledge we now have? What could a new insight mean for ambiguities or problems that people experience in their lives, work, image of history, and inner knowledge?

The research then follows certain predetermined steps, and a result emerges. There is a connection between X and Y, but P, ​​Q and R also seem to have something to do with it. X and Y are now somewhat clearer, but in a subsequent study more attention should be paid to the role of P, Q and R. Conclusion, signed, scientific research.

What is often given less attention is the very beginning of this kind of scientific research. An idea, an insight, an assumption, an interest comes from somewhere. Methodologist De Groot (a great one in his field!) called this the ‘induction phase’: from an unknown area in ourselves, in culture, in knowledge, an idea for research arises. Nobody knows exactly how that arises, and no scientific rules can be applied to ‘induction’. Afterwards, yes!

Scientific research can measure a lot, on measurement scales that really mean something. How much, how long, how intense, how big, etcetera. Psychology research was already a lot more difficult. We tried to make certain ‘variables’, such as characteristics of a person, the kind of things you tell or teach someone, or the feelings people have about a certain experience, measurable and in that way we made connections, or denied the connections. But historical research, such as Selma’s search for the meaning of images, paintings, symbols and rituals - that cannot be manipulated in the same way. And that is not due to a possible spiritual context, but to the fact that it concerns things that have been in the past for a long time, and that no one can still tell how those things ever came about. Just imagine! Not an easy research. But at least as meaningful as, or perhaps even more meaningful than many psychology studies I have read about. Selma had her own personal ‘induction’ in the form of encounters, discoveries, dreams and inner experiences. After that she followed a scientific approach as best she could, packaged in her travel stories so that the reader could follow her in the development of the ideas.

It is true: many aspects of history have been described in a romanticized form, probably because it is much more fun and juicy to read about historical figures, their lives, loves, wars and hardships. Writers can easily make something up, make something more beautiful than it was, or make up reasons, experiences and events that make the story flow better. Whether all of that really happened, we do not know.

A more scientific approach is real study: try to read everything that has been published about your subject, and also read about the time in which something took place, the developments of that time, and the evidence that has been found and seen for the theories that are now being formulated about what happened in the past. If you limit yourself to this, you continue to do research as empirically as possible, and it is possible that others, who follow the same steps, could come to the same (or almost the same) conclusion. This is how science develops further. Checking, repeating, and then investigating new elements again, to make the woven tapestry of time more visible and understandable.

But Selma was not satisfied with this. She decided to also include her inner experiences and feelings in the research that she did. Her dreams were important to her, because they often put her on a track that over time yielded many new insights. She started reading about dreams, about Carl Jung, about inner development. She gained new experiences and insights into personal and spiritual development during the spiritual (Inca) lessons she followed. She read in religious writings, old and new, and recognized the Inca insights in them. She learned about the ancient Etruscans, where the feminine energy was seen as the most important for life on earth. Matriarchy, the Goddess, the supporting force of the (female) Earth. On her travels along churches, places of pilgrimage and special landscapes, she found evidence of the importance of the feminine, in the landscape, in symbols, in rituals and in images.

The circle was in fact complete. The feminist had arrived at the Mother Goddess. The activist learned that the feminine was indeed hidden, but always remained present in a patriarchally oriented Catholic church, with so much symbolism also in the old churches that it is actually strange that 'we' did not notice that earlier. The spiritual lessons about personal and spiritual development told that everyone has the seed within them that can grow into a fully developed and ‘realized’ person, the highest form of development that a person can achieve. And she saw that this was also expressed in the rituals of the church, certainly the older rituals, and still is. Church and spirituality are closely related.

With her uncontrollable curiosity, Selma discovered a lot about the labyrinth, the double-tailed mermaid and special places in the landscape of the part of Italy where she did her research and traveled. She came across an enormously strong woman, Mathilde of Canossa, and discovered the double-tailed mermaid as a symbol of feminine primal power from the time of the Etruscans – and still present on paintings, walls, sculptures and outside of churches. And not only in Italy! Even in the Netherlands (for example Amsterdam) double-tailed mermaids have been spotted!

In the many conversations I have had with Selma over the years, her down-to-earth and grounded approach to her spiritual and dream experiences and the testing of her insights and ideas against what others had seen and described became apparent time and again. She went against the flow when she spoke and published about her research in the field of religion, history, the importance of the female equal to the male, and the importance of empathy and living from the heart, expressed in solidarity and caring for each other. Science and spirituality mixed, inspiring each other and encouraging further development.

I see the common thread. The form changed, the deeper content remained and deepened. Many people have already read her books, and do valuable things with what they have learned from them. Selma's work has an effect in many ways, and she was very happy about that.

Have you not experienced this yet? Read Selma's books. Preferably in order of publication. Then you follow in the development of about 25 years.

Read the many literature references in the back of her books. Learn to dream consciously. Do energy work, meditation, get to know yourself better. Research spirituality. Touch old cultures and religious traditions, and experience for yourself what that does to a person. What it does to you. Walk in Selma's footsteps through churches and along roads in Italy, and perhaps you will come to the conclusion that she has done phenomenal research into aspects of our time, our life, our culture, that we had almost forgotten.

Margo Kistemaker

Encounters in Selma’s Italy

Jan van Beersum

‘The path of meaningful coincidence…’

It was supposed to be our "vacation." Bologna. Perugia. Orvieto. Lake Bolsena. But it turned into a "voyage of discovery," or a study trip, with encounters and even a ritual. We hadn't anticipated it, but when it happened, it didn't feel unintentional either. It was as if the wings of an Italian Selma, still unknown to us, became "guideposts" before our eyes. Everywhere we saw double-tailed mermaids—or did they see us?

Bologna. The red one. The medieval university city with miles of terraced arcades. In the imposing hall of the oldest university (1088), we immediately encounter one, rising above eye level from the sea as a fresco at a memorial to the 19th-century poet, professor, and politician Enrico Panzacchi. There she is for the first time. The double-tailed mermaid. The universe as creative primal mother. She gives life to the earth and takes it back to herself. She is the guide of souls after their death. But indeed—where we think we will find her, the Museo Civico Archeologica in a former 15th-century hospital, with its impressive collection of Etruscan finds, we don't find her. Instead, like a voluptuous water goddesses at the feet of Neptune, il gigante—though their heads are cast down in thought—they strut their stuff for the throngs of tiktok-toking tourists next to the central Piazza Maggiore. We are confused.

We experience Perugia, with its many underground tunnels, not only as a blanket of ancient art and history, but also as a city with a keen political awareness of what's happening in the world. There are daily demonstrations. Against NATO. Against the genocide in Gaza. Against the eating of animals. In an old, alternative neighborhood, we find murals of resistance everywhere. The proud city seems not to have been forgotten how it once resisted the abuse of power by political and papal authorities. The sun is shining. A group of women from Assisi suddenly surround me and sing a prayer for me. I'm given a wooden cross around my neck. We're on the right track.

Perugia was the last bastion of Etruscan culture against the Romans. Only under General Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, was the city conquered in 40 BC, a fact still attested to by a high gate. On the outskirts lies the Archaeological Museum of Umbria, tucked away in a somewhat dilapidated monastery near an Etruscan spring beneath the Basilica of San Domenico. We first look for the restroom, but are stunned to find next to it rows of Etruscan tombstones of family clans depict double-tailed mermaids. Some with flapping wings. Others wielding oars in a fierce battle with charging Roman soldiers. The battle emanates from the stones.

In another room, dedicated to the amulets collection of the 19th-century paleontologist Guiseppe Bellucci, Annemarie finds her in a beautiful bronze amulet, the only one in the entire collection without a context. Surprise and a touch of indignation creep in. As an art student, Annemarie was deeply moved by university lectures on Etruscan studies. And I graduated as a history teacher, with even a separate unit (!) on women's history. But no Sirena Bicaudata. Has the objective "male" spectacles now turned out to be a historical blindfold?

Our next stop is Orvieto or Velzna – like Perugia (Perusna), one of the 12 city-states of the Etruscan Dodecapolis League. Suddenly, she appears everywhere. In the world-famous 14th-century Duomo, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, we find her among the Christian iconography next to the altar, and even as the central entrance column to the Apostles. I imagine Selma as a researcher who, as Margo describes in her article here, begins to identify with the archetypes in her dreams and how those dream images, suddenly "hidden" in stone, appear before her everywhere.

Near Lake Bolsena, we're staying in a beautifully situated apartment at La Montagnola Retreat, a plant-rich organic farm where Selma often stayed. Sabine, the owner and Selma's best friend, is our guide. She's eager to get started and organizes several important meetings centered around the sacred "geographical" magic that emanates from the volcanic lake.

We decided to use Selma's book "The Smile of the Sirena" (2008) as a travel guide and visited many of the locations she mentioned. We were soon surprised by the earthly beauty of it all. Luckily, we're hikers; we don't mind a steep climb, and sometimes one of us disappears into one of the hundreds of subterranean caves.

Pittigliano, a medieval town built on a tuff rock, surrounded by forests, holds a special allure where the Vie Cave, hollow labyrinthine paths dug by human hands, converge where the Etruscans had their subterranean tombs and temple mounds. Selma often stayed here and acquired a vast knowledge of the Etruscan landscape through long walks with Giovanni Feo (born in 2019), who lived there. Feo wrote numerous books about the Etruscans and their sunken paths. He had developed a fascinating theory about the origins of this lofty culture, which unfortunately found little resonance among academic Etruscologists. Selma was touched by his great erudition but retained her own focus: the mother goddess. We even find one, halfway up the climb. The sky around her is suddenly illuminated by the sun, and a radiant aura appears. Earthy brown, moss green, and a ribbon of pinkish red, like her voice.

We experience extraordinary encounters. Sacred geography proves to be the concept that opens doors. Seeing and experiencing the landscape in lines of meaning and force fields. Feeling the earth as a body, where people, animals, plants, minerals, and earth spirits work together to restore harmony and peace to nature. I immediately want to draw a map, but all the encounters here refer me to an "internal" map.

Like with Giulio, a student of Feo and an ardent fan of Selma. He and his wife Silvia guide us through a group ritual at the volcanic lake, descending through our imaginations into a sacred subterranean cavern of Isola Bisentina, one of the two islands in the lake. We also meet Isabella from Bolsena, who has taken many courses with Selma and makes bronze and silver jewelry depicting the Dea, the earth goddess of all cultures, including a beautiful necklace of the double-tailed mermaid. We dine by the lake with healer Fritz, who has built a large astrological planetarium in his garden and, together with Selma, submitted a proposal to the owners of Isola Bisentina to place her heart labyrinth there. I hope to write more about this plan and its status at a later, more mature time.

The "path of meaningful coincidence" described by Selma in her book "Woman at Heaven's Gate" (2019) gave the word "vacation" a new meaning for us this spring. Indeed, the landscapes became like portals into a sacred Dea world embedded in them.

Jan van Beersum