April 24, 2024April 20, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

Understory – Spring Meditation by Sara Wright

Time stretches, folds back on herself as I gaze out the window squared by the four directions. A slanted sun glows golden green in early twilight. How comforting to see Read More …

(Fiction) Give Me a Boat That Will Carry Two* by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Cristofer, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Evelyn stood on the lake’s shore, startling at the loon’s keening so rare had birdsong become in the past decades. But, yet, now a hundred loons sailed above the water, legs gracefully trailing the wind, for a moment even blocking out the sun. A murmuration of starlings burst against a sky whose blue was so pure, a heavenly color gone so long, that no living human had ever seen it. Past the shore, in the lake’s water, orange and blue fins and tails shimmered, throwing crystalline light into the air. With every breath, Evelyn’s lungs filled with moist, warm oxygen-saturated air. Moose, deer, beaver, wildcat, wolverine, and wolves wandered by, aware of her, but not afraid, as if she were no more threatening than a tree or a boulder. She awoke from her dreaming to her own emptying world weeping. She lay on the same shoreline she had seen in her dream, though now in reality barren of birds, fish, trees, and flowers, the water a shallow puddle exposing a sandy ribbon of fish bodies and dried seaweed. Her feet stood in the liminal place between land and lake that was, even then, slipping away with the wind gusts. She touched the ground that had once been underwater as if she could will the water to return. But the lake continued evaporating into the air, taken up into the sky, perhaps to fall elsewhere on the planet as a deluging flood. A tiny dot on the water moved towards her, a boat with a single rower. She remembered all the mythical stories of those taken across the water in boats to places of paradise and death — the Fortunate Isles, Avalon, the Land of the Dead. For all the troubles of her world, she did not want to go with the rower away from her home to one of these places, though she wasn’t sure why. She remembered how, when she was a child, she would run into the water, then fall and wait for its buoyancy to uplift her. If she began to walk into the water now, she would be far from the shore by the time the rower arrived. She closed her eyes and began to walk, only opening her eyes when she again felt the water’s embrace. She found herself not in the lake, but rather at the bottom of an ocean, perfectly able to breathe the cloudy, gray water. A few mottled fish slowly passed empty shells above a broken, white bleached coral reef. Nearby, nearly covered with barnacles, sat a woman, visible only at random moments as when you watch flashes on an ocean’s surface, sometimes a mermaid, sometimes a female human body with a fish head, sometimes a humanoid. She was in a deep sleep. As Evelyn walked closer to her, her mind became filled with the same images of abundance as in her dream. They were the woman’s dreams, invading Evelyn’s consciousness. Evelyn knew without words that the sleeper was the Ocean Mother from whom all life on Earth had originally emerged, in mourning and depleted from assaults on life both above and below. The love Evelyn felt from and for the woman was immense, a tidal wave of warm pleasure and heart’s joy. Though she had never experienced it in her lifetime, she remembered the world she had seen in the Ocean Mother’s dream, when there was no “wilderness” because all the creation, including humans, were connected and indivisible, in wordless communication, and protecting the well being of the the Earth without question. She was passionately desirous to be at the center of her dream’s maelstrom of sound, motion, color, and relations, constantly changing and growing. “What is wrong?” Evelyn asked the woman, “How can I help?” The woman looked up at Evelyn and smiled, as if she had been waiting centuries for someone to say these words to her. Evelyn opened her eyes again, but this time she was on the opposite shore, where the dead landed after their boat ride. But she breathed. And she saw the boat rowing back towards her from the other shore of the living, coming to transport her there. Her wish had been granted. She was bypassing the certainty and peace of paradise for the uncertain happiness of knowing she was in the very beating heart of all life on our planet. The rower was a very young woman, gazing at her with innocent welcome, unaware that she was seeing herself in the future. Evelyn picked up the second pair of oars and the two of them began to make their way back across the water. When they arrived at the shore, the rower waved as she set off to wait till she was needed again. Evelyn stood where she had just been a moment ago, though it seemed like it had been a lifetime. She was risen from the dead, beginning a new life of the unknown, a reborn being in an old body. A piping plover family were at her feet, two tiny birds who had made a nest in the sand for their three eggs. They had been almost extinct, their sand nests too vulnerable to beachgoers, domestic animals, and developers, but with the help of scientists and volunteers, their species had been slowly recovering and was nearing stability. She sat down by the plover family and vowed that she would stay there till the young birds hatched and flew away. Whatever else she might do with the extra days of life she had been given, this was where she needed to be now. Was the rower who had led her to this Earthly place her true self, the Ocean Mother, or the whole world? Maybe all. It no longer mattered. The plovers would be safe for now.. By NPS Climate Change Response – Piping Plovers, Public Domain This line is from an old Scottish folk song, “The Water is Wide,” that …
(Nine-Sister-Networks News-Update) #1 January 2026

Submit your update to be included in the forthcoming News Update by the 15th here. Lila’s Story2nd Carol Solstice BookS/HE: An International Journal of Goddess StudiesWitch WorkshopsMotherlinesS/HE Online Conference The Wolf Moon Ritual/PerformanceMago Academy [Editorial: Return to Mago E-Magazine (RTME)’s News Update begins to promote networks among organizational representatives and individuals under the rubric of Nine-Sister Networks in an effort to kindle the spirit of Matriversal Feminism, formerly called Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality. We begin with the updates by RTME contributors and hope to invite non-RTME individuals. If you are interested in joining us, see here (Invitation to join RTME’s News-Update).] Notes: Past events are categorized as “Story.” Danica Anderson The Kolo: Women’s Cross Cultural Collaboration- UNESCO Scientific & Education Council danica@kolocollaboration.org Event: I am invited to speak to the class of Introduction to Creatrix Studies (taught by Dr. Helen Hwang) on March 3. Title is Kolo Informed Trauma (KIT): Epigenetic Memory, Matristic Knowledge, and Living Tacit Knowledge Archives. This talk introduces Kolo Informed Trauma (KIT) as a matristic framework grounded in female biology, epigenetic memory, and oral memory practices. Central to KIT is the understanding that the epigenetic memory gene—linked to meaning, purpose, and growth—is matristic in nature, shaped through female biological processes and sustained through repetition, rhythm, and daily life practices rather than survival dominance. Drawing on decades of clinical and fieldwork with women war survivors, I examine how matristic knowledge systems preserve memory not through texts alone, but through artifacts, foodways, domestic architecture, ritual objects, and embodied practices that function as living archives. These artifacts are not symbolic remnants of the past, but active biosemiotic structures through which culture, homeostasis, and continuity are carried forward across generations. The talk situates KIT within matristic histories and practices, offering a lens for understanding how women’s knowledge systems encode survival, meaning, and regeneration beyond patriarchal historical erasure. Helen Benigni Mago Academy, Creatrix StudiesCourse: “Female Divine in Myth, History and Culture” begins on March 2 for 4 weeks. This course traces the evolution of the basic archetypes of the Goddesses of Life, Death and Regeneration outlined by Marija Gimbutas as they evolve from the Paleolithic Era to the Bronze and Iron Ages. Focus on the Creatrix and Regeneration Goddesses in Western Europe and the Mediterranean reveals attributes in the matricentric cultures that allowed all forms of the Goddess to flourish as part of an expression of the Female Divine in myth, history and culture. (Continue to read for course summary.) Registration $50 here. https://www.magoacademy.org/2025/12/28/registration-open-female-divine-in-myth-history-and-culture/.Judy GrahnMago Academy, Creatrix StudiesCourse: The S/HE Forum by Judy Grahn on two Saturdays (2nd and 4th) in February, “Inanna: Examples of Eros and Justice.” Sumerian goddess Inanna is extremely complex, paradoxical, centered in the powers of a woman’s body, and immanent everywhere. Our forum will feature two of her qualities: her erotic love, and her concerns with justice. Feb 7 Dr. Grahn will read some of Inanna’s love poetry, and Dr. Jenett will bring in additional poetry from a civilization in the Indus Valley of north India, that both paralleled and directly traded with Sumer. The Sangam literature addresses the lush erotic powers of women, and the uniquely female quality of attractiveness known as ananku in the literature, and called kuzbu in ancient Sumerian literature. Then on Feb 21, Dr. Grenn will present on the Sumerian/Mesopotamian tradition of Lilith as a figure who resisted a patriarchal paradigm in choosing to flee the prison of “Paradise”, and Dr. Grahn will complete the Forum with her analysis of Inanna’s justice, and in particular her protection of the sexual autonomy of women. Registration $30 here: https://www.magoacademy.org/2025/12/29/s-he-forum-course-spring-2026-registration/.Susan HawthorneSpinifex Press hawsu@spinifexpress.com.au Book: Laila’s Story by Mij Tanith. In January 2023, an Afghan man – a long-term refugee living in Australia – walks into the home of two older women in Adelaide. What begins as a simple request for help evolves into a year-long journey of connection, resilience, and unexpected friendship. Through the story of Laila, a single mother with five daughters, and her growing relationship with the author, this work explores the power of human connection across seemingly insurmountable divides of language, culture, age, sexuality, and faith. Laila and her daughters now reside in Australia. Publication date: March 2026 https://www.spinifexpress.com.au/shop/p/9781922964328.Trista HendrenGirl God Books support@girlgod.orgStory: The last months, I have signed a contract with Deep Books for distribution throughout Europe. So I have been revising many of our older books, and sending them 2 books a month to integrate into their system (since we now have more than 50 books). Additionally, I have been doing a lot of research for our upcoming anthologies. The 4 primary books I hope to publish this year are on the Syrian-Palestinian Goddess Anat, Mother Bear, Snake Goddess, and a 2nd Solstice Carol Books. (Titles and cover art pending for most.) I hope to put out Calls soon! The call for the Carol book is up at – https://www.patreon.com/posts/call-for-carols-116566377.Helen Hye-Sook HwangMago Academymagoacademy@gmail.comCall for Papers: Creatrix Studies Annual Online Conference seeks papers and workshop proposals. Primary deadline: March 1. Theme: Celebrating the Great Unity of ALL in the Cosmic Mother. See Call for Papers and Workshops here: https://www.magoacademy.org/2025/09/30/call-for-papers/.Helen Hye-Sook Hwang & Carolyn Lee BoydReturn to Mago E-Magazine(Search) Volunteer Opportunity with Nine Sisters Network News Update Project. Return to Mago E-Magazine (RTME) is seeking a team of volunteers to assist in the movement of Matriversal Feminism (formerly called Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality) by joining the project of Nine Sister Networks News Update. For the projects of Nine Sister Networks, Nine Poets Speak, and E-Interviews, we have been interviewing organizational representatives as well as influential individuals. As the first step toward the vision of Matriversal Feminism, we will create and publish a monthly news update post (Nine Sister Networks: Stay Informed and Connected). This classified news update will include updates from representatives of the Nine Sisters Network organizations and individuals, and RTME contributors, and eventually RTME readers and supporters. Updates will focus on the publication of new books, events, courses, workshops, services, stories, achievements, companionship, facilities, and other topics. See details here.Glenys LivingstonePaGaian Cosmology pagaian@bigpond.net.au Story: There was an on-line meeting with my Northern Hemisphere …
(Book Announcement 1) She Rises: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality by Helen Hwang

She Rises: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Edited by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Kaalii Cargill Paperback:476 pages Publisher:Mago Books (June 21, 2015) Language:English ISBN-10:1514257696 ISBN-13:978-1514257692 Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches Shipping Weight:8 pounds Anthology: 92 Contributors Available in Mago Bookstore (http://magobooks.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.com).
The Friendship Spell by Hearth Moon Rising

In the mid-80s, in San Francisco, I was having roommate problems. I don’t remember what sparked the issues, exactly, and I’m not sure I ever knew. The only thing clear was that my roommate hated my guts, in an obvious, vocal way, punctuated by all kinds of petty behaviors. Moving out was an option, of course, but even back then rents in the Bay Area were high and good roommate situations difficult to find. Besides, before moving in with her, this woman had been a friend. My first instinct was to try to improve the relationship. Photo: No-W-Y When my attempts at reconciliation failed, I went to one of the neighborhood botanicas and explained the situation. The woman in the shop said I needed a “friendship spell” and sold me a pink candle dressed with rose oil. I followed the woman’s instructions carefully, and as the candle burned the loving vibration was palpable. The response was dramatic. My roommate shifted from disliking me intensely to engaging in a full blown persecution. She began disparaging me to others, even saying things about me that were untrue – although who knows how connected to reality she was in her constant state of dudgeon. She went from constant criticism to silent nasty looks that oozed contempt. After I announced my intention to move, she began throwing away things of mine that occupied common areas. They were inconsequential things, I admit, but it’s the thought that counts. My friends had the theory that the roommate wanted to scapegoat me, and she resented that I was giving her no ammunition. Worse, I had messed up her program by bringing love energy into the house, and it was taking more out of her to maintain hostility. I bought this theory at the time, and I still don’t think it’s wrong, exactly, but I have another perspective. I think energy is energy, and while it takes concerted will and perservation to turn loving energy into hateful action, if a person is determined enough, it can be done. I think she was taking the friendship energy from the spell and using it to fuel her own sick agenda. There’s another explanation for the explosive change in the household environment. The spell, from her perspective, was a violation. After all, I was the one who wanted harmony and love, and I had just assumed that she did, too. I did not have her permission to change the situation. Was I coercing equality and peace onto a person who wanted domination and control, with yours truly as the controllee? There are some who would say the spell was not “karmically balanced.” Photo: Kurt Stuber There is still another explanation. The spell was working on me, and I was becoming more loving and respectful toward myself. It never occurred to me that I had been placating her, like a dog exposing its belly to signify submission, but it’s possible that I was. Reclaiming dignity is a sure way to set an abuser off on a path of rage. None of these explanations are mutually exclusive; they may all have been true to some extent. Whatever the reason for the way that spell explosively backfired, it wasn’t the correct response to a situation where one party was not committed to reconciliation, harmony, and respect. What I needed in that time and place was protective, defensive magic. I want, in future articles, to write more about protective magic for women, because we often find ourselves in situations where, whatever our part in building the poor dynamics, working on ourselves cannot change anything because the other party does not want change. Abuse can come from incels, men’s rights activists, trans rights activists, so-called feminist activists, bullying employers, or male family violence. What abusers have in common is a disinclination to change abusive behaviors. Huwawu. 2nd millenium B.C.E. Photo: Rama We can go to therapy, learn to recognize abusers, learn the ways we ourselves sabotage relationships, begin taking responsibility for our own addictions, codependent behaviors, and boundary violations – but at the end of the day, this can only have partial success in improving outcomes when the other side isn’t playing. These are not scenarios that call for “sending love energy.” At least not initially. One surprising outcome of the “friendship spell” was that I did not carry resentment toward my abusive roommate for long. Today, I recognize her behavior as wrong, and I regret being the target of it, and I can’t exactly say that I wish her well, but I wish her no ill. Mostly, I feel grateful for what the experience taught me about how magical energies work. In my next essay, I will expland on the issues described here through the old Sumerian myth of Gilgamesh and Huwawa. An image of Huwawa was used in Mesopotamia for protection. A version of the myth is contained in the Epic of Gilgamesh, but I think the older tale deserves scrutiny in its own right. https://www.magoism.net/2013/04/meet-mago-contributor-hearth-moon-rising/
(Short Story) Women’s Magic by Kaalii Cargill

Older than the oldest story, a dream rode on the back of the wind, seeking a dreamer. Born in another land – in another time – the dream was in no hurry. It sought a dreamer who carried a particular mix of grief and longing, vulnerability and courage. Millennia passed. The dream travelled from the Old World to the New, carrying an echo of magic and mystery. # In a city in the New World, a modern city with skyscrapers and suburbs, parks and jogging tracks, a man lay sleeping. Jonathon Wiley, a self-declared agnostic, was not expecting dispensation or grace. Life had dealt with him harshly, and he took solace where he could. Sleep, he had found, was the greatest balm of all. The Moon rose over the rooftops of the city, and the dream floated gently down into Jonathon’s sleep. Jonathon stirred, throwing off the bedclothes. He called aloud for Sandra, and she disappeared around yet another corner . . . . . . He found himself walking in a long, winding tunnel. It was so cold his breath hovered in puffs of cloud, and his testes retracted into the warmth of his body. Someone was playing music sweet enough to charm wild beasts, coax tress and rocks to dance, stop the flow of rivers. Jonathon looked in wonder as a man appeared, playing a lyre. Behind him came a woman, dark and beautiful, achingly like his Sandra. The music faltered. The man turned, reaching for the woman. Jonathon watched in horror as the woman began to fade, like an old photograph too long in the light. She stretched her hands towards the man, but a stronger force pulled her away, back to the place between the worlds. With a cry, the man threw himself after her. The lyre sang a single, mournful note as it fell. Still caught in the dream, Jonathon wept. He cried for the man’s loss – and for his own – and for the music that had plucked at his heart with exquisite, unbearable longing. Most of all, he wept because the woman’s face had been Sandra’s, fine-boned like an angel’s. The dream faded, and Jonathon stirred uneasily in his sleep, arms searching for something. His hands closed on emptiness. A chant echoed across his garden. “Everything She touches changes. She changes everything She touches.” The chanting reached into the treetops, disturbing the leafy play of possums, interrupting the dreamless sleep of doves. “Everything She touches changes. She changes everything She touches.” Women’s voices, strong and clear, filled the night, stealing into the quiet, well-appointed houses on Jonathon’s street. Carried on the breeze, the chanting blew in through Jonathon’s window, pulling him all the way back from the in-between place where he was following Sandra’s long, black hair and gamine smile. He did not want to wake; awake, Sandra was dead. He opened his eyes. It was still dark, although moonlight played across his face like warm fingers. Jonathon stood and moved to the window, unsure whether the voices were coming from outside, or were an echo of his dream. There below, in the garden across the fence, black-robed figures walked slowly through the trees. Jonathon blinked and rubbed his eyes. The Moon shone full and bright on the black hoods covering the heads of the women below. Jonathon knew they were women because of their voices. He had no idea who they were, or who lived in the house nestled at the back of the huge garden next door. He used to be curious about neighbours and other things, but that had been when Sandra was there. With a heavy sigh, Jonathon thought that Sandra would probably have befriended whoever lived in the old house and been down there howling at the Moon, or whatever the women were doing in the garden. He opened the balcony door and stepped out into the night. Below him, the black-robed women entered a cleared space between the trees, forming a circle around a single candle in the centre. They faced outwards, towards the shadows of the trees. Jonathon shivered, a prickling on his skin as if her were being watched. He stepped back inside, and reached for a blanket; it suddenly seemed important to cover his nakedness. Below, the chanting stopped, leaving a resonance in the air. The night waited. Jonathon, compelled by something he couldn’t quite name, walked downstairs and out the back door. Heat pulsed through his body, and he felt a stirring of arousal, the first in a long time. His head spun as if he had been drinking red wine all night, but he hadn’t touched alcohol since . . . . . . “Slow down, Jon. It’s so wet!” Sandra’s voice was tight, a residue of their talk over dinner; a special dinner for their anniversary – expensive food, too much wine, and the inevitable conversation about children. “Do you want to drive?” asked Jonathon through clenched teeth. “I’m just asking you to be careful,” said Sandra in the reasonable way she spoke to toddlers, old people, and recalcitrant men. “I’m always careful,” said Jonathon, as the car ahead began to slide across the road. Jonathon braked. With a stomach-rolling lurch, their car skidded sideways, slipping and sliding on the wet road. Hands locked on the steering wheel, Jonathon tried to manage the skid. Just when he thought he had it under control, the car jumped sideways and snaked towards a light pole. Sandra screamed. Jonathon’s senses returned to a strange silence. For a moment he thought he was waking from a night of drinking and partying, but then he remembered. In the passenger seat, Sandra was very still. As always, the flashback left Jonathon sweating and shaking. He forced himself to breathe and to open his eyes. He found himself half-way across the back yard clad only in a blanket. “Bloody sleep walking now!” he muttered as he turned back towards the house. Then the chanting started again. “Everything …
(Essay 2) Language for Goddess: Divine Expression by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is part 2 of an edited excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. It has often seemed generally clearer for me to speak of the “Female Metaphor” rather than “Goddess” since I wished to acknowledge that any language we have for deity or the divine is metaphor, and also I have not wished to imply a ‘God in drag’. I do however, like to use the term “Goddess” especially because I think humans do need to get acclimatized to Her expressed in this form – She has for too long been relegated to the fringes. According to the Webster’s Dictionary, a metaphor is a word or phrase used “to suggest a likeness”[i]; and “Goddess” is a figure of speech suggesting a likeness of femaleness in the divine, or the divine in femaleness. Few argue with that, though many do argue that “God” does not suggest a likeness of maleness in the divine, or the divine in maleness. The term “Goddess” does seem to evoke a different visceral impulse and visualization, which is worth noting. Some primal cultures seem to have never used an equivalent term, but neither was there any problem with a feeling for the Female as Sacred Entity: “Grandmother” spirits and ancestors were greatly revered[ii]. I usually speak of particular Goddesses with a capital ‘g’ – Demeter or Persephone for example, all of whom for me partake in the Female Metaphor; they are particular conflagrations of, are holons of, the Female Metaphor. I use a capital “g” even for these particular Goddesses, partly for political reasons, that is, so their divinity is remembered; but also signifying that I am not simply speaking of an archetype of the Olympian pantheon. As evidence suggests, long before the Goddesses were colonized, married off, raped and caught in sordid plots against each other, they were faces of a Matrix and a Cosmic Power. “Archetype” is a word frequently used to name/describe the Female Metaphor, though it is much less often used to describe other (male) Deities. I prefer not to speak of Her as “archetype”, as this tends to connote a “mindstruct” – something “merely” cultural – and what I wish to convey is the sense of Her as a “physic” of the Universe. Some who use the term “archetype” do appear to mean just that; that is, “archetype” as a “physic”. Joseph Campbell’s view is that archetypes arise not so much “from the mental sphere of rational ideation”[iii], as from the single psychophysiological source common to all humans – the body[iv]. In that sense archetypes arise from “bioenergies that are the essence of life itself”[v]. For Campbell, archetypes are biologically grounded and at once the motivating powers and connoted references of the historically conditioned metaphorical figures of mythologies around the world … (and) … are, like the laws of space, unchanged by changes of location[vi]. This would seem to be the sense in which I mean the Female Metaphor, and at home with the Cosmogenetic Principle of a dynamic creative Cosmos, which I will speak of later. However, in general I feel that the word “archetype” confuses the fundamental sense of the Triple Face Dynamic as I wish to convey it/Her. The evolutionary cosmic dynamics – Cosmogenesis – are not culturally induced phenomena, nor is the cyclical dynamic of the Triple Goddess Metaphor. The Cosmogenesis in which we find ourselves is at once completely physical and manifest, as well as “intra”-physical and unmanifest – it is not “meta”-physical and separate, it is intrinsic with the physical. Physicist David Bohm speaks in terms of “implicate” and “explicate” orders, wherein the “explicate” (or “manifest”, as I have termed it) is “a special and distinguished form contained within the general totality of all the implicate orders”[vii] (or “unmanifest”, as I have termed it). In this way Bohm develops a way of speaking about a “universe of unbroken wholeness”[viii] which is how I understand the physics of the Female Metaphor. Similiarly, some common Pagan language that is used today does not communicate the actual physics of the Universe that it aspires to celebrate, or is at least unhelpful to the changing of our minds; for example, at times Light and Dark are spoken of as being in a battle, which is also the story told in many other religions, in various ways. Often at Winter Solstice for example, the celebrations are languaged as marking Light’s “victory over the darkness of winter”[ix]. Other Pagan sources say it is Dark’s victory – that at Winter Solstice, “darkness triumphs”[x]. Either way it is being storied as a battle, which in actual fact the Sun is not engaged in. I do not think that these expressions conjure a desirable or insightful story about the Light and Dark phenomena caused by Sun’s relationship with Earth. This kind of language does not do this ancient Earth-Wisdom tradition justice for our time, and perhaps it never did amongst those who observed, studied and reflected upon, and taught the Earth Wisdom. Our language needs to fit our understanding of the Universe, needs to fit us (humans and all beings) into – story us into – the Universe, as our minds know it. Language is important to this work of re-inventing and re-storying. Feminist Theology – Thealogy – Poetry The re-storying as I have done it in the work of PaGaian Cosmology is not feminist theology, nor is it thea-logy. Although generally thealogy speaks of our Place as sacred, and frequently with an understanding that “Goddess” is immanent in this place, that She is not an external Deity; I wish to be clear that what I am speaking of, is not a Deity. PaGaian Cosmology is therefore not “theology” nor even “thealogy”. It is a cosmology because what I am speaking of and with is Cosmos – a Place. Earth-based religious traditions and Goddess traditions speak of this Place itself as sacred. “PaGaian” cosmology is a way of speaking about this Place: it implies …
(Poem) Salvator Feminus by Gloria Manthos

No plaisance, all innocence lost The reality of the beast makes the grandeur of real men even more mythical. Consent a myth itself, legendary- the boundary which separates man from animal.
(Essay 1) The Power of Metaphor: Spelling Ourselves, Our World by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone. [This essay is part 1 of an edited excerpt from the Introduction to her book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion.] Metaphor is not merely a matter of language, it is pervasive in everyday thought and action; “the way we think, what we experience, and what we do everyday is very much a matter of metaphor.”[i] Lakoff and Johnson say that conventional ways of talking about anything “pre-suppose a metaphor that we are hardly ever conscious of”.[ii] They make the point that “the metaphor is not merely in the words we use”, that it is in our very concept of the thing.[iii] They say that “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another”;[iv] so (for my purpose here), “the Divine” or however one names what is Deepest in existence, is perhaps not ultimately gendered: that is, not female and not male, though the metaphor used may suggest a likeness. The Webster’s Dictionary defines “metaphor” as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase denoting one kind of object or action is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them”,[v] and further that metaphor is an implied comparison, as opposed to an explicit comparison. As Starhawk notes, “an overt metaphor is a map, a description we may find useful or not, may accept or reject”,[vi] whereas if the metaphor is covert it is free “to restructure our reality by leading us to accept the map as the territory without questioning where we are going or whose interests are being served.”[vii] The fact that the Divine, the Essence of existence, is so ubiquitously called upon as “God”, systematically influences the shape “the Divine” takes, and the way it is talked about.[viii] It suggests a likeness and it is usually a covert metaphor that restructures our reality without question. “The Divine” may be metaphorised many other ways – “vibratory flux”, “creativity”, “relatedness”.[ix] Thus I frequently imply the Divine in many terms – “Deep”, “Change”, “Dark” – and capitalize the terms to signify this. I feel this is a necessary process for the changing and diversifying of minds. Mary Daly points out that “the word metaphor is derived from the Greek meta plus pherein, meaning to bear, carry” and that “metapherein means to transfer, change”.[x] Metaphors may thus “transform/transfer our perceptions of reality, enabling us to ‘break set’ and thus to break out of linguistic prisons.”[xi] Joseph Campbell describes a functioning mythology as “an organization of metaphorical figures connotative of states of mind that are not finally of this or that place and time …”,[xii] and such are made known in visual art and verbal narrative (written and oral). It is applied to communal life by way of a calendar of symbolic rites, festivals and ceremonies, that enable the community to participate “with its universe in eternity.”[xiii] Campbell notes how, in the popular mind, “such metaphors of transcendence” get locked into chiefly functions of control and socializing, but that “the way of the mystic and of proper art (and we might also add, religion) is of recognizing through the metaphors an epiphany beyond words.”[xiv] Campbell was convinced of the necessity – “a social as well as spiritual necessity”[xv] – of a new mythology that he felt was “already implicit among us as knowledge a priori, native to the mind.”[xvi] At the heart of the metaphorical change that re-storying may enable, is a change of the felt need in the cultural psyche to “slay the dragon” – to be free of the matter, out of which we and all, arises. Re-storying may enable “embracing of the dragon”. The Dragon – the serpent – represents a cosmology that assents to change, IS about change. Our culture and its metaphors has craved permanence, and is unable to deal with loss – which is essentially Change. The “Moon Goddess”, the Female Metaphor in Her three aspects, passes through waning into the Darkness, from which there is renewal. Brian Swimme says that to enter into the terror of loss, offers the opportunity to accept what is real, and it is the way to unite with what is eternal.[xvii] I am not suggesting that human hunger for the eternal is aberrant; it may be met, in and through the Matter in which we are. In my Search, which I have been able to also document academically, I have been seeking the essential nature of all things. This was also the aim of the early Greek philosophers and they called this essential nature “physis”. As Capra notes: “The term ‘physics’ is derived from this Greek word and meant therefore, originally, the endeavour of seeing the essential nature of all things.”[xviii] My quest is therefore very related to physics poetically – physics itself and my quest are both a kind of Poetry.[xix] My understanding of “Goddess” is as a creative metaphor for the essential nature of all things. In Her three aspects, She is the “Triskele” of energy, the dynamics of Cosmogenesis, “the innate triplicity of the Cosmos … that runs through every part of the universe”[xx] and is available to all. The “triskele” is a sacred symbol of the Celtic peoples, which consists of three interlocking spirals or sometimes three bent legs radiating from a centre, understood to be in perpetual motion. To draw upon this triple-limbed wheel, was to “grace our lives with an ever-living energy that encompasses the beginning, middle and end of everything we undertake.”[xxi] The term “triskele” itself, and its symbolic representation, could be said to be metaphor for the triple-action biospheric reality described by Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky: At each moment there are a hundred million million tons of living matter in the biosphere, always in a state of movement. The mass is decomposed, forms itself anew mainly by multiplication. Generations are thus born … unceasingly.[xxii] She – and We – may be described with overt, poetic, and scientific metaphor that links us directly to …
(Essay Part 1) Language for Goddess: Divine Expression by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D

This essay is part 1 of an edited excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. ‘Goddess’, as I understand the term, is the female metaphor for the Great Creative Principle of the Universe. As such, She is both the Matrix, and immediately also an wholistic template of Being; that is, She is whole and complete within Herself, and She is a complete illustration of the process of coming into being and passing away. Her three aspects are often based on chronological/biological phases of a woman’s life, but the aspects are not in any way limited to those biological phases … those particular phases are actually just one of the valencies of the three omnipresent cosmic qualities of being that the ancients in many cultures noticed and celebrated. It seems that the three aspects were understood as a dynamic of ultimate Creativity, which is why they were so revered and celebrated. One witness to that is the Triple Spiral engraved in central position at Bru-na-Boinne (Newgrange) in Ireland. The significance of the Bru-na-Boinne monument may yet to be fully understood, as the heretofore ethnocentric minds of researchers only now begin to remember the Goddess centred minds that built it. This is true also of other monuments and artifacts in Old Europe, which have puzzled patriarchal Earth-alienated minds.[1] I propose that the Triple Spiral encoded at Bru-na-Boinne may specifically celebrate the triple faced female metaphor – ‘Goddess’ – as ‘Cosmic Dynamic of Creativity’; it seems so since it is lit up at the moment of Winter Solstice, the Seasonal Moment that especially celebrates Origins and the renewal of Earth-Sun creativity.[2] I understand ‘Creativity’ as another name for the Mystery of Being, and it is what I understand as the essence of Being. As Loren Eiseley reflects, No utilitarian philosophy explains a snow crystal, no doctrine of use or disuse. Water has merely leapt out of vapor and thin nothingness in the night sky to array itself in form. There is no logical reason for the existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution.[3] ‘Creativity’ is also a term used by process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead for “the Category of the Ultimate”[4] and he refers to it as threefold in nature.[5] Thus, so do I understand ‘Goddess’ – the dynamic, triple-faced metaphor: She may enable the identification of life itself, as we witness it, experience it, and inter-act with it, with the manifestation of the ultimate Mystery at the heart and origin of existence. To further this identification I have associated the three faces of the Female Metaphor – Goddess – with three characteristics of what is scientifically known as Cosmogenesis, the omnipresent creative dynamic essential to all structure and form in the Universe. These qualities of Cosmogenesis are referred to by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry in their story of the Universe. They describe them as three central tendencies, which are “the cosmological orderings of the creative display of energy everywhere and at any time throughout the history of the universe.”[6] The three chronological/biological phases of a woman’s life in which the faces of Goddess are mirrored are: pre-menarchal young one, menstrual mother, and post-menopausal elder; and thus they have been known as Virgin/Maiden, Mother/Creator, Old One/Crone. It is necessary to ‘re-story’ these terms, since women and men in these times, no longer understand them in their full integrity – diminished, trivialized and even demonized as they have been by millennia of patriarchal narrative. Whereas, in the earliest of times of consciousness, and even later, these phases seem to have been sensed as aspects of the Great Creative Process whereby life continued, they had in recent patriarchal times lost their sacred essence. Indeed the Great Creative Process itself, expressed in the female as sacred, had become background. The mother became mere vessel, and ‘useful’ in this mode. The young virgin became a prize to be taken, the older virgin became a harsh deviant to be avoided. The old one became ‘used up’ and troublesome. Adam McLean advises that: To find the Triple Goddess … we must go back to an early stratum of myth. Long before the ascendancy of the Christ myth, the primal myths of the Goddess had been overlaid with generations of masculine Gods usurping her place in the scheme of things, taking over her sacred centres and grasping for themselves some facet of her attributes. If we go back to the earliest myths of humankind we will find the goddess in her purest, usually triune, form.[7] The re-storying of women – the Being of the female, is a preface to being able to speak sensibly of how Virgin-Mother-Crone could be a metaphor for the mystery of being. It is then possible to relate these three aspects to the evolutionary cosmic dynamics – to ‘Cosmogenesis’ – as a way of deepening awareness of them in the present moment and as a way of entering into the Female Metaphor more fully; as a way of comprehending or sensing ‘Goddess’. The seasonal celebrations then may become a way of accessing the Metaphor, embodying ‘Goddess’, and developing personal and cultural relationship to the Cosmos. The process of celebrating Her annual cycle of Creativity is a process of joining Earth in Her annual journey of descent and return, in Her divine expression. Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [1] See Paul Devereaux Earth Memory p.34 and 120-124, Michael Dames The Silbury Treasure, Claire French The Celtic Goddess, p.22. [2] other valencies may be included, as with all poetry and art. [3] Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, p.27. [4] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p.28. [5] More of this is described in PaGaian Cosmology, Chapter 4: see “Whitehead’s ‘Threefold Creative Composition’”. [6] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.72. [7] Adam McLean, The Triple Goddess, p.12-13. REFERENCES: Dames, Michael. The Silbury Treasure: The Great Goddess Rediscovered. London: Thames and Hudson,1976. Devereux, Paul. Earth Memory: The Holistic …

(Special Post 7) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. Special thanks to Trista Hendren, founder and author of The Girl God, who passionately and painstakingly promotes the message of each contributor via Facebook’s memes. Without Trista’s devotion to the advocacy, this collective effort would not have continued. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Kaalii Cargill: Life emerges from the Feminine: Woman, Nature, Goddess. When we value the life-giving power of the Feminine we are less likely to kill other human beings who have been held in a mother’s arms.
(Special Post Mother Teresa 2) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

[Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] Part II: We Disagree! Stand up for what you believe but be open-minded! Naa Ayele Kumari: I am going to step away from the common responses and say this… Binary is only no in betweens if you choose sides and can’t see the whole. I have been a part of black consciousness movements and women’s movements and both have the capacity for progress as well as extreme viewpoints. Both have the capacity to become so hypercritical that the movement itself transcends common human compassion and understanding. Mother Teresa was a human being with flaws and goodness. She had a public image and private fears and insecurities.. l like all of us. She lived her life the best way she knew how.. Like all of us. She made mistakes.. misjudgments.. Like all of us. But she also DID help and inspire others to help too. It is this dualistic thinking that forces people to feel like they have to assign the label of good or bad and no in between. None of us are all good or all bad.. so it seems to me that to label her has an evil traitor who let people die is no better than labeling her an Angel of god who did no wrong. She was a woman who lived her life and managed to come to worldwide fame and inspire others to love at a time and in an institution that was highly patriarchal and women were not raised up at all. Mother Goddesses in Africa were known for great nurturing and care symbolized by carrying a baby and also carried a machete on the other side for justice. This was the fine balance of wholeness…she was the gentle rain and the storm.. This was binary, but not one or the other but both.. Opposite ends of the same pole. [H]: I’m having a powerful visceral effect from this conversation. I feel as if I’m going to vomit violently. Mother Teresa comes to me in dreams and meditations. Makes me wonder what kind of person I’m seen as if I attract her energy. I have always felt so much love for her. Naa Ayele Kumari: If she comes in your dreams and it has been healing for you… Allow it/ her to continue to be healing for you. Its all about love and anything that is not love… Leave it be.. Vomiting is rejecting something that doesn’t belong with you. Embrace love my sister. Antonia McGuire: I think we may all agree that all belief systems initially began to promote a sense of goodness or fairness to some degree, but over time they are corrupted and produce both advantages and disadvantages. Donna Snyder: Yes, Gandhi, too. Back in the 90’s when I was in a band/performance art troupe called Central Nervous System, I shocked all the guys in the band coming out with an improv in response to a melody played on a banjo tuned like a sitar, called exactly that-Yes, Gandhi. Now make no mistake, he is one of my heroes, devoid of the falsified sentimentality that clings to MT. Gandhi’s work was for the world, for the masses, not for the appropriately humbled. Yet I spoke out about his sexual practices, his use of female bodies. Telling the truth about a hero requires courage. Retreating into a blind defense of a myth is a form of ethical cowardice. Anne Wilkerson Allen: Strangely I had a discussion with someone about the “hero’s journey” moving from metaphorical to physical being part of the problem…..when the “demons” are human instead of our own flaws, there seems to be a tendency to point the finger (and gun barrel) elsewhere. [B]: Fascinating & thought-provoking conversation, all. I think the biggest stumbling block I have with MT is how her acceptance of the dogma of the Catholic church blinded her to seeing and then being moved by the suffering of others enough to do something to alleviate & not vicariously celebrate it. No wonder she “suffered a lack of connection with the Divine”. This crisis with her spirituality seems to have been divorced from her and others’ body wisdom. Self-abnegation (perhaps not the same as “sacrifice”) ultimately backfires because some small part of us insists, “I am worthy!” To which I say, “We are all worthy!” [H]: I do not see or feel that she vicariously celebrated the suffering of others. I feel that she devoted her life to deeply loving and serving the poorest of the poor. I have not been to Calcutta and I have also seen some unimaginable poverty in India that is not like anything that I’ve been exposed to before. I truly believe that she had a very deep way of working with suffering that is not necessarily visible to those more accustomed to modern medical intervention and the resources available for such. I have participated in a very small amount of poverty medicine and the resources that we take for granted are just not readily available to MANY. I learned very powerfully from my experience how blessed and fortunate and often very careless we really are with our precious resources. This discussion has been a learning experience for me. I am trying to not take the critical comments […]
(Special Post 4) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Yvonne Lucia: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” -British suffragist and journalist Rebecca West “When the God is male, the male is God.” -Mary Daly Yvonne Lucia sacredartportal.com Lila Moore: My first piece of performance art was a ritual inspired by Isis. However, as a young artist, my interest in combining art and ritual was devalued by my teachers and critics alike. I felt isolated and persecuted. Only after relocating to London was I able to gradually understand that my personal and creative aspiration was integral part of a collective and global feminine and feminist awakening. I realised that personal experiences of women have political perspectives, and that being a contemporary woman artist positions me in the midst of historical and cultural enterprise. As an artist-film-maker and scholar, I have regarded my work as a spiritual quest, exploring through dance-ritual and art films the interaction of the body and psyche with the natural environment and technology. In the 21st century, my interest in the healing and transforming aspects of images on screen has been combined with a growing sense of activism. It seems inconceivable to take images of nature out of context by ignoring the ecological holocaust which is evident everywhere. I have felt compelled to ask whether the needs of the body and mind can be separated from the needs of the Earth?

(Book Excerpt) Held in the Womb of the Wheel of the Year by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from the Introduction of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Meditation cushion in circle of decorated stones My ancestors built great circles of stones that represented their perception of real time and space, and enabled them to tell time: the stone circles were cosmic calendars.[i] They went to great lengths and detail to get it right. It was obviously very important to them to have the stones of a particular kind, in the right positions according to position of the Sun at different times of the year, and then to celebrate ceremony within it. I have for decades had a much smaller circle of stones assembled. I have regarded this small circle of stones as a medicine wheel. It is a portable collection, that I can spread out in my living space, or let sit in a small circle on an altar, with a candle/candles in the middle. Each stone (or objects, as some are) represents a particular Seasonal Moment/transition and is placed in the corresponding direction. The small circle of eight stones represents the flow of the Solstices and Equinoxes and the cross-quarter Moments in between: that is, it represents the “Wheel of the Year” as it is commonly known in Pagan traditions. I have found this assembled circle to have been an important presence. It makes the year, my everyday sacred journey of Earth around Sun, tangible and visible as a circle, and has been a method of changing my mind, as I am placed in real space and time. My stone wheel has been a method of bringing me home to my indigenous sense of being. Each stone/object of my small wheel may be understood to represent a “moment of grace,” as Thomas Berry named the seasonal transitions – each is a threshold to the Centre, wherein I may now sit: I sense it as a powerful point. As I sit on the floor in the centre of my small circle of stones, I reflect on its significance as I have come to know the Seasonal transitions that it marks, over decades of celebrating them. I sense the aesthetics and poetry of each. I facilitated and was part of the celebration and contemplation of these Moments in my region for decades. It was always an open group that gathered, and so its participants changed over the years but it remained in form, like a live body which it was: a ceremonial body that conversed with the sacred Cosmos in my place. We spoke a year-long story and poetry of never-ending renewal – of the unfolding self, Earth and Cosmos. We danced and chanted our relationship with the Mother, opened ourselves to Her Creativity, and conversed with Her by this method. All participants in their own way within these ceremonies made meaning of their lives – which is what I understand relationship to be, in this context of Earth and Sun, our Place and Home in the Cosmos: that is, existence is innately meaningful when a being knows Who one is and Where one is. Barbara Walker notes that religions based on the Mother are free of the “neurotic” quest for indefinable meaning in life as such religions “never assumed that life would be required to justify itself.”[ii] I face the North stone, which in my hemisphere is where I place the Summer Solstice. From behind me and to my right is the light part of the cycle – representing manifest form, all that we see and touch. From behind me and to my left is the dark part of the cycle – representing the manifesting, the reality beneath the visible, which includes the non-visible. The Centre wherein I sit, represents the present. The wheel of stones has offered to me a way of experiencing the present as “presence,” as it recalls in an instant that, That which has been and that which is to come are not elsewhere – they are not autonomous dimensions independent of the encompassing present in which we dwell. They are, rather, the very depths of this living place – the hidden depth of its distances and the concealed depth on which we stand.[iii] This wheel of stones, which captures the Wheel of the Year in essence, locates me in the deep present, wherein the past and the future are contained – both always gestating in the dark, through the gateways. And all this has been continually enacted and expressed in the ceremonies of the Wheel of the Year, as the open, yet formal group has done them, mostly in the place of Blue Mountains, Australia. PaGaian Cosmology altar/mandala: a “Womb of Gaia” map Over the years of practice of ritually celebrating these eight Seasonal Moments – Earth’s whole annual journey around Sun, I have been held in this creative story, this Story of Creativity as it may be written – it is a sacred story. Her pattern of Creativity can be identified at all levels of reality – manifesting in seasonal cycles, moon cycles, body cycles – and to be aligned with it aligns a person’s core with the Creative Mother Universe. I have identified the placing of one’s self within this wheel through ceremonial practice of the whole year of creativity, as the placing of one’s self in Her Womb – Gaia’s Womb, a Place of Creativity. All that is necessary for Creativity is present in this Place. All may come forth from here/Here – and so it does, and so it has, and so it will. NOTES: [i] See Martin Brennan, The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland (Rochester Vermont, Inner Traditions, 1994). [ii] Barbara Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 693. [iii] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 216. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Brennan, Martin. The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland.Rochester Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1994. Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: …
(Essay) Walking with Bb by Sara Wright

Walking with Bb: a story exploring the psychic connection between one woman and her bear. Preface: The black bear – hunting season in Maine is brutal – four months of bear hell – five if one includes the month where hunters can track bears for “practice” with hounds – separate mothers and cubs, terrorize them, tree them and do anything but legally kill them. During the legal slaughter, Hunters bait bears with junk food by putting old donuts etc. in cans and shoot the bear while he or she is eating. Most bears (82 percent) are slaughtered in this manner, the rest are killed by hounding and trapping. The season begins in August and lasts through December. Trapping, by the way, is illegal in every state but Maine. Black bears are hated, and that hatred will, of course, eventually result in their extirpation. I had a shy (male) year old black bear visiting my house this past summer with whom I developed a friendship, and what follows is part of our story: Last Saturday I was walking down the road when I remembered that I had not done my daily “circle of protection” imaging for Bb (standing as he was the day he visited me at the window early in August). When I began to do this another picture of Bb moving on all four feet with his face turned towards mine super-imposed itself over his standing image. I could almost see his expression, but not quite. I didn’t know what this imaging meant beyond that we were communicating in some unknown way, and he was in the area (not a good thing on hunting Saturdays). He had not been coming in most nights and I was worried… That night he came. He is still making nightly visits five days later, the most sequentially consistent visits since September 15th, the day I believed that he had been shot. This experience prompted me to write about telepathy and precognition. It is close to All Hallows and the full Hunter’s moon (Nov 3). I keep listening to Charlie Russell’ story which reminds me that loving bears (especially male bears) is hard, almost a sure recipe for disaster, and that I was not alone in this deep concern for and fear of losing Bb. I can barely stand to remember my other bear losses and I can’t stand feeling them. Even after I wrote about the incident with Bb, the experience seemed to carry a charge that didn’t dissipate. Had I missed something? Next I wrote “Root Healer,” exploring the possibility that as I continued to act as Bb’s “little bear mother” now employing psychic techniques to keep him safe (in some desperation as it was the only means left open to me to protect this very vulnerable yearling), that Bb’s presence might also include a gift for me and that it might involve some kind of root healing for my body because Nature thrives on reciprocity. One idea I missed completely, for it was so obvious. Bb’s image was communicating to me that we were having a psychic conversation in that very moment. It was the first time in three months of imaging protective circles that moved with him that I had confirmation from him that we were communicating effectively in this unknown way. This rarely happens. Normally when I do this kind of work, I just do it. I don’t get direct confirmation that it’s working from the animal itself (except with Lily b). Knowing this helped me make another decision I might not have made so intentionally. The hunting season will last into mid December, and I will be traveling during that last month. I keep thinking that putting actual physical distance between Bb and I might pose more of a threat for his life and I have to remind myself that psychic phenomena are not distance dependent. I should be able to image that protective circle every day and feel that it is working. Bb has already shown me that it can but I fear adding distance because I don’t completely trust my own perceptions.* I suspect believing might be an additional dimension of ensuring success when it comes to psychic protection for this bear. But how do I incorporate belief into a picture that is so clouded with personal/cultural doubt? Half the time I don’t believe myself and virtually no one except Rupert Sheldrake, Iren and Harriet have ever taken my experiences seriously. I have to remind myself that I have done this work many times dealing with doubt and it worked anyway. The point of writing this reflection might be to put me on a new edge of increasing Bb’s odds of survival. If it’s possible that an attitude that embraces believing in what I do could help me protect Bb more effectively until hunting is over and its time for him to den in peace I want to claim it. The question I need to answer now is how to go about moving into a more trusting self as a woman who continues to walk with a bear at her side? The night after I wrote the above paragraph I dream of the doubters in the roles of my parents, and in a friend. I take these dreams seriously as doubters inside me and out. These dreams may be telling me that it is unreasonable to expect me to believe that what I do works when no one else does? The problem with this idea is that on some level I do believe. I feel as if I am walking with this bear, every single day. I think about him constantly. The only thing that got me out of the house yesterday was that he was out of chocolate donuts. Something is intensifying my relationship with Bb although I never see him. I am caught in a field of bear energy and information, perhaps through some version of beauty and the beast. That an archetype is …
Lammas/Late Summer in PaGaian tradition By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Traditionally the dates for this Seasonal Moment are: Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd however the actual astronomical date varies. See archaeoastronomy.com for the actual moment. Lammas table/altar Lammas, as it is often called[1], is the meridian point of the first dark quarter of the year, between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox; it is after the light phase has peaked and is complete, and as such, I choose it as a special celebration of the Crone/Old One. Within the Celtic tradition, it is the wake of Lugh, the Sun King, and it is the Crone that reaps him. But within earlier Goddess traditions, all the transformations were Hers[2]; and the community reflected on the reality that the Mother aspect of the Goddess, having come to fruition, from Lammas on would enter the Earth and slowly become transformed into the Old Woman-Hecate-Cailleach aspect …[3] I dedicate Lammas to the face of the Old One, just as Imbolc, its polar opposite on the Wheel in Old European tradition, is dedicated to the Virgin/Maiden face. The Old One, the Dark and Shining One, has been much maligned, so to celebrate Her can be more of a challenge in our present cultural context. Lammas may be an opportunity to re-aquaint ourselves with the Crone in her purity, to fall in love with Her again. I state the purpose of the seasonal gathering thus: This is the season of the waxing dark. The seed of darkness born at the Summer Solstice now grows … the dark part of the days grows visibly longer. Earth’s tilt is taking us back away from the Sun. This is the time when we celebrate dissolution; each unique self lets go, to the Darkness. It is the time of ending, when the grain, the fruit, is harvested. We meet to remember the Dark Sentience, the All-Nourishing Abyss, She from whom we arise, in whom we are immersed, and to whom we return. This is the time of the Crone, the Wise Dark One, who accepts and receives our harvest, who grinds the grain, who dismantles what has gone before. She is Hecate, Lillith, Medusa, Kali, Erishkagel,Chamunda, Coatlique – Divine Compassionate One, She Who Creates the Space to Be. We meet to accept Her transformative embrace, trusting Her knowing, which is beyond all knowledge. Lammas is the seasonal moment for recognizing that we dissolve into the “night” of the Larger Organism of whom we are part – Gaia. It is She who is immortal, from whom we arise, and into whom we dissolve. This celebration is a development of what was born in the transition of Summer Solstice; the dark sentient Source of Creativity is honoured. The autopoietic space in us recognizes Her, is comforted by Her, desires Her self-transcendence and self-dissolution; Lammas is an opportunity to be with our organism’s love of Larger Self – this Native Place. We have been taught to fear Her, but at this Seasonal Moment we may remember that She is the compassionate One, deeply committed to transformation, which is actually innate to us. Whereas at Imbolc/Early Spring, we shone forth as individual, multiforms of Her; at Lammas, we small individual selves remember that we are She and dissolve back into Her. We are the Promise of Lifeas was affirmed at Imbolc, but we are the Promise of Her- it is not ours to hold. We identify as the sacred Harvest at Lammas; our individual harvest isHer Harvest. We are the process itself – we are Gaia’s Process. Wedo not breathe (though of course we do), we borrow the breath, for a while. It is like a relay: we pick the breath up, create what we do during our time with it, and pass it on. The harvest we reap in our individual lives is important, andit is for us only short term; it belongs to the Cosmos in the long term. Lammas is a time for “making sacred” – as “sacrifice” may be understood; we may “make sacred” ourselves. As Imbolc was a time for dedication, so is Lammas. This is the wisdom of the phase of the Old One. She is the aspect that finds the “yes” to letting go, to loving the Larger Self, beyond all knowledge, and steps into the power of the Abyss; encouraged and nourished by the harvest, She will gradually move into the balance of Autumn Equinox/Mabon, the next Sesaonal Moment on the year’s cycle. References: Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess.Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990. Gray, Susan. The Woman’s Book of Runes.New York: Barnes and Noble, 1999. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. McLean, Adam. The Four Fire Festivals. Edinburgh: Megalithic Research Publications, 1979. Notes: [1]See note 3. [2]Susan Gray, The Woman’s Book of Runes,p. 18. This is also to say that the transformations are within each being, not elsewhere, that is the “sacrifice” is not carried out by another external to the self, as could be and have been interpreted from stories of Lugh or Jesus. [3]Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, The Year of the Goddess, p.143, quoting Adam McLean, Fire Festivals,p.20-22. Another indication of the earlier tradition beneath “Lughnasad” is the other name for it in Ireland of “Tailltean Games”. Taillte was said to be Lugh’s foster-mother, and it was her death that was being commemmorated (Mike Nichols, “The First Harvest”, Pagan Alliance Newsletter NSW Australia). The name “Tailtunasad” has been suggested for this Seasonal Moment, by Cheryl Straffon editor of Goddess Alive! I prefer the name of Lammas, although some think it is a Christian term: however some sources say that Lammas means “feast of the bread” which is how I have understood it, and surely such a feast pre-dates Christianity. It is my opinion that the incoming Christians preferred “Lammas” to “Lughnasad”: the term itself is not Christian in origin. The evolution of all these things is complex, and we may evolve them further with our careful thoughts and experience.
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/
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 7) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) at Mago Bookstore. YEARLY LEAP DAY AND EVERY FOURTH YEAR LEAP DAY Each Sa includes a Dan of the big Sa. A Dan is equal to one day. That adds to 365 days. At the half point of the third Sa, there is a Pan of the big Sak (the year of the great dark moon). A Pan comes at a half point of Sa. This is of Beopsu (Lawful Number) 2, 5, 8. A Pan is equal to a day. Therefore, the fourth Sa has 366 days. Each year has a leap day (Dan), which makes a total of 365 days. Every fourth year is a leap year that has a leap day (Pan), which makes a total of 366 days. The Dan day comes before the New Year in the winter solstice month. And the Pan day comes before the first day of the summer solstice month in the fourth year. The above, however, does not indicate when the New Year comes. Logographic characters of Dan and Pan each suggest their meanings. While each year includes the Dan day (the morning), every fourth year has the Pan day. A unit of four years makes the Big Calendar. Dan (旦 Morning) Leap day for every first three years Pan (昄 Big) Leap day for every fourth year I have postulated that the year begins on the Dan day (one leap day), a day before New Year that comes in the month of Winter Solstice in the Norther Hemisphere. And the Pan day comes on the day before the first day of the 7th month that has Summer Solstice in the fourth year in the Norther Hemisphere. Years Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Months Dan Dan Dan Dan 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 Pan 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 11 11 11 11 12 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 Days 365 365 365 366 The Magoist Calendar’s intercalation involves one leap day every year and one leap day every four years. That is, each year has one extra day to make it 365 days. Every fourth year has an extra day to make it 366 days. Four years has a total of 1461 days (365×3+366), which makes the mean of 365.25 days. Considering that the month is following the sidereal period rather than the synodic period, it is inferred that the year also follows the sidereal year rather than the solar year. In fact, Magoist Calendar’s one year is very close to today’s 365.25636 days of the sidereal year compared to 365.24217 days of the solar year or the tropical year. Given that, as seen below, the Budoji mentions the tiniest discrepancy of one leap day for 31,788,900 years, the discrepancy between 365.25 and 365.25636 (0.00636 day) can be explained that the year was actually 365.25 days at the time of Budo circa 2333 BCE, 4440 years ago. In other words, there is a discrepancy of 0.12375936 seconds between 2017 CE and 2333 BCE. Regarding Lawful Numbers 2, 5, 8, it is involved as follows: 365 days (3+6+5=14, 1+4=5) Lawful Numbers 2, 5, 8 refers the unit of 365 days (364 days with one intercalary day). Further dynamics are unknown. The sidereal year refers to the time taken by the Earth to orbit the sun once with respect to the distant stars. In contrast, the solar or tropical year means the time taken by the Earth to orbit the sun once with respect to the sun. The sidereal year, 365.25636 days, is about 20 minutes and 24 seconds longer than the mean tropical year (365.24217 days) and about 19 minutes and 57 seconds longer than the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days. The difference occurs primarily because the solar system spins on its own axis and around the Milky Way galactic center making the solar year’s observed position relative. Time is no independent concept apart from space and the agent. The very concept of time is preceded by the agent bound in a space. It is always contextualized. In Magoism, both calendar and time are born out of the cosmogonic universe, the universe that is in self-creation. Like calendar, time is to be discovered or measured. It is a numinous concept. The very concept of time testifies to the reality of the Creatrix. Time proves the orderly movement of the universe into which we are born. Calendar patterns time, whereas time undergirds calendar. How can we measure time? We are given the time of the Earth that comes from its rotation, revolution, and precession in sync with the moon and the sun (and its planets). One type of time is the solar time. The solar time is a calculation of time based on the position of the sun. Traditionally, the solar time is measured by the sundial. The solar time is, however, specific to the Earth only. It is valid only for the-same-observed-location. It is not made to be used for the time of another celestial body. For example, Mars’ solar time has to be measured independently based on its own rotation and revolution rates. The solar time is an isolated time. It is static and exclusive, not made for the time of other celestial bodies. By nature, it is unfit for connection and communication across celestial bodies. The second type is the sidereal time. The sidereal time is a time scale based on the rate of Earth’s rotations measured relative to the distant stars.[29] Because the observed position is in the far distant stars beyond the solar system, the sidereal time may as well be called an extrasolar stellar time. We can think of the observer’s position of an imaginary cosmic bird far out there, infinitely far beyond not only the solar system and …
(Essay) Contemplating How Her Creativity Proceeds by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

(Mago Stronghold Essay 1) The Forgotten Primordial Paradise by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Part I Multivalent Meaning of Mago Stronghold Mago Stronghold (麻姑城, Mago-seong) refers to the center of the world (axis mundi) in the Magoist Cosmogony. It is a metaphor for the Source/Origin/Womb of Life for terrestrial beings. Mago Stronghold represents the forgotten paradise of the Great Goddess in patriarchy. In patriarchal times, it has become a code to unlock the hidden S/HE Reality. As one’s life in the body and mind is the very proof for the first mother, “Mago,” from whom one comes, the existence of Mago Stronghold in toponym and meaning is the very token to prove vital for the primordial home of terrestrial beings, also called the Earth. The Mago Stronghold talk, upon being fully deciphered, merits the bird’s eye view of human history from the cosmogonic beginning of the Great Goddess to this day. Its message is, among others, we are NOT locked out from the blissful time of S/HE beginning. We are NOT disconnected from our ancestors and deities. And we are NOT substantively different from our non-human sojourns. All in WE are found in Mago Stronghold. I present my investigation of Mago Stronghold, rather than a new theory, as an alternative mode of perceiving reality. The Mago Stronghold talk answers the ultimate question of “who I am” as a person and why we are here in our life journey. It is meant to engender metamorphosis, the process of awakening and navigating in S/HE Reality, for both an individual and the collective. We realize that no one is bound to patriarchal reality except those who create it. WE are HERE/NOW. However, the full-fledged implication of Mago Stronghold can’t be unveiled without naming the systemic working of mental blocks and lifting the limit. Official (read patriarchal) historiography is not the place where we nest our conversation. Linear thinking can’t help us arrive at the Scene. Thinking within ethnocentric and nationalist grids is among the mental blocks. We are invited to explore a whole new/old/original way of seeing and knowing matters. You and I across cultures, nationalities, and geographies have a lot in common to talk and think about. Precisely, the Mago Stronghold talk bridges the gap among moderns. Its implication is NOT confined to Korea or East Asia. One may wonder how it is so? The concept of Mago Stronghold, remembered by East Asian Magoists, concerns the common origin of all beings on Earth. Discourse on the Great Goddess/Primordial Mother/Creatrix can’t be parochial by nature. It maps out the gynocentric consciousness of WE, which redefines national/cultural identities as consanguineous. The Mago Stronghold talk works at multi-dimensions crisscrossing and connecting the personal and the collective, the local and the universal, and the physical and the symbolic. Mago Stronghold found across Korea and China is no ordinary cultural or historical landmark. It is also equated with Mago Mountain or Triad Mountain. The extant toponym of Mago Stronghold is a door to the Other Realm of the Great Goddess. Precisely, it signifies the Primordial/Perennial Home for not only the Mago Clan (Mago and HER divine and human descendants) but also all terrestrial beings, according to the Magoist Cosmogony. “Mago Stronghold” is an eponym for such socio-natural-architectural variations as castles, citadels, mountain villages, fortresses, stone walls, earthen walls, and ultimately the Earth. It is etiological, explaining the gynocentric origin of the axis mundi and the sacred mountain reverence known in many ancient worlds. Macrocosmically, Mago Stronghold refers to the Earth, the Splendid Land of the Primordial Mother. Residing in the Big Dipper (Seven Stars),[1] Mago governs the solar system and chooses the Earth as HER Garden.[2] S/HE delegates HER divine and human offspring to cultivate sonic resonance in harmony with cosmic music. In that sense, Earth IS HER Civilization. Its literal meaning, the Stronghold of the Great Goddess, conveys that all Earth’s civilizations are born of the Great Goddess. The Mago Civilization of Earth is aligned with the Law of Nature established by the marvelous working of the Great Goddess. Nature reflects HER Majestic Work. When the Creatrix (Cosmogonic Matrix) is made unthinkable, if not erased, in the course of patriarchal mytho-history, Mago Stronghold stands as an enigmatic cultural icon. It comes to us as a code to decipher. Much is to be unveiled for HER Paradise to be reinstated in the collective mind of humanity. Euphemisms that are severed from the Magoist implication in the course of history are linked back to the original Magoist words. The Mago Stronghold Code enchants us to the holistic view of the Great Goddess, the WE consciousness in S/HE, that is tabooed in patriarchy. Reminding people of the common origin from the Primordial Mother, Mago Stronghold opens a new horizon of the gynocentric reality, WE/HERE/NOW. We have been part of the Grand Plan of the Great Goddess. When it comes to the female, official historiography, which is after all a product of the patriarchal dominant group, offers little to, if not obstructs, the researcher. The history it calls is nothing other than a self-aggrandizing distorted view of the past events, or rather an imposed false view of the past by patriarchal colonizers. Patriarchal history should be called pseudo-history. It concerns not truth but domination and self-expansion. The history of self-sharers/altruists/Magoists never dies for it is about re-membering of all in WE. What happened is never left unanimated, according to the Law of Nature. It can’t be erased, for truth is the language of Life. As such, the collective memory that ancient (read pre-patriarchal) Magoists were the bearers of the Magoist royal lineage has survived official East Asian (read Sinocentric) historiography. It is imbued in such socio-cultural data as lore, literature, art, and place-names, as well as the so-called apocryphal texts. My task here is to decode the meaning of Mago Stronghold, unearthing non-official data and reading them between the lines of written records. (To be continued) See Meet Mago Contributor Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D. [1] The Big Dipper (Seven Stars) is favored by Koreans. Triad Deity (Samsin), another name for Mago, is …
(Photo Essay 3) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hwang

Part III: Archaeology Bespeaks What Ideological Hetero-sexuality Can’t Do Our story-tellers informed us that Gaeyang Halmi is venerated and celebrated on January 14th annually on the lunar calendar. There are two separate rituals performed on that day. Villagers, both men and women, offer their ritual ceremony in the morning in Confucian style. The officiant must preserve the purification ritual, confining oneself to home to avoid ominous affairs for a week prior to the ceremony. After the ceremony of the villagers, Mudang groups come from outside the town and offer their Shaman rituals. A cleavage between two groups is still freshly detected in their narratives. While villagers conform to the Confucian style rituals with a despising but curious eye for the female-centered Shaman rituals, Mudangs are much more powerful in their capacities to command people, spirits, and materials. The Shamanic ritual celebration is fairly well-known domestically as well as overseas to the Chinese and the Japanese, according to our lore transmitters. People from China and Japan come to join the Mudang rituals, a vestige of the intercultural celebration that may have originated in ancient times, a point to be elaborated later. What caught my attention was the fact that the ritual celebration is known as the Ritual of Yongwang (the Dragon King) not the Ritual of Gaeyang Halmi. Our two narrators, Mr. Jeong Dong-Uk and Ms. Jeong Si-Geum, brother and sister, testified contradictorily vis-à-vis the Dragon King. Mr. Jeong mentioned that Gaeyang Halmi is the wife of Dragon King,[i] whereas Ms. Jeong spoke of Gaeyang Halmi as a solo deity without spouse. Ms. Jeong sternly said, “She was alone [without spouse]. She had eight daughters.” “It is said that there used to be a house wherein Gaeyang Halmi and her eight daughters lived together. I saw the cooking pots and household things in the ruin,” added Ms. Jeong. [Interestingly, the motif that she saw the cooking pots and other kitchen items in the ruin reminded me of other Mago folk stories from other regions. People seem to take such artifacts as pots and household things discovered in the ruin as an indication that the myth of Mago Halmi who is told to have lived in the place is plausible.] The topos of “the dragon king” was likely added later on to comply with Confucian ideology. In fact, none of our narrators mentioned the dragon king as the main deity of the Suseong Shrine. The fact that it is called the ritual of the dragon king suggests another layer of erosion/castration/dethronement done to the supreme divinity of Gaeyang Halmi.
(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.