February 17, 2016December 16, 2019 RTM Editor3 Comments

(Essay) The Wheel of the Year in Stone by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology My ancestors built great circles of stones that represented their perception of real time and space Read More …

February 3, 2016January 21, 2021 RTM Editor2 Comments

(Video) Lammas Goddess Slideshow by Glenys Livingstone

The Season of Lammas is the welcoming of the new Dark, post-Summer Solstice. Lammas, and all of the dark part of the cycle, is particularly associated with the Crone/Old One aspect Read More …

January 13, 2016November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay) The Living Earth: What She Reveals by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This is an edited version of a radio program by the author in 1994, on 2BLU 89.1 FM, Blue Mountains, Australia, in the context of a series called “Remembering the Read More …

December 23, 2015November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay) Coming Home to Our Senses: Placing Ourselves with Story By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 8 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. In the Old Western Way, The receipt of story by eyes Read More …

November 18, 2015November 15, 2019 RTM Editor1 Comment

(Essay) Mary as Christian Goddess by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This is an edited version of a radio program by the author in 1994, on 2BLU 89.1 FM, Blue Mountains, Australia, in the context of a series called “Remembering the Read More …

October 30, 2015November 15, 2019 RTM EditorsLeave a comment

(Poem) Blessing of the Ancient One by Glenys Livingstone

Taking the pose of Bird-Headed Snake Goddess I invoke Her, Ancient One. She has set Her seal upon me. I feel Her passion and Her anger within me. She Read More …

October 14, 2015March 31, 2022 RTM Editor1 Comment

(Essay) A Cosmic Metaphor for Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This is an edited excerpt from the author’s doctoral research, “The Female Metaphor – Virgin, Mother, Crone – of the Dynamic Cosmological Unfolding: Her Embodiment in Seasonal Ritual as Catalyst Read More …

September 16, 2015November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay) Spring Equinox Thoughts by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Spring Equinox (or Eostar as it is often named) may be storied as the Seasonal Moment of Heraic Return. I have summarised the Moment as ‘stepping into the joy and Read More …

August 19, 2015November 15, 2019 RTM EditorsLeave a comment

(Poem) Beginning Again by Glenys Livingstone

The Mother within reweaves the Fabric – the torn Fabric torn in the weak spots. She sets to work with all Her love and consciousness picking up Read More …

July 15, 2015November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay) Women and Religion – What’s Happening by Glenys Livingstone (1980)

This is the third in a three part series of old articles and papers by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. that were written in the 1980’s and 1990’s, two of which were Read More …

June 17, 2015November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay) Winter Solstice – Celebrating Birthing New Being by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Winter Solstice is the time in our annual orbit around Sun when the dark part of the day is longest. Traditionally it has been celebrated by our Gaian ancestors in Read More …

May 13, 2015July 4, 2023 RTM Editor1 Comment

(Essay) Exodus 1980 Revisited by Glenys Livingstone (1994)

This is the second in a three part series of old articles and papers by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. that were written in the 1980’s and 1990’s, two of which were Read More …

April 20, 2015November 15, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 5) Response by Dr. Glenys Livingstone to Magos, Muses, and Matrikas: The Magoist Cosmogony and Gynocentric Unity by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s note: This paper is published in the journal, the Gukhak yeonguronchong 국학연구론총 (Issue 14, December 2014). Here it will appear in five sequels including the response by Dr. Glenys Livingstone. Numbers Read More …

(Essay 3) Goddesses in Hinduism: “All the Mothers are One” by Mary Ann Beavis, Ph.D.

[Editor’s Note: This essay is from the same title, “Goddesses in Hinduism: “All the Mothers are One”‘ by Mary Ann Beavis with Scott Daniel Dunbar included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Mago Books, 2018).] Independent Goddesses Hinduism has many “independent Goddesses”, that is, Goddesses who aren’t associated with any male deity, or whose divine husbands are secondary at best. Two Goddesses who initially functioned independently, but who were eventually identified as aspects of Parvati (and thus coupled with Shiva) are Durga and Kali, both fierce and aggressive deities, uncoupled from male gods. Durga is a very popular warrior Goddess whose primary role is to combat demons who threaten the stability of the universe.[1] She is not mentioned in the Vedas and was probably inherited from the tribal and peasant peoples of India. She first appears in the 4th century C.E. in images of the Goddess slaying a buffalo demon.[2] There are several myths about her origin: one that she arose from the magical, creative power of Vishnu; another that the Goddess Parvati took on the name of Durga after slaying a demon by that name. The most common account of her origin is that a demon called Mahisha performed such extreme austerities (mastery of meditation and self-denial) that he became invincible to anyone except a woman. The gods assembled and were furious at the demon’s power and arrogance, so they pooled their fiery energies to create a beautiful woman, formed from the parts of the male deities’ bodies and endowed by them with their weapons. In all versions of the myth, the newly created Goddess, Durga, easily defeats the demon. In many stories, the man or demon she is supposed to defeat falls in love with her and doesn’t want to fight her, so she has to claim that only the warrior who can defeat her in battle can become her husband; all the while, she has no intention of marrying the demon warrior.[3] In her guise as an independent warrior Goddess, Durga has no male counterpart or protector. Kinsley notes: In many respects, Durgā violates the model of the Hindu woman. She is not submissive, she is not subordinated to a male deity, she does not fulfill household duties, and she excels at what is traditionally a male function, fighting in battle. As an independent warrior who can hold her own against any male on the battlefield, she reverses the normal role for females and therefore stands outside normal society. Unlike the normal female, Durgā does not lend her power or śakti to a male consort but rather takes power from the male gods in order to perform her own heroic exploits.[4] At the same time, as a demon-slayer she is the guardian of dharma (right conduct, cosmic order) and identified with prakriti (nature, primordial matter, without which existence is not possible). She is often shown riding a lion (or tiger) with eight additional arms (symbolizing her continuous motion as divine Shakti), slaying the buffalo demon (Figure 7). Her most important festival is the nine-day Durga Puja, celebrated in North India in late October, where her role as warrior and regulator of the cosmos are highlighted. Traditionally, her role was also to ensure the success of rulers in battle.[5] Kali is a Goddess who, to the western observer, may superficially resemble Durga in that she is portrayed as multi-armed and warlike, with a male body at her feet, and holding a severed head, depicting her destructive side. However, unlike the beautiful Durga, Kali is usually shown with a scowling, forbidding appearance, dark-skinned and naked with long unkempt hair. Her girdle is made of severed arms, her necklace is made of skulls, she has children’s corpses for earrings, and serpents for bracelets. She has fangs and claw-like hands, and her favourite locations are battlefields and cremation grounds. Although she is usually treated as an independent deity, she is sometimes associated with Shiva, whom she incites to dangerous and destructive behaviour.[6] In one myth of her origin, she springs forth from the forehead of Durga in one of her battles; the only thing that can stop the new Goddess from destroying the universe in her murderous rampage is when Shiva throws himself under her feet, at which point she sticks out her tongue in surprise (she is often illustrated with her tongue sticking out). Another explanation of Kali’s extended tongue is that when the demon “Blood-Seed” (Raktajiba) bled on the battlefield, thus creating other demons, Kali destroyed them with her tongue, and sucked the rest of the blood out of the Blood-Seed, thus killing him.[7] Despite her fearsome appearance and habits, and her relatively late appearance in Hindu mythology (c. 600 CE),[8] she occupies an important place in Hindu piety. In the Tantric tradition, which emphasizes the union of the male and female principles in the universe, she can be described as higher than brahman, ultimate reality. In left-handed Tantra, which seeks the divine through exposure to polluting and forbidden substances (meat, wine, drugs) and activities (illicit sex), Kali’s association with death, destruction and terror makes her the ideal object of meditation for the Tantric adept, allowing him/her to overcome all dualities.[9] Another Hindu tradition where Kali holds a central position is in the Bengali devotional literature of the late medieval period. The poetry of one of her most ardent devotees, Ramprasad Sen (1718-1775) has become famous. In this tradition, the devotee adopts the position of a helpless child approaching a beloved yet forbidding mother: O Mother, who really Knows your magic? You’re a crazy girl Driving us crazy with all your tricks. No one knows anyone else In a world of your illusions. Kālī’s tricks are so deft, We act on what we see. And what suffering— All because of a crazy girl! Who knows What She truly is? Ramprasād says: If She decides To be kind, this misery will pass.[10] In this tradition, the commonplace image of Kali dancing on the dead body of Shiva represents …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Jillian Burnett

Born in New York City, from a family of Indian and Puerto Rican immigrants Doctoral Candidate J.A. Burnett is a published poet and author of The Lost Key. She is the founder of the American Renaissance Research and Field Trip Society. As a cellist, her most recent recording is the Infinite Ellipse. Studying the lore of the Taino, J.A. practices the revival of spirit celebrating her Native American heritage. Gaming since the 80s, she is a Dungeon Master with a thousand hours of Skyrim. Above all, she loves the weave of words.
Summer Solstice Poiesis by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Seasonal Wheel of Stones Both Summer and Winter Solstices may be understood as particular celebrations of the Mother/Creator aspect of the Creative Triplicity of the Cosmos (often named as the Triple Goddess). The Solstices are Gateways between the dark and the light parts of the annual cycle of our orbit around Sun; they are both sacred interchanges, celebrating deep relationship, communion, with the peaking of fullness of either dark or light, and the turning into the other. The story is that the Young One/Virgin aspect of Spring has matured and now at Summer Solstice her face changes into the Mother of Summer. Summer Solstice may be understood as a birthing place, as Winter Solstice may also be, but at this time the transiton is from light back into dark, returning to larger self, from whence we come: it is the full opening, the “Great Om”, the Omega. I represent the Summer Solstice on my altar wheel of stones with the Omega-yonic shape of the horseshoe. I take this inspiration from Barbara Walker’s description of the horseshoe in her Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets, as “Goddess’s symbol of ‘Great Gate’[i]”; and her later connection of it with the Sheil-na-gig yoni display[ii]. Sri Yantra. Ref: A.T. Mann & Jane Lyle, p.75 Summer Solstice is traditonally understood as a celebration of Union between Lover and Beloved, and the deep meaning of that is essentially a Re-Union: of sensed manifest form (the Lover) with All-That-Is (the Beloved). This may be understood as a fullness of expression of this manifest form, the small selves that we are, being all that we may be, and giving of this fullness of being in every moment: that would be a blissful thing, like a Summerland as it was understood to be. The boundaries of the self are broken, they merge: all is given away – all is poured forth, the deep rich dark stream of life flows out. It is a Radiance, the shining forth of the self which is at the same time a give-away, a consuming of the self.In traditional PaGaian Summer ceremony each participant is affirmed as “Gift”[iii]; and that is understood to mean that we are both given and received – all at the same time. The breath is given and life is received. We receive the Gift with each breath in, and we are the Gift with each breath out. As we fulfill our purpose, as we give ourselves over, we dissolve, as the Sun is actually doing in every moment. The “moment of grace”[iv]that is Summer Solstice, marks the stillpoint in the height of Summer, when light reaches its peak, and Earth’s tilt causes the Sun to begin its “decline”: that is, its movement back to the South in the Northern Hemisphere (in June), and back to the North in the Southern Hemisphere (in December). Whereas at Winter Solstice when out of the darkness it is light that is “born”, as it may be expressed: at the peak of Summer, in the warmth of expansion, it is the dark that is “born”. Insofar as Winter Solstice is about birth, then Summer Solstice is about death, the passing into the harvest. It is a celebration of profound mystical significance, which may be confronting in a culture where the dark is not valued for its creative telios; and it is noteworthy that Summer Solstice has not gained any popularity of the kind that Winter Solstice has globally (as ‘Christmas’). The re-union with All-That-Is is not generally considered a jolly affair, though when understood it may actually be blissful. Full Flowers to the Flames Summer is a time when many grains ripen, deciduous trees peak in their greenery, lots of bugs and creatures are bursting with business and creativity: yet in that ripening, is the turning, the fulfilment of creativity, and it is given away. Like the Sun and the wheat and the fruit, we find the purpose of our Creativity in the releasing of it; just as our breath must be released for its purpose of life. The symbolism used to express this in ceremony has been the giving of a full rose/flower to the flames. Summer is like the rose, as it says in this tradition[v]– blossom and thorn … beautiful, fragrant, full – yet it comes with thorns that open the skin. All is given over. All is given over: the feast is for enjoying With the daily giving of ourselves in our everyday acts, we each feed the world with our lives: we do participate in creating the cosmos, as many indigenous traditions still recognise. Just as our everyday lives are built on the fabric of the work/creativity of all who went before us, so the future, as well as the present, is built on ours, no matter how humble we may think our contribution is. We may celebrate the blossoming of our creativity then, which is Creativity, and the bliss of that blossoming, at a time when Earth and Sun are pouring forth their abundance, giving it away. In this Earth-based cosmology, what is given is the self fully realized and celebrated, not a self that is abnegated – just as the fruit gives its full self: as Starhawk says, “Oneness is attained not through losing the self, but through realizing it fully”[vi]. Everyday tasks can be joyful, if valued, and graciously received: I think of Eastern European women singing as they work in the fields – it is a common practice still for many. We are the Bread of Life Summer Solstice celebrates Mother Sun coming to fullness in Her creative engagement with Earth, and we are the Sun. Solstice Moment is a celebration of communion, the feast of life – which is for the enjoying, not for the holding onto. We do desire to be received, to be consumed – it is our joy and our grief. Brian Swimme says: “Every moment of our lives disappears into the ongoing story of the Universe. Our creativity is energising the whole[vii]”. As it may be ceremoniously affirmed: we are (each is) …
(Essay 1) The Magoist Calendar: Mago Time inscribed in Sonic Numerology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This is my latest research that has led me to restore the 13-month, 28-day Mago Calendar, which will be included at the end of its sequels. See Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A), published in 2017.] Magoist Calendar is the inter-cosmic genealogical chart of the Creatrix in which all is found kindred. It unfolds the one standard unified time, which I call the Cosmic Mother’s Time or the Mago Time, wherein all beings in Our Universe from microcosmic quarts to macrocosmic celestial bodies are perceived in continuum. The Cosmic Mother’s Time is an inclusive time in which everyone is re-membered and celebrated. It is revelatory for its numinous nature, which some may call a mystery. The Mago Time is happening
(Meet Mago Contributor) Belinda Subraman

Belinda Subraman has been writing poetry since the 6th grade and publishing since college. Last century, she had a ten year run editing and publishing Gypsy Literary Magazine. Six of those ten years were from Germany where she was a Bohemian outcast among officer wives. She edited books by Vergin’ Press, among them: Henry Miller and My Big Sur Days by Judson Crews. Former RN who has worked in Psych, Hospice and Geriatrics. Currently owner of Mystical House which has an Etsy shop and a counter in a local New Age store. Forthcoming 2018 from Unlikely Books: Left Hand Dharma: New and Selected Poems.
(S/HE V2 N1 Book Review) Susan Ackerman’s Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who Serve them, Reviewed by Mary Ann Beavis

[This is from S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (V2 N1, 2023) Its online edition and paperback are available at Mago Bookstore.] Susan Ackerman is a professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Dartmouth College whose research has focused on women’s religious practices in ancient Israel since the 1980s. This book is a compilation of previously published works relating to women’s religion and goddess worship from as early as 1989, most of them prefaced by short introductions where Ackerman reflects on their significance from her standpoint as a mature scholar. The book is divided into four parts: Goddesses, Priests and Prophets, Queen Mothers, and Women and Worship. The chapters in Part One investigate the identities and practices associated with ancient Israelite and other Ancient Near Eastern goddesses beginning with a pioneering investigation of the deity referred to as the Queen of Heaven in the biblical Book of Jeremiah (4:16-20; 44:15, 25) (“And the Women Knead Dough”). This goddess, for whom the women of Jerusalem are said to have baked bread cakes, poured out libations, and burned incense, has similarities with “The great East Semitic goddess Ishtar, Ishtar’s West Semitic Counterpart, Astarte, the West Semitic goddesses Anat and Asherah, and even the Canaanite goddess Šapšu” (p. 7). Ackerman concludes that the deity in question particularly shares the characteristics of Astarte and Ishtar, both heavenly Queens—especially Ishtar—whose worship included the offering of bread cakes. Chapter 2, “Asherah, the West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving?”, considers the evidence for the ancient Hebrew/Canaanite mother goddess Asherah as the patron of women’s textile production hinted at by the reference in 2 Kings 23:7 to women weavers who lived in the Jerusalem temple compound during the reign of Josiah (c. 640-609 BCE). In view of the ubiquity of goddesses of spinning and weaving in the ancient Mediterranean world (Inanna, Uttu, Tayet, Athena), Ackerman surmises that these women, who were banished from the temple precincts during the Josianic reform, were producing garments to be draped over the cult images of Asherah housed in the temple. The chapter also contains an interesting consideration of the hypothesis that the eshet h̩ayil (“valiant woman”) of Proverbs 31, who weaves luxury fabrics for her household (vv. 22-23), is a personification of Woman Wisdom, a figure informed by the ancient goddess Asherah. The final chapter in the section, “The Women of the Bible and of Ancient Near Eastern Myth” considers the similarities between the Enuma Elish’s account of the defeat of the mother goddess Tiamat by her son Marduk and the notorious story of the Levite’s concubine (pîlegeš) in Judges 19. Ackerman does not posit a direct relationship between the two narratives, but points out that in both cases, a female figure (Tiamat, the pîlegeš) defies ancient near eastern gender norms and is destroyed and dismembered in horrendous acts of male violence. Part Two of the book beings with “Why Is Miriam Also among the Prophets? (And Is Zipporah among the Priests?)”. In fact, five women mentioned in the Hebrew Bible are called prophets (nĕbî’â)—Miriam, the sister of Moses (Exodus 15:20), Deborah the judge (Judges 4:4), the wife of the prophet Isaiah (Isa 8:3), Hulda, the prophet who verified the “book of the law” conveniently discovered during the Josianic reform (2 Kings 22:14; 2 Chronicles 24:22), and Noadiah, an opponent of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 6:14). These women, Ackerman posits, appear at liminal moments in the history of Israel when “the gender conventions that more usually restrict women from holding religious leadership can be suspended” (p. 100). Similarly, Zipporah, the wife of Moses, performs the priestly act of circumcising her infant son during the liminal site of an unspecified lodging on the family’s return to Egypt. Chapter 5, “The Mother of Esmunazor, Priest of Astarte,” investigates the issue of why priestly roles for women were exceedingly rare in Ugaritic and Hebrew religion, whereas upper-class women of surrounding cultures, like the Phoenician khnt (priestess), queen mother of Esmunazor II of Sidon (5th century BCE) played priestly roles. Ackerman theorizes that women of child-bearing age were excluded from blood sacrificial roles due to the ritual impurity incurred by menstruation and childbirth specific to these cultures. This issue is further investigated in “Priestesses, Purity, and Parturition,” which shows that menstrual impurity was by no means universally regarded as an impediment to female priesthood in the region. Further, Ackerman speculates that pre-pubescent girls, like the frame-drumming ‘ălamôt of Psalm 68:26, were able to access Yahweh’s sanctuary, whereas women of reproductive age were confined to the sanctuary’s periphery (2 Kings 23:7; Ezekiel 8:14; Exodus 38:8). Part Three focuses on another class of women past childbearing age—queen mothers, who, like the mother of Esmunazor, served as priestesses. In “The Queen Mother and the Cult in Ancient Israel,” Ackerman argues that the king’s mother (gĕbirâ) served not only as a trusted advisor to her son, but also as priestess of Asherah, Yahweh’s divine consort (1 Kings 15:2, 9-13; 2 Chronicles 11:20-22; 15:16). As royal representative of the goddess, the queen mother would have been able “to function as the second-most powerful figure in the royal court, superseded only by her son” (p. 169). The next chapter, “The Queen Mother and the Cult in the Ancient Near East,” situates the sacerdotal role of queen mothers in other West Semitic cultures; in a final section, Ackerman notes the attribution of the queen mother role to Mary in the New Testament infancy narratives and in the Protevangelium of James, where the child Mary is dedicated to the temple, and she and other virgins spin the wool for the temple curtain, until she reaches puberty. The two chapters in Part Four are devoted to considerations of Israelite women’s worship in the domestic sphere, encompassing the house of the God, the temple, the royal palace, and the family residence. In “At Home with the Goddess,” Ackerman concludes that Asherah worship was not confined to the elite, or to women; rather, she sees “a close interrelationship between the Asherah cult …
(Video) Female Futures by Lila Moore

The presentation is based on excerpts from the Cybernetic Institute’s Letter of Letters Manifesto dedicated to the study of technoetic arts, consciousness and the spiritual in art.
(Tribute 3) In Loving Memory of Eve Helene Wilkowitz by Jack Dempsey, Ph.D.

From there, through the next 42 years of travail—Why is this my culture’s “norm”?—there’s not a day or step or book of mine that isn’t hers. I have curled my strength around her sleep. She led me to the earliest art-history I could find, and there were the stunning “unknown” Minoans of ancient Crete: a woman-centered, joyful, dynamically creative and peaceful people without predatory “kings,” and they revel in life at the root of Western civilization for centuries longer than Rome or any period since. Such is the genesis of every work in these pages of Ancientlights.org today: a life’s work to document that we have other teachers, smarter ancestors, better choices—that The Garden is remembering we’re in it. For the record (see for yourself with Links below), this Minoan world—a dynamically creative well-being in Nature’s eternal present, bound together by trade and intermarriage (and protected by strict limits on executive power)—was still going strong when natural disaster and war-loving, self-wrecking clowns (the mainland’s Mycenaeans) combined to take them down. This was the historical emergence of patriarchy, the rule of autocratic men, whose rape for profit and rage for power they sell to us with gods and goods as normal: “Homeric glory.” He cannot control himself, and rather than learning, wallows in degenerate all-controlling fear of anything more powerful. So it is She who must cover herself, numb herself, be invisible, silent, obedient, pure yet alluring, please him in all things and, “ideally,” die. Books, bricks and walls of “his-story” bear down to bury our original Minoan success in nihilism, desperate to convince us that we’re cursed and trapped, while a toxic edifice from blood-exploiting media to crime-fiction and movies gives the lie—as a blossoming young woman who “must” be repeatedly cruelly killed. After an age when our brilliance sang the sanctity of women (hence, of Life), this is daily eucharist, central sacrament in the ritual murder of the best in us. Try counting how many times per day we fakely face the “tragedy” of her annihilation. The last 42 years of this faded Eve’s murder into one among thousands and thousands of Cold Cases round the world that men wish for and pretend to rule. Always a fresh “compelling” scenario round the same murder takes us worse than nowhere. Pornographic culture (turning Life into dead commodity) soaks the nervous system in erotic indulgence, but leaves us not with deeper more miraculous perception: instead, dis-spirited, de-moralized, numb and ever-more hungry for true ecstatic consummation. That is, to live and evolve our souls in this living flesh in a living world and universe. Hollow grifters rob us daily of real eternal life. It seems erotically urgent that we accept this. Publishers and agents “don’t even want to look at it” if you’re going to make people feel something, while farming out millions to any who can “entertain” with the sick aesthetic of an Edgar Allan Poe—who declared “the death of a beautiful woman” as “the most poetical topic in the world.” Love’s deep disturbance is the sham values of patriarchy built on the profits and rewards of psychotic dysfuntion: ignorance, fear and hatred of Earth, of women and peace. Of Life, in a word. If this seems too polemical, look around: Earth dying faster than ever, rights and human institutions crumbling, and the greatest investments by far in soldiers, weapons, and destruction on a planet still with plenty for everyone. The verdict of 2022 is that we’ve learned nothing, and fake necessity prevents it under the rule of men who lack only the courage to feel, question, control themselves, find another smarter way. Yet, there are ways out. Consider the “logic” shared between Eve’s murderer and the global gangsters stumbling toward suicide, anatomized by Susan Griffin’s brilliant Pornography and Silence. For all that we refuse to feel, change and evolve, Life (the Erotic) just keeps coming back to demolish adolescent wishes. The psychotic spiral accelerates, for the rituals of fear increase it: “the mind that believes in delusion must still face reality.” So comes a choice: come to terms with reality, or force the world to resemble the delusion. And where can we look for the quintessential expressions of our choice so far? The daily murder, conquest, exclusionary walls and never-enough-weapons of Zionist apartheid Israel are its failing monuments, maintained by a senile Zero-Sum American Empire, in whose (wishful) world only more death-machines can bring peace, and there can be only one all-controlling power. What can we positively do? Peace is not the absence of war, nor does a practical problem-solving global family happen by default. Those long-gone Minoans actively fostered both with their heterarchia, a nature-based cyclic round of festivals promoting the sharing of power across differences. (The elements of this in Calendar House.) This was so fundamental to their long success that we find it inscribed 1,000 years after them on the wheels of the world’s first computer, the Antikythera Mechanism. The answers are behind and before us. Pornographic patriarchy ends when each of us feeds it no more of our daily life-sustaining labor—and learns to share the world again. *** I cried every day for the first two wretched years of losing Eve (for as Dante said in La Vita Nuova, “how she has been among us, and is not”). It ate me alive that I hadn’t ignored Eve’s wishes and seen her safely home; and that her gentle soft-spoken father let me ride with his shattered family from funeral-home to the grave, while holding me rightly responsible. At last one day I broke open as wide as the morning when we shared that luminous breakfast. This is how much I can love, and now I cannot lose, because this feeling is to win. Another desperate day, Dante’s Comedy cracked open to the very page (Canto V, Inferno) where it seemed Eve was speaking to me still: Love, that in gentle heart so quickly wakes, took him with this fair body, which …
(Art) Egyptian Goddess Bastet by Lilian Broca

Goddess Bastet by Lilian Broca In ancient Egypt, Goddess Bastet was a goddess worshiped as early as the Second Dynasty (2890 BCE). Her name is also translated as B’sst, Baast, Ubaste, and Baset in ancient Greek. She was worshipped in Bubastis in Lower Egypt originally as a lioness goddess, a role shared by other deities such as Sekhmet. Eventually Bastet and Sekhmet were characterized as two aspects of the same goddess, with Sekhmet representing the dangerous side of her personality and Bastet, who was increasingly depicted as a cat, representing her benign side. This painting is my vision of the viewer discovering a cave, peering down and seeing an ancient painted image of the goddess Bastet on the cave floor just as a live cat walks on it and looks up at the viewer. The painting was specifically created for a thematic exhibition of CATS in 1993, 48 x 30” 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 Hieroglyphs – is part of the art work. https://www.magoism.net/2023/04/meet-mago-contributor-lilian-broca/

(Special Post Isis 3) 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 3 Isis, Arab Women Revolution, and Black Goddesses Naa Ayele Kumari Going back to the original topic of the post…. Some quotes ” Women are in half the society… How come there are only 7 in the Assembly… and they are all Islamist! ” I can’t beat up my wife and almost kill her and call it discipline… this is not discipline… this is abuse and insanity” http://youtu.be/y4umifTLSII 12-Year Old Explains Egyptian Revolution in Under 3 Minutes www.youtube.com Max Dashu It is tremendously heartening to see these insights being expressed, and spread. The Salafis have made such inroads, and now the pushback is happening. Harita Meenee Dear Naa Ayele Kumari, thank you actually reading my post and commenting something relevant to it. It’s refreshing when someone does hear what we have to say instead of projecting their own notions. Building a solidarity movement with those who are oppressed but fighting is very important during these critical times! Harita Meenee See also: https://www.facebook.co/intifadat.almar2a?fref=ts The uprising of women in the Arab world انتفاضة المرأة في العالم العربي حرية الفكر ، حرية التعبير ، حرية الاعتقاد ، حرية التنقل ، حرية الجسد ، حرية اللب…See More Glenys Livingstone … as you say Max …” way too much of it going on” – amongst people who should know better (I would have thought): “Dark goddess as terrifying, challenging, white goddess as benign; “black magic” as harmful; I see way, way too much of this going on out there.” And related to that in my mind is all the “love and light” business that is so common: the Ground of Being is Dark … it seems to me that mystics have always understood the quintessential darkness of Love/Deity. Max Dashu Sure. I would just like to add that the critique raised here addressed issues much broader than the substance of the article, which made some good points. But once the choice of graphics flagged the issue of representation, people had much more to say about that old yet still very fresh wound which is constantly reopened by the cultural habit of whitening Egypt, or interpreting Africa through a eurocentric lens. It is not on any one person to carry the weight of that; we all have a responsibility to address the issues, but especially those of us of European heritage need to familiarize ourselves with how this plays out over and over. Just as men have a responsibility to speak up in support of women when patriarchal assumptions are on board. We all can learn something from each other, along all the various axes of domination, and overthrow them in coalition. Naa Ayele Kumari I have often considered where the roots of this psychology comes from. It is dualistic thinking that causes us to compare and contrast, then sum up judgement of good or bad and place a value on each. It extends into competition and justification for war. It also doesn’t escape me that often this came with certain civilizations who systematically destroyed others. It didn’t just happen with blacks in Africa… but blacks in Asia and the Indus Valley as well. With the Aryan invasions of India, came the eventual introduction to lighter divinities and more emphasis on male divinities. Southern Indians, Sri Lankans are very dark… even more so than many African Blacks. The caste systems implemented by the Aryan invaders did the same thing to them casting them as “untouchables”. With that came the marginalization of their black female divinities such as Kali. Kali actually has 10-16 forms… from compassionate mother, the fountain of wisdom, to she of great beauty but she is minimized as just destructive and terrifying… especially as Brhaman, Vishnuu, and Shiva grow in popularity. One of Kali’s statues has her black self standing on top of Shiva because she conquered him. Later there is a discussion in on of the Hindu text explaining Kali (as Parvati) after being subdued by Shiva she becomes lighter. Further they have stories about him rejecting her and calling her blackie which made her do austerities to rid herself of her black skin. Naa Ayele Kumari It should not be overlooked that in the Story of Alice in Wonderland… a story intended to keep Goddess elements for future generations, has the Elder sister ( the Queen of Hearts) portrayed as man, ego, and power driven who cuts off heads and has a fierce dragon…a clear reference to Kali. The White goddess as the younger sister is her opponent… and her mission is to usurp the throne of the Queen of Hearts even though she was the rightful heir as the oldest … or primordial. Stories like these also reinforce the stereotypes and negative iconography. Max Dashu Yes, it is pervasive in many cultures of domination. Demons are portrayed as black not only in Europe, which we know well, but also in China and in a lot of Buddhist iconography. In modern India, the sweet goddesses are shown as pink, the wrathful as black; and Krishna (name means “dark”) is turned powder blue. (Another of his titles, s’yam, also meaning dark, is the word translated as “green” in Green Tara.) The countercurrents (Black Mazu, loving Kali – esp in Bengal and south India, Black Madonna) bubbled up from the common people, who knew and longed for something other than the dominant racialized hierarchy. Naa Ayele Kumari I am just discovering Mazu ( Matzu/LuShui) in China today! Never knew about her. This discussion has led me to look deeper for black goddesses in Asia. Max Dashu Taoist spiritual tradition often refers to Xüan Nü, which can be translated in several ways. You’ll usually see it rendered as “the Mysterious Female,” a phrase that occurs in the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching), and this is a valid translation; but what is less emphasized is that it also means “the Dark Woman.” In […]
(Special Post 8) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?

[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. Special thanks to Trista Hendren, founder and author of The Girl God, who passionately and painstakingly promotes the message of each contributor via Facebook’s memes. Without Trista’s devotion to the advocacy, this collective effort would not have continued. 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.] Marija Krstic-Chin To remember who we really are (nature, cycles, network, creative force, one, infinite…) for the benefit of all of humanity and all living things; and to unite and unify as we broadcast, hand down, protect and defend this truth and each other against the oppressive intentions and actions of patriarchal perpetrators, puppets, and pawns who seek to enslave us by various old and new divide-and-conquer strategies.
(Special Post 2) 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.] Harriet Ann Ellenberger I got involved with women’s liberation in the early 1970s, so involved that it became my life for many years. During those beginnings of what is now called “the second wave of feminism,” everything was new to us and everything was mushed together — the political, the economic, the intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual. I liked that a lot; it felt as if all the parts of myself were coming together. During that time, I learned something crucial the imagery and concepts of patriarchal religion justify and are embedded in the material structures of oppression. I don’t know which came first, institutionalized oppression (of everyone; I’m not speaking here only of women) or the religious expression of that oppression. All I’m certain of is that patriarchal religion permeates, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary, which I use all the time, in conjunction with Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, conjured by Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi.

(Prose) Desire: the Wheel of Her Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the concluding chapter (Chapter 8) of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Place of Being is a passionate place, where desire draws forth what is sought, co-creates what is needed[1]; within a con-text – a story – where love of self, other and all-that-is are indistinguishable … they are nested within each other and so is the passion for being. I begin to understand desire afresh: this renewed understanding has been an emergent property of the religious practice of seasonal celebration: that is, the religious practice of the ceremonial celebration of Her Creativity. It has been said She is “that which is attained at the end of desire[2].” Within the context of ceremonial engagement and inner search for Her, I begin to realize how desire turns the Wheel. As the light part of the cycle waxes from Early Spring, form/life builds in desire. At Beltaine/High Spring, desire runs wild, at Summer Solstice, it peaks into creative fullness, union … and breaks open at that interchange into the dark part of the cycle – the dissolution of Lammas/ Late Summer. She becomes the Dark One, who receives us back – the end of desire. It has been a popular notion in the Christian West, that the beautiful virgin lures men (sic) to their destruction, and as I perceive the Wheel, it is indeed Virgin who moves in Her wild delight towards entropy/dissolution; however in a cosmology that is in relationship with the dark, this is not perceived as a negative thing. Also, in this cosmology, there is the balancing factor of the Crone’s movement towards new life, in the conceiving dark space of Samhain/Deep Autumn – a dynamic and story that has not been a popular notion in recent millennia. Desire seems not so much a grasping, as a receiving, an ability or capacity to open and dissolve. I think of an image of an open bowl as a signifier of the Virgin’s gift. The increasing light is received, and causes the opening, which will become a dispersal of form – entropy, if you like: this is Beltaine/High Spring – the Desire[3]that is celebrated is a movement towards dis-solution … that is its direction. In contrast, and in balance, Samhain/Deep Autumn celebrates re-solution, which is a movement towards form – it is a materializing gathering into form, as the increasing darkness is received. It seems it is darkness that creates form, as it gathers into itself – as many ancient stories say, and it is light that creates dispersal. And yet I see that the opposite is true also. I think of how there is desire for this work that I have done, for whatever one does – it is then already being received. Desire is receiving. What if I wrote this, and it was not received or welcomed in some way. But the desire for it is already there, and perhaps the desire made it manifest. Perhaps the desire draws forth manifestation, even at Winter Solstice, even at Imbolc/Early Spring, as we head towards Beltaine – it is desire that is drawing that forth, drawing that process around. Desire is already receiving; it is open. Its receptivity draws forth the manifestation. And then the manifestation climaxes at Summer and dissolves into the manifesting, which is perhaps where the desire is coming from – the desire is in the darkness, in the dark’s receptivity[4]. It becomes very active at the time of Beltaine, it lures the differentiated beings back into Her. So the lure at Beltaine is the luring of differentiated beings into a Holy Lust, into a froth and dance of life, whereupon they dissolve ecstatically back into Her – She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire.” And in the dissolution, we sink deeper into that, and begin again. All the time, it is Desire that is luring the manifest into the manifesting, and the manifesting into the manifest. Passion is the glue, the underlying dynamic that streams through it all – through the light and the dark, through the creative triplicities of Virgin-Mother-Crone, of Differentiation-Communion-Autopoeisis[5]. Passion/Desire then is worthy of much more contemplation. If desire/allurement is the same cosmic dynamic as gravity, as cosmologist Brian Swimme suggests[6], then desire like gravity is the dynamic that links/holds us to our Place, to “that which is”, as philosopher Linda Holler describes the effect of gravity[7]. Held in relationship by desire/allurement we lose abstraction and artificial boundaries, and “become embodied and grow heavy with the weight of the earth[8].” We then know that “being is being-in relation-to”[9]. Holler says that when we think with the weight of Earth, space becomes “thick” as this “relational presence … turns notes into melodies, words into phrases with meaning, and space into vital forms with color and content, (and) also holds the knower in the world[10].”Thus, I at last become a particular, a subject, a felt being in the world – a Place laden with content, sentient: continuous with other and all-that-is. Notes: [1]“…as surely as the chlorophyll molecule was co-created by Earth and Sun, as Earth reached for nourishment; as surely as the ear was co-created by subject and sound, as the subject reached for an unknown signal.” As I have written in PaGaian Cosmology, p. 248. [2]Doreen Valiente, The Charge of the Goddessas referred to in Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p.102-103. [3]I capitalize here, for it is a holy quality. [4]Perhaps the popular cultural association of the darkness/black lingerie etc. with erotica is an expression/”memory” of this deep truth. [5]These are the three qualities of Cosmogenesis, as referred to in PaGaian Cosmology, Chapter 4, “Cosmogenesis and the Female Metaphor”: https://pagaian.org/book/chapter-4/ [6]Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, p.43. [7]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”, Hypatia, Vol. 5 No. 1, p.2. [8]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”,Hypatia, Vol. …
(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) A Beltaine Ceremony by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Beltaine/High Spring: the traditional dates are Southern Hemisphere – October 31st or 1st November Northern Hemisphere – April 30th (May Eve) or 1st May The actual astronomical date varies, and it is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, thus actually a little later in early November for S.H., and early May for N.H., respectively. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pODpbkzfrIU 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, music, and voice wherever you please. I have made short spaces in the video where it may be paused. The script for this Beltaine ceremony is offered in Chapter 8 of my book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, with all acknowledgements and references there. 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 name the direction, which I only do at the beginning. The images used are a collage of footage and photos from the 2024 Beltaine ceremony at my place in Wakka Wakka country, South East Queensland Australia, and from previous Beltaine ceremonies that I facilitated over the decades in MoonCourt, Goddess ceremonial space, in Gundungurra and Darug country, Blue Mountains Australia. To enhance participation in the ceremony, you may like to have the following: the element of Water flavoured with rose water. the element of Earth in a large dinner plate and card paper large enough for handprints, along with a bowl of water for washing hands after. a small bouquet of scented flowers and/or herbs for the element of Air. a firepot for the element of Fire. This may be a clay pot of sand into which a small amount of methylated spirits will be poured and lit: it produces a soft flame that will not set off fire alarms, though care should still be taken. a larger firepot or two – either near the altar or located where suitable, for either leaping the flames, or simply passing your hand over flames. This firepot may be a larger version of the one for the element of Fire. coloured ribbons, ideally attached to a pole/tree, but it is possible to manage this rite in another creative manner. a pink ring cake, topped with rose water and honey and petals, sliced ready for serving, but whole. sweet pink wine/juice and glasses for serving. Dance Instructions: Celebrant as #1, person next on right as #2. All 1’s face right, all 2’s face left. All 1’s go in & under first, all 2’s go out & over first. The chant for the dance around the tree (a “Novapole” in the Southern Hemipshere, a “Maypole” in the Northern Hemisphere): “We are the Dance of the Earth, Moon and Sun We are the Life that’s in everyone We are the Life that loves to live We are the Love that lives to love.” (Note: This is a slight variation of the chant written and taught to me by thea Gaia. Music credits: A few clips from Coral Sea Dreaming by Tania Rose: https://www.taniarose.net A clip from Benediction Moon by Pia from her album by that name, New World Music, 1998. A clip from “Shedville 28th Nov 05” by Nick Alias, who has generously shared his music, and given permission for me to use it. Image credits: Ishtar (Middle East, 1000 BCE), Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.131. Aphrodite (Europe, 300 BCE), Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.133. Xochiquetzal (Mayan, 8th century CE), Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.135. Inanna/Ishtar (Mesopotamia 400 B.C.E.), Adele Getty, Goddess: Mother of Living Nature, p.39. Birth of the Goddess, Erich Neumann, The Great Mother, plate 155. Milky Way photo: Akira Fujii, David Malin images. Beau Ravn’s “Goddess” and “God” artworks (2000). Sri Yantra (1500 CE.), A.T. Mann and Jane Lyle, Sacred Sexuality, p.75.
(Essay) Ceremony as “Prayer” or Sacred Awareness By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. MoonCourt Ceremonial Space set for Autumn Equinox ceremony, 2013 Ritual/ceremony is often described as “sacred space.” I understand that to mean “awareness of the space as sacred”: all space is sacred, what shifts is our awareness – awareness of the depth of spacetime, and of the depth of all things and all beings. I understand “sacred awareness” as an awareness of deep relationship and identity with the very cosmic dynamics that create and sustain the Universe; or an awareness of what is involved in the depth of each moment, each thing, each being. Ceremony is a space and time given to expression, contemplation and nurturance of that depth … at least to something of it. Ceremony may be both an expression of deep inner truths – perceived relationship to self, Earth and Cosmos, as well as being a mode of teaching and drawing forth deeper participation. Essentially, ceremony is a way of entering into the depth of the present moment … what is deeply present right here and now, a way of entering deep space and deep time, which is not somewhere else but is right here. Every-thing, and every moment, has Depth – more depth than we usually allow ourselves to contemplate, let alone comprehend. This book, this paper, this ink, the chair, the floor – each has a history and connections that go back, all the way back to Origins. This moment you experience now, in its particular configuration, place, people present, subtle feelings, thoughts, and propensity towards certain directions or outcomes, has a depth – many histories and choices that go back … ultimately all the way back to the beginning. Great Origin is present at every point of space and time – right here. In ceremony we are plugging our awareness into something of that. In this holy context then – in this mindframe of knowing connection, everything one does is a participation in the creation of the Cosmos: for the tribal indigenous woman, perhaps the weaving of a basket; for another, perhaps preparing a meal; for you, perhaps getting on the train to go to a workplace. It is possible to regain this sense, to come to feel that the way one breathes makes a difference – that with it, you co-create the present and the future, and you may even be a blessing on the past. In every moment we receive the co-creation, the work, of innumerable beings, of innumerable moments, and innumerable interactions of the elements, in everything we touch … and so are we touched by them. The local is our touchstone to the Cosmos – it is not separate. Ceremony may be a way into this awareness, into strengthening it. Ceremony is actually ‘doing,’ not just theorizing. We can talk about our personal and cultural disconnection endlessly, but we need to actually change our minds. Ceremony can be an enabling practice – a catalyst/practice for personal and cultural change. It is not just talking about eating the pear, it is eating the pear; it is not just talking about sitting on the cushion (meditating), it is sittingon the cushion. It is a cultural practice wherein we tell a story/stories about what we believe to be so most deeply, about who and what we are. Ceremony can be a place for practicing a new language, a new way of speaking, or spelling – a place for practicing “matristic storytelling”[i] if you like: that is, for telling stories of the Mother, of Earth and Cosmos as if She were alive and sentient. We can “play like we know it,” so that we may come to know it.[ii] Ceremony then is a form of social action. I have found it useful to describe ceremony using and extending words used by Ken Wilber to describe a “transpersonal practice,” which is needed for real change: he said it was a practice that discloses “a deeper self (I or Buddha) in a deeper community (We or Sangha) expressing a deeper truth (It or Dharma).”[iii] My extension of that is: ceremony may disclose a deeper beautiful self (the I/Virgin/Urge to Be/Buddha), in a deeper relational community (the We/Mother/Place of Being/Sangha), expressing a deeper transformative truth (the It/Old One/Space to Be/Dharma). This is the “unitive body,” the “microcosmos” that Charlene Spretnak refers to in States of Grace.[iv] Since ceremony is an opportunity to give voice to deeper places in ourselves, forms of communication are used that the dreamer, the emotional, the body, can comprehend, such as music, drama, simulation, dance, chanting, singing.[v] These forms enable the entering of a level of consciousness that is there all the time, but that is not usually expressed or acknowledged. We enter a realm that is ‘out of time,’ which is commonly said to be not the “real” world, but it is more organic/indigenous to all being and at least as real as the tick-tock world. It is a place “between the worlds,” wherein we may put our hands on the very core of our lives, touch whatever it is that we feel our existence is about, and thus touch the possibility of re-creating and renewing ourselves. NOTES: [i] A term used by Gloria Feman Orenstein in The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), 147. [ii] As my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Susan Murphy once described it to me in conversation. [iii] Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything (Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1996), 306-307. [iv] 145. [v] As Starhawk notes, The Spiral Dance, 45. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. The Reflowering of the Goddess. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990. Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. New York: Harper and Row, 1999. Wilber, Ken. A Brief History of Everything. Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1996.
(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: …
(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 …

(Essay 3) The Magoist Calendar: Mago Time inscribed in Sonic Numerology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This is my latest research that has led me to restore the 13-month, 28-day Mago Calendar, which will be included at the end of its sequels. See Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A), published in 2017.] THE SECOND CALENDAR Then, the Earth had increasingly so much work in all regions. Biodiversity went overboard. The terrestrial song became uncontrollable. The initial calendar became defunct. Lifeforms were left uncoordinated. The Earth fell into disorder, as she had no one to tune the song of earthlings in harmony with the cosmic music of creativity. The Earth was in need of sentient beings who could undertake the task. Mago’s descendants were to be born. Humans were entrusted to cultivate the earthly sound property by the Nine Mago Creatrix. The Budoji writes:
(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.
(2014 Mago Pilgrimage Report 1) Sweat Lodge in Gyodong, Ganghwa Islands by Helen Hwang

[Author’s Note: Revised verison of this report is published in Celebrating the Seasons of the Goddess (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2017). 2014 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea (Oct. 7-Oct. 20) was participated by a culturally mixed group of pilgrims from the U.S. Australia, and Korea. Among non-Koreans were Dr. Glenys Livingstone (co-facilitator), Mr. Robert (Taffy) Seaborne, and Ms. Rosemary Mattingly. For details, read 2014 Mago Pilgrimage. View the video on our visit to Ganghwa Islands by Robert (Taffy) Seaborne.] 2014 Mago Pilgrimage granted me ever unfolding revelations. The first of them that I would like to mention concerned the sweat lodge called Hanjeung-mak (汗蒸幕, Chamber of chill and steam).[1] Until we visited the traditional sweat lodge in Gyodong, Ganghwa Island, it did not occur to me that the origin of its modern variations[2] has to do with the rebirthing experience in the Womb of Mago. (Here Mago means the Great Goddess or the Primordial Mother.)

Category: Glenys Livingstone

(Essay) The Wheel of the Year in Stone by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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(Video) Lammas Goddess Slideshow by Glenys Livingstone

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(Essay) The Living Earth: What She Reveals by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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(Essay) Coming Home to Our Senses: Placing Ourselves with Story By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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(Essay) Mary as Christian Goddess by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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(Poem) Blessing of the Ancient One by Glenys Livingstone

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(Essay) A Cosmic Metaphor for Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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(Essay) Spring Equinox Thoughts by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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(Poem) Beginning Again by Glenys Livingstone

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(Essay) Women and Religion – What’s Happening by Glenys Livingstone (1980)

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(Essay) Winter Solstice – Celebrating Birthing New Being by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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(Essay) Exodus 1980 Revisited by Glenys Livingstone (1994)

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(Essay 5) Response by Dr. Glenys Livingstone to Magos, Muses, and Matrikas: The Magoist Cosmogony and Gynocentric Unity by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

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Mago Almanac Year 8 (for 2025)

S/HE: IJGS V3 N2 2024 (B/W Paperback)

S/HE: IJGS V3 N1 2024 (B/W Paperback)

2025 S/HE Conference Program Booklet

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