December 13, 2025December 16, 2025 RTM Co-Editor M Saracino

(Meet Contributor) Annie Lanzillotto

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is an American memoirist, poet and performance-artist whose stage presence has been called riveting and volcanic. She was born in the Bronx, and is of Barese heritage. Her books include Whaddyacall the Wind? (Bordighera Press), Hard Candy: Caregiving, Mourning, and Stage Light; and Pitch Roll Yaw, (Guernica World Editions), L is for Lion: an italian bronx butch freedom memoir (SUNY Press; finalist for LAMBDA Literary Award), and Schistsong (Bordighera Press.) Lanzillotto has been awarded grants from New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, Dancing in the Streets, Dixon Place, Franklin Furnace, Puffin Foundation, Creatives Rebuild New York, and Trickle Up NYC. For more info visit: AnnieLanzillotto.com

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(Essay) Re-storying Ourselves: Remembering Who We Are by Glenys Livingstone

This essay is an edited version of a ritual paper presented by the author at Harvest Home Colloquium, International House, Sydney University, 16th November 1997: it was a gathering of women involved in diverse religious traditions[i]. This essay is long for a blog, but it is a ceremonial work: and thus may be en-trancing perhaps. Artist: Deborah Milton https://deborahmiltonartist.com/gaia/ When I say “we” in the title of this presentation, it may seem audacious: is there a “we” that can be spoken of in these post-colonial times? It may seem disrepectful of diversity to draw women together with this pronoun. Yet, there are some things that are fundamental, elemental … there iscommunion: as we stand apart in all our integrity, there is the actuality of a common ground that we all stand on …. the challenge in our time is to find ways of expressing that. We are all children of GaiaEarth or however our Place of Being may be named; we share this origin. There is increasing perception in these times that we are living in a world that senses itself in a process, part of something that is whole. We now know that humanity has been around for millions of years in some form; that creation has been ongoing in the Universe for billions of years; and here on the planet Earth, the long amazing story of life is recorded in the rocks, and we have learnt to read it. So, a realization has been growing for a few centuries now, and speeding up in this one, of a common overarching story that goes beyond the heretofore parochial sense of history. Humans now know empirically that the most amazing transformations in the physical realm are a fact of life: from the proton to the atom, to the molecule, to the single cell organism, and so on. Humans can now as a species have a sense of their global cultural and social evolution, from the beginning, in a manner that is new: particulars of interpretation may vary, but the long human story is present. And the modern human now realizes our origins in the stars … empirically (not only intuitively), and we may be awestruck. Faith, hope and charity are now in some ways much easier, as we gain the advantage of an eagle-eye view of what we are part of; as we may sense ourselves conscious participants in some great cosmic drama/play. What role does religion in the future bring to this? What is it that this growing edge of humanity will ask of a religiosity? There seems to me at least two quite clear demands: one I will describe as shamanic, the other as ecozoic[ii]. By shamanic, I mean that individuals are “storying” themselves, knowing themselves and thinking from within their own skin. There is more reliance on direct lived experience for an understanding of the sacred, as opposed to relying on an external authority, external imposed symbol, story or image. This shamanic direction has been partly provoked by the emergent feminist spirituality, because women with this understanding have learned to no longer take things on prescription – reflecting suspiciously on all holy texts and myths. The feminist perspective has tended to cure one from swallowing pre-scribed religion. With this perspective one is entered into a process of self-scription, of authoring, scribing oneself. Religion then becomes based on what one can feel, what one can know. This is also an affect of the recent harvest of the last few centuries of Western science – people generally are desiring to know directly, to rethink it all, and to find “for ourselves our individual role in the matrix”[iii], a way in which each being is part of the texture of the universal fabric. Our stories then, the stories of each one, become very important – the very weaving of context. Our texts together become Context: and we do indeed co-create the Universe. When we become conscious of that, and begin to experience it often enough by ceremonial gathering, the “we” grows stronger – the Divine/Sacred is supported and birthed. When it is understood that each contains within that which we seek – and perhaps this is a growing realization, then there is no power base for religious hierarchies whose persons may claim an inside track or rights to knowledge of the sacred. There is, alsoon the other hand, a recognition of “more skilled musicians”: that is, practitioners, teachers, people in whom the music of the Universe is heard and played more skillfully, from whom one may want to learn. That is a very different kind of authority; a power that is given from within, with personal discernment and choice. The other demand being made on religions as this “we” emerges is the ecozoic; and by ecozoic I mean one that will enable the human to become present to the Earth, to feel that relationship[iv]. Thomas Berry uses the term to describe an emerging era in which the well-being of the entire Earth community will be of primary concern. All religions that are unable to make a contribution to that will increasingly mean nothing. Women particularly, though certainly not exclusively, have been ushering in this impulse towards the ecozoic in many disciplines including the theological, for a good few decades. As women reach for a notion of divinity/spirit congruent with our-selves, with our lived experience, the notion of deity separate from the cycles and rhythms of physical being has receded, and the desire to know and celebrate the larger rhythms of which one is a part arises. The fact that GaiaEarth, Cosmos, and the other than human world has seemed beneath us, other than us, is what has to change, and ischanging; and it does not mean a reduction of the human, it means expandingour understanding of what we are part of. And gradually, we are. A Bit of Ceremony So let us taste this then … this elemental communion, the dynamic of the cosmos primordial and fundamental wherein the “we” may be found[v]. (Light a candle) We remember that we are AIR. We are this gaseous realm, the planet’s membrane. …
(Art) Black Madonna of Czestochowa by Lydia Ruyle

Black Madonna of Czestochowa, Poland is the most well known Black Madonna in the world. She is Matri Polski, Queen of Poland, and the symbol for change and freedom. She saved the Poles from the Swedes and wears her battle scars on her cheek. The Madonna is a painting on wood which is covered by a screen of precious metals and jewels that is ritually changed during the year. Her image is displayed for mass, then hidden behind a curtain. The walls of her chapel are covered with offerings or milagros asking and thanking Her for miracles and healing. Painting with gold & jewels, Czestochowa, Jasna Gorna, Poland
(Poem) War in the Ukraine by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright White Winds Chaotic stirrings. Frigid waters churning a season of ice. Is there no end to the differences that separate us – War? Military violence – murder and rape displacing us all from land we belong to – exiled from Earth, self, and those we love. https://www.magoism.net/2014/12/meet-mago-contributor-sara-wright/
(Essay 1) The Animal Mother Goddess by Hearth Moon Rising

Excerpt from Invoking Animal Magic: A guide for the Pagan priestess Early religious art was predominantly animal. The cave paintings of Spain and southern France are mostly of animals and animal symbols, like the chevron, egg, crescent, vesica piscis, and spiral. Even obvious goddess figures often have an animal theme, such as the horn that the “Venus of Laussel” holds in her right hand or the feline creatures crouching beside the “Seated Woman of Catal Huyuk.” As the Stone Age progressed, goddess imagery became more pronounced, yet goddess/animal combinations were still common. With the development of writing, goddesses were associated in picture, inscription or verse with specific animals. Some of these goddesses were linked with many animals, or even given the title Mistress of Animals. One of the oldest animal mistresses on record is the Sumerian goddess Ninhursaga, addressed by worshipers of her day as Lady of the Animals, Queen of the Mountain, Lady of the Vulva, Midwife of the Gods, Mother of All Children and Lady of the Stony Ground. Her worship began in southeastern Asia Minor by at least 3500 BCE and spread throughout Mesopotamia. Ninhursaga is mother of both animals and people, which is not a contradiction when you consider humans a part of the animal family. Her place of residence is the rugged mountain steppes, an acknowledgement of the wild origins of humans. Along with her symbolic omega (Ω), which bears a stylistic resemblance to the womb, Ninhursaga is typically depicted with horned headdress, a bow and some type of animal, especially a lion cub or doe. We could call her the Goddess of Bow and Doe. Sometimes Ninhursaga is pictured with a trilogy of cow, bull and calf, a popular motif throughout the region. More obscurely, Ninhursaga is the mother of a dying and resurrecting ass-god of the western deserts. Many of Ninhursaga’s attributes are associated with goddesses we remember today: the Akkadian Ishtar, the Anatolian Cybele, the Greek Artemis, the Roman Diana. Read part 2 and part 3. Read more of Hearth Moon Rising’s posts. Hearth Moon Rising is a Dianic priestess and a priestess in the Fellowship of Isis. She has taught magic for over twenty years. Hearth is a licensed outdoor guide and lives in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Invoking Animal Magic can be found in bookstores or ordered online. See http://invokinganimalmagic.com for more details.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Kerryn Coombs-Valeontis

Kerryn Coombs-Valeontis is an art and horticultural therapist working in mental health in Australia.. She is just emerging as a poet and is studying poetry therapy. Her poems and art are a response to life; nature as a healing force and a return to the feminine, are recurrent themes in her exploration. She is traversing more confidently the nexus between the two, and feels ready to share this now. You could say she is a late bloomer, but then again, we can only bloom when we are ready! She has a B. Ed. and Masters in Social Ecology.
(Nine Poets Speak) Breathing Smoke by Harriet Ann Ellenberger

[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.] Photo by Benjamin Lizardo on Unsplash Horizon to horizon, the sky is covered with haze — smoke from faraway wildfires. Heat bakes the landscape. The grass dies back. The hot nights exhaust me; no air conditioning means little sleep. I’m warned not to walk outside, that the smoke from burning trees has a lethal particulate in it. I smoked tobacco for sixty years, and that damage added to the smoke from trees on fire could spell the end of my breathing career. I start to panic, take a deep breath to calm myself, and realize that deep breathing may do me more harm than good. A week after the haze began, rain falls, the smoke disappears, and the heat wave is broken. I breathe easily once more, but I ask myself, What comes next? One clunate-change catastrophe follows another. As the years go by, my life becomes more fragile, and the life of Earth becomes more fragile too. We’re in synchronous waning. But my heart and my trust in the Great Round of life-death-life tell me that Earth will wax again, will become resplendent as a full moon on a summer night. Humans come and go, but our Mother knows how to create new life on our home ground. Meet Mago Contributor, Harriet Ann Ellenberger – Return to Mago E*Magazine
(S/HE Article Excerpt) Goddesses in Every Girl? Goddess Feminism and Children’s Literature by Mary Ann Beavis, Ph.D.

Available in S/HE V1 N1 [Editor’s Note: This article was previously published and is now available for a free download in S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies in Volume 1 Number 1. Do not cite this article in its present form. Citation must come from the published version in S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies 1,1 (2022): 115-138 (https://sheijgs.space/).”] This essay undertakes the task of introducing, exploring, and discussing the Magoist infant-rearing custom of traditional Korea known as Dandong Siphun (檀童十訓 단동십훈 Ten Instructions for Dan Children) in its oral and written sources.[1] Dandong Siphun (Ten Instructions for Dan Children) refers to a series of nurturing interplays between the mother and her pretoddler infant, “the Home Interplay,” a concept that this essay entertains. Engineered to care for an infant in the stage from womb to walking, Dandong Siphun (hereafter DDSH) employs such foundational human actions as talking, chanting, cuddling and hugging for the task of providing developmental care for the infant. During this period, a child is prepared for an ability to speak and a mobility to walk around independently. Walking freely marks the developmental goal of infanthood in DDSH. And it does not just mean an ability to use legs for the child’s mobility. It means a walking on the Way of the Creatrix. Implications of DDSH are multilayered and multifaceted. Through DDSH, traditional Magoist Korean mothers have maintained and transmitted the matricentric socio-cultural-spiritual way of living from one generation to another. For new readers of my research concerning Mago, the Creatrix, Magoism refers to the consciousness of the Creatrix expressed through the socio-historical-cultural customs of traditional Korea/East Asia and beyond.[2] Concerning the significance of pretoddler childcare, DDSH’s pre- and proto-linguistic developmental conventions are doubtless foundational in the formation of matricentric personhood. A newborn is newly born as a toddler through DDSH plays. The DDSH interplay, tailored by Magoist mothers, awakens the babies to the matriversal consciousness in the process of growing into an adult human being. DDSH is a practice that shapes the body-mind-soul of an infant. Crystallizing matriversal motherhood, DDSH comes to us moderns as soteriology. Humans must stand on matriversal motherhood for the survival and welfare of all beings. I have recently coined the word, matriverse (the maternal universe), to convey pre-patriarchally originated Magoist motherhood and its worldview. “Matriverse” rearranges the reality with the Creatrix at the center. Matriversal motherhood is not just an expansion of motherhood into outer space. It goes downwards and sidewards too. Matriversal motherhood concerns a total state of life in the matriverse. Its root lies in the inter-cosmic bond between matricentric humans and the natural world headed by whales. Why whales? Humans do not stand alone or outside the natural world cared for by whale mothers. Matricentric humans are backed by matricentric whales from within the natural world. To be noted is that DDSH is aligned with other Korean cetacean folk practices including the postpartum diet of miyeok-guk (the sea mustard “birthday” soup), the podaegi (a baby sling) custom of carrying a baby on one’s back, Samsin-sang (Dinner Altar offered to the Triad Great Mother) for the one hundred day and one year birthday of a baby, all of which comes under Magoist Cetaceanism,[3] which requires an extensive discussion elsewhere. I mean to say that DDSH is not a single isolated peculiar practice of traditional Korea. Ultimately, DDSH is a specific expression of the Magoist belief in which a baby’s birth and mortality are determined by the “decision” of Mago Samsin Halmi, the Mago Birth Great Mother, and in which all beings, upon death, return to where they came from, the Home of Mago the Creatrix, the northern center of the universe. The DDSH custom underwent a brief period of oblivion among the public in the early 20th century. In recent decades, Koreans have rediscovered that DDSH was the traditional infant-rearing custom of their ancestors. Although the term, Dandong Siphun, may still be unfamiliar to many Koreans, some individual instructions such as do-ri do-ri (도리도리), jaem jaem (잼잼), and jjak-jjak-kung (짝짝꿍) would be too easily recognizable for them to mention. That is because those forms of mother-infant play are commonly practiced among Koreans to this day. Almost all Koreans were likely taught them at one point in their infanthood or saw them in dramas and films as well as within the family.[4] Both women and men in Korea are increasingly voicing the benefits of the DDSH custom with a sense of amazement and pride. Young mothers have consciously adopted DDSH techniques. Yet, no one has articulated matriversal motherhood embodied in the DDSH custom. In praising DDSH, male advocates attribute DDSH to the Korean indigenous thought of viewing infants as heaven-given. They don’t seem to see the mother as a representative of the Creatrix or Heaven. In fact, patriarchy does NOT want to see mother as a divine representative. If the mother is not divine, no infant could be deemed divine. Because an infant is issued from its mother. My task in this essay is to provide the Magoist context to DDSH practices. I investigate relevant lore, language, mytho-history, and thought of traditional Magoist Korea. The Dandang Siphun custom of Magoist Korea reenacts the reality of matriversal motherhood through mother-infant interplays conducted during the pretoddling period, creating a postnatal foundation for an infant to grow into a healthy, intelligent, and happy matricentric person. With its semantic origin in the pre-patriarchal times of the Danguk confederacy (3898 BCE-2333 BCE),[5] DDSH has been transmitted primarily by mothers and grandmothers throughout generations.[6] To be completed within an approximately one year scheme, DDSH mothers implement a series of progressive interplays stage by stage in a timely manner. The mother guides her infant to mimic her crafted actions and vocalizations, which are to induce an optimized developmental (physical, cerebral, linguistic, emotional, and spiritual) growth in the latter. DDSH mothers see the period of infant’s dependency as a crucial time to begin a time-old matricentric socio-cultural-spiritual education. During this period of childhood dependency, Magoist mothers intend to …
(Essay 1) Through a Darkened Door—Light by Mary Ann Ghaffurian PhD

Radiant Sun Figure. Revolutionary context, c.4000BCE[i] Introduction My name is Mary Ann Ghaffurian, aka Dr MAG; my work unheralded on the world stage or any stage, in particular. During postgraduate years, my research focused, over a broken 30 year period, on the psychoetechnologies and archaeology of human consciousness; the structure of mind, soul and psyche over historical periods; and the interior passage or alchemic journey of the individual, then society in an atmosphere of nightmare and awakening. However, an academic journey into the undercurrents of time, space, history and consciousness was something I didn’t foresee, when suddenly catapulted into a luridly, stark awareness before the age of 3. Up until then, I lived in a watery, cocooned world of motheriness and hovering, benevolent faces in a leafy place opposite a beach. But something changed, dramatically. It was not just the appearance of a new baby in the family (a very sick baby), but because the cocoon of care I lived in was summarily snatched from me. Deposited in a hospital to be looked after by unfriendly people (probably because I was screaming continuously) while my mother recovered, I was left to fend emotionally in a sterile environment without parents or visitors. The rush of the outside world hit me with all its detached anonymity and separativeness. It was an experience of the ego of the child, who as the sun of itself, abiding in glowing beneficence, is suddenly and summarily expelled from its orbit, as the thing around which everything else turns, capitulating the solar being into the impossible— cold, empty space. From cushioned padded warmth and the wholeness of oneself unconditionally, to the outside crushing in with its abject Newtonian mental constructs of imprisonment. I became super-aware of different mentalities, barriers separating human to humans, without flow and each as a separate world with vast gulfs between. So outside reality hit, not just as separation, but as existential catastrophe. Once the floodgates to this awareness were opened, they remained open and I began from that time to deal with the conflict of inner and outer, internal and external, self and other, abyss and connection, coexisting uncomfortably together. Of them alone, that was enough, but the floods brought more, the multidimensional cacophony of memes and memories with the plight of child-consciousness being pressed up against a membrane of existence-as-it-was, as well as memory itself that was much longer and larger than the memory of the singular child. This last was the hardest to abide. Day or night I felt perniciously close to the thumping heart of milliard existences clambering for attention in memory, if I, just a little, dipped in to that drum-skin membrane that separated my little world from a vast teeming ocean of life just bustling to get in. At the same time I could not discern who or what memories, voices, memes were in that swill, because it wasn’t sorted, so the child became overwhelmed and exhausted. So there was a notional 3 year old struggling to get on in a household of adults and a new brother struggling with life, plus the new inner and outer world opened up to a child who had no-one to talk to, and indeed was just beginning to talk coherently herself. This beginning set the stage for the unravelling of a dedicated, seeking life. But it wasn’t just that I was alone in my new state of the inner and outer being merged somewhat, or threatening to merge all the time, and my valiant efforts to keep them apart, so I could get on with a normal kid life. No, many other scenarios developed out of that prescient clarity which was completely undesired by the child. I also felt interferences from another world, domain, dimension, technological intrusion, or worlds, with no apparatus of incarnate maturity to deal with it. And that was the thing, I was completely aware that the membrane that separated me from the deluge behind the screen was also the gift of forgetfulness that came with coming into this world, yet again. And there was the rub. Existential anguish at 5. Yes, there was the world of Father Christmas, The Nativity, Easter Bunny, Birthdays, Mickey Mouse Club, kindergarten, Mass on Sunday; books of Binkle and Flip and The Faraway Tree, although the story of Terra, the terrapin, remained the most significant (a book I never found again later, no matter how hard I searched). Then there was that other world, the world of the dead of night, when dark doors of dimensions opened and I (psyche, emotions, and vital energy) was at the mercy or behest of forces, powers, I had no vocabulary of skills to manage the terror of. “They” were without respect of person, violating one’s “personal space” uninvited. No boundary was holy or sacrosanct then. How do you deal with lack of boundaries or “no boundaries”— introduced from the “other side,” —when you are 4 or 5. The beautiful sanctum of non-interference is what babe and children revel in, in total enveloping trust: warm smiles, snuggly toys, nice smells, shining eyes and hugs. To whom do you turn when you call out to an adult, “Mummy!” who switches on the light and no one, no one else at all is there in the room? Night paralysis began and became continual. But there was more, there was always more. In hindsight I can look back and show you how I dealt with each issue case by case, unravelling the core of each situation incrementally by the grit of struggling awareness, and by digging into and clinging to the seed of my being. It coexisted in the experiential melange one was hurled into body and soul before one could barely give utterance to what was happening, and there were no mentors to help. Beside the bereavement of being in that condition, it is important to tell, there was a very narrow band of a sense one could talk to someone or something else, very …
(Poem) MOTHERS WILL MAKE PEACE by Mary Saracino

“Mothers will make peace, so sons will not die.” Huda, a Palestinian journalist living in Jordan, as quoted in “Women’s Gathering Gives Peace a Chance,” Women’s E-News, April 13, 2006 Will it come to this, then? The mothers rising like Furies unleashed, banishing war from the souls of men, their fierce wombs howling with the memory of seedling sons — how they quickened and grew, ripening into beautiful babies, brimming with hope, their futures overflowing with laughter, love, the kisses of grateful mothers — not bombs, not bloodshed, not rage. Will the mothers unite, dressed in saris of apricot & nectarine, African headdresses of fuchsia, green, & yellow, American blue jeans and T-shirts, Italian leather jackets? Will they defy the edicts, the lies, the clarion calls to violence everywhere — the battlefield, the bedroom, the boardroom, the brothel? Mothers with dark faces heed their sons’ cries, their daughters’ anguish; mothers with blue eyes or black, mothers with Arab hearts or Israeli, inner-city moms or moms in mini-vans, farm wives and nuns, scholars and poets, Asian or Mexican, white-skinned or brown, young or old. Can they re-tether the war-weary world to their ruptured umbilical cords? Mend every tattered soul? Can peace prevail if fathers fail to join their holy efforts? Or must mothers shoulder the grief alone, bearing the world’s sorrows, as they bear the pains of labor, giving birth to justice that hungers for compassion, transformation that conjures a different kind of world? “Mothers Will Make Peace” was originally published on newversenews.com, Sunday, April 30, 2006 Read Meet Mago Contributor, Mary Saracino, and her other posts.

(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?
(Special Post 6) 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.] Esther Essinger “Why Goddess, when “GD” is perpetrating so much grief? 1) First, it’s vital to know that Goddess is NOT “GD” in a skirt. It is demanded of NO one that they “believe” or “have faith”, so there can be no guilt (and no punishment! (No Hell below us, thank you John) in NOT choosing to interest oneself in these particular Stories, myths, legends and tales which center the Cosmic Female, the Universal Mother, Mother Earth /Mother Nature at their core. No evangelism happening here!
(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.

(Photography & Poetry) Thoughts of Spring by Deanne Quarrie

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

A SEED FOR SPRING EQUINOX . . . till I feel the earth around the place my head has lain under winter’s touch, and it crumbles. Slanted weight of clouds. Reaching with my head and shoulders past the open crust dried by spring wind. Sun. Tucking through the ground that has planted cold inside me, made its waiting be my food. Now I watch the watching dark my light’s long-grown dark makes known. Art and poem are included in Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2017). (Meet Mago Contributor) Sudie Rakusin (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
(Poem) Samhain by Annie Finch

In the season leaves should love, since it gives them leave to move through the wind, towards the ground they were watching while they hung, legend says there is a seam stitching darkness like a name. Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days, till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor. I turn my hand and feel a touch move with me, and when I brush my young mind across another, I have met my mother’s mother. Sure as footsteps in my waiting self, I find her, and she brings arms that hold answers for me, intimate, waiting, bounty: “Carry me.” She leaves this trail through a shudder of the veil, and leaves, like amber where she stays, a gift for her perpetual gaze. From Eve (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010) (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
(Art & Poem) Candelmas/Imbolc by Sudie Rakusin & Annie Finch

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

The dance begins with two concentric circles, which will flow in and out of each other throughout the dance, resulting thus in a third concentric circle that comes and goes. The three circles/layers are understood to represent the three aspects of Goddess, the Creative Triple Dynamic that many ancients were apparently aware of, and imagined in so many different ways across the globe. In Her representation in Ireland as the Triple Spiral motif, which is inscribed on the inner chamber wall at Bru-na-Boinne (known as Newgrange)[1], She seems to be understood as a dynamic essential to on-going Cosmic Creativity, as this ancient motif is dramatically lit up by the Winter Solstice dawn. It seems that this was important to the Indigenous people of this place at the time of Winter Solstice, which celebrates Origins, the continuing birth of all. Thus I like to do this Cosmogenesis Dance, as I have named it[2], at the Winter Solstice in particular. The three aspects that the dance may embody, and are poetically understood as Goddess, celebrate (i) Virgin/Young One – Urge to Be as I have named this quality – the ever new differentiated being (also known as Fodla in the region of the Triple Spiral)[3]. This is the outer circle of individuals. (ii) Mother – the deeply related interwoven web – Dynamic Place of Being as I have named this quality – the communion that our habitat is (also known as Eriu in the region of the Triple Spiral)[4]. This is the woven middle circle where all are linked and swaying in rhythm. (iii) Crone/Old One – the eternal creative return to All-That-Is – She who Creates the Space to Be as I have named this quality (also known as Banba in the region of the Triple Spiral)[5]. This is the inner circle where linked hands are raised and stillness is held. The three concentric layers of the dance may be understood to embody these. The Cosmogenesis Dance represents the flow and balance of these three – a flow and balance of Self, Other and All-That-Is. It may be experienced like a breath, that we breathe together – as we do co-create the Cosmos. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have named the three qualities of Cosmogenesis in the following way: – differentiation … to be is to be unique – communion … to be is to be related – autopoiesis/subjectivity … to be is to be a centre of creativity.[6] The three layers of the dance may be felt to celebrate each unique being, in deep relationship with other, directly participating in the sentient Cosmos, the Well of Creativity. The Cosmogenesis Dance as it is done within PaGaian Winter Solstice ceremony expresses the whole Creative Process we are immersed in. It is a process of complete reciprocity, a flow of Creator and Created, like a breath. There is dynamic exchange in every moment: that is the nature of the Place we inhabit. The dance may help awaken us to it, and to invoke it. The Cosmogenesis Dance on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR73MDMM9Fk For more story: Cosmogenesis Dance for Winter Ritual For Dance Instructions: PaGaian Cosmology Appendix I Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [1] The Triple Spiral engraving is dated at 2,400 B.C.E. [2] This dance is originally named as “The Stillpoint Dance”, or sometimes “Adoramus Te Domine” which is the name of the music used for it. I learned it from Dr. Jean Houston in 1990 at a workshop of hers in Sydney, Australia. I began to use the dance for Winter Solstice ceremony in 1997, and it was only in the second year of doing so that I realised its three layers were resonant with the three traditional qualities of the Female Metaphor/Goddess, and also the three faces of Cosmogenesis. I thereafter re-named and storied the dance that way in the ceremonial preparation and teaching for Winter Solstice. See Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology: pp. 280-281 and 311. [3] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p.192. [4] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p. 192. [5] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p. 192. [6] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p. 71-79. I have identified these qualities with the Triple Goddess, and the Triple Spiral in the synthesis of PaGaian Cosmology: see Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, particularly Chapter 4: https://pagaian.org/book/chapter-4/ References: Dames, Michael. Ireland: a Sacred Journey, Element Books, 2000. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Lincoln NE: iUniverse, 2005. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. NY: HarperCollins, 1992.
A PaGaian Wheel of the Year and Her Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. for larger image see: https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ Essentially a PaGaian Wheel of the Year celebrates Cosmogenesis – the unfolding of the Cosmos, none of which is separate from the unfolding of each unique place/region, and each unique being. This creativity of Cosmogenesis is celebrated through Earth-Sun relationship as it may be expressed and experienced within any region of our Planet. PaGaian ceremony expresses this with Triple Goddess Poetry 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 expressed in the seasons), happens because of Earth’s tilt in relationship with Sun: because this 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,[i] 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.[ii] 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 (as of this writing) 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,[iii] and more recently a site of ongoing ritual activity as old as seventy thousand years has been found.[iv] 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. 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 anyone’s 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.[v]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. In PaGaian Cosmology I have adapted the Wheel as a way of celebrating the Female Metaphor and also as a way of celebrating Cosmogenesis, the Creativity that is present really/actually in every moment, but for which the Seasonal Moments provide a pattern/Poetry over the period of a year – in time and place. The pattern that I unfold is a way in which the three different phases/characteristics interplay. In fact, the way in which they interplay seems infinite, the way they inter-relate is deeply complex. I think it is possible to find many ways to celebrate them. There is nothing concrete about the chosen story/Poetry, nor about each of the scripts presented here, just as there is nothing concrete about the Place of Being – it (She) is always relational, a Dynamic Interchange. Whilst being grounded in the “Real,” the Poetry chosen for expression is therefore at the same time, a potentially infinite expression, according to the heart and mind of the storyteller. NOTES: [i] See Appendix C, *(6), Glenys Livingstone, A Poiesis of the Creative …

(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.
(Tribute) In Loving Memory of Lydia Ruyle (1935-2016) by Mago Circle Members

We posthumously honor Lydia Ruyle (August 5, 1935-March 26, 2016) as Patron of Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality. Mago Circle Members on June 11, 2016. Glenys Livingstone I feel blessed to have known Lydia and to have been in occasional personal communication with her for several years … initially via the Goddess Scholars list. Lydia sent me great information of some of her journeys, was always encouraging and generously supported my CD crowdfunding project in 2015. I feel honoured to have carried her Goddess banners to Australia in 2014.
(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 …

(Meet Contributor) Annie Lanzillotto

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