May 17, 2016October 2, 2019 RTM EditorsLeave a comment

(Prose Part 1) The Bear Goddess in Europe by Sara Wright

“It is very peaceful with the bears; the people say that’s the reason human beings seldom return.” Leslie Marmon Silko The mythology of the Bear Goddess has its roots in Read More …

(Art) Listening at the Loom of Her Love by Lucy Pierce

“I feel that in our modern western culture we are taught as women to judge, compare, belittle and compete with one another to find our place in the world. Self-love and deep belonging to one’s inner wisdom and to the awesome power of our sisterhood is scorned and we are taught to seek our salvation in the futile and exhaustive commodified quest to become something that the impossible standards of the external gaze will find acceptable, that we might finally become beautiful and exceptional enough to be worthy of love. It has been through my experiences of being in women’s circles and partaking in festivals like Seven Sisters, where the deep primal power of the collective feminine has shown itself to me, as a world-changing, earth-quaking, truth-making force that is an imperative evolution at this time. It is not always comfortable as we truly learn to belong to ourselves and to the tribe that is our community of sisters, but it feels so very deeply gratifying to feel the jubilant and joyful celebration of love as we open, teach, guide, learn and reveal the truth of our reciprocal connectivity, and that together we are so much stronger than when we stand apart.” This is a new image I painted for the call to artists for the Spirit Weavers Gathering 2017. I am feeling deeply honoured to have been selected as a finalist and very grateful for all those who supported me with their votes. I hope to make it over to this festival one day. I now have prints and cards available of this image on my Etsy store www.etsy.com/shop/lucypierce (Meet Mago Contributor) Lucy Pearce
(Essay 1) Sacred Crete: Mystery Rites and the Sacred Bull’s Transformation in the Post-Bronze Age Collapse by Jen Taylor

Dolphin Fresco / Palace of Knossos (Crete, 1700-1450 BCE) “I come from Crete over the sea’s wide back…” -Demeter / Homeric Hymn to Demeter Dynastic-era Egyptian Pharaohs hired the artists of ancient Crete to paint murals in their sacred temples. For those familiar, the art of High Bronze Age Minoan culture is stunning, considered some of “the most inspired ” of the long-gone Neolithic era, depicting “the enchantment of a fairy world.”1 One might recall the Dolphin Fresco or the palace ruins of Knossos. The unparalleled pottery techniques of the Minoans were lost at the end of the Bronze Age with the brutal Mycenaean takeover, mid-15th century BCE. Minoan pottery techniques are difficult to replicate to this day. It is long acknowledged that Roman architecture is a knock-off of Greek building works, but the Greeks are a knock-off of a knock-off: they borrowed from the Mycenaean imitation of Minoan architecture. Both Mycenaean and then Greek artisans fail to achieve Minoan feats and splendor. Some might argue with me on this, but what cannot be refuted is that Minoan archeological remains destroy the narrative that Western civilization began with the Greeks. I have never been to this fabled island of enchanted ruins, nestled in the blue waters of the Mediterranean. As Demeter desired to return, I wish to go, though I fear the longing it will stir. Can I face the testimony of the ruins? So much is lost and it requires more than a physical journey to a geographical location to recover ancient Crete. I was first alerted to this Archeo-Mythological trail as an undergrad in 1993, studying the Pre-Socratics, Homer, and Greek Tragedy. What was this Golden Age that Hesiod referred to at the onset of the Iron Age in 8th century BCE? In the beginning, the immortals who have their homes on Olympos created the golden generation of mortal people… They lived as if they were gods, their hearts free from sorrow. – Hesiod / Works and Days, lines 108-114 Around the same time, a beloved philosophy professor (Mitch Miller) pressed us in class with a tantalizing question. He asked if we had ever heard of the Eleusinian Mystery Rites. Cicero wrote of them, “We have been given a reason not only to live in joy, but also to die with better hope.”2 None of us had heard of these “Mystery Rites,” and what Professor Miller said next stunned me. He said that we should be angry about it. Then he looked around the room and stayed silent for a while. No one said a word. Something important had been lost and the writings of ancient Greece contained fragments testifying to that loss, emerging like pebbles in the moonlight now. I will always be grateful to Professor Miller for this seminal moment because the scatterings of pre-classical era-derived fragments also provide clues towards the Mystery Rites’ recovery. I have spent a lifetime searching since, and the two scholars I trust most in cleansing patriarchal overlay when looking at the origination point of the Eleusinian Mystery Rites in Bronze Age Crete are Riane Eisler and Professor Mara Keller. Each has given a lot of attention to ancient Crete in their long careers. Eisler devotes a chapter to the subject (Crete: The Essential Difference) in her paradigm-shifting book, The Chalice and the Blade. What many refer to anachronistically as Minoan, Keller has renamed Damatrian Crete in her essays and a forthcoming book.3 Minoan is the name given by Sir Arthur Evans in the first archeological excavations of the ancient civilization in the early 1900’s. The term Minoan derives from King Minos, a mythological king of Mycenaean Crete, the Iron Age war-faring, pre-Greek tribes, who destroyed and supplanted High Bronze Age, Damatrian Crete. A rose may be a rose by any other name, but not here. The domination system culture of the Mycenaeans worshipped the power of the blade, the power to take life. Damatrian Crete, what Eisler calls a partnership paradigm, worshipped the opposite, conceiving of the power to give life as sacred. The power of the womb, symbolized by a chalice, understands the rebirth that follows, and trumps death. Archeologist Nicholas Platon noted in his 1966 examinations of the ancient island, “the fear of death is almost obliterated by the ubiquitous joy of living.”4 From the first excavations in the early 1900’s, scholars agree on this point. In 1987, Keller observes that, “Their main purpose was to bring an experience of love to the most important life passages: birth, sexuality and death/rebirth.”5 The more I uncover, the more Hesiod’s lament for the lost age makes sense and matches my own: “And I wish that I were not any part of the fifth generation of men, but had died before it came, or been born afterward. For here now is the age of iron. Never by daytime will there be an end to hard work and pain…” – Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 169-174 This (meta)journey of recovery is compounded by our continued failure to decipher Damatrian Crete’s script, referred to unimaginatively as Linear A. Happily, we are alive in a time when disciplines like archeology and mythology have come together to shed light on a formerly unknowable and lost way of life. How do we live so that we are not afraid to die? How did we lose that and how to do we get it back? The Festival of the Bull and The Eleusinian Mystery Rites of Demeter offer tantalizing insights here. We will examine each separately in Parts II and III of this series, considering them together in the context of the post-Bronze Age collapse in Part IV. (Next month / Part II: The Festival of the Bull…) Demeter & Grain / Greek Bas-Relief, 700 BCE Endnotes 1 Riane Eisler, The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future (New York: HarperCollins, 1987), 32. 2 “Neque solum cum laetitia vivendi rationem accepimus sed etiam cum spe meliore moriendi.” Cicero, …
(Prose poem) The Mark of the Bear by Sara Wright

Leaving the sanctity of evergreen forest and still wrapped in winter wool, he warily approaches me. I stand riveted to a wet nose and open mouth sniffing and tasting the evening light; the bear’s gaze rekindles an ancient fire. A golden arrow pierces the shadow of my longing, forcing me to acknowledge the depth of my grief. Hungering for details I scan his face, noting his widow’s peak, mole brown-marbled eyes; curved claws pop the top off the can. Recognition parts the Veil of Bears as I acknowledge him for the second time. One image of my Beloved is this bear.
(Art Essay) Not So Invisible Was A Woman by Claire Dorey

Art by Claire Dorey Sooner or later those of us digging into buried female histories will seek meaning and identity within our own story. Tracing ancestry through the occluded lens of paternal record keeping, the way the system we live within arranges itself, brings into sharp focus how extinguishing the female narrative, denies us half of ourselves. For most of history, veiled, draped, shackled in silence was a woman. Silence wounds. “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” – Virginia Woolf. These weighty words birthed the phrase, “for most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” When women’s history is shaped by misogyny, absence of acknowledgement and being-hood unexplained, clarity means everything. Women in the wilderness Truncated, severed, cut from the roots of the mother line, we, the vessels birthing humanity, cast adrift from our ancestral moorings, diminished and devalued, sail into the headwind of the patriarchal story. I sailed down my mother’s paternal line, until the 1700s (there’s a book about them). I sailed along my father’s paternal line, on a wave of church records and land registry documents, to 1641. Pondering written and oral histories, I walked the soil beside crystal clear chalk streams flowing through tranquil meadows where my ancestors farmed watercress. These streams are described as “she” in 16th C poetry and the Goddess associated with them is Ancasta. Various family members have also traced this paternal line. I have reams of the stuff. BUT what about the women? Where are the women? Why are the women, including myself, missing from the family trees they created? My absence screams volumes. As in all symbolism it is the dark spaces that do the talking. So engrained is tracing descent through the father, even today, our own families cast women to the wilderness. The world will split open Recording heritage from the singular perspective of the paternal line is a symptom of monotheistic hierarchal thinking. Leading a family to its own “godhead,” as far back as records will allow, maintains the stability of this myth, illusion, hierarchy. It sanitizes male histories. Shame was carried by the woman, meanwhile the actions of men remain hidden. It is within the female line that the truth resides. As Muriel Rukeyser says, “if one woman told the truth about her life, the world would split open.” [1] In the mother line we find the orphanages; the casting out of women, victim to the Shame Honor Nexus; the leaving behind of female children when families emigrate. The female line butts up to many an impasse, including “coverture,” the legal status of a married woman under her husband’s authority (women of the past may not appear on historic, land registry documents for example) so, like Virginia, we must harness our intuition and imagination when seeking our ancestresses, including the single women, the Dianas “owned by no man.” Uncoupling from the paterfamilias As I come to terms with the invisibility of my existence, past, present and future, the results of DNA testing reveal my story is more exotic than the linear patriarchal version of my family history, so I’m uncoupling from the paterfamilias. The clan mothers are calling. I’m steering my ship into the unchartered headwinds of my female heritage and identity, with a renewed sense of self and freedom. Let the fresh air blow through. Breathe. Breathe in the elixir of new possibilities. A word of warning DNA testing reveals surprises pushed to the shadows of family histories. The title, DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest – The Atlantic [2], tells us immediately that incestuous relationships (consensual / coercion / rape) were commonplace. Might of the clan mother Interesting things happen when tracing family through the female line. Words such as progenitress, clan mother, matriarch, materfamilias and metronymic (names derived from a female ancestor) emerge from the darkness of patriarchal domination. Traces of the matriarch hide within names. In its patronymic form, the surname “Mawson, derives from “Maw.” In its metronymic form it means “son of Maude.” The name Matilda stems from maht ‘might/power’ and hild ‘battle’. My surname derives from doré meaning “blonde haired” in French; or dore meaning “bee” in Middle English. Hidden matrilineal dynasties In Europe’s Hidden Matrilineal Dynasty, House of Garsenda. (do watch this, it upends history) Dr Matt Baker points out that matrilineal dynasties are hidden with patrilineal ones. Here the males, rather than females, are dead ends. Tracing the mother line, Dr Matt Baker shows how the matrilineal House of Garsenda descends from one progenitress, Countess Jhair-sond. Hers is the most enduring and influential royal house, with descendants sitting on the thrones of Europe for over 600 years. Her house was far more prolific than the patrilineal Habsburgs or Capets yet, as Virginia points out, “For most of history anonymous was a women,” even queens. When we gain access we may find our own matrilineal histories are just as revelatory. Can we conclude this has been an enduring pattern, stretching back through time? Archaeology News reports that ancient DNA from El Mirón Cave reveals a 46,000-year lineage of the Red Lady! [3] Land of Warrior Queens. Just as I’m resigning myself to a romanticized form of invisibility, veiled like Isis, Hestia, Demeter and Hecate, hidden, yet brooding and powerful, eyes looking from the liminal, through a curtain of shells, there is a thunderbolt from the world of archaeology: DNA taken from 57 Iron Age graves in southwest England, the land of the Warrior Queen, shows most individuals descended from a single maternal line. [4] “Hail the mighty nectar. O’ bare feet in flower meadows. O’ weaving garlands of dill.” I knew in my bones England must have been matrilocal. I knew in my bones that Boudicca and Cartimandua could not be the only Warrior Queens. There’s more: Live Science reports that DNA sequencing reveals early Celtic elites inherited power through maternal lines. [5] There will be more powerful women waiting to be unearthed. In the future DNA sequencing may find them. …
(Prose) Methodology: the cosmic sewing maching by Nane Jordan

Perhaps the term “methodology” encapsulates my Cixousian/life writing study, a methodology driven study? I know – Cixous’ writing defies notions of “method.” My point – exactly. “get past the wall” (Cixous, Coming to writing,1991) How can we defy and re-defyne methods? Recognizing the ways in which gender, social forces and patriarchy shape practices of writing, and who can or can’t write. How can writing and methodology speak/communicate/commune-with life in new ways? I see Cixous’ writing as midwife-provocateur of such birthings, an invitation to break free of convention and “etiquette” (à la Sean W.), finding language, dreams, birth/death, the life of objects and poetic-philosophy – narratives in the narrative, turning/tuning towards words-in-themselves. Tracing the educational genealogy of this study is to look at the forces of Coming to writing/ L’avenue à l’ecriture (Cixous 1991/1977) in my own life. I was a secret teenage poet. Poetry gave me a way into my-self, my emotions and scenes of life with others. I loved what words could do. I handed a file of my poems to a university professor in my first year of visual art studies. A well-known Ottawa poet, he let me into his writing class, with words of praise and promise for my writing. I entered and promptly dropped the class. I did not feel able to commit to both writing and visual art. Or I was afraid, of writing. Growing up in a literary (reading) family, I read too, a lot. Mostly female authors, Virginia Wolfe and Doris Lessing were mainstays of my teenage years. I didn’t feel I was ‘novelist’ material, but I sensed the need to write. Reading gave me worlds and words and ways into life within and beyond my own. Years later, after community-based midwifery studies, and the birth of my first daughter, my entrance to a Master of Arts in Women’s Spirituality in San Francisco gave writing back to me. Who knew? Who knew that poet, cultural theorist, and educator Judy Grahn (http://www.judygrahn.org/) would be there, nudging students along in her creative, generous ways, “did you write that story Nané?” In our classes, writing groups, and pedagogical immersions through women-centred scholarship, space, and ritual, hearing the stories of others, telling and re-finding my own stories, I recovered my desire to write. Research methodology was key to this arrival. New feminist research methodologies were about creatively locating ourselves in our own lives as women. We could use the “I” word, a subjective voice! VOICE! Feminist qualitative research as “Organic Inquiry” (Clements, Ettling, Jenett, & Shields, 1998) opened these doors more. Art, writing, and the sacred could merge within me, in a community of e-mergence. I followed red threads that I yearned to, through women’s birth stories, midwifery, eco-feminism. This was the kind of research I had been longing to do through my years of living the birth-work, and reading women’s stories and healing ways. How to make research sing and soar, breath life, give life. Into my PhD, I found arts-based researchers in education at UBC. Again, artists, writers and poets arrived, with communities of stories as our calling. Life writing with an arts-based research team began. And reading Cixous, more and more, things evolved to this place of reading-writing, in its potent-poetic transformative impact. All that is possible in reading-writing – its individual and collective sewing. The cosmic sewing machine In this classroom, I am made more, in saying, telling, writing, following my own tales/tails, letting words come through, the flesh and blood of me, words spin out into sentences, forming a new body. These soft glowing orbs I can hand to others, placement of figurative touch, head to hand to heart, this funny mind-meld, enscribes my sensory awareness, of being. That story I told Judy, long ago about the wolves calling, and she said, “have you written that down?” no – I hadn’t, but soon did, now the thought often arises, to write things down, to stitch stories. I am a bit more familiar with this cosmic sewing machine, the one Judy points to, saying, “I have to get back to my sewing” I look in the direction of her gaze, to the sewing machine on the floor and I think – that looks a lot like a computer. And so begins another way of thinking about sewing, about writing. (Meet Mago Contributor) Nane Jordan.
(Nine Poets Speak) The heart’s mind: A villanelle by Judy Grahn

[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.] Damsel Fly. Photo credit Alamy (May 16, 2025, copyright Judy Grahn All Rights Reserved) [Author’s Note] I’ve been writing villanelles sparked by teachings of Mary Magdalen. As related in her own unique Gospel, she has a vision of her Teacher in which she asks him how we have visions; do we see them with our soul or with our spirit? Neither one, he answers her; you have them with your mind, which is situated between the soul and the spirit. And “where the mind is, there is the treasure.” I have interpreted this as “the heart’s mind,” and expanded on visions to also mean the ways we are connected with those who have passed over, or are at a distance, or are nonhuman beings. My own experience with such numinous dialogs has included insects, and friends have spoken about being guided by a crow and a dragonfly, respectively, during distressing events. I find it impossible to illustrate the intuitive mind, or nous. I did have an interactive and heart-opening encounter with a dragonfly one day; the photo is of a damselfly, who is related with a somewhat similar face. Her features were startling to me at first but the more I look, the more I like her. I especially like her direct gaze and her haircut. The photographer is unknown. https://www.magoism.net/2025/05/meet-mago-contributor-judy-grahn-ph-d/
(Book Excerpt 1) Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree ed. by Trista Hendren Et Al

[Editor’s Note: This excerpt series is from Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree ed by Claire Dorey, Janet Rudolph, Pat Daly, and Trista Hendren (Girl God Books, 2025).] The Great-Goddess Asherah by Miriam Robibins Dexter, Ph.D. In my Preface to this rich anthology on the Great Mother Goddess Asherah, I would like to present an idea of how she was worshipped by related cultures in the Near East, including that of the Hebrews. There are differing etymologies (root meanings) for Asherah’s Semitic name, but the one most accepted seems to be Hebrew ʾāšar, “to tread, to go straight on.” We may compare the related Ugaritic root word ʾṯr, “to tread;” (as in Ugaritic rbt ʾaṯrt ym: “Lady who treads the sea;” this can also be translated “Lady Asherah of the Sea”). The name Asherah was pronounced without stress on any syllable, although in Europe and the United States there tends to be an accent on the second syllable. Asherah was worshipped throughout the Near East; ancient Near Eastern texts which describe her may give us a clue to her functions and attributes. In the ancient Syrian culture of Ugarit, texts dating to ca. 1300 BCE tell us that Asherah/Athirat was the wife of the father-god El, one of the names of the deity later worshipped in Hebrew texts. In Hittite texts dating from the fifteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE, Ashertu, the Hittite equivalent of Asherah, was the consort of the father-god Elkunirsha, a form of El. Asherah was popular in Israel, where she remained prominent long after the official Hebrew religion became monotheistic. She was depicted as a tree, and sometimes she was bird-faced, linking her to Neolithic female figurines throughout Eurasia which were depicted as bird or snake. Asherah was represented as a woman from head to waist and as a broad base below, a base easily planted as a tree. In the Hebrew Old Testament, Deuteronomy 16:21, it is forbidden to plant a tree as an Asherah beside the altar of Jehovah (Yahweh), another name of the Hebrew God. It would be unnecessary, of course, to forbid what was not practiced. Inscriptions discovered in the last several years bear out the biblical testimony. The Khirbet el-Qôm inscription and the inscription from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud both invoke blessings by the Hebrew God and by his Asherah. In the Ugaritic texts, Asherah, as the wife of El, was given as epithet the feminine form of El, Elat (the –t ending in Semitic nouns indicated the feminine gender): “. . . to Asherah and her children; to Elat and her group [of offspring].” (KTU 1.4.iv.49: aṯrt wbnh . ilt . wṣbrt.) KTU stands for Keilschrifttexte aus Ugarit, ‘Cuneiform texts from Ugarit’. The ancient Near-Eastern texts often refer to the same deity in repetition with differing epithets; the goddess was addressed as both Asherah and Elat. Asherah was the “Great-Mother:” “Propitiation to the great lady Asherah of the Sea; honor to the Creatrix of the Gods . . .” (KTU 1.4.i.21-22: mgn . rbt . aṭrt ym mgẓ . qnyt . ilm). The gods were collectively her children: “The seventy children of Asherah shout: let the . . . gods drink…” (KTU 1.4.vi.45-47: ṣḥ…šbʾm. A[t]rt…špq…ilm). Both the mother-goddess Asherah and the young goddess, Anat, were described as wet nurses in Ugaritic texts: “ . . . [who] sucks the milk of Asherah sucks the breast of the young girl, Anat, the wet nurses . . .” (KTU 1.15.ii.26-28: ynq . ḥlb A[t]rt…mṣṣ ṭd . btlt [ʾnt] mšnq). In antiquity, trees were sacred in the religions of many cultures, and many sister-goddesses of Asherah were associated with sacred trees. The Egyptian Hathor was the goddess of the sycamore tree. In the Indus Valley (Mature culture ca. 2600-2900 BCE), in Egypt, in Crete, in Greece, and in Syria, men and women were represented iconographically in attitudes of worship, facing trees. The tree is rich in fertile power when it blooms and becomes heavy with fruit, and thus it has been an icon of the divine. In Hebrew religion, the sacrality and the feminine gender of the tree were greatly diminished. In the Genesis myth of Eve and Adam (which is probably a re-telling of the Sumerian Paradise myth of Nin-Hursag and Enki, in the land of Dilmun, ca. 3000 BCE), one finds a female figure, a male figure, a snake, and a tree. According to the Old Testament Biblical story, the downfall of humanity was caused by the weakness or “sinfulness” of the woman, Eve. The first mortal, Adam, and his wife, Eve (she who was constructed from one of Adam’s ribs), were for some time very happy, while they lived in the Garden of Eden. But then, a serpent induced Eve to taste the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and the couple was subsequently banished from Eden. The main elements in this story, again, the tree, the serpent, the woman, and the man, are elements found in other Near Eastern cultures, both in their myths and literatures and in their iconographies. One of the earliest Near Eastern cultures which gives us texts, the Sumerian, brings an earlier dimension to the Hebrew myth in language as well as in myth; the texts demonstrate the devaluation of the Goddess and her attributes. In antiquity, the serpent was an avatar of the Great Goddess; thousands of Neolithic Eurasian figurines depicting woman/serpent have been excavated (as well as figurines of bird/woman). In the Sumerian Paradise myth, the goddess Nin-Hursag (Lady Mountain) planted a lush, paradisiacal garden. The wisdom – and water-god Enki – who was depicted on Sumerian cylinder seals with water and serpents–feeling hunger as he entered the garden, ate all of the plants which the goddess had so carefully tended. The Goddess was angry, and she cursed Enki; he lay near death (even though he was a god!). The other deities begged Nin-Hursag to cure Enki, because the one who delivered the curse was the only one who could be responsible for its revoking. The deities did not want Enki to die; in particular, if he were …
(Book Review) Nané Jordan and Chandra Alexandre eds., Pagan, Goddess, Mother (Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2021) Reviewed by Barbara Bickel

[Editor’s Note: This book review was first published in S/HE: An international Journal of Goddess Studies Vol 1 No 1, 2022.] Pagan, Goddess, Mother, opens with the “charge of the Goddess” by Doreen Valiente, as adapted by Starhawk. The charge or ‘call to deeply care’ for mothers and children captivatingly continues through the thirteen compelling chapters of this book. I read the full book in three sittings, and had difficulty putting the book down even as I drifted off to sleep during my second round of reading at the end of a long day. The stories of women committed to living life fully awake to the significance of Earth, Goddess and Mother are a balm for the wounded, yet awakening earthling, mother, child in all of us. The honouring and reverence of, for and with the Divine Mother and mothering acts of love is the catalytic thread bonding each chapter to the other. The co-editors, Jordan and Alexandre, as matricentric feminists, create a clear and encompassing matrix of thought for the many pathways travelled by the contributing authors. They generously include a chapter of their own stories of interconnecting yet distinct paths of coming to women’s spirituality, the Goddess, and mother-centred devotions. In a vulnerable heart held way, they open the reader to a matricentric life-focused and nesting worldview in high contrast to the death-focused nest destroying patricentric worldview that has been spiraling off center for centuries, wounding all; men, women and children, more-than-humans and our mother Earth in its path. The love of the mother, expressed in the vision of a contemporary Goddess spirituality, that “draw[s] from and legitimizes female-centred and material embodied social powers, with diverse expressions of the feminine being possible beyond gender norms” (Jordan & Alexandre, p. 20) pours out from the pages of this book. Section 1is entitled “Priestess, Witch, Artist, Midwife: Mother Stories”and opens with a call for the “Mamapriestess” in Molly Remer’s chapter as she brings the priestess, mother and Goddess to presence through poetry, autobiographic storytelling, and scholarly valuation of the divine mother and female body. Sarah Rosehill, in chapter two further deepens understandings of the passionate mama through her story of a difficult birth and single motherhood by sharing how the teachings of Anamanta and pagan spiritual practices helped her, as her title states, in “Finding my Footing as a Witch and a Mother.” An image of Mother Mary with her direct and attending gaze graces the cover of the book. This symbolic painting emerged from Asia Morgenthanler’s sacred art practice described in chapter three “Remothering and the Goddess,” where Morgenthanler through her making practice, explores the inner child and the inner mother. Through making she writes that we become aligned with all creation and can transform ourselves. Foremothers and minks slide with parallel ease into our imaginaries in the poetics of chapter four written by Elizabeth Cunningham entitled “Minks.”In this chapterwe witness the spontaneous presence of prayer in a sacred moment shared between mother and teenage daughter. Chapter five, the last in this first section, follows a life full of lessons learned by Alys Einion, a mother, priestess, and midwife in her chapter entitled “‘Call Unto They Soul’: Reflexive Authoethnography of a Pagan, Priestess,Goddess-Worshipper, and Mother.” Responding to the call of the Goddess she reflects upon a lifetime of trust in the Goddess in the midst of uncertainty in “birth, death, life, nurturing, abandonment, destruction, construction and communion” (87). Section II is entitled “Scholarship from Pagan Goddess Motherlines” and traverses challenging and conflicting aspects in Pagan practices, pre-Christian Goddess cultures and Christian influenced occult teachings. Christina Hoff Kraemer’s chapter six, entitled “Pagan Mothering, Body Sovereignty, and Consent Culture” launches this section with teachable and valuable approaches for understanding how children can be raised to know the manifestation of the divine life force in their bodies. The understanding that the divine manifests in bodies is honoured and supported through nurturing healthy body boundaries, encouraging sovereignty and empathetic beingness with all others. Chapter seven questions cultural and religious confines in India that continue to limit women’s sovereignty in Kusmita Muhkerjee Debnath’s critical and vulnerable dive into historical and present practices of the Hindu religion and culture. In her search for female agency in stories of goddesses she has grown up with, she instead finds the perpetuation of a god centered subserviency and thus rejects her cultural and religious teachings regarding the prescribed role of women. Critical reflections continue in chapter seven, Georgia van Raalte’s chapter eight, entitled “The Path of the Cold Hearth-Stone: Reflections on Sex, Saturn, and Solitary Working.” This chapter offers a critical scholarly overview of early occultist Dion Fortune’s teachings, which have and continue to have a significant impact on contemporary goddess, pagan and occult practices and communities. Of significance for this book is Fortune’s recognition of motherhood as a spiritual path alongside her consequent separation of motherhood from priestesshood. Van Raalte rejects Fortune’s elimination of an occult liberational “left-hand path of exuberant endurance” (130) for those without privilege and means to enter dedicated priestess practice. Van Raalte then offers a third “Path of the Cold-Hearth-Stone, which is the path of struggle and submission as a negative ecstatic liberation theology of motherhood” (132) as an essential addition to Fortunes’ two paths for women, that of the Adept and the Path of the Hearth-Fire. Section III is entitled Empowering Spirited Mother-Daughter Lineages. Chapter nine opens this section with Laura Zegel’s powerful and practical focus on mothering daughter’s groups and is entitled “The Spiritual Dimension of Mother-Daughter Groups: Healing with Artemis, Demeter, and Persephone.” Studies of mother-daughter groups and her personal experience in a long-term mother-daughter group inspires mother-ways to support the spiritual, emotional and relational growth of young and mothering women living in a patriarchal culture that has altered, for its own means, the goddess-centred understandings of Artemis, Demeter and Persephone. Chapter ten then, aptly and poetically walks us directly to a garden-planting-nurturing moment of a present day Persephone and Demeter in the rhythmic prayer-filled words of poet-mother Jennifer …
Meet Mago Contributor, Melissa LaFlamme

Melissa La Flamme is a visionary artisan of cultural evolution. As an author, poet, activist, Jungian & shamanic psychotherapist and Troublemaker, she kindles soul’s smoldering longing for everything real. She helps hack and track the smell of our longing to fully inhabit our life. She shows us how to enact our own Prison Break, from the inner and outer Lockdowns we have unknowingly built. Melissa teaches the soul’s clandestine trade. The trade of the Code Breaker of our one authentic life. The way of the Holy Hacker of our soul. The one writhing alive in our glistening, raving heart, vulnerable, ravished, undone and messy in a world where anything but is the safe way to belong. Visit her at www.jungiansoulwork.com and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MelissaALaFlamme.

(Special Post) Discussion on Mother-Daughter Wound by Mago Circle Members

[Mago Circle members discussed and answered the question, “What do you think of this (the topic article below)? If you are a feminist, it is something that you would promote? If so, why? If not, why not?” The discussion took place on May 15, 2017 and shortly thereafter in The Mago Circle.] Topic Article: “For The Daughters Who Don’t Love Their Mothers – Screw Mother’s Day” by Sade Andria Zabala Everyone talks about a mother’s unconditional love. But what if it doesn’t exist? Daughters are socially expected to be close with their mothers. But are you one of the women who aren’t? Mother’s Day isn’t just for celebrating moms. It’s a day some of us dread because we are reminded we grew up (or are still) unloved, not good enough. (Read the whole article here.)
(Special Post Mother Teresa 2) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

[Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] Part II: We Disagree! Stand up for what you believe but be open-minded! Naa Ayele Kumari: I am going to step away from the common responses and say this… Binary is only no in betweens if you choose sides and can’t see the whole. I have been a part of black consciousness movements and women’s movements and both have the capacity for progress as well as extreme viewpoints. Both have the capacity to become so hypercritical that the movement itself transcends common human compassion and understanding. Mother Teresa was a human being with flaws and goodness. She had a public image and private fears and insecurities.. l like all of us. She lived her life the best way she knew how.. Like all of us. She made mistakes.. misjudgments.. Like all of us. But she also DID help and inspire others to help too. It is this dualistic thinking that forces people to feel like they have to assign the label of good or bad and no in between. None of us are all good or all bad.. so it seems to me that to label her has an evil traitor who let people die is no better than labeling her an Angel of god who did no wrong. She was a woman who lived her life and managed to come to worldwide fame and inspire others to love at a time and in an institution that was highly patriarchal and women were not raised up at all. Mother Goddesses in Africa were known for great nurturing and care symbolized by carrying a baby and also carried a machete on the other side for justice. This was the fine balance of wholeness…she was the gentle rain and the storm.. This was binary, but not one or the other but both.. Opposite ends of the same pole. [H]: I’m having a powerful visceral effect from this conversation. I feel as if I’m going to vomit violently. Mother Teresa comes to me in dreams and meditations. Makes me wonder what kind of person I’m seen as if I attract her energy. I have always felt so much love for her. Naa Ayele Kumari: If she comes in your dreams and it has been healing for you… Allow it/ her to continue to be healing for you. Its all about love and anything that is not love… Leave it be.. Vomiting is rejecting something that doesn’t belong with you. Embrace love my sister. Antonia McGuire: I think we may all agree that all belief systems initially began to promote a sense of goodness or fairness to some degree, but over time they are corrupted and produce both advantages and disadvantages. Donna Snyder: Yes, Gandhi, too. Back in the 90’s when I was in a band/performance art troupe called Central Nervous System, I shocked all the guys in the band coming out with an improv in response to a melody played on a banjo tuned like a sitar, called exactly that-Yes, Gandhi. Now make no mistake, he is one of my heroes, devoid of the falsified sentimentality that clings to MT. Gandhi’s work was for the world, for the masses, not for the appropriately humbled. Yet I spoke out about his sexual practices, his use of female bodies. Telling the truth about a hero requires courage. Retreating into a blind defense of a myth is a form of ethical cowardice. Anne Wilkerson Allen: Strangely I had a discussion with someone about the “hero’s journey” moving from metaphorical to physical being part of the problem…..when the “demons” are human instead of our own flaws, there seems to be a tendency to point the finger (and gun barrel) elsewhere. [B]: Fascinating & thought-provoking conversation, all. I think the biggest stumbling block I have with MT is how her acceptance of the dogma of the Catholic church blinded her to seeing and then being moved by the suffering of others enough to do something to alleviate & not vicariously celebrate it. No wonder she “suffered a lack of connection with the Divine”. This crisis with her spirituality seems to have been divorced from her and others’ body wisdom. Self-abnegation (perhaps not the same as “sacrifice”) ultimately backfires because some small part of us insists, “I am worthy!” To which I say, “We are all worthy!” [H]: I do not see or feel that she vicariously celebrated the suffering of others. I feel that she devoted her life to deeply loving and serving the poorest of the poor. I have not been to Calcutta and I have also seen some unimaginable poverty in India that is not like anything that I’ve been exposed to before. I truly believe that she had a very deep way of working with suffering that is not necessarily visible to those more accustomed to modern medical intervention and the resources available for such. I have participated in a very small amount of poverty medicine and the resources that we take for granted are just not readily available to MANY. I learned very powerfully from my experience how blessed and fortunate and often very careless we really are with our precious resources. This discussion has been a learning experience for me. I am trying to not take the critical comments […]
(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 […]

(Video) Imbolc/Early Spring Goddess Slideshow by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

On February 3rd at 19:45 “Universal Time” (as it is named), Earth our Planet crosses the midpoint of Her orbit between Solstice and Equinox, though the exact time varies each year. In the Northern Hemisphere it is the Season of Imbolc – the welcoming of the Light, post-Winter Solstice, after the fullness of the dark of Winter. Imbolc, and all of the light part of the cycle, is particularly associated with the Young One/Virgin/Maiden aspect of Goddess – or Urge to Be as I have named this aspect. Imbolc may be understood as the quintessential celebration of the Virgin/Young One quality for the year – the rest of the light part of the cycle celebrates Her processes, but this Seasonal Moment is a celebration of Her … identifying with Her. She is the New Young One, the Promise of Life, the Urge to Be. Her purity is Her singularity of purpose. She is spiritual warrior. Her inviolability is Her determination to Be … nothing to do with unbroken hymens of the dualistic and patriarchal mind. The Virgin is the essential “yes” to Being – not the “no” She was turned into. This is some Poetry of the Season: This is the season of the waxing Light … the feast of the Young One – who is the Urge To Be within All. The New One born at the Winter Solstice now grows. This is the time of celebrating the small self – each one’s Gaian uniqueness and beauty. We meet to share the light of inspiration, to be midwifed, by She who tends the Flame of Being, deeply committed to Self, and Who is True. The choice of images is arbitrary … there are so many more, and also, most ancient images of Goddess are multivalent – She was/is One: that is, all Her aspects are not separate from each other. These selected images tell a story of certain qualities that may be contemplated at the Seasonal Moment of Imbolc/Early Spring. Remember that image communicates the unspeakable – that which can only be known in body – below rational mind. You may regard it as a transmission of Herself, insofar as you wish – and particular to you. I offer you these images for you to receive in your own way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUPTKMork9s Artemis 4th Century B.C.E. Greece. (p.52 Austen) – a classic “Virgin” image – wild and free, “Lady of the Beasts”, Goddess of untamed nature. As such, in the patriarchal stories She is often associated with harshness, orgiastic rituals but we may re-story “wildness” in our times as something “innocent”: that is, in direct relationship with the Mother. She is a hunter/archer, protector, midwife, nurturing the new and pure essence (the “wild”) – in earlier times these things were not contradictory. The hunter had an intimate relationship with the hunted, and deep reverence. Aphrodite (p.132 Austen) 300 B.C.E. – often diminished to a sex Goddess in patriarchal narrative, but in more ancient times, praised as She who holds all things in form, which may be comprehended as embodying cosmic power of allurement, which may be identified with what has been named as “gravity”. Re-storied as one who admires her own Beauty, and the Beauty of All. Aphrodite (plate 137 Neumann) an earlier image 600 B.C.E. Brigid/Brigantia (p. 38 Durdin-Robertson) 300 C.E. – Her spear may be understood as the spear of Goddess: that is, as spiritual warrior, or Boadicea-like. Brigid – a later image of Christian times … dressed nun-like. Eurynome (Austen p.8) 4000 B.C.E. Africa. This image is named as Bird-Headed Snake Goddess. Austen stories Her as an image of Eurynome, Goddess of All Things who danced upon the waves in the beginning and laid the Universal Egg. She appears very self-expressive: perhaps a great image of a self-expressive Universe. She integrates animal and human, earth and sky, before dualism existed. I choose her as a Virgin image because of this integrity, and her ecstatic expression. Diana (Neumann Plate 161) Rome. She carries the Flame – is classically Her own person. … not so much “independent” as it may be thought of culturally, as “self-knowing”. She came to be associated with the Greek Artemis: they are sister Goddesses. The Horned Goddess (p. 138 Austen) 6000 B.C.E. Africa – associated with dance and healthy life-force – rain and fertility. She is of the ancient Amazon tribes of what is now known as Algeria. Even today amongst these people, Austen says: “the Tauregs, the women are independent, while the men only appear in public veiled”. Vajravarahi (p.124 Austen) 1600’s C.E. Vajravarahi, show me how to be powerful and compassionate at the same time – let me know that these qualities are one force. Teach me to feel the beauty, power and eroticism of my own being. Show me that I am an exquisite part of the life force, dancing with all other forms of life. and OM! Veneration to you, noble Vajravarahi! OM! Veneration to you, noble and unconquered! Mother of the three worlds! Mistress of knowledge!… OM! Veneration to you, Vajravarahi! Great yogini! Mistress of love! She who moves through the air! TIBETAN TEXT Radha (in my ritual space) … seeing Who She really is. REFERENCES: Austen, Hallie Iglehart. The Heart of the Goddess. Berkeley:Wingbow, 1990. Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess. Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990. Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Bergen: Girl God Books, 2023. Neumann, Erich. The Great Mother. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. The music is “Boadicea” by Enya.
(Art & Poem) Candelmas/Imbolc by Sudie Rakusin & Annie Finch

IMBOLC DANCE From the east she has gathered like wishes. She has woven a night into dawn. We are quickening ivy. We grow where her warmth melts out over the ice. Now spiral south bends into flame to push the morning over doors. The light swings wide, green with the pulse of seasons, and we let her in We are quickening ivy. We grow The light swings wide, green with the pulse till the west is rocked by darkness pulled from where the fire rises. Shortened time’s reflecting water rakes her through the thickened cold. Hands cover north smooth with emptiness, stinging the mill of night’s hours. Wait with me. See, she comes circling over the listening snow to us. Shortened time’s reflecting water Wait with me. See, she comes circling From Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003) Art is included in Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2017). (Meet Mago Contributor) Sudie Rakusin (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
Beltaine/High Spring within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 8 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Beltaine/High Spring are: Southern Hemisphere – October 31st or 1st November Northern Hemisphere – April 30th (May Eve) or 1st May though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, thus actually a little later in early November for S.H., and early May for N.H., respectively. The twin fires lit in older times on hilltops in Ireland for Beltaine likely represented the two eyes of night and day.[i] With this vision, Goddess as Sun and Moon sees Her Land, and with the power of Her eyes (Sun and Moon) brings forth life and beauty. With the fire eyes, Goddess“reoccupied and saw her whole land…”[ii] The twin fires later came to be used to run cattle between as they headed out to Summer pasture, for the purpose of burning off the bugs and ticks of Winter; the fires may thus be understood to serve a cleansing effect and likely the origins of the tradition of the ceremonial leaping of flames by participants in Beltaine festivities. In PaGaian Cosmology this is poetically expressed as the Flame of Love that burns away the psyche’s “bugs and ticks,” and sees the Beauty present, and calls it forth. The Beltaine flames may be a celebration of Sun entering into the eye, into the whole bodymind: a powerful creative evocation upon which the Dance of Life depends, and as the cleansing power of love and pleasure. PaGaian focus for Beltaine is on the Holy Desire/Passion for life, and it may be accounted for on as many levels as possible … the complete holarchy/dimensions of the erotic power. On an elemental level, there is our desire for Air, Water, the warmth of Fire, and to be of use/service to Earth. There is an essential longing, sometimes nameless, sometimes constellated, experienced physically, that may be recognized as the Desire of the Universe Herself – desiring in us.[iii] We may remember that we are united in this desire with each other, with all who have gone before us, and with all who come after us – all who dance the Dance of Life. Beltaine is a time for dancing and weaving into our lives, our heart’s desires; traditionally the dance is done with participants holding ribbons attached to a pole or tree (a Maypole in the Northern Hemisphere, which may be renamed as a “Novapole” in the Southern Hemisphere), wrapping the pole with the ribbons. This is not simply the heterosexual metaphor as is thought in modern times (thanks largely to Freudian thinking) – it is deeper than that. As Caitlin and John Matthews point out: it is symbolic of a far greater exchange than that between men and women – in fact between the elements themselves. … the maypole, a comparatively recent manifestation in the history of mystery celebrations, can be seen as the linking of heaven and earth, binding those who dance around it … into a pattern of birth, life and death which lay at the heart of the maze of earth mysteries.[iv] Beltaine is a celebration of Desire on all levels – microcosm and on the macrocosm, the exoteric and the esoteric.[v] It brought you forth physically, and it brings forth all that you produce in your life, and it keeps the Cosmos spinning. It is felt in you as Desire, it urges you on. It is the deep awesome dynamic that pervades the Cosmos and brings forth all things – babies, meals, gardens, careers, books and solar systems. We have often been taught, certainly by religious traditions, to pay it as little attention as possible; whereas it should be the cause of much more meditation/attention, tracing it to its deepest place in us. What are our deepest desires beneath our surface desires. What if we enter more deeply into this feeling, this power? It may be a place where the Universe is a deep reciprocity – a receiving and giving that is One. Brian Swimme says, in a whole chapter on “Allurement”: You can examine your own self and your own life with this question: Do I desire to have this pleasure? Or rather, do I desire to become pleasure? The demand to ‘have,’ to possess, always reveals an element of immaturity. To keep, to hold, to control, to own; all of this is fundamentally a delusion, for our own truest desire is to be and to live. We have ripened and matured when we realize that our own deepest desire in erotic attractions is to become pleasure … to enter ecstatically into pleasure so that giving and receiving pleasure become one simple activity. Our most mature hope is to become pleasure’s source and pleasure’s home simultaneously. So it is with the allurements of life: we become beauty to ignite the beauty of others.[vi] Beltaine is a good time to contemplate this animal bodymind that you are: how it seeks real pleasure. What is your real pleasure? Be gracious with this bodymind and in awe of this form, this wonder. Beltaine is also a good time to contemplate light, and its affects on our bodyminds as it enters into us; how our animal bodyminds respond directly to the Sun’s light, which apparently may awaken physical desires. Light vibrates into us – different wavelengths as different colours – and shifts to pulse. It is felt most fully in Springtime (“spring fever”), as light courses down a direct neural line from retina to pineal gland. When the pineal gland receives the light pulse it releases “a cascade of hormones, drenching the body in hunger, thirst, or great desire.”[vii] We respond directly to Sun as an organism: it is primal. NOTES: [i] Michael Dames, Ireland, 195-199. [ii] Ibid., 196. [iii] I have been inspired and informed by Swimme’s articulations about desire, particularly in Canticle to the Cosmos, video 2 “The Primeval Fireball,” video 5 “Destruction and Loss,” and video 10 “The Timing of Creativity.” [iv] Matthews, The Western Way, 54. And for more, see “Creativity …
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.
Imbolc/Early Spring – a Season of Uncertainty by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Traditionally the Seasonal transition of Imbolc/Early Spring, celebrated in early February in the Northern Hemisphere, and in early August in the Southern Hemisphere, has been a time of nurturing the new life that is beginning to show itself, around us and within. It is a time of committing one’s self to the new life and inspiration – in the garden, in the soul, and in the Cosmos. We may include in our celebrations and contemplations of this Season the beginnings of the new young Cosmos as She was, that time in our cosmic story when She was only a billion years old and galaxies were forming; and also the new which has continually emerged throughout the eons, and is ever coming forth. The flame of being, as it has been imagined by many cultures, within and around, is to be protected and nurtured: the new being requires dedication and attention. In the early stages of its advent, there is nothing certain about its staying power and growth: it may flicker and be vulnerable. There may be uncertainties of various kinds. There is risk and resistance to coming into being. The Universe itself knew resistance to its expansion when it encountered gravitation in our very beginnings, in the primordial Flaring Forth[i]. The unfolding of the Universe was never without creative tension. The Universe knows it daily, in every moment: and we participate in this creative tension of our place of being. Urge to Be budding forth Imbolc/Early Spring can be a time of remembering personal vulnerabilities, feeling them and accepting them, but remaining resolute in birthing and tending of the new, listening for and responding to the Urge to Be[ii]of the Creative Universe within. Brian Swimme has said (quoting cultural anthropologist A.L. Kroeber) that the destiny of the human is not “bovine placidity” but the highest degree of tension that can be creatively born[iii]. many flames of being, strengthening each other These times are filled with creative tension, collectively and for most, personally as well; there is much resistance, yet there is promise of so much good energy arising. We may be witness to both. This Season of Imbolc/Early Spring may encourage attention, intention and dedication to strengthening well-being: in self, and in the relational communal context, and opening to our direct immersion in the Well of Creativity. We may be strengthened with the joining of hands, as well as the listening within to the sacred depths, in ceremonial circle at this time. NOTES: [i]As our origins (popularly named as “the Big Bang”) are named by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme in The Universe Story. [ii]As I name this determined Virgin quality in PaGaian Cosmology. [iii]The Canticle to the Cosmos, DVD #8, “The Nature of the Human”. References: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Swimme, Brian. Canticle to the Cosmos. DVD series, 1990.
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) …

(Essay 1) Magoist Cetaceanism and the Myth of the Pacifying Flute (Manpasikjeok) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

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

[Author’s Note: I have created 13 basics of Mago Almanac, which are included in Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Volume 6), Year 6 or 5920 MAGOMA ERA (Equivalent to 2023 CE). These 13 basics constitute the backbone of Magoist Cetaceanism as well.] It is a 13 month 28 day luni-menstrual-solar calendar of Old Magoist Korea. Insofar as one year marks about 365.25 days, a time taken for the earth to revolve around the sun, it is a solar calendar. The fact that both the moon and the female menstruation cycle mark 28 days, which makes 13 months or 364 days for one year. This makes approximately 1.25 a surplus. Thus, we have days outside the calendar grid. Each year has one extra day on the day before the New Year’s day. The New Year of Year 1 or 5915 Magoma Era was set on the new moon date before Winter Solstice in 2018 by the Gregorian Calendar. With one extra day, the year makes 365 days. Given that the actual period of the Earth’s revolution is approximately 365.25 days, we have the second extra day every fourth year. Setting aside the extra days, we have 364 days for one year. 364 days divided by 28 days is 13. That is how we have 13 months in a year. The Magoist Calendar championing the matricentric worldview is the very indication that our Mother Earth is stabilized in her own voyages. https://www.magobooks.com/update-on-mago-books/mago-almanac-13-month-28-day-calendar-book-a https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang/
(Bell Essay 7) The Magoist Whale Bell: Decoding the Cetacean Code of Korean Temple Bells by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This and ensuing sequels are excerpts of a new development from the original essay sequels on Korean Temple Bells and Magoism that first published January 11, 2013 in this current magazine. See (Bell Essay 1) Ancient Korean Bells and Magoism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.] Whale Mallet, Temple Bell in Sudeok-sa, Chungnam Korea Sources and Methods of Studying the Magoist Whale Bell It is not possible to present the topic in any comprehensive manner due to its complex and outlandish nature. As a whole, its elusive manifestations makes some of this essay’s premises provisional, leaving room for definite conclusions. I suggest that this essay be read as a primer to the large topic, Korean Magoist cetaceanism. I have built this essay on my previously published essay sequels on the Korean temple bell as well as my book, The Mago Way: Re-discovering the Great Goddess Mago from East Asia, on the Magoist Cosmogony.[1] It also draws from my forthcoming essay on Korean Magoist cetacean culture. Importantly, I am indebted to the work of Sungkyu Kim, advocate of Korean cetaceanism, for his valuable insights on the Korean temple bell and Korean cetaceanism in general. While his cross-cultural assessments of ancient Korean cetacean customs are often compelling, his cetacean hermeneutic on the pacifying flute story is in particular indispensable in securing the evidence of Sillan cetacean worship by the generations of Sillan rulers. That said, however, what distinguishes this essay from his work lies in the recognition that Korean cetaceanism is not monolithic totem worship. I hold that Korean cetaceanism was born and flowered within the context of Old Magoism. Here Old Magoism refers to the pre-patriarchal (read pre-Chinese) tradition of East Asia that venerates the Great Goddess, Mago.[2] In turn, the cetacean consciousness of ancient East Asian Magoists enabled a revelation of the Magoist Cosmogony. Thus, Korean cetaceanism is inextricably intertwined with the mytho-history of Magoism. It went underground, as the symbolic power of women inscribed in Magoism was removed from the public space in the course of history. In this light, Kim’s cetacean thought remains revisionist rather than reconstructionist, meaning not radical enough, unable to ask such critical questions as how the Sinocentric mytho-history of Korea or the Buddhist historiography has rendered Korean cetaceanism invisible and what that means to Koreans and the world. Most critically, Kim’s discussion of the Sillan whale bell and the pacifying flute underestimates their musical (read cosmogonic) implications. They are not of a mere musical instrument to call the whale to dance. True that the concept of music is much underestimated outside the context of the Magoist Cosmogony as a whole. The whale bell as well as the pacifying flute represents the regalia of Sillan Magoist rulers who undertook the Magoist mandate of bringing the terrestrial sonic resonance to harmonize the cosmic music of Yulryeo. The whale bell marks a new watershed wherein Sillan rulers successfully reinvented the legacy of Magoist shaman rulers of Old Magoism from the ancient inland mountain culture into the maritime culture of Silla. Stories on the pacifying flute and Manbulsan (Mountain of Ten Thousand Buddhas), the two major myths directly concerning the cetacean code of Korean temple bells, are drawn from the Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three States), the 13th century text that recounts myths, legends, and historical events of ancient Korean States including Silla (57 BCE-935), Goguryeo (37 BCE-668), Baekje (18 BCE-660), and Gaya (42-562) from an orthodox Buddhist perspective.[3] To be noted is that the Samguk Yusa (1281), together with another official historical text of Korea, the Samguk Sagi (1145), is a Sinocentric text that tailors ancient Korean history and territory to fit the historical framework of China. As a Sinocentric text, the Samguk Yusa takes a pro-Chinese perspective and presents ancient Korea as a humble little brother who owes Imperial China for his civilized culture. In it, Korean history and territory are curtailed to fit those of Imperial China. Put differently, the Samguk Yusa is a product of a Buddhist evangelist author, Ilyeon (1206-1289), whose interest was in establishing Buddhism of China and India at the cost of traditional Korean Magoism. Among modern Korean historians who are critical of Sinocentric Korean historiography is Sin Chaeho (1880-1936). As Sin’s advocacy of Korean ethnic historiography is largely aligned with the mytho-historical reconstruction of Magoism, I borrow his assessments of the Samguk Yusa and the Samguk Sagi here. Sin maintains that the loss of pre-Chinese Korean history primarily owes to the two survived Korean history books, the Samguk Yusa and the Samguk Sagi, that reduce and distort ancient Korean history. Precisely because of the Sinocentric (read patriarchal and imperialist) take, these two books have survived the persecution of pre-Chinese Korean Magoist historical books. Sin’s poignant criticism goes on to say that the Samguk Yusa employs the Sanskrit words for the names of people and places from the pre-Buddhist period of Wanggeom Joseon and that the Samguk Sagi ascribes Confucian phrases to the speech of Korean warriors who dismiss Confucius thought.[4] What Sin does not see is, however, that the authors of both books chose to be pro-Chinese or pro-Indian to subvert the female-centered tradition of Old Korea, Magoism. In short, they resort to Buddhism and Confucianism, the two major patriarchal religions of East Asia, respectively over against indigenous Magoism. The patriarchal time was waging a war against Magoists and life in general. I hold that both texts mark the milestones that escalated the process of patriarchalization in Korea, which took place much slowerly and later than in China. Damage is not done to Korean history only. A lie brings more lies. In the case of the Samguk Yusa, the portrayal of Sillan Buddhism is distorted. On the surface, the Samguk Yusa treats Esoteric Buddhism as a reservoir of miraculous legendary stories that fertilized orthodox Buddhism. On a deeper level, it dismantles a tie between Magoist cetacean worship and Esoteric Buddhism. The Samguk Yusa’s Buddhist perspective aligned with the Sinocentric historical framework is inherently inadequate in defining Sillan Esoteric …