[Author’s Note: This essay was published in S/HE: An International Journal of Goddress Studiess V5 N1 (2026). Footnotes numbers of these sequels do not match with those in the original publication.]
Toward Matriversalism
Creatrix Studies is an unfolding field of study, which concerns the Origin Mother. It has grown out of my lifetime research and advocacy on Ceto-Magoism (the Whale-guided Way of Mago, the Creatrix), the pre-patriarchally originated civilizational system of matriversal ontology (the maternal way of intercosmic becoming) made possible by the adoption of cetacean intelligence. For me, Creatrix Studies is a broad application of Ceto-Magoism. Creatrix Studies is an outer attire for Ceto-Magoism. Ceto-Magoism completes Creatrix Studies. Both are about resuming the anciently-set journey to build a matriversal home on the planet. They, interweaving interdisciplinary materials, stand in open-ended reality. The academic facade is there as a modality to connect farther. Creatrix Studies reifies matriversal ontology, whereas Ceto-Magoist Studies roots matriversal ontology. The relationship between Creatrix Studies and Ceto-Magoism is mutually supportive. Creatrix Studies can only float the surface without the root in Ceto-Magoist Studies. Ceto-Magoist Studies needs to be reborn with its lost branches in the course of patriarchal history. They are the two ends in one spectrum, called Matriversalism (the Way of the Matriverse, the maternally perceived universe). In the course of my study of Ceto-Magoism, I came to coin the term, the matriverse, and defined it as the maternally perceived universe. “The matriverse” began to untie my then paralyzed tongue. I use “Ceto-Magoist” synonymously as “matriversal.” The Cosmic Tree would be an apt symbol for Matriversalism. Creatrix Studies is an effort to rebuild the Cosmic Tree, the symbol for matriversal ontology given by our Ceto-Magoist ancestors.[1]
Figure 1 illustrates where Creatrix Studies stands in the overall scheme of matriversal human history assessed from the Ceto-Magoist perspective. I reconstructed the mytho-history of Magoist Korea from the beginning of my doctoral research on Magoism based on Korean primary sources including The Budoji. The first four periods, Mythic, Golden, Budo, and the early part of Post-Budo are exclusively drawn from The Budoji.[2] In this overview of human history, Creatrix Studies enters the Revival Period. The Revival Period is marked by the year 1986 when the Korean translation of The Budoji was published in Korea, ending the Dark Period (from the 17th Century to 1986).[3] Creatrix Studies connects us in the 21st century to the Mythic Period, the envisaged past wherein a new matriversal beginning unfolded and continue to the Early Neolithic. The Golden Period marks the beginning of the 5th millennium BCE (Hanguk) through the end of the 4th millennium BCE (Danguk), followed by the Budo Period (Budo Joseon) in the 3rd millennium BCE. Ceto-Magoism flowered during the three old matriversal confederacies of Hanguk, Danguk, and Budo Joseon during the Golden and the Budo Period.
Figure 1: Mytho-History of Ceto-Magoists
Embodied Intercosmic Knowing
Creatrix Studies chisels out an old, original mode of embodied intercosmic knowing. We know intercosmic kinship of ALL in our bodies. Our bodies remember the intercosmic kinship of ALL. Biology, a form of structured water, is not just the medium to enter intercosmic reality. It is the manifestation of intercosmic reality, LIFE. We intend to thread seemingly scattered or unrelated sources with the collective eye of matri-cosmology laid out by Ceto-Magoism. Precisely, Creatrix Studies re-plants the consciousness of the Cosmic Mother in the matriversal reality of WE/HERE/NOW, wherein entities are birthing, growing, and transforming simultaneously and interdependently. The category of the Cosmic Mother we focus on in comparison with the Goddess or the female divine does away patriarchal confinements in that the Cosmic Mother is the notion that patriarchal religions and mythologies do not endorse. S/HE is supreme as the Origin of ALL. Our scholars interrogate how major Goddesses of the world remain, while drawing age-long piety and admiration, coopted and warped in patriarchal religions and mythologies. We want to know how they are possibly correlated. For such inquiries, we take into consideration her symbols, historical contexts, and cultural representations.
Creatrix Studies projects are founded to achieve the purpose of expanding the consciousness of the Creatrix, which underlies worldwide myths, customs, religions, histories, and civilizations. Currently, the major projects of Creatrix Studies include the graduate and non-degree programs in Creatrix Studies, the peer-reviewed open-access academic journal (S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies), the S/HE Online Conference, and the S/HE Online Forum. The degree program officially began in the fall of 2025. The non-degree Lifetime Certificate Program began in the spring of 2026. For the graduate degree program, Mago Academy offers MA, Ph.D., and MA/Ph.D. degrees in partnership with Ubiquity University[4].
The foundational premises of Creatrix Studies are:
- The salvific consciousness of the Cosmic Mother is inscribed in ancient myths, religions, and cultures.
- Creatrix Studies aims at understanding the force behind the great unity of ALL in the Matriverse, the Ninefold Cosmic Music, the cosmogenic principle represented by the Nine Mago Creatrix.
- Mythologically, Creatrix Studies relies on matriversal cosmology, which requires a study of The Budoji, the principal text of Ceto-Magoism.
- We moderns have inherited a brilliant ontological legacy, Ceto-Magoist civilization, built on cetacean-human hybrid intelligence from the Neolithic.
- Patriarchy is derivative of its matrix, matriversal confederacy, erasing or usurping the Sovereignty of the Cosmic Mother.
- Restoring the mytho-historical-cultural trajectory of Ceto-Magoism unfetters demonization and suppression of the ancient symbolism of the sea-monster/dragon/serpent, representing Ceto-Magoist matristic history.
- Creatrix Studies awakens the mind/heart/soul to the matriversal reality of WE/HERE/NOW. It reminds us of matriversal ontology wherein ALL are born, grow, and transform interdependently and simultaneously.
- We, the human terrestrial inhabitant, are called to re-orient ourselves and our communities within matriversal ontology to bring an ever-new equilibrium to the planet Earth.
Going beyond syncretism or comparative mythology, Creatrix Studies aims at decoding and demonstrating matriversal intelligence/spirituality. Goddess, motherhood, thealogy, cosmology, mythology, matristic histories, matriarchies, Shamans and witches, critique of patriarchy, folklore and toponymy, matricentric culture, calendrics, healing, cymatics, water, female biology, and feminist ecology are among the major subfields of Creatrix Studies. Because Creatrix Studies unearths a thus-far forgotten or marginalized body of literature, it necessarily challenges the present paradigm. The challenging aspect is only a byproduct. Creatrix Studies undertakes major surgery on human consciousness to restore its original health.
Ceto-Magoist Studies
Ceto-Magoist Studies is about how archaic Korean ancestors (the One Mother People of the Earth) reified heaven on earth by way of cetacean-human hybrid intelligence/spirituality. It is a twenty-first century effort to revive matriversal ontology (the maternal way of intercosmic becoming), cultivated and bequeathed by our Ceto-Magoist ancestors. Ceto-Magoist Studies uncovers Old Korean testimony to the mytho-historical-cosmological legacy of ancient matristic worlds we moderns have inherited. By “Old Korea” (the first three matriversal confederacies of Hanguk, Danguk, and Budo Joseon), I mean the archaic Koreans who marched into the Neolithic with the mission of restoring matriversal ontology on the planet. They invented and spread Ceto-Magoism to the world. To be discussed later in this essay, Old Korea stood for Matriversal Sovereignty and represented the One People and the One Land of Mago, the Creatrix, on the planet, Mago Stronghold. Old Korean Shaman Queens of the Neolithic adopted cetacean intelligence to carve out the consciousness of the Cosmic Mother in the form of civilization, which I call Ceto-Magoist civilization, as a way of guiding humans throughout generations. Ceto-Magoism was no parochial phenomenon. Together with the civilizational advancements, Ceto-Magoism was carried out to the world by the envoys (mermaids and mermen) of Old Korea.[5]
Language is not just a means to convey ideas but the matrix to reify ideas and expand consciousness. Here is a brief survey of terms that I have coined along the way. Each time when I coined them, I was able to say I was not conscious of the cetological epistemic underpinning. I began forging “Magoism” to refer to a pan-East Asian mytho-historical-cultural tradition. I was not fully aware of the cetacean overtone of Magoism until the beginning of 2019. I first called it Magoist Cetaceanism sometime in 2023. On September 2, 2024, I modified it to “Ceto-Magoism.”[6] Earlier in October 2021, I coined the term, “matriverse,” to name the maternally perceived universe. “Matriverse” was evolved from “the ultimate reality of WE/HERE/NOW” used in my first book, The Mago Way.[7] The word, “matriverse,” freed my tongue to utter what was unnamed before, including matriversal confederacy, “matri-cosmology,” matriversal intelligence, matriversal civilization, and so forth. In this essay, I introduce “matriversalism,” and “matriversal ontology.” And I use it interchangeably with “Ceto-Magoist.”
The term, “Creatrix Studies,” was coined in 2024 after the first and inaugural online conference, which I called first the S/HE Divine Studies Conference. Then I needed to explain what “S/HE” means. “S/HE” refers to the Cosmic Mother, the Origin of ALL both males and females. S/HE is a pronoun for the Creatrix. Mago is both the Cosmic Mother (personified) and the Creatrix (the non-personal). When S/HE indicates the Origin or Source of ALL (including non-organic entities), S/HE is the Creatrix. The S/HE Conference is interchangeably with the Creatrix Studies Conference during the second conference in 2025. Last year, I founded Creatrix Studies graduate programs followed by the foundation of the non-degree program this year.
Ceto-Magoist Studies is necessarily built on my conceptual translation of Korean primary sources into the English language. I work with Old Korean matriversal concepts and introduce them in English. My work is trans-linguistic and trans-cultural by default. The English word, Creatrix, is a semantic translation of the Koreans word, Johwasin (造化神 the Creator Divine) for Mago. “Mago” is the Korean/East Asian word for the Creatrix (impersonal, non-theistic) and the Cosmic Mother (personal, theistic).[8] When Mago is referred to as the Creatrix, S/HE is the Origin of ALL (including inorganic entities). When Mago is referred to as the Cosmic Mother, S/HE is the Mother of ALL. The epithets of Mago include the Triad Creatrix (Johwa Samsin), the Triad Divine (三神 Samsin) or the Birth Mother, the Heavenly Divine (天神Cheonsin), the Progenitor Divine (Daejosin), the One Divine (Ilsin).[9]
My task is to provide the Ceto-Magoist foundation to Creatrix Studies. To say that Ceto-Magoist Studies merits many things is an understatement. It reorders the primary categories, while taking the student to the unfolding realm beyond, below, and through the surface of patriarchal pseudo-reality. Matri-cosmology, matriveral ontology, matristic histories, Ceto-ecofeminist spirituality, and creatrix-thealogy rise as compelling subfields. Human history began as a matristic community, “the One Tribe” of the Earth. The expression, the One Tribe of the Earth is not my invention. Old Korean Shaman Queens were missioned to “demonstrated how Heaven and Earth are operated by the One Principle and how human beings comprise the One Tribe.”[10] All that has happened in the human world is an overall manifestation of matristic history. People of the time are given the mission of maintaining terrestrial equilibrium.
Most conspicuously, Ceto-Magist Studies offers the matriversal origin of human civilizational achievements. It releases matri-cosmology as a soteriological program of the ancient matristic world. I hold that matri-cosmology is the greatest intangible inheritance from the Mother World, a key to blissful ontology for ALL. At the core of Ceto-Magoism lies matri-cosmology, the language of Ceto-Magoist civilization. Bequeathed from the Middle Neolithic, circa the four millennium BCE, Ceto-Magoist civilization comes to us as a whole kit of matriversal soteriology. In fact, we moderns have not lost the matriversal foundation because it constitutes the basis of human life that we moderns inherited. Patriarchy is a distortion and abuse of the Ceto-Magoist civilizational foundation. The world does not seem to remember the founder of Ceto-Magoist civilization, Goma, the Shaman Queen of Old Korea.[11] Her myriad names and manifestations across cultures remain to be assessed.
When I wrote the article about Goma, I noted that the divinity of Goma was often conflated with Mago and manifested as the Magoma divine:
Goma and Mago are two distinguished but merging entities. Goma refers to the historical queen founder of Danguk, whereas Mago is the Creatrix, the Source of all. Both often manifest as one merging deity, which I call Magoma, in mytho-cultural-folk traditions. The Magoma representation, ranging from the Creatrix to the Bear Goddess to the Nine Goddess, to the Mountain Goddess, and to the Heavenly Queen Mother proffers a methodological tool for us to assess the kinship of major East Asian Goddesses including Doumu (Mother of the Northern Dipper), Gwaneum (Guanyin, Goddess of Compassion), Ximangmu (Queen Mother of the West), Jiutian Xuannu (the Mysterious Woman of Nine Heavens), Yeowa or Nuwa (Ancient Goddess), Amaterasu (The Great Goddess of Heavenly Light), Gemu (Mountain Goddess) and Mazu (Heavenly Ancestor Mother Queen).[12]
This was before I detected the cetacean underpinning of Magoism. Now I perceive that Goma represents the Mago-Cetacean-Goma divine, the original trinity.[13] The 21st revival of matriversalism involves a rediscovery of Goma, better known as Ungnyeo (Bear/Head Woman) among Koreans, who tapped into cetacean intelligence and founded Ceto-Magoist civilization for generations to come.
The salvific consciousness of the Cosmic Mother hallmarks the Early Neolithic, climaxed in Goma’s establishment of Ceto-Magoist civilization in the fourth millennium BCE. The leadership of Goma is symbolized as the Cosmic Tree known as the Divine Tree.[14] According to the foundation myth of Korea, which I call the Goma Myth, she is told to have descended to the divine tree on Mt. Taebaek (Great Resplendence) and began her governance.[15] Mt. Taebaek is the place reifying the primordial and paradisiacal home of Mago Stronghold.[16] Put differently, the cosmogonic myth of Ceto-Magoism was born under the leadership of Goma. The Goma myth is ripe with the major themes of Ceto-Magoist cosmology including parthenogenesis, the cave initiation, opening heaven, as well as the divine tree. Read in the context of The Budoji, it becomes clear that she was the teacher, the savior, and civilizer of Ceto-Magoism.
The expression, “opening heaven,” distinguishes the ancient Korean worldview, patriarchally paralleled to “founding a state.” It is an ancient matriversal notion to mean that Goma, and her successors for that matter, reified the heavenly principle in the human world in the form of a new matriversal polity.[17] Patriarchy has normalized monarchy headed by kings and emperors as the prototype of a socio-political system. In discussing Old Korean polities, I avoid such terms as “ruling” and “to found a state.” Instead, I employ “governing” and “opening heaven,” which indicate the pacific, egalitarian, and cosmogenic nature of a polity. A polity is a socio-political reification of the Ninefold Cosmic Music. Discussion of the sono-numerological nature of entities (the Ninefold Cosmic Music, the Nine Mago Creatrix, the Nine Sons of the Dragon Ruler, etc.) requires another space. Thus comes the matriversal confederacy of Nine Hans for Danguk. It would be semantically and technically wrong to say, “Goma founded the state of Danguk.” That is not because the polity, Danguk, was primitive to be called as a state. On the contrary, Danguk was equipped with a high level of structure enabled by cetacean-human hybrid intelligence, a topic too complex to discuss here. Suffice it to say that her government instituted the three Ceto-Magoist ministers (Wind Elder, Rain Master, and Cloud Master) and 360 departments, according to the Korean foundation myth.[18]
Further, ancient Ceto-Magoists intentionally avoided the notion of “a state.” For them there is only one Land on the planet and the one sovereign, Mago, the Cosmic Mother. Opening heaven means that she achieved a new beginning of a socio-political-institutional body, polity, with the leadership of the mother polity to daughter polities. In The Budoji, the polities inaugurated by Shaman Heads over the span of seven millennia are referred as “seven worlds.”[19] Koreans to this day celebrate the day of Opening Heaven, referring to Goma’s Danguk revived by her generational successor, Imgeom, better known as Dangun.[20]
Humans are given the mandate of equilibrating terrestrial sonic resonance in harmony with the Cosmic Music. Matriversal cosmology (the first cause) The Budoji recounts holds the key to matriversal soteriology (the final cause). That is, the survival and prosperity of the terrestrial community depends on the fact that humans remember the matriversal ontology of ALL. Pre-patriarchal Ceto-Magoist ancestors inscribed the soteriological consciousness of the Cosmic Mother in human civilization. And Creatrix Studies are working with the Ceto-Magoist legacy of mtriversal ontology, what our life on the Matriverse is about.
(To be continued)
[1] The Cosmic Tree is the signature symbol of Goma, a topic that I briefly explain throughout in this essay. It is a topic to be discussed elsewhere for its complexity and immensity.
[2] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Seeking Mago, the Great Goddess: A Mytho-historic-thealogical Reconstruction of Magoism, an Archaically Originated Gynocentric Tradition of East Asia,” Ph.D. dissertation. (Claremont Graduate University, 2005), 75-86. Also see Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Mago, the Creatrix from East Asia, and the Mytho History of Magoism,” Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, Edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2018), 18-30. What I have recently realized is that the Ceto-Magoist chronology takes place in the matriversal reality of WE/HERE/NOW.
[3] The Korean translation and publication of The Budoji by Eunsu Kim (1986) came after the Korean translation of The Handan Gogi (Old Histories of Han and Dan) by the same translator in 1985. I also discussed the issues of using both books, shunned by Korean academics but welcomed by the public, in my dissertation. Hwang, “Seeking Mago,” 74-75; 98-101.
[4] Ubiquity University offers graduate degrees in partnership with organizations. https://www.ubiquityuniversity.org/.
[5] The Budoji Chapter 11.
[6] I trace these specific time marks through my emails to the lists of scholars and projects that I have created over the past 13 years. My email of September 2, 2024, says that I rephrased “Magoist Cetaceanism” to “Ceto-Magoism.”
[7] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia. (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2015), Chapter 8.
[8] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Liminal timespace unfolded: A short reflection on the Magoist K-drama, Hotel del Luna,” Celebrating the Intercosmic Kinship of the Goddess (Mago books, 2023), 50.
[9] I have discussed the epithets of Mago extensively. Hwang “Mago” 5-10.
[10] The Budoji 26:6-7.
[11] According to The Budoji, Goma established the Way of the Heavenly Savior (天雄 Cheongung), see The Budoji 11:5.
[12] Hwang, “Goma,” 256.
[13] From my poem, “The Original Trinity.” Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “The Original Trinity” S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, V3 N2 (2024): 7-8.
[14] Goma’s tree is called Sindansu (神檀樹 the Divine Bright Tree) or Danmok (the Bright Tree). The character, dan 檀, is associated with the birth tree (bakdal namu 박달나무 in Korean) whose Korean pronunciation is close to the word, “Bakda (밝다 bright),” to refer to Goma’s governance. See Hwang, “Goma,” 253-4.
[15] Hwang, “Goma,” 263-275 (Appendix B).
[16] Hwang, “Mago” 4; 24-26. Also see Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Magoist East Asia/Korea, and Her Mythology,” Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2018), 252.
[17] Koreans to this day celebrate the Day of Opening Heaven (개천절), referring to Goma’s Danguk revived by her generational successor, Imgeom, better known as Dangun.
[18] Hwang, “Goma,” 82 (Appendix B).
[19] The character se 世 refers to a world. The Budoji 26:29.
[20] Koreans to this day celebrate their national holiday of “Opening Heaven.” It is called Gaecheon-jeol (Time of Opening Heaven) annually celebrated on October 3.
This is an interesting article but it seems to dismiss people who might have alternate viewpoints or those who may simply not know. As a lifetime naturalist, herbalist and ethologist I have learned that humans know very little about the non -human species on this planet on land, air or sea. We know much much less about the workings of the cosmos. Our various mythologies are the way humans attempt to create meaning. We need to be respectful of all perspectives whether we agree with them or not – yes?