November 29, 2021February 10, 2022 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Special Post 5) Multi-Linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

[This is a summary of discussion that took place around 2014 in The Mago Circle, Facebook group.] Marka Zenmyo: Lash goes into the roots of magic, magi, and majestic, which is Read More …

November 12, 2021November 13, 2021 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

What the Star Mothers Would Have You Know by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Should it be a spectacular ring of supernovas all exploding in massive, colorful and festive fireworks close enough for all on Earth to see? A black hole a million times Read More …

November 11, 2021November 3, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 4) Goddesses in Hinduism: “All the Mothers are One” by Mary Ann Beavis, Ph.D.

[Editor’s Note: This essay is from the same title, “Goddesses in Hinduism: “All the Mothers are One”‘ by Mary Ann Beavis with Scott Daniel Dunbar included in Goddesses in Myth, Read More …

November 10, 2021November 1, 2021 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Essay 1) The Giant Huwawa by Hearth Moon Rising

This essay explores the demon giant Huwawa as a matriarchal deity whose defeat in battle can be viewed as symbolic of the beginings of man-made environmental destruction. The slaying of Read More …

November 9, 2021November 2, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Goodbye D.C. by Francesca Tronetti

The nation’s capital stands empty today No throngs of politicians, aides, and lobbyists Fill the streets with cars, buses, and taxis No snarled traffic fills the freeways Would that image Read More …

November 8, 2021November 8, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Sandborn River Song by Sara Wright

One day while photographing I grew leaves. How can it be that I slip skins with such ease? Light breezes twirled my petticoat, and a chartreuse sister drifted orange Read More …

November 5, 2021November 6, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) What Queenie says about Mahādevī by Susan Hawthorne, Ph.D.

Mahadevi elephant mother smelt another being on earth she said to her friends it’s time for us to walk the world and so they set off with Mahadevi in the Read More …

November 4, 2021November 2, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Mago Almanac Planner Year 5 Excerpt 2) 13 Month 28 Day Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This and its sequences are a newly added portion in the Mago Almanac Planner Year 5, equivalent to the Gregorian Year 2022. Because the Budoji did not explain Read More …

November 3, 2021November 2, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Video 6) Genevieve Vaughan & Chiquie Estrada in Maternal Gift Economy: Breaking Through by Genevieve Vaughan

[Words of Invitation] Drawing on Maternal Gift Economy theory, the suppressed wisdom of women, and the traditions and ethics of Indigenous societies, this integrated programme of presentations sponsored by the Read More …

November 2, 2021January 25, 2022 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Music 1) Singing to Hathor: Spiritual and Historical Reclamations Through the Muses of Memory, History, and Music by Jen Taylor

“Sing now muses, show me the way, to a spring that runs clear on the darkest of days. There was a time, cities had no walls. There was a time Read More …

November 2, 2021May 25, 2023 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Call for Contributions) Commemorating our ancestor feminists: Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994), Mary Daly (1928-2010), Audre Lorde (1934-1992), Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008), Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004), and Your Hera

What is feminism to you? Do you have a feminist ancestor? How do you see your feminist ancestor in your life and work today? And what does it mean that Read More …

November 1, 2021September 11, 2021 RTMeditorsKGLeave a comment

(Essay) Ceremonial Celebrants as Evocators of Presence by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This article is an edited excerpt from Chapter 6 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. In presiding as Mistress of Ceremonies/Priestess in the Seasonal ceremonies that Read More …

(Meet Mago Contributor) Nicole Shaw

Among other things, Nicole Shaw is a farmer, feminist, artist, founder of a women’s time barter group, Past President of the Nanaimo Women’s Resources Society which operates a women’s centre, President of the Errington Farmers’ Market, and founding member of the Bowen Road and Farmers’ Market. Her life purpose is creating deeper awareness. This is what motivates her and is the thread that weaves through her artwork, writing, activism, organic farming, advocating for local food production, and founding groups and organizations.
(Poem) Amber/honey/river/mirror by Donna Snyder

Amber drips from her ears and wrists like honey I hear the sound of brass bells She dances me up into a fog of purple smoke I see a hall of mirrors and as I pass by each mirror I see not my face but the face of all my loves I find myself beside a dying river “From my mouth to yours” I say it out loud as I drip honey into the water lick my own sweet fingers I hear wind through the cane It sounds like laughter The river accepts the honey dripping from my flesh and is gone I am on a desert mountain rough and dry I find a pot of sweet water and know that today I will not die With a needle I stitch together the fabric of my life and yours I look into the mirror and I see your face Published in Matrix, June 1999
(Poem) Desire Spoken Under a Night Sky by Harriet Ellenberger

May the earth live, May we live on the earth, May love in our life flower, May the transformation be realized. May it be stone that we stand on, May winds bring us fast-moving thought, May our heart bathe in salt waters, May spiral galaxies light our way home. – Harriet Ann Ellenberger March 2014 Read Meet Mago Contributor Harriet Ann Ellenberger.
(She Rises 1) Knowing the Great Goddess: Act of Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This is part of my introduction to She Rises, Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?” forthcoming June Solstice, 2015] Without doubt, undertaking the project of this anthology is a way of advocating a feminist/activist/spiritual Goddessism/Magoism. Knowing the Great Goddess itself is an act of Goddess feminism/activism/spirituality. “To know” is an active verb. To know the Goddess is an act that hurls one to an uncharted territory in the patriarchal foreground. Precisely, in that bewildered place we find the door to the Way of the Goddess. We are collectively waking up to the deep memory that ancients paved a way for us to remember. She Rises invites everyone including agnostics and atheists. More to the point, it defies the very notion of an “agnostic” or “atheist”—and “believer” or “non-believer”— concepts derived from the dualistic thinking of the monotheistic patriarchal religions. We do not have to believe in the Goddess. Or one may “believe” in the Goddess no more than one “believes” in one’s ancestor. Thealogy (studies of the Female Divine/Goddess) does not work in the same way as the theology of the monotheistic male divine does. It is a whole new way of thinking, not believing. As direct offspring of the Great Goddess/Mago, we humans are endowed with Her divine nature. Thealogy takes us to see the new horizon in which the divide between the divine and humans is no longer substantive. Likewise, the divide between the sacred and the secular is eroded in the consciousness of the Great Goddess. Knowing the Great Goddess/Mago redefines oneself, humanity, the Earth community, and the universe. We are given the primordial lens of the Great Goddess. We get to know the Great Goddess through thinking. Our knowing is not static, however, but ever unfolding and evolving. Our thinking is not a mere cerebral activity. It is the rudder of our action. A deep thinking leads to gynocentric knowing, the knowing of the Great Goddess. We understand the self and the world through the lens of the Great Goddess, the consciousness of WE in S/HE. Because gynocentric knowing has been made esoteric or anomalous, if surfaced in the consciousness, in patriarchal times, we require some techniques in our thinking especially in the beginning to tap into gynocentric thinking. We are led to the vacancy of the patriarchal mind before realizing that we are in the sacred ground of the Great Goddess. She Rises marks a collective realization that we are HERE! Meanwhile, we require both deconstruction and reconstruction in the mode of our thinking. The first and last thing that we become aware of is that knowing the Great Goddess does not take place within the framework of monotheistic male theology. By definition, patriarchy is founded on the dualistic thinking of the male and the female. Patriarchal religions, based on the dualistic mode of thinking, see things in separation from and against one another, e.g., men vs. women, God vs. humans, the world vs. nature, the mind vs. the body, theism vs. atheism. In order to enthrone the male, patriarchal mind-molders employ the ruse of dualism, which is an epistemological/anthropological/ecological disaster that has brought havoc not only to humanity but also to the earthly community as a whole. The patriarchal mode of thinking disqualifies for the consciousness of WE. Perpetuating the cycle of hierarchy and domination, it takes everything within its reach into the cacophonic degeneration that hinders the working of the Creatrix. An effort “to know who I am” is the prerequisite of knowing the Goddess. The quest for finding/knowing oneself is indeed a dangerous thing in that patriarchal mind-molders do not have control of it and indeed fear it. Self-trust is in disproportion with one’s endorsement of dualistic thinking. That was my experience. As I became aware of the working in my mind of the dualistic thinking spawned by patriarchal cultures/religions of both the West and the East and made a conscious decision not to go with it, I came to affirm myself. Till then, I underestimated the power of thinking. Our self-knowledge saves us. I used to hear that thinking, or knowing, is the opposite of one’s action or at least not the same as action. That accounts for the fact that patriarchal mind-molders do not teach people how to think deeply. Instead, they impose on people to believe in the dogmas and creeds that they created for themselves. Any authority that does not allow people to think for themselves is an aggressor. Goddessians/Magoists re-claim the power of thinking/knowing/naming. Thinking marks the very core of our action. Thinking acts. A thought shocks, touches, or bores our body/mind/heart. Thinking causes a consequence in the material world. Our heart pounds with a thought. That is how journalism works in modern times. Journalists ceaselessly seek for “shocking” news and invent headlines to maximize the impact on people. However, news media companies do not teach people how to think positively or correctly. They use the power of thinking. Correct thinking is derived from gynocentric knowing. Goddessians/Magoists tune our thinking to the gynocentric unconsciousness. We are fully alive with the consciousness of the Great Goddess. Our thinking invokes another thinking; it is organic and contagious. The working of our collective thinking is unfathomable. She Rises embodies our collective thinking. It is true that, if one does not change the mode of one’s thinking, while blindly accepting what patriarchal religions or moralities impose, one’s thinking fails to lead one to the knowing of the Goddess. Such thinking remains stunted. Stunted thinking, endorsing patriarchal norms, misleads and confuses people. It changes nothing. Without reaching/touching the core of one’s being, it only mimics the power of creative thinking. We need to watch our thinking. The conscious transition from the dominant/dominated mode of thinking (A or/against B) to empowering/encompassing mode of thinking (A and/in-continuum-of B) needs to be made. We can detect the dualistic mode of thinking that works in our mind on a daily basis. At that very split second that we sabotage the patriarchal/dualistic mode of …
(Book Extracts) Crete by Susan Hawthorne

I saw the recent news about the death of Carol Christ. Although I never met Carol, I was struck by the similarities between my experience in the Dicktaean Cave some decades earlier, and her book, The Serpentine Path. I have read many other books by her and have travelled to Crete on three occasions. Once in winter in early 1977; once in October in 1986; and again, in summer of 1992. On each occasion I visited the museums, the archaeological sites; I drank a lot of Greek coffee and ate sweets in the streets. I would go back at the drop of a hat. The first visit prompted me to learn Demotic Greek for about a year, not enough to develop any fluency, but enough to survive and read the signs. By the time I returned in 1986, I had studied Classical Greek for several years. At bus stops, the old women and I would troll my dictionary looking for the crossover between Katharevousa and Demotic Greek. Katharevousa is formal modern Greek, used in the media, government legal and academic documents, though this was changed by law in 1977 and since then Demotic Modern Greek has been the official language. The old women at the bust stops knew it. The first extract below is from The Falling Woman which I wrote in the late 1980s and was first published in 1992. In the extract below, I refer to boustrophedon, a form of writing from Crete in which the words resemble the way a cow ploughs a field with words going back and forth across the surface without any breaks. Crete was another world. They spent a day in the Museum at Herakleion staring in wonder at the riches there. Julia had given Estella a labrys, a double axe, for her birthday, which she wore on a leather thong around her neck. In the squat in London, Roberta had told her about its origins in pre-patriarchal Crete. In Italy she’d been advised to hide it, since Mussolini had appropriated the symbol in the thirties and many Italians still associated the labrys with fascism. In the museum in Herakleion there were whole cases filled with tiny gold ones; huge tarnished-bronze ones on long poles; others painted on the sides of pots and pithoi, along with birds and snakes, flowers and octopi. They visited the palace at Phaestos that overlooked the plain with its wide steps and corridors. Stella, still experimenting with her new camera, was taking photographs of double axes engraved in stone. The stones seemed to lie any which way, as though they had simply fallen there. Stella was reading writing engraved on stone. For all her Greek she couldn’t decipher more than a few words, though she could follow the continuity of words that started on the left side, turned and returned across the stone from the right. A continuous squiggly line that imitated the way in which an ox ploughs a field. Stella was developing her own errant theory of writing, from the Phaestos disk to the boustrophedon of this stone. It’s all snakes, she thought, whether they coil in a spiral or slither in curves down the page. But Julia was sceptical. AMI – Goldene Doppelaxt, from Wikimedia Commons The second extract is from Dark Matters, in which the main character Kate (Ekaterina) is the daughter of a woman from Greece. Many Greek refugees came to Australia after the Second World War. The small country town I lived near included a Greek run café and a Greek run newsagent. It was Ochi Day, and I was travelling in the mountains in Crete. I hadn’t remembered the story of Ochi Day. It was the day the Greeks celebrated saying no, ochi or οχι to Mussolini. That no, meant that Greece would be attacked as they were on 28 October 1940. I was on the Lasithi Plateau in the village of Psychro chasing archaeological sites. It was cold so I went to bed early and woke to the sound of such loud music I had to get up and see what was happening. A building some distance from my room, a hall filled with people. Women were flinging their arms and legs about in wild dancing. I sat for a while, not wanting to intrude but as the music wound up even more; I had to dance. The walls spun, the music swelled, faces and bodies in movement. The people around smiled at me, a woman grabbed my hand and led me across the dance floor and back again several times, and as she let go, she sent me spinning. I sat down again and caught my breath. The next day I headed for the Diktaian Cave. It’s the cave where Zeus brought Europa when he abducted her. Zeus transformed himself into a white bull. Europa, like all ancient girls, was out picking flowers with her friends. She patted him and being an adventurous young woman, climbed up to ride on his back. Bad mistake because Zeus took off, swam towards Crete and brought her to Diktaian Cave. It was her line from which all the Minoans were descended. There wasn’t much to see outside the gate to the cave. The tourist season was finished, and the gate was closed. I climbed the fence and entered through a narrow cleft as you’d expect from an old site sacred to the mother of Crete. It opened out into several ‘rooms’, some with beautiful stalactites. I paused, feeling my heart expanding. Not one for acts of reverence, I was surprised to find my hand touching my forehead then my heart. The darkness enclosed me. So rare, but a feeling of immense safety swept over me. I took tentative steps into the deeper darkness, my hands tracing the lumps of wall as I moved slowly down. I have no idea how long I walked and sat and listened. It might have been years. As I turned to retrace my steps, tears – …
(Nine Poets Speak) Binding Spell by Annie Finch

[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.] Annie Finch with her book, Spells, photo by Karen Middleton He who wastes a woman’s willBurns in flames that never still. He who mocks a woman’s mindWill be ruined by the wind. He who abuses a woman’s bodyMother Earth won’t feed nor bury. He who hurts a woman’s heartRots where tears and oceans start. He who scorns a woman’s spiritLoses his own birth within it. https://www.magoism.net/2016/09/meet-mago-contributor-ani-finch/
(Art poem essay) In Praise of Her by Yvonne M. Lucia

IN PRAISE OF HER I pledged my life to God in the back seat of our ’57 Rambler when I was seven, as my dad drove home from the 6AM Latin Mass. When Sister Renata taught us the catechism in first grade, the Doctrine of Limbo made me cry. That same year she chose me to lead the May Procession – the special girl who got to wear the special dress reserved for the occasion. I crowned the alabaster Mary with a wreath of baby’s breath, then joined the others in the Living Rosary encircling the altar. Today I worship the Feminine Divine – the seeds of my rebellion were sown, it seems, around the age of reason, with talk of “Pygmies” who, unbaptized, upon their death might live happily ever-after but could not meet God. The pastel velvet dress I wore for Mary’s coronation – that domesticated Rite of Spring- was the tiny spore of my unfurling. The child is mother of the woman. Now, I’m whirling in the circle dance in praise of Her. The poem “In Praise of Her” is my attempt to crystalize the experience of my journey with the Divine Feminine, encountered in the figure of Mary, from childhood to the present. I have been a lover of Mary for as long as I can remember. As a young girl I used to recite the prayer “Lovely Lady Dressed in Blue” each night before falling asleep. I felt held and comforted by the words and the images I saw in my mind’s eye. The series of paintings that I began in January 2012, Contemporary Images of the Feminine Divine, is a culmination of many threads of my life being woven together into a public offering of my personal theology. The paintings explore images of the sacred feminine, primarily symbolized in the archetypal figure of Mary. They are visual contemplative prayers offered as a healing balm for our broken selves and for our dying Mother earth. The images are intended as reflections and mirrors of the sacred feminine that resides within each of us, male and female alike.
(Book Excerpt 2) Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess, the Girl God anthology by Trista Hendren

Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess: a Girl God Anthology. Edited by Trista Hendren, Pat Daly and Noor-un-nisa Gretasdottir Several weeks ago on the news, we saw pictures of 40,000 people starving to death in Madaya, Syria. The elderly, women and children—all horribly emaciated. Their faces haunt me, especially the children’s. I have felt unbearably burnt out these last weeks so I decided to clean out our flat instead of working as I usually do during the weekend. My husband offered to help, but I declined. The deep cleaning was something I wanted to tackle myself for my own mental health—and, he had work to do downstairs that we frankly needed the income from.
(Book Excerpt 3) Re-Membering with Goddess: Healing the Patriarchal Perpetuation of Trauma by Trista Hendren

https://thegirlgod.com/re-membering.php Surviving “Traumarchy” Sharon Smith I grew up traumatized by Patriarchy. I didn’t know it at the time, but now I can see clearly the negative effects this androcentric Dominator System had on my body, my mind, and my soul as a girl growing into womanhood during the ‘60s and ‘70s. My first experience was physical abuse at the hands of my mother who had been, herself, the victim of child abuse perpetrated by her own mother who told her (as she beat her), “Girls are no goddamned good! Only boys are good!” She was the only daughter in a family of eight children. And she was the only one who ever got beaten. This abusive domination of my mother undoubtedly traumatized her. But it was also an early and destructive imprint upon her “love map,” and it dictated what kind of mother she would be to her own daughter. And then I was born, the second child and only girl of three children. The first beating I recall was when I was still in a highchair. I remember this event clearly. Pain has a way of etching itself upon body and mind. My mom had sat me in the highchair and given me a bowl of jello. I was expecting the little wiggly cubes she usually cut it into, but this time she had whipped the dessert into a frothy substance that I didn’t recognize. So, I pushed it away to let her know I didn’t want it. Unfortunately, I pushed the bowl a little too hard and it went crashing to the floor, spilling the frothy jello all over the linoleum. My mom was furious! She got one of dad’s belts, and then she grabbed me by the arms and yanked me out of the highchair. She lashed the belt across my back and buttocks hard… with the buckle end. I remember screaming in pain. But she kept on whipping me till my body shook. Finally, when she stopped, the pain had spread itself into a total body numbness. That was my first memory of dissociating from my body. My mom apparently had internalized the patriarchal belief that “girls are no goddamned good; only boys are good” which had been beaten into her. And she taught me in return. “Traumarchy”—that’s a word coined by Meera Atkinson, author of the book, Traumata. She describes it thus: “the way patriarchy perpetuates trauma, making it ‘inherently traumatic’ and giving rise to a multitude of sufferings and strife.” My life has been a struggle to overcome traumarchy in more than just physical abuse. At age three I also suffered child sexual abuse at the hands of an uncle, who digitally raped me… and then threatened to kill me if I told anyone. I was so frightened that I began to cocoon myself under the covers in my bed each night, thinking I’d be “hidden and safe” if he came through my bedroom window. I also began to bed wet, which had the unfortunate consequence of angering my mother, which resulted in more beatings. But the trauma didn’t end there. Throughout my youth, I was subjected to the groping hands of neighborhood boys and even some of my own male cousins. One teenage cousin asked me to go into the woods with him so we could “fuck.” I was too young at the time to know what “fuck” meant, but it didn’t seem like anything I wanted to do, so I said “No” and ran home. The boys always got away with their harassment and assaults, because—and who hasn’t heard this one?—“boys will be boys!” Sad thing is, the boys who groped my body (without my permission, of course)—sometimes grabbing my breasts or my crotch or pinching my behind—talked dirty about me and spread lies and rumors, so, of course, I was called a “slut” and a “whore.” Funny, because I hadn’t even “fucked” yet. But that didn’t matter. Boys could say whatever they wanted to shame and blame girls. And girls just had to keep their mouths shut. Traumarchy: Patriarchal trauma. It left me feeling ashamed and dirty. And I hadn’t really done anything worthy of it. Except be born a girl. After high school, I, like many girls of that time period, got married. I had met my husband in my senior year (he had already graduated and was working as a stock boy at a local grocery store) and we had “fallen in love.” We got engaged during that final year of school and “tied the knot” (wonderful saying, no?) in August of 1972. The “honeymoon” didn’t last long. I found myself going from an abusive home-life to an abusive marriage. Except this time, the abuse wasn’t physical. It was mental and emotional abuse and neglect. And, in many ways, it hurt far worse. For most of my 28-years with this man, I was neglected and mentally/verbally abused. For instance, while I was very pregnant with his child—belly large and protruding—he seemed to get a kick out of focusing on my weight gain. On one occasion (at church, no less), he saw me walking toward him and exclaimed aloud while our church friends looked on: “Hey, Hey, Hey: Here comes Faaaaaat Albert!” in the cartoon voice. I wanted to disappear through the cracks in the floor of that “sanctuary.” He thought it was “funny;” I found it humiliating and demeaning. He laughed… I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and cried. After about the third year of our marriage, my husband stopped getting me cards for any occasion—not even my birthday or Mother’s Day (although I had two beautiful daughters with him). And no gifts either. Not even at Christmas. I continued to buy him cards and gifts, and I strived to be a “Proverbs 31 Woman,” according to my Fundamentalist Christian beliefs. I was a stay-at- home Mom and did my utmost to make that man feel like the King of His Castle, as we were taught …

(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 an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] [C]: Unfortunately, Mother Theresa is not understood here in some of these comments: To be in any way critical of Mother Theresa using what was the state of the world in her time & the poor & dying as tools of compassion, even more so when left to die visibly barely cared for, as a teaching method must not be looked at as unfeeling on her part as it was her greatest sorrow to use them so horribly as means to an end, but they were what she had at hand. Was never her intention to use any money to save them, would negate their very suffering purpose as well. She did not believe we all had learned the lesson yet in her time so she had to pretend to be solving the problem while continuing the problem. You see, the money was a byproduct of no importance to her, used just to get the peoples’ attention by using what they valued, let the Church have it for other things for it had served it’s purpose by bringing her sought after awareness of the poor & dying into view. In pretending to like & accept attention to herself, honors, & even challenges to these choices, all for one purpose to fool, to get the poor & dying attention, is why she was so distressed near the end by the means she had to use to reach that end! And perhaps her sheer loss of hope at having to stoop to such measures which reflects on the sad state of the rest of us. Wondering here where the money went doesn’t understand anything of what she was trying to do. [C]: Thank You Naa Ayele Kumari for plowing through my thoughts enough to ‘like’ even! Could I be understood that Mother Theresa’s intentions were ‘higher’ than just taking care of the poor & dying in institutions, but to have the people understand there should be ‘feelings’ for them so they would never ever even have to be cared for in such ‘style’? She sacrificed these many nonpeaceful deaths to display, to show, to the whole world the direction it was heading, for the saving of the future multitudes of suffering & deaths if no one understood & cared soon. She dreamed these future lives would be right & good & their deaths would be the same attended by loved ones of their own, no need for group interference. She did not wish to just contain such tragedy, but to eliminate it from the whole earth forever. In the smaller scale view of some today the institutions are a necessary step, however Mother Theresa thought this a false step on a horrible path in the wrong direction, & she knew this, & dreamed beyond! To send away, to cage, the suffering, old, & sick in any society is a crime against Mother Nature no matter what the excuses or how pretty the packaged institution is presented! [Z] Did not foresee the discussion would provoke such indepth and rich responses. It feels that we are getting close to the bottom of the matter that has not been brought up for so long, not in my life time. Profound interactions that make us aware of the aspects of how our thinking and living can be based on the kind of values we hold. I treat each and all of you in the hand of our goddesses. Anne Wilkerson Allen: I think the Mother always moves us back toward compassion. Whether we have a sense of deity or not, we can all understand contextually how she was used and that her “beliefs” left her with such poverty of spirit that her entire life is under the microscope. I wonder, will the media ask what the Church has done with all their Billions or simply focus on a dead nun indoctrinated by the system? Diane Horton: No, I am sorry. [C], that is an incredible rationalization of Mother Teresa’s actions. Unbelievable actually. For you to justify her not using the extraordinary amount of money sent to her by saying that she chose to use these horrible deaths to bring attention to the sick and the dying and evoke compassion in people – that is the most megalomaniac position possible! Did she assume the role of God then?? That is outrageous! To think that she had the means to relieve these poor people’s sufferings and chose not to in order to USE them is even more heinous to me! I cannot wrap my head around how you think that is a good thing. She already HAD evoked compassion for these people. That’s why the money poured in! And all the “pretending” and lying you said she did for the greater good? NO. Compassion and empathy are a basic human response to suffering. “She sacrificed these nonpeaceful deaths” REALLY?! She had no right. And she was wrong. I can see no lofty ideal she was displaying there. Diane Horton: Forgive, me. I could not let what was said there lie. I won’t say anymore. Everyone has their own perspective. And each perspective together makes the whole. Blessed Be. [C]: On this […]
(Special Post 4) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

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

The contribution of my writing to Return to Mago E-Magazine has evolved since it began four years ago, into a deeply mutually enhancing relationship. The time and effort taken to write carefully and in alignment with my heartfelt passions and insights, and then to be able to publish to a receptive audience, has always been rewarding – for me personally and apparently for many who received it.

The Ceremonial Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

Spring At the highest point on the tree, you stretch, reaching for the sun. Your pink petals elegant in their grace, you stand alone. Bravest of all, for leaves have yet to come to offer shade Branches bare except for furry buds that will soon follow in imitation of your daring first move. Intrepid flower of Spring, I feel like you in my yearning for the Sun!
(Prose) Halcyon for the Season by Deanne Quarrie

A bird for this season is the Kingfisher, also known as the Halcyon. The Kingfisher is associated in Greek myth with the Winter Solstice. There were fourteen “halcyon days” in every year, seven of which fell before the winter solstice, seven after; peaceful days when the sea was smooth as a pond and the hen-halcyon built a floating nest and hatched out her young. She also had another habit, that of carrying her dead mate on her back over the sea and mourning him with a plaintive cry. Pliny reported that the halcyon was rarely seen and then only at the winter and summer solstices and at the setting of the Pleiades. She was therefore, a manifestation of the Moon-Goddess who was worshiped at the two solstices as the Goddess of Life in Death and Death in Life and, when the Pleiades set, she sent the sacred king his summons for death. Kingfishers are typically stocky, short-legged birds with large heads and large, heron-like beaks. They feed primarily on fish, hovering over the water or watching intently from perches and they plunge headlong into the water to catch their prey. Their name, Alcedinidae, stems from classical Greek mythology. Alcyone, Daughter of the Wind, was so distraught when her husband perished in a shipwreck that she threw herself into the sea. Both were then transformed into kingfishers and roamed the waves together. When they nested on the open sea, the winds remained calm and the weather balmy. Still another Alcyone, Queen of Sailing, was the mystical leader of the seven Pleiades. The heliacal rising of the Pleiades in May marked the beginning of the navigational year and their setting marked the end. Alcyone, as Sea Goddess protected sailors from rocks and rough weather. The bird, halcyon continued for centuries to be credited with the magical power of allaying storms. Shakespeare refers to this legend in this passage from Hamlet: Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is the time. Hamlet, I, i 157 When I was a young mother, and my children were little, we lived in a house that had a creek in the back yard. There were small trees along the far bank of this creek and every day, a kingfisher would sit in the branches overlooking the creek. Sometimes he sat there very quietly for a very long time. Suddenly he would dive from his perch straight into the creek. Every time he did he came out and up into the air with a fish. It gave me great pleasure to watch him from my kitchen window. I love birds. I love learning about their habits because it teaches me ways of being that are closer to nature. I love drawing birds as well. When I was a young and more able, I was an avid bird watcher, out with my friends hoping for a sight never seen before. I love the story of the kingfisher and her connection to the Halcyon Days of the Winter Solstice. It is for most of us the busiest time of year. Whether it is for the Solstice or Christmas (often both) we are in a frenzy to get things done, making sure everything is just right and perfect. I celebrate the Winter Solstice. As a priestess, my days right now are very busy creating ritual. It is at the Solstice that many passage rites are happening with the women I work with. And of course, I celebrate with my family with our magical Yule Log each year. But I try to honor those seven days before and the seven days after by trying to have the frantic moments before the Halcyon Days begin and then even when busy, hold the peace and calm of that beautiful smooth sea in my mind. Peace and love and joy surrounding the Winter Solstice make it perfect. May the Peace of a Halcyon Sea be yours in this Solstice Season. Do hold the image of that little kingfisher in mind! Meet Mago Contributor, Deanne Quarrie
(Art & Poem) Candelmas/Imbolc by Sudie Rakusin & Annie Finch

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

(Mago Essay 2) Toward the Primordial Knowing of Mago, the Great Goddess by Helen Hwang

Part 2 Gynocentric Study of Mago’s Visual Representations [The following sequels including this one are a modified version of my paper presented to Daoist Studies, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2010.] Mago [麻姑, also known as Magu or Mako] remains underrepresented if treated in modern scholarship. Little attention has been given to the topic of Magu in its own right. In the West a handful of scholars have mentioned Mago within the context of Daoism. Her transnational and trans-temporal manifestations in Korea, China, and Japan are largely unrecognized. That Magu is known as multiple identities throughout history in East Asia has gone unnoticed. In my study of Mago, that Mago’s supreme divinity as the Great Goddess has been rendered unintelligible over time under the rule of patriarchy offers a crucial insight leading to a befitting method. First of all, the perception of Her as the Great Goddess enables one to recognize a large volume of primary sources, otherwise left unattended, from across national, regional, temporal, and typological boundaries. Secondly, the primary materials in turn allow one to assess the supreme nature of the Great Goddess, Mago, apart from the theological framework of the monotheistic male god. By being a non-Western and non-patriarchal tradition, Magoism warrants a distinctive thealogy characterized by self-equilibrium and interdependence of components, part of which was discussed in Part I. Thirdly, a trans-disciplinary method is corollary in processing a variety of multi-genre materials that would not be neatly categorized in a mono-disciplinary data-pool. To say the least, it liberates itself from the tyranny of monolithic methodology, which dissects to take only a portion of data from the whole and treat it as if it is a single independent entity. In short, methodology and thealogy, being mutually supportive, lead the researcher to a rather unexplored conceptual territory, which I call gynocentrism. Gynocentrism takes the female principle as an operating system. Its system has been thwarted within the discourse of androcentric perspectives. Gynocentrism is a submerged mode of thinking in the patriarchically indoctrinated psyche. Made to be subliminal, the gynocentric mode of thinking elicits the Mago (Great Goddess) consciousness. Consequently, Mago consciousness upholds the infrastructures of gynocentric thinking. What distinguishes gynocentrism from feminism is that it redefines the male as a derivative of the Female. Gynocentrism reflects the principle of all mothers of living beings. In that sense, my study of Mago is a gynocentric endeavor to chart an alternative paradigm of doing thealogy within the context of East Asian history, mythology, and culture. It is a misunderstanding that Magoist thealogy or Magology (the study of the Great Goddess) concerns the divine only. Gynocentric thealogy is not locked into a separate domain apart from humanity, nature, and the universe. Put differently, Magology is not a mere conceptual tool that explains the divine. It summons gynocentric histories, myths, and cultures that are to be restored and rewritten. It calls for rethinking everything in a fresh light. In the sequels to follow, I bring to light a series of Mago’s visual representations expressed in paintings, ceramics, embroideries, woodprints, sculptures, and topographies, and examine Her multivalent identities in light of the large corpus of Magoist written and oral texts. Mago’s visual icons are beyond one’s documentation. They, especially those from China, are still a favored item in modern day’s auction markets. Several hundred images that I have documented are simply incomplete. Some sample images are chosen to show an array of historical/cultural/social productions, once honored and valued highly by many. Through the economy of commodification, these images have carried the cultural memory of the Great Goddess. While a number of her visual icons are undated, many are from the Yuan (1271 to 1368), Ming (1368 to 1644), and Qing (1644 to 1912) dynasties of China, the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) of Korea, and certain historical periods of Japan. Also, many are from modern times. In them, Mago/Magu/Mako is depicted as: (1) An immortal/transcendant (仙 xian or seon, immortal or transcendant). (2) A mendicant. (3) A sea goddess. (4) A mountain goddess. (5) A crone. (6) The ancestor of shamans. And (7) A non-anthropomorphic identity or giantess as the nature-shaper or cosmogonist of local topographies such as mountains, rocks, caves, and seas. The notion of a giantess is employed to describe Her transcendental nature. In this case, Mago-named topographies alongside folk stories describe Her feature/identity of immeasurability. Needless to say, these identities overlap and merge, making up an overall picture of Mago as the Great Goddess. That is, She is each and all. These visual icons, stylized with symbolic objects, respectively demonstrate specific Magoist cultural memes once prevailing and favored among East Asians. A throng of objects such as medicinal herbs, especially lingzhi mushrooms, flowers, hoes, baskets, vessels, and animals, forms the coded syntaxes of the arcane language. In particular, a troupe of animals including deer, crane, dog, and monkey highlights the drama. Also, colophons carry not only the cultural meme but also prestige and authority for its producers and possessors. (To be continued.) [i] I have discussed this in detail in Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Seeking Mago, the Great Goddess: A Mytho-Historic-Thealogical Reconstruction of Magoism, an Archaically Originated Gynocentric Tradition of East Asia, Ph.D. dissertation (Claremont: Claremont Graduate University, 2005), 335-342; 353-361.
(Book Announcement 5) Introduction (part 3) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Editor’s Note: This Introduction is from She Rises: How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 2.] Pre-order available now! Engendering the Gynocentric Economy In the sense that the She Rises collective writing project does NOT begin with a ready-made blueprint, it is distinguished from a standard anthology. More to the point, this book is a book of the Goddess. By saying that, I do not mean that it is just about the Goddess. It is created in a gynocentric way and it serves a gynocentric purpose. Motivations matter; the task of the She Rises collective writing was first undertaken as a way of enhancing the Goddess/Mago Movement in 2014.[i] It has taken place spontaneously by the hand of volunteers. It relies on the gynocentric economy, a system of enabling the life of all beings operated through voluntary collaboration and egalitarian coordination. As an extension of the Gift Economy that Genevieve Vaughan advocates, the gynocentric economy is based on the voluntary sharing of one’s available resources for the whole.[ii] Gift-givers not only give what we can give freely but also enable a whole new (read non-patriarchal) mode of doing economic activities. In other words, they summon gynocentric reality to take place. Gynocentric economy secures free gift-giving activities and at the same time is shaped by the latter.
(Goma Article Excerpt 3) Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea and Her Mythology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This essay was first published in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, published in 2018 by Mago Books.] The Goma Words The Bear Goddess In the coventional interpretation of the Korean foundation myth, “Ungnyeo (熊女)” is the name given to the bear (Gom) who received a female body upon enduring the trial of the cave initiation, married Hanung, and gave birth to a son who later became the founder of the ancient Korean state, Joseon (2333 BCE – 232 BCE). As such, “Ungnyeo” and “Gom” are unequivocally identified as the same figure. Nonetheless, the notability of “Ungnyeo” remains secular to most modern Koreans. That Gom is also involved with the bear constellation, the Northern Dipper in particular, remains esoteric at best. The bear mytheme of the Goma myth offers an insight to the etymology of both words, “Mago” and “Goma.” Given the mythological evidence that associates both Goma and Mago with the bear constellation, we may establish that the syllable “Go (姑 Ancient Goddess)” in “Mago” and “Goma” is derived from “Gom,” which means the bear in Korean. Modified by “Ma,” a universal sound for “mother,” both “Goma” and “Mago” refer to the Bear Mother. This assessment merits, among others, an explanation for the bear mytheme in the Goma myth in which Goma is depicted as the head of the royal bear clan. The bear is one of the most prominent symbols of Goma and Mago together with the nine and the tree. Goma, as the bear Goddess, holds together the animal bear, the bear worshipping people, and the circumpolar constellation of the Bears (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) in the Northern Hemisphere. Indicating the bear totem and the bear constellation, the bear symbol runs through her myths and linguistics. In the story, the cave initiation that Goma proposed intimates the ancient bear worshippers associated with the bear’s cyclic behaviors including hibernation for the long winter months in a cave. The bear symbol is important in that it connects Goma (the queen of the bear clan), Mago (the Goddess of the bear constellation), and their devotees, “the royal bear clan,” broadly recognized across cultures. It is not surprising to note that Goma and Mago appear conflated in cultural and devotional practices. Doumu (斗母 Mother of the Northern Dipper) is a prominent example of the amalgamated divine, Magoma. Doumu is well noted for her conflating manifestations among kindred Goddesses in Daoism. Marnix Wells states that Doumu is alternatively identified as Taiyi Yuanjun (太一元君 Goddess of the Great One) and Jiuhuang Daji (九皇大帝 the Great Emperor of Nine Emperors). Doumu is considered as “Mother of Dipper” known as Doumu Yuanjun (斗母元君 “Goddess of the Chariot”) and conflated with Taiyi Yuanjun (太一元君 “Goddess of the Great One”), who is one of the Three Pure Ones. She is considered the mother of the seven stars of the Dipper and two not visible ones, the Jiuhuang Daji (九皇大帝 “Nine Great Divine Kings”).[1] Here Taiyi Yuanjun corresponds to Mago (or the Mago Triad) and Jiuhuwang Daji to Goma (or the Nine Mago Creatrix). As such, Doumu is also related to the number nine symbol, which connects Mago and Goma, a topic to be explained below. Suffice it to say that Doumu, representing Magoma, is a female personification of the inter-cosmic reality unfolded through the circumpolar constellation of the Bears in the Northern Hemisphere in sync with the eco-biotic behavior of bears, as such venerated by their devotees. Goma and the Korean Identity Goma’s alternative names include “Ungnyeo (Female Sovereign),” “Hanung (Han Sovereign),” “Cheonung (Heavenly Soverein),” “Daeung (Great Sovereign),” “Seonhwang (Immortal Emperess),” and “Daein (Great Person)” as well as “Ungssi-ja (Decendant of the Goma Clan), “Ungssi-wang” (Ruler of the Goma Clan), and “Ungssi-gun” (Head of the Goma Clan). The Goma words also include such modifiers as “Ung,” “Gom (Gam, Geum, Geom, Kami)” and “Baedal (Barkdal, Baekdal), “Dan.” Given that her worship is old in origin and non-ethnocentric in nature, the Goma epithets are not limited to the above. It is conjectured that she was revered by other names including the aforementioned Goddesses across cultures. In fact, the Magoist hermeneutic of the Goma myth enables us to reassess variant Halmi (Great Mother/Grandmother/Crone) stories in Korea that have the Magoma mytheme. Among them are Gaeyang Halmi, Seogu Halmi, Angadak Halmi, Dangsan Halmi, to name a few. In any case, the epithet “Goma” is by no means a modern invention. Intriguingly, they are found in place-names, state-names and clan-names, to be discussed shortly. The link between “Ung” and “Gom” is not something unfamiliar to most Koreans. Researchers note that “Goma-seong (Goma Stronghold)” better known “Ungjin-seong” was the capital of ancient Baekje Korea from 475 to 538 CE.[2] However, “Gom” as an alternative epithet of “Goma” remains unfamiliar to many modern Koreans. Furthermore, little known is that “Ungnyeo” is derived from “Goma,” the queen of the bear clan. Korean linguists infer that “Ungsim (熊心)” is an Idu word and should be read “Goma.”[3] Accoding to them, the second character “Sim (心)” meaning “Maeum (마음)” in “Ungsim” is an indicator of its phonetic sound, “Ma.” Following the first character “Go” in “Gom (곰), “Ungsim” should be read as “Goma.” A compound of “Ung (熊)” and “Nyeo (Woman),” “Ungnyeo” is a euphemism for “Ungsim (熊心).” Idu (吏讀 Official’s Script) is an ancient Korean writing system that uses logographic characters for the Korean spoken language. Its use is noted during the early three states (Silla, Goguryeo, Baekje) to Joseon (1392-1919) periods. That Goma is the Idu word for Ungsim offers no small insight. It holds key to unlock a broad range of the Goma words found trans-nationally in East Asia and elsewhere. The Idu word “Ungsim” for “Goma” holds the key to unlock the Goma words that permeate ancient Korean history, language, and culture. Ungsim-yeon (熊心淵 Goma Lake) and Ungsim-san (熊心山Goma Mountain) and Ungsim-guk (熊心國 Goma State) are the most prominent examples. These place-names show how Goma mythology has shaped the landscape of ancient Korean mytho-histories. Ungsim-yeon (Goma Lake) is associated with Yuhwa (Willow Tree …

Month: November 2021

(Special Post 5) Multi-Linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

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(Call for Contributions) Commemorating our ancestor feminists: Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994), Mary Daly (1928-2010), Audre Lorde (1934-1992), Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008), Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004), and Your Hera

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S/HE: IJGS V4 N1-2 2025 (B/W Paperback)

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Program Booklets

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