July 3, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Art & Prose) Becoming Safe to Feel by Lucy Pierce

We need all of our feelings, they are there for a reason and they need to be felt. We need to know we’re big enough to feel them all, even Read More …

June 28, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 2) The Role of Castration in the Worship of the Great Mother Goddess Cybele by Francesca Tronetti, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This essay and its sequels are part of a longer chapter for a book I am working on. The book is based on my dissertation research at the Read More …

June 27, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Bell Essay 9) The Magoist Whale Bell: Decoding the Cetacean Code of Korean Temple Bells by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This and ensuing sequels are excerpts of a new development from the original essay sequels on Korean Temple Bells and Magoism that first published January 11, 2013 in Read More …

June 26, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Prose) The Story of Changing Woman: Myth and Commentary by Sara Wright

I want to begin by recounting the story of how Changing Woman came to be and why she was so important to Navajo mythology. In these dark and tumultuous times Read More …

June 24, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poetry) Peace in Connection by Belinda Subraman

Memories like bullets lifeless until held or loaded… The wind comes around again magnified from different angles. Crystals are in the net, an elephant in the room. Read More …

June 19, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art 2) Gather the Women by Pegi Eyers

The shared support and connection between women allows us to heal from the patriarchy that has waged war on us for millennia, and joining together in the true spirit of Read More …

June 18, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Hymn & Altar Art) Hymn to Lilith #3 by Nuit Moore

LILITH…. She is the breath of the desert and of the sea. She is the bitter earth, myrrh and root and shadow. She is the salt of the Red Sea, Read More …

June 17, 2019April 15, 2020 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Essay 2) The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia by Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen

[This part and the forthcoming sequels are an elaborated version of the original article entitled “The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia—a late Shamanistic Read More …

June 12, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) Artist: The Wayfinder by Virginia Masson

We are all born with gifts to help us on the path to our soul work. The Artist archetype appears to share those gifts and point the way. (Meet Mago Read More …

June 7, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Prose) Poetry as Mentifacts by Susan Hawthorne

The following is a meditation on poetry. It falls pretty much in the centre of my novel Dark Matters. It is poetry that is keeping the main character Kate/Ekaterina going Read More …

June 6, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Prose) Shaped by Unseen Histories by Lucy Pierce

I am forged in the fire of my own forgetting as much as I am hewn from the tome of my recollection.Forged by the great amnesia of my shadow’s blind deductions, the Read More …

May 29, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Essay 1) The Worship of Cybele in the Ancient World by Francesca Tronetti, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This essay and its sequels are part of a longer chapter for a book I am working on. The book is based on my dissertation research at the Read More …

May 28, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Book Excerpt 3) Inanna’s Ascent: Reclaiming Female Power, Edited by Trista Hendren, Tamara Albanna and Pat Daly

Making Our Stand Molly Remer “You may not remember, but let me tell you this, someone in some future time will think of us.” —Sappho I put on my boots and Read More …

(Essay 2) What It’s Like to Live on Wimmin’s Land by Hearth Moon Rising

Cholla drawing by Mary Emily Eaton Part 1 is here I loved living on wimmin’s land. And I hated it. The thing I hated most about living on the land was the fighting. Well, that and the chollas. Those prickly cactus prongs hurt worse on the way out than when they get stuck in you. I’m talking here not about harassment by neighbors and law enforcement, but infighting amongst women. Some of the blowups could be doozies, getting so out of hand there was no way to be neutral. You might think it obvious, with women coming together from vastly different walks of life, many of whom had never met before coming to the land, that there would be disagreements stemming from class, race, religion, sexual orientation, and disability. Sometimes the fights were about these issues (or, more commonly, devolved into these issues), but most of the fights were just…stupid. Dog poop was a perennial issue, and I probably only remember this one because it was a pet peeve of mine. Irresponsible compost practices was another bone of contention. Workers versus shirkers, messes in common areas, ecological considerations, decisions about repairs – I could go on, but you get the idea. The mundane nature of the issues should not suggest that the disagreements they sparked were minor. Tempers flared and fights could go on for days if not weeks. Photo: Katja Schulz Less explosive, but no less disturbing, were disagreements about personal choices perceived as harmful to the individual woman, if not the community. Alcohol abuse, management of medical and mental health issues, dysfunctional relationships, childrearing practices, unsafe sex, decisions to leave the land, decisions to stay on the land – these types of issues cannot remain private and “none of your business” in a women’s community. Some behaviors were automatic deal-breakers and would get a woman expelled quickly, albeit sometimes only temporarily. Bringing guns onto the land (can you imagine what would have happened if we’d been armed?) and abusive sexual relationships are two that I remember, but there were others. Stealing within the community didn’t happen much, mostly because none of us had anything worth stealing, but I doubt anyone would have been kicked out for that. Some of the women stole or scammed the outside systems, but that was tolerated. Illicit drug use was tolerated – actually a lot of things were tolerated that probably shouldn’t have been, but that was partly reflective of the times. Wimmin’s communities invariably fell short of ideals and could certainly be criticized for some things, but those leaving as a result of their own egregious behaviors were the most likely to gossip and try to stir up bad blood against the community. It was almost like some women could not leave the fighting behind. In Finding A Woman’s Place, Lorraine Duvall describes (among other things) infighting in a women’s community in upstate New York that stemmed from more substantive issues. A Woman’s Place struggled under financial pressures and an ambitious mission. The women were trying to run their land as a formal retreat, with workshops and programs, with few resources of their own or from the demographic they served. The location of A Woman’s Place meant better access to fundraising, but the harsh winter environment required ongoing financial investment, as did running what was essentially a business. At Adobeland we were in a better situation. The woman who generously opened the land as an intentional community, Joan “Adobe” Pepper, asked residents and visitors for a relatively small amount of money for modest living expenses and property taxes. There was no land mortgage to meet, property taxes in Arizona were low, and the climate did not require upkeep on modern structures. We welcomed women for a day or a weekend or a few months, but we didn’t advertise, and women dropped in, paid what they could afford, and moved on. We did a lot of alternative healing, and there were workshops arranged by residents or visitors, but no conscious attempt to create structure. Organically, we achieved some of what A Woman’s Place was trying to do, probably because we had fewer financial worries. Photo: Sue in az One disagreement on Adobeland was substantive and ongoing. Many women believed that Adobe held too much power in the community, that it wasn’t really wimmin’s land because it was not held in trust. Theoretically, Adobe could ask anyone to leave for any reason, although in practice she seldom asked anyone to leave even when there were good reasons. The future of the land was a contentious issue with no foreseeable path forward. Residents didn’t have the money to buy the land from Adobe, and she refused to make arrangements for the land to continue after her death. To most women, it seemed a no-brainer at the time to will the land to a trust so Adobeland could continue serving women for the next few hundred years. In retrospect that level of faith seems quaint, given the social changes that would make wimmin’s land everywhere more difficult to sustain. One thing we did not fight about on wimmin’s land was men, and this is the significant takeaway. As women in a patriarchal society, we aren’t taught how to negotiate conflict with other women. Most of the time, women are competing with women in structures men create for the crumbs that men allow us, or we are conspiring to protect women from males in male-led systems. When men are banished from the equation, what do we have? Of course we bring baggage from patriarchy, but what we don’t bring is experience resolving conflict. We’re taught to avoid conflict. It makes men uncomfortable, and when men are uncomfortable they hurt us. Though I hated the fighting at the time (even when I participated in it), I realized in retrospect that it was important. Maybe not as important as the loving, but one of the things we were ultimately there for. Living for long periods with only women …
(Essay 2) Red Poppies Among the Ruins by Mary Saracino

How far we humans have strayed from our homeland. How long we have wandered alone in the desert of our amnesia. Have we learned nothing? Vivo and morto. The circle of life embraces the round mouth of the cave, the red O of the uterus. It births mysteries that can save and sustain us, if we will heed its call to silence. Where there is tyranny, how can there be love? Or peace? For more than 7,000 years humankind has borne the scars of violence. That legacy began around 5,000 BCE when the early Indo-European, nomadic Kurgans emerged from the Russian steppes and launched incursions throughout northern Europe. Eventually these warrior people broadened their territory, invading the Aegean and Adriatic regions as well. Scholars, including the renowned Marija Gimbutas, tell us the Kurgans rode horse-drawn chariots and worshipped storm gods of vengeance and battle. Peaceful Neolithic peoples, whom the Kurgans encountered along the way, were ill-equipped to combat such aggression. Even during the early Bronze Age the nonviolent Neolithic societies, such as the Nuraghi of Sardegna, fashioned metal and stone into tools and utensils and later into jewelry, cooking vessels, urns, and other life-sustaining implements. Their lands, often rich in silver, zinc, copper and obsidian, provided ample raw materials, which were traded among groups of people over vast distances. The Kurgans traded with these peaceful societies, fashioning the raw materials into swords and spears, turning the metallic fruits of the Earth into weaponry to use against those whose cultures were imbued with the values of social harmony, whose principles embodied the beliefs of the sacred female. The Kurgan legacy survives to this day. From sports icons to corporate raiders and political strategists we laud and celebrate the principle of conquest. Our history books teach war, not peace. We learn of military campaigns, famous battles, esteemed generals with their prowess of might and destruction. The progress of civilization is measured in lives lost, blood shed, peoples oppressed. The more ancient legacy of peaceful coexistence is silenced. How did it come to be that 7,000 years of violence could wipe away 50,000 years of accord, erase it from our collective memory? Where are the chapters about peaceful resolution of conflict, about cultures co-existing in harmony, or tales of societies like those of the early days of Tharros or of the Nurgahi of Sardegna, people whose day-to-day living made no room for slavery, social stratification, or inequality between men and women? History chronicles the exploits of the conquerors, not the subaltern ways of the silenced. In Rome, en route from Sardegna to my life in America, I walked the city streets in June 2004, mere days after a visit from George W. Bush. Everywhere, hanging from windows on buildings large and small, from wrought-iron apartment balconies, the facades of public office buildings, the stone arches of church entryways, I encountered rainbow-colored banners waving in the smoggy breeze. In white letters, against a prism field of hope (bright rows of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red) blazed the word Pace. Peace. A clarion call for sanity in an insane, out-of-control world. A prayer for harmony, for humanity, for grace. The Pace flags mirrored the hearts and minds of people seeking to create a different resolution, establish a new pathway, disinherit humanity’s 7,000-year-old Kurgan legacy. On city walls throughout Rome, red and black graffiti screamed its resounding outrage. Unambiguous, stark images leapt from stone walls and the sooty sides of buildings; war, and warmongers, were not welcome. Stop Global War; Bushladen; Bush Go Home; Bush Terrorista, No War for Oil; No Justice No Peace; No Bush, No War. I stood on street corners, reading these spray-painted messages, my heart pounding with urgency. The memory lives, I heard myself say.
(Intercosmic Kinship Conversations) Lunar Kinship with Noris Binet by Alison Newvine

Available at Mago Bookstore Noris Binet is an artist, psychospiritual therapist, sociologist, author and spiritual teacher. She is firmly rooted in non dual spiritual teachings and the lineage of Ramana Maharishi. Her impressive, full bio can be found here. She is a wise woman who embodies Lunar knowing, with a comfort traversing the depths of the unconscious and bridging that wisdom into Solar, waking consciousness through art and healing work. Her artwork is woven throughout this interview as she explores the role art making has played in her spiritual journey, including facilitating her healing from terminal cancer without Western medicine. Her essay, “The Goddess and Kinship with Nature: Our Goddess Moon” opens the anthology by invoking the sweet and mysterious presence of the Moon, luminary in the sacred darkness. She explores how growing up in a rural village in the Dominican Republic without artificial lighting meant following the lunar cycle closely, developing a relationship with night sky from an early age. Her relationship with the moon is palpable and intimate. In our conversation, Noris shares her journey from village to city and back again and the centrality of her relationship with nature to her well-being. She describes moving from Latin America to Tennessee, being assured that there was no racism there, and being met with a very different reality. As a biracial woman not from the US, she had a unique vantage point from which she initiated and successfully carried out radical, embodied racial healing work with diverse groups of women in Tennessee. She wrote about this work in the book, Women on the Inner Journey: Building a Bridge: Healing Racial Wounds through Art and Spirituality. Noris also shares her experience of her Crone years, a time of sacred shadow work, alchemy and orgasmic initiation. I felt inspired and full after our time together and have continued to interact with her artwork since our interview, as she was generous enough to allow me to weave some of her pieces into the forthcoming music video, Muse that will feature several Mago community artists. There is truly such a feast of insights, delightful stories and inspiring personal experiences that Noris shares with us. This interview is an opportunity to sit in circle with a wise spiritual elder who embodies Lunar consciousness and kinship, a deep memory of which resides within us all. https://youtu.be/j5Ma39i672U
(Prose) Portals by Sara Wright

Lately, as I meander around the Bosque and down the paths to the river I am seeing portals everywhere I look. I walk under one made of golden cottonwood boughs, another graced by willows, a few created by rusty iron or wooden gates – all pathways to the beyond. Portals are gateways or doorways into other worlds, or a different way of seeing and it is not lost on me that perhaps I am “seeing” portals everywhere in Nature because according to the Celtic/Native American calendars we are approaching the end of the wheel of the year here in Northern New Mexico as well as elsewhere. Perhaps I need to discover a new way of seeing. I can set this intention for the coming year even as I pass through each gate…Climbing through this mountainous twelve month cycle of steep ascents/descents has exhausted my soul, body, and spirit. All Hallows, the Feast of the Dead, All Souls day mark the end of the yearly cycle for many including me. Then we will enter the space in between. Although Indigenous people’s calendars are more fluid, around here, for example, the Tewa speaking peoples will tell you that in November “they do nothing” as one man from Santa Clara Pueblo recently quipped to me. The Harvest is in. Frost is on the horizon. There are no tribal dances until the winter solstice. Around us our beloved Cottonwoods are slowly losing their golden canopies. The owls are silent. Migrating Sand hill cranes serenade us with their haunting collective cries. Only the tracks and scat of animals remind us that our wild companions are still out and about. Some Indigenous peoples from the north call this full moon “the leaves falling moon” or “the white frost on grass moon” names that seem particularly apt when describing what is happening. I could also name this moon “making tracks in the mud moon.” The period that we are about to enter in about a week is a space where the veil lifts… It is a time of rest and reflection, a time to dream the world (and ourselves) into another way of being, perhaps. A mystical time for those of us who are sensitized to All That Is. It is my favorite time of year. In Northern New Mexico it is also the ‘season of light’. The dance between the sun star and her mountain shadows is a source of ongoing amazement, exhilaration, and deep wonder, peaking at dawn and at eventide with each becoming a portal into the other. As scalloped hearts and bear paw leaves drift to the ground and branches (some curved like claws), stretch their fingers and limbs towards an ever deepening blue or shark gray sky, I watch juncos, sparrows, and nuthatches feasting on fluffy chamisa and golden aster seeds. Last night the almost full moon hid her face behind rose pearled clouds. I create a conscious intention beginning with this poignant and oh so beautiful, so poignant “leaves falling in drifts” moon to find a way to move through this next year with more grace and less chaos in my life acknowledging that I am not certain how to Earth myself in a more generous way except by developing a new way of seeing. Extremes of every sort have defined my days this year with me plunging into despair and grief over climate change and woman hatred. Eerily, my concern for the Earth has often been mirrored by personal crisis. The veil between Earth and self seems to have evaporated like the mist that rises over the river in delicate plumes reaching towards a now golden sun or ever deepening dusk. I can’t help wondering if this merging might be a natural response to aging and/or my heightened sensitivity, a result of being in such an intimate relationship with Nature? Perhaps as Earth Chaos intensifies I will continue to experience my own extremes even more deeply? If the latter is the case my hope and intention is to carry the awareness that this state is “natural” under the circumstances. To accept what is, might be I the greatest challenge I face. One portal to acceptance as I already mentioned might be to shift my awareness into a different way of seeing. I can create this intention without knowing exactly what I mean… As I pass under the portal of the end of this year entering “the space in between” my earnest hope is that I will not lose myself, even when I stand alone in a sea of humanity whose (personal and political) behavior mystifies me, or that I will not succumb to despair, or make an unnecessary descent into rage or sorrow. I remind myself that to stay with the truth of what is, as I experience it, is also heroic (although I never feel this way) and that others who cannot be present to their lives in a meaningful way will try to dismiss my life as inauthentic (too emotional, too sensitive, too fill – in – the blank, blah, blah, blah,) because witnessing human horrors with great compassion is too threatening. Rape is still rape regardless of disbelief. Like the deer in my dreams who bed down in tall grasses before the open gate may I too surrender to what is, and to that which is unknown. Animal Peace is the gift offered when we are present to the moment. And like the worms living in my compost heap who create ‘black gold’ in the process of living out their lives, may I find a way to do the same… perhaps through sight – insight. A lot to ask for, I know. Still, as I pass under this next portal the help I need is near… All I need to do is to follow the tracks of the animals that are so dear. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright
(E-Interview) Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

https://www.spinifexpress.com.au/blog/start-your-radfem-library-with-these-must-have-books It is an honor and a privilege for me to e-interview Dr. Susan Hawthorne and Dr. Renate Klein, co-founders of Spinifex Press. Spinifex Press has published feminist books since 1991. I personally became aware of Spinifex Press or rather the book, Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed (Spinifex 1996) for the first time in 1996. Mary Daly, U.S. radical feminist thinker, recommended this book to me, when I was in Korea preparing for an admission to a graduate school in the U.S. It was the first feminist anthology written in the English Language, which I purchased through an international post service. I absorbed its articles like a clean sponge sucking water. And this was the book that I continued to read and cited in my term papers during my graduate courses for a long time. For the last decade, I grew to learn more about Spinifex Press through Susan Hawthorne who has been one of the substantive contributors to Mago Work projects (Return to Mago E-Magazine, Mago Academy, Mago Books, and the peer-review S/HE journal). Helen Hwang: What is Spinifex Press about? Susan Hawthorne: Spinifex Press is about making radical feminist ideas available. It is an independent Australian feminist press which publishes controversial and innovative feminist books with an optimistic edge. The optimistic edge is important because, although we publish books that are often difficult, such as books about violence against women, pornography, prostitution, as well as books that highlight racism, sexism, ableism, agism and the torture of lesbians, we still try to include seeds of hope. Our books also delve into the origins of patriarchy around the world. We have published books by Indigenous writers from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, North America and Africa. Our list includes a significant number of lesbian writers, as well as writers living with a disability or coming from a migrant or working-class background. Diversity has become a fashionable word in recent years, but we at Spinifex have been publishing diverse voices since we began in 1991. Hwang: When and how did it come about? Hawthorne: In the Australian summer of 1990, Renate Klein and I had a holiday in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. A beautiful area with a long Indigenous history and a great deal of rock art. As we slowed down from a hectic year, we began to talk about whether we had enough knowledge to start a small feminist press. We decided that we did, with Renate having a long background in international non-fiction publishing (the Athene Series) and as an academic journal editor in Women’s Studies (Women’s Studies International Forum and Issues in Reproductive and Genetic Engineering). I had four years’ experience as an editor of mostly fiction and poetry at Penguin Australia as well as an organiser of a nine-day feminist writers festival. We therefore had good contacts in Australia and internationally. We decided to jump into this adventure and so I left my job as Acquisitions Editor at Penguin while Renate continued in her teaching position in Women’s Studies at Deakin University in order for us to have a regular income. In our first year, we published four books, an anthology, Angels of Power, a crime novel, Too Rich, a women’s health book and a quiz book. By the second year we published seven books including one by an international writer and a book of cartoons. We were off. Each year we have published books that reflect the concerns of feminists during that period. Because the mainstream is always well behind what feminist are talking about, we are always ahead of the cultural curve. https://www.spinifexpress.com.au/blog/discover-our-african-titles Hwang: Tell us about your feminist commitment. Hawthorne: Our feminist commitment is very deep. For around 50 years we have each worked in different ways and in different parts of the Women’s Liberation Movement. I joined the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1973 and quickly became active in Melbourne’s first Rape Crisis Centre. I advocated for courses in Women’s Studies and Feminism and wrote about the Ibu women’s war in Nigeria, about the Australian writer Miles Franklin and in my final year in Philosophy wrote a thesis ‘In Defence of Separatism’ that was finally published in full in 2019. I travelled overseas and was especially taken by what I saw in Crete and was soon reading prehistory, myth and studying first Modern Greek then Ancient Greek. During this time, I wrote several long essays which were subsequently published, one on the Greek philosopher, Diotima and another on the Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite and Demeter. I was soon embarking on writing my novel. The Falling Woman, organising several writers’ festivals and then moving into publishing. Since beginning Spinifex, I have worked teaching Creative Writing at universities, I completed a PhD in Women’s Studies, Wild Politics, and I joined two women’s circuses and learnt to be an aerialist. I have also continued to write fiction, poetry and non-fiction and have been lucky enough to get three residencies in India, Italy and Turkey that allowed me time out to write. You can see many of my books here. Renate Klein: After having worked as a neurobiologist at Zürich University, Switzerland, and a chemistry and zoology high school teacher for a few years, I desperately felt I needed a big change in my life. I started teaching biology in the Women’s Studies Program at Berkeley University, USA, and ended up studying for a BA (Hons) in Women’s Studies because I realised that, as a scientist, my world was very narrow-minded. I then went on to get my doctorate at London University on the Theory and Practice of Women’s Studies in an international context and began working as the European Editor of Women’s Studies International Forum and an editor of The Athene Series. I also got heavily involved in the radical feminist resistance to reproductive technologies and genetic engineering by editing books, a journal and being a co-founder of FINRRAGE (Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering). Eventually, I ended up in Australia doing research …
Black Bird Ballet by Sara Wright

A starling In September I was patient. My beloved birds were having a good year seeking food in natural places like my field I reminded myself over and over as they remained absent from my feeders until I fell and was hospitalized for weeks. After November’s first snow storm the grouse arrived and I had high hopes that she would stay. I occasionally flushed her in thickets but did not see grouse’s plump brown body feasting on the remainder of the berries from the crabapple or see her hieroglyphs in the snow. The turkeys remained absent. When I walked through my young pine forest where chickadees chirp even on windy days, the musical whirring wings of mourning doves tore into the grief I felt and didn’t want to own. Sometimes I called out “I love you” to those birds who chose to converse with me because I know they know. In late November when the snow piled up bowing trees to the ground it also brought in the first winter cold; this time the brook almost froze solid. A few birds did visit the feeder for a day or so: titmice, chickadees, one female cardinal, a few juncos, goldfinches, but the absence of abundance was overwhelming. Two days later nothing. On the first of December someone emailed me a video of the most beautiful Italian Starling Murmuration set to one of Puccini’s arias. Entranced, enchanted, I replayed that video repeatedly that morning and kept doing it every morning for about two weeks while putting out fresh seed for birds that didn’t come. The worst flood of the year tore up the banks of the brook uprooting trees dropping 6 inches of rain in 5 plus hours and then a couple more inches during the third week in December. Once more my cellar flooded. No birds at all. I watched the sky dancers every dawning, wondering if this was the wave of the future coming to pass – gazing into a computer screen to see birds instead of seeing them in the flesh. Some days the vision of clouds of starlings orchestrating such an exquisitely choreographed aerial ballet in the Sardinian sky still brought me to tears. I decided to research starlings and discovered they are in steep decline, yet still being targeted by pesticides “that kill starlings in one to three days but are less lethal to other birds and pets” (Starlicide). Starlings interfere with agribusiness, so humans murder them without mercy. Even conservation groups are involved in bird killings but that’s another story. Starlings I also did some research on Maine birds. After checking bird groups, I learned that our regular winter birds are absent throughout the state. It’s not just me. It’s not just local, and it’s not that I don’t know that most birds are in decline with a number facing imminent extinction on a global level. This change has surely been coming but as a friend of mine ruefully remarked, “did it have to happen so fast”? Well of course it didn’t. It has been happening all along. We ignored the signs. We need more research, better technology the scientists tell us. “We don’t know why these birds are disappearing.” This from Cornell Ornithology Bird Capital of the Bird World. We don’t? Besides cats, pesticides, herbicides, loss of whole forests from logging, human development, poor air, water, and soil quality and continued hunting of migrating flocks and game birds, climate change, we really do know some of the reasons we have lost more than three billion birds. But no one speaks to soul loss, bodies bowed over in grief. My bones ache. Strangely, towards the end of December I received two more equally moving videos of starling murmurations, one just two days before the end of the month. After the third one arrived, I had to ask myself why. Three videos in one month with black birds dancing through the sky. I do not believe in coincidences. In myth and story birds are Messengers from the Beyond and they certainly have brought me to my knees again and again throughout my life with messages I did or/didn’t want to hear. In mythology many winter goddesses that control the weather (personifications of Nature made manifest) are depicted as having black birds as their familiars. Ravens or crows. Much to my astonishment I also read in FAR about one myth where the winter goddess was accompanied by a starling! Finally, illumination struck. These Black Birds were speaking to me in the language of loss. Yet the starling sky dances continued to sooth an aching heart, helping me to mediate intensifying grief. Such abundance. I think the sky dancers were also reminding me that what’s important now is to be present for Nature’s miracles wherever I can find them. On January 1st I scattered a little seed for the three doves and what I hoped would be more than a few chickadees before dawn… When the woodpecker chirped, I not only thought of holes but sensed that the whole tapestry of Life as we know it is unraveling. But there was more… The most painful memories of my broken relationship with my mother had been haunting me for the last month. And my mother once fed crows as her mother, my grandmother, did before her. To re-live the worst primal grief of all, to acknowledge that I would have given anything to have had a loving relationship with my mother who I loved so deeply, to seek peace with the long dead woman who birthed me keeps me anchored to a present that is overshadowed by our past. On January 2nd I had the first dream of the year. In it I see a manilla envelope and hear the words “these records must be read thoroughly”. I wondered if the previous month of painful mother memories might have been about beginning to go through that manilla envelope. Those records are written into my body, and they surface …
(Essay) Green Goddess: Loving the Earth with a Fierce Devotion! by Pegi Eyers

“The essence of LOVE is found everywhere in nature, and LOVE is the vibratory field for the plant kingdom, the kinship of the creatures, the nurturing power of the Feminine, and elements such as the water.” In times of massive change, our task is to bond with the land, to revere nature again as our Ancestors did, and to see ourselves as part of this thin and fragile biosphere, Our Earth, the source of all life and our spiritual home. The love of the land has always been central to our most cherished dreams and memories, and if we delve far enough below the surface of the modern mechanistic overlay, we find that Gaia has been patiently waiting for us to return. We are all Children of the Earth, and at the heart of our roving discontent is a veiled desire to be reunited with our perennial family, the other-than-human world.
(Essay 2) Con-Text: Personal/Cultural/Cosmic Stories by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D.

This essay is a version of an excerpt from Chapter 2 of her book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Further to my unfolding awareness of the nature of my cultural con-text, the androcentric nature of the stories in which I grew, was the perceiving of my identification as sex object … with no subjectivity, no space to Be. I remember pornographic magazines from my childhood, depicting women being constantly pursued by salivating men – either there was an assumption that she desired this, or they did not care to ask her. And Christian cosmology, which saturated my context, appeared to condone the imposition of a dominant will upon another – at the very heart of it is “the sacrifice of the lamb”. Women have been especially vulnerable, with their submission openly advocated. They sometimes called me “Marilyn” (for Marilyn Monroe), simply because of my babyhood platinum hair. I was not particularly cute as I grew up, on the contrary, I was skinny, had buck teeth, freckles and a bad haircut. But Marilyn was suggested to me by this naming, as someone I could model myself after. I don’t remember any other significant famous women in the first decade or two of my life. As a child I was very conscious of being looked at, and perhaps on reflection, it was because I was female. I felt transparent and vacuous. The Great Male Metaphors of the day – God and Santa – knew everything about me. The male humans imitated the Deity with constant Gazing, in magazines, movies, wall calendars. I could only hope to be chosen to be worthy of his desire, yet at the same time it was known and told that he could be dangerous. I felt acutely the identification of myself with the “inanimate” world, as it was understood to be – dead and inert: though I had no words for it. Ursula Le Guin says, We are told in words, and not in words, we are told by their deafness, … (that) … the life experience of women, is not valuable … to humanity. (We have been valued by the patriarchal viewpoint) as an element of their experience, as things experienced.[1] The male in this worldview was also “inanimate”, albeit the machine that was expected to perform. I began to find words, and consciousness of my assigned cultural destiny as sex object. I wrote: What did it take to move from that, to develop a shell, a protective boundary, to pull the shades on the imposing mostly male Gaze, to allow a fertile darkness within my being, where ‘I’ could begin? What did it take to create this kind of darkness, a safe place to Be, to shut out the world and scream ‘I’? … A sex object has to completely fall apart before she can rebuild herself in her own image. She has to fall into the mud, begin again, perform her own acts of Creation, mold herself of this solid material. It is out of the mud that the lotus blossoms. It does not grow on some pedestal, under the light of the eternal Gaze. … How ironic that our paternal mythmakers made Medusa’s gaze the deadly one!
(Book Excerpt 5) Single Mothers Speak on Patriarchy by Trista Hendren & Pat Daly

Becoming My Own Midwife Celeste Gurevich I learned to survive by quilting myself with breath, blood, bones, and stories. Panel by panel, saturated remnants of all of the Celestes I have ever been. The stitches laden with the scent of early Spring daphnes, garden-fresh basil a licorice-y labor of loving hands. The eternal tang of salty Pacific Ocean air. In the warp and weft of fiber, my scars, each with its own tale to tell.

(Special Post Isis 1) Why the Color of Isis Matters by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s note: The discussion took place in Mago Circle during the month of July, 2013. Our heartfelt thanks go to the members who participated in this discussion with openness and courage.] Part 1 Is Isis White (European) or Black (African)? Harita Meenee What could Isis have to do with the political situation in Egypt? Read on to find out! Isis, Egypt and the Revolution For the past few years Egypt has felt like a second home to me. Some cherished friends and co-workers live there, to whom my thoughts often travel. Also, Isis, the Egyptian great goddess once worshiped all over the Mediterranean, has been an ever-present source of inspiration… By: Harita Meenee, Author https://www.facebook.com/notes/harita-meenee-author/isis-egypt-and-the-revolution/457348724361326 Rick Williams Isis and that picture for me is kind of offensive in 2013. KMT [Kemet, Egypt] and AUSET [Isis] “worship” is an oxymoron. Kahena Dorothea Can you explain, Rick Williams, how it is an oxymoron? I am curious. Rick Williams First, Auset as a deity was not a singularly honored symbolic personage. KMT taught principles of BALANCE and UNIVERSAL COSMOLOGICAL TRUTH. There are NO images from the dawn of that age depicting her as EUROPEAN. [Threads curtailed] Helen Hwang I would strongly suggest that Rick and others who see Rick’s point educate us in Mago Circle. I know this is very difficult but we are here to learn and express differences from each other. We are all centers and please share your perspective and knowledge so that others can learn. I am doing that with patience and tolerance as well. Thank you all! Rick Williams I try to be as honest and respectful when I can, Helen. I only personalize things when ONE person says something. Yet there are those who know that the people of that land now weren’t the same people who honored the deities of mythology and that image isn’t of Auset. When will folks stop promoting fictitious images and uneducated observations? I could have beat around the bush and politely asked about the statue, why that one isn’t truly the same of Auset’s time? Helen Hwang Okay, conflicts and contradictions are everywhere. Nonetheless, we can’t be beat by those. We are exploring ways to be empowered by addressing our differences in Mago Circle. We trust that we have good intentions and yet we are not perfect. I do Mago Circle and Return to Mago because I believe there is a way for us to meet and talk with our differences, I can’t let that hope go! Thank us for talking to each other. Naa Ayele Kumari I can see both points. Egypt has a long and ancient history… One filled with invaders.. wars.. people who stole the magic and manipulated it for their own purposes… Those invaders changed images to make them in their own reflections all the while slowly destroying the indigenous images of power and strength as well as the sacred tradition they were built on.. As a woman of African descent, it is sometimes difficult to see the Hellenistic images of our mother.. because her original images were a woman of color. Racism… whether we chose to admit it or not has played an immense part in our oppression as a people and that includes the struggle for Egypt today. It is especially a sensitive issue because those images play a role in how people see and view black women… even today. The dark goddess is stereotyped as being a part of our shadow while the white goddess is caste as being all that is good in the world. What black women struggle to tell the world is that those projections are simply racist projections… and so we reject them. Still, I recognize that people like to experience the divine in their own image and that our Mother has been taken around the world… and by extension absorbed many names and faces because after all, she is mother not to just Africans… but to the World. Right now, we have dominant tradition of Islam… that at its roots has a feminine basis… (Islam came from the word Isis) all the while oppressing women by its dogma. The indigenous people of Egypt, the Badarians and Nubians… are oppressed by Arab invaders who have taken control, projected their own religions all the while wanting to destroy the remainder of the images of the ancients. Injustice recognizes injustice… and all the ways that it shows up. At the root of Egypt…is Isis… called also Esi and Auset by the indigenous people. She has been oppressed by many layers of invaders… Her daughter’s voices have been muted… Timeless icon that she is, as the tides are turning, so are the heavy oppressions being lifted. Women are finding and re-remembering their power… and as they do… Mama Esi.. is taking back her throne. Naa Ayele Kumari This is the Isis on the walls and temples of Egypt. Harita Meenee Seeing the people of Egypt as all white or all Black means stereotyping them. In fact the inhabitants of Egypt are of different colors: some are white, others are Black and many others are something in-between. The same was true in antiquity and it’s reflected in Egyptian art. Rick Williams Harita, really? What does that have to do with your choice of misrepresentation of that image? Please enlighten me, thank you. Harita Meenee Τhere is no misrepresentation, dear Rick Williams. If you read my note carefully, you’ll see that it talks about Isis as a goddess who was worshiped all over the Mediterranean–I’m not referring to just her Egyptian manifestation. The statue depicted is in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. I took this picture and processed it slightly so that it looks more like a painting than a sculpture. No change was made to the actual form or color of the statue. I’m attaching a photo of the museum label of this work of art. It may not be clearly visible, but it reads: Marble statue of the goddess Isis-Tyche-Pelagia. 1st-2nd century AD. The composite name means that, as was often the case in […]
(Special post) Laurie Baymarrwangga, Senior Australian of the Year 2012

Posted with permission in Return to Mago on ‘Australia Day’, 26 January 2014 (Australian time), in recognition of the ill-treatment and misunderstanding of Aboriginal people that was set in train when, in 1788, white people first settled in the land now known as Australia.
(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?

A Southern Hemisphere Perspective on Place by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the Introduction to the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion, which was an outcome of her doctoral research/thesis entitled The Female Metaphor – Virgin, Mother, Crone – of the Dynamic Cosmological Unfolding: Her Embodiment in Seasonal Ritual as Catalyst for Personal and Cultural Change. This doctoral work was in turn a documentation and deeper research of the Seasonal ceremonial celebrations that the author was already engaged in for over a decade. The whole of the process is here named as her “Search”. photo credit: David Widdowson, Astrovisuals. The site of seasonal ceremonial celebrations will always be significant. In my case, the place in which I have created them has been notably in the Southern Hemisphere of out Planet Earth. The fact of my context being thus – the Southern Hemisphere – had contributed in the past to my deep internalized sense of being “other”, and dissociated from my senses, since almost all stories told were based in Northern Hemisphere perspective. Yet at the same time this context of inhabiting the Southern Hemisphere contributed to my deep awareness of Gaia’s Northern Hemisphere and Her reciprocal Seasonal Moment: thus, awareness of the whole Planet. My initial confusion about the sensed Cosmos – as a Place, became a clarity about the actual Cosmos – which remained inclusive of my sensed Cosmos. PaGaian reality – the reality of our Gaian “country” – is that the whole Creative Dynamic happens all the time, all at once. The “other”, the opposite, is always present – underneath and within the Moment. This has affected my comprehension of each Sabbat/Seasonal Moment, its particular beauty but also a fullness of its transitory nature. Many in the Northern Hemisphere – even today – have no idea that the Southern Hemisphere has a ‘different’ lunar, diurnal, seasonal perspective; and because of this there often is a rigidity of frame of reference for place, language, metaphor and hence cosmology[i]. Indeed over the years of industrialized culture it has appeared to matter less to many of both hemispheres, including the ‘author-ities’, the writers of culture and cosmos. And such ‘author-ity’ and northern-hemispheric rigidity is also assumed by many more Earth-oriented writers as well[ii]. There has been consistent failure to take into account a whole Earth perspective: for example, the North Star does not need to be the point of sacred reference – there is great Poetry to be made of the void of the South Celestial Pole. Nor need the North be rigidly associated with the Earth element and darkness, nor is there really an “up” and a “down” cosmologically speaking. A sense and accountof the Southern Hemisphere perspective with all that that implies metaphorically as well as sens-ibly, seems vitally important to comprehending and sensing a whole perspective and globe – a flexibility of mind, and coming to inhabit the real Cosmos, hence enabling what I have named as a ‘PaGaian’ cosmological perspective, a whole Earth perspective. It has also been of particular significance that my Search has been birthed in the ancient continent of Australia. It is the age of the exposed rock in this Land, present to her inhabitants in an untarnished, primal mode that is significant. This Land Herself has for millennia been largely untouched by human war, conquest and concentrated human agriculture and disturbance. The inhabitants of this Land dwelt here in a manner that was largely peaceful and harmonious, for tens of thousands of years. Therefore the Land Herself may speak more clearly I feel; one may be the recipient of direct transmission of Earth in one of her most primordial modes. Her knowledge may be felt more clearly – one may be taught by Her. I think that the purity of this transmission is a significant factor in the development of the formal research I undertook – in my chosen methodology and in what I perceived in the process, and documented; from my beginnings as a country girl, albeit below my conscious mind in the subtle realms of which I knew little, to the more conscious times of entering into the process of the Search. In this Land that birthed me, ‘spirit’ is not remote and abstract, it is felt in Her red earth[iii]. Aboriginal elder David Mowaljarlai described, “This is a spirit country”[iv], and all of Her inhabitants, including non-Indigenous, may be affected by the strength of Her organic communication. It took me until the later stages of my research to realize the need to state the importance of this particular place for the advent of the research: the significance of both the land of Australia, and the specific region of the Blue Mountains in which I was now dwelling, as well as the community of this particular region, which all lent itself to the whole process. The lateness of this perception on my part, has to do with the extent of my previous alienation; but the fact that it did occur, is perhaps at least in part attributable to the unfolding awakening to my habitat that was part of the project/process. The specific region of the “Blue Mountains” – as Europeans have named them – is significant in that I don’t think that this project/process could have happened as it did in just any region. David Abram says, “The singular magic of a place is evident from what happens there, from what befalls oneself or others when in its vicinity. To tell of such events is implicitly to tell of the particular power of that site, and indeed to participate in its expressive potency[v]”. Blue Mountains, Australia: Dharug and Gundungurra Country The Blue Mountains are impressive ancient rock formations, an uplifted ancient seabed, whose “range of rock types and topographical situations has given rise to distinct plant communities”[vi]; and the presence of this great variation of plant communities, “especially the swamps, offer an abundance and variety of food sources, as well as habitats for varied fauna”[vii]. I feel that this is the case for …
(Essay) Contemplating How Her Creativity Proceeds by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

Autumn Equinox/Mabon Northern Hemisphere – September 21-23 Southern Hemisphere – March 21-23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRJNY1LSvIs&t=1175s …oOo… The purpose of this video is for ceremony, and I suggest pausing the video where it suits you, to add your own processing, embellishments and/or your own drum, percussion and voice wherever you please. I have made short spaces in the video where it could be paused. The script for this Autumn Equinox/Mabon ceremony is offered in Chapter 11 of my book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, with all acknowledgements and references there. In particular I mention here, credit for the story of Demeter and Persephone as told by Charlene Spretnak in her book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece. For more full participation in the ceremony, you could have one or more stalks of wheat or native grain tied with a red thread/ribbon, a garden pot with soil, a small garden trowel, a flower bulb (daffodil type), food and drink, that may represent your “harvest” – ready for eating and drinking. The elements of Water, Fire, Earth and Air on the altar in this video are placed in directions that are appropriate to my region in the Southern Hemisphere, and East Coast Australia: you may place yours differently, and transliterate when I mention the direction (which I do minimally). The images used are a collage of footage and photos from the 2024 Autumn Equinox ceremony at my place in Wakka Wakka country, South East Queensland Australia, and from previous Autumn Equinox ceremonies I facilitated over the decades in MoonCourt, Goddess ceremonial space in NSW Australia, Darug and Gundungurra country. My partner Robert (Taffy) Seaborne who has participated in all the Seasonal ceremonies since Samhain 2000, adds his voice to this video. Image credits: Demeter and Persephone (500 B.C.E. Greece). Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.72. Art of Demeter and Persephone on MoonCourt wall: Cernak Herself Music credit: “Gentle Sorrow” by Sky: which he has previously allowed me to use in my work. This piece of music is also used in the Autumn Equinox meditation on my PaGaian Cosmology Meditations published 2015.
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 …
(Video) A Samhain Ceremony by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVRoK2XNeqw The purpose of the video is for ceremony and I suggest pausing the video where it suits you, to add your own processing, embellishments and/or your own drum, percussion and voice wherever you please. I have made short spaces in the video where it could be paused. For more full participation in the ceremony, you could have some past photos of yourself, an altar with ancestor photos, a gingerbread snake, some apples sliced up, and some apple juice. The script for this Samhain ceremony is offered in Chapter 4 of my book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, with all acknowledgements and references there. However I want to acknowledge here the inspiration and some text of Robin Morgan’s poem “The Network of the Imaginary Mother” in her book Lady of the Beasts, for which I was given permission in my book. I also acknowledge here the paraphrase of some words by Starhawk in her book The Spiral Dance, used in the rite of Sailing to a New World. I also use a line from the poem Song of Hecate by Bridget McKern. The elements of Water, Fire, Earth and Air on the altar in this video are placed in directions that are appropriate to my region in the Southern Hemisphere, and East Coast Australia: you may place yours differently, and transliterate when I mention the direction (which I do minimally). For the rite of the Transformation Journey (remembering old selves) I use an adaptation of a children’s game “In and Out the Windows”, where each participant travels in and out of upraised and linked arms of the circle, and when ‘in’ may speak and /or show photos of themselves from the past. Some may choose to remember any self from the entire evolutionary story, with whom they would like to identify. The game seems appropriate to what each being does existentially in so many ways, over the eons as well as in our personal lives. The chant can be found on YouTube. The photos used are a collage of footage and photos from the 2024 Samhain ceremony at my place in Wakka Wakka country, South East Queensland Australia, and from previous Samhain ceremonies I facilitated over the decades in MoonCourt, Goddess ceremonial space in NSW Australia, Darug and Gundungurra country. Music credit: All music used in this video is by Tim Wheater, which has previously generously allowed me to use in my work. The pieces used are from Tim’s CD Fish Nite Moon: they are Ancient Footsteps, Fish Nite Moon, Spiritbirth, and Conception. I thank my partner Robert (Taffy) Seaborne for his participation in the creation of the video.
Lammas/Late Summer within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 10 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd, Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd These dates are traditional, though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox, thus actually a little later in early February for S.H., and early August for N.H., respectively. a Lammas/Late Summer table The Old One, the Dark and Shining One, has been much maligned, so to celebrate Her can be more of a challenge in our present cultural context. Lammas may be an opportunity to re-aquaint ourselves with the Crone in her purity, to fall in love with Her again, to celebrate She Who creates the Space to Be. Lammas is a welcoming of the Dark in all its complexity: and as with any funerary moment, there is celebration of the life lived (enjoyment of the harvest) – a “wake,” and there is grieving for the loss. One may fear it, which is good reason to make ceremony, to go deeper, to commit to the Mother, who is the Deep; to “make sacred” this emotion, as much as one may celebrate the hope and wonder of Spring, its opposite. If Imbolc/Early Spring is a nurturing of new young life, Lammas may be a nurturing/midwifing of death or dying to small self, the assent to larger self, an expansion or dissipation – further to the radiance of Summer Solstice. Whereas Imbolc is a Bridal commitment to being and form, where we are the Promise of Life; Lammas may be felt as a commitment marriage to the Dark within, as we accept the Harvest of that Promise, the cutting of it. We remember that the Promise is returned to Source. “The forces which began to rise out of the Earth at the festival of Bride now return at Lammas.”[i] Creativity is called forth when an end (or impasse) is reached: we can no longer rely on our small self to carry it off. We may call Her forth, this Creative Wise Dark One – of the Ages, when our ways no longer work. We are not individuals, though we often think we are. We are Larger Self, subjects within theSubject.[ii] And this is a joyful thing. We do experience ourselves as individuals and we celebrate that creativity at Imbolc. Lammas is the time for celebrating the fact that we are part of, in the context of, a Larger Organism, and expanding into that. Death will teach us that, but we don’t have to wait – it is happening around us all the time, we are constantly immersed in the process, and everyday creativity is sourced in this subjectivity. As it is said, She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire:”[iii] the same Desire we celebrated at Beltaine, has peaked at Summer and is now dissolving form, returning to Source to nourish the Plenum, the manifesting – as all form does. This Seasonal Moment of Lammas/Late Summer celebrates the beginning of dismantling, de-structuring. Gaia-Universe has done a lot of this de-structuring – it is in Her nature to return all to the “Sentient Soup” … nothing is wasted. We recall the Dark Sentience, the “All-Nourishing Abyss”[iv] at the base of being, as we enter this dark part of the cycle of the year. This Dark/Deep at the base of being, to whom we are returned, may be understood as the Sentience within all – within the entire Universe. The dictionary definition of sentience is: “intelligence,” “feeling,” “the readiness to receive sensation, idea or image; unstructured available consciousness,” “a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness.”[v] The Old Wise One is the aspect of the Cosmic Triplicity/Triple Goddess that returns us to this sentience, the Great Subject out of whom we arise. We are subjects within the Great Subject – the sentient Universe; we are not a collection of objects, as Thomas Berry has said.[vi] This sentience within, this “readiness-to-receive,” is a dark space, as all places of ending and beginning are. Mystics of all religious traditions have understood the quintessential darkness of the Divinity, known often as the Abyss. Goddesses such as Nammu and Tiamat, Aditi and Kali, are the anthropomorphic forms of this Abyss/Sea of Darkness that existed before creation. She is really the Matrix of the Universe. This sentience is ever present and dynamic. It could be understood as the dark matter that is now recognized to form most of the Universe. This may be recognized as Her “Cauldron of Creativity” and celebrated at this Lammas Moment. Her Cauldron of Creativity is the constant flux of all form in the Universe – all matter is constantly transforming. We are constantly transforming on every level. a Lammas/Late Summer altar These times that we find ourselves in have been storied as the Age of Kali, the Age of Caillaech – the Age of the Crone. There is much that is being turned over, much that will be dismantled. We are in the midst of the revealing of compost, and transformation – social, cultural, and geophysical. Kali is not a pretty one – but we trust She is transformer, and creative in the long term. She has a good track record. Our main problem is that we tend to take it personally. The Crone – the Old Phase of the cycle, creates the Space to Be. Lammas is the particular celebration of the beauty of this awesome One. She is symbolized and expressed in the image of the waning moon, which is filling with darkness. She is the nurturant darkness that may fill your being, comfort the sentience in you, that will eventually allow new constellations to gestate in you, renew you. So the focus in ceremony may be to contemplate opening to Her, noticing our fears and our hopes involved in that. She is the Great Receiver – receives all, and as such She is the Great Compassionate One. Her Darkness may be understood as a Depth of Love. And She is Compassionate because of …

(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.
(Photo Essay 3) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hwang

Part III: Archaeology Bespeaks What Ideological Hetero-sexuality Can’t Do Our story-tellers informed us that Gaeyang Halmi is venerated and celebrated on January 14th annually on the lunar calendar. There are two separate rituals performed on that day. Villagers, both men and women, offer their ritual ceremony in the morning in Confucian style. The officiant must preserve the purification ritual, confining oneself to home to avoid ominous affairs for a week prior to the ceremony. After the ceremony of the villagers, Mudang groups come from outside the town and offer their Shaman rituals. A cleavage between two groups is still freshly detected in their narratives. While villagers conform to the Confucian style rituals with a despising but curious eye for the female-centered Shaman rituals, Mudangs are much more powerful in their capacities to command people, spirits, and materials. The Shamanic ritual celebration is fairly well-known domestically as well as overseas to the Chinese and the Japanese, according to our lore transmitters. People from China and Japan come to join the Mudang rituals, a vestige of the intercultural celebration that may have originated in ancient times, a point to be elaborated later. What caught my attention was the fact that the ritual celebration is known as the Ritual of Yongwang (the Dragon King) not the Ritual of Gaeyang Halmi. Our two narrators, Mr. Jeong Dong-Uk and Ms. Jeong Si-Geum, brother and sister, testified contradictorily vis-à-vis the Dragon King. Mr. Jeong mentioned that Gaeyang Halmi is the wife of Dragon King,[i] whereas Ms. Jeong spoke of Gaeyang Halmi as a solo deity without spouse. Ms. Jeong sternly said, “She was alone [without spouse]. She had eight daughters.” “It is said that there used to be a house wherein Gaeyang Halmi and her eight daughters lived together. I saw the cooking pots and household things in the ruin,” added Ms. Jeong. [Interestingly, the motif that she saw the cooking pots and other kitchen items in the ruin reminded me of other Mago folk stories from other regions. People seem to take such artifacts as pots and household things discovered in the ruin as an indication that the myth of Mago Halmi who is told to have lived in the place is plausible.] The topos of “the dragon king” was likely added later on to comply with Confucian ideology. In fact, none of our narrators mentioned the dragon king as the main deity of the Suseong Shrine. The fact that it is called the ritual of the dragon king suggests another layer of erosion/castration/dethronement done to the supreme divinity of Gaeyang Halmi.
(Mago Almanac Planner Year 5 Excerpt 3) 13 Month 28 Day Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This and its sequences are a newly added portion in the Mago Almanac Planner Year 5, equivalent to the Gregorian Year 2022. Because the Budoji did not explain further about time units smaller than 1 day, I did not follow through some possible implications in previous Mago Almanac volumes. Next year’s Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar Year 5 or 5919 MAGOMA ERA is forthcoming in Mago Bookstore (October 25, 2021). PDF version is available for purchase.] We set the new moon day of the Winter Solstice month in 2017 as the New Year of Year 1. With that, we are able to tap Magoist days into Gregorian days that we moderns use. Then, how do we bring down a Magoist time in the scheme of the Gregorian time? How do we determine the onset of New Year in the Magoist Calendar? When would be the midnight of New Year in Year 1? That requires a translation of Mago time into Gregorian time. We can designate midnight as a midpoint in time equidistant from the sunset of New Year’s Eve to the sunrise of New Year. As local times vary around the globe, the midnight of New Year varies in states and cities. In Los Angeles, California USA, the first Magoist midnight falls on 23:29 on December 17, 2017 for Year 1. That would be 07:29 on December 18, 2017 in UTC. Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Midnight12/17/2017 23:2912/17/2018 23:2912/17/2019 23:2912/16/2020 23:30Sunset16:45, 12/1716:45, 12/1716:45, 12/1716:44, 12/16Sunrise6:53, 12/186:53, 12/18 6:53, 12/186:53, 12/17 (Sunset and sunrise times in Los Angeles, USA) The below table shows the first Magoist midnight (around 0.33 AM) falls on December 18, 2017 in Gyeongju, South Korea. That would be 15:33 on December 17, 2017 in UTC. Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Midnight12/18/2017 0:33.512/18/2018 0:32.512/18/2019 0:32.512/17/2020 0:32.5Sunset17:11, 12/1717:11, 12/1717:11, 12/1717:11, 12/16Sunrise7:28, 12/187:27, 12/18 7:27, 12/187:27, 12/17 (Sunset and sunrise times in Gyeongju, South Korea) We can imagine a spiral progression of years from Little Calendar (one year) to Medium Calendar (two years) and to Large Calendar (four years). Every year has one leap day, whereas every fourth year has another leap day in the middle of the year. Cyclic time, as it progresses, creates rhythm and harmony in the human world. Little Calendar (1 year)13×1=13 months364 days+1 leap day=365 daysMedium Calendar (2 years)13×2=26 months2x(364 days+1 leap day) =730 daysLarge Calendar (4 years)13×4=52 months4x(364 days+1 leap day)+1 leap day=1,461 days (End of the series) https://www.magoacademy.org/virtual-midnight-vigil-to-new-year/ https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang/

Category: Awakening

(Art & Prose) Becoming Safe to Feel by Lucy Pierce

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(Bell Essay 9) The Magoist Whale Bell: Decoding the Cetacean Code of Korean Temple Bells by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

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(Prose) The Story of Changing Woman: Myth and Commentary by Sara Wright

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(Poetry) Peace in Connection by Belinda Subraman

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(Art 2) Gather the Women by Pegi Eyers

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(Hymn & Altar Art) Hymn to Lilith #3 by Nuit Moore

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(Essay 2) The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia by Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen

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(Art) Artist: The Wayfinder by Virginia Masson

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(Prose) Poetry as Mentifacts by Susan Hawthorne

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(Prose) Shaped by Unseen Histories by Lucy Pierce

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(Essay 1) The Worship of Cybele in the Ancient World by Francesca Tronetti, Ph.D.

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(Book Excerpt 3) Inanna’s Ascent: Reclaiming Female Power, Edited by Trista Hendren, Tamara Albanna and Pat Daly

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Mago Almanac Year 9 Monthly Wheels

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

Mago Almanac Year 8 (for 2025)

Program Booklets

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