December 31, 2025December 31, 2025 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Creatrix Tango by Michele J. Celello

Beautiful, magical, loving, and freeFocused, clear minded, logicallyPain-free, and complete mobilityFull of laughter, compassion, and possibilitiesThe cosmos, the earth simultaneouslyConnected, inseparable Shakti-Shiva unityBirthing joy, peace, sustainabilityDancing together, matter with energyManifesting Read More …

December 30, 2025December 31, 2025 RTM Co-Editor M Saracino2 Comments

(Nine Poets Speak) Laundry by Leslene della-Madre

[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.] Today I hung my clothesline.I feel twisted inside even thinking about using the clothes dryer Read More …

December 29, 2025December 24, 2025 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Book Excerpt 3) Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree ed. by Trista Hendren Et Al

[Editor’s Note: This excerpt series is from Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree ed by Claire Dorey, Janet Rudolph, Pat Daly, and Trista Hendren (Girl God Books, 2025).] Goddess Asherah, Read More …

December 28, 2025February 27, 2026 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Announcement) Submit your data for Nine-Sister Networks News Updates

Interns/volunteers (one or two) are welcome. Email Dr. Hwang, if you are interested in serving as an intern/volunteer. (Search) Volunteer Opportunity with Nine-Sister Networks News-Update Project Return to Mago E-Magazine (RTME) Read More …

December 26, 2025December 23, 2025 RTM Co-Editor M Saracino1 Comment

(Poem) Fire and Ice by Sara Wright

Medicine Wheel photo by Sara Wright I walked downto rippling waterslistening….Frozen mossestrees and meold snowoverflowing anguishgathered in aChalice of Light my prayerfor usmy dogand meto flow underfire and iceor toleratesoul Read More …

December 25, 2025January 16, 2026 RTM Co-Editor M SaracinoLeave a comment

(Nine Poets Speak) The Littlest Balsam by Sara Wright

[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.] Five years agoI dug a seedlingin protestki’s deep greenneedlesslender trunkand rootsyieldedto sweetspring earthwith prayers.I believed.One Read More …

December 24, 2025November 25, 2025 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Art Essay) The Hider – Exploring Sensitivity as a Strength by Sanna Pöyhönen

Some time ago I found my old diaries and read them all through. It was both fascinating and an embarrassing exercise to look at the life as I had wanted Read More …

December 23, 2025January 21, 2026 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Nine Sister Networks E-interview) Feminism and Religion Blog Editors by Carolyn Lee Boyd

[Editor’s Note: Return to Mago E-Magazine (RTME) introduces Sister Organizations under the banner of the Nine Sister Networks as a way of consolidating Matriversal Feminism previously known as Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality. Read More …

December 22, 2025December 16, 2025 RTM Co-Editor M Saracino2 Comments

(Poem) Wholly Holy by Mary Saracino

Photo by Mary Saracino The forest is my cathedral.The meadow is my church.The mountains are my temple.The oceans are my mosque.The fields are my ashram.The sacred dwells in all that Read More …

December 19, 2025December 19, 2025 RTM Co-Editor M Saracino4 Comments

(Poem) Walking in the Early Morning Darkness by Mary Saracino

Photo by Mary Saracino I love to walk in the early morning darknessbefore the first light of day kisses the horizonwhen the birds are still asleepand the trees sway in Read More …

December 18, 2025December 18, 2025 RTM Co-Editor M Saracino1 Comment

(Nine Poets Speak) Metacrisis by Harriet Ann Ellenberger

[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.] Photo by Cassandra Moore, on Unsplash; Cassandra Moore (@cassanova) | Unsplash Photo Community MetacrisisThere is Read More …

December 18, 2025December 18, 2025 Mago WorkLeave a comment

Ceto-Magoism Debunks the Dragon/Serpent Demonizing Myth by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

I just completed my section of the S/HE forum offered as a course for Creatrix Studies Program this past Saturday (December 13, 2025). The topic was Goma with the title, Read More …

December 16, 2025January 21, 2026 RTM Co-Editor M Saracino1 Comment

(Nine Sister Networks E-Interivew) Peg Elam and Pearlsong Press by Mary Saracino

2015 Nine Day Solstice Celebration Program Details

Each day’s program is available for view in “Reading Room” at Mago Academy’s website (magoacademy.org)! Mago Academy and The Girl God Proclaims “Gathering At the Crossroad for Mago Time/Space” during December 14-22 (9 days)! Go to 9 Day Overall Program Outline. Go to Promotion Video
Mago Pod Newsletter, January 2018 BE #28

Announcement Call for Contributions for She Rises Volume 3 Deadline extended to March 31 or until we reach 81 contributors for the symbol completion of nine Nine Sisers (the fullest embodiment of Nine Numerology) 2018 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea (Viritual and local), TBA Gynapedia: Feminist Encyclopedia is under revision of the website tool. We administrators (Kaalii Cargill and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang) are working about the clock, TBA Mago Pool Circle is under revision of the structure. We administrators (Sumaiyah Yates and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang) seek new bloggers and users, TBA. Ongoing Become a Mago Scholar! Free PDF downloads for Mago Almanc and The Mago Way Online Mago Festival, Facebook group, continues to open throughout the year! Return to Mago E-Magazine seeks for contributions for the coming year! Join Mago Work Yahoo Discussion Group (You don’t have to have a yahoo email account) Mago Books 2018 forthcoming books include: You Can Make Your Own Rose, Poems and Reflections by Andrea Nicki Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture ed. by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang She Rises: What Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 3 Mago Bookstore offers: Publishing Services Bulk Buy Discount of Mago Books 2017 published books: Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess Mago Almanac Year 1/2018 CE Mago Pool Circle welcomes bloggers! Mago Pool Circle hosts Classifies for Goddess feminists/activists! Amina Rodriguez (USA) Glenys Livingstone (Australia) Lila Moore (UK) Deanne Quarrie (USA) Return to Mago E-Magazine Highlights (Prose) Imbolc and Transformation by Deanne Quarrie (Essay) Abandoning the Goddess: Men’s Ending of Ecogynocentrism by Moses Seenarine (Prose) The Way the Cosmos Was for a Girl by Glenys Livingstone (Video) Gaia – Mysterious Rhythms by Dr Lila Moore (Poem) What does it mean when the Black Birds Come? by Sara Wright Ongoing Call for Contributions open now! Meet Our Volunteer Editors and Bloggers! 2017-8 Forthcoming Projects include: Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Call for Contributions) She Rises: What Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality? Volume 3 (Call for Contributions) Articles for Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary of Goddess Feminist Activism Gynapedia (Under construction) Mago Pool Circle Return to Mago E-Magazine Magoist Calendar, The Mago Time Inscribed in Sonic Numerology Korean Historical Dramas Free Open Forum Live! On-line classes including Introduction to Magoism and Korean Shamanism Mago Academy Join Mago Scholars Certificate Programs in Magoist Studies Meet Mago Scholars Upcoming and Ongoing 2018 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea (Viritual and local), TBA Introduction to Magoism (online class) Korean Historical Dramas (upon request) Enter Mago Bookstore The name Mago Pod is borrowed from a pod of whales who stay together throughout their lifetimes and travel across oceans. Join the Mago Work and interweave your threads with all in WE!
Janie Rezner

View all posts by Janie Rezner. Heralding the Return of our Mother I am a great grandmother, singing publicly most of my life, influenced by my musical mother who grew up on a farm in Illinois, 1933. After 2 abusive marriages, and 3 lovely children I came to Berkeley California, received an MA in clinical psychology. I then began a profound spiritual journey inward, initiated by separation from someone I loved. My past thirty years have been devoted to heralding the return of the Great Ancestress through music, art, writing, speaking, and life itself. I also interview women on Women’s Voices, KZYX radio, who work for change in our troubled world. www.janierezner.com http://www.janierezner.com/interviews.html
(Prose & Photography) Patriarchy: For Love of Predators by Sara Wright

Photography by Sara Wright I live just down the road from one of our many lakes and ponds here in western Maine. Almost every morning I hear the haunting call of the loons as they fly over the house. Although I cherish the symphony I have never figured out why some of these birds making this early morning flight from one lake to another. I have never seen any research that supports my experience – but obviously, for unknown reasons some loons move routinely from pond to pond. Why remains a mystery. I used to have a woodsman friend who once commented that he didn’t understand why everyone loved loons so much because they were fierce predators who speared their hapless fish, duck, or goslings to death before devouring them. At the time I found Don’s statement ironic (and irritating!) because this man was an excellent brook trout fisherman and deer hunter. In his defense I must add that I had to acknowledge that he also loved all animals; after deer hunting season ended he fed his deer all winter. I want to digress a moment to tell a story about Don. The year before his death one buck left him a complete set of antlers on the night of the winter solstice; the next year on solstice night Don died. At the time of his death (I didn’t know this until the next day) an antler he gave me clattered to the floor. Although we never spoke of it I understood that Don’s relationship with wild animals was as intimate as my own. Acknowledging this truth created enormous ambivalence in me because I loved and studied wild animals. I did not kill them. I wanted to separate myself from Don. But at the same time I ate fish and chicken so how could I really make a distinction between him and me? And what about all the plants I ate? Wasn’t I a predator too? I carried this contradiction with great discomfort for years before finally being able to accept it. All life feeds on the lives of others…like it or not. Life, death, and renewal, as Carol Christ believed. To return to my original story, Don’s remark about the loons stayed with me because up until then I had never thought of loons as predators… I had grown up falling asleep to the sound of loons calling on the lake, watched them raise their young ones at a time before speedboats became a summer reality. Whippoorwills, loons, frogs, and lightening bugs brought in our joyous summer nights. Who could imagine that all of these animals would become so endangered? Loons are iconic water birds and once they began dying Audubon, followed by many other groups, attempted to bring back the loons, many of which were dead from lead poisoning. As most people know this effort was successful. Today loons once again grace summer ponds… Eagles also became threatened but through tireless conservation efforts these birds returned to our waters too. On the pond closest to me eagles abound, often plucking loon chicks for dinner. Initially, I took sides with the loons, especially after witnessing a lone chick being snatched up by deadly hooked talons to be swept away, perhaps to feed one of the two eaglets. For years now we have had a giant eagle’s nest on one of our islands that attracts enormous attention from people in boats every summer, people who hope to get a glimpse of one. And everyone I know covets an eagle feather except me. On our lake we also have a whole gaggle of wild geese who are shot (- illegally in summer – during the fall migration there is an open hunting season on geese as well as other water fowl -) by the people who live here because they don’t like geese fertilizing their lawns. I happen to love geese. They are birds that live in genuine community. As vegetarians they munch away at wild grasses and raise their young with great tenderness gathering in large groups to surround the fuzzy goslings as they mature. There is always a papa goose who acts as protector keeping a sharp eye on all of the others. Geese are shy of humans because they have been treated so badly. Whenever I am paddling in the pond I talk to them hoping they will allow me to kayak close by, but they make no exceptions. In the fall, one of sounds I love the most is listening to the geese as they gather in large V’s to migrate south – a perilous journey. At dusk the skies overflow with their poignant goodbyes. Often, as these birds take flight above me, Mother Goose tales come to mind, because as most feminists on FAR know, geese are associated with the Great Mother. I think it was my love of geese that also helped me to answer a question I had. I wondered why saving predators of all kinds, loons, eagles, raptors, wolves, wild cats etc. was a priority for the American people (true for other countries too). It is only now, for example, after we have lost 2.9 billion birds, that songbirds like nightingales and warblers, are finally getting some attention. Other birds like geese are perceived to be nothing but a nuisance – an expendable one at that. What is it about predators that humans find so attractive? I think predators reflect the patriarchal structure that humans have adopted for the last five thousand years. Patriarchy supports a hierarchal society where some people – mostly middle class white men have all the power. I think our love of predators is a mirror in which men and many women see themselves, one that reflects the power over model, while peaceful matriarchal egalitarian societies like the ones Carol Christ studied, as well as other Indigenous peoples, animals and birds are ignored or hunted, often to extinction. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright https://www.magoism.net/2014/12/meet-mago-contributor-sara-wright/
(Poem) Children of Our Dreams, We Are With You by Carolyn Lee Boyd

I often think of my ancestors and I sometimes wonder, “Did they ever think of me?” I think they did in their own way, doing what they thought would make the lives of those who would come after them better than their own, though I have never found anything directly addressed to their descendants. So here is my missive to my own descendants, meant to be read by them long after I am gone and to inspire me to make their future better with my actions now. Now I am of air and wishes, no longer flesh,bones, and blood, but you carry within youall that I once was. When you sleep, the air of your breathconnects you to all that ever existed, even me.Listen, do you hear my sighs in the moonlight?As you gather round the fire’s flames, do youfeel my kisses in the sparks that soar up to heaven?When you plunge your hands in the black soildo you know my DNA is there, beneath your fingernails?Do you ever feel the salt of my ancient tearsin your body water’s flow? My eyes are closed forever, but when yourub your eyes at sunrise and stand at the thresholdof your doorway, tell me, what do you see?Do you spy a billion stars fading, visible onlynow that our century’s overbearing night lights have dimmed?Are a million birds soaring, so many thatsometimes they obscure the sky’s pure lapis lazuli hue?Are the honeyed bees swarming in trees dripping in gold?I have to know, do your seas teem with salmon, dolphins,glowing coral, singing whales?Have our wastelands grown to old growth forests,now home to reindeer, cougars, beavers, buffalo, and wolves? We envisioned our best hopes for you to walk inimagined lands of peace and plenty whereyou would be free to be all you are,loved always and loving mightily every instant of your lives.Forgive us if our visions were too small,If we were too bound by our suffering, our terrors, our limiting ideashanded to us by our own ancestors.If your world is not the paradise we hoped for or you need,reach out across those veils of time and spaceso that we may hold your hand and offer youwhat wisdom we lacked when alive but know now,what love we could not give for we did not know your namesbut which we tender you in abundance now,what joy delighted us in the beauty that still remained in our own timeof our fragile and wounded world. It is your turn now to embrace what we dreamedand dream so much more for those who come after you,even knowing that no dream that is majestic, compassionate,radiant enough to pass to the future can happen in one lifetime.Our human dreaming is a constant movement,an ongoing rhythm, spanning generations,reaching out from time to time to time.Be kind to us who left you the world we made,Lovingly if not always perfectly,And know that you have our blessings always. Kmaidlow, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://www.magoism.net/2016/08/meet-mago-contributor-carolyn-lee-boyd/
(Poem) Meanderings by Anne Wilkerson Allen

A thousand threads have woven wings of love, mounting us on the wind. Images of ancients have caressed our eyes, revealing new shapes and colors. Drums of women have kindled memories forgotten, thrumming the cadence of our hearts. Poets and musicians have sailed us on rivers of passion, touching empty spaces with fever. Waves, like dervishes, have swept us from the abyss, spinning us into ecstasy. Wisdom, in full raiment, has sent her shafts of light, illuminating our truths. Is it any wonder that we choose to sail these seas with fellow travelers?
(Essay) Blood & Honey Icons by Danica Anderson

“We are confronted with the slaughter of EVE, a systematic Gendercide of tragic proportions.” Theodor Winkler I am a world traveling Forensic psychotherapist, a Psycho-social Gender Victims Expert for the International Criminal Court since 2005 and founded a non-profit The Kolo: Women’s Cross Cultural Collaborations. As a result I have been in many countries abroad. This may sound exotic but my travels are never for vacations. I found myself squeezed in between the bombs, bullets, famine and rapes in the midst of catastrophic violence. In the raucousness of violence, I would face the survivors and their stories. According to Julie Mertus, 75% to 80% of worldwide refugees are women and I realized that if our world of violence was to be changed it would be through women, the major caregivers of children and the Moist Mother Earth.[1] I realized long ago through the narratives shared with me by those who survived what I never thought could be survived is how my trauma work begins where humanity ends. My trauma healing practices are steeped in oral memory traditions, a technology I take along on my journeys. What oral memory traditions are is a technology, wholly feminine in nature and origins, and lived as opposed to being scrutinized intellectually. Secondly, oral memory traditions are the past spoken in our personal memory passed down by words not written. Those folk round dances danced, ballads sung, and in textiles and threads or paints to clay expressed in diverse art forms to rituals manifested culture. [2] Although the places and particulars of every atrocity differ, the psychological damage done to its victims is much the same. Just surviving such horrific trauma would seem victory enough. Sadly, it is not. Without healing, the effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome fester, deepening the emotional decay. Once the insidious seed is sown, time may reap another whirlwind. The radius of collateral damage knows no borders and can reach from one generation to the next. This is what I witness over and over, no matter the land I stand upon. Increasingly, in armed conflicts around the world, a new commerce in cruelty has emerged: Gendercide. Now the rule rather than the exception, the specific targeting of women and children to be murdered, mutilated, raped or recruited as combatants has been added to the brutal lexicon of warfare, not least governing entities with power over the masses. Following the demise of the Republic of Yugoslavia, between 1992 and 1995 over 100,000 people were slaughtered in a swirling triad of ethnic and religious violence. Hundreds of thousands were forced from their ancestral homes and villages. The ancient fault lines of the European continent had fractured yet again. I ask you, isn’t this the raging campaign against the Great Mother with the advancement of Patriarchy for the past 5,000 years? I almost walked away from Bosnia in March 1999 to never return. I was frozen by the utter reality that there was nothing I could do or help. Despite that reality that nothing could help, I asked myself, what if it was not about help but another four letter word – heal? In fact, in the archaeologies of memory of the Great Mother, the God/dess, are an intangible heritage and legacy of oral memory traditions that are millennia-old healing practices. I did return to Bosnia and continue to, for the past 13 years. I have written two books; one is published to preserve the oral memory traditions of the South Slavic women, simply due to the reality that it was all that they had left in terms of resources. I faced an abyss in the psychology field and the humanitarian organizations’ policies and mandates that did everything to erase the oral memory traditions. I was laughed at for my oral memory traditions efforts, scathed at psychology associations and conferences, but soon after my presentation in Edinburgh, Scotland at the International Trauma Society, my kolo trauma and treatment format was being couched in other intellectual terms of Somatic Psychology or Movement practices. I continue to witness the eradication of an incredible female humanities tool, oral memory traditions, in the form of lines such as the Sudanese women, who stood for hours and days to get food or treatment. I witnessed the money going to male hands or international workers while those in need, mostly women and children, went without. But in Bosnia, the women war crimes and war survivors showed me a ray of inspiration. The humble meals, often the result of hand foraging for nettles in the spring or chasing down of their chickens for sweet fresh eggs, were placed before me on a rustic wooden table and handmade chairs. I need to mention that I had to go with the women to forage for my meal. The women demanded that no one eats unless they gather the food together. Before I sat down on the hand-crafted gleaming chair I spied a meticulous embroidered cushion that would have made Marija Gimbutas kneel down to examine the Old Europe symbology woven by female hands that never opened her books. Joanna Hubbs in Mother Russia observes the spindle, mortar and pestle from the world of women as a feminine metaphysic. [3] I was certainly transfixed by the spiral pattern on the cushion that softens not just my derriere but the war crimes stories I heard at the table. Joan Marler wrote, “An embodied spirituality begins with the very food we eat”.[4] I think of the Russian Blini, the same as the South Slavic Palacinke, crepes; the cooking of these delicious crepes is a ritual performed according to the sun’s yearly movement through the skies. [5] Folklore tells us it is to heal sexual vitality, an oral memory tradition with cosmic order, where the sun is rebirthed each day, absorbed into the inky blackness at night, but blood red dawns mirrors the experience of giving birth. It took 13 years to write and publish my book Blood & Honey Icons: Biosemiotics & Bioculinary and the …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Sarah Wolfe

Sarah Wolfe’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including The Orchard Poetry Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Synkroniciti, Bitter Melon Review, Willows Wept Review, Misfit Magazine, Academy of the Heart and Mind, and other places. She earned a BA in Communication and Media Arts from Montclair State University, with minors in English and Film.
Goddess Pilgrimage Central Queensland Australia by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Her vulval images are in abundance in this place, Carnarvon Gorge, Central Queensland Australia; however, in a cultural milieu that can barely say the word ”vulva”, let alone understand the ceremonial celebration of female anatomy, this place has gone largely unrecognised. Even Goddess people barely know of it, though I was alerted to it by a good Goddess woman, Chris Sitka, who went there a few years ago. Part of me is amazed that the site of these engravings is open to the public, and people are allowed so close up: it seems to me almost sacriligious to do so: most who view the work would have little perception of the sacredness of the art. The Indigenous people who created them were long ago banished from the place and their descendants are only beginning to return and tell their story again. In the story told at the Ranger’s Station there, the vulval images are named as “cup and ring” motifs; my partner and I were aghast at the complete erasure of Her. There was only an admission that they “were associated with very significant fertility ceremonies”. Perhaps the Europeans who wrote this actually did not have any idea, since their kind had destroyed so much of the culture and knowledge of the people, and their own culture and religions were so completely devoid of sacred female imagery. It would have been difficult for them to imagine, much like the Sheela-na-Gigs have not been comprehended by minds locked up in dualistic, androcentric mythologies. Thankfully the story being told at one site, “The Art Gallery” as it is named, is different. It is entitled “A Woman’s Story” and the word “vulva” is used. The full text in this location reads: Women are responsible for looking after some of the stories etched along this section of the sandstone wall – women’s business. You will see engraved over and over again the motif of the human vulva. Our Elders tell the story of this design being a fertility symbol. There must be very interesting discussions that go on about how to describe the engravings. The place is certainly not advertised as a sacred female place, though there are Elders (recorded at the Ranger’s Station) who tell that it is women’s business. I can only advise that Carnarvon Gorge, Central Queensland, Australia, be put on the list of global Goddess sites, and it’s true worth recognised, received and revered. Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone

(Special Post) BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE FOR EL PASO ARTIST MARIO COLÍN by Donna Snyder

Born in Juárez in 1959, Mario Colín lived his entire life in the Five Points area of Central El Paso, where he attended Houston Elementary and Austin High School. From the age of fifteen, he worked as a construction worker, building silos and other large construction projects across the U.S.A., at some point hitch hiking from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic shores. In his late twenties, he began to focus all his attention and energy on art, which had been an interest since early childhood, working as a muralist and portrait painter. Much of his art is of a religious nature, although he also painted secular art, portraits, and historical scenes. Colín painted his first mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe in collaboration with deceased artist Chuck Zavala in 1987 at Esparza’s Grocery, a small store in Central El Paso. It has now become a shrine, with community members building a stone arch and bringing flowers and candles, and has been pronounced a religious site by the parish church. Since that first mural, Colín has painted over 40 pieces of public art, many of which have become landmarks. Many of those murals are in that same Central El Paso neighborhood, on or near Piedras, including the House of Pizza, Los Alamos Grocery, The Elbo Room bar, the former Sanitary Plumbing at Piedras and Fort Boulevard. Colín twice painted a 25 foot mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe, at Alameda and Zaragoza, across from the Ysleta mission. The first version, painted in 1997, became decayed, but was a popular landmark. That mural has appeared in periodicals, art books, calendars, many newspaper articles, and in photographs exhibited in the El Paso Art Museum and galleries. In 2004, Señor José Villalobos donated and members of the community contributed money to pay laborers to replaster the wall of the century-old adobe building where it is located, and Colín repainted the entire mural for donations from passers-by and community members. Colín’s work has also been featured on the International History Channel and Canal 44, XHUI TV, in a Ford television commercial, and numerous times in the El Paso Times and the defunct El Paso Herald-Post, as well as in periodicals such as Texas Monthly, Dallas Morning News, Texas Observer, Austin American Statesman, Stanton Street magazine; literary journals such as Mezcla and GypsyMag.com; in documentaries including Walls that Speak: El Paso’s Murals, directed by Jim Klaes; in art books such as Colors on Desert Walls: The Murals of El Paso and Texas 24:7, and in various editions of Chicano Studies: Survey and Analysis, a text book used throughout the country.
(Special Post) Why I choose to be an RTM contributor by Glenys Livingstone

The contribution of my writing to Return to Mago E-Magazine has evolved since it began four years ago, into a deeply mutually enhancing relationship. The time and effort taken to write carefully and in alignment with my heartfelt passions and insights, and then to be able to publish to a receptive audience, has always been rewarding – for me personally and apparently for many who received it.
(Special Post 2) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Here is another image of the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra slain by Herakles. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(mythology)… Glenys Livingstone: Yes, the Hercules story is more documentation of the Old Battle, of the rise of the “hero” to slay the Mother, when in the earliest of times he served with his beauty and labours. It is so interesting to see the analogies in other cultures/places as you are doing Helen, especially in Asia – it seems important work. Your perseverance is paying off, and will. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Glenys, I am re-reading a book on Chinese mythology and found a lot more on the nine Magoist symbolism. Someday, I hope to write about the topic in its own right. Glenys Livingstone: This chapter’s work is good re the Old Battle in Greek mythology: Valaoritis, Nanos. “The Cosmic Conflict of Male and Female in Greek Mythology”, in From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas. Joan Marler (ed). Manchester CT: Knowledge, Ideas and Trends Inc., 1997, p.247 – 261. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Now back to the female divine who is depicted with the nine heads. See the nine-headed Guanyin/Kannon/Gwaneum. Also note that her icon comes in eleven-headed (the 8 Daughters and the Triad Creatrix, which makes eleven). http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/kannon.shtml Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: The symbol of nine dragons was adopted by imperial China. See the Nine Dragon Wall China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-Dragon_Wall Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: We connect the dots. When Guanyin is depicted with nine dragons, it conveys that the nine symbolism was/is once deemed sacred. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4a/17/b3/4a17b33d9a4ae53bad6466a0eaf11722.jpg How popular the Guanyin icon, three headed and eight armed, to this day! Simply Google “eight armed Guanyin.” Below is from the Late Ming Dynasty, China. https://www.google.com/search?q=eight%20armed%20guanyin… She comes in a different name, Ushnishavijaya, in Tibetan Buddhism. https://www.himalayanart.org/items/65445 Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: We can draw that the female deity such as Guanyin and Ushnishavijaya, just to name two, is venerated in association with the nine symbolism. Within the mytho-history of Magoism, I infer that Guanyin or Ma Guanyin is a persona embodying Goma, the Magoist Shaman ruler of Danguk (3898 BCE-2333 BCE), the head of Nine Hans (Magoist Koreans). Note that Magoist shamans or priestesses are called “Mago.” See my essay, “Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea and Her Mythology,” in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books), 2018. The insight that the major Goddesses in East Asia and beyond point to the same and old divine persona is NOT farfetched, considering that the nine-headed snake or dragon representing the female sovereignty of pre-patriarchal times is slain by male heroes across cultures. Judy E Foster: I’d have to agree with you here. As usual, interesting information! Patty Kay: My meditation this morning was on a history of mysticism. While I’m in the midst of appropriating all of the wonderful beliefs I find here, I also have found a strand in my own tradition that helps me understand why all the Divine Feminine stuff makes so much sense to me. I’ve been trying to determine when the patriarchal world view took over. According to this history, mysticism began to emerge in about 800 to 500 BCE. Could it be that mysticism kept alive the ancient understanding of the cosmos? This is just speculation, but in it I’m answering my own questions. (To be continued) Join us in The Mago Circle https://www.facebook.com/groups/magoism/.

(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 …
Lammas – the Sacred Consuming by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Lammas, the first seasonal transition after Summer Solstice, may be summarised as the Season that marks and celebrates the Sacred Consuming, the Harvest of Life. Many indigenous cultures recognised the grain itself as Mother … Corn Mother being one of those images – She who feeds the community, the world, with Her own body: the Corn, the grain, the food, the bread, is Her body. She the Corn Mother, or any other grain Mother, was/is the original sacrifice … no need for extraordinary heroics: it is the nature of Her being. She is sacrificed, consumed, to make the people whole with Her body (as the word “sacrifice” means “to make whole”). She gives Herself in Her fullness to feed the people …. the original Communion. In cultures that preceded agriculture or were perhaps pastoral – hunted or bred animals for food – this cross-quarter day may not have been celebrated, or perhaps it may have been marked in some other way. Yet even in our times when many are not in relationship with the harvest of food directly, we may still be in relationship with our place: Sun and Earth and Moon still do their dance wherever you are, and are indeed the Ground of one’s being here … a good reason to pay attention and homage, and maybe as a result, and in the process, get the essence of one’s life in order. One does not need to go anywhere to make this pilgrimage … simply Place one’s self. The seasonal transition of Lammas may offer that in particular, being a “moment of grace” – as Thomas Berry has named the seasonal transitions, when the dark part of the day begins to grow longer, as the cloak of darkness slowly envelopes the days again: it is timely to reflect on the Dark Cosmos in Whom we are, from Whom we arise and to Whom we return – and upon that moment when like Corn Mother we give ourselves over. This reflection is good, will serve a person and all – to live fully, as well as simply to be who we are: this dark realm of manifesting is the core of who we are. And what difference might such reflection make to our world – personal and collective – to live in this relationship with where we are, and thus who we are. We all are the grain that is harvested and all are Her harvest … perhaps one may use a different metaphor: the truth that may be reflected upon at this seasonal moment after the peaking of Sun’s light at Summer Solstice and the wind down into Autumn, is that everything passes, all fades away … even our Sun shall pass. All is consumed. So What are we part of? (I write it with a capital because surely it is a sacred entity) And how might we participate creatively? We are Food – whether we like it or not … Lammas is a good time to get with the Creative plot, though many find it the most difficult, or focus on more exoteric celebration. May we be interesting food[i]. We are holy Communion, like Corn Mother. Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [i] This is an expression of cosmologist Brian Swimme in Canticle to the Cosmos DVD series.
Summer Solstice Poiesis by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Seasonal Wheel of Stones Both Summer and Winter Solstices may be understood as particular celebrations of the Mother/Creator aspect of the Creative Triplicity of the Cosmos (often named as the Triple Goddess). The Solstices are Gateways between the dark and the light parts of the annual cycle of our orbit around Sun; they are both sacred interchanges, celebrating deep relationship, communion, with the peaking of fullness of either dark or light, and the turning into the other. The story is that the Young One/Virgin aspect of Spring has matured and now at Summer Solstice her face changes into the Mother of Summer. Summer Solstice may be understood as a birthing place, as Winter Solstice may also be, but at this time the transiton is from light back into dark, returning to larger self, from whence we come: it is the full opening, the “Great Om”, the Omega. I represent the Summer Solstice on my altar wheel of stones with the Omega-yonic shape of the horseshoe. I take this inspiration from Barbara Walker’s description of the horseshoe in her Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets, as “Goddess’s symbol of ‘Great Gate’[i]”; and her later connection of it with the Sheil-na-gig yoni display[ii]. Sri Yantra. Ref: A.T. Mann & Jane Lyle, p.75 Summer Solstice is traditonally understood as a celebration of Union between Lover and Beloved, and the deep meaning of that is essentially a Re-Union: of sensed manifest form (the Lover) with All-That-Is (the Beloved). This may be understood as a fullness of expression of this manifest form, the small selves that we are, being all that we may be, and giving of this fullness of being in every moment: that would be a blissful thing, like a Summerland as it was understood to be. The boundaries of the self are broken, they merge: all is given away – all is poured forth, the deep rich dark stream of life flows out. It is a Radiance, the shining forth of the self which is at the same time a give-away, a consuming of the self.In traditional PaGaian Summer ceremony each participant is affirmed as “Gift”[iii]; and that is understood to mean that we are both given and received – all at the same time. The breath is given and life is received. We receive the Gift with each breath in, and we are the Gift with each breath out. As we fulfill our purpose, as we give ourselves over, we dissolve, as the Sun is actually doing in every moment. The “moment of grace”[iv]that is Summer Solstice, marks the stillpoint in the height of Summer, when light reaches its peak, and Earth’s tilt causes the Sun to begin its “decline”: that is, its movement back to the South in the Northern Hemisphere (in June), and back to the North in the Southern Hemisphere (in December). Whereas at Winter Solstice when out of the darkness it is light that is “born”, as it may be expressed: at the peak of Summer, in the warmth of expansion, it is the dark that is “born”. Insofar as Winter Solstice is about birth, then Summer Solstice is about death, the passing into the harvest. It is a celebration of profound mystical significance, which may be confronting in a culture where the dark is not valued for its creative telios; and it is noteworthy that Summer Solstice has not gained any popularity of the kind that Winter Solstice has globally (as ‘Christmas’). The re-union with All-That-Is is not generally considered a jolly affair, though when understood it may actually be blissful. Full Flowers to the Flames Summer is a time when many grains ripen, deciduous trees peak in their greenery, lots of bugs and creatures are bursting with business and creativity: yet in that ripening, is the turning, the fulfilment of creativity, and it is given away. Like the Sun and the wheat and the fruit, we find the purpose of our Creativity in the releasing of it; just as our breath must be released for its purpose of life. The symbolism used to express this in ceremony has been the giving of a full rose/flower to the flames. Summer is like the rose, as it says in this tradition[v]– blossom and thorn … beautiful, fragrant, full – yet it comes with thorns that open the skin. All is given over. All is given over: the feast is for enjoying With the daily giving of ourselves in our everyday acts, we each feed the world with our lives: we do participate in creating the cosmos, as many indigenous traditions still recognise. Just as our everyday lives are built on the fabric of the work/creativity of all who went before us, so the future, as well as the present, is built on ours, no matter how humble we may think our contribution is. We may celebrate the blossoming of our creativity then, which is Creativity, and the bliss of that blossoming, at a time when Earth and Sun are pouring forth their abundance, giving it away. In this Earth-based cosmology, what is given is the self fully realized and celebrated, not a self that is abnegated – just as the fruit gives its full self: as Starhawk says, “Oneness is attained not through losing the self, but through realizing it fully”[vi]. Everyday tasks can be joyful, if valued, and graciously received: I think of Eastern European women singing as they work in the fields – it is a common practice still for many. We are the Bread of Life Summer Solstice celebrates Mother Sun coming to fullness in Her creative engagement with Earth, and we are the Sun. Solstice Moment is a celebration of communion, the feast of life – which is for the enjoying, not for the holding onto. We do desire to be received, to be consumed – it is our joy and our grief. Brian Swimme says: “Every moment of our lives disappears into the ongoing story of the Universe. Our creativity is energising the whole[vii]”. As it may be ceremoniously affirmed: we are (each is) …
(Essay) Ceremony as “Prayer” or Sacred Awareness By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. MoonCourt Ceremonial Space set for Autumn Equinox ceremony, 2013 Ritual/ceremony is often described as “sacred space.” I understand that to mean “awareness of the space as sacred”: all space is sacred, what shifts is our awareness – awareness of the depth of spacetime, and of the depth of all things and all beings. I understand “sacred awareness” as an awareness of deep relationship and identity with the very cosmic dynamics that create and sustain the Universe; or an awareness of what is involved in the depth of each moment, each thing, each being. Ceremony is a space and time given to expression, contemplation and nurturance of that depth … at least to something of it. Ceremony may be both an expression of deep inner truths – perceived relationship to self, Earth and Cosmos, as well as being a mode of teaching and drawing forth deeper participation. Essentially, ceremony is a way of entering into the depth of the present moment … what is deeply present right here and now, a way of entering deep space and deep time, which is not somewhere else but is right here. Every-thing, and every moment, has Depth – more depth than we usually allow ourselves to contemplate, let alone comprehend. This book, this paper, this ink, the chair, the floor – each has a history and connections that go back, all the way back to Origins. This moment you experience now, in its particular configuration, place, people present, subtle feelings, thoughts, and propensity towards certain directions or outcomes, has a depth – many histories and choices that go back … ultimately all the way back to the beginning. Great Origin is present at every point of space and time – right here. In ceremony we are plugging our awareness into something of that. In this holy context then – in this mindframe of knowing connection, everything one does is a participation in the creation of the Cosmos: for the tribal indigenous woman, perhaps the weaving of a basket; for another, perhaps preparing a meal; for you, perhaps getting on the train to go to a workplace. It is possible to regain this sense, to come to feel that the way one breathes makes a difference – that with it, you co-create the present and the future, and you may even be a blessing on the past. In every moment we receive the co-creation, the work, of innumerable beings, of innumerable moments, and innumerable interactions of the elements, in everything we touch … and so are we touched by them. The local is our touchstone to the Cosmos – it is not separate. Ceremony may be a way into this awareness, into strengthening it. Ceremony is actually ‘doing,’ not just theorizing. We can talk about our personal and cultural disconnection endlessly, but we need to actually change our minds. Ceremony can be an enabling practice – a catalyst/practice for personal and cultural change. It is not just talking about eating the pear, it is eating the pear; it is not just talking about sitting on the cushion (meditating), it is sittingon the cushion. It is a cultural practice wherein we tell a story/stories about what we believe to be so most deeply, about who and what we are. Ceremony can be a place for practicing a new language, a new way of speaking, or spelling – a place for practicing “matristic storytelling”[i] if you like: that is, for telling stories of the Mother, of Earth and Cosmos as if She were alive and sentient. We can “play like we know it,” so that we may come to know it.[ii] Ceremony then is a form of social action. I have found it useful to describe ceremony using and extending words used by Ken Wilber to describe a “transpersonal practice,” which is needed for real change: he said it was a practice that discloses “a deeper self (I or Buddha) in a deeper community (We or Sangha) expressing a deeper truth (It or Dharma).”[iii] My extension of that is: ceremony may disclose a deeper beautiful self (the I/Virgin/Urge to Be/Buddha), in a deeper relational community (the We/Mother/Place of Being/Sangha), expressing a deeper transformative truth (the It/Old One/Space to Be/Dharma). This is the “unitive body,” the “microcosmos” that Charlene Spretnak refers to in States of Grace.[iv] Since ceremony is an opportunity to give voice to deeper places in ourselves, forms of communication are used that the dreamer, the emotional, the body, can comprehend, such as music, drama, simulation, dance, chanting, singing.[v] These forms enable the entering of a level of consciousness that is there all the time, but that is not usually expressed or acknowledged. We enter a realm that is ‘out of time,’ which is commonly said to be not the “real” world, but it is more organic/indigenous to all being and at least as real as the tick-tock world. It is a place “between the worlds,” wherein we may put our hands on the very core of our lives, touch whatever it is that we feel our existence is about, and thus touch the possibility of re-creating and renewing ourselves. NOTES: [i] A term used by Gloria Feman Orenstein in The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), 147. [ii] As my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Susan Murphy once described it to me in conversation. [iii] Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything (Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1996), 306-307. [iv] 145. [v] As Starhawk notes, The Spiral Dance, 45. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. The Reflowering of the Goddess. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990. Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. New York: Harper and Row, 1999. Wilber, Ken. A Brief History of Everything. Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1996.
(Essay) The Wheel of the Year and Climate Change by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 2 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ The Wheel of the Year in a PaGaian cosmology essentially celebrates Cosmogenesis – the unfolding of the Cosmos, in which Earth’s extant Creativity participates directly, as does each unique being. The Creativity of Cosmogenesis is expressed through Earth-Sun relationship as it may manifest and be experienced within any region of our Planet. In PaGaian tradition this is expressed with Triple Goddess Poetry, which is understood to be metaphor for the creative dynamics unfolding the Cosmos. At the heart of the Earth-Sun relationship is the dance of light and dark, the waxing and waning of both these qualities, as Earth orbits around our Mother Sun. This dance, which results in the manifestation of form and its dissolution, as it does in the Seasons, happens because of Earth’s tilt in relationship with Sun: and that is because this tilt effects the intensity of regional receptivity to Sun’s energy over the period of the yearly orbit. This tilt was something that happened in the evolution of our planet in its earliest of days – some four and a half billion years ago, and then stabilised over time: and the climatic zones were further formed when Antarctica separated from Australia and South America, giving birth to the Antarctica Circumpolar Current, changing the circulation of water around all the continents … just some thirty million years ago[i]. Within the period since then, which also saw the advent of the earliest humans, Earth has gone through many climatic changes. It is likely that throughout those changes, the dance of light and dark in both hemispheres of the planet … one always the opposite of the other – has been fairly stable and predictable. The resultant effect on flora and fauna regionally however has varied enormously depending on many other factors of Earth’s ever changing ecology: She is an alive Planet who continues to move and re-shape Herself. She is Herself subject to the cosmic dynamics of creativity – the forming and the dissolving and the re-emerging. The earliest of humans must have received all this, ‘observed’ it, in a very participatory way: that is, not as a Western industrialized or dualistic mind would think of ‘observation’ today, but as kin with the events – identifying with their own experience of coming into being and passing away. There is evidence to suggest that humans have expressed awareness of, and response to, the phenomenon of coming into being and passing away, as early as one hundred thousand years ago: ritual burial sites of that age have been found[ii], and more recently a site of ongoing ritual activity as old as seventy thousand years has been found[iii]. The ceremonial celebration of the phenomenon of seasons probably came much later, particularly perhaps when humans began to settle down. These ceremonial celebrations of seasons apparently continued to reflect the awesomeness of existence as well as the marking of transitions of Sun back and forth across the horizon, which became an important method of telling the time for planting and harvesting and the movement of pastoral animals. https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ It seems that the resultant effect of the dance of light and dark on regional flora and fauna, has been fairly stable in recent millennia, the period during which many current Earth-based religious practices and expression arose. In our times, that is changing again. Humans have been, and are, a major part of bringing that change about. Ever since we migrated around the planet, humans have brought change, as any creature would: but humans have gained advantage and distinguished themselves by toolmaking, and increasingly domesticating/harnessing more of Earth’s powers – fire being perhaps the first, and this also aided our migration. In recent times this harnessing/appropriating of Earth’s powers became more intense and at the same time our numbers dramatically increased: and many of us filled with hubris, acting without consciousness or care of our relational context. We are currently living in times when our planet is tangibly and visibly transforming: the seasons themselves as we have known them for millennia – as our ancestors knew them – appear to be changing in most if not all regions of our Planet. Much predictable Poetry – sacred language – for expressing the quality of the Seasonal Moments will change, as regional flora changes, as the movement of animals and birds and sea creatures changes, as economies change[iv]. In Earth’s long story regional seasonal manifestation has changed before, but not so dramatically since the advent of much current Poetic expression for these transitions, as mixed as they are with layers of metaphor: that is, with layers of mythic eras, cultures and economies. We may learn and understand the traditional significance of much of the Poetry, the ceremony and symbol – the art – through which we could relate and converse with our place, as our ancestors may have done; but it will continue to evolve as all language must. At the moment the dance of dark and light remains predictable, but much else is in a process of transformation. As we observe and sense our Place, our Habitat, as our ancestors also did, we can, and may yet still make Poetry of the dance of dark and light, of this quality of relationship with Sun, and how it may be manifesting in a particular region and its significance for the inhabitants: we may still find Poetic expression with which to celebrate the sacred journey that we make everyday around Mother Sun, our Source of life and energy. It has been characteristic of humans for at least several tens of thousands of years, to create ceremony and symbol by which we could relate with the creative dynamics of our place, and perhaps it was initially a method of coming to terms with these dynamics – with the apparently uniquely human awareness of coming into being and passing away[v]. Our need for …
Samhain: Stepping Wisely through the Open Door by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Day of the Dead altar, via Wikimedia Commons According to Celtic tradition, on Samhain (October 31 for those in the north and April 30 for those in the south) the doors between the human and spirit worlds open. Faeries, demons, and spirits of the dead pour out of the Otherworld to walk the Earth. In the past, some would try to hurry ghosts past their houses or ward off evil spirits by setting jack o’lanterns in their windows. They avoided going outside, especially past cemeteries, lest they be snatched away to the Otherworld. In ancient times, some offered sacrifices to propitiate deities. However, others have invited in the souls of friends and family who have passed away. In Brittany, according to W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, people would provide “a feast and entertainment for them of curded-milk, hot pancakes, and cider, served on the family table covered with a fresh white tablecloth, and to supply music” which “the dead come to enjoy with their friends” (p. 218). Other cultures also have such welcoming traditions. In Korea, as so beautifully described by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang in her posts about her family’s mourning for her father (Part I and Part II), in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, and elsewhere, food and flowers are brought to cemeteries to honor those no longer in the realm of the living. Many of us live in a society where death is pushed out of sight and Samhain’s sacred traditions have devolved into Halloween, a commercialized children’s holiday. Still, it seems to me that the pandemic, climate catastrophes, and war have made death much more present in our everyday thoughts over the past couple of years than before, so perhaps this year’s Samhain offers us the opportunity to re-examine Celtic and other practices of the past and present to see what insights and meaning they may have for us. Jack o lanterns: By Mihaela Bodlovic, via Wikimedia Commons All these ancient practices respect the spirit world and its power. Whether you believe that the Otherworld can wreak havoc on us at Samhain or not, the realm where spirits dwell clearly has power. Its allure can take us away from focusing on mundane, daily challenges or, more positively, open our eyes to the value of relating to forces that can give richness and meaning to our lives. At the same time, we must remember that each domain has its own power. We can use our physical bodies in beneficial ways that those in the Otherworld cannot. We must respect the power of the Otherworld as well as our own. Some kinds of healing are only possible when we welcome those from the Otherworld into our lives in a healthy way, whether through holiday visits or every day through remembrance, meditation, prayer, or other means. I’m of an age when many of my beloveds are in the Otherworld and so I am beginning to find that the idea of being able to sit with someone I have lost is cause not for fear, but rather joy and comfort. Perhaps those who have longstanding wounds from the past can heal by remembering those we have lost at Samhain and forgiving them or ourselves or realizing that we are no longer bound to those who have hurt us and are now gone. Samhain can also reassure us of the truth of our intuitive sense that our beloveds who we grieve are with us still, in some way, on this night and throughout the year. When we participate in the celebration of Samhain’s opening of doors to the Otherworld, if only for a day, we are honoring our own participation into the great cycle of life, death, and rebirth. We are expanding our vision of ourselves to be more than our bodies on the Earth and experiencing ourselves as connected to many realms, seen and unseen, spirit and human. We are accepting that at some time we will also become ancestors, with all the responsibility that entails and the fulfillment of taking our place in the complex matrix of being that is our universe. When we interact with the souls of those we have lost in ways that are healthy for us, however we may choose and believe that happens, we can also better celebrate the realm of the living. Just as we may listen in various ways for positive messages from those whom we have lost, we can ensure that we are expressing important guidance to those who will come after us by who we are and how we live our lives. We can express that life is worth living, even with all its traumas, and that we respect both the boundaries and the doors between the worlds so that we may continue living fully in our physical bodies on our beautiful, awe-inspiring Earth. I hope my message to my descendants will be: Love your lives. Build on what we have done and do better. Leave behind what we left you that no longer serves. If you feel alone, remember that you have thousands of generations of mothers sending you unconditional love and also generations of women coming after you eager to pick up where you left off. According to Mary Condren in The Serpent and the Goddess, in the most ancient times, “Samhain had been primarily a harvest feast celebrating the successful growth and gathering of the fruits of the past year” (p. 36). While we in the north are coming into the season of death, those in the south are experiencing Beltane, the first moments of spring when the doors between the worlds are also open. The eternal cycle of life, death, and regeneration turns again. Whether you are celebrating Samhain or Beltane, know that this holy time offers us all a chance to enter into the task of maintaining harmony with those we have loved before and for bringing balance between life and death, winter and summer, and the realm of the living and …

(Budoji Essay 5) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part 5: Magoist Cosmology “The primary aim of Magoist cosmology lies in lifting up the conceptual veil in people’s mind so that they can see what is given at birth.” [This is a translation and interpretation of the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), principal text of Magoism. Read the translation of Chapter 1 of the Budoji.] Magoist cosmology: Magoist cosmology, knowing of the female principle of Magoist cosmogony (story of the Female Beginning), reconstitutes, heals, and maintains the original vision of gynocentric soteriology. Its primary function is to guide humanity according to the law of nature whereby all things are born and evolve into their greatest potential. In short, Magoist cosmology is a gynocentric mode of thinking that shows the Way of all beings. By extension, it is an inherent principle of nature- and women-honoring civilizations. I suggest Magoist cosmology, underpinning of the Magoist cosmogony, as an antidote to the detriments of patriarchal consciousness. Its female principle restores the original unity among all entities, which has been thwarted by patriarchal cosmologies. Comprising the most foundational program of human consciousness, so constitutive that no one is born without it, Magoist cosmology is ever active and accessible to people. Nonetheless, it is made dormant in the conscious mind of people under patriarchal cultures. Thus, the primary aim of Magoist cosmology lies in lifting up the conceptual veil in people’s mind so that they can see what is given at birth.
(Bell Essay 1) Ancient Korean Bells and Magoism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part I The bell as both a percussion instrument and an idiophone is one of the most pacific, sublime, and ingenious human inventions. It appears cross-culturally from the remote past. Its artistic and ritualistic aspects are fairly well recognized by many. However, many overlook that the bell is a female icon with functionality. Put differently, the bell symbolizes the Goddess, the female who has the purpose. This essay, to be written in parts hereafter, will examine the symbology of ancient Korean bells and explore its implications with regard to Magoist history, cosmogony, and soteriology. At the outset, I posit that ancient Korean bells cast in the form of a woman’s body are there to awaken humanity to the arcane reality of the Female, that is Mago. In East Asia, bell connotes two distinct types, the open ended and the enclosed. In Korean, the open ended bell is called jong (鐘, Chinese zhong), whereas the enclosed one is called bang-ul or ryeong (鈴, Chinese ling). Jong and bang-ul are also distinguished by size. While the former tends to be larger, the latter are commonly used by a shaman or diviner to hold and shake (a group of bang-uls) to invoke the spirit. However, these differences are not unbridgeable. Some bang-uls are open-ended, like jong. By definition, jong is a bell made of metal not stone. (The character jong 鐘 has the radical (basic element) of geum 金, metal or gold. The stone bell is called gyeong.) When jong is used in music, in particular as a musical instrument consisting of a set of bronze bells, it is called pyeon-jong (編鍾, Chinese bianzhong). Perhaps the invention of pyeon-jong follows pyeon-gyeong (編磬, Chinese bianqing), a stone musical instrument consisting of a set of L-shaped stone chimes. Discussing the differences between the two instruments goes beyond the purpose of this essay. Suffice it to say that jong was likely a metallic replica of gyeong presumably first introduced in the Bronze Age. (See the images below for comparison.) My primary focus in this essay is on jong, in particular the Korean bells cast in the 8th century CE and thereafter. The beauty and significance of ancient Korean bells shed a new light on ancient Korea to be re-dis-covered in relation to Magoism. Both scholars and the public appear to be unaware that the ancient bells of Korea symbolize the female principle as well as woman’s body. It is my hope that this essay allows the ancient bells of Korea to reverberate through time and call people to return to the female origin. Ancient Greek Bells as Woman’s Body A variety of jong from the ancient world appears across cultures. The most explicitly rendered bells which mirror the female form are the terracotta bell figurines of Greece (Thebes) dated circa the 8th century BCE. Both are housed in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Protruded breasts are placed on the upper part of the bell. The body of the bell is sculpted to resemble the skirt that she is wearing. Two arms annexed from her shoulders appear to be aesthetic rather than functional. The elongated neck is made as a handle to be held. Her neck is adorned with elaborate necklaces. Geometrical designs and swastikas are compelling in both figurines — rife with arcane meanings. The legs are made as mallets. Imagine, then, where the sound comes from upon being shaken! It is her belly, more precisely the vulva from which the sound originates. In the first, above, icon of the Greek bell, women are drawn on the bell’s body in a simplified and exaggerated manner. They are connected with each other hand in hand forming a circle, perhaps dancing a circle dance. As a whole, the bell depicts a dancing woman with her arms raised, standing on her toes. The women painting befits the spirited nature of the bell. In the second, above, icon of the Greek bell, 39.5 cm in height, her breasts are highlighted, encircled by the drawing of two circles. Thus, they appear to be more nipples than breasts. Her arms are laid downward as if pointing to the birds standing below on each side. Each bird is holding an elongated earthworm-like swirling thing at the tip of its beak. Geometric designs in the center of her body are catchily inviting to interpretations. The symmetrical balance is heightened. She appears to stand firmly or be ready to walk. As shown below, one leg when placed out to the side conveys to its viewer that the legs are mallets and at once creates a look that she is real, in motion. In my documentation, the Greek bell idols and ancient Korean bells are the only two groups that are explicitly made in the shape of a woman’s body. Yet, as to be shown shortly, these Greek bell idols, far smaller in size, date about a thousand years earlier than the ancient Korean bells. Furthermore, there is a vast geographical distance between the two bell icons. In comparing them, however, I have no intention to assume that the ancient Greek bell figurines are the earliest of their kind. (It is difficult to discuss the origin of bell as a woman’s body due to the nature of the task, too complex and daunting. It suffices to say that the Chinese bells, dated older than the Thebes bell figurines, have relevance to ancient Korean bells, a point to be discussed at a later part.) Ancient worlds appear not too heterogeneous to say the least, as moderns tend to think. Sillan Bells Let me begin with introducing some ancient Korean bells from the Silla period (57 BCE-935 CE) and their major features that are also uniquely ancient Korean (read Magoist). They sound beautifully and deeply when struck. Sounding waves are calculated in the structure of the bell upon being cast. It is known that there are eleven jongs extant from the United Silla period. Only five of them are currently located in Korea, whereas the rest are in Japan. These bells are known as beomjong, a term referring to a bell in Buddhist temples used for Buddhist …
(Budoji Essay 3) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“Reintroducing the concept of the Mago Species has a profound implication, compelling one’s vocabularies to be changed to the Mother’s Tongue.” [This is a translation and interpretation of the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), principal text of Magoism. Read the translation of Chapter 1 of the Budoji.] There were Four Heavenly Persons at the four corners of the castle. They built pillars and sounded music. Four Heavenly Persons are the four clan leaders who reside in the four corners of Mago Castle, Primordial Paradise. They are entrusted by Mago to cultivate the acoustical effect of the universe (the original music). While the translation of “pillars” is provisional, it may mean a musical instrument of some primordial sort. Given the importance of stone, a theme reiterated in later chapters of the Budoji, the pillars may refer to the stone structure that supports a musical instrument. Or they may indicate stone chimes or an acoustical rock structure.

Month: December 2025

(Poem) Creatrix Tango by Michele J. Celello

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(Nine Poets Speak) Laundry by Leslene della-Madre

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(Book Excerpt 3) Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree ed. by Trista Hendren Et Al

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(Announcement) Submit your data for Nine-Sister Networks News Updates

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(Poem) Fire and Ice by Sara Wright

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(Nine Poets Speak) The Littlest Balsam by Sara Wright

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(Art Essay) The Hider – Exploring Sensitivity as a Strength by Sanna Pöyhönen

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(Nine Sister Networks E-interview) Feminism and Religion Blog Editors by Carolyn Lee Boyd

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(Poem) Wholly Holy by Mary Saracino

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(Poem) Walking in the Early Morning Darkness by Mary Saracino

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(Nine Poets Speak) Metacrisis by Harriet Ann Ellenberger

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Ceto-Magoism Debunks the Dragon/Serpent Demonizing Myth by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

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(Nine Sister Networks E-Interivew) Peg Elam and Pearlsong Press by Mary Saracino

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Mago Almanac Year 9 Monthly Wheels

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

Mago Almanac Year 8 (for 2025)

Program Booklets

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