I have become a Ceto-Magoist, while studying and advocating the Budoji, the principal text of Ceto-Magoism (the Whale-guided Way of Mago, the Creatrix), for the last more than two and half decades. For those who may not be familiar with my research on Ceto-Magoism, here is the Ceto-Magoist tenet in a sentence: “Humans are born to assist the natural world headed by the Cetacean Divine, who manages terrestrial sonic equilibrium in bringing back balance and harmony among earthlings in tune with the Cosmic Music, the cosmogenic force of the Matriverse (Maternally perceived universe).” The Ceto-Magoist Consciousness pre-patriarchal in origin is salvific in nature. And it is inscribed in our civilizations. That way, the Ceto-Magoist consciousness has never left the human world.
Ancient Magoists were able to tap into Cetacean Intelligence/Spirituality or Matriversal Intelligence and governed the human world in alliance with the sono-aquatic-environmental work of Cetaceans, traditionally addressed as the Dragon Palace Mother or the Dragon Rider. At the core of Ceto-Magoism is Matriversal Cosmology, which concerns reality unfolding through the Offspring of the Cosmic Mother. S/HE represents the Cosmic Music, the creative force/principle of the Matriverse. The Cosmic Music refers to the sono-numeric-cosmogenic web of the Matriverse. The Cetacean Song, which circulates planetary water in tune with the Cosmic Music, invokes the process of creation to take place on the planet.
According to Ceto-Magoist Cosmology, ALL (including inorganic entities) in the Matriverse are born, grow, and transform through the Ninefold Cosmic Music represented by the Nine Mago Creatrix and that earthlings are raised by the Song of Cetaceans, traditionally symbolized as the dragon, which circulates planetary water and manage terrestrial climates. That is, cetaceans are revered as the terrestrial divine who nourishes planetary beings. Thus comes the original trinity of the Ceto-Magoist Divine: Mago (the Heavenly Divine), Whales (the Terrestrial Divine), and Goma (the Human Divine). Goma refers to the Shaman Queen Mother of the 4th millennium BCE deified as the greatest deity born of a woman. I ascribe Goma as the Teacher, Savior, and Civilizer of Ceto-Magoist Civilizations that we moderns inherited.
Soteriological Nature of Ceto-Magoist Cosmology
Ceto-Magoist Cosmology is soteriological. Today, I want to address what we can do or rather how we can cope with today’s planetary conundrums caused by humans in the course of human history. While there are many old and fresh approaches, which is the sign of hope, there is one voice that we don’t have yet. That is to see terrestrial problems from the matriversal perspective. Precisely, I refer to the view to perceive the universe as the Land of the Cosmic Mother, the Home/Womb/Tomb of ALL (including inorganic entities). The matriversal approach is salvific, the ultimate and final hope for terrestrial problems.
We humans in the 21st century are deprived of Matriversal Cosmology, the mental and epistemic framework, which equips humans with the lens of the Cosmic Mother. The Eye of the Cosmic Mother, while it has never left the human world since the beginning, puts humans back in touch with the cosmogenic power of the Matriverse. For S/HE is the Source and the Origin of ALL, the Creatrix. In the course of patriarchal history, humans have lost the Eye of the Cosmic Mother. The human restoring of the Cosmic Mother’s Soul, Heart, and Mind is the key to terrestrial soteriology. Matriversal Cosmology allows us to understand and adopt the matristic way of thinking and building individual and communal Life on and beyond the planet Earth.
It is important to note that Matriversal Feminism, a revised form of spiritual feminism previously called Goddess Feminist Spirituality Movement among the Mago Community, is not a free-floating modern excursion. Matriversal Feminism refers to the feminist movement propelled by the consciousness of the Cosmic Mother who is the Source and the Origin of ALL in the Matriverse. It is rooted in Matriversal Cosmology. And at the core of Matriversal Cosmology lies the Ceto-Magoist Consciousness (see the figure below, Matriveral Intelligence). I use the term “Matriversal” inclusively and interchangeably with “Ceto-Magoist.”
How do we gain the Eye of the Cosmic Mother, Matriversal Intelligence? I am inviting us to adopt a way of seeing reality as the marvelous web of the Cosmic Mother, which I call the matriversal reality of WE/HERE/NOW. When we can look at reality as an indivisible whole originating from the Cosmic Mother, we have the Eye of the Cosmic Mother. HER EYE is salvific, not hidden but forgotten. HER EYE is inscribed in our civilizations at the heyday of the Neolithic by our Ceto-Magoist ancestors. What we have to do is to open our eyes to discover HER EYE.
What I suggest is not a modern invention or a mere revival of an old esoteric way of knowing. The Ceto-Magoist Consciousness old in origin summons its own sets of cosmological premises to populate the mind. Reality is not contained in the past or even in the present. The past, the present, and the future are species-bound timespace units. Our future can’t be the future of insects or whales, for example. We the lifeforms in matriveral timespace neither stay static or remain the same. There is no one beginning or the one ending in the matriveral reality of WE/HERE/NOW. Individual entities begin, grow, and die simultaneously. All entities run the cyclic journey of Causal Becoming, as I wrote elsewhere.
We are in the ever-expanding and ever-dying web of the Cosmic Mother. There is no repeat of the same reality. The WEB, which is HER WEB, is ALIVE. Our human lives are the revival and the innovation at the same time. For example, our genes are bequeathed by our ancestors but we are not the same as our ancestors. We receive the ancient world and evolve from it. We humans, like all else, are born, grow, and transform to begin the cycle ever again in the Bosom of the Cosmic Mother. And we are NOT an isolated or supreme species. We are the offspring of ALL ELSE owning intercosmic kinship with them.
ALL die, that is, transform in order to begin again. That is the dark spot of the Cosmic Mother. S/HE is full and void at the same time. The Bosom of the Cosmic Mother comes as dreadful, if one refuses to adopt HER Eye. Once one willfully go against the Way of the Matriverse, s/he is filled with fear. The ancient fear made them demonize women and the natural world who represent the Cosmic Mother. I am referring to the demonization of the dragon or the serpent, the symbol of the Cetacean Providence. The power of nature comes as demons and is often mystified as sea monsters. The refusal of the matriversal way has caused delusion, ignorance, and suffering in humans on all levels, which brought imbalance in and among all terrestrial lifeforms.
The Two Old Human-caused Catastrophes
Ceto-Magoist Cosmology concerns humans to comprehend the way of the Matriverse and our ontological conundrums on behalf of all planetary beings. According to the Budoji, the ancient Korean testimony to matriversal cosmology and matristic history, the human world caused two evolutionary catastrophes deflecting the process of all lifeforms on the planet from the harmony with the Ninefold Cosmic Music (See the Budoji Chapters 5 to 26). Consequently, the majority of humans have forgotten the Heavenly Nature, an innate ability to know the matriversal force of cosmogenesis, represented as the Nine Mago Creatrix.
The first catastrophe of the human world is dietary violence, which I call the biological fall. It refers to the fact that human ancestors in the mythic period took living beings for food by force. This dietary change brought out terrestrial disasters in the course of history. Its impacts changed all on the planet on all levels from biology to psychology, to interspecies dynamics (by nature all beings hide instinctively to survive from their predators), to natural disasters especially the flood, and to the discrepancy of calendric numbers. This first fall is mythologically told as “eating grapes” or “eating an apple.” The expression, Pandora’s box, captures the first evolutionary disaster and the kind thereafter. If you can think of the ouroboros symbol, it will be helpful to understand this first catastrophe. This is the terrestrial ontology: S/HE Eats HER Own Tail since the first catastrophe. The figure below kindly informs its meaning, “the all is one,” a matriversal consciousness.
Although humans came to be subjected to the soteriological task of coping with the self-consuming paradigm for physical subsistence, they managed a new balance for the forthcoming tens of millennia. Then the second fall took place about four millennia ago. The second catastrophe refers to patriarchy, fallacy in the mind or the epistemic system wherein self-claimed kings and emperors mimicked the matriversal political system for themselves by forging a distorted philosophy and the 12 month calendar. Patriarchy was nothing other than a willfully mistaken interpretation of the Ninefold Cosmic Music, the cosmogenic principle of the Matriverse. Manipulating the matriversal reality of WE/HERE/NOW in the mind, patriarchy enforced the distorted idea of colonialist kingship. It brought demise to traditional matristic confederacies gradually. I will leave the discussion of patriarchy as an epistemic fall elsewhere.
These two human-caused terrestrial catastrophes turned the direction of planetary evolution regressively and continue to cause suffering in humanity and all planetary beings. Calling them the evolutionary catastrophes, I mean that their impacts have shaped the process of evolution on the part of all planetary entities. We moderns cannot undo or change anything that had already happened in the planetary history of evolution. No one expects that split milk will reverse to be the cup, for example. Or a grown up can’t go back to the babyhood. But we can change the present. What we can do is to change the present so that the future will find a new point of equilibrium. Whatever has happened in the phenomenon world joins the whole and proceeds according to the principle of natural evolution, which I call Causal Becoming. I am saying that Matriversal Cosmology is the roadmap given to humanity by our Neolithic Ceto-Magoist ancestors. With it, we humans can steer our planetary ship. The fact that we humans have come this far (we are still functional despite the first two catastrophes, not extinct yet) owes to the indelible legacy program of our matristic civilizations we moderns inherited.
Given that the Budoji was written in the late-4th or early-5th century CE, we cannot but notice the gap between from the 5th century to today, the 21st century. That we don’t have a matriversal text that tells about the course of history since the 5th century is no accident. The lapse of about two millennia has brought the oblivion of Matriversal Cosmology on the surface. I have been thinking if we in the 21st century may be blind to the third human-caused catastrophe. For this reason, I was paying attention to the arrival of AI (Artificial Intelligence), if it fits the category. But I wasn’t certain that the AI wave meets the criteria of the third cataclysm. Has humanity opened the third Pandora’s box, so to speak?
Synthetic Biology as the 21st Century Human-caused Conundrum
Recently I ran into something alarming, which is called synthetic biology. Synthetic biology (synbio for short) struck me in the spine. Such trends as organoids, hybrid organic systems, embodied AI, and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) go hand in hand with synthetic biology. What is synthetic biology? Basically, it is the newest form of science-based technology that manipulates organic lifeforms for good and for bad. The following is from the AI summary on the web browser:
“Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary field that applies engineering principles to biology, designing and constructing new biological parts, devices, and systems, or re-designing existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes.”
I realize that AI itself won’t be the third fall of the terrestrial catastrophe. To fit the category, it has to be the cause of planetary problems. AI is the newest ramification of patriarchy. It is an apt tool for the synbio industry. That said, AI is largely exaggerated and romanticized in its propaganda. The language that describes AI is somewhat entertaining. Laughably, a subfield of AI scanning is called Deep Learning. Everyone knows that AI scans broadly and widely without depth. We know that AI can’t know things that are not read by it. If AI can do Deep Learning, that may be the sign of “the AI Singularity,” a point of time wherein AI surpasses human intelligence. AI will surely surpass male intelligence someday soon. AI can’t surpass Matriversal Intelligence. That is because Matriversal Intelligence does not work in the linear mode of scanning what is already said or written. Foremost, it debunks patriarchy as the fall of the deluded mind. AI has to be self-negating, if it comprehends Matriversal Intelligence.
Also note that AI commits “hallucination,” which refers to the false and misleading information provided as fact by AI. AI hallucination is also called “bullshitting” or “delusion.” Some say that AI can’t say that it does not know. So what it does is to fabricate facts by using what it has read. This is much like a patriarchal lie. Misunderstanding Matriversal Intelligence (precisely, the Ninefold Cosmic Music), the deluded patriarchal mind distorts facts. This is the point that the Budoji addresses. Others say that marketers will give hallucination insurance for its users. By the same logic, we would need delusion insurance under patriarchy. Those are sad jokes. I would say that AI is a mental copy of the deluded patriarchal mind. AI proves that patriarchy can only self-replicate, the deluded mind, which is dangerous to ALL.
Now with AI technology applied in labs and bio foundries, synthetic biology gains viability to advance at an exponential speed. We will soon witness the explosion of synbio products, from microbiomes to organoids and organisms. I sense that synthetic biology would fall into the third catastrophe, the catastrophe of reproduction. While patriarchy was a distortion of reality in the mind by the male ego to enthrone himself as the sovereign, synbio is the usurpation of Nature’s reproductive power by the male ego to emulate the Creatrix. Synbio techs may think they can play God, the male creator, who is fake in the first place. This third evolutionary catastrophe may reset Life on the planet Earth with or without humans.
The biological manipulation of lifeforms is something that we humans did not have a century ago. We matriversal women and men know too well that synbio is only an outburst of patriarchal madness. We know deep down that patriarchy has a rotten root, which can’t shoot out organic sprouts. Synthetic biology is nothing but suicidal, masked as the newest opportunity for humans at the cost of of ALL. It cares for nothing but the deluded male ego. It acts upon the torturing of the Natural World in the name of intelligence, severing spirituality from it for good. While it puts the knife to the throat of the human species, it awakens the time of lighting Ceto-Magoist Intelligence again.
The need to advocate the soteriological worldview of Ceto-Magoist Cosmology coincides with the impending explosion of synthetic biology equipped with AI. We need to cultivate Matriversal Intelligence urgently more than ever. Some might think that synbio is the last patriarchal hero to complete the original plot of patriarchs, magna-matricide (killing of the Cosmic Mother), a pure delusion. Synbio techs may pretend that they can act for the Creatrix. They should be reminded that they can’t remove the power of life inscribed in organisms. Humans are too ephemeral to be counted in the evolution of planetary lifeforms. Matriversal Intelligence is unconquerable. S/HE DOES NOT DIE. S/HE LIVES ON in the Matriverse. Meanwhile, the public will hear through ever-more refined AI that the dragon, the serpent, and sea monsters once demonized by patriarchs did not die but will rise again with the new generation of humans armed with Matriversal Cosmology. The bond between humans and the whale-guided natural world established by our ancestors is indelible. The only way that we humans can contribute to the planetary eco-community is to recognize the intercosmic kinship of ALL in the Cosmic Mother and consolidate our bond with the Natural World.
References
The Budoji (Epic of the Emblem Capital City), translated by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (2026). https://www.magoacademy.org/the-budoji-epic-of-the-emblem-capital-city/
Helen Hye-Sook Hwang. Reader: Toward Magoist Cetaceanism (Mago Books, 2023).
Groff-Vindman, C.S., Trump, B.D., Cummings, C.L. et al. “The convergence of AI and synthetic biology: the looming deluge.” npj Biomed. Innov. 2, 20 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44385-025-00021-1
“The Age of AI in the Life Sciences: Benefits and Biosecurity Considerations” National Academies Press (US); 2025 Apr 23. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK614606/ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssynbio.3c00760
Hector García Martín, Stanislav Mazurenko, Huimin Zhao. “Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence for Synthetic Biology,” ACS Synth. Biol. 2024, 13, 2, 408–410 https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.3c00760
I like the way you define this way of being and found the whole article illuminating. What you say about AI is critical – we all have to become increasingly aware of this newest form of tech -god patriarchy –
Crucial reflections for these perilous times. I would say AI is knocking on the door of terrestrial collapse, given all the power and drinking water it uses to function. A true nightmare.