June 15, 2015October 2, 2019 RTM Editors

(Solstice art) May the Light Within Guide Your Way by Jassy Watson

The Priestess walks the wild soul path of magic and mystery. With sacred signs and messages to receive on her journey she lights Her way with a lamp of old and forges the armour that no longer serves her in the winter flames. There is a deep knowing in her heart that it is the light within she is seeking.

From the darkness and cold, the light and hope return.

Winter Solstice Blessings to those in the Southern Hemisphere. May the light within guide your way in the dark.

(This work is included in Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess, Mago Books 2017.)

Read Meet Mago Contributor Jassy Watson.

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(Poem) She by Louisa Calio

Original illustration by Terry Lennox In the Eye of Balance 1978 From the coolest corner of the darkest space at the longest river of an unseen place She lies in wait a force a feminine force Pearl, in the eyes of the world Vulva eyes, lotus eyes black‑purple slits -that always smile. Louisa Calio Journey to the Heart Waters Legas Press 2014. https://www.magoism.net/2015/06/meet-mago-contributor-louisa-calio/
(Essay 5) Future of Identity: Reclaiming the Northern Pagan Tradition by Jillian Burnett

Art by Jillian Burnett Freedom of Thought Northern pagan values include independent thought. This is completely at odds with a traditional education system as it is found in the modern world. Part of the mechanics of a post-industrial capitalist society is training children to obey. They passively listen to authority and by rote learn things and then are tested. The method does not engage critical thinking or creativity; nor collaboration with peers and others—as is desperately needed in today’s society. Kids for the most part learn to sit and listen to lectures in school from childhood. Furthering they then study empirical data and repeat what they have been taught, and then follow up with rigorous exams.When polls such as happiness indices are self-reported, there is often a positive correlation that supports that an individual who has the capacity to fully express themselves and process emotions fully, and is creative—has a happier life outcome. Today in America at least every week there is a shooting. Unhappy children turn to violence to seek answers from a broken society. Gun laws are a hot topic on capitol hill. Politicians with an ever growing death toll wrangle voting blocks over the possibility of metal detectors in public places and schools. A solution could be to overhaul this post-industrial Christian system—that focuses on conformity and economic productivity rather than individual realization. Their focus is on obedience rather than ascension into the most creative consciousness and life. Parents have started turning away from what they now call ‘government schools’. The public schooling system has defectors—home school is the new way for pagans and parents who see the inherent flaws in the old education framework. Preparing the youth for the modern world and today’s global marketplace is challenging. The world is increasingly interconnected with semi-open borders and exceptional visas for competitive employment. With the current economy, rising inflation, and more automation stifling the job markets, things will only become more competitive. While vocational training is available in some places, in America that option is decades dead, and schooling is merely a funnel to jobs that soon will be outsourced, or automated. There is no focus on the individual learning and growth—beings are just a means to an end in producing value for the shareholder. Today we all have our place to consume income, provide taxation for the state, and to reflect the values we imbibe from media driven culture. Statistics in the United States also show fewer and fewer young men engaged in higher education; this tells us that the system has failed. We have no choice but to reboot. The northern pagan response to these phenomena is to truly unplug. Off-grid culture rejects endless consumerism which prioritizes economic output over environmental conservation and welfare of people or their culture. Living off the grid provides an opportunity to truly embraces the northern pagan values of self-reliance, harmony with nature, and silent time to reflect so as to offer meaningful and wisdomous communication when needed, along with a healthier and more natural lifestyle. Of course, as can be expected with migration demographics, as the majority of the populations live in cities, so access to rural plains forest and grasslands is extremely limited. Instead, gatherings tend to be at a single shrine. Pagans in New York City meet in great public parks. Others meet privately behind closed doors. Personal access to large swathes of untamed wilderness is outside of the reach of most folk. But few are those even in concrete metropolises who don’t have access to a public park. Tree removals in the greying of places have long since seen counter movements such as the 1 million trees project, which made efforts to bring green to urban slums. Pagans will always find a way to reach into their core consciousness states via nature, trance, and communication with the supernatural. The northern pagan mystical practice of seiðr utilizes the natural world, its elements and materials. The practitioners may know each herb and its association, they may also contemplate within the forests. The reverence for nature is seen in the activity of communicating with spirits and meditating. In today’s pagan community, the cultural continuity includes meditators or herbalists-intuitives, tree hugging naturalists, plant medicine practitioners, or simply folk with garden apothecaries or kitchen witcheries. The practice of incorporating nature as a partner in this shared and co-created experience of presence and consciousness—is at the heart of the practitioner’s path. The systems of sympathetic understanding or astrological associations with plants, berries, trees, shrubs and flowers is as ancient as mankind’s desire to understand cause and effect and action at a distance. The great Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer is one early scholar who spoke at length of this; where early tribes all knew the interdependence of phenomena. Their ritualistic efforts at what later was called sympathetic magic demonstrated belief that no one was an island—that all was connected. This interconnection at the clan and tribe level extended itself and evolved into the practice of exchange of goods as people moved from semi-nomadic to permanent and stable farming communities. While history teaches us that some ancient Germanic tribes were more nomadic than others, across Europe the agrarian lifestyle was adopted as time progressed. With cold winters, trade was a stable way to have access to things needed. Without currency, people exchanged things as they liked using their best judgement. Ports up and down all major river outlets of inland Europe and coastal Europe generally have northern place names or port names because of the heavy historical trading in the area. Looking to the past, the system of exchange of goods and services used by the northern pagans was trade through bartering. Kennings such as oath taker and ring giver tell us a little bit about the tradition of generosity and the cultural and social value of maintaining relationships within members of the clan and tribe through exchange. Marriage-promises, favors and gifts as well as wealth would be traded and locked into family …
(Essay 4) The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia by Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen

[This part and the forthcoming sequels are an elaborated version of the original article entitled “The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia—a late Shamanistic Branch of the Old European Civilization?” by Märta-Lena Bergstedt & Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen, included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Mago Books, 2018) Edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.] The Transition Cut in Stone. Last Expression of Old European Civilization Fig. 5. The När-stone or Smiss-stone. Gotland. Typically, a major paradigm shift will show in archeological artifacts. To illustrate the transition from the old to the new belief system in Scandinavia, we have chosen the decorated standing stones, called picture stones (bildstenar), from Gotland. As imagery is normally associated with the contextual society, the dating of the stones, before or after 400 CE separates them into two groups, indicating a significant shift, not only in iconography, but also in society. As the two groups of stones are significant in several ways in regards to their shaping, symbolism, iconography, and style, as well as their locations, the two groups actually testify two different world views. The old picture stones from before c. 400 CE were raised on graveyards. Their iconography, consisting mostly of circles, swirls, vortex patterns and spirals is throughout symbolic with no ambition of realism, and could well be connected the circles of life, death, and regeneration. They are characterized by a convex top side and concave flanks. (Fig. 5) From the 5th century CE onwards, the shaping, imagery, and location undergo radical changes; the new stones show mushroom or phallus shapes. (Fig. 7, Fig 8) Suddenly the depictions of men, ships, and horses, although mythical (like Odin´s 8-legged horse) have realistic features, and they are personalized. Scholars have succeeded in linking some of the motifs to Asir legends, known from the 500 years later Eddas.[1] Imagery now gets a preponderance of male figures in significant roles, displayed with a variety of features and clothing. Female figures, if they appear at all, are more stereotyped and always portrayed standing and in profile, dressed in full-length robes, some of them wearing capes or shawls. They play subordinate and serving roles as, e.g., handing bowls of wine to central male figures. The difference in the presentation of females and males may indicate a rather strict set of norms, presumably prototyped in the now ruling society. The locations of the new type of stones were not graveyards. Instead they were raised to stand alongside roads and fairways to be seen by many.[2] Thus the motifs on the new stones could well have played a propagandistic role during the establishing of the new social and religious order. To represent the old type of picture stones just before the shift, we have chosen a stone with a unique motif. (Fig. 5) The stone was found in a grave field in the parish of När, south-west Gotland. It lay face-side down, apparently overthrown when its symbolism was no longer current. Besides the traditional symbolic decoration of circles and swirls, this stone has a symbolic female icon. She is showed frontally, her legs turned out to the sides exposing her sex. In each hand she holds a wiggling snake. A big triskelia composed by three snakes is circling above her head. At each side of her head she has a hair knot, a classic pre-historic hair style, well-known also from, e.g., the considerably older imagery on the Gundestrup Cauldron, Denmark (150 BCE‒100 CE).[3] The squatting female on the När-stone, also known as the Birthing Woman (or Goddess), has confused archeologists ever since it was found in the 1950s. Unable to link it to any known mythology, scholars have attested the motif at least not to be connected to Asir religion. A squatting female figure is unique for Migration Period, and no later examples of this squatting icon exist. All the same, the motif as such is well-known from earlier periods. The icon is common on Bronze Age rock carvings in Bohuslän on the Swedish west coast (Fig. 9), and it is found as red paintings inside caves all along the Norwegian west coast from Trondheim to Lofoten.[4] In the last 25 years, squatting female figures have been found in as many as twelve caves. The Norwegian coastline has thousands of caves formed by the sea. However, caves, containing female figures, have specific features distinguishing them from other caves. First, their entrances; their striking resemblance to the female womb may not be too imaginative.[5] Second, these caves may be reached only by boat from the water-side. Cultural deposits in one of the caves indicate a dating between 1700-500 BCE (Scandinavian Bronze Age) suggest that the paintings are also from this period.[6] (Fig. 10, 11, 12) The iconographic tradition of the squatting woman figure winds its way still further back in both time and space. In fact, it goes back several thousand years, leading from Scandinavia down through Europe, and all the way back to the 9400 year old Neolithic city of Çatal Hüyük, in Anatolia, Turkey, where the squatting female is vividly represented.[7] Çatal Hüyük had a pre-Indo-European culture, which archeologist Marija Gimbutas named the Old European civilization.[8] Based on her large-scale research, and supported by her innumerable excavations all over Southern and Eastern Europe, Gimbutas pointed to a highly developed culture in Europe during the Neolithic. Its striking absence of both warfare and male domination speaks of a social order built on life-supporting values.[9] The peaceful and creative Old European culture seems to have expressed its understanding of the world and cosmos in circles, spirals, zig-zag-lines, and symbolic animal and female figures: “what is clear is that Old European religion understood life and death as aspects of larger cyclic processes.”[10] Gimbutas found certain categories of figures and patterns repeated over and over again. Emphasizing a strong connection between the womb and the tomb,[11] she suggested a Neolithic understanding of life, death and re-generation as based on cyclic processes of transition. In substance the …
(Essay 2) A Mixteca Woman Saving the Lives of First Peoples in the Autonomous Territory of San Juan Copalá, Oaxaca, Mexico by Swami Pujananda Saraswati

[Author’s Note: Initially submitted in 2012, as part of the course material for the Master’s Program in Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. At the time of this publication, thanks to the efforts of this remarkable woman and others who have kept their unflinshing and caring commitment for the human rights of Indigenous People, the Autonomous Community of San Juan Copalá thrives and celebrates it sacred Earth-based and stars embodied cultural legacy. This is my small contribution in telling the story of Betty Cariño—herstory and history.] The title where the image appears translates:”The release of convicts accused of the assassination of activists in San Juan Copalá, Oaxaca”El caso de Alberta Cariño, van dos liberados Humanitarian Spirituality in Action —Or Integrating Fragmented Identities Everyone experiences loss, but how can the personal losses experienced in my life, as a panentheist, ecofeminist woman, relatively safe in the urban U.S., be of any significance while others, who are an extension of who I am, who constitute my own larger body (Virat),[19] inseparable from this interconnected breathing System-Universe called me and/or Earth, confront ethnic cleansing, the genocide of first peoples, bleeding communities displaced from one place to another, and women that lullaby their children going to sleep in hunger night after night, and without water for basic hygiene or medicine for their elders? How do I put the luxury of my peaceful life to work for those for whom peace is not available and have little or no choices? Even in my dreams, I hear their voices sobbing in a simple and honorable desire to live. The work of Bety Cariño was spirituality in action, whether her activism was fueled by a spiritual calling or not. He life was dedicated to protecting the lives and living conditions of those who were less fortunate. The so called First World and its leaders keep expanding the projections for consumerism, militarization, while corporate occupations and governments keep funding paramilitaries to carry out genocidal attacks against indigenous people (ethnic cleansing), while most of the people of the United States live in the midst of an economic collapse. In the midst of the present chaos, “First World” people, have much to learn from people who protect a small autonomous territory and farm their land, hold meetings of elders to keep the social order, support each other by celebrating and consuming the healing plants of the earth, and indigenous women can teach us much about sustainable ways of living, healing and dying in peace. In what ways is our need for spiritual activism hampered by participating in a society which promotes the social club called churchgoers’ religion? Can one even be a mediocre Christian, Jew or Hindu and still support a status quo and ethnic cleansing so close to us, right in our back yard, in the southern tip of Mexico? It is in this context that the ongoing repression and displacement of the people of San Juan Copala becomes an affront to the humanity of all freedom loving people. The assassination of first peoples, reasserted on April 27, 2010, with the ambush and shooting of human rights Mixteca activist Bety Cariño and Finnish human rights activist Jyri Jaakkola in La Sabana, a region controlled by the armed group Unión de Bienestar Social de la Región Triqui (UBICORT), a name which roughly and euphemistically translates as, “Social Welfare Union for the Triqui Region.” The Nordic male invaders that swept over egalitarian agricultural matrilineal societies, as detailed in the work of Marija Gimbutas, and the Spanish Conquerors who invaded the peoples of the original nations in the “New World,” are still informing the psycho-pathological attitudes of “divide and conquer” that the Eurocentric ruling patriarchal societies keep perpetuating for centuries and are again enacted in the massacres and murderous attacks, another form of “ethnic cleansing” against the Triqui indigenous people of the Autonomous Territory of San Juan Copala. Reading some of the works by Cherie Moraga, I am made aware of the tremendous need for women activists in the Oaxaca region and elsewhere in Latin America to unite. At a time when Moraga “began to make political the fact of being a Chicana”[20] she recalls her brother mentioning that he never felt “culturally deprived.” Moraga goes on to describe what many so called Latina women can relate to, how males in the household are served, sure with privileges like this there is no reason why males would feel culturally deprived. The one parallel that I find between Bety Cariño and Moraga’s feminism is the way in which each broke away from being the witness to atrocities, and worked for creating their own vision of what a more just world can be. Unlike Moraga, Cariño lives in a heterosexual family environment, but much like Moraga, she had a vision of how women can help each other beyond the socially acceptable normative values of kyriarchal society. Philosophical ethnocentricity has served to silence the voices and positions of indigenous women. Feminist Sylvia Marcos gives greater emphasis to decolonizing efforts which, according to her, “should be grounded at the epistemological level.” This is precisely the context in which Bety Cariño challenged an establishment that perpetuates the colonization of indigenous people. Through her efforts at CACTUS (Spanish language acronym for the non-profit founded by Ms. Cariño) she and others in the second caravan, challenged the colonizing stance of the government supported guerrillas, and this cost her her life. Like Cariño, many indigenous feminist women impose their efforts in ways that effectively correct what Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak calls “the international feminist tendency to matronize the Southern woman as belonging to gender oppressive second-class cultures.”[21] What is seen as by others as imposing, may be precisely what Marcos and other authors suggest by “decolonizing efforts […] grounded at the epistemological level.”[22] How else can one present a silenced, distorted and rejected indigenous epistemology to those who have imposed their culture and epistemology in your own land other than by being even more imposing, more persistent? The …
(Art) Taera Weeps for the 3 Warring Brothers by Elaine Drew

In this painting Taera represents the earth. She mourns for the followers of the world’s three major religions, children of the same father, who are embroiled in a conflict that threatens not only the warriors and their supporters, but the earth herself. Those who fight are blind to their similarity, symbolized in this painting by their looking exactly alike except for their identifying emblems. Beneath their feet is the destruction they have wrought by their centuries of warfare, both to their own civilizations and to the ancient civilizations they have destroyed, represented by the scattered heads of early European goddesses.
(Goddess writing 6) Notes by Kaalii Cargill

Lilith – who did not take it lying down. Burnley Relief, 19th-18th Century BCE, British Museum. This is an edited excerpt from my book Don’t Take It Lying Down: Life According to the Goddess. This book is based on my PhD thesis in which I explored women’s reproductive autonomy and a mindbody approach to birth control. The word “aesthetics” comes from the Greek for perceiving. In the English language, we tend to use the word to refer to an appreciation of beautiful things. I use the word here to explore how women feel about birth control. Does it seem beautiful to them? Does it have a quality that brings pleasure to the senses or the mind? On the contrary. It has been suggested by one Jungian analyst that . . . to a great many women contraceptives, though accepted intellectually, are still unaesthetic, and to a deep basic feminine morality they are wholly unacceptable.[i] What is this deep, basic feminine morality? Basic feminine morality is linked to the rhythms and cycles of Nature, to the experience of change and renewal that is so clearly reflected in a woman’s menstrual cycle. It involves an appreciation of time: The time it takes for one whole cycle of the moon (remember that women were the first time keepers, with sticks or stone marked for the phases of the moon and the menstrual cycle). The time it takes to grow a baby from the first spark of life to the fully formed child ready to be born. The time it takes to give birth. The time it takes for a child to grow into an adult. Feminine morality is about working with Nature, with the natural rhythms and cycles. It could be argued that birth control has to work against Nature; in order to prevent pregnancy, the natural process of conception has to be interrupted. Of course, that is completely true. There is, however, a vast difference between using a synthetic hormone that acts on the mindbody system, and engaging a process that works with the mindbody system to bring about a shift that is ecologically sound. When something is ecologically sound, all the parts of the system are in agreement; any changes that occur are harmonious throughout the whole system, and nothing is being forced or suppressed in an absolute way. When we use a synthetic hormone or chemical that is designed for a specific purpose, we are introducing something into our system that cannot be used by the body in any other way. On the other hand, the naturally occurring neuro-chemicals and hormones in the body can be changed and redirected by the mindbody system to maintain balance and harmony. One of the serious consequences of the widespread use of oestrogen-based oral contraceptives is that the oestrogen/progesterone balance in women’s bodies has been undermined.[ii] The synthetic hormones take up space that would otherwise be used by the naturally occurring body hormones. When this happens, the natural levels fall, and the body’s ability to continue producing the natural hormones is affected. Even when a woman does not have this biochemical knowledge, she may still find the contraceptive Pill “unaesthetic”. Our deep basic feminine morality is supported by a reverence for the life-giving power of the feminine. When we reconnect with ancient principles that underlie reproduction, we rediscover the forgotten mysteries of women’s ways that offer true reproductive autonomy. We reclaim power, control and choice. Mythology and anthropology show that the most important aspects of birth control involve issues of power and control, as well as prevailing beliefs about how reproduction works. Overwhelmingly, I have found that women today express strong concerns about power and control in their experience of contraception. . . .either the Pill was not helping or it was one more thing where I felt controlled. This experience of feeling controlled can arise in relation to all aspects of fertility. In my home state of Victoria, Australia, for example, the statistics for caesarian birth indicate a disturbing degree of taking over by the medical profession (23% in 1999-2000 compared with the WHO recommended rate of 12%).[iii] Women’s experiences of powerlessness and lack of control in fertility management indicate a deep basic feminine morality that is disrupted by modern contraceptive methods. When I was studying philosophy early in my undergraduate years I was impressed by a definition of morality as choice, based on the Latin derivation of the word. If morality is fundamentally about choice, then our deep feminine morality will be offended by experiences of powerlessness and lack of choice. When women are dissatisfied with their contraceptive choices, what are they really saying? I hear them saying that while the birth control methods offered by medical science may have offered some control of the rhythms and cycles of fertility, they have not offered a subjective, personal experience of empowerment or control. This makes sense in the light of the historical and anthropological material that shows how women’s experience of fertility management has been affected for many generations by political and religious issues of power and control. The takeover of women’s mysteries by patriarchal religions, scientific principles and technological solutions has demoralised us. There is little doubt that there is still discomfort and shame attached to the functions of fertility, despite liberation in other areas of a woman’s life. We live in a time when we are relatively well educated and appear to be free to choose in many areas of our lives, but many women still report an experience of ignorance, powerlessness, and lack of choice around reproduction and birth control. Whether or not we are having children, when we choose to have them, and how many we have, are topics of intense debate and opinion. Anthropology shows us that all people are educated and conditioned to adopt the values, beliefs and practices of their culture. People become bound by and to whatever belief systems contribute to the cultural consensus, limiting reality to a particular time and space[iv]. So strong …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Cinzia Marongiu

Cinzia Marongiu has a Laurea in English literature from Università degli Studi di Genova and a MA in Italian literature from Indiana University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz at the American Studies Department studying Italian American literature. Her dissertation, which explores the relationship between Italian Americans and African Americans narrated by female authors, is a transdisciplinary project engaging with the American Studies and Italian Studies Departments of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität. She is also interested in post-colonial studies, Italian transnational literature and Black diaspora studies.
Meet Mago Contributor, Luciana Percovich

A member of the Italian Feminist Movement since the Seventies, she has lived and worked in Milano as a teacher, an editor, a translator and an author, before leaving for the country. She is part of the Libera Università delle Donne di Milano (www.universitadelledonne.it), director of a series of books on women’s history and spirituality (www.venexia.it), and contributor to women’s reviews on women’s health, science, anthropology and mythology. Her main books are: La coscienza nel corpo. Donne, salute e medicina negli anni Settanta, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2005; Oscure Madri Splendenti. Le origini dl sacro e delle religioni, Venexia, Roma, 2007; Colei che dà la vita, Colei che dà la forma. Miti di creazione femminili, Venexia, Roma, 2009.
(Prose 1) Pseudo-Tolerance by Aisha Monks-Husain

Growing up with an Agnostic English mother and a Muslim Pakistani father has taught me a lot, to say the least. It’s taught me everything is deeper than it seems, always. There is always more to know, more to see, and more to think about. It’s taught me people assume I am white because I look white. For that, I am a child of passing and of privilege. I was in Morocco a couple of years ago. As I wondered through the maze like markets, smelling the cumin and garlic, fresh naan and mint tea, I realized I grew up with these smells. One would think I’d feel at home in Morocco because it all felt familiar. But I was disconnected. A white girl, with green
The Cosmos is a Ritual by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the Introduction to the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion Ceremonial space set to celebrate Samhain 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, this “cosmic ceremony of seasonal and diurnal rhythms” which frame “epochal dramas of becoming”, as Charlene Spretnak describes it[1]. Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry describe the universe as a dramatic reality, a Great Conversation of announcement and response[2]. Ritual may be the human conscious response to the announcements of the Universe – an act of conscious participation. Ritual then is a “microcosmos”[3] – a human-size 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[4]. It is a way in which we may respond to this awesome experience of being and becoming – hold the beauty and the terror. Humans have exhibited this tendency to ritualize since the earliest times of our unfolding: there is evidence of burial sites dating back at least one hundred thousand years, and often going to huge effort, 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 are 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 something essential to the human – a way of being integral with our Cosmic Place, which was not separate from material sustenance, the Source of existence: thus it was a way perhaps of sensing “meaning” as we might term it 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[5]. The seasonal pattern contains within it the most basic dynamics of the Cosmos – desire, fullfilment, loss, transformation, creation, growth, and more. The annual ritual celebration of the Seasonal Wheel – the Earth-Sun sacred site – 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 Sabbats when practiced in the art form of ceremony may be sens-ible “gateways” through the Flesh of the world 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 ourselves with – individually and collectively. NOTES: [1] Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace, p.145. [2] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.153. [3] Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace, p.145. [4] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.152. [5] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.152. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. 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.
(Poetry) Listen For Me by Kaalii Cargill

I am the Queen of Sheba, more beautiful than all the rest. I am the night-hag, more haggard then your worst fears. Don’t try to hold me still. Things change. Time moves. The coins on my hip girdle ring – like bells – as I move between the worlds. Listen for me. https://www.magoism.net/2014/05/meet-mago-contributor-kaalii-cargill/
The Servants of the Cailleach by Jude Lally

Cailleach and the Wolf. Digital art by Jude lally In folk etymology, January is known as Faoileach, wolf month. An entire month where the wolf is both figuratively and symbolically at the door. While food resources may well be running low, the wolf also experienced hunger which drove them from the wild places and closer to town. The winds of the wolf month are described as being sharp, ravenous, and tearing, like the jaws of a desperate and hungry predator. Wolf in the storm Digital art by Jude Lally Dark storm clouds racing across the land, blasting icy winds and striking hail is the Cailleach riding a wolf. A long fluffy tail sweeping down brings a heavy rain shower, while a lighter layer of grey cloud is the old hag’s tattered skirts. Sadly the wolf only approaches in spirit and rides with the Cailleach in shapeshifting clouds for man’s hunger to obliterate the species from Scotland was ferocious enough that the last wolf was said to be shot in 1680, in Killiecrankie, Perthshire. That was the official record while other tales say they kept on in wild places, up until the 18th century. My Grandmother always said that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, another saying, this one of February, is that it comes in with the head of a serpent, and goes out with a peacock’s tail. But if February were to come in with a peacock’s tail and leave with the head of a serpent, or march to come in like a lamb and leave like a lion, then there would be a lot to worry about, especially if your existence depended on sheep, cattle, and fishing. Naming the patterns of weather kept a track of recognized periods and what to expect. If spring is on your mind you might well forget that the beginning of March can bring snow, but when your birthday is in early march you remember that more often than not snow is due. Lapwing, or Green Plover Spring is divided up into several parts. After the Faoillech (the stormy), next is The Whistle, also called the Plover, which is the first week of March, a week of whistling winds. “I am the bare, swift, leggy plover, I can kill both sheep and lambs’ The Dogfish is actually a Catshark and its egg sack often washes up on beaches – known as a mermaids Purse. Photo source: www.beachcombingmagazine.com/blogs/news/a-mermaid-s-purse The period of weather known as the Gobag (Dog-fish) is the second week of March, which is a week of heavy rains. ‘Gobag, Gobag Mother of the month of cold, Thou didst kill the sheep and the lean lamb, Though didst kill the grey goat in two watches, And the speckled stirk in one’. In some of these weeks, there is a borrowing of days, three days from April might be inserted into March – experienced as a false sense of spring, which then is swallowed up by sweeping winds. These three borrowed days are then experienced in April, a few days of gusts of winds which then will disappear as spring progresses. Cailleach and her Cauldron, the Whirlpool of Corryvrecken. Digital art by Jude Lally And so the wolf (the stormy), the dogfish, and the plover are referred to as servants of the Cailleach. As March progresses and cycles towards Spring Equinox, which was New Year in Scotland up until the 16th century, comes the days of the Cailleach. This marks the last of the storms as the weather begins to wain, seen in stories of the Cailleach, the great crone of Gaelic belief. The storms are short, overtaken by sunshine breaking through. The lines of this verse suggest the Caillech trying to defeat this new budding energy and failing miserably. Shootings here and sprouting there,It eludes me everywhere;Overhead and underfootBud and blade blossom shoot. It escaped me below, it escaped me above,It escaped me between my two hands,It escaped me before, it escaped me behind,It escaped me between my two eyes.It escaped me down, it escaped me up,It escaped me between my two ears,It escaped me thither, it escaped me hither,It escaped me between my two feet.I threw my druidic evil wand,Into the base of a withered hard whin bush,Where shall not grow ‘fionn’ nor ‘fionnidh, She strikes here, she strikes there, She strikes between her legs, but the grass grows too fast for her, and in despair, she throws the hammer from her, and where it lighted no grass grows. She threw it beneath the hard holly tree, Where the grass or hair has never grown. Black Reading these lines I can see them playing out on the hills out of my window – huge rain sheets bring lashing rains, which are very brief and then the sun breaks through. Dark clouds move in again, obscuring the sun, only for sunbeams to shine down and light up the new green. Ben Lomond (local mountain on the east shore of Loch Lomond) disappears again in a veil of rain, and like a magic show suddenly appears again with a great rainbow. The next day arrives, like the day borrowed from April when you can leave your winter coat at home. This pattern of weather is solidified in the fight of the Cailleach with spring, sometimes with St Brighid, Bride, making a special appearance, in embellished tales. These patterns of weather never quite adhered to calendar dates, and this is why they were given stories to recognize this tumultuous period. As long as each story played out you could keep track of the rough pattern and know that soon it would be soon time to plant seeds, tend to sheep and lambs, and head out in fishing boats and begin to feed themselves from the land’s bounty. But what happens when March borrows entire weeks from April or even June? Then June borrows two weeks from March and new crops are flooded, giving us the wettest summer or record. …
(Essay) The Gift Economy by Genevieve Vaughan

Two basic economic paradigms coexist in the world today. They are logically contradictory, but also complementary. One is visible, the other invisible; one highly valued, the other undervalued. One is connected with men; the other with women. What we need to do is validate the one connected with women, causing a basic shift in the values by which we direct our lives and policies. I first approached the idea of giving as a basic economic and life principle when I was doing work on language and communication. Later, as a feminist, I realized that in my free homemaking and child-rearing work, I was doing gift labor-as were women worldwide. The present economic system, which is made to seem natural and too widespread to change, is based upon a simple operation in which individuals participate at many different levels and at many different times. This operation is exchange, which can be described as giving in order to receive. The motivation is self-oriented since what is given returns under a different form to the giver to satisfy her or his need. The satisfaction of the need of the other person is a means to thc satisfaction of one’s own need. Exchange requires identification of the things exchanged, as well as their measurement and an assertion of their equivalence to the satisfaction of the exchangers that neither is giving more than she or he is receiving. It therefore requires visibility, attracting attention even though it is done so often that the visibility is commonplace. Money enters the exchange, taking the place of products reflecting their quantitative evaluation. This seemingly simple human interaction of exchange, since it is done so often, becomes a sort of archetype or magnet for other human interactions, making itself-and whatever looks like it-seem normal, while anything else is crazy. For example, we talk about exchanges of love, conversations, glances, favors, ideas. There is also a different type of similarity of exchange to linguistic definition. The definition mediates whether or not a concept belongs to a certain category, just as monetarization of activity mediates its belonging to the category of work or not. The very visibility of exchange is self-confirming, while other kinds of interaction are rendered invisible or inferior by contrast or negative description. What is invisible seems to be valueless, while what is visible is identified with exchange, which is concerned with a certain kind of quantitative value. Besides, since there is an equivalence asserted between what we give and what we receive, it seems that whoever has a lot has produced a lot or given a lot, and is, therefore, some – how more than whoever has less. Exchange puts the ego first and allows it to grow and develop in ways that emphasize me-first competitive and hierarchical behavior patterns. This ego is not an intrinsic part of the human being, but is a social product coming from the kinds of human interaction it is involved in. The alternative paradigm, which is hidden – or at least misidentified – is nurturing and generally other-oriented. It continues to exist because it has a basis in the nature of infants; they are dependent and incapable of giving back to the giver. If their needs are not satisfied unilaterally by the giver, they will suffer and die. Society has allocated the caretaking role to women since we bear the children and have the milk to nourish them. Since a large percentage of women nurture babies, we are directed toward having an experience outside exchange. This requires orientation toward interest in the other. The rewards and punishments involved have to do with the well-being of the other. Our satisfaction comes from her or his growth or happiness, not just from our own. In the best case, this does not require the impoverishment or depletion of ourselves either. Where there is enough, we can abundantly nurture others. The problem is that scarcity is usually thc case, artificially created in order to maintain control, so that other-orientation becomes difficult and self-depleting. In fact, exchange requires scarcity because, if needs are abundantly satisfied, no one is constrained to give up anything in order to receive what they need. It is said that the earth produces enough at the present time to feed everyone abundantly. However, this cannot be done on the basis of the exchange paradigm. Nor can the exchange paradigm or the kind of dominant ego it fosters continue in a situation of abundance and free giving. That is why scarcity has been created on a worldwide scale by armaments spending and other wastes of resources: $17 billion would feed everyone on earth for a year and we spend it every week on the military, thus creating the scarcity necessary for the exchange paradigm to survive and continue to validate itself. If we identify the gift paradigm with women’s way, we see that it is already widespread, since women arc the majority of the population. Many men practice it to some extent also. Noncapitalistic economies such as native economies, often have major gift-giving practices and various important kinds of women’s leadership. I believe, for example, that many of the conflicts between women and men that seem like personal differences are really differences in the paradigm we are using as the basis for our behavior. Women criticize men’s big egos and men criticize women as being unrealistic, soft touch. bleeding hearts. Each tries to convince the other to follow his or her values. Recently, many women have begun to follow the exchange paradigm, which has the immediate advantage of liberating them from grim economic servitude – and the psychological advantage that monetarization defines their activity as valuable. But the servitude itself is caused by the exchange paradigm. As people change from one paradigm to the other, there is probably some holdover of the previous paradigm, so that women who take on exchange often remain nurturing while men who take on giving remain more ego-oriented. I see this in the case of religions, in …

(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 […]
(Special Post 2) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that […]
(Special Post Isis 3) 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 3) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that […]
(Special Post 6) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. […]
(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 […]

(Essay) Contemplating How Her Creativity Proceeds by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the conclusion of chapter 5 of the author’s book, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. It is a chapter on the process of the Wheel of the Year. for the Northern Hemisphere version: https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ It seems to me that the main agenda of the Cosmos is ongoing Creativity, “never-ending renewal” it may be termed, and that this is expressed in Earth’s Seasonal Wheel through the transitions of Autumn,Winter, Spring, Summer; and in the ubiquitous process of a Cosmic Triplicity of Space to Be, Urge to Be and this Place of Being, a dynamic that has often been imagined as the Triple Goddess. In the flow of the PaGaian Wheel of the Year, the Seasonal transitions of the Wheel and the Triplicity of the Cosmos come together. There are two celebrations of the Old One/Crone or the Cosmogenetic quality of autopoiesis creating the Space to Be; and they are Lammas/Late Summer and Samhain/Deep Autumn, which are the meridian points of the two quarters of the waxing dark phase. At Lammas, the first in the dark phase, we may identify with the dark and ancient Wise One – dissolve into Her; at Samhain, we may consciously participate in Her process of the transformation of death/the passing of all. The whole dark part of the cycle is about dissolving/dying/letting go of being – becoming – nurturing it (the midwifing of Lammas/Late Summer), stepping into the power of it (the certain departure of Autumn Equinox/Mabon), the fertility (of Samhain/Deep Autumn), the peaking of it (at Winter Solstice). The meridian points of the two quarters of the waxing light phase then are celebrations of the Young One/Virgin or the Cosmogenetic quality of differentiation, the new continually emerging, the Urge to Be; and they are Imbolc/Early Spring and Beltaine/High Spring. At Imbolc, the first in the light phase, we may identify with She who is shining and new – as we take her form; at Beltaine, we may consciously participate in Her process of the dance of life. The whole light part of the cycle is about coming into being: nurturing it (the midwifing of Imbolc/Early Spring), stepping into the power of it (the certain return of Spring Equinox/Eostar), the fertility (of Beltaine/High Spring), the peaking of it (at Summer Solstice). In the PaGaian wheel of ceremony there are two particular celebrations of the Mother, the Cosmogenetic quality of communion; and they are the Solstices. If one imagines the light part of the cycle as a celebration of the ‘Productions of Time’, and the dark part of the cycle as a celebration of ‘Eternity’, the Solstices then are meeting points, points of interchange, and are celebrations of the communion/relational field of Eternity with the Productions of Time. This is a relationship which does happen in this Place, in this Web. This Place of Being, this Web, is a Communion – it is the Mother; the Solstices mark Her birthings, Her gateways. The Equinoxes then – both Spring and Autumn – are two celebrations wherein the balance of all three Faces/Creative qualities is particularly present: in the PaGaian wheel, the Equinoxes have been special celebrations of Demeter and Persephone – echoing the ancient tradition of Mother-Daughter Mysteries that celebrate the awesomeness of the continuity of life, its creative tension/balance. Both Equinoxes then are celebrations and contemplations of empowerment through deep Wisdom – one contemplation during the dark phase and one during the light phase. The Autumn Equinox is a descent to Wisdom, the Spring Equinox is an emergence with Wisdom gained. I like to think of the Equinoxes, and of the ancient icons of Demeter and Persephone, as celebrations of the delicate ‘curvature of space-time’, the fertile balance of tensions which enables it all. Her Creative Place The Mother aspect then may be understood to be particularly present at four of the Seasonal Moments, which are also regarded traditionally as the Solar festivals; and in this cosmology Sun is felt as Mother. I recognize these four as points of interchange: at Autumn Equinox, Mother is present primarily as Giver – She is letting Persephone go, at Spring Equinox, She is present primarily as Receiver – welcoming the Daughter back, at Winter Solstice the Mother gives birth, creates form, at Summer Solstice, She opens again full of radiance, and disperses form. The Mother is Agent/Actor at the Solstices. She is Participant/Witness at the Equinoxes, where it is then really Persephone who is Agent/Actor, embodying an inseparable Young One and Old One. The Old One is often named as Hecate, who completes the Trio – all seamlessly within each other. Another possible way to visual it, or to tell the story, is this: The Mother – Demeter – is always there, at the Centre if you like. Persephone cycles around. She is the Daughter who returns in the Spring as flower, who will become fruit/grain of the Summer, who at Lammas assents to the dissolution – the consumption. At Autumn Equinox She returns to the underworld as seed – Her harvest is rejoiced in, Her loss is grieved, as She becomes Sovereign of the Underworld – Her face changes to the Dark One, Crone (Hecate). As the wheel turns into the light part of the cycle She becomes Young One/Virgin again. Persephone (as Seed) is that part of Demeter that can be all three aspects – can move through the complete cycle. The Mother and Daughter are really One, and embody the immortal process of creation and destruction. Demeter hands Persephone the wheat, the Mystery, and the thread of life is unbroken – it goes on forever. It is immortal, it is eternal. Even though it is true that all will be lost, and all is lost – Being always arises again: within this field of time there is never-ending renewal, eternity. This is what is revealed in the ubiquitous three faces of the Creative Dynamic/ She of Old, the Triplicity that runs through the Cosmos. The Seed of Life never …
(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).
(Art & Poem) Spring Equinox by Sudie Rakusin & Annie Finch

A SEED FOR SPRING EQUINOX . . . till I feel the earth around the place my head has lain under winter’s touch, and it crumbles. Slanted weight of clouds. Reaching with my head and shoulders past the open crust dried by spring wind. Sun. Tucking through the ground that has planted cold inside me, made its waiting be my food. Now I watch the watching dark my light’s long-grown dark makes known. Art and poem are included in Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2017). (Meet Mago Contributor) Sudie Rakusin (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
(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. …
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.
(Photography & Poetry) Thoughts of Spring by Deanne Quarrie

Spring At the highest point on the tree, you stretch, reaching for the sun. Your pink petals elegant in their grace, you stand alone. Bravest of all, for leaves have yet to come to offer shade Branches bare except for furry buds that will soon follow in imitation of your daring first move. Intrepid flower of Spring, I feel like you in my yearning for the Sun!
Lammas/Late Summer within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 10 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd, Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd These dates are traditional, though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox, thus actually a little later in early February for S.H., and early August for N.H., respectively. a Lammas/Late Summer table 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, to celebrate She Who creates the Space to Be. Lammas is a welcoming of the Dark in all its complexity: and as with any funerary moment, there is celebration of the life lived (enjoyment of the harvest) – a “wake,” and there is grieving for the loss. One may fear it, which is good reason to make ceremony, to go deeper, to commit to the Mother, who is the Deep; to “make sacred” this emotion, as much as one may celebrate the hope and wonder of Spring, its opposite. If Imbolc/Early Spring is a nurturing of new young life, Lammas may be a nurturing/midwifing of death or dying to small self, the assent to larger self, an expansion or dissipation – further to the radiance of Summer Solstice. Whereas Imbolc is a Bridal commitment to being and form, where we are the Promise of Life; Lammas may be felt as a commitment marriage to the Dark within, as we accept the Harvest of that Promise, the cutting of it. We remember that the Promise is returned to Source. “The forces which began to rise out of the Earth at the festival of Bride now return at Lammas.”[i] Creativity is called forth when an end (or impasse) is reached: we can no longer rely on our small self to carry it off. We may call Her forth, this Creative Wise Dark One – of the Ages, when our ways no longer work. We are not individuals, though we often think we are. We are Larger Self, subjects within theSubject.[ii] And this is a joyful thing. We do experience ourselves as individuals and we celebrate that creativity at Imbolc. Lammas is the time for celebrating the fact that we are part of, in the context of, a Larger Organism, and expanding into that. Death will teach us that, but we don’t have to wait – it is happening around us all the time, we are constantly immersed in the process, and everyday creativity is sourced in this subjectivity. As it is said, She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire:”[iii] the same Desire we celebrated at Beltaine, has peaked at Summer and is now dissolving form, returning to Source to nourish the Plenum, the manifesting – as all form does. This Seasonal Moment of Lammas/Late Summer celebrates the beginning of dismantling, de-structuring. Gaia-Universe has done a lot of this de-structuring – it is in Her nature to return all to the “Sentient Soup” … nothing is wasted. We recall the Dark Sentience, the “All-Nourishing Abyss”[iv] at the base of being, as we enter this dark part of the cycle of the year. This Dark/Deep at the base of being, to whom we are returned, may be understood as the Sentience within all – within the entire Universe. The dictionary definition of sentience is: “intelligence,” “feeling,” “the readiness to receive sensation, idea or image; unstructured available consciousness,” “a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness.”[v] The Old Wise One is the aspect of the Cosmic Triplicity/Triple Goddess that returns us to this sentience, the Great Subject out of whom we arise. We are subjects within the Great Subject – the sentient Universe; we are not a collection of objects, as Thomas Berry has said.[vi] This sentience within, this “readiness-to-receive,” is a dark space, as all places of ending and beginning are. Mystics of all religious traditions have understood the quintessential darkness of the Divinity, known often as the Abyss. Goddesses such as Nammu and Tiamat, Aditi and Kali, are the anthropomorphic forms of this Abyss/Sea of Darkness that existed before creation. She is really the Matrix of the Universe. This sentience is ever present and dynamic. It could be understood as the dark matter that is now recognized to form most of the Universe. This may be recognized as Her “Cauldron of Creativity” and celebrated at this Lammas Moment. Her Cauldron of Creativity is the constant flux of all form in the Universe – all matter is constantly transforming. We are constantly transforming on every level. a Lammas/Late Summer altar These times that we find ourselves in have been storied as the Age of Kali, the Age of Caillaech – the Age of the Crone. There is much that is being turned over, much that will be dismantled. We are in the midst of the revealing of compost, and transformation – social, cultural, and geophysical. Kali is not a pretty one – but we trust She is transformer, and creative in the long term. She has a good track record. Our main problem is that we tend to take it personally. The Crone – the Old Phase of the cycle, creates the Space to Be. Lammas is the particular celebration of the beauty of this awesome One. She is symbolized and expressed in the image of the waning moon, which is filling with darkness. She is the nurturant darkness that may fill your being, comfort the sentience in you, that will eventually allow new constellations to gestate in you, renew you. So the focus in ceremony may be to contemplate opening to Her, noticing our fears and our hopes involved in that. She is the Great Receiver – receives all, and as such She is the Great Compassionate One. Her Darkness may be understood as a Depth of Love. And She is Compassionate because of …
(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.
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) …
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.
(Video) Autumn Equinox/Mabon Poetry by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The Autumnal Equinox occurs each year in the range of March 20-23 in the Southern Hemisphere, and in the range of September 20 -23 in the Northern Hemisphere. Autumn Equinox is a point of sacred balance: it is the point of balance in the dark part of Earth’s annual cycle. Sun is equidistant between North and South as it was/is at Spring Equinox, but in this dark phase of the cycle, the trend is toward increasing dark. Henceforth the dark part of the day will exceed the light part: thus it is a Moment of certain descent … and a sacred Moment for feeling and contemplating the grief and power of loss, for ceremoniously joining personal and collective grief and loss with the larger Self in whom we are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZflKLkvP8 Below is the text of the video. It is based on the traditional poetry for PaGaian Autumn Equinox/Mabon ceremony[i]. This is the Moment of the Autumnal Equinox in our Hemisphere – the moment of balance of light and dark in the dark part of the cycle. The light and dark parts of the day in the South and in the North of our planet, are of equal length at this time. We feel for the balance in this moment – Earth as She is poised in relationship with the Sun … breathing in the light, swelling with it, letting our breath go to the dark, staying with it. In our part of Earth, the balance is tipping into the dark. We remember the coolness of it. This is the time when we give thanks for our harvests – all that we have gained. And we remember too the sorrows, losses involved. The story of Old tells us that Persephone, Beloved Daughter, is given the wheat from Her Mother – the Mystery, knowledge of life and death. She receives it graciously. But she sets forth into the darkness – both Mother and Daughter grieve that it is so. Demeter, the Mother, says: “You are offered the wheat in every moment … I let you go as Child, most loved of Mine: you descend to Wisdom, to Sovereignty. You will return as Mother, co-Creator with me. You are the Seed in the Fruit, becoming the Fruit in the Seed. Inner Wisdom guides your path.” We give thanks for our harvests – our lives they are blessed. We are Daughters and Sons of the Mother. Yet we take our Wisdom and all that we have gained, and remember the sorrows – the losses involved. We remember the grief of the Mother, of mothers and lovers everywhere, our grief. Persephone descends. The Beloved One is lost. Persephone goes forth into the darkness to become Queen of that world. She tends the sorrows. The Seed represents our Persephones, who tends the sorrows – we are the Persephones, who may tend the sorrows. We go out into the night with Her and plant our seeds. Persephone blesses us with her fertile promise: “You have waxed into the fullness of life, And waned into darkness; May you be renewed in tranquility and wisdom[ii].” These represent our hope. The Seed of life never fades away. She is always present. Blessed be the Mother of all life. Blessed be the life that comes from Her and returns to Her. We tie red threads on each other: we participate in the Vision of the Seed – of the continuity of Life, that continues beneath the visible. The Mother knowledge grows within us. Our hope is in the Sacred Balance of the Cosmos – the Thread of Life, the Seed that never fades away: it is the Balance of Grief and Joy, the Care that we may feel in our Hearts. NOTES: [i] Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, p. 239-247. [ii] Charlene Spretrnak, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, p. 116. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Spretnak, Charlene. Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: a Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992/1978.

(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.
(Book Excerpt 1) Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: Year 4’s Mago Almanac celebrates the birth of Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey. The Magoist 13 month 28 day calendric movement has grown steadily and we welcome the public as well!] PREFACE: What Mago Almanac Planner Offers The Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey enchants people and our societies to live with a sense of the natural timespace patterned by the luni-menstrual rhythm in company with the earth’s song and dance. This is not a statement of poetic fancy unsupported by science or mathematics. We are invited to walk through the matrix of Sonic Numerology, the organizing force of Life. The 13 month 28 day Magoist Calendar returns calendric regularity to us. Calendric regularity is the very vision that unfolds the metamorphic reality of WE/HERE/NOW. Unlike the 12 month irregular day calendar that modifies the natural rhythm to serve the purpose of controlling people, the Magoist Calendar guides human activities within the natural rhythm to harmonize the human world with the natural world. The Mago Almanac Planner is built to provide flesh to the bones of the Mago Almanac. Taking the latter as foundation, Mago Almanac Planner partitions a year into the units of weeks and days. The regularity of 28 days makes it possible to lay out 52 weeks and 364 days with one or two extra days seamlessly. The rhythm of nine numbers becomes transparent. Each day of a year is named accumulatively in order i.e. the first to 364th. Likewise, each week of a year is named accumulatively in order i.e. Week 1 to Week 52. Each day is given the daily number, the moon phase, and/or 24 Seasonal Marks. Special days include such double dates as New Year (1st Moon 1st Day), double second (2nd Moon 2nd Day), double third (3rd Moon 3rd Day), and so forth. By writing the Mago Almanac Planner, I have observed that Double Ninth (9th Moon 9th day) overlaps with the 16th mark of 24 Seasonal Marks, Ipchu (立秋 Entering Fall) or Lammas in the Northern Hemisphere. The day of Double Ninth is indeed the center point of a year! Also the interval of 24 Seasonal Marks is about every 15 days, whereas that of 8 Seasonal Marks is about every 45 days. In three Appendixes, I have provided a traditional style of one year calendar, Year 4’s 364 Days (52 Weeks) with 2 Extra Days and their Gregorian Dates or the conversion chart, Large Calendar 1 (Years 1-4) marked in Gregorian C. Dates, and Year 4 Lunar-Menstrual Chart in which one can add their menstrual dates in relation to the moon phases and seasonal marks. As a whole, the Mago Almanac Planner is designed to personalize one’s own celebratory or commemorative days in tune with nature’s rhythm. This Planner marks the 4th year (Volume 4) of the revived Magoist Calendar, Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar. We are about to complete the first Large Calendar, which refers to the first four years (Years 1-4). We set the new moon date (December 18) before Winter Solstice in 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere as the first lunation of the revived Magoist Calendar. If we count the year from the onset of the nine-state Danguk confederacy (3898 BCE-2333 BCE) founded by Goma, Magoist Shaman Queen Mother, our Year 1 would be 5916 ME (Magoma Era). Technically speaking, the Magoist Calendar formed at the time of our beginning came to be reincarnated on December 18, 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere (hereafter it implies the Northern Hemisphere otherwise indicated.) The year 2018 for the rebirth of the revived Magoist Calendar was arbitrary in that it could have been in 2017 or 2019. In retrospect, I must say that we are lucky to set the time of our first lunation on December 18 2018 because it makes the calendric migration process the smoothest. This means that our Magoist Calendar runs as less as 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar. If we had begun in 2017, our New Year would have been December 17. Only one day difference. However, if we had begun in 2016, our New Year would have been on November 29. Likewise, if we had begun in 2019, our New Year would have been on November 26. These dates are the new moon date before Winter Solstice, the New Year day. The Magoist Calendar charts the human world into the Reality of WE/HERE/NOW. The Magoist Calendar needs to be in use today, which means that it has to be translated into the language of the Gregorian Calendar. For we have lost the actual counting of the Magoist Calendar into our days in the course of patriarchal history. Mago Almanac serves the purpose of making our calendric migration possible from the 12 month Gregorian Calendar to the 13 month Magoist Calendar. It guides our collective journey in the Mother TimeSpace interwoven by the cosmogonic force of Sonic Numerology, the musical interplay of nine numbers, which gives birth, nurtures, and transforms all beings in the cosmos. Intriguingly, I have realized only last year that the Magoist Calendar is identical with “the 13 Moon Turtle Calendar,” the calendar of North American indigenous peoples, which adopts the turtle shell that has 13 inner sections and 28 outer sections for the calendar of 13 moons and 28 days (see figure). This speaks volumes that the 13 month 28 day calendar was once widely known among peoples of the ancient world. The Magoist Calendar restores the link between lunation and menstruation as a 28 day monthly cycle, a topic that I have discussed in my essay, “Introducing the Magoist Calendar: Original Blessing of the Womb Time,” included in this planner. Why do we need to reinstate the calendar that is based on the luni-menstruation rhythm? That is because the Magoist Calendar is in accordance with Sonic Numerology. Put differently, the moon-women duet inscribed in the 13 month 28 day calendar is given by the Natural World. In fact, the Magoist Calendar is the first and …
How do you say what The Mago Work is? by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang & Mago Circle Members

It took many years for me to pronounce the communal nature of the Mago Work. Defining the Mago Work necessarily endows us with the bird’s eye view of the Great Goddess, the primordial consciousness of WE in S/HE. Early this year, I asked people to define the Mago Work and their definitions are illuminating about what this book ultimately seeks to achieve.[1]
(Book Announcement 4) Introduction (part 2) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Editor’s Note: This Introduction is from She Rises: How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 2.] Pre-order available now! The Text of the Primordial Mother/the Creatrix/Mago She Rises Volume 2, like her predecessor, is born out of the Magoist vision.[i] It intends to raise the collective consciousness of WE, a cognitive symbolic system derived from the knowing of the Primordial Mother or the Creatrix. One may call it an embodied knowing or gynocentric epistemology. Our stories shed light on the holistic view in which all parts are revered as a microcosm of the Creatrix. The She Rises book is an emblem of gynocentric cosmology: All contributions are interconnected and the book is enriched by each and all contributions. This book is NOT just about what we have discovered and what we have experienced about Goddess feminism, activism, and spirituality but what and how we do with our discoveries and experiences. Where are we heading to with our knowing of S/HE? The collective consciousness of WE summons a gynocentric reality. This book is designed to show our togetherness in our uniqueness. It stands for unity that is enhanced by the diversity of individuals. The key phrase in the subtitle, “Goddess feminism, activism, and spirituality,” is a reminder of the all-embracing gynocentric way of our becoming. We ARE committed to the making of the book to reflect the gynocentric principle of unity in diversity. We allow our differences to lead us to a new (read gynocentric) territory without making ourselves fall into factionalism. Competition in a constructive manner helps us grow. But factionalism destroys us. We speak our truths not to argue or win. We speak our truths because they are true to us. Truth speaks, even when we can’t hear. And we trust ourselves to speak our truths in HER. And S/HE shall bring us together in WE. To trust in our contributors is the map that we editors have followed in She Rises collective books. In the process, we have learned that what we really need to be careful of, not the other camp of Goddessians, but what really divides us among Goddessians/Magoists. In my Introduction to She Rises Volume 1, I drew attention to the word “Goddess,” concerning our need to reclaim it despite its linguistic drawback. Summarily, we strategically adopt the word, “Goddess,” knowing its derivative and subsequently dualistic nature from the word “God” in the English language.[ii] We are aware of the functional nature of language, a means for the meaning that we intend to convey. We choose one word over another for our political and utilitarian reasons. Our use of the word “Goddess” has given us a common ground to come together and interweave the She Rises books. The Magoist vision of the book merits the stance that the Goddess is not just the female divine or a sum of female deities but the Great Goddess, the Primordial Mother. It is S/HE who allows us the holistic view of WE/HERE/NOW, the ultimate reality. We who are awakened in S/HE know that we ARE this S/HE reality. In writing my Introduction to the second book, another term has come to my attention, “feminine.” As seen in this book, some of our authors have favorably chosen the word, “feminine” in support of Goddess feminism, activism, and spirituality for reliable reasons. The context wherein the term is used is complex and highly suggestive of the female divine power. In their uses, some make it clear that the feminine refers to the female divine nature/power of women. Others use it in redefining and deconstructing patriarchal definitions of “the feminine.” It is true that “the divine feminine” or “the sacred feminine” has taken on popularity so much so that it appears almost indispensable in the Goddess Talk. Nonetheless, I hold that there is a point that we need to think and explore together the meaning of “feminine.” Linguistically speaking, referring to the gender quality of women, the meaning of “feminine” fluctuates. I find it worth broaching these questions to us: Is the term “feminine” empowering Goddess feminism? Why yes? Why no? These questions can only be answered by our authors and readers. We editors by no means advocate the purge of the term, feminine, from this book. Forcing unity is not gynocentric. We propose the question as an ongoing conversation among Goddessians. Here is my stance to the question, which is yes and no. When the context indicates an ancient (read gynocentric) or feminist meaning, the word “feminine” certainly empowers women. When “the divine feminine” indicates the Primordial Mother within an environment like this book, the word is empowering. Put differently, the meaning of “feminine” can be conveyed as gynocentric, that is, women-empowering, when “the divine feminine” refers to the Creatrix, the Great Goddess. In this case, the gender quality of “feminine” is coherent with the biological quality of “female.” The meaning of “feminine” in such context does NOT reflect the patriarchally-imposed qualities of women; the feminine is gynocentric and sacred. However, when the word “feminine” is used outside the gynocentric context, it becomes dubious in meaning, if not self-defeating, obstructing the impetus of women’s empowerment. Referring to the gender quality (read a social/patriarchal construct), of women, the meaning of “feminine” changes in different times and cultures. It is not free from socio-cultural settings. Being feminine today in the U.S. would be very different from being feminine two centuries ago. Also, being feminine today in one country would be very different from being feminine today in another country. On the other hand, the word, “female,” conveying the biological and biologically-derived quality of women, remains coherent in meaning across times and cultures. “Female” offers us a solid ground to build our feminist activism and feminist spirituality. Thus far, we women still hold the power of female biological and biologically-derived traits. The word, “feminine” alone risks a powerful conceptual ground for Goddess feminism. Precisely, it falls short in capturing the divine power of the Primordial Mother, the Creatrix. For example, I …
(Essay 2) Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess, from East Asia by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This essay was first published in Trivia, Voices of Feminism, Issue 6, September 2007. Also to be included in the forthcoming anthology She Rises: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?] An Introduction to Magoism Mago is the Great Goddess of East Asia. Nonetheless, she remains barely known to the world. Her equals, Xiwangmu (the Supreme Goddess of Daoism) and Amaterasu (the Sun Goddess of the Japanese imperial family), are said to comprise the pantheon of East Asian cosmic goddesses. Considering that these goddesses are often aligned with the ancient culture of China or Japan, one notices that the pantheon of East Asian Great Goddesses thus omits both Mago and “Korean culture.”
(Special post) Interweaving Mago Threads by Mago Circle Members

“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 most moderns have settled with (which calcifies the innate senses and finer antennae of knowing, emboldening technologically driven modes of mind and being to take their place), then we are on our way to a vivifying recollection. Here is an earlier presentation of the “mago” root word in “imago” or image. Not coincidentally, perhaps, it is connected to maps. (Mary Ann Ghaffurian, culled from Through a Darkened Door—Light, Part 2 by Mary Ann Ghaffurian PhD [http://magoism.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/through-a-darkened-door-light-part-2-by-mary-ann-ghaffurian-phd/]) A very special online, global group Dearest X, …Which brings to mind the “other” reason why I wanted to write to you … Other than just saying “hello” and letting you know that you are very much missed, I also wanted to share with you about a very special online, global group that I have had the honor of being a part of. This group is called Mago Circle and it was founded by my dear friend, “sister” and colleague, Helen Hwang. Helen’s work and commitment to restoring Mago, Ancestral Mother Goddess, to her rightful place as progenitor and creatrix of the Korean people, has not only been admirable but truly critical during a time when we are in real need for inspiration from thought leaders and scholars with a solid foundation in the arts and research of the sacred feminine. As you know, with the roots of Korean shamanism in the realm of women, it makes perfect sense that Korean spirituality must also have sprung within the womb of Woman … the great cosmic goddess, Mago. While Helen’s work is very much grounded in meticulous research — showcasing Korea to the rest of the world in all of Her depth, herstory, and vibrance — it is more importantly, founded in genuine intentions of love, transparency, and humility. I know that Helen can explain the depth, breadth, and height of her work much better than me so I think it will be better to have her directly share more of herself with you; what I simply hope to do through this letter is perhaps help serve as a familiar hand …. reaching out to you and letting you know that your presence and blessings as a well-regarded and much-admired Korean female shaman and scholar would be much appreciated in Mago Circle. Do you remember, X, … you once told me … about 20 years ago: “Sanity is insanity with a focus.” These words I still remember and hold true … they have helped me through times that were truly dismal and chaotic in my life, and with this reassuring and transformational way of looking at myself, looking at my life, looking at the world, I have made it through. My life continues to have its share of insanity, but I know that with focus, all sanity is restored. I know that my letter to you today may feel unexpected and random (especially after not having seen each other for so, so long), but as you know, somehow, life brings us through twists and turns that may seem awkward and strange at first, but upon retrospect, all makes complete sense. In closing, may I have the honor and pleasure of introducing Helen Hwang and the Mago Circle to you … I realize that you must be very busy, but it is my sincere hope that you will find a little time to acquaint yourself with Helen and this wonderful group of women (and men) who are very much dedicated to restoring the balance and peace of Korea and the world via Mago and her goddess sisters of many names… (Wennifer Lin, culled from her letter to her old friend) I share your call for staying connected with each other at a time of cultural and religious tensions. I too believe that all tensions arise from a patriarchal system of hegemony or domination. In the absence of patriarchal hegemony, there would be little or no tension among human beings. The belief in the Mother Goddess would remove the necessity for aggression and hence domination of other human beings or animals. In the eyes of the Mother, every living being is her creature. Hence love, kindness, nurturing and all that is beautiful would prevail everywhere. Am I sounding too idealistic or am I pining for a utopian society that is just not possible? But in theory, it is possible to return to the spirit of Mother, manifest in everything in nature and in our thoughts and actions. With admiration and preservation of Mother we can change the world for a better place. So with this in mind, I submit to all women (who are the living image of the Great Mother Goddess) and goddess lovers in the world to unite in our efforts to bring back the ideals of the Great Goddess. As an academic, I …