September 3, 2017October 2, 2019 Mago Work

(Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Abbott

Susan Abbott catches her creative inspiration from the individual and collective genius of rebellious women. She works in a gynographic milieu that affirms their sacred incendiary spirit. Her watercolors are known for their evocative bold colors and themes. She has shown her work in Joshua Tree, California at local galleries, shops, farmers markets, and her own Dancing Wind Studio Gallery. Her poetry chapbook “Nasty Woman Rise: The Dream and the Curse” was recently published by Cholla Needles. Her art also appears in “The Mojave Muse Major Arcana Tarot Deck” (2016) and “Woman Awake” (online journal). She has a Facebook page “Susan AbbottWatercolors” where you can see and order more of her work.

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(Art poem) Those We Put to Sleep by Kushal Poddar

Those We Put To Sleep[1] When the rain drowns every other noise The female fetuses begin to Conspire. Green splashes from the green, and All morning the sons of men play with The rooms, tables, chairs. Indoor, because of rain. Outside the murmurs float and twirl from One glistening leaf to another. Father you put us to sleep. Father You put us to sleep. You said, A man Can do only his life’s worth of wrong. Wrong. Wrong, father. One wrong travels beyond, Blows in the breeze from veers of time. [1] Fetal sex determination and sex-selective abortion by medical professionals has grown into a 1,000 crore industry (US$244 million) according to Wikipedia article on violence against women in India Meet Mago Contributor, Kushal Poddar.
(Essay 2) The Kiss of Nong Toom: High Stakes in the Semiotic Arena by Matthew Chabin

(PART II) In her exemplary work Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters: Shakespeare, Johnson and Comic Androgyny, Grace Tiffany outlines two traditional representations of the androgyne/ hermaphrodite figure: the sacred vs. the satirical. Wikipedia commons The sacred androgyne is rooted in myths, particularly origin myths of primal unity, and is a positive, salutary, even salvific figure. As she explains: “Classical myths concerning the androgyne, like those found in numerous other cultures, used him/her to demonstrate a principle of relatedness: of potent human connectedness and progress, or what the Greeks called ‘eros.’ Eros, according to the androgynous principle, is far more than sexual libido. It is a metamorphic power that compels human creativity, procreation, and personal and social growth through intimate connectedness…. [quoting Laurens van der Post], ‘The spirit of Eros’ is ‘a process of metamorphosis,’ of which ‘all of us…are not only capable…but driven…by the collective unconscious’ that ‘unites all humankind.’” It is important to remember that this sacred androgyne is in no way deprived of positive masculine traits (Tiffany associates it with such virile figures as Hercules, Odysseus, Dionysus and Shiva), but is rather the fruition of both gender potentials in tandem, true man and true woman, (M/F). Tiffany traces its genealogy through a number of culture zones and literatures, finding it especially well represented in the work of William Shakespeare—his cross-dressing, shape-shifting champions of Eros vs. his tragic/villainous rejecters and saboteurs of same. On the other side of the coin we find what Tiffany dubs the satiric androgyne, which she links to “a misogynistic classical ethic that, as early as the seventh century B.C, confronted and warred with the older myth of the sacred androgyne.” This rival androgyne is typically vulgar, immodest, hypersexual (yet impotent/barren), lacking both the grace and generative power of the feminine and the virility and agency of the masculine. It is grounded in a dispassionate, separatist, intellectual critique (as opposed to the passionate involvement of erotic experience), and is characterized by “distrust in personal and social relationships, particularly in relationships with women.” Its rhetorical M.O. involves what Matthew Hodgart calls “destruction of the symbol,” which Tiffany explains: “When the image of the androgyne is separated by the satirist from its mythic roots, it becomes simply this “thing in itself”: not a multiform, polynomial, fluid symbol of multiple selves, but one single effeminate male or inappropriately aggressive, ‘manly’ female who, so far from figuring communal wholeness, appears as an unhealthy impediment to the productive life of the community.” This, then, is the double negative, neither male nor female, (-M/-F) which opposes and seeks to annihilate the positive, male and female (M/F). All of this is vividly realized in the 2003 biopic film Beautiful Boxer by Singapore-based director Ekachai Uekrongham. The film chronicles Nong Toom’s journey, from her childhood in rural Thailand, to her initiation into Muay Thai, through the stages of her controversial career as a top fighter, and finally her decision to undergo a sex-change operation and resolve the contradictions of mind and body once and for all. There are many scenes worthy of comment, but the key scene, for our purposes, comes about two thirds of the way through. Nong Toom, (sensitively played by actor/boxer Asanee Suwan), stands in the ring, comely and dignified in her customary lipstick and rouge. Her opponent is Ramba, a grotesque—bearded, garlanded, and garishly made up. This unsightly thing minces and sashays about the ring in a caricature of womanly mannerisms to the raucous cheers of the spectators. Mythically it appears as a projection of the ignorant crowd, born of their derision; psychologically it is also Nong Toom’s own shadow made hideous flesh. This clownish, false, satirical androgyne, this demonic mockery, neither man nor woman, arises to traduce and slay the hero, to counter her erotic power and eradicate her very tenuous identity. What started as a boxing match has become a harrowing ritual, an enacted myth, and yet there is nothing pre-scripted or guaranteed or safely contained here. The stakes are jacked to an all or nothing, existential showdown, and all the world is watching. At first the demon’s wicked mojo seems to work; Toom is stunned, clearly offended. She is blindsided by a sudden, vicious attack. In the course of the fight she regains her poise, turns the tide, and gives Ramba a vengeful thrashing. It’s no surprise, really, that the demon isn’t much of a fighter. Its very nature is negation; when it comes down to it, it isn’t much of anything. In the end, the shameless creature begs for mercy, pleading “We’re both girls!” “Yes,” says Toom, “but girls like you give girls like me a bad name.” Her next punch knocks Ramba out cold, and this time there’s no kiss. Psychologically,and mythically, this scene opens the way for Nong Toom’s further initiationinto the feminine sphere. She startstaking hormones, and while the treatment favors her transformation, it weakensher in the ring. She absorbs morepunishment and starts losing fights. Sadas it is, this decline also supports the mythic reading, for as she becomesmore and more a woman, she sacrifices the male aspect of the androgyne,forfeiting certain potentials and powers, like closing down wings of a greathouse. The process culminates in herfinal, surgical transformation, after which she is banned entirely fromentering the ring, as per the ancient, patriarchal rules of the sport.[4] On a sociological level, we may not thegalling irony that the official acceptance of her as woman takes the form ofbanishment. But in a mythic sense, wesee her delivered from the semiotic arena and its crucible of warringcategories. She has died to herself andbeen reborn. She is free. (To be continued) (Meet Mago Contributor) Matthew Chabin.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Carolyn Lee Boyd

Carolyn Lee Boyd is a writer, student drummer, retired human services administrator, and herb and native plant gardener, currently living in New England. Her essays, short stories, memoirs, reviews, and poetry have been published in, among others, Return to Mago E*Magazine, Sagewoman, Feminism and Religion, The Goddess Pages, Matrifocus, and The Beltane Papers, and various anthologies. She would love for you to visit her at her website, www.goddessinateapot.com where you can find some of her free e-books to download as well as contact her.
(Art) Earth Mother Goddess, Love, by Rena Hoffman

I have always created images from within that hold deep meaning for me, which often resemble iconic images from the outside world, one such example being ‘Earth Mother Goddess, Love’, resembling the well recognised, ‘Venus of Willendorf’.
(Photo Essay 3) Pilgrimage in a Time of Plague by Kaalii Cargill

I offer these images in gratitude for the journeys I have taken and in the hope that the ways stay open for those of us who are called to visit ancestral places where Goddess was honoured . . . c 35,000 BCE. Hohle Fels, Schelklingen, Swabian Jura, Germany The path to Hohle Fels Cave Inside Hohle Fels (Hollow Rock) Cave Nigel Shaw & Carolyn Hillyer performing a ritual concert – THE ANTLERED DRUM – at Hohle Fels Cave, July 2018. 40,000 – 35,000 BCE, Geißenklösterle Cave, Germany. “The Adorant”, Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart. Karanovo, Bulgaria. This large excavated tell (mound) shows successive deposits spanning the early Neolithic through to the middle Bronze Age. Levels I and II represent the early Neolithic (6400 – 6000 BCE). Tell Yunatsite, Bulgaria. Another partly excavated tell spanning c6000 years. I worked on this archaeological site for 2 weeks in July 2018. Tell Yunatsite sunset. c 4500 BCE. Karanovo culture, Pazardzik, Bulgaria. Natural History Museum, Vienna Womb Cave (Utroba), Kardzhali, in the area Tangardak Kaya, near the village of Nenkovo, Bulgaria. Entrance to the Womb Cave – reached by climbing a 3 kilometre track and then a ladder! The entrance from inside the cave – there She is! Meet Mago Contributor Kaalii Cargill
(Video) The Pilgrim’s Account by Dr Lila Moore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWozDC2QxTs The Pilgrim’s Account videos were made as part of the Serpentine Love Field – Networked Rites which coincided with the annual ceremony of the Holy Snakes of Mary in the island of Kefalonia in Greece. The ceremony is a pilgrimage event and the videos depict the perspective of the pilgrim which is expressed through passages from her diary. The Pilgrim’s Account unfolds her journey as mediated by the serpents that open the gateways between the realm of the elements of Earth and the noetic realm of the cosmic deep mind or nous. The noetic realm is perceived as the mind that gives rise to visionary or revelatory consciousness. The encounter with the serpents during the pilgrimage opens up a three-fold trail including three stations on the way that stand for the states of mind of Ordeal, Liminality and Communitas, which gradually lead to the pilgrim’s Transformation. It is of relevance to add that the anthropologist Victor Turner links the altered state of communitas with the ritualistic structure and process of pilgrimage. The pilgrimage as a ritualistic practice is designed to end and transform an outdated situation or way of life. According to Turner, pilgrimage processes across cultures and religions always encompass liminal phenomena and a journey towards a source of communitas, a centre of healing and renewal. The three Pilgrim’s Account videos can be viewed here. More Info The artwork, Serpentine Love Field, including its associate concepts and works, was presented and exhibited at academic conferences, art centers and platforms in Greece, UK, Germany, China and Cyberspace. It is explained in the following academic articles: Moore, Lila. (2015), ‘Fields of networked mind: Ritual consciousness and the factor of communitas in networked rites of compassion’, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 13: 3, pp. 331–339 Moore, Lila. (2017), ‘Techno-spiritual horizons: Compassionate networked art forms and noetic fields of cyborg body and consciousness’, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 15:3, pp. 325–39 For more info, subscribe to Dr Lila Moore Cybernetic Futures Inst. monthly newsletter, here: http://www.cyberneticinstitute.com/online-courses-1 © Dr Lila Moore, All Rights Reserved (Meet Mago Contributor) Lila Moore, Ph.D.
(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. …
(Prose & Poetry) Eurydice by Susan Hawthrone

When you subsume yourself in mythic figures, they often return under different guises. In the early 1990s I wrote this poem. EURYDICE Orpheus sings as he returns from the dead. Eurydice cried out, Don’t leave me here like this. Eurydice’s eyes are dry with fear and anger As darkness closes in on her once again. This poem is from my collection Bird and Other Writings on Epilepsy (1993). In the poem I am trying to find a way to convey the experience of loss of consciousness. Orpheus, because of his talent for music, is told that Eurydice can accompany him out of the Underworld, but the condition is that he does not look back until they are both in the upper world. Yes, Orpheus looks back, thinking he has been tricked. And so Eurydice disappears once again. The figure of Eurydice is very dear to me. In one version of the story, she died when Aristaeus pursued her (I assume with intentions of raping her, as so many did). She stepped on a viper and died. Ovid, however, says that Aristaeus was not the cause, but rather that Eurydice was dancing with naiads on her wedding day when she trod on the snake. There are so many stories hidden in here about assault, about the power of music, about men’s fallibility, about the importance of snakes (sacred to Persephone, Queen of the Underworld) and perhaps about the patriarchal desire to eradicate the practice of women’s rituals passed down through the generations. In 2017, when my novel Dark Matters was published, I returned to the story of Eurydice. In this book, Eurydice is the great aunt of Kate (Ekaterina) and one of seven sisters in the generation of Kate’s grandmother, Maia. And finally, Aunt Eurydice, she was always disappearing with her girlfriends. Eventually she went so far away, her sisters never saw her again. There are three photos of her. In one she is standing alone. It is such a small photograph I can’t see the features of her face. In the second photo, because I don’t know her, I cannot pick her out in the one taken with so many of the sisters in Paris in the early 1920s. What were you doing there? Living it up? Finding love or a companion?The last photo is of Eudy standing on the moors or some other wind-blasted place with another woman. Who is she?Ruby. You are the mystery woman in the photo with Eurydice. I found your name in a letter which was signed, Eudy and Ruby. Here, the reference is twofold. The disappearance of lesbians from history and, in this case, from family history. Like many lesbians, Eudy, felt the need to go into exile, because remaining in one’s home country would bring too much shame. Eudy’s life period is that of the late nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century and she goes into exile from Australia around 1919 to Britain. The other reference is to the disappearances of those who resisted the Pinochet regime in Chile, some of whom were lesbians. This is another narrative strand in the novel. Rewritings of our history in myth is a way of excavating the unknown and the erased. So much of women’s history has been disappeared and when you dig into the furrows, you can find those other disappearances that are due to disability, sexuality, race and ethnicity. Bird and Other Writings on Epilepsy is available here and from online retailers: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=48/ Dark Matters is available here and from online retailers: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=297/ (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne.
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 6) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) Free PDF available at Mago Bookstore. 28 DAY MENSTRUAL CYCLE The moon’s tidal lock is no astronomical phenomenon that concerns celestial bodies only. Women’s menstruation cycle is also locked to the calendric cycle of 28 days or 4 cycles of 7 days. The 28 day cycle refers not just to the lunar motion. It also indicates women’s menstrual cycle. Because the lunar calendar that moderns are familiar with is of the 29.5 day cycle based on the waxing and waning phases of the moon, even women themselves tend to see their menstruation cycle to be 29 or 30 days. However, this can be reconsidered. Statistics and researchers report that its average length of duration is 28 days.[18] When it comes to the 28 day calendric cycle, the cyclic synchronicity between the moon and women is of no coincidence. It is a given by nature, the fulcrum of the Magoist Calendar. At the core of the Magoist Calendar is the primordial consciousness that women’s fertility cycle is synced with the lunar cycle. They synchronize not only numerically but also symbolically. Enabling and nurturing life on Earth, they, the lunation and women’s biological rhythm, unfold the Mago Time in which all other members of the inter-cosmic reality mutually synchronize. Humans and human cultures enter the standard intergalactic time through the moon-women calendric cycle. The word, “menstruation,” is etymologically linked with “moon” and “month” in many languages of the world including English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Greek. In the English language, the terms “menstruation” and “menses” are derived from the Latin “mensis” (month), which is also related with the Greek mene (moon) and the roots of the words, month and moon.[19] Barbara Mor and Monica Sjoo note the linguistic and semantic connection of the moon-menstruation-month words and writes: And both words [moon and menstruation] are related, through Indo-European roots, to the Old English word, mona (moon), deriving from me, which meant both “mind” and “measurement.” All are cognates – moon, mind, measurement, month, menstruation – since it is the moon mind that establishes measurement, including calendars.[20] The case is similar in the Korean language. In Korean, dal 달 or wol 月 means both moon and month. Women’s menstruation is called dal-geori 달거리 (lunar occurrence) or wol-gyeong 月經 (lunar weaving). The calendar is called dal-ryeok 달력 (the moon calendar). Although its etymology is unknown, it is highly plausible that ddal 딸 (daughter) is derived from dal, the moon. Also Dal 달as affix means land, place, and a celestial body. The dal-related words show a broad range of meanings. Such verb as dal-da 달다 (to weigh or to be sweet), dal-i-da 달이다 (to boil down), dal-a-o-reu-da 달아오르다 (to get hot, to reach an apex, to flush) and dal-ri-da 달리다 (to run) share the root, dal. There is more evidence about the 28 day cycle of the moon-month-menstruation in Korean traditional culture. We hear even today that Koreans count the period of pregnancy as 10 months not 9 months. Precisely, 10 months (40 weeks, which is 280 days) reflects the practice of the Magoist Calendar in which a month has 28 days. Barbara Mor and Monica Sjoo also note that “pregnancy has the duration of exactly 10 lunar months”, and that midwives in many indigenous cultures of the world used the lunar calendar stick to calculate the period of pregnancy .[21] When all is said and done, the moon, month, and menstruation, linguistically, numerologically, etymologically, and cross-culturally refer to the 28 day cycle of the Magoist Calendar. The 28 day periodic synchronization of the moon and the menstruation is the key to the pre-patriarchal gynocentric calendar. Robert Graves in The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth maintains that the Coligny Calendar was of 13 months and 28 days based on the luni-menstrual cycle and writes: Moreover, twenty-eight is a true lunar month not only in the astronomical sense of the moon’s revolutions in relation to the sun, but in the mystic sense that the Moon, being a woman, has a woman’s normal menstrual period (‘menstruation’ is connected with the word ‘moon’) of twenty-eight days.[22] Graves rightly notes that the synchronization of the lunation and women’s menstrual cycle undergirds the structure of the Coligny Calendar and assesses that “[it was] possibly brought into Britain by the Romans of the Claudian conquest”.[23] From this, we may infer that the 13 month calendar was spread to Britain by the Romans around the first century CE. The connection between the lunar calendar of 13 months and menstruation is also made by John Kellermeire. In particular, Kellermeire infers that “the lunar calendars would not have been merely methods of keeping time but also reflective of the resonance between the phases of the moon and the sacred menstrual cycles of women”.[24] To be accurate, it is not the phases of the moon per se but the motions of the moon that the ancients considered in sync with the menstruation. Kellermeire’s insight goes further to connect the 13 cycles of the moon and menstruation. According to the researchers, he says, in the relief the “Venus of Laussel” found in France, dated 25,000 to 20,000 BCE, the bison horn with 13 notches that she holds, indicates the number of lunation and/or the number of menstrual cycles in one year. Kellermeire, after such feminist scholars as Mor and Sjoo and Grahn, goes on to attribute women to the inventor of mathematics. Judy Grahn ascribes menstruation to the parameter of human civilizations. Grahn’s insight that time measured through the cycles of menstruation is necessarily cyclic rather than linear and quantitative is precisely in accordance with the spiraling nature of time perceived in the Magoist Calendar. Grahn asserts that Paleolithic women themselves, the menstruant, were likely the originator of the 13 month lunation system. Furthermore, she maintains that the rite of menstruation gave rise to the measurement of time and the lunar notation and writes: [O]ur ancestors may have learned to think numerologically through …
Ancestral Journeys: A Pilgrimage to the Oracle Chamber by Jude Lally

Looking over to the Isle of Skye There is a magic on the isles off the West of Scotland that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. A feeling of being at the edge of the world and at times it deepens into feeling you are at the edge of this world and peering into the otherworld. It is a place where worlds merge and ancestral voices whisper on the wind. Listening to the Bones, Honoring them in Ritual Looking Over to the Isle of Rum I have spent a long time pouring over maps, exploring the contours and plotting out the path to the Oracle’s Chamber. It’s a curious site which archeologists named which indicates how even they were affected by the air of mystery of this place. It was probably on Julian Cope’s site the Modern Antiquarian that I first read about this site. Then reading further archeological reports words such as ‘ritual enclosure’, ‘prehistoric’ began to feed the images and the daydreams. Sron-na h-Iolaire – the Eagle’s Promontory Each year I lead the Ancestral Mothers of Scotland retreat to this little isle, the Isle of Egg (whose Gaelic name translates as the Isle of the Big Women). There is always a day midweek, as by this time the woman has gotten to know the island a little that they are invited to undertake a pilgrimage. We begin the day in silence and then each woman makes her ritual journey off to a particular place to spend the day. They are encouraged to perform a small ritual as they enter into a deeper level of conversation with the land. This is often a rare opportunity for women plus there is the added layer of feeling relatively safe as opposed to being out in nature in other parts of the world (human predators being the main risk). So I decided to make my own pilgrimage on this day. It was impressive that the journey to the Chamber took 18 miles on an island that is around 5 miles long and 3 miles across. It was a very windy day and so being high on the cliffs was a little daunting, at times and I had to crouch down to traverse small sheep paths that had been made through scree slopes of landslides of rocks, boulders, and soil that had come tumbling down from the cliffs above. Often vertigo got the better of me and I slid down 20 meters or so on my backside just to stay safe and not be blown away! The view over to the Isle of Skye was stunning and I could see no signs whatever of human activity as if I had indeed slipped between worlds, or perhaps gone back in time. The site area is in an area called the ‘Struidh’ which translates as rocky. I found myself scrambling over massive boulders, which often resulted in spaces between them suddenly dropping down 6 feet or so. I retreated for a while to find an archeologist photo which highlighted the entrance so I could work out its exact location. I rummaged and rummaged in my rucksack only to see it sitting by my bedside back at the hostel. It seemed an absolutely impossible task to find a small oval opening which was probably obscured by bracken. The Entrance A sign I thought, I need a sign – such as a small bird or a mystical gravitational pull. You need a signal seemed to be the reply. I need a sign, not a signal I thought – wondering if I was having this conversation with myself. I pulled out my phone to check the time and amazingly, on the remotest part of the island I had a phone signal! There was my sign! So I quickly looked up the archeological record and saved the photo highlighting the entrance. This way I could position the eagle rock with the cliffs and be able to work out where the entrance to the chamber (on relatively flat land) was located. The interior of the Chamber ‘This unusual site is situated in the midst of a boulder field on the broken ground between the cliffs of Sron na h-Iolaire and the coast below. It consists of a substantial grass-and bracken-grown platform that measures about 20m from E to W by at least 10m transversely, on top of which there are the remains of a circular enclosure, probably a roundhouse, measuring about 6m in internal diameter within drystone rubble walls 2m thick. The wall thickens to 4m at the entrance to the enclosure where a narrow passage provides access to the interior. On the far side is the entrance to a large boulder cave that runs W beneath the enclosure wall. The main chamber of the cave measures about 7m from NE to SW by up to 3.5m transversely and 2.5m high; but there are other smaller chambers opening off to either side and at the end. The cave entrance and the sides of the chamber have been modified by the insertion of rough walling, while a thick deposit of midden material covers the floor. This includes animal bones, shells and broken hammerstones, some of which have a concretion of crushed shell to their points. Other hammerstones occur in the many small caves and voids found between and beneath the boulders nearby.’ – Archeological Report/Canmore Record. What hands collected the shellfish from the beach below? Hammerstone I sat quietly in the space. I looked at the shells and the hammerstone used to smash them. I have heard of folks who used this chamber to shelter from storms, then slowly I peeled back the layers of time and the people who came to visit this site. Looking Out to the Entrance Although I had researched this site and looked forward to visiting for over two years somehow it was more about the journey to this place – the physical and psychological barriers rather than reaching the place itself. The previous year I …
(Art poem) Speaking to the Virgin by Eileen Haley

Meet Mago Contributor Eileen Haley. Inspired by Yvonne M Lucia’s recent post, I would like to share one of my Guadalupe poems. The original Virgin of Guadalupe is Spanish and has strong colonial and conquest associations: among other things, it was at the Monastery of Guadalupe in Extremadura that Isabella and Ferdinand signed documents authorising the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, and it was to this monastery that in 1496 Columbus brought two indigenous men to be baptised, the first New World converts to Christianity. This poem celebrates the Virgin’s escape from those associations.
(Essay) Aprons: Povesma by Danica Borkovich Anderson, Ph.D.

According to the South Slavic elderly women I talked to in Bosnia in the aftermath of the third war in one century, “The apron is not for housework or housekeeping.” The exquisite embroidery of their aprons done by Slavic hands decorates cultural and ethnic costumes of specific Eastern European, Slavic, and Baltic regions. The painstaking embroidery and tailoring attest to the reverence they have for aprons. The apron covering a woman’s lap and reproductive areas is not to be dismissed or ignored. In the archeological field and anthropological research, a thorough review of artifacts of goddess figures will have artifacts replete with aprons. In Marija Gimbutas’ rich archeological research of “Old Europe,” the prehistoric era of South Slavs and all Slavic people can speculate the meaning of the apron as honoring destiny and the fates. Drenched in red ochre and with her apron, the Old Europe/South Slavic Duck Bird Goddess/archeological artifact indicates the presence of the unbroken DNA line passed down from mother to daughter. The archeological goddess figurines with aprons, the Neolithic artists intended to convey the apron as the necklace adorning the uterus. Both necklaces and aprons are tied or fastened onto the female body.An archeological treasure in Dordogne, France, labeled Venus Goddess dated between 20,000 to 18,000 BCE, is described as having huge breasts. Not only are the breasts, but the buttocks and stomach regions are exaggerated to communicate through the millennia. Interestingly, this Venus ancient artifact wears a grooved apron over the back of the legs. In the aftermath of the bloody Balkan War in the 1990s, I asked many stari Babas (elder women) what was in their apron pockets. South Slavic storied aprons are the first-person stories of daughters, mothers, and grandmothers mirroring the biological miracle of female mitochondrial DNA. The mitochondrial DNA, the unbroken line of genes passed down from mother to daughter, allows geneticists to trace back to the first mother. The Slavs embroidered pockets to hold dolls, keys, and jewelry to be passed on to their daughters is an unbroken ritual despite wars and holocaustic events.
(Essay 4) Circe the Island Witch by Hearth Moon Rising

The last essay in this series mentioned Robert Graves’s assertion that Circe is a falcon goddess. If so, her type of falcon would be Eleonora’s Falcon, a medium-sized raptor that nests in the Mediterranean, particularly in rocky islands in the Aegean Sea. Eleonora’s Falcon is approximately the size of the Peregrine Falcon, with dark gray upper coloring and either a gray or reddish underside. Like all falcons, Eleonora’s has the fast-moving, agile flight pattern adapted for preying on other birds. Unlike other falcons, Eleonora’s raises chicks in the late summer, mining the fall migration of songbirds as a food source. In late autumn, this falcon migrates along the African coast to Tanzania and Madagascar. What does Eleonora’s Falcon have in common with our picture of Circe, aside from having a high profile on isolated Aegean islands? Keeping in mind that the name of Circe’s island is Aeaea, listen to the cries of this falcon: From Xeno-Canto These chilling cries remind us that this bird is a predator – a hunter like the archetypal death goddess. Also like Circe, this falcon takes hostages, crippling birds taken on the wing and storing them in crevices for later consumption. Despite the fierceness and isolated habitat of Eleonora’s Falcon, humans have been the major predators of this bird, both for eggs and fat tasty chicks. This was once an esteemed falconry bird, especially popular with women. In light of this history, the following advice of Hermes in dealing with Circe is interesting. Hermes tells Odysseus, Do not press any advantage over her, but at the same time do not allow her to dominate you. This is classic strategy for managing a bird in falconry. Here is a five minute video showing Eleonora’s Falcon in her natural environment. https://youtu.be/LOMtlXzKzCY You can listen to more Eleonora’s Falcon calls here. The next essay will look at a historical woman who had much in common with Circe as a falcon goddess.

(Special Post 6) 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 Mother Teresa 3) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

Part III: The Debate, What Went Right/Wrong with Mother Teresa? [Editorial Note: The following is […]
(Special Post Isis 1) 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) Laurie Baymarrwangga, Senior Australian of the Year 2012

Posted with permission in Return to Mago on ‘Australia Day’, 26 January 2014 (Australian time), […]
(Special Post 4) Multi-Linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

[This is a summary of discussion that took place around 2014 in The Mago Circle, […]
(Special Post 1) 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, […]

Happy New Year, Year 2/5916 Magoma Era! by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“The Bell of King Seongdeok, known as the Emille Bell, a massive bronze bell at 19 tons is the largest in Korea.” Wikimedia Commons. Cast in 771, the bell reenacts the music of whales to remind people of the Female Beginning, the self-creative power innate all beings. Today is Day 2 of the New Year in the reconstructed Magoist Calendar characterized by 13 months per year and 28 days per month. We are heading toward the Solstice that falls on Dec. 21/22 (Day 5 of the first month in the Magoist Calendar), which happens to be the day of the first full moon of Year 2. Below is the details about the Magoist Calendar. https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/03/27/magoist-calendar-13-month-28-day-year-1-5915-me-2018-gregorian-year/ The Gregorian year 2018 marks a watershed in that we began to implement the Magoist Calendar. The Magoma Era is based on the onset of the nine-state confederacy of Danguk (State of Dan, the Birth Tree) traditinally dated 3898 BCE-2333 BCE. We just passed Year 1 or 5915 Magoma Era (the Gregorian 2018). For Year 1, we had the New Year Day on December 18 of 2017, the first new moon day before the December Solstice. That makes December 18 of 2017 our lunation 1, the first lunar year that the reconstructed Magoist Calendar determines its first day of the Year 1! Although relatively short in history, the Mago Work began to celebrate the Nine Day Mago Celebration on the day of December Solstice annually since 2015. With the reconstructed Magoist Calendar, we placed it in its due timeframe, the Ninth Month and the Ninth Day, which fell on August 8, 2018 (US PST) and celebrated it for the first time according to the Magoist Calendar. Apparently, this had to be a mid-Summer event. This left us with another seasonal event, the New Year/Solstice Celebration. For Year 2, we hold the 3 Day New Year/Solstice Celebration on December 20, 21, and 22 (December 22 to be the Solstice Dat in PST) and the Virtual Midnight Vigil as a precussor to the New Year Day. http://www.magoacademy.org/2018/07/17/2018-5915-magoma-era-year-1-nine-day-mago-celebration/ https://www.magoacademy.org/home-2/new-year-solstice-celebrations/ We just greeted the Year 2 by holding the event called Virtual Midnight Vigil during which we sounded the Korean temple bell, in particular the Emile Bell or the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok the Great, to the world. A few from around the globe (Germany, Korea, Italy and the US) participated in it or hosted their own local vigils. The Korean temple bell is the key symbol for the Magoist Calendar as well as the Magoist Cosmogony. It is not a coincidence that it is struck on the midnight of the New Year’s Eve. It is Korean tradition that even modern Koreans gather at the bell tower in Seoul to hear the sound of the bell at midnight. And these bells are gigantic weighing 19 tons in the case of the Emile Bell. That this convention has an ancient Magoist root remains esoteric. For not only they strike the bell 28 times in the evening indicating the 28 lunar stations that the Moon stops by in the sky throughout the year (please read below what the 28 day lunar journey means and how it is represented by women). But also the Korean temple bell is no mere acoustic device to play the beautiful sound only. It is designed to reenact the Magoist Cosmogony. https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/12/14/virtual-midnight-vigil-dec-17-2018-to-new-year-year-2-5916-magoma-era/ That said, that is not what’s all about the Korean Magoist convention of welcoming the New Year by sounding the temple bell, however. That the bell sound is a mimicry of the music of whales has been in the hand of wisdom seekers! Ancient Korean bells testify that whales are with us in the journey of the Moon and her terrestrial dependents headed by women. You may like to hear the sound of the Magoist Korean whale bell included in the Participation Manual for Virtual Midnight Vigil below. Happy New Year to all terrestrial beings in WE/HERE/NOW! https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/12/16/participation-manual-for-virtual-midnight-vigil-year-2/
(Slideshow) Beltaine Goddess by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D.

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

The ‘passing of last Summer’s growth’ as is experienced and contemplated in the Season of Deep Autumn/Samhain, may be a metaphor for the passing of all/any that has come to fullness of being, or that has had a fullness, a blossoming of some kind, and borne fruit; and in the passing it has been received, and thus transforms. The ‘passing of last Summer’s growth’ may be in hearts and minds, an event or events, a period of time, or an era, that was a deep communion, now passed and dissolved into receptive hearts and minds, where it/they reside for reconstitution, within each unique being. Samhain is traditionally understood as ‘Summer’s end’: indeed that is what the word ‘Samhain’ means. In terms of the seasonal transitions in indigenous Old European traditions, Summer is understood as over when the Seasonal Moment of Lammas/Lughnasad comes around; it is the first marked transition after the fullness of Summer Solstice. The passing and losses may have been grieved, the bounty received, thanksgiving felt and expressed, perhaps ceremonially at Autumn Equinox/Mabon; yet now in this Season of Samhain/Deep Autumn it composts, clearly falls, as darkness and cooler/cold weather sets in, change is clearer. In the places where this Earth-based tradition arose, Winter could be sensed setting in at this time, and changes to everyday activity had to be made. In our times and in our personal lives, we may sense this kind of ending, when change becomes necessary, no longer arbitrary: and the Seasonal Moment of Samhain may be an excellent moment for expressing these deep truths, telling the deep story, and making meaning of the ending, as we witness such passing. What new shapes will emerge from the infinite well of creativity? And we may wonder what will return from the dissolution? What re-solution will be found? We may wonder what new shapes will emerge. In the compost of what has been, what new syntheses, new synergies, may come forth? Now is the time for dreaming, for drawing on the richness within, trusting the sentience, within which we are immersed, and which we are: and then awaiting the arrival, being patient with the fermentation and gestation. Seize the moment, this Moment – and converse with the depths within your own bodymind, wherein She is. Make space for the sacred conversation, the Conversing with your root and source of being, and take comfort in this presence. We may ponder what yet unkown beauty and wellness may emerge from this infinite well of creativity. The Samhain Moment in the Northern Hemisphere is 17:14 UT 7thNovember this year. Wishing you a sense of the deep communion present in the sacred space you make for this holy transition.
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) …
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 …
(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.
(Poetry & Photo Essay) Pongal by Susan Hawthorne

I am a secularist rather than a ritualist, but I can’t help but be drawn into the celebrations that people make when they honour the passing of the seasons. Even as a child I felt the disconnect between Christmas and the hot dusty days of summer. When Christians invaded and colonised Australia they brought their holidays but did not consider changing the dates to match the seasons. I was in India recently, invited as a speaker at the Hindu Lit For Life Festival in Chennai where I had lived ten years ago. The last day of the festival was the first day of Pongal. A friend, feminist economist Devaki Jain, who had grown up in Chennai eighty years earlier invited me to join her in a car ride to see Pongal celebrations in the streets. This is a Tamil festival dating back at least a thousand years, a sun festival, welcoming the next six months of the sun’s journey, also a harvest festival. During this time many women produce beautiful drawings, known as kolam. In my book Cow I wrote a poem about kolam which I think says more than I can explain here. what she says about kolam where they are drawn and when is all important early morning is auspicious it sets the shape of the day the hard ground is cleaned points of white grain sprinkled she works quickly she knows her design for the day runs the powdered grain from point to point it is a mandala a yantra a sign so the forces of the universe align themselves with her intentions Back to Pongal. The festival goes for four days. On the first day, which is called Bhogi, people are on the streets with the fruits of harvest, piles of tumeric and stacks of sugar cane tied in bunches. My friend, Devaki, bought flowers to take back to her room in the hotel. The second day, called Thai Pongal, I was invited to a harvest lunch at the house of my friend Mangai who is a playwright, theatre director and human rights activist. The word ‘pongal’ means ‘boiling over’ or’ overflow’ and I saw this in the cooking of the sweetened rice dish into which each of the twelve people present poured some water and milk as it almost overflowed the pot. This sweet rice dish was added to the collection of other dishes on the table. I cannot tell you what they were, but the meal was delicious. After lunch everyone relaxed, someone sang, we talked and caught up on news. The third day, is called Maatu Pongal, and cattle are at the centre of celebrations on that day. I don’t know if this line up of cattle had anything to do with the day’s celebration but there they were tied up alongside a very busy main road. These were not cows and I did not see any cows with decorated horns and flowers on their heads. on that day as I have on other occasions. On the fourth day, Kaanum Pongal, things begin to wind down. One of my co-speakers at the festival said she would be visiting family members on that day. The kolams are drawn again, sugar cane is consumed and people go back to their daily lives. What I liked about being in Tamil Nadu during the Pongal festival is that it felt absolutely right. The time of the year, the connection with harvest, so I did not feel the discomfort I so often feel in the midst of the out-of-season commercialised holidays as they are celebrated in Australia. Susan Hawthorne’s book Cow is available worldwide from distributors in USA, Canada, UK, from all the usual online retailers or from Spinifex Press. http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=215/ © Susan Hawthorne, 2019 (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne.
Imbolc: Through Goddess Eyes by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Photo by Carolyn Lee Boyd In times past, Creation’s Winter cupped me in her icy hand of sanctuary Gathered in, I sucked dormant life, and slumbered Till Earth’s rebirthing groans awakened my new body Now, older and full of life’s weeping and wondering awe At all that has happened in my decades on Earth I must shake myself into consciousness My seed’s opaque, blinding hull disintegrates and Bodyless, at last I can see through Goddess eyes I ache as my blood paints each flower petal I spin the whirlwind that cannot stop creating abundance I push the seasons through the year that mortals believe revolve of their own accord. Through Goddess eyes I can see me, I inhabit Winter’s hand as my own. I make the cold to slow creation of outside of me To gather the seed into fertile stillness within. That burgeons in my own time. https://www.magoism.net/2016/08/meet-mago-contributor-carolyn-lee-boyd/
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.
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.

(2018 Mago Pilgrimage) Peak of Nine Wells in Yeongam (Spiritual Rock), South Jeolla by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This essay comprises a summary report and its unfolding awakenings to be unraveled in sequences. I dedicate this essay to my 2018 Mago Pilgrimage companions, Narayani Ankh, Kate Besleme, Hyunsuk Jee, and Julie Jang. Learn more about Mago Pilgrimage.] Hike Report The town, Yeong-am (Spirit Rock), emanates an aura from its Magoist natural, historical, and cultural legacies. Among them, what grabbed my attention include Wolchul-san (月出山 Moon Rising Mountain), Dogap-sa (Dogap Temple), and Gurim Village, known for the birth place of Doseon Guksa (State Master Doseon), a prominent Buddhist monk, the 9th century of Silla (827-898). I was most attracted to the Peak of Nine Wells (九井峰 Gujeong-bong) as well as the Loom Cave shaped in the form of a vulva, part of the Moon Rising Mountain ranges. Our goal was to hike the Peak of Nine Wells (hereafter Gujeong-bong). We took the seemingly shortest trail, through Cheonwang-bong (Peak of Heavenly Ruler), the highest peak of Moon Rising Mountain, 809 km above sea level. It took about 8 hours for the entire hike took about 8 hours and it was one of the two most strenuous and significant ones that I have taken. About 30 years ago, I climbed Mt. Halla in Jeju Island and had received the vision of my life. No longer a youth, I had a much clearer vision about my life and the act of high altitude hiking this time. With my two companions, Narayani Ankh and Kate Besleme, who showed no sign of hesitation or tiredness in the beginning and throughout the course, I embarked my day’s journey. With occasional breaks, we were able gain distance and progress. Beautiful streams adorned the valley. Rocks were emitting the oldest song of the earth. Our talks continued and deepened, when we had breath to spare. It was such a blessing that I had these two co-hikers from elsewhere! My mind zoomed in and worked in detail. All thinking and feeling became registered. Impromptu, I began to count my steps up on stiff wooden stairways. My counting one, two, three… and thirteen carried me to the top of the stairs. The 13 counting chant worked; There was no medium between me and WE/HERE/NOW. We were gifted a 360-degree bird’s eye view on Cheongwang-bong. Several ridges with the depth of Magoist history came within a vision. We took a small lunch break. On a high mountain top wherein all remains visibly related, everyone becomes kin. On Cheongwang-gong, we were instructed by the rangers we met along the journey about the ridge path to Gujeong-bong. Gujeong-bong would be about another one and half hour hike away from us. We passed by a few masses of gigantic boulder formations for which Wolchul-san is known for. Among them was the standing stone called the Phallic Rock, a name that I suspected to be original. For standing stones are called the Rock of Mago Halmi in other regions of Korea. In any case, the very existence of the Phallic Rock (남근바위 Namgeun Bawi) heralded the appearance of the Loom Cave, a misnomer for the Yoni Cave (여근바위 Yeogeun Bawi). Heart beatings escalated as we approached our destination. We finally reached the Loom Cave, which closely resembled the vulva. The cave was made of a huge boulder, three times taller than an average person in size. A small pond sat inside the entrance made the cave a real yoni of nature. I was pulled into the state of trance, as we made a final climb up the stairs around the left side of the Loom Cave. I was able to see that the Peak of Nine Wells is located on the top plain of the Loom Cave. It is part of the yoni cave! I saw a number of wells pocketed in various sizes of ponds. They numbered more than nine, about 13, variable in number in that a couple of them were made in between adjacent boulders. The biggest well was larger than one meter (3.3 feet) in diameter. Moderns do their typical things in a time like this, indeed odd out of other options or necessity to share with others: I took photos of the wells and my companions, which were absolutely beautiful as they were. However, mental imprints were not able to be contained then and in nature. WE/HERE/NOW embraced all on the spot, perhaps like a black hole. Casual conversations wouldn’t continue. The silence and the oneness fast permeated our time/space. Our minds worked on layers. The deepest mind was stored in the reservoir of the unspoken. Descending is good as a time/space of tuning/balancing oneself to the power of WE/HERE/NOW. There wasn’t much time left for us to return, while the sun was still out. We hurriedly descended a different tail. I was no longer the same person I was prior to the experience of hiking Gujeong-bong. No need to dig up and count the number of branches in one’s root. To live means to grow and evolve, as we are meant to be. To be continued. (Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.
(Essay 2) Magoist Cetaceanism and the Myth of the Pacifying Flute (Manpasikjeok) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Reversing the Reversed of the Buddhist Textual Erasure (Part 1) Dragon Loop and Sound Tube in the Temple Bell of Silla (57 BCE-935 CE) Restored Sillan Temple Bell (8-9th C), excavated in Uncheong-dong, Cheongju Among the many Sillan Magoist Cetacean expressions which stands out is the temple bell, traditionally known as the Whale Bell (鯨鍾 Gyeongjong). The Whale Bell, a signature device of Sillan Magoist Cetaceanism, has two distinctive features, the dragon loop and the sound tube. The dragon loop functions to hang the bell, which occurs in Chinese and Japanese bells as well. This is not to say that the dragon in Chinese and Japanese counterparts are the same as that of the Korean temple bell, a point which was discussed in an earlier part of my essay on the Korean temple bell. However, the sound tube is a feature exclusively present in Korean temple bells, which is, among others, a hallmark of the Korean temple bell, distinguished from its Chinese and Japanese counterparts. Cast adjacent to each other in the bell head, the two are depicted as if the dragon is carrying the sound tube on its back (see the image). By pinpointing the sound tube, a group of Korean scholars (Suyeong Hwang and Donghae Gwak) posit that the sound tube is a replication of the pacifying flute that defeats all (萬波息笛 Manpasikjeok), the seventh century Sillan treasure. Put differently, the Korean temple bell is an innovative remake of the pacifying flute, which is uniquely Sillan. To support their contention, they draw attention to the fact that the sound tube of some Korean temple bells comes in the form of bamboo nodes. Indeed, while most temple bells show the design of nodes etched in the upright pipe, some from the Goryeo period (910-1392) specify the nodes as those of a bamboo tree.[1] Ironically, the bell with the design of bamboo nodes is a whale-effacing variation of earlier Sillan ones with decorative nodes. The Sillan temple bells replicate the bamboo-looking cetacean flute not a bamboo-made flute. This indicates that the Buddhist erasure of Magoist Cetaceanism was gaining hegemony in the Goryeo period. In any case, what does the bamboo-like node design have to do with the pacifying flute? According to the myth of the pacifying flute, the pacifying flute is made from a mysterious bamboo tree grown in a mysteriously floating mountain in the sea. And the dragon loop is no mere functional or decorative design. In the story, the dragon presents the pacifying flute to King Sinmun the Great, the protagonist, with the message that he would be ruling the whole world with the sound. Even if agreeing that the pacifying flute is replicated as the sound tube, there is an enigma yet to be unraveled. How is the sound tube or the pacifying flute related with whales? What is the role of the dragon with regards to whales? Answering these questions requires reinstating the lost name for whales in the myth of the pacifying flute. Temple Bell in the Early Goryeo Period with the sound tube resembling bamboo nodes, Samseon-am in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Temple Bell in the Late Goryeo Period with the sound tube resembling bamboo nodes Truth is that the myth of the pacifying flute written in the Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three States), the 13th century Korean Buddhist text that depicts the mytho-history of Korea ultimately Buddhist, comes to us as an altered story. There involved a Buddhist obfuscation of Magoist Cetaceanism. As background, the Buddhist church could not but embrace folk and Shamanic practices in order to reach out to the populace. It must be said that the Buddhist church did not kill or antagonize Magoist Cetacean folk practices. Although seemingly peaceful, however, Buddhist authority aimed at the goal of a patriarchal religion: To subdue and coopt pre-patriarchal spiritual and folk practices, which is gynocentric and cetacean. The evidence of Magoist Cetaceanism had to be dismantled but not completely destroyed. To subdue the public recognition of Magoist Cetaceanism, Ilyeon, its Buddhist monk author, replaces the whale, a narwhal in particular, with “a moving mountain in the sea” and the tusk of a narwhal with “a bamboo tree growing atop the mountain.” By undoing the linguistic harness, we are able to assess the seventh century Sillan Magoist Cetaceanism. It is possible to reconstruct the cogent Magoist Cetacean story of the pacifying flute. At one point of time before the 13th century when the Samguk Yusa was written, there likely existed an original version of the story, which articulates the narwhal (외뿔고래 Oeppul Gorae or 일각고래 Ilgak Gorae) and its single tusk (Oeppul). If we reverse “a moving mountain” to “a pod of whales” and “the bamboo tree” with “the tusk of a narwhal,” the myth of the pacifying flute would make a perfect sense as follows: (A hypothetically original account 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 pod of whales (a little mountain) in the Sea of Whales (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 whale (the mountain) floating like a turtle’s head in the sea. There was a bamboo-tree-like tusk (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 …
(Budoji Essay 1) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“The Great Goddess Myth is the first and last revelation to humankind. Where the Primordial Mother is, there is Home!” Part 1 Introduction When I first read the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), the principal text of Magoism, my life journey took an unexpected turn. The power of the Magoist cosmogony began to work on me, and suddenly I was returning Home with/to/in Mago, the Great Goddess! Before, “Home” had seemed an unreal destination, a mirage that lured voyagers to its abyss of nowhere. I had been stripped of “Home.” The Magoist cosmogony gifted me with a vision of what I had been seeking as a feminist voyager. I meant to return Home. In Mago, I felt no longer free-floating, but this was not without its price. My radical feminist searches brought me no material benefits; rather, to become Myself was the reward. Layer after layer of patriarchal deception had to be peeled off. And for women who, like me, came from the non-Western, formerly colonized world, reversing the reversals required a deeper analysis of racism, ethnocentrism, and colonialism. I underwent the process of becoming Me, a process which also led me to WE. Personally, Homecoming means an integration of myself within the mytho-historical-cultural context of Magoism. However, Homecoming in the Great Goddess can never be an isolated individual act. Magoism unfolds the Primordial Home wherein all beings are kindred. The Primordial Home is for everyone. Everyone is destined to return Home in the Great Goddess because She is Here for us all. She will be Here for as long as humanity survives. Homecoming is a harbinger; it signals the arrival of WE, a very old concept that was misconstrued if not tabooed in patriarchy. The nature of my life has changed. “I” is no longer in the way of “WE.” “I” and “WE” do not stand against each other. Furthermore, “I” is transformed by “WE,” just as are all things in the universe. Scalar turns to vector. Chaos yields to order. The labyrinth leads to the Source. My feminism is rewarded with gynocentrism, the Goddess Matrix in which the female principle by far surpasses patriarchy. As many admit, Myth, the story of the divine, is etiological, meaning it explains the origin of things. I hold that only the gynocentric cosmogonic myth can be fully etiological, shedding light on the primal beginning. Myth is inherently gynocentric, for it is derived from the perception of the Primordial Mother, the oldest divine in human history. Put differently, Myth tells us that the Divine is She, that Female is the original divine. Myth is ultimately inseparable from the Great Goddess. The Primordial Mother is the macrocosmic translation of a mother. She is the Metaphor for life-giver and life-raiser. Divinity issues from Her. In Her, everything, including the God, is endowed with divinity. The etiological and metaphoric nature of Myth is fully illumined only in the story of the female beginning. The Goddess Myth told to/by us testifies to what patriarchy can’t or doesn’t tell. It is a language distinguished from that of patriarchy, dominating if not violent. The nature of Its language is persuasive and pacific. The truth It tells awakens one to Home. It is intrinsically soteriological, and herein lies the urgency of Myth: It shows the Way that humanity needs to know and follow in order to survive and flourish. The Great Goddess Myth is the first and last revelation to humankind. Where the Primordial Mother is, there is Home! Mago is not necessarily the “creator” of things. In the Magoist cosmogony, there is no one who created or creates anything alone. (I have used the term “cosmogony” in place of “creation” to avoid the conflation of Magoist thought with the origin-stories of patriarchal religions.) Instead, all things are interdependent and the power of auto-genesis is embedded within the universe itself. In explaining that, the Magoist cosmogony does not employ a magical or a logical jump. In the time of beginning, cosmic rays dance in accordance with the law of nature. Mago and primordial matter are self-born through the movement of cosmic music. Mago is, above all, the Cause of human existence. All things on Earth are indebted to Mago for She initiated the process auto-genesis of the Earth itself. In short, She is the Source of Life on Earth. Without Her, nothing is possible for us.
(Mago Almanac 4) Restoring 13 Month 28 Day Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[This and the following sequels are from Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A), Years 1 and 2 (5, 6, 9, 10…), 5915-6 MAGO ERA, 2018-9 CE (Mago Books, 2017).] We want to get back the 13th Friday. This almanac shows how that is possible. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang INTRODUCTION (Continued) 13 MARY DALY QUOTES Each monthly calendar, headed by quotes from Mary Daly’s Wickedary, has space for users to continue OUR Story. 1 Elemental Rhythms 1: rhythms displaying the infinite interplay of unity and diversity characteristic of Elemental phenomena such as tides, seasons, phases of the moon: TIDAL RHYTHMS 2: cadences and vibrations of the wordings of Websters, which are Be-Spoken in cosmic concordance Background the Realm of Wild Reality; the Homeland of women’s Selves and of all other Others; the Time/Space where auras of plants, planets, stars, animals and all Other animate beings connect. 2 New Space Space on the Boundary of patriarchal institutions; Space created by women which provides real alternatives to the archetypal roles of fatherland; Space in which women Realize Power of Presence New Time Time on the Boundary of patriarchal time; women’s Life-Time; Time in which the past is changed and Archaic Futures are Realized 3 Archaic Time Original Creative Time, beyond the stifling grasp of archetypal molds and measures; the measure of Original Motion/E-Motion/Movement Archespheres the Realm of true beginnings, where Shrews shrink alienating archetypes and Unforget Archaic Origins, uncovering the Archimage, the Original Witch within 4 Re-calling 1: persistent/insistent Calling of the Wild; recurring invitation to Realms of Deep Memory 2: Active Unforgetting of participation in Be-ing; Re-membering and giving voice to Original powers, intuitions, memories 5 Courage to live The Courage to refuse inclusion in the State of the Living Dead, to break out from the deadforms of archetypal deadtime, to take leap after leap of Living Faith; Fiercely Biophilic Courage 6 Elemental Spirits Spirits/Angels/Demons manifesting the essential intelligence of spirit/matter; Intelligences ensouling the stars, animating the processes of earth, air, fire, water, enspiriting the sounds that are the Elements of words, connecting words with the earth, air, fire, water and with the sun, moon, planets, stars 7 Tidal Characterized by cosmic interconnections and rhythms; Elemental; Wild Tidal Memory Memory of the Deep Background, characterized by Tidal Rhythms of Re-membering: ELEMENTAL MEMORY Tidal Time Elemental Time, beyond the clocking/clacking of clonedom; Wild Time; Time that cannot be grasped by the tidily man-dated world; Time of Wicked Inspiration/Genius 8 Wild The vast Realm of Reality outside the pinoramic world view constructed by the bores and necrophiliacs of patriarchy; true Homeland of all Elemental be-ing, characterized by diversity, wonder, joy, beauty, Metamorphic Movement and Spirit 9 Biophilic Bonding 1: the Lusty combining of Elemental forces among Others 2: the uniting of Life-Loving women in Hopping/hoping harmony 10 Metabeing Realms of active participation in Powers of Be-ing; State of Ecstasy 11 Re-membering 1: Re-calling the Original intuition of integrity healing the dismembered Self – the Goddess within women; Re-calling the Primordial connections/conversations among women, animals, and other Elemental beings 2: Realzing the power to See and to Spell out connections among apparently disparate phenomena: Spinning, Creating 12 Powers of Be-ing Be-ing the Verb, understood in multiple and diverse manifestations, e.g., Knowing, Creating, Loving, Unfolding – and through diverse Metaphors – e.g. the Fates, Chaning Women (Eastan Atlehi, Creatrix of the Navaho People), Shekhina (female divine presence in Hebrew lore) 13 Thirteen represents the Other Hour, beyond the direction of disaster. It signals the Presence of the Otherworld – Metamorphospheres – True Homeland of all Hags, Crones, Furies, Furries and Other Friends. It represents the Realm of Wild Reality, the Background, the Time/Space when/where auras of plants, planets, stars, animals, and all truly animate be-ing connect. It points to Living Worlds utterly foreign to foolocracy – Worlds that are Eccentric, Erratic, Odd, Queer, Quaint, Outlandish, Weird. (Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.
(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 …
(Essay 1) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and her Tradition Magoism[i] This study documents and interprets a substantial body of primary sources concerning Mago [麻姑, also known as Magu or Mako] from Korea, China, and Japan. Much of this material has never been brought to light as a whole. In working with these various and sundry data including folklore, paintings, arts, literature, poetry, toponyms, rituals, historical and religious records, and apocryphal texts, I encountered an organic structure that relates these seemingly unrelated materials and named it Magoism. Magoism refers to an anciently originated gynocentric cultural and historical context of East Asia, which venerates Mago as supreme divine. Although “Magoism” is my coinage, its concept is not new. Magoism is referred to as the Way of Mago, the Origin of Mago, the Event of Mago, Reign of Mago, Heavenly Principle, or simply Mago in historical sources. In the West, its partial manifestation is known as the cult of Magu within the context of Daoism. One of the earliest verified records, the Biography of Magu (Magu zhuan) written by Ge Hong (284-364) dates back to proto-Daoist times.[ii] Nonetheless, “Mago” remains largely forgotten and misrepresented to the world especially in modern times. More incisively, her sublime divinity is made invisible despite strong evidence. No scholarship in the West has treated Mago as a topic in her own right. Mago’s multiple identities ranging from the cosmogonist to a grandmother, from the progenitress to the Daoist goddess, from the sovereign to a shaman/priestess in Korea, China, and Japan remain unregistered in modern scholarship. When mentioned, her transnational manifestation is not recognized cogently. She is often lumped together with other parochial goddesses from China. Other times, she is fetishized as a Daoist goddess of immortality. She is also known, among other representations, as the giant grandmother (goddess) who shaped the natural landscape in the beginning of time among Koreans. In any case, Mago is not deemed on a par or in relation with Xiwangmu (the Queen Mother of the West in Chinese Daoism) and Amaterasu, (the Sun Goddess of the Japanese imperial family), both of who represent the East Asian pantheon of supreme goddesses to the West. I hold that the paramount significance of Magoism lies in the fact that it redefines the female principle and proffers a gynocentric utopian vision to the modern audience. Its utopian cosmology is no free-floating abstract idea but imbedded in the mytho-historical-cultural reality of East Asia. I suggest Magoism as the original vision of East Asian thought. Put differently, Magoism is an East Asian gynocentric testimony to the forgotten utopian reality. In the sense that Magoism presents an East Asian gynocentric symbolic system, this study is distinguished from Western and androcentric discourse. In other words, its gynocentric universalism should not be subsumed under the discourse of Western or patriarchal universalism. Magoism prompts an alternative paradigm of ancient gynocentrism that redefine major notions of the divine, human, and nature in continuum. Mago, the great goddess, is the unifying and at the same time individualizing force in this system. Magoism enables a macrocosmic view in which all individualized parts are organically co-related and co-operating. As a religious system, it is at once monotheistic and polytheistic. That is, Mago is the great goddess in her multiple manifestations. Underlying the patriarchal edifices, the Magoist principle is the Source from which the latter is derived.