March 13, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Meet Mago Contributor Amy D’Amico

Amy D’Amico is a writer, mama, attorney, who is learning slowly what the spirit of the universe is made of, and how it intersects with the creation and editing of Read More …

(Story 1) The Spirit in the Teapot by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Art, “Woman with Bountiful Bowls” by Nanri Tenney Lucia poured water into the tea kettle and set it on the stove. She then measured two scoops of tea leaves into her grandmother’s century-old teapot, too distraught to notice their tangy aroma or curling beauty, before replacing the lid. Only rarely did the teapot leave the battered cabinet where Lucia kept her precious family mementoes, but today she hankered to touch its round, inviting belly, admire the delicate designs winding around in a never-ending circle, and savor again the hours that she and her grandmother had spent chatting while drinking tea when she was a girl. It was a simple teapot just like hundreds of others made by the same factory so long ago, but to Lucia it was a gateway to all she had lost and did not know how to regain. She had been laid off from her part-time, minimum wage job in the morning and spent the afternoon in line at the neighborhood food pantry. She had never before asked for help, but she needed milk or bread for her son and daughter when they came home from school. A freezing panic set into her stomach as she glanced at the calendar and realized that rent was due next week. Without her job she would never be able to pay it and she was already two months behind. If she and her children were evicted, where would they go? She thought of her grandmother who had brought the teapot with her on the long voyage from the home country she had fled when war made life too dangerous for her family and village. She was just a small girl traveling alone because there was only enough money for one family member to escape. The teapot, a memento, had been wrapped in the few clothes in her suitcase along with a letter to a distant relative begging her to take Lucia’s grandmother in. Lucia had learned all this from her mother, now long since passed away. Her grandmother had never spoken of it. Lucia wondered how her grandmother had survived so much, even more than she herself was facing now. She pondered how her grandmother cherished every flower in her garden, every human being she met, every day as being made up of moments of grace. She always seemed as if she knew she was where she was supposed to be, doing what she was meant to do, even if she was just washing dishes, or, in her last months, sitting quietly in the dayroom of her nursing home. Lucia remembered having such transcendent moments herself as a child, but now she was so busy with trying to keep herself and her children fed, clothed, and sheltered that she had no time for the luxury of contentment. Lucia’s reverie was interrupted by the whistle of the tea kettle. She waited a moment for the water to stop boiling, then poured it into the teapot. The faint sound awoke one of the Spirits who Goddess had assigned to Earth as a caretaker of the world’s living beings. She had given this Spirit the special task of serving the world’s women. The Spirit had taken a short nap, only a few thousand years, merely the wink of an eye in terms of human history. Other Spirits had continued on during her rest, answering the cries of those in despair, gazing down with compassionate eyes, always offering just what was needed even if the humans thought they wanted something else. The whistle reminded her of the delightful hums, chants, and music that had come from all the Goddess sacred sites around the world when she had first fallen asleep. She wiped the mist of millennia from her eyes and flew down to Earth to see where the music was coming from. She looked in vain for a globe full of caves, temples, shrines, groves and other sites sacred to the Goddess. The Spirit found that so many had been abandoned and razed that entire communities existed without a single image of Goddess. The places that had once been so holy were now silent, bereft of human hearts and minds. In many places, the names and images of Goddess were now reviled or forgotten. Her hymns and stories were no longer told and her music no longer filled the air. The Spirit, first puzzled, then troubled, sought out the humans who were so dear to her and searched their souls. Too many women who once saw themselves as the sacred givers of life and had served as shamans and priestesses, now no longer knew that Goddess was within them and their voices were banished from holy places. To the Spirit, the destruction that had taken place was epitomized by the desecration of the serpents. All over the planet she saw the sacred snakes cut into pieces, made into objects of fear and revulsion. For millennia, snakes had been symbols of the renewal of life and transformation and had accompanied the priestesses in their ceremonies. In many culture, the serpent was the symbol of wisdom and enlightenment and the life energy within all humans, ascending upwards when awakened. Could the sacred serpents be made whole and once again bring their life-giving power to humans, the Spirit wondered? Could people as isolated from one another as the pieces of the serpent ever find each other and their own sacredness within themselves? Nanri Tenney Artist Statement Woman with Bountiful Bowls, a symbol for forward movement and positive feminine energy in our times. This spiritual woman on a teapot lid is offering bowls of food to all. She is holding the world in balance with her nurturing creativity and sustainability. The round teapot represents the world in the process of returning to a healthy state. The spout and handle morphs the globe into a peaceful serpent dragon, a vehicle for positive transformation. The cut-up dead snake below the teapot is the shadow world and represents the …
Call for Contributions

Thanks to your support and interest, the Return to Mago webzine has grown rapidly for the last twelve months and continues to send out the message that WE ARE ONE PEOPLE in the Great Goddess. It is open to the public across the continents. We have begun to publish materials in non-English languages. Our readership displays over 134 nations as of today. Our Editors (Rosemary Mattingley, Helen Hwang, Donna Snyder, Mary Saracino, and others) are ever-committed as volunteers, a symbol in itself for what WE are. We seek out for contributions that can visualize our connections, struggles, and visions. We welcome the following perennially: Introduction of Goddess from around the world (the great goddess in priority) and her history, myth, material cultures; Feminist issues; Structural/institutional issues (racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and nationalism, etc) that hinder the goddess consciousness and activities; Spirituality, religion, history of a particular people that revere the female divine; Cosmology, ecology, and nature in relation to the female divine; Song/dance of life-searching and life-loving work, project, and expression; We also seek seasonal themes such as equinoxes and solstices, feast and holiday messages. By contributing to Return to Mago, you are participating in WE, the Current of Connecting with All Beyond Differences, the Way the Universe Is as our ancestors did. Please send an email for submission inquiry or more information to any of us: Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com), Creator, Director, and Co-editor Rosemary Mattingley (rosemarymago@gmail.com), Editor-in-Chief Donna Snyder (tumblewordsproject@yahoo.com), Co-editor Mary Saracino (marysar1004@msn.com), Co-editor Basic Guidelines: We are seeking relevant and creative materials that include research, experience, insight, knowledge, vision, and/or event anytime. We welcome articles, essays, poems, reports, fictions, journals, photo essays, short videos, and art pieces. Topics: Our emphasis is on any theme of goddess and the female divine of the world to promote connection, peace, creativity, diversity, and activism of many kinds. Length: Approximately but not exclusively in 400-700 words for essays. If long in length, we recommend parceling it into parts. Use and attach in your email a Word document for your manuscript. If using notes, please make them as endnotes. Provide at least one image that goes with your material. Images need to be sent as jpg files. For art, pixels should be about 800×1000. Include 3-10 keywords in your submission. Include one or a few sentences from your essay that will entice our readership. We will use it as “a pinned quote” for your post. If you are a new contributor to RTM, provide a short bio and a headshot photo for our Contributors Page. Our Editors Collective will review your submission as quickly as possible and notify the decision. If chosen, you will be provided with copy-editing and/or suggestion that will respect your voice and style. Please email us about a non-English essay submission if you have one. Thanks so much and Mago Blessings! Read previous Call for Contribution Themes: March, 2014 Jan. and Feb. 2014 Nov. and Dec. 2013 ◊ We, the co-editors, contributors, and advisers, have started the Mago Web (Cross-cultural Goddess Web) to rekindle old Gynocentric Unity in our time. Now YOU can help us raise this torch high to the Primordial Mountain Home (Our Mother Earth Herself) wherein everyone is embraced in WE. There are many ways to support Return to Mago. Donate $3.00 to $10.00 is one way. For your time and skill, please email Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Please take an action today and we need that! Thank YOU in Goddesshood of all beings! (Click Donate button below. You can donate by credit card or bank account without registering PayPal. Find “Don’t have a PayPal account?” above the credit card icons.)
(Poem) The Ballad of Cantalily by Robin Scofield

White terns cross the cobalt mountains turned fire in the river. My name is Riddle speaker, the taste of wings rising. The reflection tastes like mercury, but my teeth are sweet. With faces like catchers’ mitts, the old crones look twice. In my hands I find birds to carry the seed for winter wheat. My name is what the sandpiper says to the river. The wolf moon lights my name, not a snake on the path. My name is not Golondrina, not full throttle at dawn. My name is not Zopilote, yet I eat the dead. My name is not snow goose yet I am invisible. My name stops before limestone slabs in Smuggler’s gap. My name is a train whistle the gates coming down. Robin Scofield is the author of And the Ass Saw the Angel and Sunflower Cantos from Mouthfeel Press. She has poems appearing or forthcoming in Pilgrimage, Cedilla Six, Interstice, and Mezcla II. She is a poetry editor for BorderSenses who lives in El Paso and writes regularly with the Tumblewords Project. “The Ballad of Cantalily” is included in Sunflower Cantos, published by Mouthfeel Press in August of 2012. In the book, Scofield creates her own cosmology, set forth through the mouth of the trickster goddess, Cantalily. Cantalily is a liminal figure both very much of the present as well as of the time before time.
(Essay 1) Through a Darkened Door—Light by Mary Ann Ghaffurian PhD

Radiant Sun Figure. Revolutionary context, c.4000BCE[i] Introduction My name is Mary Ann Ghaffurian, aka Dr MAG; my work unheralded on the world stage or any stage, in particular. During postgraduate years, my research focused, over a broken 30 year period, on the psychoetechnologies and archaeology of human consciousness; the structure of mind, soul and psyche over historical periods; and the interior passage or alchemic journey of the individual, then society in an atmosphere of nightmare and awakening. However, an academic journey into the undercurrents of time, space, history and consciousness was something I didn’t foresee, when suddenly catapulted into a luridly, stark awareness before the age of 3. Up until then, I lived in a watery, cocooned world of motheriness and hovering, benevolent faces in a leafy place opposite a beach. But something changed, dramatically. It was not just the appearance of a new baby in the family (a very sick baby), but because the cocoon of care I lived in was summarily snatched from me. Deposited in a hospital to be looked after by unfriendly people (probably because I was screaming continuously) while my mother recovered, I was left to fend emotionally in a sterile environment without parents or visitors. The rush of the outside world hit me with all its detached anonymity and separativeness. It was an experience of the ego of the child, who as the sun of itself, abiding in glowing beneficence, is suddenly and summarily expelled from its orbit, as the thing around which everything else turns, capitulating the solar being into the impossible— cold, empty space. From cushioned padded warmth and the wholeness of oneself unconditionally, to the outside crushing in with its abject Newtonian mental constructs of imprisonment. I became super-aware of different mentalities, barriers separating human to humans, without flow and each as a separate world with vast gulfs between. So outside reality hit, not just as separation, but as existential catastrophe. Once the floodgates to this awareness were opened, they remained open and I began from that time to deal with the conflict of inner and outer, internal and external, self and other, abyss and connection, coexisting uncomfortably together. Of them alone, that was enough, but the floods brought more, the multidimensional cacophony of memes and memories with the plight of child-consciousness being pressed up against a membrane of existence-as-it-was, as well as memory itself that was much longer and larger than the memory of the singular child. This last was the hardest to abide. Day or night I felt perniciously close to the thumping heart of milliard existences clambering for attention in memory, if I, just a little, dipped in to that drum-skin membrane that separated my little world from a vast teeming ocean of life just bustling to get in. At the same time I could not discern who or what memories, voices, memes were in that swill, because it wasn’t sorted, so the child became overwhelmed and exhausted. So there was a notional 3 year old struggling to get on in a household of adults and a new brother struggling with life, plus the new inner and outer world opened up to a child who had no-one to talk to, and indeed was just beginning to talk coherently herself. This beginning set the stage for the unravelling of a dedicated, seeking life. But it wasn’t just that I was alone in my new state of the inner and outer being merged somewhat, or threatening to merge all the time, and my valiant efforts to keep them apart, so I could get on with a normal kid life. No, many other scenarios developed out of that prescient clarity which was completely undesired by the child. I also felt interferences from another world, domain, dimension, technological intrusion, or worlds, with no apparatus of incarnate maturity to deal with it. And that was the thing, I was completely aware that the membrane that separated me from the deluge behind the screen was also the gift of forgetfulness that came with coming into this world, yet again. And there was the rub. Existential anguish at 5. Yes, there was the world of Father Christmas, The Nativity, Easter Bunny, Birthdays, Mickey Mouse Club, kindergarten, Mass on Sunday; books of Binkle and Flip and The Faraway Tree, although the story of Terra, the terrapin, remained the most significant (a book I never found again later, no matter how hard I searched). Then there was that other world, the world of the dead of night, when dark doors of dimensions opened and I (psyche, emotions, and vital energy) was at the mercy or behest of forces, powers, I had no vocabulary of skills to manage the terror of. “They” were without respect of person, violating one’s “personal space” uninvited. No boundary was holy or sacrosanct then. How do you deal with lack of boundaries or “no boundaries”— introduced from the “other side,” —when you are 4 or 5. The beautiful sanctum of non-interference is what babe and children revel in, in total enveloping trust: warm smiles, snuggly toys, nice smells, shining eyes and hugs. To whom do you turn when you call out to an adult, “Mummy!” who switches on the light and no one, no one else at all is there in the room? Night paralysis began and became continual. But there was more, there was always more. In hindsight I can look back and show you how I dealt with each issue case by case, unravelling the core of each situation incrementally by the grit of struggling awareness, and by digging into and clinging to the seed of my being. It coexisted in the experiential melange one was hurled into body and soul before one could barely give utterance to what was happening, and there were no mentors to help. Beside the bereavement of being in that condition, it is important to tell, there was a very narrow band of a sense one could talk to someone or something else, very …
(Poem) Nana Haiku by Virginie Colline

Sunny femmes fontaines the strength of Niki’s women the contagious dance
(Essay 3) Cosmogenesis and the Female Metaphor: Her Resonances with the Three Qualities by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is part 3 of an edited excerpt from Chapter 4 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. In my authoring of PaGaian Cosmology, I have associated the three qualities of Cosmogenesis (the unfolding of the Cosmos) as described by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, with the three qualities of the Goddess metaphor; as a method of restoring Her as a pattern of Cosmological Creativity. The three qualities/themes of Cosmogenesis have been named by Swimme and Berry as differentiation, communion and autopoeisis/subjectivity. Herewith is an abbreviated summary of my synthesis of these three qualities with the three qualties of Goddess. Describing differentiation, which I associate with the Virgin aspect – the Urge to Be, passionate love of every individual self, Swimme and Berry say, From the articulated energy constellations we call the elementary particles and atomic beings, through the radiant structures of the animate world, to the complexities of the galaxy with its planetary systems, we find a universe of unending diversity… The more intimately we become acquainted with anything, the clearer our recognition of its differences from everything else… There has never been a time when the universe did not seek further differentiation[i]. Swimme and Berry note that the more deeply we come to know a thing – the Milky Way, the species on a particular tree in a rainforest – the more deeply we perceive its “ineffable uniqueness”. They note then that not only is each thing new and different, but that the dynamics of relationship between the new structures are qualitatively and quantitatively different. They find that when the thirteen point seven billion year epic of the Universe’s unfolding is viewed as a whole, with its extravagant creative outpouring, there is the revelation of the uniqueness of the creativity of each place and time, and the existence of each being. My own Poetic translation of Swimme and Berry’s expressions regarding Cosmogenesis proceeds in the following way. When they say that the universe “at each instant has re-created itself anew”, and that this seemingly infinite power “speaks of an inexhaustible fecundity at the root of reality”[ii], I imagine it in “Goddess-speak”. That is, “the Virgin dynamic of unique beauty expressed and celebrated in early Spring, has layered within, the fertility that is expressed and celebrated in High Spring (Beltane), as She changes into the Mother dynamic of Summer, whose fertility rests in the Dark Interiority of the Old One expressed and celebrated particularly in Deep Autumn (Samhain).” This translation of mine is kin to William Irwin Thompson’s translation of Lyn Margulis’ description of her study of bacteria: he says that when he saw her film about bacteria, his thoughts “on the relationship between myth and science took a jump forward” as he began to understand what his Irish ancestors meant when they had spoken of “the little people” at work in the leaf mold at their feet[iii]. Even as Swimme and Berry define differentiation, the three aspects are constantly drawn into the equation, and again with this perception: “The multiform relatedness demanded by a differentiated universe rests upon the fact that each individual thing in the universe is ineffable”[iv]. The sentience or interiority or presence of each unique thing/being evokes relatedness in mind-boggling complexity. To help one understand the way in which the aspects support each other, Swimme and Berry imagine: Were there no differentiation, the universe would collapse into a homogenous smudge; were there no subjectivity, the universe would collapse into inert, dead extension; were there no communion, the universe would collapse into isolated singularities of being.[v] Each aspect does not really exist without the others, yet each has its own integrity. In the case of the dynamic of differentiation, Swimme and Berry say that, to understand the Universe – the entire display – to get the full picture, we must understand the absolute freshness of each being and each moment. The Matres Describing communion, which I associate with the Mother aspect – the sustaining, relating Context, the reciprocal Place of Being, the passionate pouring forth for other, Swimme and Berry say, … relationship is the essence of existence. In the very first instant when the primitive particles rushed forth, every one of them was connected to every other one in the entire universe. At no time in the future existence of the universe would they ever arrive at a point of disconnection. Alienation for a particle is a theoretical impossibility. For galaxies too, relationships are the fact of existence. Each galaxy is directly connected to the hundred billion galaxies of the universe, and there will never come a time when a galaxy’s destiny does not involve each of the galaxies in the universe. Nothing is itself without everything else. Our Sun emerged into being out of the creativity of so many millions of former beings. The elements of the floating presolar cloud had been created by former stars and by the primeval fireball … The patterns of nuclear resonances enabling stable nuclear burning was not the Sun’s invention – and yet all that followed depended upon this pattern of interconnectivity in which the Sun arose[vi]. So it is with any entity, with any being – we arise within a pattern of interconnectivity, the beneficiaries of the creativity of former beings, supported by everything that has gone before. Swimme and Berry point out that a sense of relatedness is at the base of being, present even before a first interaction. They give the example of an unborn grizzly bear, as being already related to the outside world in that she will not have to develop a taste for the foods bears eat, and she is already shaped for her environment and the survival tasks ahead of her; that is, we are already in relationship by the fact of our being – relationships then “are discovered, even more than they are forged”[vii]. Once again, in the process of defining the one aspect – this time communion – all three aspects are drawn into …
(Music) We Are the Women Who… by Alison Newvine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozrupNDrbS0 “We Are” is a tribute to the healers, midwives and other women who were persecuted and killed during the centuries of European witch hunts. This piece honors the sacred wisdom held by women that patriarchal religious forces were determined to destroy. This sacred season of the witch is also a season of reclamation. We are reclaiming our wisdom, our power, our sacred worth, our interconnectedness. We are reclaiming our darkness and our light. Spiral Muse creates music exploring the exquisite pain and beauty of the human experience. We are guided by Spirit and the awe inspiring power of the Sacred Mother on our quest for healing. We write and produce songs of praise, protest and healing, centering around Goddess and women’s lived experiences. This song appears on our most recent album Fire of Hope. Our song writing process is highly collaborative. The lyrics for “We Are” were written by Lana Dalberg, published author and the band’s violinist. The melody was written by myself and the choral arrangement by Kathleen Neville-Shinn, founder of Brigid’s Flame, a center for Goddess-centered healing services. The piece weaves together three voices and the violin to create a haunting four-part harmony. This song is an early release from our upcoming album, “Fire of Hope,” coming out this winter. All of our music is available on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Youtube and other electronic music platforms. Lyrics We are the women who mixed the herbs Our wisdom Earth, our knowledge it’s plants We are the midwives who shepherded life We moved in darkness to bring forth the light We are the ones with hearts on fire Burned at the stake, our wisdom seemed lost We are the ones who grow from ashes And now, anew, our wisdom arises https://www.magoism.net/2023/10/meet-mago-contributor-alison-newvine/
(Poem) Homo Sapiens by Janine Canan

Whatever I said that was bitter and burning was not bitter or burning enough to describe what we have been put through— Earth, our Mother, and her children. No words can be invented by a sane human mind for the horror of this holocaust. And still they go on—Madmen stripping plundering gang-raping our Mother.
(Book Excerpt 1) Pagan, Goddess, Mother by Nane Jordan, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This is the Introduction chapter from: Pagan, Goddess, Mother, edited by Nané Jordan and Chandra Alexandre, Demeter Press, 2021, pp. 11-28, https://demeterpress.org/books/pagan-goddess-mother/.] Introduction Nané Jordan and Chandra Alexandre I am the Mother of all things and my love ispoured out upon the earth…I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters,I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me.For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe. From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return. Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. (From Traditional Charge of the Goddess by Doreen Valiente, adapted by Starhawk) This book gathers creative voices, stories, and scholarship from the forefront of Pagan and Goddess-centred homes—where Goddesses, divine Mothers, female embodiment, and generative life cycles are honoured as sacred. Pagan and Goddess spirituality are distinct yet overlapping traditions, lived through diverse communities in North America and beyond. Those who inhabit these spaces have much to say about deity as mother and about human mothers in relationship to deity. This anthology puts Pagan and Goddess mothering into focus by highlighting the philosophies and experiences of mothers in these movements and spiritual traditions. By doing so, we hope to generate new ways of imagining and enacting motherhood. Questions informing this collection are as follows. How do mothers in contemporary Pagan and Goddess movements negotiate their mothering roles and identities? How does devotion towards Mother Goddesses empower and/or affect the lived experiences of mothers and feminist practices of mothering? As editors, we wondered how Pagan- and Goddess-centred mothers engage in, and are affected by, their particular spiritual leadership through practices of ceremony, ritual, magic, priestessing, as well as through living connections with nature, the more-than-human world, the Earth as Mother, and our own bodies. We were curious to know how Pagan- and Goddess-centred mothers interface with dominant religions, the public sphere, social institutions for children, community leadership, and social justice movements. We were curious especially because Pagan and Goddess spirituality are not mainstream religions, nor are they accepted as such. Adherents often co-create new pathways, subcultures, or countercultures in life and spirit. Practitioners may or may not belong to particular communities or faith-based groups and may even practice traditional religions alongside their Pagan and Goddess spirituality. For many, the term “spirituality” rather than “religion” best describes Pagan and Goddess philosophies and ways of life. Spirituality may be equated with the search for meaning in life; it is related to sensing the more-than-material world of the sacred, numinous, or divine—feeling interconnections within the web of life, and all that is. Spirituality often describes subtle human experiences that are immanent (from within) and/or transcendent (from outside) of the self. Spiritual experiences often have transformative, healing, or uplifting qualities. For some practitioners, Pagan and Goddess spirituality are understood as growing from the roots of ancient religions or as reclaimed from pre-Christian spiritual worldviews. Pagan- and Goddess-loving individuals may be hidden in their communities and face misunderstanding from mainstream religion and society. Conversely, others live openly and identify with particular pathways, groups, or circles, gathering in designated places of worship to practice their spiritual expression. What especially intrigued us, as editors, is the knowledge gained from our own experiences, struggles, and insights with Goddess spirituality. In this, our practices and experiences of mothering have been uniquely affected by living spiritual paths that value women, the sacred female and feminine, daily embodied life, and mothers themselves as divine and part of the sacred cycle of life. We particularly live our mother- centred spirituality as women seeking to engage in nonpatriarchal spiritual practices and leadership. We see this form of spiritual feminist leadership reflected in this volume—through stories of those who support and uplift women as mothers in their communities and through the voices of mothers who strive to live in balance with male partners and/or the men in their lives. Many Pagan- and Goddess- identified mothers and mother-centred people find their spiritual pathways to be life-enhancing alternatives to patriarchal, male-centred religions. In particular, Goddess spirituality, as a women- and female-empowering movement, has grown out of social gender justice and feminist movements in North America and beyond (e.g. Hwang et al., Robbins Dexter and Noble; Sjoo and Mor, Spretnak). Some common principles to both Pagan and Goddess spirituality are a love of nature and the Earth as sacred; knowing the Earth as our Mother; a respect for the elements and the more-than-human worlds of trees, plants, earth, water, and animal life; belief in the importance of the unseen realms; valuing embodied life and our bodies as sacred in female and all gendered forms; honouring the seasons and the cosmic turning of the wheel of the year; and appreciating the depth of interconnections between birth, life, and death. Through the authors represented herein, this anthology examines the pleasures, struggles, and challenges of living Pagan- and Goddess-centred truths as mothers raising children towards postpatriarchal, Earth-based, and love-centred lives, which recognize the pain of suffering alongside the importance of healing, compassion, and the pursuit of an interconnected, joyful life. Such mothers are striving to unleash their own and their children’s fullest potential from worldviews that honour the female/feminine and mothers as divine and sacred to all life. Engaged in and uplifting Pagan- and Goddess-centred spirituality, this anthology reveals the tensions and insights of these communities, philosophies, and practices for empowering and healing the lives of mothers as well as the next generation. (To be continued) (Meet Mago Contributor) Nane Jordan https://www.magoism.net/2014/03/meet-mago-contributor-nane-jordan/

(Special Post 1) "The Oldest Civilization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: The following discussion took place in response to an article listed blow by the members of The Mago Cirlce, Facebook group of Goddessians/Magoists from May 6 to May 10, 2016. Readers are recommended to read the original article linked below that has invoked the converation.] “The Danube Civilization: Oldest in the World” in The Ancient Ones upon the ruins of our ancestors, published April 3, 2016.
(Special Post Mother Teresa 4) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

Part IV: Illumination and Consensus Reached [Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] Diane Horton: [C], how is it that you do not see that MT had no right to sacrifice other people for any purpose whatsoever? None of us have the right or the place to “sacrifice those we care about” for anything. She was not “above them”. And she had abundant means to do far more for them, to cure and comfort them. If indeed she imagined she had some lofty motivation as you so fervently believe, to use the power she had to withhold medical care from the poverty stricken sick and dying in some misguided and ultimately cruel attempt to bring the world’s attention to their suffering and produce compassion within those who would not otherwise feel it is the most monstrous miscarriage of any expression of what you might refer to as “love” that I have heard of outside of Jim Jones killing all of his followers in Ghana. That’s not Love. That’s not Compassion. That is Manipulation, and manipulation is ego-based. Anne Wilkerson Allen: Yes. It is an indoctrination so deep and so prolonged that it takes a lifetime to overcome…and we rely on the love and compassion of others to help bring us to this understanding….thanks, Diane. Diane Horton: Love you, Anne. [C]: Is thinking that any human being sacrificing inside their very soul, their morals, & all that entails, is actually of lesser value than outside human pain, suffering, even death itself, right? Diane Horton: I’m not sure I understand the question really, but I’ll try a response: one’s inner and outer life are of equal importance because they are all the whole person.
(Special Post 4) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing eight sequels (all nine parts) are a revised version of the discussion that has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Here is how Goma is known among the ancient Chinese. She is called The Mysterious Woman of the Nine Heavens (Jiutian xuannu). Nine Heavens refer to the confederacy of nine states, Danguk or Nine Hans. Statue of Jiutian Xuannü, Wikimedia Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiutian_Xuann%C3%BC Another icon of Jiutian Xuannu below. https://www.tinyatdragon.com/blogs/spiritual/jiu-tian-xuan-nu-mysterious-lady-of-the-nine-heavens?fbclid=IwAR0n1Ld6tmxqTec23Pzg3DxRjEQ-DbjdGF1DU_Jjlt4eMbHdTOO9Jd7ePnc Lizzy Bluebell: Oh – now I see what the Buddha riding the deer was carrying; her Gourd. A very interesting link, thanks.”…these statues in Taoism are not for worshipping or praying. They are like a container, a magic tool, which is used to program the energies into profiles and be used for different things in Taoist magic. The outsiders cannot understand too much, and so these “Taoist secrets” are often hidden from the public in the old days or even today.” Lizzy Bluebell: Very informative passage on the power of the NINE:”Nine is the pattern of giving off power, or using up the energies of things to give off powers, just like a flashlight burning it’s battery up for the light. Sky is the pattern that relates to any pool of resources or elements that are considered the proactive party that is “starting” something or the giving side of a situation.Remember that we talk about patterns in Taoism, and it applies to everything including our FU talismans words and these special terms like Jiu Tian / Gau Tin.A practical example for this term can be used as in if you are trying to go to the kitchen and cook something for lunch. Your “sky” here is all the things in the kitchen, and ground is the kitchen itself where you put the food into “process” them. So the 9-sky stage is to have picked out the food you like and let them show themselves to let you know which one is the best to use, maybe some just smell better or some look fresher to you. Nothing has been done yet, but you are now able to “start” something because you can at least feel and sense the food’s potentials and power.” Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Lizzy Bluebell, Oh it is gourd. Yes, I forgot about the gourd symbol for Mago/Magu. It is a container for the elixir from which one drinks. It is a common pictographic/literary theme and I have images of Magu with the gourd. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Lizzy Bluebell, this is one heuristic analogy. Ancient Magoists depicted/perceived the universe as Nine Heavens, an equivalent to Nine States on earth for it is the lens of Nine Numerology through which they saw everything. Because ancient China removed the history of Goma, they spiritualized/philosophized the teaching of Nine Numerology. If we have Goma’s history (and the mytho-history of Old Magoism), we can perceive the meaning of Nine Heavenly directly (not through theories or analogies). Wherever and whenever the consciousness of Nine Numerology surfaces is a manifestation of Goma’s rule/civilization/religion. This will remain forever insofar as humanity continues because Nine Numerology is the principle of nature including humans. I would say that the teaching/principle of Nine Numerology is Goma’s self-redemptive soteriological gift. Insofar as we understand and honor the Nine Mago Creatrix/Nine Numerology (the female divine in general), we are endowed with the power of self-redemption. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Lizzy Bluebell, the character “Xuan or Hyeon 玄” refers to the quality of gynocentric spirituality, which has been made esoteric or mystic. It refers to the spirituality of the Great Goddess (Magoist spirituality). Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Nine Hans or Nine Heavens manifests in such place-names as Kyūkoku (九国, Nine States). Kyushu (Nine Provinces) Island, Japan, seemingly a replica of Danguk (confederacy of nine states) representing the Nine Mago Creatrix, reflects the ancient glory of the Goma’s gynocentric rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyushu Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Doumu (Mother of the Northern Dipper) also comes in the icon of eight arms. Doumu, Song Dynasty, Wikimedia Commons Domu, Wikimedia Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doumu Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: She is often conflated with Marici seated on a boar in her iconography (affine to Gemu of the Mosuo and Durga on a tiger/lion). Here Marici is depicted as four-headed and eight-armed. Marici, Wikimedia Commons Marici (Buddhism) – Wikipedia Judy E Foster: So similar to the Indian Goddess… Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Indeed! I am afraid that we may not be able to feature some of the nine forms of Durga from “Hinduism”. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang There is more, Marici. Marici, Wikimedia Commons File:Marichi, Buddhist Goddess of Dawn, China, Qing dynasty, 18th… Marichi, Source below. Marichi (Buddhist Deity) – Kalpoktam (3 faces, 8 hands)… Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: This is new info. on the nine tripod caldrons of ancient China. “The Nine Tripod Cauldrons (Chinese: 九鼎; pinyin: Jiǔ Dǐng) were ancient Chinese ritual cauldrons. They were ascribed to the foundation of the Xia (c. 2200 bce) by Yu the Great, using tribute metal presented by the governors of the Nine Provinces of ancient China.[1] At the time of the Shang Dynasty during the 2nd millennium bce, the tripod cauldrons came to symbolize the power and authority of the ruling dynasty with strict regulations imposed as to their use. Members of the scholarly gentry class were permitted to use one or three cauldrons; the ministers of state (大夫, dàfū) five; the vassal lords seven; and only the sovereign Son of Heaven was entitled to use nine.[2] The use of the nine tripod cauldrons to offer ritual sacrifices to the ancestors from heaven and earth was a major ceremonial occasion so that by natural progression the ding came to symbolize national political power[3] and later to be regarded as a National Treasure. Sources state that two years after the […]

(Essay) The Wheel of the Year and Climate Change by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 2 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ The Wheel of the Year in a PaGaian cosmology essentially celebrates Cosmogenesis – the unfolding of the Cosmos, in which Earth’s extant Creativity participates directly, as does each unique being. The Creativity of Cosmogenesis is expressed through Earth-Sun relationship as it may manifest and be experienced within any region of our Planet. In PaGaian tradition this is expressed with Triple Goddess Poetry, which is understood to be metaphor for the creative dynamics unfolding the Cosmos. At the heart of the Earth-Sun relationship is the dance of light and dark, the waxing and waning of both these qualities, as Earth orbits around our Mother Sun. This dance, which results in the manifestation of form and its dissolution, as it does in the Seasons, happens because of Earth’s tilt in relationship with Sun: and that is because this tilt effects the intensity of regional receptivity to Sun’s energy over the period of the yearly orbit. This tilt was something that happened in the evolution of our planet in its earliest of days – some four and a half billion years ago, and then stabilised over time: and the climatic zones were further formed when Antarctica separated from Australia and South America, giving birth to the Antarctica Circumpolar Current, changing the circulation of water around all the continents … just some thirty million years ago[i]. Within the period since then, which also saw the advent of the earliest humans, Earth has gone through many climatic changes. It is likely that throughout those changes, the dance of light and dark in both hemispheres of the planet … one always the opposite of the other – has been fairly stable and predictable. The resultant effect on flora and fauna regionally however has varied enormously depending on many other factors of Earth’s ever changing ecology: She is an alive Planet who continues to move and re-shape Herself. She is Herself subject to the cosmic dynamics of creativity – the forming and the dissolving and the re-emerging. The earliest of humans must have received all this, ‘observed’ it, in a very participatory way: that is, not as a Western industrialized or dualistic mind would think of ‘observation’ today, but as kin with the events – identifying with their own experience of coming into being and passing away. There is evidence to suggest that humans have expressed awareness of, and response to, the phenomenon of coming into being and passing away, as early as one hundred thousand years ago: ritual burial sites of that age have been found[ii], and more recently a site of ongoing ritual activity as old as seventy thousand years has been found[iii]. The ceremonial celebration of the phenomenon of seasons probably came much later, particularly perhaps when humans began to settle down. These ceremonial celebrations of seasons apparently continued to reflect the awesomeness of existence as well as the marking of transitions of Sun back and forth across the horizon, which became an important method of telling the time for planting and harvesting and the movement of pastoral animals. https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ It seems that the resultant effect of the dance of light and dark on regional flora and fauna, has been fairly stable in recent millennia, the period during which many current Earth-based religious practices and expression arose. In our times, that is changing again. Humans have been, and are, a major part of bringing that change about. Ever since we migrated around the planet, humans have brought change, as any creature would: but humans have gained advantage and distinguished themselves by toolmaking, and increasingly domesticating/harnessing more of Earth’s powers – fire being perhaps the first, and this also aided our migration. In recent times this harnessing/appropriating of Earth’s powers became more intense and at the same time our numbers dramatically increased: and many of us filled with hubris, acting without consciousness or care of our relational context. We are currently living in times when our planet is tangibly and visibly transforming: the seasons themselves as we have known them for millennia – as our ancestors knew them – appear to be changing in most if not all regions of our Planet. Much predictable Poetry – sacred language – for expressing the quality of the Seasonal Moments will change, as regional flora changes, as the movement of animals and birds and sea creatures changes, as economies change[iv]. In Earth’s long story regional seasonal manifestation has changed before, but not so dramatically since the advent of much current Poetic expression for these transitions, as mixed as they are with layers of metaphor: that is, with layers of mythic eras, cultures and economies. We may learn and understand the traditional significance of much of the Poetry, the ceremony and symbol – the art – through which we could relate and converse with our place, as our ancestors may have done; but it will continue to evolve as all language must. At the moment the dance of dark and light remains predictable, but much else is in a process of transformation. As we observe and sense our Place, our Habitat, as our ancestors also did, we can, and may yet still make Poetry of the dance of dark and light, of this quality of relationship with Sun, and how it may be manifesting in a particular region and its significance for the inhabitants: we may still find Poetic expression with which to celebrate the sacred journey that we make everyday around Mother Sun, our Source of life and energy. It has been characteristic of humans for at least several tens of thousands of years, to create ceremony and symbol by which we could relate with the creative dynamics of our place, and perhaps it was initially a method of coming to terms with these dynamics – with the apparently uniquely human awareness of coming into being and passing away[v]. Our need for …
(Music) Songs for Samhain by Alison Newvine

The season of Samhain is upon us. This playlist is an offering for this descent into the sacred darkness, and a companion for the journey into the underworld. Invocation of Witches features music by Loreena McKennitt, Marya Stark, Inkubus Sukubus, Wendy Rule, my band Spiral Muse, and many others. It is a soundtrack for ceremony and each song expresses a different face of the spirit of the witch. May this Samhain season guide you gently into the dissolution of what no longer serves, the honoring of what is complete and the cultivation of the inner space that will gestate what is yet to come. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2CFNoH9exhloz3w95P3Rlb?si=270cf01fabb8421c https://www.magoism.net/2023/10/meet-mago-contributor-alison-newvine/
(Essay) Winter Solstice/Yule within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Dates for Winter Solstice/Yule Southern Hemisphere – June 20 – 23. Northern Hemisphere – December 20 – 23 This Seasonal Moment is the ripe fullness of the Dark Womb and it is a gateway between dark and light. It is a Birthing Place – into differentiated being. Whereas Samhain/Deep Autumn is a dark conceiving Space, it flows into the Winter Solstice dark birthing Place – a dynamic Place of Being, a Sacred Interchange. This Seasonal Moment of Winter Solstice is the peaking of the dark space – the fullness of the dark, within which being and action arise. It is the peaking of emptiness, which is a fullness. As cosmologist Brian Swimme describes: the empty “ground of being … retains no thing.” It is “Ultimate Generosity.”[i] In Vajrayana Buddhism, Space is associated with Prajna/wisdom – out of which Upaya/compassionate action arises. Space is highly positive – something to be developed, so appropriate action may develop spontaneously and blissfully.[ii] In Old European Indigenous understandings, the dark and the night were valued at least as much as light, if not more so: time was counted by the number of nights, as in ‘fortnights,’ and a ‘day’ included both dark and light parts … it was ‘di-urnal’. I have been careful with my language about that inclusion in the ceremonial ‘Statement of Purpose’ for each Seasonal Moment. This awareness is resonant with modern Western scientific perceptions about the nature of the Universe: that it is seventy-three percent “dark energy,” twenty-three precent “dark matter,” four percent “ordinary matter.”[iii] The truth is that we live within this darkness: it is the Ground of all Being. In Pagan traditions since Celtic times, and in many other cultural traditions, Winter Solstice has been celebrated as the birth of the God; and in Christian tradition since about the fourth century C.E., as the birth of the saviour. But there are deeper ways of understanding what is being born: that is, who or what the “saviour” is. In the Gospel of Thomas, which was not selected for biblical canon, it says: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.”[iv] This then may be the Divine Child, the “Saviour”: it may be expressed as the new Being forming in the Cosmogonic Womb,[v] who will be born. We may celebrate the birth of the new Being, which /who is always beyond us, beyond our knowing … yet is within us, burgeoning within us – and within Gaia. What will save us is already present within – forming within us. The Winter Solstice story may emphasize that what is born, is within each one – the “Divine” is not “out there”: it may be said, and expressed ceremoniously, that we are each Creator and Created. We may imagine ourselves as the in-utero foetus – an image we might have access to these days from a sonar-scan during pregnancy. This image presents a truth about Being: we are this, and it is within us, within this moment. Every moment is pregnant with the new. It will be birthed when holy darkness is full. Part of what is required is having the eyes to see the “new bone forming in flesh,” scraping our eyes “clear of learned cataracts,”[vi] seeing with fresh eyes. That is what the fullness of the Dark offers – a freshening of our eyes to see the new. And the process of Creation is always reciprocal: we are Creator and Created simultaneously, in a “ngapartji-ngapartji”[vii] way. We are in-formed by that which we form. In Earth-based religious practice, the ubiquitous icon of Mother and Child – Creator and Created – expresses something essential about the Universe itself … the “motherhood” we are all born within. It expresses the essential communion experience that this Cosmos is, the innate and holy Care that it takes, and the reciprocal nature of it. We cannot touch without being touched at the same time.[viii] We may realize that Cosmogenesis – the entire Unfolding of the Cosmos – is essentially relational: our experience tells us this is so. The image of The Birth of the Goddess on the front cover of my book PaGaian Cosmology expresses that reciprocity for me, how we may birth each other and the healing/wholing in that exchange. It is a Sacred Interchange. And it is what this Event of existence seems to be about – deep communion, which both Solstices express. Babylonian Goddess, Ur 4000-3500 BCE. Adele Getty, Goddess, 33. Birthing is not often an easy process – for the birthgiver nor for the birthed one: it is a shamanic act requiring strength of bodymind, attention, courage, and focus of the mother, and resilience and courage to be of the new young one. Birthgiving is the original place of ‘heroics,’ which many cultures of the world have never forgotten, perhaps therefore better termed as “heraics.” Patriarchal adaptations of the story of this Seasonal Moment usually miss the Creative Act of birthgiving completely, usually being pre-occupied with the “virgin” nature of the Mother which is interpreted as having an “intact hymen.” The focus of the patriarchal adaptation of the Winter Solstice story is the Child as “saviour”: even the Mother gazes at the Child in most Christian icons, while in more ancient images Her eyes are direct and expressive of Her integrity as Creator. NOTES: [i] Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, 146. [ii] See Rita Gross, “The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 179-192. [iii] These figures as told by cosmologist Paul Davies with Macquarie University’s Centre for Astrobiology, Australia. [iv] Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas, saying number 70. See https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html . [v] Melissa Raphael’s term, Thealogy and Embodiment, 262. [vi] The quotes come from a poem by Cynthia Cook, “Refractions,” Womanspirit (Oregan USA, issue 23, March 1980), 59. [vii] This is an Indigenous Australian term for reciprocity – giving and receiving at the same time. I explain it a bit further in PaGaian Cosmology, 256-257. [viii] An expression from Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 68. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living …
(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.
(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 …
The Ceremonial Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. The Cosmos is a ceremony, a ritual. Dawn and dusk, seasons, supernovas – it is an ongoing Event of coming into being and passing away. The Cosmos is always in flux, and we exist as participants in this great ritual event, this “cosmic ceremony of seasonal and diurnal rhythms” which frame “epochal dramas of becoming,” as Charlene Spretnak describes it.[i] Swimme and Berry describe the universe as a dramatic reality, a Great Conversation of announcement and response.[ii]Ritual/ceremony[iii] may be the human conscious response to the announcements of the Universe – an act of conscious participation. Ceremony then may be understood as a microcosmos[iv] – a human-sized replication of the Drama, the Dynamic we find ourselves in. Swimme and Berry describe ritual as an ancient response humans have to the awesome experience of witnessing the coming to be and the passing away of things; they say that a “ritual mode of expression” is from its beginning “the manner in which humans respond to the universe, just as birds respond by flying or as fish respond by swimming.”[v] It is the way in which we as humans, as a species, may respond to this awesome experience of being and becoming, how we may hold the beauty and the terror. Humans have exhibited this tendency to ritualize since the earliest times of our unfolding: evidence so far reveals burial sites dating back one hundred thousand years, as mentioned in the previous chapter. We often went to huge effort in these matters, that is almost incomprehensible to the modern industrialised econocentric mind: the precise placing of huge stones in circles such as found at Stonehenge and the creation of complex sites such as Silbury Hill may be expressions of some priority, indicating that econocentric thinking – such as tool making, finding shelter and food, was not enough or not separate from the participation in Cosmic events. Ritual seems to have expressed, and still does actively express for some peoples, something essential to the human – a way of being integral with our Cosmic Place, which was not perceived as separate from material sustenance, the Source of existence: thus it was a way perhaps of sensing “meaning” as it might be termed these days – or “relationship.” Swimme and Berry note that the order of the Universe has been experienced especially in the seasonal sequence of dissolution and renewal; this most basic pattern has been an ultimate referent for existence.[vi] The seasonal pattern contains within it the most basic dynamics of the Cosmos – desire, fullfilment, loss, transformation, creation, growth, and more. The annual ceremonial celebration of the seasonal wheel – the Earth-Sun sacred site within which we tour – can be a pathway to the Centre of these dynamics, a way of making sense of the pattern, a way of sensing it. One enters the Universe’s story. The Seasonal Moments when marked and celebrated in the art form of ceremony may be sens-ible ‘gateways’ through the flesh of the world[vii] to the Centre – which is omnipresent Creativity. Humans do ritual everyday – we really can’t help ourselves. It is simply a question of what rituals we do, what story we are telling ourselves, what we are “spelling”[viii] ourselves with – individually and collectively. Ceremony is actually ‘doing,’ not just theorizing. We can talk about our personal and cultural disconnection endlessly, but we need to actually change our minds. Ceremony can be an enabling practice – a catalyst/practice for personal and cultural change. It is not just talking about eating the pear, it is eating the pear; it is not just talking about sitting on the cushion (meditating), it is sittingon the cushion. It is a cultural practice wherein we tell a story/stories about what we believe to be so most deeply, about who and what we are. Ceremony can be a place for practicing a new language, a new way of speaking, or spelling – a place for practicing “matristic storytelling”[ix] if you like: that is, for telling stories of the Mother, of Earth and Cosmos as if She were alive and sentient. We can “play like we know it,” so that we may come to know it.[x] Ceremony then is a form of social action. NOTES: [i] Spretnak, States of Grace, 145. [ii] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 153. [iii] I will use either or both of these terms at different times: I generally prefer “ceremony” as Kathy Jones defines it in Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, 319. She says that ritual involves a repeated set of actions which may contain spiritual or “mundane” elements (such as a daily ritual of brushing one’s teeth), “whereas ceremony is always a spiritual practice and may or may not include ritual elements.” The PaGaian seasonal celebrations/events are thus most kin to “ceremony,” although I do not perceive any action as “mundane.” However, “ritual” is more commonly used to speak of how humans have conversed with cosmos/Earth. [iv] Spretnak, States of Grace, 145. [v] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 152-153. [vi] Ibid. [vii] Abram speaks of “matter as flesh” in The Spell of the Sensuous, 66, citing Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Invisible and the Invisible (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1968). [viii] Starhawk used this term on her email list in 2004 to describe the story-telling we might do to bring forth the changes we desire. [ix] A term used by Gloria Feman Orenstein in The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), 147. [x] As my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Susan Murphy once described it to me in conversation REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Jones, Kathy. Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess. Glastonbury: Ariadne Publications, 2006. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. The Reflowering of the Goddess. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990. Spretnak, Charlene. States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

(Book Excerpt 3) The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia

[Author’s Note: The following is from Chapter 8, The Consciousness of WE/HERE/NOW.] The Budoji stories the primordial drama of Mago’s beginning. It furnishes a yet-to-be-heard story of the beginning of the Great Goddess, the taboo story in patriarchy. It is the story of the Creatrix that patriarchy has attempted to erase. It can be temporarily forgotten but can never die because it is the story that is at the root of patriarchy. Ultimately, it is The Story that is happening HERE and NOW. The merit of the Magoist Cosmogony lies in the fact that it, through storying, restores the view of the whole, the macrocosmic view of the All. The holistic view necessarily involves the Great Goddess or the First Mother in that S/HE is the Creatrix. Time is not a linear concept, flowing from one end to the other. Time is the unified Present, happening NOW. It may be said that time is circular or cyclic, as all beings are constantly in motion to enhance the process of self-creation, which causes the whole to change ceaselessly. The Present hosts an infinite number of stories that take place in the undividable One Space HERE. The beginning of the Great Goddess is still happening and we are invited to re-cognize HER STORY in the HERE and NOW. The beginning is a process, not a single isolated event that took place in the remote past.[i] All things exist in the process of becoming HERE and NOW as part of WE. Put differently, the beginning of the Great Goddess is the LIVE SCENE/DRAMA/STORY. We are part of HER STORY. Mago’s beginning is the heart that pumps fresh blood to the body of the terrestrial becoming. The beginning of the Great Goddess is still taking place HERE/NOW. The terrestrial beginning is attributed to the Great Goddess who is self-born through the sonic movement of cosmic light. The beginning story of the Great Goddess is no ordinary one. It is of power and truth, that is, metamorphic. It provides the original text to the meaning of “salvation.” HER Beginning that is happening HERE/NOW holds all from falling into cacophony. For one thing, it delivers us from the patriarchal misconception of ultimate reality that does away with the Creatrix. The holistic view of the Creatrix is capable of saving us from misconceptions and misconduct. Ultimately, it guides us to live our life in harmony with the whole, HERE/NOW. The Magoist Cosmogony engenders the consciousness that WE ARE HERE/NOW. The universe is existent without beginning or end. In one ever-existing reality, things ceaselessly appear and disappear in relation to one another on all levels. All things are in the constant movement of autogenesis striving to arrive at a new position of balance. S/HE IS HERE/NOW telling us the STORY of WE. That is the source of our metamorphosis. Notes: [i] Process thought founded by Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, and John B. Cobb shares a common premise on that regard, although it does not associate ultimate reality with the Creatrix. (See Book Excerpt 1 and Book Excerpt 2. Available in Mago Bookstore.) Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.
(Essay 1) Magoist Cetaceanism and the Myth of the Pacifying Flute (Manpasikjeok) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Pod of narwhals, northern Canada, August 2005. Image courtesy of Kristin Laidre. Wikemedia Commons Manpasikjeok (the pacifying flute that defeats all) is a legendary flute, purportedly made from a narwhal’s tusk, originating in the 7th century Silla (57 BCE-935 CE). King Sinmun (r. 681-692) had a revelation concerning “a bamboo tree” growing on a mysterious mountain floating in the Sea of Whales, today’s East Sea of Korea. From this tree, a flute was made with which he was able to protect the whole world. As a national treasure of Silla, this instrument was famed to defeat all enemies at the time of troubles. What we have is the accounts of the pacifying flute recounted in Korea’s official historical texts. Two sources from the Samguk Sagi (Historical Records of the Three States) and the Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three States) shall be examined. Not surprisingly, whales are made unrecognizable not only within the story but also in the official history books of Korea. Magoist Cetaceanism was subjected to erasure in the course of Korean official history, but apparently not in the time of King Sinmun of Silla. The myth of Manpasikjeok testifies to Sillan Magoist Cetaceanism upheld by 7th century Sillan rulers. We are reading a Magoist Cetacean myth, however, told by people of a later time when Magoist Cetaceanism was no longer recognized. The fact that these two official historical texts of Korea recount the narrative of Manpasikjeok speaks to its significance: The story is told with a sense of mystery or suspicion. While the Samguk Sagi overtly treats the author’s sense of disbelief, the Samguk Yusa provides a full narrative in tantalizing but mystified details. How was Manpasikjeok 萬波息笛 created in the first place? Below is the Samguk Sagi version of the story: According to Gogi (Ancient Records), “During the reign of King Sinmun, a little mountain emerged in the East Sea out of nowhere. It looked like a head of a turtle. Atop the mountain there was a bamboo tree growing, which became two during the day and became one at night. The king had his subject cut the bamboo tree and had it made a flute. He named it Manpasik (Pacifying and Defeating All).” Although it is written so, its account is weird and unreliable.[1] Written by Gim Busik (1075–1151), a Neo-Confucian historiographer, the above account betrays an unengaged author’s mind in the story. For Gim, Korean indigenous narratives like Manpasikjeok are anomalous, if not unreliable, by the norms of Chinese history. In contrast to the former, the Samguk Yusa details the Manpasikjeok story in a tantalizing sense of mystery. Its author Ilyeon (1206-1289) was a Buddhist monk, a religious historian who saw the history of Korea as fundamentally Buddhist from the beginning. He elaborates the story with factual data but fails to bring to surface the cetacean underpinning of the myth. It is possible that Magoist Cetaceanism had already submerged much earlier than his time. King Sinmun (r. 681-692) had built the temple, Gameun-sa (Graced Temple), to commemorate his late father King Munmu (r. 661-681) who willed to become a sea dragon upon death. The relic of King Munmu had been spread in Whale Ferry (Gyeongjin 鯨津), also known as the Rock of Ruler the Great (Daewang-am) located in the waterfront of the East Sea also known as the Sea of Whales. Evidence substantiates that King Munmu was a Magoist Cetacean devotee clad in a Buddhist attire. Or today’s Buddhologiests call it Esoteric Buddhism. The Manpasikjeok myth may be called the story of King Sinmun’s initiation to Magoist Cetaceanism. Before explicating the Samguk Yusa account, which is prolix and complex, I have summarized the Samguk Yusa’s account as follows: (Summary of the Manpasikjeok Myth) King Sinmun ordered the completion of Gameunsa (Graced Temple) to commemorate his deceased father, King Munmu. The main hall of Gameunsa was designed at the sea level to allow the dragon to enter and stroll through the ebb and flow of the sea waves. In the second year of his reign (682 CE), Marine Officer reported that a little mountain in the East Sea was approaching Gameunsa. The king had Solar Officer perform a divination. The divination foretold that he would be given a treasure with which he could protect Wolseong (Moon Stronghold), Silla’s capital. This would be a gift from King Munmu who became a sea dragon and Gim Yusin who became a heavenly being again. In seven days, the king went out to Yigyeondae (Platform of Gaining Vision) and saw the mountain floating like a turtle’s head in the sea. There was a bamboo tree growing on its top, which became two during the day and one at night. The king stayed overnight in Gameumsa to listen to the dragon who entered the yard and the substructure of the main hall. Then, there was darkness for seven days due to a storm in the sea. After the sea calmed, the king went into the mountain to meet the dragon. The dragon told him that, if he made a flute out of the bamboo tree, the whole world would be pacified. The king had the bamboo tree brought out of the sea and made it into a flute, which became a treasure of Silla. The mountain and the dragon disappeared. The flute, when played during times of the nation’s trouble, brought peace. Thus comes its name, Manpasikjeok (the pacifying flute that defeats all). During the reign of King Hyoso (r. 692-702), his son, the flute continued to make miracles. Thus it was renamed Manmanpapasikjeok (the pacifying flute that surely defeats all of all). One day, it was reported to King Sinmun that a little mountain was approaching Gameunsa. That mountain had a mysterious bamboo tree atop. On the seventh day from then, he went out to Yigyeondae (Platform of Gaining Vision), the whale watch place near Gameumsa. Then, he stayed overnight in Gameunsa to hear the dragon who entered the temple yard through the ebb and flow of the …
(Mago Essay 1) Toward the Primordial Knowing of Mago, the Great Goddess by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Introduction: Why Inaugurate the Great Goddess Consciousness? The Great Goddess is known by many names around the world. “Mago” is one known by East Asians from time immemorial. As such, the term “Mago” is a common noun referring to the Great Goddess rather than the name of a particular goddess. According to my assessment of a large volume of primary sources that I have documented, Mago’s divine nature is characterized as the progenitor, creator, and ultimate sovereign. In short, Mago is supreme as the Creatrix. That does not mean that there is nothing before or even after Her. In fact, according to the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), principal text of Magoism, Mago was born into the cosmic era prior to our cosmic era by the music/vibration/movement of the universe. Being the Creatrix, She is the beginning and the end. She is the Origin of humankind. She will be with us insofar as humanity continues to exist on its cosmic journey. She is the Great Ancestor of all humans as well as goddesses and gods. Furthermore, She is “the Cosmic Great Mother” from whom everything is derived. “Mago” is eponymous of human civilization. With regard to the world, She is immanent and transcendent at once. Standing at the threshold of the world, She embodies the world. She is the Channel that connects humanity with nature and the universe. She is the Lens through which we humans perceive Ultimate Reality. To be precise, She is the Cause for human consciousness. Through Her, we enter the world. She is self-sustained, as symbolized in the ouroboros. The beginning and the end for the world relies on Her. While holding the key to eternity, She shares the rise and fall with humankind. Here is Her intimacy with humanity: We are part of Her and She is in our DNA. My reconstruction of Mago and Magoism did not begin with a teleological scheme. No pre-measured outcome was there to motivate my undertaking of the research project. On the contrary, the topic was a serendipitous yet timely encounter, which I had never consciously expected. Nonetheless, I was not in a vacuum. As a self-identified radical feminist, I sought a new mode of knowing within my own cultural roots that can remedy Eurocentric, nationalist, colonialist, racist, and ethnocentric knowledge. The years of my graduate studies were spent in exploring such possibilities. Only after furthering my research of Mago and Magoism for over a decade, I began to grasp something at which my intellectual/spiritual voyage is destined to arrive. It was this phrase, in fact a very old mandate that ancient Magoists self-identified with, “Return to the Origin of Mago (Mago Bokbon, 麻姑複本),” that surfaced over the horizon with clarity. How do we return to Mago’s Origin? Do we return to Her Realm or invoke Her Reality to our time? Time is one seamless measurement. No need to go there or bring it here. The fact that “Mago” refers to the Great Goddess rather than an individual goddess intimates an implication at the level of consciousness. Talk of Mago invokes the Great Goddess consciousness, primordial unity/oneness. A “new” mode of knowing is re-birthed once and time and time again. Individuals are placed in unity with the whole. Each shares with the subject position, WE. After all, everyone is progeny of the Great Goddess! We are re-stored within the scheme of old knowing that the whole (universality) comprises parts (particularities) and that they are organically interconnected. Complexity and precision of the way microcosmic entities work in harmony with the cosmos are beyond the human grasp. However, we know that an assault on a part affects the whole. And vice versa. This is why I study Mago and Magoism: Reenacting the Great Goddess consciousness is the ultimate antidote to the patriarchal consciousness. WE learn how to see things beyond the isolated position of an “I,” the notion of the self molded to stand against its environments (the other) by the patriarchal mastermind. The separated “I,” implanted in one’s psyche from birth through patriarchal institutions such as the state, religion, family, and heterosexuality, conjoins the new awareness of WE. The Mago consciousness is the original, pristine perspective prior to the split of the patriarchal consciousness. It is an undifferentiated state of mind that underlies patriarchal socialization. Ancient cultures had an understanding of the mysterious working of Mago. With Mago, WE Re-Turn to the Origin! The Female is epistemically invincible, nullifying the assaults of the patriarchal “I.” The power of the Mago consciousness is well depicted in the icon of Durga defeating the patriarchal demon. One should not be mistaken that the Mago consciousness is just another form of patriarchal thinking with reversed gender. It fundamentally differs in nature from the latter. Suffice it to say that “the Almighty God,” unlike the Great Goddess, does not share the same DNA with humans. In fact, He has no DNA! The monotheistic god rules over and against the world in protection of himself. He is needy. He isn’t even transcendent but disconnected from primordial unity. He can’t be “He” but only he of She. He can’t be the representative of the world because he is biased against the female principle. Ultimately, he is incapable of embracing everyone, unlike the Great Goddess. To hide the fact that the monotheistic god leads only to the abyss of self-destruction, patriarchal religions have created dogmas to indoctrinate people. The Great Goddess consciousness exposes the patriarchal deception. As patriarchy developed over the course of history, Mago was made unintelligible. People lost the Original Knowing! The Paradise was gone not only in a physical manner but also epistemically! That may as well be a corollary in that patriarchy precludes the concept of the Great Goddess by definition. It is not patriarchy if a society upholds the female as supreme. Nonetheless, patriarchy could not get rid of the manifestation of Mago in history, culture, and the collective consciousness of people. In fact, the ancient cultures, histories, myths, topographies, religions, and memories …