September 9, 2020August 25, 2020 hearthrisingLeave a comment

(Essay 5) What It’s Like to Live on Wimmin’s Land by Hearth Moon Rising

These essays don’t have to be read in order, but previous ones are here, here, here, and here. Thus far, I’ve confined my series on wimin’s land mainly to the hardships. It is Read More …

June 26, 2020June 19, 2020 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) Labrys by Pegi Eyers

The first labyrinths were associated with the ceremonies of the Moon Goddesses of the ancient world such as the Amazon Goddess Gaea, and with the symbol of the double-headed axe. “Her Read More …

June 18, 2020June 13, 2020 Kaalii Cargill1 Comment

[Essay] I am woman by Kaalii Cargill

‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud? JK Rowling this week in a social media post Read More …

March 9, 2020March 2, 2020 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Prose) Lily B, My Telepathic Bird by Sara Wright

Image: Wikimedia Commons Every morning at “first light” Lily B sounds a call to wake up the rest of his family – his human mother – and her current dogs, Read More …

February 20, 2020February 20, 2020 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poetry) woman by Maya Daniel

she went through them–twisting her spine, bleedingand the baby’s cry is getting louderher journey has come to thisshe’s awake and the wilds followed herthe seed grows on her handshe is Read More …

November 13, 2019November 8, 2019 hearthrising1 Comment

(Essay) Birth of the Moon by Hearth Moon Rising

Many devotees of the Goddess are familiar with the story of Inanna’s Descent, yet this is not the only surviving Mesopotamian myth about the underworld. Offhand, I can think of Read More …

September 11, 2019November 8, 2019 hearthrisingLeave a comment

(Essay) The Brewer was a Lady by Hearth Moon Rising

Like the swelling of the Tigris and Euphrates,You pour the filtered beer.Like the onrush of the sacred rivers, Ninkasi,You pour the filtered beer.~ Hymn to Ninkasi The grocery chain where Read More …

September 9, 2019September 4, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Prose) Red Willow River by Sara Wright

Winding through the valley the river tells ancient stories about the peaceful people who lived along her red willow banks, long ago… I can almost see the women who gathered Read More …

September 4, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) Crowning by Liz Darling

The imagery represents the crowning of childbirth as the Goddess gives birth to the world, and perhaps a birth-like awakening into the Anthropocene as we begin to viscerally understand how Read More …

September 2, 2019November 15, 2019 Glenys D. LivingstoneLeave a comment

(Review) Vibrant Voices: Women, Myth, and the Arts, editors Sid Reger & Marna Hauk, by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

If you are passionate about Goddess in your heart and mind and life, you only need to see/hear the titles of the five sections of this book Vibrant Voices: Women, Myth, Read More …

June 24, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poetry) Peace in Connection by Belinda Subraman

Memories like bullets lifeless until held or loaded… The wind comes around again magnified from different angles. Crystals are in the net, an elephant in the room. Read More …

June 19, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art 2) Gather the Women by Pegi Eyers

The shared support and connection between women allows us to heal from the patriarchy that has waged war on us for millennia, and joining together in the true spirit of Read More …

June 1, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art 1) Gather the Women by Pegi Eyers

Gather the Women 1/2 The shared support and connection between women allows us to heal from the patriarchy that has waged war on us for millennia, and joining together in Read More …

(Poem) A Prayer for Mother Earth by Mary Saracino

Red Buds in Bloom, by Mary Saracino Hail Mother full of grace The Earth is full of beauty Blessed art thou among all beings And beloved is the fruit of thy womb Holy Earth, Mother Planet Pray for us, your children Now, and at the hour of our forgetfulness So we may long remember to honor you Our home, our freedom, our glory Forever and ever Amen https://www.magoism.net/2013/05/meet-mago-contributor-mary-saracino
(Prose) Stardust Calling by Amina Rodriguez

I call in my Soul Essence, Great Mother Within, I call in what I need for health and vitality, confidence and courage, abundance, joy and may I always be love manifest unto all beings and may all beings be free and have peace, love, joy and abundance. The particles before my eyes are charged with light and I can see that I can manipulate them, please I ask my cells, never forget that. Remember to always observe the lit particles in front of your eyes knowing that you are that. She tells me, the stardust in your cells are crying out to you in need longing for your touch, for your love, and your self-compassion. I have long longed to honor your call Great Mother, Green Heart of heaven within, but only now beneath my rooted feet and under the green grass, the primal rhythms vibrate far under the dark rich earth. Our ancient ancestors call out to us through the earth and through all those ancient ruins. Divine Mother creator of humanity, we are the children of the earth, as we look upon you with such care you look upon us as innocent children, Soul Essence will guide us, flow with the Great Mother Within, let Her energy flow through you like the blood flows through your veins. Awaken the tribal spirit within you however in which ever way you can, it is that Spirit that will guide you, the One that lives there among the trees and within your heart’s desires. Surrender to Her Spirit and from your insides will flow creations beyond your current known experience. Do you hear her drumming heart? The rumblings of her ancient sounds are the echoes of our ancestors beating hearts, the music of Pachamama, may our breath with hers become as One. (Meet Mago Contributor) Amina Rodriguez.
(Essay 2) Through a Darkened Door—Light by Mary Ann Ghaffurian PhD

Between the beginning-story and now, at different times, a great numinous proximity welled. It was then that I knew I was onto one or other of the great vital puzzle pieces that could help put all the ghosts to rest. It was all the more shocking to realise because it took almost mental, spiritual and soul cataclysm to bring it on — so successfully had the pathways been deliberately effaced or rubbed out. Dr MAG When the seeker of truth or pilgrim sets out on a journey, he or she is on an open-ended path of self-discovery. There is a degree of submission to the path, and alertness to new intimations of “the whole”. Echoing the Tao: “She is modest, like one who is a guest, She is yielding, like ice that is going to melt, She is simple, like wood that is unplaned,” [i] yet, equally: “Chaos must be faced.”[ii] Early on I began to use maps for human consciousness interpretation, and as a way to press forward.[iii] Maps are image, direction and “whole picture” suggestions, depicting the imaginative struggle of individual or culture to pin to the known what is actually unknown, or the so-far indecipherable, as well as that which has been partially discovered. All knowledge proceeds this way, via maps, regardless of whether information is computational, intellectual, scientific, anecdotal or visceral. Maps, no matter how sketchy, unfilled-in or inaccurate, are created in people’s heads as they proceed through life. It is also true of the great discoveries of human inner life. We map our experiences as we make sense of how to go forward in a world where there is a growing sense of incomprehension and dismay as to what has been received knowledge — that things are not what they seem, and therefore the maps might be wrong, including our internal ones. If we view an imaginative map of the entire knowledge-world, the dominant received information of the education system has a North-Atlantic, US-European slant, even if that information and “knowledge” is received via many media: books, TV, films, magazines, other people and the internet. The “Inanna Moment” This is possibly an “Inanna-moment” for many, where one has to be confident Ereshkigal is not waiting at the end of the journey to leave one naked and cold on a meat-hook to dry out deep in the earth. One has to be poised, to stand at the door to the unknown, and knock. A moment of trust. When soul and psyche begin to wrest free, they leave much behind in the process, clearing body and soul of the hampering past, burning dross on pyres, unwinding metaphorical shrouds, emptying mildewy capes: at the same time learning new ways of the ancient, forever new, assisting us in our reconnection to Origin. Were she already among the immortals – were she already there at the goal to which this difficult path seems to be taking her – with what amazement she would look back over all this coming and going, all the indecision and wild zig-zagging of her tracks. With what a mixture of encouragement and blame, pity and joy…[iv] A “Mago Moment”… Feminism is now an established scholarly tradition, so as we step into the deeper as well as broader context of “women’s knowing”, we are drawn also into unlayering the past or what has been forgotten, in order to gain the bigger picture. Will what we call “Feminism” go through another round of transformation (as it could if it is in the unwinding, energetic phase, and not fixed), to become, what? Whatever that is, the direction has to give ultimate dignity to the woman, to the feminine, to the initiation of women, to sexual innateness, to mothering and motherhood, to birthing, and to the phases of women’s bodies, hearts, souls, minds and psyches, as women go through rebirthing via education, knowledge, initiation, awakening and regeneration. The Mago Circle opened as a new door for Western women and for Korean and south-east Asian traditional culture, ancient and modern, to be brought together. In the Mago Circle space, a heart-felt, explorative environment has become manifest in Social Media, where women (and men) can allow themselves to “come forth”, out of the closet of deeply held fear, apprehensions, even closely guarded secrets about their inner journey, to embrace spiritual certitude, as they embrace the renewal of the sacred Goddess and Mother connection, her forms, powers and entrustments from traditions both inside and outside traditional Western systemic, patrilineal lines, and from the sacred traditions of the East. So, it is exciting to have another door opening on to formerly darkened areas of knowledge and know-how, with opportunities to expand mental and mythical reach, and to deepen perception of the inner as well as the outer world geographical map. “Mago” Tradition Magoism is a new word to the modern Western vocabulary, yet it has its linguistic roots in many parts of the globe and in an ancient knowledge and know-how almost lost. Dr Helen Hwang determinedly and methodically is excavating the little-understood historical Mother-Goddess knowledge of Korea, and its traditions, the Mago, and Magoism, and in doing so is unlocking another previously invisible door, and replacing another ripped-off corner of the global map of significant, almost-lost tradition and forgotten knowledge. This is a most welcomed prospect. The newness of this discovery for those who learn of it fills them with excitement because every step to remember the ancient ways, particularly the lost Goddess ways, and those ways that hint of Source, are crucial to humanity remembering itself. Moderns have become accustomed to modes of mind that strip the soul and psyche of finer attunement to earth, sea, stars and each other. This renders most adrift on a sea of seeming limitless freedoms, to be picked up by any technological hook that would substitute for inner knowing. The map becomes the new computer wiring, insurance policy or bank regulation to follow. But once we scrape from our psyches the encrustation of mind …
(Book Excerpt 1) Nun too Clever by Elaine Drew

[An excerpt from the the mystery novel Nun Too Clever, which looks at what life as a queen was really like for the fairytale maiden who landed the prince.] An Unexpected Death The king is off fighting in Cornwall. He is always off fighting somewhere or other. When the hurricanes hit, it was Kent. When the roof over the fire collapsed, he was in East Anglia. When some villagers started a blood feud, Egbert was in Mercia. It stands to reason he would be off being heroic when I heard about the body. The day had been ordinary enough, the most remarkable event a visit from a predictably long-winded cleric. Who would have guessed the life of a queen involved so much tedium? On this inauspicious day, I managed to put off the bishop until dinner, when I had no choice but to seat him next to me. The man is sufficiently unattractive to make it a blessing that he joined the priesthood and spared a woman. And it isn’t just his table manners. While he waited for a dish of jugged hare to be placed within reach, the bishop caressed a gold cross so large it was vulgar. The potage arrived first, and the bishop slurped it from his spoon. Between mouthfuls he droned on about the status of his ongoing effort to claim yet another parish for his diocese. Good Christians, I thought, are often surprisingly venal. The bishop wiped his mouth on the tablecloth. I took a break from Bishop Badwulf, turning to the elderly and deaf thane on my left. This old guy showed up from time to time and was always seated next to me. Before dinner I’d seen him limping around the hall, visiting with the other old warriors. They laughed and yelled stories at one another. One old fellow repeated the same story several times running, while another, vying for the limelight, tried to shout him down. My old thane was mercifully quiet. Whenever I tried to engage him, he seemed happy enough to offer his toothless smile and nod his head amicably. He was so hard of hearing that any attempt at conversation turned to gibberish. On the rare occasion he understood what I said, his answers were just as nonsensical. The first time I found him sitting next to me, I asked him about battles he had fought. The topic is a reliable icebreaker with warriors old and young. “Have you fought with the king, sir?” I asked. “He’s not my enemy,” said the old man. “I bet Your Royal Highness fights with him all the time.” The old thane never stayed for more than a night, but after the third time in as many months that I had to endure his company, I asked the butler why the old warrior merited a seat next to the queen. “His Majesty’s orders,” the butler had explained, if you can call that an explanation. I was left wondering, not for the first time, if Egbert populated the hall with particularly unappealing men during his absence, or if it just seemed that way. Turning to the old man, I steeled myself for our usual verbal joust. His eyes gleamed a little as he looked at me—or was he looking at the chicken pasties the servant was placing in front of me? I wasn’t sure, but there was no mistaking the hand on my thigh. I removed his hand and turned back to the bishop. As I watched him return his uncleaned spoon to a dish of pork roasted in wine, my appetite faded. I soldiered on. “How was your journey from Lichfield, Your Excellency?” “Uneventful, Your Royal Highness.” In his eagerness to speak, he didn’t feel the drop of sauce that slithered from a corner of his mouth. “That is, until I discovered the body.”(To be continued) https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-elaine-drew/
(Poem) Herecura by Angelika Heike Rüdiger

Herecura The heat is lying on the land. Sun rays are pouring down. On yonder fields they cut the corn And make the hay chasing the butterflies From grass and flowers doomed Falling beneath the iron sickle of the harvester. Soon they will sit in orchards, celebrate And sing and dance with the sun setting, Bleeding last light. I will be watching from the woodland- a little while at least. I am not one of them. Deep in the wood is Herecura’s shrine The long forgotten stone Of the dark Lady of Abundance and secret ways. A dream You have become now to the people, A long lost memory, The unknown queen sharing the throne with Dis, the Father. Does Your moss-covered image feel my footfall The rhythm of my pulses My heart-beat on old ways, the sacrifice of harvest dripping from my fingers: The blood-red juice of berries, The salty water of my tears When I brush past Your shrine Into the arms and the embrace of my beloved?
(Tribute 2) In Loving Memory of Eve Helene Wilkowitz by Jack Dempsey, Ph.D.

Eve is on the verge of her 21st birthday that Spring: a smart strong happy outgoing person grown up in Oakdale, Long Island, and moving now from Bay Shore into dynamic relation with the world, through her college-course pursuit of a career in social work. She loves her Jewish family, old friends from Connetquot High School, home-cooked meals, horses, stupid movies, music (most lately, The Beatles): the first thing they love together is walking the great city streets holding hands, and talking and talking. “Eve and I were not what anyone would consider popular at Connetquot,” writes a close girlfriend (posted among other fond comments with “Eve, Spring, Flowers” at Wordpress). “Other girls were sometimes mean to her,” and although Eve is “rather shy and fragile,” people close to her know “one of the sweetest people I ever met.” “I always felt she would contribute a great deal to society” because “she had such a lovely personality…from deep within.” “She seemed to have blossomed after high school.” Eve’s love for her family and her own life’s hopes are a painful mix these days. Just a year ago, her mother has died young of cancer, and Eve hides the grief still in her heart. As she lives now to honor and care for her father and younger sister, she also “just has to get out” of their devastated home awhile, to find her way. And out comes her current situation—for she had jumped too fast into living with a boyfriend who, she avers, is boyfriend no more. She’s stuck in a very uneasy living-space and longs to break out in new directions. Weekly February dates for lunch become home-cooked dinners at the writer’s midtown mouse-hole, and always a fresh red rose sprayed with baby’s breath in his hand or on the table. He’s holding back most of a million kisses as Eve urges him, “Go slow, go slow”: she says the last thing she wants is new commitment, even as a girlfriend recalls that at the time, “she seemed the happiest I had ever known her to be.” To him she seems endearingly grateful for any little kindness, such as taking her by crosstown taxi to the evening’s last Long Island Railroad train, and constant offers (staunchly declined) to see her all the long way home. “There’s nothing to worry about, I know everybody,” she protests. Eager to show what a patient, understanding fellow he could often pretend to be, he croons a few after-dinner songs with acoustic guitar. “Like James Taylor?” “Some,” Eve shrugs. So, he plays, and as sure as it happens that two people instantly know they belong together, he can see her slowly melting toward the world he longs to give. Well the sun is surely sinking down but the moon is slowly rising so this old world must still be spinning round and I still love you It won’t be long before another day we gonna have a good time and no one’s gonna take that time away you can stay as long as you like Soon, one mid-week morning, Eve rides into Manhattan early and just shows up with breakfast at the writer’s door. Spring sunshine pours down through tall windows onto his ratty little table where they sit (talking, talking), and life between them is in full bloom. Her planned spontaneous visit happens in the same days when Eve starts a diary (later shared with the writer by authorities): I bought this book to write in because I am very confused with the things I’ve been doing and feeling lately….I think I have a problem with guys and love. I don’t want to fall in love and don’t want a commitment. But it seems as if they do….I definitely don’t. I do want a guy to care….I really don’t know what exactly I want out of a relationship. I know that right now I like Jack….I know that he likes me too, but I told him not to push….But so far he seems like a nice guy. He is honest, and he thinks that I am funny. Although Eve hates and dreads office-gossip, she stops by his Macmillan writer’s desk as work allows, and there one morning he invites her on a writing-trip to talk with his WWII-veteran uncle in Asheville, North Carolina. “What? When are you going? All that for a stupid book?” “Stupid book? I think you should go away now,” he says with obviously fake umbrage. Within hours an enormous red rose lands on his desk, with a card: Jack, Sorry. Hope this helps, Eve. He brings the bloom home and it unfolds like no rose he’s ever seen. March 12 1980. I think I am in trouble now. I think I am really starting to like Jack more than I wanted to. I have a feeling that this time I am the one who is going to be hurt. I asked him if he dates other girls and he said yes. And that bothers me, but I can’t show it. I don’t want him to think I care too much, or too little. I really don’t want to lose this guy. He is really good to me and makes me feel good, I’m glad we’re taking it slow like I said. But now I think about him more than I want to. I am afraid. I really don’t want to fall in love with him, and I am so scared of being hurt. Nine days later—Friday March 21st—they glide down Third Avenue from Macmillan to his place on 36th Street. Under red evening sky young street-poplars bloom out yellow and purple. Sharing wine, laughing, kissing, talking challenges and hopes: he’s rolling a smoke, Eve comes from behind to wrap his neck and nuzzle, and the man dissolves. “Eve, don’t be afraid. But I love you. I love you and I …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Sharon Smith

Sharon Smith is a poet and writer with a passion for helping women reconnect with their Authentic Selves and Voices and discover their Sovereignty as Sacred Beings in their own right. She loves and honors the Great Mother in all Her many forms, and has a deep connection to Nature. She has developed a teaching, “Crone to the Bone”, designed to bring back the honoring of the aging female. Sharon currently lives in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and follows an eclectic spiritual path that is a blending of Native American and Celtic Teachings, both in her ancestral line.
(Essay 2) Finding Our Agency and Awareness in the Seeds of Self by Deepak Shimkhada and Lachele Schilling

[Editor’s Note: This is first published in She Rises: What… Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality? Volume 3 as an article entitled, “Finding Our Agency and Awareness in the Seeds of Self” co-authord by Deepak Shimkhada, Ph.D. and Lachele Schilling, Ph.D.] Human Follies Goddess Kali standing in the battlefield amidst human skulls signifying millions of Raktavijas she has killed. It’s a modern painting by an unknown artist in public domain. https://anandashramblogg.wordpress.com/page/23/ As was mentioned, and according to the laws of physics, nothing can really be created or destroyed. The inclination in human beings to destroy what we fear, to erase it, to tramp it down, is a losing battle. The United States has one of the largest militaries in the world, following China and India, but has the largest budget. Overall, in 2017, for example, global military spending totaled 1.7 trillion dollars, and the States makes up 610 billion of that, or 39%. Humans tend to respond to violence with more violence, and so for instance a terrorist organization is met with bigger bombs and a war. But are we just adding rajas to rajas and flailing further into imbalance? Buddhist Nhat Thich Hanh offers a metaphor of composting. One can look at evil or violence or hate as the rubbish of the world. The only way to get “rid” of trash is to transform it, to compost it into our gardens so that it becomes a productive and nutritious food for seeds to grow into sustenance and beauty. What does this mean in terms of how we treat people who seem to be causing havoc in our world? Some are convinced that violence not only results from greed for wealth and power but out of desperation and hopelessness in a world of unequal distribution. Humans must listen and understand the root of the problem. What is the message of rebellion and unrest? Regardless of the root, though, we need to add the elements that are not already present and in excess in order to return to balance. Otherwise, we will utterly destroy ourselves. Blood as Seed The Devi Mahatmya is a Hindu text that extolls the glories of the goddess Durga. One of many exploits of Durga, one that is memorable, is a battle with Raktavija, a formidable general of demon Mahishasura. During the course of the epic-battle between the goddess and the armies of Mahishasura, many brave and powerful demon warriors are killed by her. Mahishasura orders his best fighter with a special ability. That is no other than Raktavija, one who is born of blood seed. As the name suggests, Raktavija (blood seed) holds his power in his blood. In the story, the setting is a vast open space. At one corner of the battlefield stands alone Goddess Durga, mounted on her ferocious lion. She is young and beautiful. Endowed with rajas energy, the radiant heroine holds weapons of destruction in each of her eight hands. She challenges the demons standing on the other side of the battlefield. The massive army of Mahishasura led by Raktavija carries heavy weapons of all sorts—mostly spiked clubs and battle axes. By shouting loudly and brandishing their weapons, they show a readiness to fight. Raktavija orders his warriors to attack Durga, and they run toward her making a loud noisy attle cry. Durga, however, waits until they arrive within striking distance and charges her weapons at them. Her attack is precise and fatal. She doesn’t miss a single attacker, and she keeps charging at them as the angry lion runs ripping anyone that is in his path while carrying Durga on his back. Limbs or heads mutilated, the demons fall on the ground by the hundreds. Seeing such a devastating loss of his warriors, Raktavija becomes angry and runs toward Durga with a sharp axe in both his hands determined to kill her. However, before he strikes her, the Goddess makes a sudden lunge at him and chops his head off with the strike of her powerful sword. As his severed head falls on the ground, blood splatters everywhere. To Durga’s astonishment, ten Raktavijas spring up, each fully equipped with more weapons. Durga immediately cuts off their heads. Most surprisingly, as their severed heads fall on the ground, tenfold of Raktavijas spring up ready to fight with her. Raktavija keep multiplying by the tenfold. In her frenzy, Durga continues killing them all without realizing that she is only making possible the production of a million Raktavijas in a short time. When she pauses to observe the chaos she has perpetuated, she finds herself surrounded by more than a million Raktavijas. The goddess is overwhelmed by the scene, an outcome of her own action, at least in part, even though she only wanted to stop the violence of the demons. She feels hopeless and desperate. Her energy, her frequencies generate an alter-ego, Kali—the Dark Goddess. Durga, unable to stop herself, severs the heads of the Raktavija one last time. But as the blood begins to spill, Kali catches it with her tongue, licking the blood dripping from the head before it can fall as blood seeds to the ground. She composted the violence into her body. She became intimate with it, oriented herself to the potential violence in a new way, a way that might transform it. Her strategy ended Raktavija’s saga because his blood was stopped by making contact with the earth that fertilized his seed. According to another Hindu myth, the world, after its dissolution, was created with seeds. Here is a charming narrative according to which Brahma, at the behest of Shiva, mixed earth with water and kept it in a golden pot and floated it down the river. When it came to a stop, Shiva shot an arrow to break the pot open. Out flowed amrita, the water of immortality, and the seeds of creation, filling the earth with beings and non-beings. The pot, therefore, became the symbol of the womb, containing the water of life and the …
(Book Excerpt) Bearing Witness Transmigration by Danica Anderson, Ph.D.

For seventeen years, I bore witness to the Bosnian women war crimes and war survivors. In my clinical informed Kolo (Slavic Folk Circle and/or Round Dance) Trauma practices I realized I encountered the purest Orphic doctrine. Dionysus myths of the dismembered god live on in Thrace of old now the geographic regions of Greece and former Yugoslavia. The process is called, “Transmigration of Souls,”[1] an apt description of my journeys to Bosnia in the aftermath of war. Much gossip and talk occurred with my rhythmic returns back to Novi Travnik, Bosnia. The Bosnian women survivors often wondered why someone would return without the salves to soften their wounds. I had little to no funding for my clinical trauma work. Their invisible status to the helping aid organizations added to the environment where wars never end. The only way through and what was left to do was bearing witness. Let me tell you bearing is the most difficult single act of humanity that ties your hands behind your back as you brave the elements. Yet, something happens to you when you are without money in the pockets, or huge backers, as one lone middle-aged female (me) facing an aftermath of a hideous vicious war. I continue to swim in the archaeologies of memories of women’s first person stories streaming into the female collective communal gatherings. Slavs have a kinship with the trees and often metaphors detail a complex but simple archetypes. My sense and understanding about bearing witness assumes the posture of trees rooted to one spot all their lives. When the trees fall to the earth, their decaying mass transmigration into the new saplings must be an immense relief for the tree after being in one posture for perhaps hundreds of years. Often the fall to the ground, the tree is shattered and torn much like the Bosnian women survivors. But, when I bore witness to the fallen trees I saw how the trees’ energy given while alive leaves behind the flesh filled tree rings of recorded life. The tree rings are a nurse log of life experiences-stories. In my bearing witness to their first person woman stories, herstories, the tree rings shaped like the kolo (s) nurse life in the present moment and future generations. I am talking about the vast resources found in epigenetic processes that shape our genome from how each of us live our lives, what we eat and grow, how we play and dance right down to every decision and choice we make. I am defining transmigration as the sacred pilgrimage and sometimes referred to as rebirth, metempsychosis/regeneration. This in Orphic doctrine is noted as the symbology of a thunderbolt or meteoric stone. [2] Bearing witness and hearing first person stories are thunderbolts and meteoric stones thrown into your being and consciousness. By bearing witness female solidarity is threaded into our beings with other women, we discover how effortlessly it is to bear witness and that it was not a struggle but huge important work that heals trauma. Yes, the thunderbolt and meteoric stones can be thrown at us with the stories loaded with pain and often filling us with terror. One Novi Travnik young woman told me a story of another young woman who lost her parents and did not know her grandparents either since they died long before the war. Engineering or some technical field was the Bosnian young woman’s major course of study. With the siege in Novi Travnik by snipers taking up locations in the surrounding heavily treed hills, going to the market meant a ten second dash and spurts of diving for cover. Many were killed on their way to the market and even as they stayed hidden in their flats or homes away from windows where sniper bullets would lethally intrude. However, this young Bosnian woman was able to get out and had forays into the mountain slopes for herbs, plants and berries if available. Whatever she brought back she shared with others in the Apartment building. She saved many lives from starving. After the war, an elder woman from another village, who knew her great grandmother, went to her. The elder woman told her how proud her great grandmother would be that she followed in her footsteps for knowing the plants, herbs and mushrooms. The mysteries deepen, as this young woman had no interest in botany let alone the idea of botany as a study. When I stayed with her for the night in a shell of once a stately home so cold I slept with my boots and coat on, she made me tea from her hand-picked store of herbs. The tea was something she learned to do during the Balkan War. My curiosity about this the running storyline from her great grandparents both of which did not survive WWI in their great granddaughter propelled me to ask many questions. She told me she felt guided to pick the mushrooms and plants. I asked how did she know which mushroom was poisonous or not. She said she still does not know which are poisonous because she only picks the good ones. I thought this was exactly how transmigration of wisdom occurs which is especially heightened during times of trauma and the need to survive. I ended the interview with questions, ‘what is transmigration of souls like when we are not surviving violence and wars? What is transmigration in times of strength, bonding with all of life and in female solidarity?’ I have only to look at my mother’s survival of a WWII concentration camp in contrast to the prehistoric “Old Europe” (6500 – 1450 BCE) civilization of the Goddess[3] to see how our bodies and genomic multi-nodal learning capacities genetically encode our intuitive ways we behave and respond to life’s circumstances to seed life. What I saw in my research of Old Europe was how women created culture with no violence and wars in times of strength. This art form is not dead. Women simply need …
(Fiction) Give Me a Boat That Will Carry Two* by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Cristofer, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Evelyn stood on the lake’s shore, startling at the loon’s keening so rare had birdsong become in the past decades. But, yet, now a hundred loons sailed above the water, legs gracefully trailing the wind, for a moment even blocking out the sun. A murmuration of starlings burst against a sky whose blue was so pure, a heavenly color gone so long, that no living human had ever seen it. Past the shore, in the lake’s water, orange and blue fins and tails shimmered, throwing crystalline light into the air. With every breath, Evelyn’s lungs filled with moist, warm oxygen-saturated air. Moose, deer, beaver, wildcat, wolverine, and wolves wandered by, aware of her, but not afraid, as if she were no more threatening than a tree or a boulder. She awoke from her dreaming to her own emptying world weeping. She lay on the same shoreline she had seen in her dream, though now in reality barren of birds, fish, trees, and flowers, the water a shallow puddle exposing a sandy ribbon of fish bodies and dried seaweed. Her feet stood in the liminal place between land and lake that was, even then, slipping away with the wind gusts. She touched the ground that had once been underwater as if she could will the water to return. But the lake continued evaporating into the air, taken up into the sky, perhaps to fall elsewhere on the planet as a deluging flood. A tiny dot on the water moved towards her, a boat with a single rower. She remembered all the mythical stories of those taken across the water in boats to places of paradise and death — the Fortunate Isles, Avalon, the Land of the Dead. For all the troubles of her world, she did not want to go with the rower away from her home to one of these places, though she wasn’t sure why. She remembered how, when she was a child, she would run into the water, then fall and wait for its buoyancy to uplift her. If she began to walk into the water now, she would be far from the shore by the time the rower arrived. She closed her eyes and began to walk, only opening her eyes when she again felt the water’s embrace. She found herself not in the lake, but rather at the bottom of an ocean, perfectly able to breathe the cloudy, gray water. A few mottled fish slowly passed empty shells above a broken, white bleached coral reef. Nearby, nearly covered with barnacles, sat a woman, visible only at random moments as when you watch flashes on an ocean’s surface, sometimes a mermaid, sometimes a female human body with a fish head, sometimes a humanoid. She was in a deep sleep. As Evelyn walked closer to her, her mind became filled with the same images of abundance as in her dream. They were the woman’s dreams, invading Evelyn’s consciousness. Evelyn knew without words that the sleeper was the Ocean Mother from whom all life on Earth had originally emerged, in mourning and depleted from assaults on life both above and below. The love Evelyn felt from and for the woman was immense, a tidal wave of warm pleasure and heart’s joy. Though she had never experienced it in her lifetime, she remembered the world she had seen in the Ocean Mother’s dream, when there was no “wilderness” because all the creation, including humans, were connected and indivisible, in wordless communication, and protecting the well being of the the Earth without question. She was passionately desirous to be at the center of her dream’s maelstrom of sound, motion, color, and relations, constantly changing and growing. “What is wrong?” Evelyn asked the woman, “How can I help?” The woman looked up at Evelyn and smiled, as if she had been waiting centuries for someone to say these words to her. Evelyn opened her eyes again, but this time she was on the opposite shore, where the dead landed after their boat ride. But she breathed. And she saw the boat rowing back towards her from the other shore of the living, coming to transport her there. Her wish had been granted. She was bypassing the certainty and peace of paradise for the uncertain happiness of knowing she was in the very beating heart of all life on our planet. The rower was a very young woman, gazing at her with innocent welcome, unaware that she was seeing herself in the future. Evelyn picked up the second pair of oars and the two of them began to make their way back across the water. When they arrived at the shore, the rower waved as she set off to wait till she was needed again. Evelyn stood where she had just been a moment ago, though it seemed like it had been a lifetime. She was risen from the dead, beginning a new life of the unknown, a reborn being in an old body. A piping plover family were at her feet, two tiny birds who had made a nest in the sand for their three eggs. They had been almost extinct, their sand nests too vulnerable to beachgoers, domestic animals, and developers, but with the help of scientists and volunteers, their species had been slowly recovering and was nearing stability. She sat down by the plover family and vowed that she would stay there till the young birds hatched and flew away. Whatever else she might do with the extra days of life she had been given, this was where she needed to be now. Was the rower who had led her to this Earthly place her true self, the Ocean Mother, or the whole world? Maybe all. It no longer mattered. The plovers would be safe for now.. By NPS Climate Change Response – Piping Plovers, Public Domain This line is from an old Scottish folk song, “The Water is Wide,” that …
(Poem) Morning reflections by Arlene Bailey

Art, Beyond The Veil by Debbie Hanna,www.facebook.com/DebbieHannaArt https://www.magoism.net/2020/04/meet-mago-contributor-arlene-bailey/
(Meet Mago Contributor) Julie Stewart Rose

Julie Stewart Rose is a Singer-Songwriter, Artist and businesswoman based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Julie’s artistic expression comes from a desire to explore mythology and spirituality as an expression of the feminine. Her art typically is multi-layered and loaded with symbolism and a beautifully complex, textured colour palette. Julie works primarily in the spiritual realm when she paints. Julie’s passionate interest in feminine energy is expressed as forms of spirituality. To build up the texture of Julie’s work, her mixed media approach includes hidden photos, underlying symbols and outlines, plaster, glues and acrylic paints built up in layers over time. Her website is: http://www.juliestewartlive.com/
(Prose) 2015 Survivors of Violence Art Exhibit—Reading by Swami Pujananda Saraswati

I awoke to the news that there was a volcano erupting in Chile. The images were stunning. I saw the timelapse and bowed my head to Her power. But that’s Chile’s Calbuco volcano, and it is far away. But its victims are not far, they are near. Nature behaves in fury, and humans get the idea that they can also behave irrationally and even criminally with impunity. There is wisdom in nature that does not reach the human abuser. Let me stretch my imagination and sit with you and with this thought. There is wisdom in Nature… even if it kills innocent people? But that is not fair? Who said we’ve come to a world that is fair? Look around and see all the destruction around us, this may not sound too helpful, but it is a necessary thought for dissolving cycles of self-pity and destructing memory of suffering. Not all memory of our suffering should be discarded—it would be like throwing the water with the baby. But there suffering arose a fire within us that should not be denied its power. Because we are powerful beyond measure, if only we knew it. It is interesting that in Kundalini Yoga, the science of chakras and nadis, the navel center relates to will power. In other indigenous worldviews, the navel is considered to be firm like a mountain. A mountain evokes certain firmness, we know. But in our culture, all the advertisement and propaganda are about keeping women at the water chakra, the chakra of sexuality and preventing women from reaching a fuller power and potential. In a market economy most relationships include harmful elements of competition. When navel chakra or center of power is activated, no one can tell us that we are victims or abused anymore. A woman who has come to her power is a force to be reckoned with, even if she appears to be soft and gentle, her thoughts and feelings can change the world. And you are the changing women, initiating a journey into transformation that will put an end patriarchal domination. I want to read to you a short essay by Anne Baring, the title is “Awakening to the Feminine,” you can find her online. http://www.annebaring.com/anbar34_awakeningtofeminine.html The word ‘Feminine’ stands for the Soul: the unseen cosmic web of life that connects each one of us to all others as well as to the life of the planet and the greater life of the cosmos. It stands for the recognition that we live within a Sacred Order and that we have a responsibility to protect the life of the planet and all the variety of species it embraces instead of exploiting them for the benefit of our species alone. In sum, the word ‘Feminine’ stands for a totally different perspective on life, a totally different worldview or paradigm of reality and for the feeling values which might reflect and support that worldview. It stands for a new planetary consciousness and the arduous creation of a new kind of civilization. Without reconnecting to the Soul and the guidance and wisdom of the Feminine, without going in search of the values it represents and opening our own heart to its subtle guidance, we will not understand the purpose of our presence on this planet, nor will we be able to disempower the unconscious atavistic tendencies which draw us ever closer to the destruction of our habitat and therefore to self-annihilation. Like the fiery magma of the earth’s core, the long repressed feminine principle is rising to meet the masculine one in response to a deep soul impulse to balance and marry these archetypal energies within ourselves and within our world. The resurgence of the Feminine invites a new planetary consciousness where the deepest instincts of the heart in both men and women: compassion, informed intelligence and a longing to protect, heal and make whole are able to find expression in ways that can best be described as devotion to planetary and cosmic life. Awakening to the Feminine means becoming protective of the whole of creation; dying to all the divisive ways of looking at life and each other; being born into an utterly different vision of reality. As it becomes more conscious in us, we are already becoming aware of our dependence for our continued existence on the integrity and sustainability of the planetary biosphere. Our image of reality and our relationship with the planet and with each other are being transformed as we assimilate the implications of this ‘marriage’ of the two primary archetypal principles. The return of the Feminine has the impact of a planetary earthquake, dissolving long-established social patterns, political and financial systems and religious institutions, asking for a radical transformation of our understanding of life….. (Anne Baring) I cannot stress enough the importance of allowing only positive and compassionate empowering women in your life. People who have territoriality issues, who see you as competition or as victim have no place in your life. If my friend could do it, so can you. You find a new beginning as powerful testimony when you connect body-mind-spirit, and much good and personal strength can come out of our pain. It is a strength that comes from having been broken and recovering the ever present unbroken one within. She went through feeling broken, and erected a new identity out of inspiration and cautious attention to who she associated with. She is living proof that recovery is possible. My life mission is to empower women with herstories of healing after abandonment, trauma and abuse, stories about women who crossed the threshold of victim identity to the new dawn of transformed empowered and compassionate presence. Once you shed the victim identity and grow into empowered woman character, you have one more mountain to climb to reach complete satisfaction from your long journey and efforts. Inspiration comes to compel you to empower other women. A time comes when it is your turn to mentor women who suffer abuse from …

(Special post) Interweaving Mago Threads by Mago Circle Members

“Mago” tradition Magoism is a new word to the modern Western vocabulary, yet it has […]
(Special Post 7) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. […]
(Special Post Isis 2) Why the Color of Isis Matters by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s note: The discussion took place in Mago Circle during the month of July, 2013. […]
(Special Post 1) Multi-linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

“Ma” in “Mago” and “Ma-Gaia” Mother Goddess, ca.7250-6700 BCE, Catal Huyuk Turkey [Conversation between Carol P. […]
(Review) Journey into Dreamtime by Munya Andrews, reviewed by Glenys Livingstone

Although the term “Dreamtime” is often not considered an adequate translation of the cosmology, religion […]
(Special Post 2) "The Oldest Cilivization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: The following discussion took place in response to an article listed blow by […]

(Slideshow) Summer Solstice Goddess by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Sekhmet by Katlyn Each year between December 20-23 Sun reaches Her peak in the Southern Hemisphere: it is the Summer Solstice Moment. Poetry of the Season may be expressed in this way: This is the time when the light part of day is longest. You are invited to celebrate SUMMER SOLSTICE Light reaches Her fullness, and yet… She turns, and the seed of Darkness is born. This is the Season of blossom and thorn – for pouring forth the Gift of Being. The story of Old tells that on this day Beloved and Lover dissolve into the single Song of ecstasy – that moves the worlds. Self expands in the bliss of creativity. Sun ripens in us: we are the Bread of Life. We celebrate Her deep Communion and Reciprocity. Glenys Livingstone, 2005 The choice of images for the Season is arbitrary; there are so many more that may express Her fullness of being, Her relational essence and Her Gateway quality at this time. And also for consideration, is the fact that most ancient images of Goddess are multivalent – She was/is One: that is, all Her aspects are not separate from each other. These selected images tell a story of certain qualities that may be contemplated at the Seasonal Moment of Summer Solstice. As you receive the images, remember that image communicates the unspeakable, that which can only be known in body, below rational mind. So you may open yourself to a transmission of Her, that will be particular to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syTBjWpw3XU Shalako Mana Hopi 1900C.E. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess), Corn Mother. Food is a miracle, food is sacred. She IS the corn, the corn IS Her. She gives Herself to feed all. The food/She is essential to survival, hospitality and ceremony … and all of this is transmuted in our beings. Sekhmet Contemporary image by Katlyn. Egyptian Sun Goddess. Katlyn says: Her story includes the compassionate nature of destruction. The fierce protection of the Mother is sometimes called to destroy in order to preserve well being. And Anne Key expresses: She represents “the awesome and awe-full power of the Sun. This power spans the destructive acts of creation and the creative acts of destruction.”- (p.135 Desert Priestess: a memoir).A chant in Her praise by Abigail Spinner McBride: Sheila-na-gig 900C.E. British Isles. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). From Elinor Gadon The Once and Future Goddess (p.338): “She is remembered in Ireland as the Old Woman who gave birth to all races of human…. In churches her function was to ward off evil”, or to attract the Pagan peoples to the church. From Adele Getty Goddess (p.66): “The first rite of passage of all human beings begins in the womb and ends between the thighs of the Great Mother. In India, the vulva “known as the yoni, is also called cunti or kunda, the root word of cunning, cunt and kin … (the yoni) was worshipped as an object of great mystery … the place of birth and the place where the dead are laid to rest were often one and the same.” Getty says her message here in this image “is double-edged: the opening of her vulva and the smile on her face elicit both awe and terror; one might venture too far inside her and never return to the light of day …” as with all caves and gates of initiation. In the Christian mind the yoni clearly became the “gates of hell”. And as Helene Cixous said in her famous feminist article “The Laugh of the Medusa”: “Let the priests tremble, we’re going to show them our sexts!” (SIGNS Summer 1976) Kunapipi (Australia) “the Aboriginal mother of all living things, came from a land across the sea to establish her clan in Northern Australia, where She is found in both fresh and salt water. In the Northern Territory She is known as Warramurrungundgi. She may also manifest Herself as Julunggul, the rainbow snake goddess of initiations who threatens to swallow children and then regurgitate them, thereby reinforcing the cycle of death and rebirth. In Arnhem Land She is Ngaljod …” (Visions of the Goddess by Courtney Milne and Sherrill Miller – thanks to Lydia Ruyle). More information: re Kunapipi. NOTE the similarity to Gobekli Tepe Sheela Turkey 9600B.C.E., thanks Lydia Ruyle.Lydia Ruyle’s Gobekli Tepe banner. Inanna/Ishtar Mesopotamia 400 B.C.E. (Adele Getty, Goddess: Mother of Living Nature) She holds Her breasts displaying her potency. She is a superpower who feeds the world, nourishes it with Her being. We all desire to feel this potency of being: Swimme and Berry express: “the infinite striving of the sentient being”. Adele Getty calls this offering of breasts to the world “a timeless sacred gesture”. Mary Mother of God 1400 C.E. Europe (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). A recognition, even in the patriarchal context that She contains it all. Wisdom and Compassion Tibetan Goddess and God in Union. This is Visvatara and Vajrasattva 1800C.E. (Sacred Sexuality A.T. Mann and Jane Lyle). Sri Yantra Hindu meditation diagram of union of Goddess and God. 1500 C.E. (Sacred Sexuality A.T. Mann and Jane Lyle, p.75). “Goddess and God” is the common metaphor, but it could be “Beloved and Lover”, and so it is in the mind of many mystics and poets: that is, the sacred union is of small self with larger Self. Prajnaparamita the Mother of all Buddhas. (The Great Mother Erich Neumann, pl 183). She is the Wisdom to whom Buddha aspired, Whom he attained. Medusa Contemporary, artist unknown. She is a Sun Goddess: this is one reason why it was difficult to look Her in the eye. See Patricia Monaghan, O Mother Sun! REFERENCES: Gadon, Elinor W. The Once and Future Goddess. Northamptonshire: Aquarian, 1990. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living Nature. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess.Berkeley: Wingbow, 1990. Katlyn, artist https://www.mermadearts.com/b/altar-images-art-by-katlyn Key, Anne. Desert Priestess: a memoir. NV: Goddess Ink, 2011. Mann A.T. and …
Summer Solstice Poiesis by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Seasonal Wheel of Stones Both Summer and Winter Solstices may be understood as particular celebrations of the Mother/Creator aspect of the Creative Triplicity of the Cosmos (often named as the Triple Goddess). The Solstices are Gateways between the dark and the light parts of the annual cycle of our orbit around Sun; they are both sacred interchanges, celebrating deep relationship, communion, with the peaking of fullness of either dark or light, and the turning into the other. The story is that the Young One/Virgin aspect of Spring has matured and now at Summer Solstice her face changes into the Mother of Summer. Summer Solstice may be understood as a birthing place, as Winter Solstice may also be, but at this time the transiton is from light back into dark, returning to larger self, from whence we come: it is the full opening, the “Great Om”, the Omega. I represent the Summer Solstice on my altar wheel of stones with the Omega-yonic shape of the horseshoe. I take this inspiration from Barbara Walker’s description of the horseshoe in her Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets, as “Goddess’s symbol of ‘Great Gate’[i]”; and her later connection of it with the Sheil-na-gig yoni display[ii]. Sri Yantra. Ref: A.T. Mann & Jane Lyle, p.75 Summer Solstice is traditonally understood as a celebration of Union between Lover and Beloved, and the deep meaning of that is essentially a Re-Union: of sensed manifest form (the Lover) with All-That-Is (the Beloved). This may be understood as a fullness of expression of this manifest form, the small selves that we are, being all that we may be, and giving of this fullness of being in every moment: that would be a blissful thing, like a Summerland as it was understood to be. The boundaries of the self are broken, they merge: all is given away – all is poured forth, the deep rich dark stream of life flows out. It is a Radiance, the shining forth of the self which is at the same time a give-away, a consuming of the self.In traditional PaGaian Summer ceremony each participant is affirmed as “Gift”[iii]; and that is understood to mean that we are both given and received – all at the same time. The breath is given and life is received. We receive the Gift with each breath in, and we are the Gift with each breath out. As we fulfill our purpose, as we give ourselves over, we dissolve, as the Sun is actually doing in every moment. The “moment of grace”[iv]that is Summer Solstice, marks the stillpoint in the height of Summer, when light reaches its peak, and Earth’s tilt causes the Sun to begin its “decline”: that is, its movement back to the South in the Northern Hemisphere (in June), and back to the North in the Southern Hemisphere (in December). Whereas at Winter Solstice when out of the darkness it is light that is “born”, as it may be expressed: at the peak of Summer, in the warmth of expansion, it is the dark that is “born”. Insofar as Winter Solstice is about birth, then Summer Solstice is about death, the passing into the harvest. It is a celebration of profound mystical significance, which may be confronting in a culture where the dark is not valued for its creative telios; and it is noteworthy that Summer Solstice has not gained any popularity of the kind that Winter Solstice has globally (as ‘Christmas’). The re-union with All-That-Is is not generally considered a jolly affair, though when understood it may actually be blissful. Full Flowers to the Flames Summer is a time when many grains ripen, deciduous trees peak in their greenery, lots of bugs and creatures are bursting with business and creativity: yet in that ripening, is the turning, the fulfilment of creativity, and it is given away. Like the Sun and the wheat and the fruit, we find the purpose of our Creativity in the releasing of it; just as our breath must be released for its purpose of life. The symbolism used to express this in ceremony has been the giving of a full rose/flower to the flames. Summer is like the rose, as it says in this tradition[v]– blossom and thorn … beautiful, fragrant, full – yet it comes with thorns that open the skin. All is given over. All is given over: the feast is for enjoying With the daily giving of ourselves in our everyday acts, we each feed the world with our lives: we do participate in creating the cosmos, as many indigenous traditions still recognise. Just as our everyday lives are built on the fabric of the work/creativity of all who went before us, so the future, as well as the present, is built on ours, no matter how humble we may think our contribution is. We may celebrate the blossoming of our creativity then, which is Creativity, and the bliss of that blossoming, at a time when Earth and Sun are pouring forth their abundance, giving it away. In this Earth-based cosmology, what is given is the self fully realized and celebrated, not a self that is abnegated – just as the fruit gives its full self: as Starhawk says, “Oneness is attained not through losing the self, but through realizing it fully”[vi]. Everyday tasks can be joyful, if valued, and graciously received: I think of Eastern European women singing as they work in the fields – it is a common practice still for many. We are the Bread of Life Summer Solstice celebrates Mother Sun coming to fullness in Her creative engagement with Earth, and we are the Sun. Solstice Moment is a celebration of communion, the feast of life – which is for the enjoying, not for the holding onto. We do desire to be received, to be consumed – it is our joy and our grief. Brian Swimme says: “Every moment of our lives disappears into the ongoing story of the Universe. Our creativity is energising the whole[vii]”. As it may be ceremoniously affirmed: we are (each is) …
(Prose) Desire: the Wheel of Her Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the concluding chapter (Chapter 8) of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Place of Being is a passionate place, where desire draws forth what is sought, co-creates what is needed[1]; within a con-text – a story – where love of self, other and all-that-is are indistinguishable … they are nested within each other and so is the passion for being. I begin to understand desire afresh: this renewed understanding has been an emergent property of the religious practice of seasonal celebration: that is, the religious practice of the ceremonial celebration of Her Creativity. It has been said She is “that which is attained at the end of desire[2].” Within the context of ceremonial engagement and inner search for Her, I begin to realize how desire turns the Wheel. As the light part of the cycle waxes from Early Spring, form/life builds in desire. At Beltaine/High Spring, desire runs wild, at Summer Solstice, it peaks into creative fullness, union … and breaks open at that interchange into the dark part of the cycle – the dissolution of Lammas/ Late Summer. She becomes the Dark One, who receives us back – the end of desire. It has been a popular notion in the Christian West, that the beautiful virgin lures men (sic) to their destruction, and as I perceive the Wheel, it is indeed Virgin who moves in Her wild delight towards entropy/dissolution; however in a cosmology that is in relationship with the dark, this is not perceived as a negative thing. Also, in this cosmology, there is the balancing factor of the Crone’s movement towards new life, in the conceiving dark space of Samhain/Deep Autumn – a dynamic and story that has not been a popular notion in recent millennia. Desire seems not so much a grasping, as a receiving, an ability or capacity to open and dissolve. I think of an image of an open bowl as a signifier of the Virgin’s gift. The increasing light is received, and causes the opening, which will become a dispersal of form – entropy, if you like: this is Beltaine/High Spring – the Desire[3]that is celebrated is a movement towards dis-solution … that is its direction. In contrast, and in balance, Samhain/Deep Autumn celebrates re-solution, which is a movement towards form – it is a materializing gathering into form, as the increasing darkness is received. It seems it is darkness that creates form, as it gathers into itself – as many ancient stories say, and it is light that creates dispersal. And yet I see that the opposite is true also. I think of how there is desire for this work that I have done, for whatever one does – it is then already being received. Desire is receiving. What if I wrote this, and it was not received or welcomed in some way. But the desire for it is already there, and perhaps the desire made it manifest. Perhaps the desire draws forth manifestation, even at Winter Solstice, even at Imbolc/Early Spring, as we head towards Beltaine – it is desire that is drawing that forth, drawing that process around. Desire is already receiving; it is open. Its receptivity draws forth the manifestation. And then the manifestation climaxes at Summer and dissolves into the manifesting, which is perhaps where the desire is coming from – the desire is in the darkness, in the dark’s receptivity[4]. It becomes very active at the time of Beltaine, it lures the differentiated beings back into Her. So the lure at Beltaine is the luring of differentiated beings into a Holy Lust, into a froth and dance of life, whereupon they dissolve ecstatically back into Her – She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire.” And in the dissolution, we sink deeper into that, and begin again. All the time, it is Desire that is luring the manifest into the manifesting, and the manifesting into the manifest. Passion is the glue, the underlying dynamic that streams through it all – through the light and the dark, through the creative triplicities of Virgin-Mother-Crone, of Differentiation-Communion-Autopoeisis[5]. Passion/Desire then is worthy of much more contemplation. If desire/allurement is the same cosmic dynamic as gravity, as cosmologist Brian Swimme suggests[6], then desire like gravity is the dynamic that links/holds us to our Place, to “that which is”, as philosopher Linda Holler describes the effect of gravity[7]. Held in relationship by desire/allurement we lose abstraction and artificial boundaries, and “become embodied and grow heavy with the weight of the earth[8].” We then know that “being is being-in relation-to”[9]. Holler says that when we think with the weight of Earth, space becomes “thick” as this “relational presence … turns notes into melodies, words into phrases with meaning, and space into vital forms with color and content, (and) also holds the knower in the world[10].”Thus, I at last become a particular, a subject, a felt being in the world – a Place laden with content, sentient: continuous with other and all-that-is. Notes: [1]“…as surely as the chlorophyll molecule was co-created by Earth and Sun, as Earth reached for nourishment; as surely as the ear was co-created by subject and sound, as the subject reached for an unknown signal.” As I have written in PaGaian Cosmology, p. 248. [2]Doreen Valiente, The Charge of the Goddessas referred to in Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p.102-103. [3]I capitalize here, for it is a holy quality. [4]Perhaps the popular cultural association of the darkness/black lingerie etc. with erotica is an expression/”memory” of this deep truth. [5]These are the three qualities of Cosmogenesis, as referred to in PaGaian Cosmology, Chapter 4, “Cosmogenesis and the Female Metaphor”: https://pagaian.org/book/chapter-4/ [6]Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, p.43. [7]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”, Hypatia, Vol. 5 No. 1, p.2. [8]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”,Hypatia, Vol. …
Lammas – the Sacred Consuming by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Lammas, the first seasonal transition after Summer Solstice, may be summarised as the Season that marks and celebrates the Sacred Consuming, the Harvest of Life. Many indigenous cultures recognised the grain itself as Mother … Corn Mother being one of those images – She who feeds the community, the world, with Her own body: the Corn, the grain, the food, the bread, is Her body. She the Corn Mother, or any other grain Mother, was/is the original sacrifice … no need for extraordinary heroics: it is the nature of Her being. She is sacrificed, consumed, to make the people whole with Her body (as the word “sacrifice” means “to make whole”). She gives Herself in Her fullness to feed the people …. the original Communion. In cultures that preceded agriculture or were perhaps pastoral – hunted or bred animals for food – this cross-quarter day may not have been celebrated, or perhaps it may have been marked in some other way. Yet even in our times when many are not in relationship with the harvest of food directly, we may still be in relationship with our place: Sun and Earth and Moon still do their dance wherever you are, and are indeed the Ground of one’s being here … a good reason to pay attention and homage, and maybe as a result, and in the process, get the essence of one’s life in order. One does not need to go anywhere to make this pilgrimage … simply Place one’s self. The seasonal transition of Lammas may offer that in particular, being a “moment of grace” – as Thomas Berry has named the seasonal transitions, when the dark part of the day begins to grow longer, as the cloak of darkness slowly envelopes the days again: it is timely to reflect on the Dark Cosmos in Whom we are, from Whom we arise and to Whom we return – and upon that moment when like Corn Mother we give ourselves over. This reflection is good, will serve a person and all – to live fully, as well as simply to be who we are: this dark realm of manifesting is the core of who we are. And what difference might such reflection make to our world – personal and collective – to live in this relationship with where we are, and thus who we are. We all are the grain that is harvested and all are Her harvest … perhaps one may use a different metaphor: the truth that may be reflected upon at this seasonal moment after the peaking of Sun’s light at Summer Solstice and the wind down into Autumn, is that everything passes, all fades away … even our Sun shall pass. All is consumed. So What are we part of? (I write it with a capital because surely it is a sacred entity) And how might we participate creatively? We are Food – whether we like it or not … Lammas is a good time to get with the Creative plot, though many find it the most difficult, or focus on more exoteric celebration. May we be interesting food[i]. We are holy Communion, like Corn Mother. Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [i] This is an expression of cosmologist Brian Swimme in Canticle to the Cosmos DVD series.
(Slideshow) Beltaine Goddess by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D.

Tara, Hallie Iglehart Austen, p.122 On November 7th at 22:56 UTC EarthGaia crosses the midpoint in Her orbit between Equinox and Solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere it is the Season of Beltaine – a maturing of the Light, post-Spring Equinox. Beltaine and all of the light part of the cycle, is particularly associated with the Young One/Virgin aspect of Goddess, even as She comes into relationship with Other: She remains Her own agent. Beltaine may be understood as the quintessential annual celebration of Light as it continues to wax towards fullness. It is understood to be the beginning of Summer. Here is some Poetry of the Season: Earth tilts us further towards Mother Sun, the Source of Her pleasure, life and ecstasy You are invited to celebrate BELTAINE the time when sweet Desire For Life is met – when the fruiting begins: the Promise of early Spring exalts in Passion. This is the celebration of Holy Lust, Allurement, Aphrodite … Who holds all things in form, Who unites the cosmos, Who brings forth all things, Who is the Essence of the Dance of Life. Glenys Livingstone, 2005 The choice of images for the Season is arbitrary; there are so many more that may express this quality of Hers. And also for consideration, is the fact that most ancient images of Goddess are multivalent – She was/is One: that is, all Her aspects are not separate from each other. These selected images tell a story of certain qualities that may be contemplated at the Seasonal Moment of Beltaine. As you receive the images, remember that image communicates the unspeakable – that which can only be known in body – below rational mind. So you may open yourself to a transmission of Her, that will be particular to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKGRoVjQQHY Aphrodite 300 B.C.E. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). This Greek Goddess is commonly associated with sexuality in a trivial kind of way, but She was said to be older than Time (Barbara Walker p.44). Aphrodite as humans once knew Her, was no mere sex goddess: Aphrodite was once a Virgin-Mother-Crone trinity – the Creative Force itself. The Love that She embodied was a Love deep down in things, an allurement intrinsic to the nature of the Universe. Praised by the Orphics thus: For all things are from You Who unites the cosmos. You will the three-fold fates You bring forth all things Whatever is in the heavens And in the much fruitful earth And in the deep sea. Vajravarahi 1600C.E. Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). A Dakini dancing with life energy – a unity of power, beauty, compassion and eroticism. Praised as Mistress of love and of knowledge at the same time. Tara Contemporary – Green Gulch California ,Tibetan Buddhist. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). “Her eroticism is an important part of her bodhisattvahood: the sweetpea represents the yoni, and she is surrounded by the sensual abundance of Nature. One of Tara’s human incarnations was as the Tibetan mystic Yeshe Tsogyal, “who helped many people to enlightenment through sacred sexual union with her”. – Ishtar 1000 B.C.E. Babylon (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). Associated with passionate sexuality (and with Roman Goddess Venus) – which was not perceived as separate from integrity and intelligence … praised for Her beauty and brains! Her lips are sweet, Life is in Her mouth. When She appears, we are filled with rejoicing. She is glorious beneath Her robes. Her body is complete beauty. Her eyes are total brilliance. Who could be equal to Her greatness, for Her decrees are strong, exalted, perfect. MESOPOTAMIAN TEXT 1600 B.C.E. Artemis 4th Cent.B.C.E. Greece. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess) – classic “Virgin” image – wild and free, “Lady of the Beasts”, Goddess of untamed nature. As such, in the patriarchal stories She is often associated with harshness, orgiastic rituals but we may re-story “wildness” in our times as something “innocent” – in direct relationship with the Mother. She is a hunter/archer, protector, midwife, nurturing the new and pure essence (the “wild”) – in earlier times these things were not contradictory. The hunter had an intimate relationship with the hunted. Visvatara and Vajrasattva 1800C.E. Tibetan Goddess and God in Union: it could be any Lover and Beloved, of same sex. Image from Mann and Lyle, “Sacred Sexuality” p.74. Sacred Couple –Mesopotamia 2000-1600 BCE “Lovers Embracing on Bed”, Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth, Diane Wolkstein and Samuael Noah Kramer. Represents the sacred marriage mythic cycle – late 3rd and into 4th millennium B.C.E. (See Starhawk, Truth or Dare). This period is the time of Enheduanna – great poet and priestess of Inanna. Xochiquetzal 8th century C.E. Mayan (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). Her name means “precious flower” – She is Goddess of pleasure, sexuality beauty and flowers. Sometimes represented by a butterfly who sips the nectar of the flower. “In ancient rituals honouring her, young people made a bower of roses, and, dressed as hummingbirds and butterflies they danced an image of the Goddess of flowers and love.” Her priestesses are depicted with ecstatic faces. (called “laughing Goddesses” !!) She and Her priestesses unashamedly celebrated joyful female sexuality – there is story of decorating pubic hairs to outshine the Goddess’ yoni. https://www.magoism.net/2013/06/meet-mago-contributor-glenys-livingstone/ REFERENCES: Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess. Berkeley: Wingbow, 1990. Mann A.T. and Lyle, Jane. Sacred Sexuality. ELEMENT BOOKS LTD, 1995. Starhawk. Truth or Dare. San Fransisco:Harper and Row, 1990. Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983. Wolkstein,Diane and Kramer, Samuel Noah. Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth. NY: Harper and Rowe, 1983. The music for the slideshow is “”Coral Sea Dreaming” by Tania Rose.
(Prose & Photography) Equinox Reflection by Sara Wright

Photography by Sara Wright I gaze out my bedroom window and hear yet another golden apple hit the ground. The vines that hug the cabin and climb up the screens are heavy with unripe grapes and the light that is filtered through the trees in front of the brook is luminous – lime green tipped in gold – My too sensitive eyes are blessedly well protected by this canopy of late summer leaves. The maples on the hill are losing chlorophyll and are painting the hollow with splashes of bittersweet orange and red. The dead spruces by the brook will probably collapse this winter providing Black bears with even more precious ants and larvae to eat in early spring. I only hope that some bears will survive the fall slaughter to return to this black bear sanctuary; in particular two beloved young ones… Mushrooms abound, amanitas, boletes morels, puff balls, the latter two finding their way into my salads. The forest around my house is in an active state of becoming with downed limbs and sprouting fungi becoming next year’s soil. The forest floor smells so sweet that all I can imagine is laying myself down on a bed of mosses to sleep and dream. The garden looks as tired as I am; lily fronds droop, yellowing leaves betraying the season at hand. Bright green pods provide a startling contrast to fading scarlet bee balm. Wild asters are abundant and goldenrod covers the fields with a bright yellow garment. Every wild bush has sprays of berries. My crabapple trees are bowed, each twig heavy with winter fruit. Most of the birds have absconded to the fields that are ripe with the seeds of wild grasses. The mourning doves are an exception – they gather together each dawn waiting patiently for me to fill the feeder. In the evening I am serenaded by soft cooing. One chicken hawk hides in the pine, lying in wait for the unwary…Just a few hummingbirds remain…whirring wings and twittering alert me to continued presence as they settle into the cherry tree to sleep, slipping into a light torpor with these cool September nights… Spiders are spinning their egg cases, even as they prepare to die. I can still find toads hopping around the house during the warmest hours of the day. Although the grass is long I will not mow it for fear of killing these most precious and threatened of species. I am heavily invested in seeing these toads burrow in to see another spring. My little frogs sit on their lily pads seeking the warmth of a dimming afternoon sun. Soon they too will slumber below fallen leaves or mud. I am surrounded by such beauty, and so much harvest bounty that even though I am exhausted I take deep pleasure out of each passing day of this glorious month of September, the month of my birth. Unlike many folks, for me, moving into the dark of the year feels like a blessing. Another leave -taking is almost upon me, and I am having trouble letting go of this small oasis that I have tended with such care for more than thirty years… I don’t know what this winter will bring to my modest cabin whose foundation is crumbling under too much moisture and too many years of heavy snow. In the spring extensive excavation will begin. A new foundation must be poured and this work will destroy the gardens I have loved, the mossy grounds around the south end of the house that I have nurtured for so long. In this season of letting go I must find a way to lay down my fears, and release that which I am powerless to change. Somehow… I have no idea what I will return to except that I have made it clear that none of my beloved trees be harmed. I am grateful that Nature is mirroring back to me so poignantly that letting go is the way through: That this dying can provide a bedrock foundation for another spring birth. As a Daughter of the Earth I lean into ancient wisdom, praying that this exhausted mind and body will be able to follow suit. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright.
(Book Excerpt) Imbolc/Early Spring within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Imbolc/Early Spring are: Southern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – February 1st/2nd though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, thus actually a little later in early August for S.H., and early February for N.H., respectively. Some Imbolc Motifs In this cosmology Imbolc/Early Spring is the quintessential celebration of She Who is the Urge to Be. This aspect of the Creative Triplicity is associated with the differentiation quality of Cosmogenesis,[i] and with the Virgin/Young One aspect of the Triple Goddess, who is ever-new, unique, and singular in Her beauty – as each being is. This Seasonal Moment celebrates an identification with the Virgin/Young One – the rest of the light part of the cycle celebrates Her processes. At this Moment She is the Promise of Life, a spiritual warrior, determined to Be. Her purity is Her singularity of purpose. Her inviolability is Her determination to be … nothing to do with unbroken hymens of the dualistic and patriarchal mind. The Virgin quality is the essential “yes” to Being – not the “no” She was turned into. In the poietic process of the Seasonal Moments of Samhain/Deep Autumn, Winter Solstice and Imbolc/Early Spring, one may get a sense of these three in a movement towards manifest form – syntropy: from the autopoietic fertile sentient space of Samhain, through the gateway and communion of Winter Solstice to differentiated being, constant novelty, infinite particularity of Imbolc/Early Spring. The three are a kaleidoscope, seamlessly connected. The ceremonial breath meditations for all three of these Seasonal Moments focus attention on the Space between the breaths – each with slightly different emphasis: it is from this manifesting Space that form/manifestation arises. If one may observe Sun’s position on the horizon as She rises, the connection of the three can be noted there also: that is, Sun at Samhain/Deep Autumn and Imbolc/Early Spring rises at the same position, halfway between Winter Solstice and Equinox, but the movement is just different in direction.[ii] And these three Seasonal Moments are not clearly distinguishable – they are “fuzzy,”[iii] not simply linear and all three are in each other … this is something recognised of Old, thus the Nine Muses, or the numinosity of any multiple of three. Some Imbolc/early Spring Story This is the Season of the new waxing light. Earth’s tilt has begun taking us in this region back towards the Sun. Traditionally this Seasonal Point has been a time of nurturing the new life that is beginning to show itself – around us in flora and fauna, and within. It is a time of committing one’s self to the new life and to inspiration – in the garden, in the soul, and in the Cosmos. We may celebrate the new young Cosmos – that time in our Cosmic story when She was only a billion years old and galaxies were forming, as well as the new that is ever coming forth. This first Seasonal transition of the light part of the cycle has been named “Imbolc” – Imbolc is thought to mean “ewe’s milk” from the word “Oimelc,” as it is the time when lambs were/are born, and milk was in plentiful supply. It is also known as “the Feast of Brigid,” Brigid being the Great Goddess of the Celtic (and likely pre-Celtic) peoples, who in Christian times was made into a saint. The Great Goddess Brigid is classically associated with early Spring since the earliest of times, but her symbology has evolved with the changing eras – sea, grain, cow. In our times we could associate Her also with the Milky Way, our own galaxy that nurtures our life – Brigid’s jurisdiction has been extended. Some sources say that Imbolc means “in the belly of the Mother.” In either case of its meaning, this celebration is in direct relation to, and an extension of, the Winter Solstice – when the Birth of all is celebrated. Imbolc may be a dwelling upon the “originating power,” and that it is in us: a celebration of each being’s particular participation in this power that permeates the Universe, and is present in the condition of every moment.[iv] This Seasonal Moment focuses on the Urge to Be, the One/Energy deeply resolute about Being. She is wilful in that way – and Self-centred. In the ancient Celtic tradition Great Goddess Brigid has been identified with the role of tending the Flame of Being, and with the Flame itself. Brigid has been described as: “… Great Moon Mother, patroness (sic … why not “matron”) of poetry and of all ‘making’ and of the arts of healing.”[v] Brigid’s name means “the Great or Sublime One,” from the root brig, “power, strength, vigor, force, efficiency, substance, essence, and meaning.”[vi] She is poet, physician/healer, smith-artisan: qualities that resonate with the virgin-mother-crone but are not chronologically or biologically bound – thus are clearly ever present Creative Dynamic. Brigid’s priestesses in Kildare tended a flame, which was extinguished by Papal edict in 1100 C.E., and was re-lit in 1998 C.E.. In the Christian era, these Early Spring/Imbolc celebrations of the Virgin quality, the New Young One – became “Candlemas,” a time for purifying the “polluted” mother – forty days after Solstice birthing. Many nuns took their vows of celibacy at this time, invoking the asexual virgin bride.[vii] This is in contrast to its original meaning, and a great example of what happened to this Earth-based tradition in the period of colonization of indigenous peoples. An Imbolc/Early Spring Ceremonial Altar The flame of being within is to be protected and nurtured: the new Being requires dedication and attention. At this early stage of its advent, there is nothing certain about its staying power and growth: there may be uncertainties of various kinds. So there is traditionally a “dedication” in the ceremonies, which may be considered a “Brigid-ine” dedication, or known as a “Bridal” dedication, since “Bride” is a derivative of …
Samhain/Deep Autumn within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 4 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Samhain/Deep Autumn are: Northern Hemisphere – October 31st/November 1st Southern Hemisphere – April 30th/May 1st though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, thus actually a little later in early May for S.H., and early November for N.H., respectively. A Samhain/Deep Autumn Ceremonial Altar In this cosmology, Deep Autumn/Samhain is a celebration of She Who creates the Space to Be par excellence. This aspect of the Creative Triplicity is associated with the autopoietic quality of Cosmogenesis[i] and with the Crone/Old One of the Triple Goddess, who is essentially creative in Her process. This Seasonal Moment celebrates the process of the Crone, the Ancient One … how we are formed by Her process, and in that sense conceived by Her: it is an ‘imaginal fertility,’ a fertility of the dark space, the sentient Cosmos. It mirrors the fertility and conception of Beltaine (which is happening in the opposite Hemisphere at the same time). Some Samhain/Deep Autumn Story This celebration of Deep Autumn has been known in Christian times as “Halloween,” since the church in the Northern Hemisphere adopted it as “All Hallow’s eve” (31st October) or “All Saint’s Day” (1st November). This “Deep Autumn” festival as it may be named in our times, was known in old Celtic times as Samhain (pronounced “sow-een), which is an Irish Gaelic word, with a likely meaning of “Summer’s end,” since it is the time of the ending of the Spring-Summer growth. Many leaves of last Summer are turning and falling at this time: it was thus felt as the end of the year, and hence the New Year. It was and is noted as the beginning of Winter. It was the traditional Season for bringing in the animals from the outdoor pastures in pastoral economies, and when many of them were slaughtered. Earth’s tilt is continuing to move the region away from the Sun at this time of year. This Seasonal Moment is the meridian point of the darkest quarter of the year, between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice; the dark part of the day is longer than the light part of the day and is still on the increase. It is thus the dark space of the annual cycle wherein conception and dreaming up the new may occur. As with any New Year, between the old and the new, in that moment, all is possible. We may choose in that moment what to pass to the future, and what to relegate to compost. Samhain may be understood as the Space between the breaths. It is a generative Space – the Source of all. There is particular magic in being with this Dark Space. This Dark Space which is ever present, may be named as the “All-Nourishing Abyss,”[ii] the “Ever-Present Origin.”[iii] It is a generative Place, and we may feel it particularly at this time of year, and call it to consciousness in ceremony. Some Samhain/Deep Autumn Motifs The fermentation of all that has passed begins. This moment may mark the Transformation of Death – the breakdown of old forms, the ferment and rot of the compost, and thus the possibility of renewal.[iv] It is actually a movement towards form and ‘re-solution’ (as Beltaine – its opposite – begins a movement towards entropy and dissolution). With practice we begin to develop this vision: of the rot, the ferment, being a movement towards the renewal, to see the gold. And just so, does one begin to know the movement at Beltaine, towards expansion and thus falling apart, dissolution. In Triple Goddess poetics it may be expressed that the Crone’s face here at Samhain begins to change to the Mother – as at Beltaine the Virgin’s face begins to change to the Mother: the aspects are never alone and kaleidoscope into the other … it is an alive dynamic process, never static. The whole Wheel is a Creation story, and Samhain is the place of the conceiving of this Creativity, and it may be in the Spelling of it – saying what we will; and thus, beginning the Journey through the Wheel. Conception could be described as a “female-referring transformatory power” – a term used by Melissa Raphael in Thealogy and Embodiment:[v] conception happens in a female body, yet it is a multivalent cosmic dynamic, that is, it happens in all being in a variety of forms. It is not bound to the female body, yet it occurs there in a particular and obvious way. Androcentric ideologies, philosophies and theologies have devalued the event and occurrence of conception in the female body: whereas PaGaian Cosmology is a conscious affirmation, invocation and celebration of “female sacrality”[vi] as part of all sacrality. It does thus affirm the female as a place; as well as a place.[vii] ‘Conception’ is identified as a Cosmic Dynamic essential to all being – not exclusive to the female, yet it is a female-based metaphor, one that patriarchal-based religions have either co-opted and attributed to a father-god (Zeus, Yahweh, Chenrezig – have all taken on being the ‘mother’), or it has been left out of the equation altogether. Womb is the place of Creation – not some God’s index finger as is imagined in Michelangelo’s famous painting. Melissa Raphael speaks of a “menstrual cosmology”. It is an “ancient cosmology in which chaos and harmony belong together in a creation where perfection is both impossible and meaningless;”[viii] yet it is recently affirmed in Western scientific understanding of chaos, as essential to order and spontaneous emergence. Samhain is an opportunity for immersion in a deeper reality which the usual cultural trance denies. It may celebrate immersion in what is usually ‘background’ – the real world beyond and within time and space: which is actually the major portion of the Cosmos we live in.[ix] Samhain is about understanding that the Dark is a fertile place: in its decay and rot it seethes with infinite unseen complex golden threads connected to the wealth of Creativity of all that has gone before – like any …
Lammas/Late Summer in PaGaian tradition By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Traditionally the dates for this Seasonal Moment are: Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd however the actual astronomical date varies. See archaeoastronomy.com for the actual moment. Lammas table/altar Lammas, as it is often called[1], is the meridian point of the first dark quarter of the year, between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox; it is after the light phase has peaked and is complete, and as such, I choose it as a special celebration of the Crone/Old One. Within the Celtic tradition, it is the wake of Lugh, the Sun King, and it is the Crone that reaps him. But within earlier Goddess traditions, all the transformations were Hers[2]; and the community reflected on the reality that the Mother aspect of the Goddess, having come to fruition, from Lammas on would enter the Earth and slowly become transformed into the Old Woman-Hecate-Cailleach aspect …[3] I dedicate Lammas to the face of the Old One, just as Imbolc, its polar opposite on the Wheel in Old European tradition, is dedicated to the Virgin/Maiden face. The Old One, the Dark and Shining One, has been much maligned, so to celebrate Her can be more of a challenge in our present cultural context. Lammas may be an opportunity to re-aquaint ourselves with the Crone in her purity, to fall in love with Her again. I state the purpose of the seasonal gathering thus: This is the season of the waxing dark. The seed of darkness born at the Summer Solstice now grows … the dark part of the days grows visibly longer. Earth’s tilt is taking us back away from the Sun. This is the time when we celebrate dissolution; each unique self lets go, to the Darkness. It is the time of ending, when the grain, the fruit, is harvested. We meet to remember the Dark Sentience, the All-Nourishing Abyss, She from whom we arise, in whom we are immersed, and to whom we return. This is the time of the Crone, the Wise Dark One, who accepts and receives our harvest, who grinds the grain, who dismantles what has gone before. She is Hecate, Lillith, Medusa, Kali, Erishkagel,Chamunda, Coatlique – Divine Compassionate One, She Who Creates the Space to Be. We meet to accept Her transformative embrace, trusting Her knowing, which is beyond all knowledge. Lammas is the seasonal moment for recognizing that we dissolve into the “night” of the Larger Organism of whom we are part – Gaia. It is She who is immortal, from whom we arise, and into whom we dissolve. This celebration is a development of what was born in the transition of Summer Solstice; the dark sentient Source of Creativity is honoured. The autopoietic space in us recognizes Her, is comforted by Her, desires Her self-transcendence and self-dissolution; Lammas is an opportunity to be with our organism’s love of Larger Self – this Native Place. We have been taught to fear Her, but at this Seasonal Moment we may remember that She is the compassionate One, deeply committed to transformation, which is actually innate to us. Whereas at Imbolc/Early Spring, we shone forth as individual, multiforms of Her; at Lammas, we small individual selves remember that we are She and dissolve back into Her. We are the Promise of Lifeas was affirmed at Imbolc, but we are the Promise of Her- it is not ours to hold. We identify as the sacred Harvest at Lammas; our individual harvest isHer Harvest. We are the process itself – we are Gaia’s Process. Wedo not breathe (though of course we do), we borrow the breath, for a while. It is like a relay: we pick the breath up, create what we do during our time with it, and pass it on. The harvest we reap in our individual lives is important, andit is for us only short term; it belongs to the Cosmos in the long term. Lammas is a time for “making sacred” – as “sacrifice” may be understood; we may “make sacred” ourselves. As Imbolc was a time for dedication, so is Lammas. This is the wisdom of the phase of the Old One. She is the aspect that finds the “yes” to letting go, to loving the Larger Self, beyond all knowledge, and steps into the power of the Abyss; encouraged and nourished by the harvest, She will gradually move into the balance of Autumn Equinox/Mabon, the next Sesaonal Moment on the year’s cycle. References: Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess.Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990. Gray, Susan. The Woman’s Book of Runes.New York: Barnes and Noble, 1999. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. McLean, Adam. The Four Fire Festivals. Edinburgh: Megalithic Research Publications, 1979. Notes: [1]See note 3. [2]Susan Gray, The Woman’s Book of Runes,p. 18. This is also to say that the transformations are within each being, not elsewhere, that is the “sacrifice” is not carried out by another external to the self, as could be and have been interpreted from stories of Lugh or Jesus. [3]Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, The Year of the Goddess, p.143, quoting Adam McLean, Fire Festivals,p.20-22. Another indication of the earlier tradition beneath “Lughnasad” is the other name for it in Ireland of “Tailltean Games”. Taillte was said to be Lugh’s foster-mother, and it was her death that was being commemmorated (Mike Nichols, “The First Harvest”, Pagan Alliance Newsletter NSW Australia). The name “Tailtunasad” has been suggested for this Seasonal Moment, by Cheryl Straffon editor of Goddess Alive! I prefer the name of Lammas, although some think it is a Christian term: however some sources say that Lammas means “feast of the bread” which is how I have understood it, and surely such a feast pre-dates Christianity. It is my opinion that the incoming Christians preferred “Lammas” to “Lughnasad”: the term itself is not Christian in origin. The evolution of all these things is complex, and we may evolve them further with our careful thoughts and experience.
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 3) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) Free PDF available at Mago Bookstore. MAPPING THE MAGOIST CALENDAR According to the Budoji, the Magoist Calendar was fully implemented and advocated during the period of Old Joseon (ca. 2333 BCE-ca. 232 BCE) whose civilization is known as Budo (Emblem City). Indeed, the Magoist Calendar is referred to as the Budo Calendar in the Budoji. Budo was founded to succeed Sinsi and reignited Sinsi’s innovations including the numerological and musicological thealogy of the Nine Mago Creatrix. The Budoji expounds on the Magoist Calendar as follows: The Way of Heaven circles to generate Jongsi (a cyclic period, an ending and a beginning). Jongsi circles to generate another Jongsi of four Jongsi. One cycle of jongsi is called Soryeok (Little Calendar). Jongsi of Jongsi is called Jungryeok (Medium Calendar). Jongsi of four Jongsis is called Daeryeok (Large Calendar). A cycle of Little Calendar is called Sa (year). One Sa has thirteen Gi (months). One Gi has twenty-eight Il (days). Twenty-eight Il are divided by four Yo (weeks). One Yo has seven Il. A cycle of one Yo is called Bok (completion of a week). One Sa (year) has fifty-two Yobok. That makes 364 Il. This is of Seongsu (Natural Number) 1, 4, 7. Each Sa includes a Dan of the big Sa. A Dan is equal to one day. That adds up to 365 days. At the half point after the third Sa, there is a Pan of the big Sak (the year of the great dark moon). A pan comes at a half point of Sa. This is of Beopsu (Lawful Number) 2, 5, 8. A Pan is equal to a day. Therefore, the fourth Sa has 366 days. At the half point after the tenth Sa, there is a Gu of the big Hoe (Eve of the first day of the month). Gu is the root of time. Three hundred Gu makes one Myo. With Myo, we can sense Gu. A lapse of 9,633 Myo-Gak-Bun-Si makes one day. This is of Chesu (Physical Number), 3, 6, 9. By and by, the encircling time charts Medium Calendar and Large Calendar to evince the principle of numerology.[12] KEY TERMS Calendric Cycles Jongsi (終是 Ending and Beginning): Cyclic periods Soryeok (小曆 Little Calendar): One year Jungryeok (中曆 Medium Calendar): Two years Daeryeok (大曆 Large Calendar): Four years Names of Year, Month, Day, Week Sa (祀 Rituals, year): One year refers to the time that takes to complete the cycle of rituals. Gi (期 Periods, month): One month refers to the period of the moon and menstruation cycle. Il (日Sun, day): One day refers to the sun’s movement due to Earth’s rotation. Yo (曜 Resplendence of seven celestial bodies, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, week): Each weekday is dedicated to seven celestial bodies. Bok or Yobok (曜服 Duties of the Celestial Bodies, completion of a week): One week refers to the veneration of the seven celestial bodies. Names of Monthly Transition Days Hoe (晦 Eve of the first day of the month, 28th) Sak (朔 First day of the month, 1st, the dark moon) Names of Intercalation Days Dan (旦 Morning): Leap day for New Year Pan (昄 Big): Leap day for every fourth year Names of Time Units Gu (晷 sun’s shadow): Time measure, 1/300 Myo Myo (眇 minuscule): Time measure, a total of 300 Gu Myo-Gak-Bun-Si (眇刻分時 minuscule, possibly 15-minutes, minute, hour): Time measure, 9,633 Myo-Gak-Bun-Si is equal to a day Names of Three Types of Numbers in Nine Numerology Seongsu (性數Natural Number): 1, 4, 7 in the digital root Beopsu (法數 Lawful Number): 2, 5, 8 in the digital root Chesu (體數 Physical Number): 3, 6, 9 in the digital root THREE SUB-CALENDARS The Way of Heaven circles to generate Jongsi (a period, an ending and a beginning). Jongsi circles to generate another Jongsi of four Jongsi. One cycle of jongsi is called Soryeok (Little Calendar). Jongsi of Jongsi is called Jungryeok (Medium Calendar). Jongsi of four Jongsis is called Daeryeok (Large Calendar). The universe is infinite without beginning and ending. Everything runs the course of self-equilibration in relation to everything else. The Way of Heaven or the Way of the Creatrix circles and makes possible the infinite time/space to be measured and calculated. As the Way of Heaven circles, we are able to perceive Our Universe in finite measures of time/space. Time becomes measurable, as space is stabilized. Seasons and days-nights are demarcated in cyclic patterns, as the Earth makes the three cyclic movements of rotation, revolution, and precession. Calendar, born out of the inter-cosmic time, synchronizes human culture with the song/dance of the universe. The term Jongsi, which means an ending and a beginning, is equivalent to “a cyclic period” that is marked by the beginning and the end. Time (a day, a month, and a year) circles, as space (the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun) spirals. The Magoist Calendar has three sub-calendars: The period of one yearly cycle is called Little Calendar, whereas the period of two yearly cycles is called Medium Calendar and the period of four yearly cycles, Large Calendar. To be continued. (Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang) Notes [12] Budoji, Chapter 23. See Bak Jesang, the Budoji, Bak Geum scrib., Eunsu Kim, trans. (Seoul: Gana Chulpansa, 1986).
(Essay) Walking with Bb by Sara Wright

Walking with Bb: a story exploring the psychic connection between one woman and her bear. Preface: The black bear – hunting season in Maine is brutal – four months of bear hell – five if one includes the month where hunters can track bears for “practice” with hounds – separate mothers and cubs, terrorize them, tree them and do anything but legally kill them. During the legal slaughter, Hunters bait bears with junk food by putting old donuts etc. in cans and shoot the bear while he or she is eating. Most bears (82 percent) are slaughtered in this manner, the rest are killed by hounding and trapping. The season begins in August and lasts through December. Trapping, by the way, is illegal in every state but Maine. Black bears are hated, and that hatred will, of course, eventually result in their extirpation. I had a shy (male) year old black bear visiting my house this past summer with whom I developed a friendship, and what follows is part of our story: Last Saturday I was walking down the road when I remembered that I had not done my daily “circle of protection” imaging for Bb (standing as he was the day he visited me at the window early in August). When I began to do this another picture of Bb moving on all four feet with his face turned towards mine super-imposed itself over his standing image. I could almost see his expression, but not quite. I didn’t know what this imaging meant beyond that we were communicating in some unknown way, and he was in the area (not a good thing on hunting Saturdays). He had not been coming in most nights and I was worried… That night he came. He is still making nightly visits five days later, the most sequentially consistent visits since September 15th, the day I believed that he had been shot. This experience prompted me to write about telepathy and precognition. It is close to All Hallows and the full Hunter’s moon (Nov 3). I keep listening to Charlie Russell’ story which reminds me that loving bears (especially male bears) is hard, almost a sure recipe for disaster, and that I was not alone in this deep concern for and fear of losing Bb. I can barely stand to remember my other bear losses and I can’t stand feeling them. Even after I wrote about the incident with Bb, the experience seemed to carry a charge that didn’t dissipate. Had I missed something? Next I wrote “Root Healer,” exploring the possibility that as I continued to act as Bb’s “little bear mother” now employing psychic techniques to keep him safe (in some desperation as it was the only means left open to me to protect this very vulnerable yearling), that Bb’s presence might also include a gift for me and that it might involve some kind of root healing for my body because Nature thrives on reciprocity. One idea I missed completely, for it was so obvious. Bb’s image was communicating to me that we were having a psychic conversation in that very moment. It was the first time in three months of imaging protective circles that moved with him that I had confirmation from him that we were communicating effectively in this unknown way. This rarely happens. Normally when I do this kind of work, I just do it. I don’t get direct confirmation that it’s working from the animal itself (except with Lily b). Knowing this helped me make another decision I might not have made so intentionally. The hunting season will last into mid December, and I will be traveling during that last month. I keep thinking that putting actual physical distance between Bb and I might pose more of a threat for his life and I have to remind myself that psychic phenomena are not distance dependent. I should be able to image that protective circle every day and feel that it is working. Bb has already shown me that it can but I fear adding distance because I don’t completely trust my own perceptions.* I suspect believing might be an additional dimension of ensuring success when it comes to psychic protection for this bear. But how do I incorporate belief into a picture that is so clouded with personal/cultural doubt? Half the time I don’t believe myself and virtually no one except Rupert Sheldrake, Iren and Harriet have ever taken my experiences seriously. I have to remind myself that I have done this work many times dealing with doubt and it worked anyway. The point of writing this reflection might be to put me on a new edge of increasing Bb’s odds of survival. If it’s possible that an attitude that embraces believing in what I do could help me protect Bb more effectively until hunting is over and its time for him to den in peace I want to claim it. The question I need to answer now is how to go about moving into a more trusting self as a woman who continues to walk with a bear at her side? The night after I wrote the above paragraph I dream of the doubters in the roles of my parents, and in a friend. I take these dreams seriously as doubters inside me and out. These dreams may be telling me that it is unreasonable to expect me to believe that what I do works when no one else does? The problem with this idea is that on some level I do believe. I feel as if I am walking with this bear, every single day. I think about him constantly. The only thing that got me out of the house yesterday was that he was out of chocolate donuts. Something is intensifying my relationship with Bb although I never see him. I am caught in a field of bear energy and information, perhaps through some version of beauty and the beast. That an archetype is …

(Bell Essay 8) The Magoist Whale Bell: Decoding the Cetacean Code of Korean Temple Bells by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This and ensuing sequels are excerpts of a new development from the original essay sequels on Korean Temple Bells and Magoism that first published January 11, 2013 in this current magazine. See (Bell Essay 1) Ancient Korean Bells and Magoism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.] Singing Humpback Whales, wikimedia commons Whales as the Cosmic Music Maker That whales (Gorae in Korean) are foundational to the Korean temple bell remains subliminal to this day. How do we assess the cetacean code of the Korean temple bell? What is the relationship between these two seemingly unrelated objects? We are given the whale-shaped mallet of the bell to begin with. Intriguingly, two Buddhist temples are noted today for the wooden whale-carved mallet of their bells: Sudeok-sa in Yesan, South Chungcheong, and Seonam-sa in Suncheon, South Jeolla.[1] Other temple bells reportedly have the whale mallet as well, although not as much distinctly carved as the two. The Divine Bell of King Seongdeok the Great is known as such. What is the significance of the Korean temple bell that has a whale as its striker? However, the whale-shaped wooden mallet is only a visible symbol of Sillan cetacean veneration. The whale motif is not just physically present in the mallet but also signified in its name or title. Among many alternative names of the Korean temple bell are cetacean names; Janggyeong (長鯨 Eternal Whale), Gyeongjong (鯨鐘 Whale Bell), Hwagyeong (華鯨 Splendid Whale), and Geogyeong (巨鯨 Gigantic Whale). Here the character “gyeong 鯨” means a whale.[2] These whale names suggest that the bell itself is conceived as a whale. Korean temple bells are the code of Magoist cetaceanism. By the very nature of a temple bell that is to awaken all beings to put it bluntly, we can establish that the sound of a whale is elevated to the purpose of a temple bell. Or vice versa. The sound of a temple bell is identified as that of a whale. At the outset, suffice it to say that whales are admired and revered for their vocal behaviors so much so that they are represented in Sillan temple bells. The cetacean representation of the Korean temple bell comes unexpected to us. Why is the song of a whale not the song of a bird or another animal? And what does it mean that the Korean temple bell employs cetacean names? These are no small questions. Answering them requires digging into the deepest layer of what has gone under the surface about Magoist Korean whale culture. I have discussed elsewhere in detail about how Korean cetaceanism is steeped in linguistics, myths, place-names, and custom.[3] For the immensity and complexity of the topic, this essay leaves out the discussion of such salient features of whales as their pre-human origin, evolution from land to sea, sizes and trans-oceanic migratory journeys. Summarily, whales connect and bridge the human mind beyond anthropocentrism. Here we will focus on how cetacean veneration is encoded in the Korean temple bell, in particular the sound tube. Ancient Korean Magoists deemed whales as the cosmic music makers. The cetacean names of Korean temple bells redefine the bell as the acoustic instrument that conveys the music of whales. Note the plural in bells and whales. Korean temple bells are meant to be recognized as a chorus, like whales in the sea, to respond to the sonic property of all beings. In fact, the Korean temple bell is never an isolated single sound wave, to be discussed below. What is emitted from both is harmonized music. It is noted that the music of whales can travel hundreds of kilometers underwater.[4] That the song of whales travel as far as hundreds of kilometers underwater is juxtaposed with the sound of the Korean temple bells that travel far. The former is transmitted through water waves, while the latter is transmitted through air waves. Humpback Whales Whales compose music. Among cetacean species, known for their vocalizations are the blue whale, the fin whale, the humpback whale, the minke whale, and the killer whale.[5] In particular, such baleen whales as humpback whales and blue whales have been relatively well studied for their vocalizing behaviors. The range of humpback whales’ sound frequencies is known as follows: The range of frequencies that whales use are [sic] from 30 Hertz (Hz) to about 8,000 Hz, (8 kHZ). Humans can only hear part of the whales’s songs. We aren’t able to hear the lowest of the whale frequencies. Humans hear low frequency sounds starting at about 100 Hz.[6] In comparisons, the vocalizations of blue whales are known to range from 10 to 40 Hz at a fundamental frequency (the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform). It is also noted that blue whales off the coast of Sri Lanka make music of “four notes duration lasting about two minutes each, reminiscent of the well-known humpback whale songs.”[7] To be discussed below, the frequencies of the two most noted Korean temple bells range from 65 Hz to 103.02 Hz, which fall within the range of these whales’ vocalizations. A significant volume of scientific research has been harvested on the music of humpback whales. Katy and Roger Payne are, according to an article by Bill McQuay and Alison Richards, the first scientists who identified the calls of male humpback whales as songs.[8] They report that humpback whales do not merely sing but compose music. McQuay and Richards describe the song of humpback whales as follows: Surprisingly researchers have noted that at any given moment all males in a group will sing the same version of a song, even when separated over large distances, while whales in another region or hemisphere will sing a completely different song, but in unison with other whales in their area. These sounds are loud, deep and low-frequency (20Hz – 10 kHz). They can be heard many miles away and may go on for hours or even days. Individual songs can last anywhere from a few minutes up to a half hour at which point they may then be repeated again. …
(Essay 3) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

[Editor’s note: Numbers of endnotes differ from the original ones in the article] Claiming the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City) as a Principal Text of Magoism The Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City) stands out from other sources for its systemic and refined mytho-historical account of Old Magoism. Alleged to have been written in between the late fourth and early fifth century of Silla Korea (57 BCE-918 CE), the Budoji is the Sillan testimony to the history of Budo (Emblem City), a replica of Mago’s Citadel. It is a book that summons ancient Koreans to remember the glorious history of their Magoist ancestors particularly Budo, better known as Dangun Choson Korea (2333 BEC-232 BEC). Budo’s construction and administration in East Asia for nearly two millennia are attributed to the leadership of Imgeom or Dangun. She is the third of the triad sovereigns of Old Magoism after Hanin and Hanung. Designating the civilization of Budo as a direct successor of its previous civilization Sinsi (Divine Market) attributed to the leadership of Hanung, the Budoji traces the Magoist pedigree of pre-patriarchal civilizations ultimately back to Mago and her paradisiacal community, Mago’s Citadel.[i] Composed of thirty-three chapters, its epical narrative is replete with unheard but resonant concepts and symbols such as cosmic music, triad, parthenogenesis, mountain paradisiacal community, genealogy, and so on. Among others, the Budoji unleashes one most fascinating cosmogonic account yet-to-be-known, the story of Mago’s beginning.[ii] Mago, emerged by the cosmic music alongside the stars in the primordial time, began her procreation. Then she initiates the natural process of self-creation. She had her offspring to procreate and asked them to administer the paradisiacal community in Mago’s Citadel. She is the cosmic being who listens to the rise and fall of the cosmic music. The primary task of Mago’s community was to produce Earthly musical resonance that corresponds with the music of the universe. The sonic balance between the universe and the Earth is absolutely essential to the survival and prosperity of the earthly community.[iii] The Budoji not only makes it possible to recognize a large corpus of transnational primary sources as coherent within the context of Magoism but also enables the researcher to understand erosion, variation, and mutation wrought on individual data in the course of history. Budoji’s mytho-historical framework is particularly crucial in assessing the large number of folkloric and topological data that are otherwise seen anomalous or corrupted. For example, the stories that Mago lived in a rock or Mago carried large boulders on her limbs and built megalithic structures find resonance in Budoji’s narratives. Its accounts concerning rocks and landmasses are too complex to present here. Some examples are: Mago began her act of creation by moving and dropping a heavenly landmass and into heavenly water; Magoist sovereigns became rocks that made resonating sounds upon death. In short, Magoism animates pre-Chinese history of East Asia otherwise labeled as “primitive societies.” It entertains the idea that animism and shamanism are not isolated practices but the older religious forms of Magoism.
(Essay 2) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

[Editor’s note: Numbers of endnotes differ from the original ones in the article] Reconstructing Gynocentric Korean Identity Scholars in the West, upon assessing a religion or deity of the non-Western world, tend to pair the topic with a modern nation. Thus, they often project their modern knowledge of the nation or culture onto the indigenous religion or deity they study. Such a methodology betrays the assumption that the modern notion of national identities is time-proven and bias-free. In this process, one’s perception of other people’s cultural expression is molded by Western-made modern knowledge of that people. This kind of knowledge ceases to exist outside the Western mind. Some go further to point out that the religious expression of a non-Western country in point is colored by the air of nationalism that is culturally on the rise in that country. This kind of assessment suggests the idea that a cultural expression fostered by nationalist zeal is inauthentic or impure and therefore of less value for study. While such conclusions are not necessarily wrong, I find it misguided. Done so, it prepares the ground for Western scholars to wield the authority of Western hegemony over the non-Western world. Precisely, it is blind to the fact that no cultural expression in modern times is free from nationalist ethos. Modern life is inherently shaped by the shade of nationalism whether it is in a non-Western world or a Western world. In my view, the question to be asked is: How can we assess a religious expression of a people beyond the modern notion of national identities? Or how can we go beneath the modern notion of national identities in order to assess a religious expression of a people? I hold that the modern category of national identities in particular causes harm to the study of the goddess. Modern nationalities go hand in hand with the impetus of patriarchal religions that do away with the female principle. There is an unmistakable difference between the male divine and the female divine when their manifestations are found cross-nationally. It is generally assumed that exchange of cultures between nations allows the male divine to be disseminated from one people to another. It is true that patriarchal religions have traveled around the globe and disseminated their gods into other nations. When it comes to the goddess whose worship is widespread across nations, such as the case of Mary in the West, however, this kind of reasoning proves to be inadequate. Antithetical is the idea that patriarchal religions actively promote the transmission of the great goddess from one nation to the other. Thus, the very perception of the transnational goddess is systematically thwarted in the realm of patriarchal religions. Androcentric researchers may choose to either dismiss as anomalous the topic of the goddess whose manifestation is found cross-nationally or treat her as a local deity severing her from her transnational context. This has been done to the topic of Mago. While Mago’s manifestation exists across the national boundaries of Korea, China, and Japan, it differs in nature, density, and complexity in these countries. Likewise, primary sources also show different traits according to the country. Korean sources surpass her Chinese counterparts not only in number but also in density and complexity. Mago’s supreme divinity is essentially affirmed in Korean sources, whereas it is treated as unknown in Chinese and Japanese counterparts. More to the point, the Budoji, the principal text that re-emerged in Korea in 1986, asserts that Koreans were the defenders of Old Magoism (Magoism in pre-patriarchal times) against the pseudo-Magoist Chinese regime. How can we understand the primacy of Korean Magoism without resorting to the modern notion of nationalist identities?
Mago, the First Mother from East Asia by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Excerpts from “Mago, the First Mother from East Asia,” Creatrix Media Live (CML) Roundtable Radio Talk with Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang. May 23, 2011] Jayne DeMente: Welcome Helen, I was fortunate to read some of your research and I applaud you because, we in the Western WSE movement have long needed to hear more from Asian women spiritual leaders and feminists and your reference to the Neolithic timeline… For our listeners and participants online, let’s lead with the question of who is Mago, was she a mother figure, what is Magoism, does any other deity pre-date her? Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: *Mago is the great goddess known to East Asians throughout history. She is the first mother of all, cosmogonist, and ultimate sovereign/ruler. She has many names. Among them are Triad Deity (Samsin), Grandmother (halmi), Auspicious Goddess (Seogo), Evil (Magui), and Old Goddess (Nogo). She is also known as the Giantess who shaped the natural and cultural landscape. Her manifestations are so multivalent that one may think they do not refer to the same goddess. She was well loved, given high esteem, celebrated by East Asians in the past. She was almost completely forgotten, however in modern times, up until the 1980s in Korea, when the principle text of Magoism, the Budoji, re-emerged. *Mago is a mother figure in the sense that she bore two daughters, Kunghee and Sohee, and managed her household called the Castle of Mago, the primordial paradise of humanity. She is the ancestor of all races. She takes care of everything on earth via the equilibrium of cosmic music/sound/vibration. *Magoism is the term that refers to the totality of culture/civilization venerating Mago as the great goddess. It is a tradition largely unnoted but co-opted and distorted in major East Asian religions. The concept of Magoism helps one identify and understand Mago’s multivalent manifestations that are found trans-nationally. It also makes possible to name the female-centered original/primal civilization that gave birth to the forthcoming East Asian civilizations and religions. *Whether Mago is the earliest deity known to East Asia is unknown. In fact, there are goddesses unearthed from “pre-historic” archaeological sites without their names. The life-sized goddess statue was unearthed in the site of Hongshan Culture, northeastern region of present China dating from 4,700 to 2,900 BCE. The heavy use of jade along with the partly bear-figured female icon is congruent with the account of Magoism in the Budoji. Also, of course, there are numerous female figurines called dogu excavated in Japan’s “pre-historic” times. The ancient origin of Mago or Magoism has a merit to explain some facts that remain a mystery, so to speak. Korea is also known as the land of dolmens. Half of the world megaliths are populated in the Korean peninsula. There are numerous pyramids found in mainland China. There is a documentary film about the sunken temple beneath the sea of Okinawa Japan, etc. dating to 10,000 years ago. *Then, how early does Mago date to? It is difficult to date the earliest evidence of Mago or Magoism simply because written history does not exist in pre-patriarchal times. As you see here, when we talk about the earliest of something, everyone assumes it is of Chinese. So let me follow this line of thought: Ge Hong’s record on Magu from China dates to the early fourth century CE (Ge Hong 283—343 CE). However, Daoist scholar Robert Ford Campany states that the cult of Mago dates back to the Stone Age. It is more difficult to date Mago in Korean records simply because ancient written records did not survive. Two books, the Budoji and the Handan Gogi, alleged to have been written in the late 4th or early 5th century and subsequent later times, which refer to Mago otherwise known as Samsin (Triad Deity) remain controversial. Considering that the name Mago is embedded in Korean language as in “gom,” “geum,” and “gam,” whose meaning indicates ruler, sovereign, and head, the origin of Mago is as old as these words. Likewise, most materials that recount Mago as cosmogonist are of folklore, place names, literature, arts, and debris of historical and religious records, most of which are difficult to date for its origin. Anniitra Ravenmoon: Thank you Helen, you have done much academic research and hold several degrees, can you explain to us how your education or experience informed you regarding Mago? Helen: *I would say that encountering Mago as a doctoral research topic is ultimately prompted by my intellectual quest as a Korean feminist. Following radical feminism of Mary Daly, I wanted to seek spirituality that is not only non-patriarchal but also East Asian and Korean. This made me study feminism and East Asian religions, histories, and cultures, etc. I end up with so much to study over the past decade and a half. I did not take up graduate studies as a means to develop an academic career. I loved reading and studies from youth. This kind of attitude is not that practical in the job market. However, I believe this is the right path for me. To look back, I did not follow the ready-made conventional path of life. I was a dreamer and idealist. I still value those qualities in myself and others. I used to think to myself, if I had remained a Christian, I would not have sought Mago. How could I? Likewise if I had resorted to Buddhism, I would not have encountered Mago. Because I wanted to carve out my own spiritual path as a Korean feminist, I was able to encounter Mago. Another factor at work in my study of Mago is the cultural or spiritual tradition of cultivating the Dao, the Way, in East Asia. I wanted to find out what the truth was, how I could make the most out of my life and etc. So I tried the shoes of a Catholic overseas missionary for a while. Leaving Christianity behind, however, helped me realize the cultural heritage that I have within. It was …
(Italian language essay) Corea: la Musica cosmica di Mago by Luciana Percovich

[Author’s note: From Colei che dà la vita. Colei che dà la forma. Miti di creazione femminili, Venexia, Roma, Italia, 2009] Capitolo 3 Corea: la Musica cosmica di Mago Mago Nell’Età del Primo Cielo, esistevano solo la luce del sole e l’acqua. Quando Ryoe Ryul (la Musica cosmica armonizzata) risuonò più volte, emersero le stelle. Da Pal Ryoe (la Musica cosmica otto volte avvolta), si generarono Mago e il paradiso di Mago (Mago Sung). Fu un evento che ebbe luogo nell’Età Cosmica di Mezzo chiamata Jim Se (il Suo/Loro mondo). Mago preparò l’età che si chiama Ultimo Cielo. Mago non provava sentimenti né di piacere né di dolore. Nell’Età del Primo Cielo la grande cittadella di Mago stava sopra il SilDal (la Terra reale) e vicina all’HeoDal (la Terra ideale). Anche queste erano emerse dalla musica. Quando il Jim Se ebbe compiuto i suoi cicli per molto tempo, prima dell’Ultimo Cielo (il Nostro/Questo mondo), Mago generò da sola due figlie, Kung Hee (volta) e So Hee (nido) e affidò loro l’Oem Chil Jo (le cinque note e i sette toni). E mentre praticavano l’arte di vivere, dalla terra sgorgava il latte; Kung Hee e So Hee generarono ciascuna due figlie e due figli. In seguito, Mago affidò Ryoe (la Musica cosmica femminile) alle quattro nipoti femmine e Ryul (la Musica cosmica maschile) ai quattro nipoti maschi. Il paradiso di Mago, Mago Sung (la cittadella di Mago), che onorava l’Emblema celeste, seguì al Primo Cielo. Le quattro coppie, chiamate Hwang Gung (volta gialla), Baek So (nido bianco), Chun Gung (volta azzurra) e Heuk So (nido nero) furono posizionate ai quattro angoli della città. Ed esse costruirono i tubi (flauti) e composero musica. Il ciclo dell’Ultimo Cielo si srotolava. Ryul e Ryoe tornavano a risuonare. Si formò Hyang Sang (la rappresentazione dell’eco), suoni e musica si mescolavano. Mago tirò la grande cittadella di SilDal e la immerse nella regione dell’Acqua celeste. L’energia del SilDal salì e coprì la nuvola d’acqua. Quando il corpo del SilDal si espanse, comparve la terra in mezzo all’acqua. Terra e acqua stavano parallele, sorsero le montagne e le correnti si allungarono. La regione dell’Acqua celeste divenne terra e le due nuove regioni di acqua e terra ruotarono ripetutamente, finché il sopra e il sotto si rovesciarono. Da qui iniziarono numeri e calendario. Energia, fuoco, acqua e terra si generavano, mescolavano e equilibravano in mutua relazione. Da quel momento la luce separò il giorno dalla notte e le quattro stagioni. Piante e animali crescevano in abbondanza. C’era tanto lavoro da fare sulla terra… Poiché non c’erano altri se non i quattro uomini e le quattro donne celesti che amministravano la musica originale e la rappresentazione dell’eco, le cose apparivano e sparivano rapidamente senza tenersi in equilibrio. Mago allora mostrò loro come procreare dalle ascelle. Fu allora che i quattro uomini celesti si unirono alle quattro donne celesti. E ciascuna generò tre figlie e tre figli: gli antenati umani che apparvero per la prima volta sulla terra. Tutti gli abitanti di Mago Sung avevano disposizioni di cuore e di mente pure e sincere e conoscevano l’armonia. Bevevano il latte che sgorgava dalla terra e il loro sangue era energia pura. Avevano oro nelle orecchie e sentivano la musica celeste. Correvano e camminavano a loro piacere, erano liberi nei movimenti. Alla fine della loro vita, diventavano polvere dorata. L’essenza dei loro corpi si conservava. Con l’hon (spirito dell’aria) risvegliato, sapevano parlare senza voce e muovendo il baek (spirito del corpo) sapevano agire senza forme. Vivevano sparsi tra le energie della terra e la lunghezza delle loro esistenze era infinita… Quando ogni clan raggiunse il numero di 3000 … Ji So (nido di ramo), del clan dei Baek So (nido bianco), non riuscì più a bere il latte della terra. La sorgente del latte era così piccola e affollata che Ji So perse il suo turno più volte. Così Ji So per la fame assaggiò l’uva e invitò altri a farlo e fu così che un gruppo fu mosso a provare questa nuova esperienza… Il loro sangue e il loro corpo cominciarono a diventare torbidi, crebbero loro i denti, gli si aprirono gli occhi … stavano perdendo la loro natura celeste. Cominciarono a morire e la morte non fece più parte della vita. Nacquero creature bestiali. L’ordinato calendario cadde nel disordine. La comunità si divise e quelli che mangiavano l’uva lasciarono Mago Sung con vergogna, disperdendosi in luoghi diversi … . Fu allora che Mago chiuse i cancelli e ritirò le nuvole attraverso cui la gente poteva restare in sintonia con la Musica cosmica.
(Mago Almanac Basics 1) What is the Magoist Calendar? by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: I have created 13 basics of Mago Almanac, which are included in Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Volume 6), Year 6 or 5920 MAGOMA ERA (Equivalent to 2023 CE). These 13 basics constitute the backbone of Magoist Cetaceanism as well.] It is a 13 month 28 day luni-menstrual-solar calendar of Old Magoist Korea. Insofar as one year marks about 365.25 days, a time taken for the earth to revolve around the sun, it is a solar calendar. The fact that both the moon and the female menstruation cycle mark 28 days, which makes 13 months or 364 days for one year. This makes approximately 1.25 a surplus. Thus, we have days outside the calendar grid. Each year has one extra day on the day before the New Year’s day. The New Year of Year 1 or 5915 Magoma Era was set on the new moon date before Winter Solstice in 2018 by the Gregorian Calendar. With one extra day, the year makes 365 days. Given that the actual period of the Earth’s revolution is approximately 365.25 days, we have the second extra day every fourth year. Setting aside the extra days, we have 364 days for one year. 364 days divided by 28 days is 13. That is how we have 13 months in a year. The Magoist Calendar championing the matricentric worldview is the very indication that our Mother Earth is stabilized in her own voyages. https://www.magobooks.com/download-mago-almanac-circular-calendar-year-6-2023/ https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang/

Category: Women

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