February 20, 2013November 15, 2019 Mago Work1 Comment

(Poem) Mother-Warrior by Glenys Livingstone

You are hera, heraic, warrior You are brave, you are Brave You have conquered You have taken in hand those forces of disintegration that threatened your existence You hold them Read More …

February 6, 2013November 15, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Precious Body Unknown by Glenys Livingstone

Precious Body I gave you away (we gave you away) Cast you before swine. ooo Precious Pearl, the Self … Embodied I delivered you to the pyre (we were delivered, Read More …

January 28, 2013November 15, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Transformation by Glenys Livingstone

Completely dismantled – all the stock taken out of the cupboards. Strip them bare Pull apart my knowings – rip them open, let the connections be severed. Expose Read More …

October 22, 2012November 15, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

‘En-trancing Gaia’s Womb through Seasonal Ceremony: Re-creating Her Sacred Site’ by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

In the earliest of Her stories, Gaia – also known as “Ge”, meaning Earth – was the possessor of the oracle in Delphi, the place at the foot of Mount Read More …

July 25, 2012November 15, 2019 Mago Admin2 Comments

Winter-Spring EarthGaian Wisdom: Invoking the Power of Brigid, the Mother Creator by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

In the Southern Hemisphere we have just passed the Earth holy-day of Winter Solstice, which was in late June; and are moving into Early Spring which may be marked and Read More …

(Essay 3) Cosmogenesis and the Female Metaphor: Her Resonances with the Three Qualities by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is part 3 of an edited excerpt from Chapter 4 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. In my authoring of PaGaian Cosmology, I have associated the three qualities of Cosmogenesis (the unfolding of the Cosmos) as described by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, with the three qualities of the Goddess metaphor; as a method of restoring Her as a pattern of Cosmological Creativity. The three qualities/themes of Cosmogenesis have been named by Swimme and Berry as differentiation, communion and autopoeisis/subjectivity. Herewith is an abbreviated summary of my synthesis of these three qualities with the three qualties of Goddess. Describing differentiation, which I associate with the Virgin aspect – the Urge to Be, passionate love of every individual self, Swimme and Berry say, From the articulated energy constellations we call the elementary particles and atomic beings, through the radiant structures of the animate world, to the complexities of the galaxy with its planetary systems, we find a universe of unending diversity… The more intimately we become acquainted with anything, the clearer our recognition of its differences from everything else… There has never been a time when the universe did not seek further differentiation[i]. Swimme and Berry note that the more deeply we come to know a thing – the Milky Way, the species on a particular tree in a rainforest – the more deeply we perceive its “ineffable uniqueness”. They note then that not only is each thing new and different, but that the dynamics of relationship between the new structures are qualitatively and quantitatively different. They find that when the thirteen point seven billion year epic of the Universe’s unfolding is viewed as a whole, with its extravagant creative outpouring, there is the revelation of the uniqueness of the creativity of each place and time, and the existence of each being. My own Poetic translation of Swimme and Berry’s expressions regarding Cosmogenesis proceeds in the following way. When they say that the universe “at each instant has re-created itself anew”, and that this seemingly infinite power “speaks of an inexhaustible fecundity at the root of reality”[ii], I imagine it in “Goddess-speak”. That is, “the Virgin dynamic of unique beauty expressed and celebrated in early Spring, has layered within, the fertility that is expressed and celebrated in High Spring (Beltane), as She changes into the Mother dynamic of Summer, whose fertility rests in the Dark Interiority of the Old One expressed and celebrated particularly in Deep Autumn (Samhain).” This translation of mine is kin to William Irwin Thompson’s translation of Lyn Margulis’ description of her study of bacteria: he says that when he saw her film about bacteria, his thoughts “on the relationship between myth and science took a jump forward” as he began to understand what his Irish ancestors meant when they had spoken of “the little people” at work in the leaf mold at their feet[iii]. Even as Swimme and Berry define differentiation, the three aspects are constantly drawn into the equation, and again with this perception: “The multiform relatedness demanded by a differentiated universe rests upon the fact that each individual thing in the universe is ineffable”[iv]. The sentience or interiority or presence of each unique thing/being evokes relatedness in mind-boggling complexity. To help one understand the way in which the aspects support each other, Swimme and Berry imagine: Were there no differentiation, the universe would collapse into a homogenous smudge; were there no subjectivity, the universe would collapse into inert, dead extension; were there no communion, the universe would collapse into isolated singularities of being.[v] Each aspect does not really exist without the others, yet each has its own integrity. In the case of the dynamic of differentiation, Swimme and Berry say that, to understand the Universe – the entire display – to get the full picture, we must understand the absolute freshness of each being and each moment. The Matres Describing communion, which I associate with the Mother aspect – the sustaining, relating Context, the reciprocal Place of Being, the passionate pouring forth for other, Swimme and Berry say, … relationship is the essence of existence. In the very first instant when the primitive particles rushed forth, every one of them was connected to every other one in the entire universe. At no time in the future existence of the universe would they ever arrive at a point of disconnection. Alienation for a particle is a theoretical impossibility. For galaxies too, relationships are the fact of existence. Each galaxy is directly connected to the hundred billion galaxies of the universe, and there will never come a time when a galaxy’s destiny does not involve each of the galaxies in the universe. Nothing is itself without everything else. Our Sun emerged into being out of the creativity of so many millions of former beings. The elements of the floating presolar cloud had been created by former stars and by the primeval fireball … The patterns of nuclear resonances enabling stable nuclear burning was not the Sun’s invention – and yet all that followed depended upon this pattern of interconnectivity in which the Sun arose[vi]. So it is with any entity, with any being – we arise within a pattern of interconnectivity, the beneficiaries of the creativity of former beings, supported by everything that has gone before. Swimme and Berry point out that a sense of relatedness is at the base of being, present even before a first interaction. They give the example of an unborn grizzly bear, as being already related to the outside world in that she will not have to develop a taste for the foods bears eat, and she is already shaped for her environment and the survival tasks ahead of her; that is, we are already in relationship by the fact of our being – relationships then “are discovered, even more than they are forged”[vii]. Once again, in the process of defining the one aspect – this time communion – all three aspects are drawn into …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Taffy (Robert) Seaborne

Taffy (Robert) Seaborne was born in 1944 and raised in Wales before emigrating to Australia in 1967. He has enjoyed a wide variety of life experience in mechanical engineering, and supervision of state forests, national parks and indigenous Aboriginal lands. From 1990 to 1995, he was District Supervisor and Manager of Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park, Australia’s best known indigenous icon, and had further experience on the Pitjantjatjara lands in Central Australia, and at Broken Hill 1995-1998.
(Art) KEEPERS OF WISDOM AND TRUTH by Lilian Broca

“Goddesses and Heroins” by Lilian Broca This painting was created for an exhibition called “Goddesses and Heroines” in 1993, 36 x 60”. For many centuries women lived in restrictive patriarchal and androcentric societies that considered women lesser equals. Guarding both their voices and stories safe within, was integral to their fight for survival not just for themselves but for their community and future generations as well. Materials: spackle mixed with glue on panel, painted with acrylics in layers and sanded several times to give impression of antiquity as well as the uneven texture of rock. As always, script – in this case Cuneiform – is part of the art work. https://www.magoism.net/2023/04/meet-mago-contributor-lilian-broca/
(Essay 3) How Mother Nature Died: The bio-cosmic rupture of European Renaissance by Luciana Percovich

[This essay was presented at Roma Goddess Conference, May 22-23, 2021, under the theme of “Goddess & Environment – Save Mother Earth.”] From the V to the XV century, Early and Late Middle Ages It took another millennium to the slow but crucial transformations that finally erased what was left of the numinous alliance between female centered vision and natural forces. Through forced Christianization, imposed from high by the courts, cathedrals, castles, and cities on people living and working in the countries and mountainous zones, the male anthropomorphic divine erection gave up progressively with all connections with Nature, now narrated and reduced to His creation. The Creation became more and more Transcendent and Incorporeal – but Masculine nonetheless, as Divine/God is uncreated, not generated by matter and blood, and Mind alone is pure and creative. Until a New Man living in walled cities was born with arms and goods, as Athena from the head of Zeus. It happened during Humanism and the triumphal Re-naissance. Resistance was fierce and never-ending, lay, and ecclesiastic authorities had to endure a war without quarter to control the peasant revolts often guided by women, to restrain the female order. This process lasted for centuries, had to overcome the strong endurance of “paganism” all around the fortified mansions and walled towns. It had to confront with the central role of women in the agricultural world, thanks to their millennial knowledge of plants, herbs, and body anatomy, handed down orally, generation after generation along a lineage starting from the gatherers and hunters of the Paleolithic. Women still treated illnesses and accompanied the passages between the world of the living and of the dead: they were now called prophetesses, seers, enchantresses, singers, sometimes appreciated court counselors. A paradigmatic ending of this long strife which invested all aspects of life and prepared industrialization is to be found in the Enclosures Acts emanated between 1700 and 1810 that concluded a process of progressive elimination of open fields, common wastes and of the communitarian style of life of million peoples, a process which had begun in the XIII century. The metaphor of Mother Earth went on and on. Even in the XVI century, she continued to be represented as a living organism, nature/earth was still called Alma Mater, the Anima Mundi was imagined as feminine, the Microcosm laws reflected the Macrocosm ones. How Descriptions contain Instructions Carolyn Merchant in The Death of Nature underlines the invisible power of metaphors and of unconscious presuppositions, that is what we automatically or traditionally think to be true, and often results stronger than the mere matter of facts. She reconstructs the change in metaphor that occurred after Renaissance, particularly between the XVI and XVII centuries, inviting to recognize and fully understand the normative importance of descriptive statements, in this case on nature. The Renaissance image of the Nurturing Earth still brought within ethic rules and limitations: as long as the earth was considered a living sensitive and maternal organism, every destruction or withdrawal had to be limited and blamed. With the mounting success of the Scientific Revolution in mechanization and rationalization, in the growing new technologies aimed to produce goods of every kind, a new image of an unrestrained overwhelming and Disordered Nature broke through, gaining ground. It was time for the new industrious men, safe beyond the walls of cities and minds, to gain Power over nature. “Two new ideas, mechanism – nature as a collection of inanimate parts – and the rule and mastery over nature became central concepts in the Modern World.” From Mother Nature to nature as inanimate machineThe change in perception and representation (imaginary) from Nature as a living Organism to nature as an inanimate Machine introduced/reflected many philosophical and practical consequences:- a dramatic erasing of feminine principles – the subjection of nature to the new machines, an enthrallment to measurements, a promise of free exploitation, unrestrained commercialism, industrialization, marketing. – the “monstrification” of the herbalists, seers, healers as WITCHES. The Witches (Green 1510) The Magician becomes a Manipulator As the witches were burning, the devastation of nature began to be depicted. In synchronicity, during the Burning Times – the most atrociuos event in the history of humankind – another devastation, more “egalitarian” for it involved lands, animals, humans without difference of sex or age, was spreading around planet Earth: the colonization of other continents, the long Kurgan wave of the Modern Age. While millenarian forests were cut in Europe to build ships, colonization spread everywhere, pillaging of wealth beyond imagination from native peoples began to be brought to Europe and Africans kidnapped and trasported as slaves, while poors and landless Europeans were transformed in nude uprooted bodies which began to be trained to follow the order of the machines. The mechanistic view of nature/Earth/cosmos as a set of inanimate parts spread in philosophical, political and nascent scientific thinking alike. Illustrious examples were Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Isaac Newto, Tomas Hobbes. The masculine language of The Bible, widely available thanks to the invention of print, became the main and most diffuse religious text and supported the enterprise: the rovers were the missionaries of God. (To be continued) https://www.magoism.net/2013/10/meet-mago-contributor-luciana-percovich/
(Prose) The kiss by Nane Jordan

The effort of travel, of moving around so much, despite the adventure (or because of it), I was more than glad to come home this time. Relieved, happy, exhausted – how to integrate it all? Looking back at this year of travel, a year of bounty and saturation of experiences. No wonder this last trip pushed me. But I relaxed more too, seeing all this, realizing why I felt a lot of physical and mental resistance this time. It’s like I can only absorb so much, how to digest and get a good view? And as much as I wanted to get home again, I am now (of course) going to miss Paris. A feel for the place has got under my skin. I spent my last days in Paris mostly ill, and unable to visit people I would have liked to meet with. I mostly sat at one of those wonderful, ubiquitous Paris cafés. In a yellow and red stripped wicker chair, sitting outside in the October rain, bundled in my coat and hat, an awning sheltering me from the rain. I loved at least to do this, writing in my journal outside, drinking my déca / noisette, watching all the Paris peoples go by. Just sitting in a café, nowhere else to go for now, waiting/wanting to go home, getting a friendly nod from the waitress as I returned each day. It took all these trips until I got t/here, to this café. The Café des Dames – perfect, at la Place Coloniel Fabien. Not very far from the attacks would take place only a few days later. I think of that now, my proximity, and distance, to those sad and terrible events. “We will understand nothing from this trembling, troubled archive, without recollecting the history of war in the century scarcely past, and especially the history of the one we have called the second world war, the war that remembered the First and announces the Third, the hinge between the two pages of the century.” Hélène Cixous, Poetry in Painting, 2012, p. 84 I often feel how Paris is a kind of archive—archive of the West, its art and its wars—the city itself, the streets, museums, cathedrals, cemeteries. The many people, descendants of another time, out in the streets and cafes, or hidden inside apartment homes, alive and working in this city of art and love. I took a picture of the grave of Marguerite Duras in the Montparnassse cemetery (Sartre & De Beauvoir, Beckett, Baudelaire, & Mavis Gallant, are also there). Her grave is decorated with fresh pots of flowers. Small, colourful heart beads are attached to the largest potted plant, a small tree, whose perimeter holds offerings of pens stuck into its potted earth. Duras’ writing storied the French resistance and Paris at the end of WWII, in transition. I read her work with great, captivating interest. She went on to write many more works, often on the topic of forbidden love affairs and their effects (Hiroshima, mon amour). Her writing is like a clear bell into hearts and minds of that time, now spilling over into the living city, an echo. Sitting in the Café des Dames, I write very quickly of something I just witnessed in the Metro. Twice in the days before, I got onto the Metro with the intention of going to various places (probably la Madeline & the Musée d’Orsay—one last time). Both times I would ride for a bit in the usually over-crowed Metro car, and realize quite quickly that there was no way I would be able to keep standing, let alone walk around upon arriving at my destination. I just felt too ill and dizzy. So I’d get off, walk over to other side, and go back to my original stop (and this café, where I could find myself writing). Story is, while standing on a crowded, rush-hour Metro platform, waiting to go back to my original stop, I found myself watching a young couple who were talking to each other casually, with their sweet small child standing between them. They were lovely to look at. I was just enjoying seeing them there in easy communication, the little family, when it happened. They leaned into to each other, very closely, and took the most sensual, loving kiss I have ever seen in public (or in a movie for that matter!). Their eyes closed, as lips reached towards and met the other, in a slow, tender, loving kiss. They took all the time in the world, in absolute devotion, as if no one else where there, only their small child cuddled between them. And so, sealed with such a kiss, the world went onwards, and into the arriving Metro car. (Meet Mago Contributor) Nane Jordan.
(Essay) She Who Changes* by Carol P. Christ

She changes everything She touches and everything She touches changes. The world is Her body. The world is in Her and She is in the world. She surrounds us like the air we breathe. She is as close to us as our own breath. She is energy, movement, life, and change. She is the ground of freedom, creativity, sympathy, understanding, and love. In Her we live, and move, and co-create our being. She is always there for each and every one of us, particles of atoms, cells, animals, and human animals. We are precious in Her sight. She understands and remembers us with unending sympathy. She inspires us to live creatively, joyfully, and in harmony with others in the web of life. Yet choice is ours. The world that is Her body is co-created. The choices of every individual particle of an atom, every individual cell, every individual animal, every individual human animal play a part. The adventure of life on planet earth and in the universe as a whole will be enhanced or diminished by the choices we make. She hears the cries of the world, sharing our sorrows with infinite compassion. In a still, small voice, She whispers the desire of Her heart: Life is meant to be enjoyed. She sets before us life and death. We can choose life. Change is. Touch is. Everything we touch can change. One of the earliest insights of feminist theology was that women have been viewed as secondary or subordinate in dualistic anti-body traditions that follow Plato in making a sharp distinction between God and the unchanging soul on the one hand, and the changing body and nature on the other. Feminists have shown that in dualistic traditions created by men, the rational soul of man is associated with the unchanging immortal realm of (a male) God, while woman is identified with the body, nature, and death. Feminists have called this way of thinking hierarchical dualism because one set of qualities—the unchanging, the rational, the soul, the male—is valued more highly than the other—the changing, the natural, the body, the female. In such traditions, God must be imaged as male because maleness is associated with the soul and spirit. In such traditions God cannot be imaged as female because femaleness is associated with the body, nature, and death, and these in turn are imagined to be antithetical to the spirit. Feminists in religion share a critique of the “God out there” of traditional biblical religion, agreeing that images of God as King, Lord, and Father are images of God as a dominant male other. In one of his last books, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, process philosopher Charles Hartshorne identified the six common mistakes of western theological traditions as the assertion of God’s omnipotence, omniscience, unchanging nature, and unsympathetic goodness, and the related errors of infallible revelation and immortality. Many feminists have focused attention on the masculine and hierarchical language of biblical traditions. We have not always been as clear that ideas about divine power as unchanging and unsympathetic, omnipotent and omniscient, and views of infallible revelation and immortality are integral to the understanding of God “out there,” separate from and above the world, that we criticize. In She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World, I argue that each of these “theological mistakes” results from a prior ontological mistake. This mistake is denial of the body that is based in a rejection of the female body through which we come into the physical world. In other words the “theological mistakes” are based in unacknowledged matricide. I believe that process philosophy is implicitly feminist because it provides an alternative to theological traditions that are rooted in unacknowledged matricide. Feminism’s contribution to process philosophy is to make the matricidal roots of traditional theologies explicit and to insist that process philosophy firmly root its concepts of “the body,” “the world,” and “the world as the body of God” in physical materiality. Process philosophy in turn can help feminists to avoid the theological mistakes that are part and parcel of a matricidal view of the world. These traditional ideas are so deeply engrained in language and culture that it is difficult for any of us to speak of Goddess or God without consciously or unconsciously repeating them unless we consciously replace them with a new paradigm. *Adapted from Carol P. Christ, She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World (New York: Routledge, 2004). Carol P. Christ is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement. She teaches online courses in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions. One of her great joys is leading Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete through Ariadne Institute. This essay was originally published in Feminism and Religion (http://feminismandreligion.com/2012/05/21/she-who-changes-by-carol-p-christ/)
(2022 Pilgrimage 4) A visual Journey of the Goddess as Protectress from the Neolithic to Present in Eastern Europe by Krista Rodin

Lycian Coast, Turkey goddesses The Lycian region was inhabited from very early on. Caves indicate human worship from about 20,000 BCE and Neolithic mother goddess figurines, Geometric and Bronze Age votive figures and pottery have been uncovered in abundance and are now in museums in Fethiye, Izmir and Istanbul. The museum in Fethiye is small, only two rooms, but it has an interesting collection of items from Telmessos and Tlos as well as Kaunos. The collection includes artifacts from Neolithic pottery and figurines through the Byzantine period, with remnants of old Basilica carved doors with vegetal and Christian symbols. There were a few items in the gallery that caught my special attention. The first was a 3rd C BCE 55cm stone statue of the Lycian goddess Artemis Eleuteria. Like her sister to the north, the Ephesian Artemis, her skirt is filled with symbols, but unlike her she doesn’t have multiple breasts or rows of symbolic creatures. Artemis Eleuteria’s skirt is somewhat simpler, with figures of a scorpion and wreath at the bottom, apparently under the earth, a pair of what look like does on a level that could represent the earth with an angel in the center surrounded by frogs, above the angel are flowers and a figure of a god/goddess with the sun rays radiating from its head. The goddess has multiple necklaces and earrings and her hair is placed in a way to represent the city she is protecting. There are also engravings on the sides that are not visible through the glass showcase. The positioning of the figures appears to me to represent her protection of the three worlds, the underworld with the scorpion, the earth with frogs and does, and the sky with the sky god between her shield-like breasts. The angel in the middle is like her heart connecting the three worlds. The plaque next to her states that: “she was the mother goddess of Myra and was worshipped in the coastal settlements of Lycia. The exact nature of her worship is unknown, but she does appear on coins and steles found in Limyra and Myra.” It should be noted that Myra is also the birthplace of the gift giving St. Nicholas. Another female figure that I found fascinating was the bowhead of St. Catherine. She was used as protectress on 19th C commercial vessels. The Greeks used Christian symbols and saints, while the Ottomans used animal figures. A different, series of artifacts that were striking were a set of reliefs with two warriors on horseback facing a standing female figure. There is a rock relief on the Taskuzluk Plateau that is mentioned in the Tlos book, that describes the same image. In that book, they say that these are probably Hellenic Roman era reliefs depicting the twin sons of Zeus, Castor and Pollux, with either their sister Helena or the mother goddess Artemisia in the middle. (Tlos 176) Eleusian goddesses of Cybele, Fethiye Museum, Turkey Hellenic Figurines, Fethiye Museum, Turkey Hellenic Figurines, Fethiye Museum, Turkey Hellenic Roman reliefs with Castor and Pollus and either their sister, Helena, or the mother goddess Artemisia, Fethiye Museum, Turkey Ephesian Artemis, Izmir Artemis Eleutaris, Fethiye Museum Roman Artemis 4th C CE, Kaunos Roman Isis, Fethiye Museum 19th C. St. Catherine bowhead from sunken Greek vessel, Fethiye Museum Medieval St. Anne and the Virgin Mary – Stockholm & Vilnius Early 15th C Norwegian Walrustusk Anna Selbdritt, Swedish History Museum 1425-1450 St. Anne with Mary, St. Anne Shrine, Gotland, Swedish History Museum 1425-1450 Anna Selbdritt, Swedish History Museum Mid-19th C Anna Selbdritt, Swedish History Museum (To be Continued) Meet Mago Contributor, Krista Rodin Ph.D. https://www.magoism.net/2018/09/meet-mago-contributor-krista-rodin-ph-d/
(Quilt Art) Louhi, Matriarch of the Man-Eating Village of Pohjola (Northland), her daughters and relatives by Kaarina Kailo

The Finnish epic Kalevala portrays the inhabitants of the matriarchal Northland (Terra Feminarum?) as greedy, selfish and treacherous. In my combined quilt art and research I seek to show these mythical foremothers and goddesses in more positive light. Patriarchal Christianity demonized them and we need to rewrite herstory and recover a more woman-friendly cosmology to empower women and provide them with the information that has been censored and distorted. https://www.magoism.net/2016/03/meet-mago-contributor-kaarina-kailo/
(Poem) Annwn by Angelika Ruediger

Annwn1 Light of a lonely candle Yours is the task to make us feel The deep, the dark, the unknown.

(Special Post) To Contributors: Strengthening Our Roots by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Dear Contributors, Do you know that Return to Mago (RTM) E*Magazine is entering its fifth year this fall? And, thanks to our collective effort, we are still growing! As of today, our contributors have grown to more than 130 in number and our readership is from about 140 countries around the world. We have some hundred email followers as well as Wordpress blog followers. We draw 3000-4000 clicks per month on average; that is no small accomplishment for a Goddess blog that is named after a yet-to-be heard word, Mago (the Great Goddess), and that began from scratch.
(Special Post Mother Teresa 4) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

Part IV: Illumination and Consensus Reached [Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] Diane Horton: [C], how is it that you do not see that MT had no right to sacrifice other people for any purpose whatsoever? None of us have the right or the place to “sacrifice those we care about” for anything. She was not “above them”. And she had abundant means to do far more for them, to cure and comfort them. If indeed she imagined she had some lofty motivation as you so fervently believe, to use the power she had to withhold medical care from the poverty stricken sick and dying in some misguided and ultimately cruel attempt to bring the world’s attention to their suffering and produce compassion within those who would not otherwise feel it is the most monstrous miscarriage of any expression of what you might refer to as “love” that I have heard of outside of Jim Jones killing all of his followers in Ghana. That’s not Love. That’s not Compassion. That is Manipulation, and manipulation is ego-based. Anne Wilkerson Allen: Yes. It is an indoctrination so deep and so prolonged that it takes a lifetime to overcome…and we rely on the love and compassion of others to help bring us to this understanding….thanks, Diane. Diane Horton: Love you, Anne. [C]: Is thinking that any human being sacrificing inside their very soul, their morals, & all that entails, is actually of lesser value than outside human pain, suffering, even death itself, right? Diane Horton: I’m not sure I understand the question really, but I’ll try a response: one’s inner and outer life are of equal importance because they are all the whole person.
(Special Post Mother Teresa 2) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

[Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] Part II: We Disagree! Stand up for what you believe but be open-minded! Naa Ayele Kumari: I am going to step away from the common responses and say this… Binary is only no in betweens if you choose sides and can’t see the whole. I have been a part of black consciousness movements and women’s movements and both have the capacity for progress as well as extreme viewpoints. Both have the capacity to become so hypercritical that the movement itself transcends common human compassion and understanding. Mother Teresa was a human being with flaws and goodness. She had a public image and private fears and insecurities.. l like all of us. She lived her life the best way she knew how.. Like all of us. She made mistakes.. misjudgments.. Like all of us. But she also DID help and inspire others to help too. It is this dualistic thinking that forces people to feel like they have to assign the label of good or bad and no in between. None of us are all good or all bad.. so it seems to me that to label her has an evil traitor who let people die is no better than labeling her an Angel of god who did no wrong. She was a woman who lived her life and managed to come to worldwide fame and inspire others to love at a time and in an institution that was highly patriarchal and women were not raised up at all. Mother Goddesses in Africa were known for great nurturing and care symbolized by carrying a baby and also carried a machete on the other side for justice. This was the fine balance of wholeness…she was the gentle rain and the storm.. This was binary, but not one or the other but both.. Opposite ends of the same pole. [H]: I’m having a powerful visceral effect from this conversation. I feel as if I’m going to vomit violently. Mother Teresa comes to me in dreams and meditations. Makes me wonder what kind of person I’m seen as if I attract her energy. I have always felt so much love for her. Naa Ayele Kumari: If she comes in your dreams and it has been healing for you… Allow it/ her to continue to be healing for you. Its all about love and anything that is not love… Leave it be.. Vomiting is rejecting something that doesn’t belong with you. Embrace love my sister. Antonia McGuire: I think we may all agree that all belief systems initially began to promote a sense of goodness or fairness to some degree, but over time they are corrupted and produce both advantages and disadvantages. Donna Snyder: Yes, Gandhi, too. Back in the 90’s when I was in a band/performance art troupe called Central Nervous System, I shocked all the guys in the band coming out with an improv in response to a melody played on a banjo tuned like a sitar, called exactly that-Yes, Gandhi. Now make no mistake, he is one of my heroes, devoid of the falsified sentimentality that clings to MT. Gandhi’s work was for the world, for the masses, not for the appropriately humbled. Yet I spoke out about his sexual practices, his use of female bodies. Telling the truth about a hero requires courage. Retreating into a blind defense of a myth is a form of ethical cowardice. Anne Wilkerson Allen: Strangely I had a discussion with someone about the “hero’s journey” moving from metaphorical to physical being part of the problem…..when the “demons” are human instead of our own flaws, there seems to be a tendency to point the finger (and gun barrel) elsewhere. [B]: Fascinating & thought-provoking conversation, all. I think the biggest stumbling block I have with MT is how her acceptance of the dogma of the Catholic church blinded her to seeing and then being moved by the suffering of others enough to do something to alleviate & not vicariously celebrate it. No wonder she “suffered a lack of connection with the Divine”. This crisis with her spirituality seems to have been divorced from her and others’ body wisdom. Self-abnegation (perhaps not the same as “sacrifice”) ultimately backfires because some small part of us insists, “I am worthy!” To which I say, “We are all worthy!” [H]: I do not see or feel that she vicariously celebrated the suffering of others. I feel that she devoted her life to deeply loving and serving the poorest of the poor. I have not been to Calcutta and I have also seen some unimaginable poverty in India that is not like anything that I’ve been exposed to before. I truly believe that she had a very deep way of working with suffering that is not necessarily visible to those more accustomed to modern medical intervention and the resources available for such. I have participated in a very small amount of poverty medicine and the resources that we take for granted are just not readily available to MANY. I learned very powerfully from my experience how blessed and fortunate and often very careless we really are with our precious resources. This discussion has been a learning experience for me. I am trying to not take the critical comments […]

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

Lammas, the first seasonal transition after Summer Solstice, may be summarised as the Season that marks and celebrates the Sacred Consuming, the Harvest of Life. Many indigenous cultures recognised the grain itself as Mother … Corn Mother being one of those images – She who feeds the community, the world, with Her own body: the Corn, the grain, the food, the bread, is Her body. She the Corn Mother, or any other grain Mother, was/is the original sacrifice … no need for extraordinary heroics: it is the nature of Her being. She is sacrificed, consumed, to make the people whole with Her body (as the word “sacrifice” means “to make whole”). She gives Herself in Her fullness to feed the people …. the original Communion. In cultures that preceded agriculture or were perhaps pastoral – hunted or bred animals for food – this cross-quarter day may not have been celebrated, or perhaps it may have been marked in some other way. Yet even in our times when many are not in relationship with the harvest of food directly, we may still be in relationship with our place: Sun and Earth and Moon still do their dance wherever you are, and are indeed the Ground of one’s being here … a good reason to pay attention and homage, and maybe as a result, and in the process, get the essence of one’s life in order. One does not need to go anywhere to make this pilgrimage … simply Place one’s self. The seasonal transition of Lammas may offer that in particular, being a “moment of grace” – as Thomas Berry has named the seasonal transitions, when the dark part of the day begins to grow longer, as the cloak of darkness slowly envelopes the days again: it is timely to reflect on the Dark Cosmos in Whom we are, from Whom we arise and to Whom we return – and upon that moment when like Corn Mother we give ourselves over. This reflection is good, will serve a person and all – to live fully, as well as simply to be who we are: this dark realm of manifesting is the core of who we are. And what difference might such reflection make to our world – personal and collective – to live in this relationship with where we are, and thus who we are. We all are the grain that is harvested and all are Her harvest … perhaps one may use a different metaphor: the truth that may be reflected upon at this seasonal moment after the peaking of Sun’s light at Summer Solstice and the wind down into Autumn, is that everything passes, all fades away … even our Sun shall pass. All is consumed. So What are we part of? (I write it with a capital because surely it is a sacred entity) And how might we participate creatively? We are Food – whether we like it or not … Lammas is a good time to get with the Creative plot, though many find it the most difficult, or focus on more exoteric celebration. May we be interesting food[i]. We are holy Communion, like Corn Mother. Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [i] This is an expression of cosmologist Brian Swimme in Canticle to the Cosmos DVD series.
Happy New Year, Year 2/5916 Magoma Era! by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“The Bell of King Seongdeok, known as the Emille Bell, a massive bronze bell at 19 tons is the largest in Korea.” Wikimedia Commons. Cast in 771, the bell reenacts the music of whales to remind people of the Female Beginning, the self-creative power innate all beings. Today is Day 2 of the New Year in the reconstructed Magoist Calendar characterized by 13 months per year and 28 days per month. We are heading toward the Solstice that falls on Dec. 21/22 (Day 5 of the first month in the Magoist Calendar), which happens to be the day of the first full moon of Year 2. Below is the details about the Magoist Calendar. https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/03/27/magoist-calendar-13-month-28-day-year-1-5915-me-2018-gregorian-year/ The Gregorian year 2018 marks a watershed in that we began to implement the Magoist Calendar. The Magoma Era is based on the onset of the nine-state confederacy of Danguk (State of Dan, the Birth Tree) traditinally dated 3898 BCE-2333 BCE. We just passed Year 1 or 5915 Magoma Era (the Gregorian 2018). For Year 1, we had the New Year Day on December 18 of 2017, the first new moon day before the December Solstice. That makes December 18 of 2017 our lunation 1, the first lunar year that the reconstructed Magoist Calendar determines its first day of the Year 1! Although relatively short in history, the Mago Work began to celebrate the Nine Day Mago Celebration on the day of December Solstice annually since 2015. With the reconstructed Magoist Calendar, we placed it in its due timeframe, the Ninth Month and the Ninth Day, which fell on August 8, 2018 (US PST) and celebrated it for the first time according to the Magoist Calendar. Apparently, this had to be a mid-Summer event. This left us with another seasonal event, the New Year/Solstice Celebration. For Year 2, we hold the 3 Day New Year/Solstice Celebration on December 20, 21, and 22 (December 22 to be the Solstice Dat in PST) and the Virtual Midnight Vigil as a precussor to the New Year Day. http://www.magoacademy.org/2018/07/17/2018-5915-magoma-era-year-1-nine-day-mago-celebration/ https://www.magoacademy.org/home-2/new-year-solstice-celebrations/ We just greeted the Year 2 by holding the event called Virtual Midnight Vigil during which we sounded the Korean temple bell, in particular the Emile Bell or the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok the Great, to the world. A few from around the globe (Germany, Korea, Italy and the US) participated in it or hosted their own local vigils. The Korean temple bell is the key symbol for the Magoist Calendar as well as the Magoist Cosmogony. It is not a coincidence that it is struck on the midnight of the New Year’s Eve. It is Korean tradition that even modern Koreans gather at the bell tower in Seoul to hear the sound of the bell at midnight. And these bells are gigantic weighing 19 tons in the case of the Emile Bell. That this convention has an ancient Magoist root remains esoteric. For not only they strike the bell 28 times in the evening indicating the 28 lunar stations that the Moon stops by in the sky throughout the year (please read below what the 28 day lunar journey means and how it is represented by women). But also the Korean temple bell is no mere acoustic device to play the beautiful sound only. It is designed to reenact the Magoist Cosmogony. https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/12/14/virtual-midnight-vigil-dec-17-2018-to-new-year-year-2-5916-magoma-era/ That said, that is not what’s all about the Korean Magoist convention of welcoming the New Year by sounding the temple bell, however. That the bell sound is a mimicry of the music of whales has been in the hand of wisdom seekers! Ancient Korean bells testify that whales are with us in the journey of the Moon and her terrestrial dependents headed by women. You may like to hear the sound of the Magoist Korean whale bell included in the Participation Manual for Virtual Midnight Vigil below. Happy New Year to all terrestrial beings in WE/HERE/NOW! https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/12/16/participation-manual-for-virtual-midnight-vigil-year-2/
(Book Excerpt) Held in the Womb of the Wheel of the Year by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from the Introduction of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Meditation cushion in circle of decorated stones My ancestors built great circles of stones that represented their perception of real time and space, and enabled them to tell time: the stone circles were cosmic calendars.[i] They went to great lengths and detail to get it right. It was obviously very important to them to have the stones of a particular kind, in the right positions according to position of the Sun at different times of the year, and then to celebrate ceremony within it. I have for decades had a much smaller circle of stones assembled. I have regarded this small circle of stones as a medicine wheel. It is a portable collection, that I can spread out in my living space, or let sit in a small circle on an altar, with a candle/candles in the middle. Each stone (or objects, as some are) represents a particular Seasonal Moment/transition and is placed in the corresponding direction. The small circle of eight stones represents the flow of the Solstices and Equinoxes and the cross-quarter Moments in between: that is, it represents the “Wheel of the Year” as it is commonly known in Pagan traditions. I have found this assembled circle to have been an important presence. It makes the year, my everyday sacred journey of Earth around Sun, tangible and visible as a circle, and has been a method of changing my mind, as I am placed in real space and time. My stone wheel has been a method of bringing me home to my indigenous sense of being. Each stone/object of my small wheel may be understood to represent a “moment of grace,” as Thomas Berry named the seasonal transitions – each is a threshold to the Centre, wherein I may now sit: I sense it as a powerful point. As I sit on the floor in the centre of my small circle of stones, I reflect on its significance as I have come to know the Seasonal transitions that it marks, over decades of celebrating them. I sense the aesthetics and poetry of each. I facilitated and was part of the celebration and contemplation of these Moments in my region for decades. It was always an open group that gathered, and so its participants changed over the years but it remained in form, like a live body which it was: a ceremonial body that conversed with the sacred Cosmos in my place. We spoke a year-long story and poetry of never-ending renewal – of the unfolding self, Earth and Cosmos. We danced and chanted our relationship with the Mother, opened ourselves to Her Creativity, and conversed with Her by this method. All participants in their own way within these ceremonies made meaning of their lives – which is what I understand relationship to be, in this context of Earth and Sun, our Place and Home in the Cosmos: that is, existence is innately meaningful when a being knows Who one is and Where one is. Barbara Walker notes that religions based on the Mother are free of the “neurotic” quest for indefinable meaning in life as such religions “never assumed that life would be required to justify itself.”[ii] I face the North stone, which in my hemisphere is where I place the Summer Solstice. From behind me and to my right is the light part of the cycle – representing manifest form, all that we see and touch. From behind me and to my left is the dark part of the cycle – representing the manifesting, the reality beneath the visible, which includes the non-visible. The Centre wherein I sit, represents the present. The wheel of stones has offered to me a way of experiencing the present as “presence,” as it recalls in an instant that, That which has been and that which is to come are not elsewhere – they are not autonomous dimensions independent of the encompassing present in which we dwell. They are, rather, the very depths of this living place – the hidden depth of its distances and the concealed depth on which we stand.[iii] This wheel of stones, which captures the Wheel of the Year in essence, locates me in the deep present, wherein the past and the future are contained – both always gestating in the dark, through the gateways. And all this has been continually enacted and expressed in the ceremonies of the Wheel of the Year, as the open, yet formal group has done them, mostly in the place of Blue Mountains, Australia. PaGaian Cosmology altar/mandala: a “Womb of Gaia” map Over the years of practice of ritually celebrating these eight Seasonal Moments – Earth’s whole annual journey around Sun, I have been held in this creative story, this Story of Creativity as it may be written – it is a sacred story. Her pattern of Creativity can be identified at all levels of reality – manifesting in seasonal cycles, moon cycles, body cycles – and to be aligned with it aligns a person’s core with the Creative Mother Universe. I have identified the placing of one’s self within this wheel through ceremonial practice of the whole year of creativity, as the placing of one’s self in Her Womb – Gaia’s Womb, a Place of Creativity. All that is necessary for Creativity is present in this Place. All may come forth from here/Here – and so it does, and so it has, and so it will. NOTES: [i] See Martin Brennan, The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland (Rochester Vermont, Inner Traditions, 1994). [ii] Barbara Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 693. [iii] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 216. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Brennan, Martin. The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland.Rochester Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1994. Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: …
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 …
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 7) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) at Mago Bookstore. YEARLY LEAP DAY AND EVERY FOURTH YEAR LEAP DAY Each Sa includes a Dan of the big Sa. A Dan is equal to one day. That adds to 365 days. At the half point of the third Sa, there is a Pan of the big Sak (the year of the great dark moon). A Pan comes at a half point of Sa. This is of Beopsu (Lawful Number) 2, 5, 8. A Pan is equal to a day. Therefore, the fourth Sa has 366 days. Each year has a leap day (Dan), which makes a total of 365 days. Every fourth year is a leap year that has a leap day (Pan), which makes a total of 366 days. The Dan day comes before the New Year in the winter solstice month. And the Pan day comes before the first day of the summer solstice month in the fourth year. The above, however, does not indicate when the New Year comes. Logographic characters of Dan and Pan each suggest their meanings. While each year includes the Dan day (the morning), every fourth year has the Pan day. A unit of four years makes the Big Calendar. Dan (旦 Morning) Leap day for every first three years Pan (昄 Big) Leap day for every fourth year I have postulated that the year begins on the Dan day (one leap day), a day before New Year that comes in the month of Winter Solstice in the Norther Hemisphere. And the Pan day comes on the day before the first day of the 7th month that has Summer Solstice in the fourth year in the Norther Hemisphere. Years Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Months Dan Dan Dan Dan 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 Pan 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 11 11 11 11 12 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 Days 365 365 365 366 The Magoist Calendar’s intercalation involves one leap day every year and one leap day every four years. That is, each year has one extra day to make it 365 days. Every fourth year has an extra day to make it 366 days. Four years has a total of 1461 days (365×3+366), which makes the mean of 365.25 days. Considering that the month is following the sidereal period rather than the synodic period, it is inferred that the year also follows the sidereal year rather than the solar year. In fact, Magoist Calendar’s one year is very close to today’s 365.25636 days of the sidereal year compared to 365.24217 days of the solar year or the tropical year. Given that, as seen below, the Budoji mentions the tiniest discrepancy of one leap day for 31,788,900 years, the discrepancy between 365.25 and 365.25636 (0.00636 day) can be explained that the year was actually 365.25 days at the time of Budo circa 2333 BCE, 4440 years ago. In other words, there is a discrepancy of 0.12375936 seconds between 2017 CE and 2333 BCE. Regarding Lawful Numbers 2, 5, 8, it is involved as follows: 365 days (3+6+5=14, 1+4=5) Lawful Numbers 2, 5, 8 refers the unit of 365 days (364 days with one intercalary day). Further dynamics are unknown. The sidereal year refers to the time taken by the Earth to orbit the sun once with respect to the distant stars. In contrast, the solar or tropical year means the time taken by the Earth to orbit the sun once with respect to the sun. The sidereal year, 365.25636 days, is about 20 minutes and 24 seconds longer than the mean tropical year (365.24217 days) and about 19 minutes and 57 seconds longer than the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days. The difference occurs primarily because the solar system spins on its own axis and around the Milky Way galactic center making the solar year’s observed position relative. Time is no independent concept apart from space and the agent. The very concept of time is preceded by the agent bound in a space. It is always contextualized. In Magoism, both calendar and time are born out of the cosmogonic universe, the universe that is in self-creation. Like calendar, time is to be discovered or measured. It is a numinous concept. The very concept of time testifies to the reality of the Creatrix. Time proves the orderly movement of the universe into which we are born. Calendar patterns time, whereas time undergirds calendar. How can we measure time? We are given the time of the Earth that comes from its rotation, revolution, and precession in sync with the moon and the sun (and its planets). One type of time is the solar time. The solar time is a calculation of time based on the position of the sun. Traditionally, the solar time is measured by the sundial. The solar time is, however, specific to the Earth only. It is valid only for the-same-observed-location. It is not made to be used for the time of another celestial body. For example, Mars’ solar time has to be measured independently based on its own rotation and revolution rates. The solar time is an isolated time. It is static and exclusive, not made for the time of other celestial bodies. By nature, it is unfit for connection and communication across celestial bodies. The second type is the sidereal time. The sidereal time is a time scale based on the rate of Earth’s rotations measured relative to the distant stars.[29] Because the observed position is in the far distant stars beyond the solar system, the sidereal time may as well be called an extrasolar stellar time. We can think of the observer’s position of an imaginary cosmic bird far out there, infinitely far beyond not only the solar system and …
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 5) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) Free PDF available at Mago Bookstore. THE 28-13-7 INTERPLAY How does the number, 28 (days), for the lunar cycle come about? Why is it 28 days and not 29 or 30, the latter implicated in the traditional lunar calendar of East Asia? It appears that 28 days is a value closer to the moon’s sidereal period (about 27.3 days) than the synodic period (about 29.5 days). Or is it that 28 days points to the median between the synodic lunar cycle and the sidereal lunar cycle? To answer these questions, it is important to note that a value in the Mago Time captures an inter-cosmic biological cusp/juncture derived from the matrix of sonic numerology. Distinguished from the patriarchal measure of time fixated into a solipsistic space, it makes visible the interconnectedness of all bodies. It never stands as an isolated single occasion. The 28 day, 13 month calendar has to do with how we perceive the moon. There are two ways of understanding the lunar cycle; the sidereal period and the synodic period (see Figure 2). The synodic period refers to the time, about 29.5 days, that we on earth see the moon complete one round of revolution, e.g. from the full moon to the full moon. In contrast, the sidereal period refers to the actual time, about 27.3 days, that the moon takes to complete one round of revolution. While the synodic time is measured relative to the Earth (the observer’s position is on earth), the sidereal time is measured relative to the distant “fixed” stars (the observer’s position is far out at the distant stars). Since the distant stars are considered at rest, the sidereal period is taken as a universal value, not affected by the location of the viewer, we on earth. There is, apparently, a discrepancy between the lunar cycle that we on earth see the moon return to the same phase and the lunar cycle that the moon actually completes a revolution. The former is based on our observation of the moon’s phases, whereas the latter is based on the moon’s actual orbital motions. The two differs basically because all celestial bodies, the moon, earth, and sun, in the solar system are in motion. It is not just the moon that we watch revolving but Earth also revolves around the sun. We are watching the movement of the moon on a moving vehicle, earth, so to speak. Therefore, the moon has to travel about 2 more days in order for us on earth to see it in the same phase (see the green portion in Figure 2 part). At the position A of the moon in Figure 2, the moon is in line with the sun and the distant stars, which is a new moon. In the position of B (the new moon), the moon is in line with the sun but not with the distant stars. The right hand line of the green portion in line with the distant stars is where the moon started as a new moon. The moon has traveled about 2 more days to be in line with the sun. That is why the synodic period is about 2 days longer than the sidereal period. When it comes to “the lunar calendar”, moderns tend to think of it as the waxing and waning phases of the moon (29.5 days, the synodic period). The problem lies in that, following the synodic period, people see nothing beyond the moon’s phases. They overlook the fact that the moon rotates and revolves on its own axis and around the earth approximately 13 degrees every day. The synodic lunisolar calendar is a navel-gazing vision. Attending to the moon’s phases may seem benign. However, that is a planned pitfall; the synodic lunisolar calendar with 12 months in a year is here to supersede the 28 day, 13 month gynocentric calendar. Its irregularity with the number of days in a month (29 or 30 days with about 11 extra days for intercalation) is an inherently critical flaw. Its inaccuracy when incorporated within the solar annual calendar (approximately 365.25 days) stands out. Seen below in the table, the synodic lunar track results in as many leap days as a total of 44 days for 4 years, whereas the sidereal lunar track has 2 days for 4 years. The synodic lunisolar calendar undercuts the moon’s given capacity – guiding earthly beings into the intergalactic voyage of WE/HERE/NOW. In it, both the moon and women are, glorified and objectified by the viewer, cast under the male voyeuristic eye. On the contrary, the sidereal lunisolar calendar, based on the cyclic synchrony between the moon and women, offers the lens to the interconnectedness of all bodies in the universe. Synodic Lunar Track (Patriarchal) Sidereal Lunar Track (Magoist) Focus Moon’s phases Moon’s motions Days of month 29 or 30 (irregular) 28 (regular) No. of months in a year 12 13 Women’s menstrual cycle Assumed sync Synced Luni-centric Astolonomy Unknown 28 Constellations Intercalations 11 days annually, a total of 44 days for 4 years 1 day annually & 1 day every 4 years, a total of 2 days for 4 years Sources prove that the sidereal lunation is, albeit esoterically, known across cultures to this day. Through the comparative study of ancient cultures of Babylon, Arabia, India and China, W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) observes the substantive difference in dynamic between the two lunation tracks, the synodic and the sidereal. He notes that the moon’s orbital motion, apart from the sun’s, charts out the celestial sphere as the 28 Mansions. I have learned that the 28 Mansions or 28 Constellations of the Moon is a popular form of the 28 day and 13 month Magoist calendar, widely circulated among East Asians especially Koreans from the ancient time. Yeats’ following insights corroborate the Budoji’s explication of the Magoist Calendar in general and the faulty nature of the patriarchal (ancient Chinese) calendar in …

(Mago Pilgrimage 3) Seonam-sa (Seonam Temple), Suncheon, South Jeolla Korea by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Seonsam-sa, located in Suncheon City, South Jeolla Province, is one of many ancient Buddhist temples in Korea. It is among the seven Korean Buddhist temples designated as UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites this year. I visited Seonam-sa during the Mago Pilgrimage to Korea in 2014. The name, Seonsam-sa (仙巖寺 Seonam Temple), drew my attention immediately for the first two characters “seon (read sun)” and “am (read ahm)” of its title convey Magoism. It remains esoteric that Seon-am (仙巖 Precipice of Seon) is an alternative of Mago-am (Precipice of Mago) also known as Nogo-am (Precipice of Nogo). “Nogo” (老姑 Primordial Goddess) is a popular epithet, which is often interchangeably used with “Mago” in place-names and folktales. That said, the character “seon or xian (仙)” refers to Magoists rather than Daoist Immortals, a topic that requires another space to explicate. Fork traditions have preserved its Magoist meaning (Mago or Magoist) in place-names and stories. One prominent exmaple is “Mago Seonnyeo” to convey a Maogist Female Seon. Below I use it as Seon without transliteration. It is rarely recognized by the public that Seonam-sa is imbued with Magoist mytho-historical-cultural memories. This is not to say that Korean Buddhist temples are as a whole independent of Magoism. I have discussed, among others, that the main hall (Daeung-jeon) of many Korean Buddhist temples is dedicated to Goma, the Magoist shaman queen founder of Danguk (3898-2333 BCE), also known as Daeung (Great Hero), as follows: Korean Buddhism is characterized by its idiosyncratic feature of Daeung-jeon (Hall of the Great Hero), its main building, in most Buddhist temples. That Goma is enshrined in Daeung-jeon accounts for the Magoist root of Korean Buddhism.[1] Seonsam-sa has some intriguing unorthodox Buddhist characters. While its foundation is debated to be in the mid 6th century by Ado Hwasang in 592 or the second half of the 9th century by Monk Doseon (827-898), we have stories about Monk Doseon , the alleged founder. Monk Doseon, according to the story, had a revelation from the Heavenly Ruler of the Holy Mother (聖母天王) of Mt. Jiri who told him “If you establish three Amsas (Precipice Temples), Three Hans will unite and there will be no wars.” Doseon founded the three precipice temples known as Seonam (Seon Precipice), Unam (Cloud Precipice), and Yongam (Drago Precipice).[2] Three Hans (Samhan) refers to the descendants of Old Joseon (ca. 2333-232 BCE), the Magoist people of ancient Korean states including Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla, Gaya and their remnants who sought to restore the bygone rule of Magoist confederacies.[3] In short, the foundation story of Seonamsa reflects the mytho-history of Magoism. Also intriguing is the fact that Seonam-sa has Seungseon-gyo (Bridge of the Ascended Seon) and Gangseon-ru (Pavilion of the Descended Seon), which are evocative of such Magoist place-names as Mangsoen-gyo (Bridge of Anticipated Seon) and Biseon-dae (Point of Ascending Seon), to name a few. In addition, Seonam-sa is, among numerous halls and shrines, noted for Sansin-gak (Mountain Deity Pavilion) and Samseong-gak (Three Sages Pavilion), the indigenous faith practices that are incorporated in a Buddhist temple. We were enrolled in Seonam-sa’s Temple Stay. Later I detected that the monk who guided us was unenthused about our interests in indigenous elements of Seonam-sa. Out of honesty, he mentioned that Seonam-sa needed to purge itself of indigenous shrines. It was sad to hear that but I could see where he was coming from. It appeared that monks were not all in agreement with him, however. Our visit to Seonsam-sa seemed to end with a somewhat uneasy stroll with the monk. Lo and behold! As we were about to leave the temple, we ran into a female Buddhist novice who took interest in our queries. Together with her, we hurriedly payed visit to Sansin-gak and a couple of indigenous shines located in the backside of the main sectors. While on a brief leisurely stroll with our new guide, she finally led us to an unlikely place, the unseen heart of Seanam-sa by the public. She showed us the place wherein monks gather to begin Dong-angeo (Winter Retreat), an annual three-month-long winter medication practice. Inside this ordinary-looking Korean traditional house was a traditional style kitchen stove. Above the big iron cast cooking pot was hung a tablet that reads “Nammu Jowangsinwi,” which means “Take refuge in Jowang Deity who is present here.” Faith in Jowang Deity was still alive among Buddhist monks!!! Jowang-sin or Jowang Halmi, the Kitchen Goddess or the Hearth Goddess, is one of the many indigenous Goddesses of Korea. It is known today that she was enshrined in the kitchen and widely venerated by women in the past. Today, She is still worshipped in Muism (Korean Shamanism) as the deity of fire, children, and wealth of the household. (Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang. Notes [1] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea, and Her Mythology” in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books), 293. [2] Sanghyeon Kim, “Suncheon Seonam-sa,” in Hanguk Daebaekgwa Sajeon (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture). http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Contents/Item/E0028783/. August 12, 2018. [3] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Mago, the Creatrix from East Asia, and the Mytho-History of Magoism” in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books), 29-34.
(Essay 2 Part 1) Why Do I Love Korean Historical Dramas? by Anna Tzanova

Part 1 Fans, journalists, critics, and academia in multiple fields have studied this world phenomenon; have written blogs, articles, books; and presented in conferences, dissecting, and making predictions. Still, the magic and mystery of its success persists to be as thrilling as ever. This is the way I see it: DELIGHTING THE SENSES
(K-Drama Review 1) Liminal Space/Time into WE: What Hotel del Luna Displays by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: Hotel del Luna is a 16-episode Korean television drama aired in 2919. Caution is required for the spoiler. This essay is prompted by this drama, which was discussed in a new class, Experience Korean Culture through Film (EKCF) offered by Mago Academy. I am ever grateful for this opportunity to assess matriversal (read Magoist) soteriology, eschatology, and cosmology implicated in this drama. This drama takes viewers to a liminal time/space. At the liminal timespace, we see how one meets the other. Almost all objects of the drama remind viewers of their liminal property. The female main character, neither living nor dead, stands between the living and the dead. The ghost-serving moon lodge she operates is visible to both ghosts and people. So is the tree of the moon spirit, a symbol for the tree of life or the world tree, which summons the moon lodge to take place. And so are all beings with physical forms. The liminal timespace is where we find ourselves in the Reality of WE/HERE/NOW.] Copyright origin unknown. Part I: Introduction with Synopsis Jang Manwol, the female protagonist, is fixated to the tree of the moon spirit (wolryeongsu 월령수) and entrusted as the representative of the moon lodge, which serves ghosts charged with unrelenting resentments, by the Mago Divine. Mago Halmi (Great Mother, Creatrix), by providing new opportunities, awaits Manwol until she takes actions to relieve her unyielding grudge, caused by the complex socio-political misfortunes in the 7th century. Manwol is, currently neither living nor dead, expected to die and take a ride to the realm of after-life (returning to the origin) just like other ghosts in her lodge. Together with her ghost employees, she operates a large luxurious hotel, Hotel del Luna, the latest name of the moon lodge. Standing in the liminal time/space, the hotel is equipped with an elegantly decorated spacious lobby, a sky-viewing terrace, a horizon-surrounded beach, and an amusement park as well as a multiple number of rooms, each of which is catered to serve the special needs of a ghost guest. At the heart of the lodge is the tree of the moon spirit. The hoteliers welcome ghosts, diagnose the story of han (unresolved resentments) that they carry in themselves and its remedy, and execute plots to resolve resentments in a peaceful manner, to be beneficial to ALL. Upon being healed and rejuvenated with a new perspective on their past lives and the Reality of Intercosmic Life, the ghosts leave the lodge to take the ride to the realm of after-life (jeoseung 저승). The dead are supposed to take this ride to the Origin. Ghosts with unrelenting resentments escapes this route and lingers in the in-between reality of the living and the dead. Until accepting the help of the male protagonist, Gu Chanseong, sent by the Mago Divine, Manwol stubbornly continues to roam around her inbetween space/time. Insofar as she holds onto her own oath to avenge, the tree of the moon spirit remains dormant, seemingly dead. The tree, a visual locus reflecting the inner landscape of Manwol (her predecessors and successors alike), connects ghosts and people and reveals the reality of Life to them. The young man, Chanseong, misses no opportunity to choose the good and to right the wrong in ghosts and people, which is the key to straightening up the entangled karmic consequences. He prompts Manwol to heal herself: She realizes the truth about her betrayer (she was consumed by her anger against him so much so that she could not know the truth; he did not betray her but saved her) and let go of her over-1,300 year-long desire to destroy him. Affected by the grudge-releasing actions of Chanseong, she gradually chooses the path to reconcile with her past, as the Mago Divine wishes for her. The tree of the moon spirit, showing a sign of life again by putting out leaves and flowers, harbingers the end of the moon lodge. Manwol and her ghost employees as well as Chanseong reach the timespace of saying good-bye to move on to the next stage of Life’s cycle. Mawol becomes the last ghost who get helped in her lodge. The Mago Divine is seeking a new owner for the lodge so that ghosts with resentments can continue to be served. The drama is potentially transforming the human psyche from within. Tantalizing, heart-breaking, and frightening stories of the dead and the living stretch the horizon to the whole — the realm of physical life (iseung 이승), the realm of afterlife (jeoseung 저승), and the in-between realm of ghosts. In the sense that its narrative structure is built on the Korean folk belief of Mago Halmi (Great Mother, Crone, and Creatrix), and Magoism, the Way of the Creatrix, I find this drama a composite text of Magoist thealogy (a systematic understanding of Mago, the Creatrix) at the core. What the hoteliers are doing is in fact the role of Mudangs (Korean Shamans). Although Mudangs and Muism (Korean Shamanism) are strikingly absent, the drama resonates with the Muist worldview. The core message is to release unrelenting resentments of the dead on the part of the living. Intriguingly, this drama does not speak directly to humans, “Humans, do not create cheok (hatred or suffering in other beings).” Perhaps, such is too clear a message to articulate. At any rate, we are supposed to gain the lesson by listening to the stories of ghosts. What we see is that troubled ghosts with resentment are helped and guided to the journey of afterlife. The dead are expected to take the ride to the realm of after-life immediately. Ghosts are those who would not follow the path of the dead. Viewers are told why some people become haunting ghosts upon death, why ghosts seek to interfere with humans, and why ghosts are tempted to take revenge upon humans. We may say that ghosts are the confused or disrupted souls. Ghosts face extermination by the Mago Divine if they harm humans or assist an evil ghost. Consequently, evil ghosts are precluded from the cycle of rebirth. That is …

Category: Glenys Livingstone

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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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