December 30, 2024December 30, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

What it Takes to Breach by Michaela Harrison

[Author’s Note: Whale Whispering is an ancestral commission, an ode to water, a work of interspecies translation and co-creation between me, humpback whales and other cetaceans and people, a diasporic healing Read More …

December 24, 2024December 23, 2024 ANewvineLeave a comment

(Music) Goddess Christmas Carols for Peace and Liberation by Alison Newvine

Christmas music is nearly inescapable this time of year. Thank Goddess there are alternatives to the oppressive, patriarchal messages voiced in traditional holiday music. In 2015, Spiral Muse recorded a Read More …

December 19, 2024December 2, 2024 RTMeditorsKGLeave a comment

(Essay) Summer Solstice/Litha Within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 9 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. The dates for Summer Solstice/Litha are: Southern Read More …

December 12, 2024November 18, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

In Dark Times We Call Upon the Black Madonna by Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

When I visited the Black Madonna at the Chartres Cathedral in France in August 2022, I was at first confused. Why was this deeply feminine expression of the Divine power Read More …

December 11, 2024December 9, 2024 ANewvineLeave a comment

(Music) With Voices Strong ~ Winter Solstice Playlist by Alison Newvine

Music nestles deeply in many of our hearts. As Winter Solstice approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, I offer you this Utterly Eclectic Constellation of Yuletide Ballads, ReImagined Carols and Unique Read More …

December 7, 2024December 15, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Susun Weed

Susun Weed, green witch and wise woman, is an extraordinary teacher with a joyous spirit, a powerful presence, and an encyclopedic knowledge of herbs and health. She is the voice Read More …

November 8, 2024October 22, 2024 Carolyn BoydLeave a comment

(Fiction) The Keeper of No Time Rides the Northern Lights (and won’t tell me what to do) by Carolyn Lee Boyd

I sprawl on the harvested corn field, the ground underneath my back rocky and unforgiving, waiting for the Northern Lights to rain radiance down onto the Earth. Those iridescent, prismatic Read More …

October 31, 2024October 28, 2024 ANewvineLeave a comment

(Music) We Are the Women Who… by Alison Newvine

“We Are” is a tribute to the healers, midwives and other women who were persecuted and killed during the centuries of European witch hunts. This piece honors the sacred wisdom Read More …

October 29, 2024October 23, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Essay) Goddess Rises as Trauma Resolves by Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

[Editor’s Note: This piece is a response to Helen Hwang’s advocacy of the Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality Movement recently discussed in celebration of the 9th anniversary of She Rises trilogy.] Read More …

October 22, 2024October 16, 2024 ANewvineLeave a comment

(Music) Songs for Samhain by Alison Newvine

The season of Samhain is upon us. This playlist is an offering for this descent into the sacred darkness, and a companion for the journey into the underworld. Invocation of Read More …

October 9, 2024October 10, 2024 ANewvine1 Comment

(Intercosmic Kinship Conversations) Revealing and Reweaving Our Spiralic Herstory with Glenys Livingstone by Alison Newvine

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Glenys Livingstone for the fifth episode of Intercosmic Kinship Conversations. Glenys Livingstone PhD was born and lives in Australia where she Read More …

October 8, 2024October 5, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Essay 3) Reinvigorating Concepts of Attachment Through a Matriversal and Indigenous Lens by Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

[Editor’s Note: This piece was presented during the first and inaugural S/HE Divine Studies Forum held on September 7th, 2024.] Language Reclamation From the moment that I began to write, Read More …

October 3, 2024October 5, 2024 Mago Work1 Comment

(Essay 2) Reinvigorating Concepts of Attachment Through a Matriversal and Indigenous Lens by Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

[Editor’s Note: This piece was presented during the first and inaugural S/HE Divine Studies Forum held on September 7th, 2024.] Turning Concepts of Attachment on Their Head I have been Read More …

(Essay 2) “Click Here” to Download Spirituality by Francesca Tronetti

While taking my deep dive into the world of subscription boxes in the fall of 2021, I became both excited and later depressed. I loved the idea of getting oodles of pagan goodies and crystals each month, but when boxes weren’t coming as fast as I wanted, I began to get bored and anxious. When they did arrive, some were loaded with witch kitsch, a half dozen loose pentacle charms with one tied to a small bottle of rosemary. Pentacles on a patch and buttons with a few black candles, and that was a box. Or they had teas, fancy hot chocolate made with mushrooms, chia additives, or face oils. Items that didn’t seem spiritually important to me, but the Instagram models of Facebook gushed over the offerings. But, the ads had me hooked. I saw the websites’ pictures that depicted boxes filled with fantastic spiritual items. Books, statues, bells, bowls, large crystal spheres, it all looked so wonderful. It was almost a complete altar, delivered to your door. Only, with each disappointment, they moved me away from spirituality and towards just getting things. It’s actually a good business model, and being overwhelmed by Covid, politics, the environment, or a garden that was not growing, the businesses fed on our collective desperation. Collectively we were drained mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and the self-care, self-help, and spiritual boxes were supposed to be the answer. When they didn’t deliver, you could visit online stores, usually with a small coupon, where you could buy what you’d seen in previous boxes or even get a past box. So our on-demand lifestyles could still be on-demand, even when it came to our spirituality. The frustration grew, and I started looking up metaphysical shops near me to shop in person and get the crystals and incense I was wanted. This thankfully helped me pull out of the trap of the boxes. When stores were open, I was able to talk to actual practitioners who had spent years studying and mastering the art, which the boxes promised to give me in a month. One fantastic shopkeeper and I talked about the popularity of crystal mapping, something which I’d seen had been very popular as of late. Talking to an actual person who was living what I was and sharing the same feelings of being overwhelmed made me realize I was acting like those plastic people I’d shaken my head at before. I wanted that spiritual fulfillment that the boxes were supposed to give me but didn’t. Because getting these boxes is like buying a bunch of spiritual self-help and spell-work books at the shop and thinking that will solve your problems. Many of the boxes were geared towards lazy spirituality. Lazy spirituality is a term I created to describe how this kind of capitalist spirituality works. Capitalist spirituality sees spiritual emptiness as something that can be filled using crystals, dreamcatchers, incense, wall hangings, singing bowls, and herbal teas. Buzzwords like meditation and mindfulness, centering yourself, chakras, and engrams are all over the internet, meant to draw you to stores, books, or classes. Capitalist spirituality tells you that you cannot heal your spiritual emptiness yourself, which can be true. However, it also says that you must buy specific items to find your spirituality and creates a competition of who’s got the best stuff between people who will probably never meet in person. You want a singing bowl with beautiful decorations, large selenite towers, fancy Himalayan salt lamps, and giant amethyst geodes for your end tables. It is a new kind of “Keeping up with the Jones” where rather than focusing on cars or gadgets to show off your material wealth, you are supposed to show off your spiritual wealth. You can afford to take a weekend meditation retreat at a spa in the Berkshires or a beach resort. Pictures of your house show every room with lush meditation pillows in bright colors as plants cascade down the walls and from the ceiling. How does all this work? How do these things make you spiritual? Well, this is where lazy spirituality comes in. Chakra Smudge, photo by Francesca Tronetti Lazy spirituality is built on the capitalist spirituality model where you are handed “spiritual” items and told to use them to heal yourself. A collection of seven tumbled square stones is to be arranged to balance your chakras. For $5, you can buy an “Energy Cleansing Smudge Kit ~ With Amethyst~” or Palo Santo sticks painted to match the chakras. Lazy spirituality is the quick fix for your spiritual emptiness because the idea is that having these items will instantly fix your spiritual problems. The smudging kit contains palo santo, sage, and a selenite wand. Burn the sage to cleanse the space, burn the palo santo to refresh it, and use the selenite to keep negative energies from the area and increase your clarity and inner peace. It is a fix it and forget it kit that is supposed to change the feeling of your room or home instantly. The lazy spirituality method is very much about the objects you can display, such as Fung Shui coins, amulets to protect you against the evil eye, and spiral goddess images on stained glass. These items are supposed to instantly bring you peace and balance while making the walls or windows of your home look pretty. And, of course, you need to have at least one display of chakras. Chakras seem to have been the biggest seller on the spirituality market for the past few years, even beating out smudging. The traditional Native American practice of cleansing a home has become so popular that Southwestern tribes now have difficulty obtaining the white sage used in their sacred rituals. Capitalist spirituality is physically robbing Native Americans by denying them their ritual tools. While at the same time leaving those, it was old to hollow and still searching for fulfillment. It is ironic that while we are more aware than ever of cultural …
(Essay) The Invisible Bleeding Goddess by Trista Hendren‏

“We need a god who bleeds nowwhose wounds are not the end of anything”- Ntozake Shange I have been contemplating these lines for several days now. What has come back to me is the empty promise of “leaving it at the foot of the cross“ – which has usually meant, letting the things that matter most to women die there, too. I have internalized these lines to mean that I am no longer willing to leave anything at the foot of male privilege. My work these last years has centered upon empowering women through the Divine Feminine. My vision has shifted significantly since I started. I am caught in an interesting vortex of new age mysticism and social justice, with Christianity and Islam peppered in between due to my religious affiliations. What I am feeling more and more, is that there is no right answer. Feminists spend entirely too much time fighting over insignificant matters and not enough time digging down to the root cause of our oppression, which to me lies in male-centric spirituality. My fear is we are often missing what the Goddess is trying to tell us. And if there is one singular message of the goddess, in my mind, it is that every woman matters. There are a lot of people running around with good intentions that are entirely missing the bigger picture. Case in point: the photos of Malala Yousafzai floating around the internet. As a Muslim woman, I am tired of seeing pictures of Malala exploited to legitimize American violence abroad. Like everyone else I deeply admire Malala. I love her – as my beloved sister – and I am rooting for her full recovery. However, we have made one girl more important than the hundreds more who are killed by our own hand. And in the process, we have trampled on the hearts of women and girls the world over. What I was intending to write today was already written (much better than I could have done it) by Kim Tran earlier this week. (http://thefeministwire.com/2012/10/what-mourning-malala-yousafzai-might-mean-come-november-6th/) “I find the violence perpetrated against Malala Yousafzai reprehensible in every way. As a result, I want to consider how her young body became both the site where the Taliban chose to enact physical warfare and also ideological justification for the very thing it rejects: an American presence in Pakistan. Put simply, how is the attack against Malala Yousafzai being used to legitimize American imperialism? In an election year, mourning Malala Yousafzai and celebrating her bravery should cause us as American voters to examine how women are appropriated time and time again in war rhetoric.” ~ Kim Tran But the heart of what I want to address is still very much avoided among us polite women folk. The line I always feel trapped between is those goddess-inspired folks who want everything to be nice and rosy, and those who are angry – possibly perpetually so, about the injustices towards woman throughout time. It is exhausting to be a feminist. There is always something to fight. And we cannot fight everything or fight all the time. I go back and forth between the peace I have found in the Divine Feminine and the anger I feel as a woman, sometimes even towards other (probably well-meaning) feminists. But here is what I need to say: If you are silent about drone attacks, don’t cry publicly on your Facebook page about Malala. If you are silent about the epidemics of rape, domestic violence and unequal pay in our country, don’t talk about Malala or other girls in Muslim countries as if they were in need of our salvation. This is as condescending as believing only a Male God could possibly save us. The divine feminine is unconventional. She does not come to us as a Savior; rather she is the force within us who empowers us to save ourselves. She loves indiscriminately; you do not have to be good to merit her attention. As Mary Oliver reminds us, You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. When we recognize, both individually and collectively, our value as women, the world will change. As we shift our worship to a female deity, the pulse of the world will slow to follow us. When we return to the Divine Feminine, beating a woman becomes as unacceptable as burning down a church or a mosque. When we return to the Divine Feminine, rape will become inconceivable. How can you pillage what is sacred? When we return to the Divine Feminine, we will stop trying to “save” women in other countries and realize that we have problems of our own to conquer. We will realize that each of us is capable of becoming our own savior. The thing I love most about Malala is that she never felt the need to ask for permission. So many of us are still waiting for our father or husband to sign our permission slips – whether it is for an abortion, birth control or schooling. When we feel the sense of the divine within us, we learn that we do not need permission for anything. Many of the “rights” we are fighting so hard for are already things we innately possess. That is the lesson we should learn from Malala. It is not that one type of woman is more valuable or more exploited than the next. Malala is not someone we should feel sorry for. She is someone who can teach us a great deal. We do not need more separations between us as women. It is those “differences” that keep us fighting over silly things, like whether you can even be a Muslim Feminist. What I love about the divine feminine is that she is found in all the world’s religions. There is no separation between …
(Art) Persephone by Jassy Watson

Persephone; daughter of Zeus and Demeter, Queen of the Underworld. Persephone’s story is one of ascent and descent, of a journey from the light to dark and dark to light. It is a story of mother and daughter and of individuation; the path of becoming Woman.
(Essay) Hex to Perfection by Hearth Moon Rising

The following is an excerpt from Divining with Animal Guides: Answers from the World at Hand by Hearth Moon Rising, recently published by Moon Books. It is available online in paperback or ebook and at your bookstore. An earlier essay covered numbers one through three. We now continue our numerical journey with the numbers four, five, and six. Four Three is a more stable number than two, but it’s still an unstable number. The three-legged stool and the three-legged cauldron work, but there’s a reason chairs usually have four legs and buildings four sides. I have come to believe that all numbers are intrinsically unstable, even the number one, but four is a relatively stable number, providing a foundation for traditions as well as houses. Four is an even number—the first even non-prime number. Even numbers provide more stability because they can be divided into equal parts; they are not lopsided. The number two added to itself and multiplied by itself is the same number, four. No other positive integer does this trick. Four objects can be divided into equal rows and columns, which is the characteristic of all integers with whole square roots. 22 = 4, or two rows with two columns. When even numbers are squared, they can be divided into an even number of equal rows and columns, while odd numbers squared produce an equal number of odd rows and columns. 62 = 36, six rows with six columns; 32 = 9, three rows with three columns. Remember, for numbers greater than two, odd numbers are less stable than even. The square brings us out of the flat world, allowing movement in three dimensions. A triangle is always a face on a single plane. We associate pyramids with their triangular faces, but they must have at least four sides. People also associate triangles with the ancient Egyptians, because of the pyramids, but the numerical focus of Egypt was actually the number four. This is somewhat surprising, since orientation to the four cardinal points of the year would not be as obvious in such a warm climate, but Egyptians did have to keep careful track of time to schedule activities around the annual inundation of the Nile. Timekeeping was probably the root of the cult that arose around sun worship. Core beliefs about the sun are usually expressed in multiples of four, in Egypt and elsewhere. (Greece is an exception, as we will get to.) Egyptian deity relations were usually expressed as four deities or two pairs. The most well-known of these deity groupings are the siblings Isis, Osiris, Nephthys, and Seth. As the Greeks thought in threes, the Egyptians thought in fours. In mummification four internal organs were taken out of the body and preserved in four jars, each guarded by a different deity. The number four also corresponds to directional points (east, south, west, north), which are delineated by sunrise/sunset and by the magnetic poles. Four is the number of grandparents (the two parents of your own two parents or 22 = 4), which would associate this number with tradition even if it were not already a highly stable number. Not all aspects of the number four are intrinsic. Some are cultural. I once did graphic design for a man from Hong Kong who had a business in California that was expanding rapidly. He kept ordering more and more phone lines, and he had long arguments with the phone company telling them he did not want any fours in his phone numbers. Apparently the word four in English sounds like the word for death in Cantonese. The phone company insisted they had no control over phone numbers and could not honor his request, but this probably was not true, because somebody started giving him numbers with lots of fours just to yank his chain. This is an example of why you would not want to take the numeric symbology of one culture and apply it to another without reflection. Unless you are bilingual in English and Cantonese, the number four is not going to have these associations. Five While the number four is matching, even, balanced, and complementary, the number five introduces disequilibrium back into the system. It is perceived as an unfortunate number in the tarot because it comes on the heels of the highly stable four. The number five brings change. Witches use the pentagram (the fivearmed star drawn with a continuous line) because five is such a dynamic number, helpful in effecting transformation. The pentagram is usually pointed upward to invoke heavenly power, but it can be pointed downward to draw power from earth. The upward pentagram also represents the individual—head, arms, and feet. It is often used to represent the physical human body, well represented by the number five since it is in a constant state of change. In alchemy the number five corresponds to the element of ether, which contains the other four elements of air, water, earth, and fire. It is called the quintessence (the essence of five) because it is the essence of all things. The five-sided object in the center of the pentagram, the pentagon, has an angle of 108 degrees. If you have taken any yoga, chances are you have been instructed to do certain exercises 108 times, since this is an important number in Vedic philosophy. Regardless of your belief system, 108 is still an interesting number, because it is equal to one times two squared times three cubed, 11 x 22 x 33 or 1 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 108. Five is a prime number, which means that it is irreducible and cannot be broken into factors except one and itself. The first three prime numbers are two, three, and five, so if you like to hunt threes, there you are. In the practice of addition, five is the sum of the beginning prime numbers two and three. Prime numbers in metaphysics represent fundamental truths, since they …
(S/HE V2 N1 Excerpt) purple horizon by Susan Hawthorne

[This content is from S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (V2 N1, 2023) Its online edition and paperback are available at Mago Bookstore.] https://www.magoism.net/2013/12/meet-mago-contributor-susan-hawthone/
(Special Post) If the Universe is So Abundant, Why are We So Cheap? by Beth Raps

From Wikimedia Commons We would all agree that the Universe is abundant. We love living here in this flow. We receive everything we need from the Universe and more. We extract endlessly from Her. But we don’t give back with our money. Why are we so cheap? Given all we receive, why don’t we participate actively in the Universe’s generous giving like the creatrixes we are created to be? After 40 years’ work with money flow for organizations and individuals, here’s what I see: Patriarchy: Yes, patriarchy is hugely to blame for the place we find ourselves. For more precision, let’s do, in the Euro-centric world, as bell hooks did and call it by its true name: white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. This monster has kept most of us down successfully for thousands of years, stealing from Nature and the Earth, women, Black people, Indigenous people, colonized people, poor people, working-class people, disabled people, queer people, and anyone else it could turn into fodder for its insatiable hunger for power-over. OK, so, what keeps patriarchy in place? Fear: Patriarchy’s ravaging keeps it blind to its own utter insecurity. We aid it when we behave like a resource it can colonize. When we abdicate our intrinsic, Universe-given, power and trim ourselves to bite-size, we get eaten. We actually learn to live bite-sized! We play small, live small, ask for little, and give even less. Why? Belief in a Zero-Sum Game: We believe there’s not enough to go around. Even though we espouse beautiful alternative beliefs, we don’t live them. We don’t let our deepest beliefs change our actions. Our actions with money betray our agreement that there’s not enough to go around. Our stinginess becomes our power: if we give, we have less, so we’d be fools to give. Where does this lead us? Internalized Poverty: Almost half of women across income and profession have “bag-lady syndrome.” We fear ending up homeless and penniless—no matter how much money we have. This leads many of us to hoard money, hoard things, not give philanthropically, not create wills, estates, and trusts, not pay attention to our monthly money flow, not plan for how to allocate what money we have, not look at how to increase our flow if we want more. Almost no one feels rich. The Financial Times’s Lucy Kellaway wrote that the only thing the three super-rich people she asked to interview had in common was that “all of them protested when I applied the term to them.” She pointed out that it didn’t “matter that they were among the 1,000 richest people in the country–none of them saw themselves that way.” They are not alone! When was the last time you affirmed, ‘I’m wealthy!” and meant it? I openly declare that I am wealthy. My baseline income is $749 per month. Wealth is my lived state of mind. What makes the difference between seeing ourselves as wealthy or poor? Learned Ignorance: We fear money. We fear talking about it and we fear thinking about it. Bag-lady syndrome wouldn’t have a chance if our high consciousness were applied to money. I’m not talking about becoming savvy investors; I’m simply talking about knowing our own financial flow intimately and in detail. This is what I called “becoming financially fierce.” We’ve learned our historic lessons all too well. In the US, we are starting to read about the generational impact of redlining by banks for decades on communities of color resulting in people of color and African-Americans especially not being able to get home loans and mortgages, which means not being able to build wealth generationally as white families have done, by buying houses. There is a multi-millennial history of women being iced out of wealthbuilding by men. Women have been forbidden to own property, make money, use money, and pass money or property on to our children. We still behave as though we are. We see money misogyny at work in the 2023 film, Inshallah A Boy in which, to quote IMDb’s film description, “A widow pretends to be pregnant with a son in order to save her daughter and home from a relative exploiting Jordan’s patriarchal inheritance laws.” Even though we don’t live under patriarchal laws like Jordan’s we act like we do. Our money ignorance, money squeamishness, and stinginess show that we have internalized our historic disempowerment. What to Do? Here are some quick and easy antidotes as well as some longer-term ones: Shake yourself out of scarcity: Become a conscious financial giver. Yes, volunteering and other forms of exchange are vital. And sometimes, money is what’s needed. Whatever you have, give some of it. The Mago Work brought you this post: what about giving back financially? Start with a gift of any size to the Mago Community’s first-ever fundraising campaign. There is no way you haven’t enough to give! Gifts of $5 to $500 are actively welcomed. Take my experiential session at the 2024 S/HE Divine Studies Online Conference. You’ll have the chance to heal money wounds and reclaim yourself as a budding money magician. Participants will benefit from my decades learning what sensitive, high-consciousness people need to align ourselves with money abundance specifically. Get educated. Browse my free blog posts on money, and subscribe if you like them. Or consider doing some money healing with me 1:1 or in a group. I share inspirational writing and affordable offerings weekly in my newsletter. A book that has changed my life and set me on the course of money abundance and financial fierceness is Money Magic, a workbook by the founder of moneycoaching Deborah L. Price that is full of clients’ personal stories and simple, kind, deep self-reflection exercises. Price was a financial advisor who couldn’t figure out why people made unhealthy choices with money when they had good information until the light went on for her: unhealthy money choices are a product of our emotions, not our rationality. Got another idea? Share it in the comments below! Questions? Likewise! …
(Poem) Mnajdra, Malta by Susan Hawthorne

I wrote this poem, which includes the commentary by the character Curatrix, after visiting Malta in 2013. An extraordinary island nation filled with the most amazing places, archaeological sites and remains of prehistory. To anyone with eyes it is clear that women’s bodies were the basis of the architecture. Unfortunately, the site has been got at by Colin Renfrew and his followers in the Cambridge School. They are in the process of distorting prehistory and pretending that women played no part. The poem is written in two voices. In three lines the speaker is experiencing the site, the silence and stillness of stones. In four lines, Curatrix is challenging the ideas being pushed by the museum’s interpreters and in her commentary Curatrix reflects on the different ways of seeing.
(Poem) Freedom’s Strength by JoyAnne O’Donnell

Photo by JoyAnne O’Donnell Whispers through the tree’s breeze blowing Strong female flowers dancing softly, gently lovingly and so warmly without cease Patterns of sunlight carry our strongest way into daylights charm Sun’s fancy alarm rings dressed in orange symbolizing females strength females divine orange strong lace within our space. https://www.magoism.net/2023/06/meet-mago-contributor-joyanne-odonnell/
(Book Excerpt) Blood and Honey by Danica Anderson, Ph.D.

In the aftermath of the bloody Balkan War in the 1990s, I asked many stari Babas (elder women) what was in their apron pockets. South Slavic storied aprons are the first-person stories of daughters, mothers, and grandmothers mirroring the biological miracle of female mitochondrial DNA. The mitochondrial DNA, the unbroken line of genes passed down from mother to daughter, allows geneticists to trace back to the first mother. The Slavs embroidered pockets to hold dolls, keys, and jewelry to be passed on to their daughters is an unbroken ritual despite wars and holocaustic events.

(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.
(Special Post 2) Multi-linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

Artwork, “The-great-mother” by Julie Stewart Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: On the word, Magi/Magus, from Magi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Magi (/ˈmeɪdʒaɪ/; singular magus /ˈmeɪɡəs/; from Latin magus) were priests in Zoroastrianism and the earlier religions of the western Iranians. The earliest known use of the word magi is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Persian texts, predating the Hellenistic period, refer to a magus as a Zurvanic, and presumably Zoroastrian, priest. Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia until late antiquity and beyond, mágos was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic, to include astronomy/astrology, alchemy and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for (Pseudo‑)Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the Chaldean founder of the Magi and inventor of both astrology and magic, a meaning that still survives in the modern-day words “magic” and “magician”. In the Gospel of Matthew, “μάγοι” (magoi) from the east do homage to the newborn Jesus, and the transliterated plural “magi” entered English from Latin in this context around 1200 (this particular use is also commonly rendered in English as “kings” and more often in recent times as “wise men”).[1] The singular “magus” appears considerably later, when it was borrowed from Old French in the late 14th century with the meaning magician. … An unrelated term, but previously assumed to be related, appears in the older Gathic Avestan language texts. This word, adjectival magavan meaning “possessing maga-“, was once the premise that Avestan maga- and Median (i.e. Old Persian) magu- were co-eval (and also that both these were cognates of Vedic Sanskrit magha-). While “in the Gathas the word seems to mean both the teaching of Zoroaster and the community that accepted that teaching”, and it seems that Avestan maga- is related to Sanskrit magha-, “there is no reason to suppose that the western Iranian form magu (Magus) has exactly the same meaning”[4] as well. But it “may be, however”, that Avestan moghu (which is not the same as Avestan maga-) “and Medean magu were the same word in origin, a common Iranian term for ‘member of the tribe’ having developed among the Medes the special sense of ‘member of the (priestly) tribe’, hence a priest.”[2]cf[3] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: On the word, Gaia, from Gaia (mythology) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In Greek mythology, Gaia (/ˈɡaɪə, ˈɡeɪə/ GHY-ə, GAY-ə;[1] from Ancient Greek Γαῖα, a poetical form of Γῆ Gē, “land” or “earth”),[2] also spelled Gaea (/ˈdʒiːə/ JEE-ə),[1] is the personification of the Earth[3] and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life: the primal Mother Earth goddess. She is the mother of Uranus (the sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans (themselves parents of many of the Olympian gods) and the Giants, and of Pontus (the sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.[4] … The Greek name Γαῖα (Gaĩa)[5] is a mostly epic, collateral form of Attic Γῆ[6] (Gê), Doric Γᾶ (Gã, perhaps identical to Δᾶ Dã)[7] meaning “Earth”, a word of uncertain origin.[8] Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin.[9] In Mycenean Greek Ma-ka (transliterated as Ma-ga, “Mother Gaia”) also contains the root ga-.[9][10] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Greek mythology of Gaia’s family tree is remotely evocative of the Magoist genealogy written in the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), the principale text of Magoism. In Korean, “Mama” is also an honorary title referring to the royal family including ruler, ruler’s mother, father, grandmother and so on. This suggests that “ma” means “mother,” “ruler,” and “Goddess” all at once in gynocentric/gynocratic (Magoist/Magocratic) societies, pre-patriarchal in origin. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: I came to search the etymology of “montgomery” in relation to Mt. Mago or Mt. Goya and am led to such related terms as Gomer, Gog, Magog. Montgomery (name) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Montgomery or Montgomerie is a surname from a place name in Normandy.[1] Although there are many stories of its origin,[2][3][4][5] An old theory explains that the name is a corruption of “Gomer’s Mount” or “Gomer’s Hill” (Latin: Mons Gomeris), any of a number of hills in Europe named in attribution to the biblical patriarch Gomer,[2] but it does not explain the final -y or -ie (the phonetical evolution would have been *Montgomers) and it does not correspond to the old mentions of the place name Montgommery in Normandie : Monte Gomeri in 1032 – 1035, de Monte Gomerico in 1040 and de Monte Gumbri in 1046 – 1048.[6] More relevant is the explanation by the Germanic first name Gumarik,[7] a compound of guma “man” (see bridegroom) and rik “powerful”, that regularly gives the final -ry (-ri) in the French first names and surnames (Thierry, Amaury, Henry, etc.). Moreover, the name is still used as a surname in France as Gommery,[8] from the older first name Gomeri.[9] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: On the word, Gomer below from Wikipedia. Gomer (גֹּמֶר, Standard Hebrew Gómer, Tiberian Hebrew Gōmer, pronounced [ɡoˈmeʁ]) was the eldest son of Japheth (and of the Japhetic line), and father of Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah, according to the “Table of Nations” in the Hebrew Bible, (Genesis 10). The eponymous Gomer, “standing for the whole family,” as the compilers of the Jewish Encyclopedia expressed it,[1] is also mentioned in Book of Ezekiel 38:6 as the ally of Gog, the chief of the land of Magog. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: On the word, Gog and Magog from Wikipedia. Gog and Magog: They are depicted as monsters and barbarians from the East/Eurasia. Gog and Magog (/ɡɒɡ/; /ˈmeɪɡɒɡ/; Hebrew: גּוֹג וּמָגוֹג Gog u-Magog; Arabic: يَأْجُوج وَمَأْجُوج Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj) are names that appear in the Hebrew bible (Old Testament), the Book of Revelation and the Qur’an, sometimes indicating individuals and sometimes lands and peoples. Sometimes, but not always, they are connected with the “end times”, and the passages from the book of Ezekiel and Revelation in particular have attracted attention for this reason. From ancient times to the late Middle Ages Gog and Magog were identified with Eurasian nomads such as the Khazars, Huns and Mongols (this was true also for Islam, where they were identified first with Turkic tribes of Central Asia and later with the Mongols). Throughout this period they were conflated with various other legends, notably those concerning Alexander the Great, the Amazons, Red Jews, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and became the subject of much fanciful literature. In modern times they remain associated with apocalyptic thinking, especially in the United States and the Muslim world. Helen […]
(Special Post 1) "The Oldest Civilization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: The following discussion took place in response to an article listed blow by the members of The Mago Cirlce, Facebook group of Goddessians/Magoists from May 6 to May 10, 2016. Readers are recommended to read the original article linked below that has invoked the converation.] “The Danube Civilization: Oldest in the World” in The Ancient Ones upon the ruins of our ancestors, published April 3, 2016.

(Art & Poem) Candelmas/Imbolc by Sudie Rakusin & Annie Finch

IMBOLC DANCE From the east she has gathered like wishes. She has woven a night into dawn. We are quickening ivy. We grow where her warmth melts out over the ice. Now spiral south bends into flame to push the morning over doors. The light swings wide, green with the pulse of seasons, and we let her in We are quickening ivy. We grow The light swings wide, green with the pulse till the west is rocked by darkness pulled from where the fire rises. Shortened time’s reflecting water rakes her through the thickened cold. Hands cover north smooth with emptiness, stinging the mill of night’s hours. Wait with me. See, she comes circling over the listening snow to us. Shortened time’s reflecting water Wait with me. See, she comes circling From Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003) Art is included in Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2017). (Meet Mago Contributor) Sudie Rakusin (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
(Slideshow) Beltaine Goddess by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D.

Tara, Hallie Iglehart Austen, p.122 On November 7th at 22:56 UTC EarthGaia crosses the midpoint in Her orbit between Equinox and Solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere it is the Season of Beltaine – a maturing of the Light, post-Spring Equinox. Beltaine and all of the light part of the cycle, is particularly associated with the Young One/Virgin aspect of Goddess, even as She comes into relationship with Other: She remains Her own agent. Beltaine may be understood as the quintessential annual celebration of Light as it continues to wax towards fullness. It is understood to be the beginning of Summer. Here is some Poetry of the Season: Earth tilts us further towards Mother Sun, the Source of Her pleasure, life and ecstasy You are invited to celebrate BELTAINE the time when sweet Desire For Life is met – when the fruiting begins: the Promise of early Spring exalts in Passion. This is the celebration of Holy Lust, Allurement, Aphrodite … Who holds all things in form, Who unites the cosmos, Who brings forth all things, Who is the Essence of the Dance of Life. Glenys Livingstone, 2005 The choice of images for the Season is arbitrary; there are so many more that may express this quality of Hers. And also for consideration, is the fact that most ancient images of Goddess are multivalent – She was/is One: that is, all Her aspects are not separate from each other. These selected images tell a story of certain qualities that may be contemplated at the Seasonal Moment of Beltaine. As you receive the images, remember that image communicates the unspeakable – that which can only be known in body – below rational mind. So you may open yourself to a transmission of Her, that will be particular to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKGRoVjQQHY Aphrodite 300 B.C.E. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). This Greek Goddess is commonly associated with sexuality in a trivial kind of way, but She was said to be older than Time (Barbara Walker p.44). Aphrodite as humans once knew Her, was no mere sex goddess: Aphrodite was once a Virgin-Mother-Crone trinity – the Creative Force itself. The Love that She embodied was a Love deep down in things, an allurement intrinsic to the nature of the Universe. Praised by the Orphics thus: For all things are from You Who unites the cosmos. You will the three-fold fates You bring forth all things Whatever is in the heavens And in the much fruitful earth And in the deep sea. Vajravarahi 1600C.E. Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). A Dakini dancing with life energy – a unity of power, beauty, compassion and eroticism. Praised as Mistress of love and of knowledge at the same time. Tara Contemporary – Green Gulch California ,Tibetan Buddhist. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). “Her eroticism is an important part of her bodhisattvahood: the sweetpea represents the yoni, and she is surrounded by the sensual abundance of Nature. One of Tara’s human incarnations was as the Tibetan mystic Yeshe Tsogyal, “who helped many people to enlightenment through sacred sexual union with her”. – Ishtar 1000 B.C.E. Babylon (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). Associated with passionate sexuality (and with Roman Goddess Venus) – which was not perceived as separate from integrity and intelligence … praised for Her beauty and brains! Her lips are sweet, Life is in Her mouth. When She appears, we are filled with rejoicing. She is glorious beneath Her robes. Her body is complete beauty. Her eyes are total brilliance. Who could be equal to Her greatness, for Her decrees are strong, exalted, perfect. MESOPOTAMIAN TEXT 1600 B.C.E. Artemis 4th Cent.B.C.E. Greece. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess) – classic “Virgin” image – wild and free, “Lady of the Beasts”, Goddess of untamed nature. As such, in the patriarchal stories She is often associated with harshness, orgiastic rituals but we may re-story “wildness” in our times as something “innocent” – in direct relationship with the Mother. She is a hunter/archer, protector, midwife, nurturing the new and pure essence (the “wild”) – in earlier times these things were not contradictory. The hunter had an intimate relationship with the hunted. Visvatara and Vajrasattva 1800C.E. Tibetan Goddess and God in Union: it could be any Lover and Beloved, of same sex. Image from Mann and Lyle, “Sacred Sexuality” p.74. Sacred Couple –Mesopotamia 2000-1600 BCE “Lovers Embracing on Bed”, Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth, Diane Wolkstein and Samuael Noah Kramer. Represents the sacred marriage mythic cycle – late 3rd and into 4th millennium B.C.E. (See Starhawk, Truth or Dare). This period is the time of Enheduanna – great poet and priestess of Inanna. Xochiquetzal 8th century C.E. Mayan (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). Her name means “precious flower” – She is Goddess of pleasure, sexuality beauty and flowers. Sometimes represented by a butterfly who sips the nectar of the flower. “In ancient rituals honouring her, young people made a bower of roses, and, dressed as hummingbirds and butterflies they danced an image of the Goddess of flowers and love.” Her priestesses are depicted with ecstatic faces. (called “laughing Goddesses” !!) She and Her priestesses unashamedly celebrated joyful female sexuality – there is story of decorating pubic hairs to outshine the Goddess’ yoni. https://www.magoism.net/2013/06/meet-mago-contributor-glenys-livingstone/ REFERENCES: Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess. Berkeley: Wingbow, 1990. Mann A.T. and Lyle, Jane. Sacred Sexuality. ELEMENT BOOKS LTD, 1995. Starhawk. Truth or Dare. San Fransisco:Harper and Row, 1990. Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983. Wolkstein,Diane and Kramer, Samuel Noah. Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth. NY: Harper and Rowe, 1983. The music for the slideshow is “”Coral Sea Dreaming” by Tania Rose.
A Southern Hemisphere Perspective on Place by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Dates for Winter Solstice/Yule Southern Hemisphere – June 20 – 23. Northern Hemisphere – December 20 – 23 This Seasonal Moment is the ripe fullness of the Dark Womb and it is a gateway between dark and light. It is a Birthing Place – into differentiated being. Whereas Samhain/Deep Autumn is a dark conceiving Space, it flows into the Winter Solstice dark birthing Place – a dynamic Place of Being, a Sacred Interchange. This Seasonal Moment of Winter Solstice is the peaking of the dark space – the fullness of the dark, within which being and action arise. It is the peaking of emptiness, which is a fullness. As cosmologist Brian Swimme describes: the empty “ground of being … retains no thing.” It is “Ultimate Generosity.”[i] In Vajrayana Buddhism, Space is associated with Prajna/wisdom – out of which Upaya/compassionate action arises. Space is highly positive – something to be developed, so appropriate action may develop spontaneously and blissfully.[ii] In Old European Indigenous understandings, the dark and the night were valued at least as much as light, if not more so: time was counted by the number of nights, as in ‘fortnights,’ and a ‘day’ included both dark and light parts … it was ‘di-urnal’. I have been careful with my language about that inclusion in the ceremonial ‘Statement of Purpose’ for each Seasonal Moment. This awareness is resonant with modern Western scientific perceptions about the nature of the Universe: that it is seventy-three percent “dark energy,” twenty-three precent “dark matter,” four percent “ordinary matter.”[iii] The truth is that we live within this darkness: it is the Ground of all Being. In Pagan traditions since Celtic times, and in many other cultural traditions, Winter Solstice has been celebrated as the birth of the God; and in Christian tradition since about the fourth century C.E., as the birth of the saviour. But there are deeper ways of understanding what is being born: that is, who or what the “saviour” is. In the Gospel of Thomas, which was not selected for biblical canon, it says: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.”[iv] This then may be the Divine Child, the “Saviour”: it may be expressed as the new Being forming in the Cosmogonic Womb,[v] who will be born. We may celebrate the birth of the new Being, which /who is always beyond us, beyond our knowing … yet is within us, burgeoning within us – and within Gaia. What will save us is already present within – forming within us. The Winter Solstice story may emphasize that what is born, is within each one – the “Divine” is not “out there”: it may be said, and expressed ceremoniously, that we are each Creator and Created. We may imagine ourselves as the in-utero foetus – an image we might have access to these days from a sonar-scan during pregnancy. This image presents a truth about Being: we are this, and it is within us, within this moment. Every moment is pregnant with the new. It will be birthed when holy darkness is full. Part of what is required is having the eyes to see the “new bone forming in flesh,” scraping our eyes “clear of learned cataracts,”[vi] seeing with fresh eyes. That is what the fullness of the Dark offers – a freshening of our eyes to see the new. And the process of Creation is always reciprocal: we are Creator and Created simultaneously, in a “ngapartji-ngapartji”[vii] way. We are in-formed by that which we form. In Earth-based religious practice, the ubiquitous icon of Mother and Child – Creator and Created – expresses something essential about the Universe itself … the “motherhood” we are all born within. It expresses the essential communion experience that this Cosmos is, the innate and holy Care that it takes, and the reciprocal nature of it. We cannot touch without being touched at the same time.[viii] We may realize that Cosmogenesis – the entire Unfolding of the Cosmos – is essentially relational: our experience tells us this is so. The image of The Birth of the Goddess on the front cover of my book PaGaian Cosmology expresses that reciprocity for me, how we may birth each other and the healing/wholing in that exchange. It is a Sacred Interchange. And it is what this Event of existence seems to be about – deep communion, which both Solstices express. Babylonian Goddess, Ur 4000-3500 BCE. Adele Getty, Goddess, 33. Birthing is not often an easy process – for the birthgiver nor for the birthed one: it is a shamanic act requiring strength of bodymind, attention, courage, and focus of the mother, and resilience and courage to be of the new young one. Birthgiving is the original place of ‘heroics,’ which many cultures of the world have never forgotten, perhaps therefore better termed as “heraics.” Patriarchal adaptations of the story of this Seasonal Moment usually miss the Creative Act of birthgiving completely, usually being pre-occupied with the “virgin” nature of the Mother which is interpreted as having an “intact hymen.” The focus of the patriarchal adaptation of the Winter Solstice story is the Child as “saviour”: even the Mother gazes at the Child in most Christian icons, while in more ancient images Her eyes are direct and expressive of Her integrity as Creator. NOTES: [i] Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, 146. [ii] See Rita Gross, “The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 179-192. [iii] These figures as told by cosmologist Paul Davies with Macquarie University’s Centre for Astrobiology, Australia. [iv] Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas, saying number 70. See https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html . [v] Melissa Raphael’s term, Thealogy and Embodiment, 262. [vi] The quotes come from a poem by Cynthia Cook, “Refractions,” Womanspirit (Oregan USA, issue 23, March 1980), 59. [vii] This is an Indigenous Australian term for reciprocity – giving and receiving at the same time. I explain it a bit further in PaGaian Cosmology, 256-257. [viii] An expression from Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 68. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living …
(Slideshow) Summer Solstice Goddess by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Sekhmet by Katlyn Each year between December 20-23 Sun reaches Her peak in the Southern Hemisphere: it is the Summer Solstice Moment. Poetry of the Season may be expressed in this way: This is the time when the light part of day is longest. You are invited to celebrate SUMMER SOLSTICE Light reaches Her fullness, and yet… She turns, and the seed of Darkness is born. This is the Season of blossom and thorn – for pouring forth the Gift of Being. The story of Old tells that on this day Beloved and Lover dissolve into the single Song of ecstasy – that moves the worlds. Self expands in the bliss of creativity. Sun ripens in us: we are the Bread of Life. We celebrate Her deep Communion and Reciprocity. Glenys Livingstone, 2005 The choice of images for the Season is arbitrary; there are so many more that may express Her fullness of being, Her relational essence and Her Gateway quality at this time. And also for consideration, is the fact that most ancient images of Goddess are multivalent – She was/is One: that is, all Her aspects are not separate from each other. These selected images tell a story of certain qualities that may be contemplated at the Seasonal Moment of Summer Solstice. As you receive the images, remember that image communicates the unspeakable, that which can only be known in body, below rational mind. So you may open yourself to a transmission of Her, that will be particular to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syTBjWpw3XU Shalako Mana Hopi 1900C.E. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess), Corn Mother. Food is a miracle, food is sacred. She IS the corn, the corn IS Her. She gives Herself to feed all. The food/She is essential to survival, hospitality and ceremony … and all of this is transmuted in our beings. Sekhmet Contemporary image by Katlyn. Egyptian Sun Goddess. Katlyn says: Her story includes the compassionate nature of destruction. The fierce protection of the Mother is sometimes called to destroy in order to preserve well being. And Anne Key expresses: She represents “the awesome and awe-full power of the Sun. This power spans the destructive acts of creation and the creative acts of destruction.”- (p.135 Desert Priestess: a memoir).A chant in Her praise by Abigail Spinner McBride: Sheila-na-gig 900C.E. British Isles. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). From Elinor Gadon The Once and Future Goddess (p.338): “She is remembered in Ireland as the Old Woman who gave birth to all races of human…. In churches her function was to ward off evil”, or to attract the Pagan peoples to the church. From Adele Getty Goddess (p.66): “The first rite of passage of all human beings begins in the womb and ends between the thighs of the Great Mother. In India, the vulva “known as the yoni, is also called cunti or kunda, the root word of cunning, cunt and kin … (the yoni) was worshipped as an object of great mystery … the place of birth and the place where the dead are laid to rest were often one and the same.” Getty says her message here in this image “is double-edged: the opening of her vulva and the smile on her face elicit both awe and terror; one might venture too far inside her and never return to the light of day …” as with all caves and gates of initiation. In the Christian mind the yoni clearly became the “gates of hell”. And as Helene Cixous said in her famous feminist article “The Laugh of the Medusa”: “Let the priests tremble, we’re going to show them our sexts!” (SIGNS Summer 1976) Kunapipi (Australia) “the Aboriginal mother of all living things, came from a land across the sea to establish her clan in Northern Australia, where She is found in both fresh and salt water. In the Northern Territory She is known as Warramurrungundgi. She may also manifest Herself as Julunggul, the rainbow snake goddess of initiations who threatens to swallow children and then regurgitate them, thereby reinforcing the cycle of death and rebirth. In Arnhem Land She is Ngaljod …” (Visions of the Goddess by Courtney Milne and Sherrill Miller – thanks to Lydia Ruyle). More information: re Kunapipi. NOTE the similarity to Gobekli Tepe Sheela Turkey 9600B.C.E., thanks Lydia Ruyle.Lydia Ruyle’s Gobekli Tepe banner. Inanna/Ishtar Mesopotamia 400 B.C.E. (Adele Getty, Goddess: Mother of Living Nature) She holds Her breasts displaying her potency. She is a superpower who feeds the world, nourishes it with Her being. We all desire to feel this potency of being: Swimme and Berry express: “the infinite striving of the sentient being”. Adele Getty calls this offering of breasts to the world “a timeless sacred gesture”. Mary Mother of God 1400 C.E. Europe (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). A recognition, even in the patriarchal context that She contains it all. Wisdom and Compassion Tibetan Goddess and God in Union. This is Visvatara and Vajrasattva 1800C.E. (Sacred Sexuality A.T. Mann and Jane Lyle). Sri Yantra Hindu meditation diagram of union of Goddess and God. 1500 C.E. (Sacred Sexuality A.T. Mann and Jane Lyle, p.75). “Goddess and God” is the common metaphor, but it could be “Beloved and Lover”, and so it is in the mind of many mystics and poets: that is, the sacred union is of small self with larger Self. Prajnaparamita the Mother of all Buddhas. (The Great Mother Erich Neumann, pl 183). She is the Wisdom to whom Buddha aspired, Whom he attained. Medusa Contemporary, artist unknown. She is a Sun Goddess: this is one reason why it was difficult to look Her in the eye. See Patricia Monaghan, O Mother Sun! REFERENCES: Gadon, Elinor W. The Once and Future Goddess. Northamptonshire: Aquarian, 1990. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living Nature. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess.Berkeley: Wingbow, 1990. Katlyn, artist https://www.mermadearts.com/b/altar-images-art-by-katlyn Key, Anne. Desert Priestess: a memoir. NV: Goddess Ink, 2011. Mann A.T. and …
A PaGaian Wheel of the Year and Her Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. for larger image see: https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ Essentially a PaGaian Wheel of the Year celebrates Cosmogenesis – the unfolding of the Cosmos, none of which is separate from the unfolding of each unique place/region, and each unique being. This creativity of Cosmogenesis is celebrated through Earth-Sun relationship as it may be expressed and experienced within any region of our Planet. PaGaian ceremony expresses this with Triple Goddess Poetry understood to be metaphor for the creative dynamics unfolding the Cosmos. At the heart of the Earth-Sun relationship is the dance of light and dark, the waxing and waning of both these qualities, as Earth orbits around our Mother Sun. This dance, which results in the manifestation of form and its dissolution (as expressed in the seasons), happens because of Earth’s tilt in relationship with Sun: because this effects the intensity of regional receptivity to Sun’s energy over the period of the yearly orbit. This tilt was something that happened in the evolution of our planet in its earliest of days – some four and a half billion years ago,[i] and then stabilised over time: and the climatic zones were further formed when Antarctica separated from Australia and South America, giving birth to the Antarctica Circumpolar Current, changing the circulation of water around all the continents … just some thirty million years ago.[ii] Within the period since then, which also saw the advent of the earliest humans, Earth has gone through many climatic changes. It is likely that throughout those changes, the dance of light and dark in both hemispheres of the planet … one always the opposite of the other – has been fairly stable and predictable. The resultant effect on flora and fauna regionally however has varied enormously depending on many other factors of Earth’s ever-changing ecology: She is an alive Planet who continues to move and re-shape Herself. She is Herself subject to the cosmic dynamics of creativity – the forming and the dissolving and the re-emerging. The earliest of humans must have received all this, ‘observed’ it in a very participatory way: that is, not as a Western industrialized or dualistic mind would think of ‘observation’ today, but as kin with the events – identifying with their own experience of coming into being and passing away. There is evidence (as of this writing) to suggest that humans have expressed awareness of, and response to, the phenomenon of coming into being and passing away, as early as one hundred thousand years ago: ritual burial sites of that age have been found,[iii] and more recently a site of ongoing ritual activity as old as seventy thousand years has been found.[iv] The ceremonial celebration of the phenomenon of seasons probably came much later, particularly perhaps when humans began to settle down. These ceremonial celebrations of seasons apparently continued to reflect the awesomeness of existence as well as the marking of transitions of Sun back and forth across the horizon, which became an important method of telling the time for planting and harvesting and the movement of pastoral animals. It seems that the resultant effect of the dance of light and dark on regional flora and fauna, has been fairly stable in recent millennia, the period during which many current Earth-based religious practices and expression arose. In our times, that is changing again. Humans have been, and are, a major part of bringing that change about. Ever since we migrated around the planet, humans have brought change, as any creature would: but humans have gained advantage and distinguished themselves by toolmaking, and increasingly domesticating/harnessing more of Earth’s powers – fire being perhaps the first, and this also aided our migration. In recent times this harnessing/appropriating of Earth’s powers became more intense and at the same time our numbers dramatically increased: and many of us filled with hubris, acting without consciousness or care of our relational context. We are currently living in times when our planet is tangibly and visibly transforming: the seasons themselves as we have known them for millennia – as anyone’s ancestors knew them – appear to be changing in most if not all regions of our Planet. Much predictable Poetry – sacred language – for expressing the quality of the Seasonal Moments will change, as regional flora changes, as the movement of animals and birds and sea creatures changes, as economies change.[v]In Earth’s long story regional seasonal manifestation has changed before, but not so dramatically since the advent of much current Poetic expression for these transitions, as mixed as they are with layers of metaphor: that is, with layers of mythic eras, cultures and economies. We may learn and understand the traditional significance of much of the Poetry, the ceremony and symbol – the art – through which we could relate and converse with our place, as our ancestors may have done, but it will continue to evolve as all language must. In PaGaian Cosmology I have adapted the Wheel as a way of celebrating the Female Metaphor and also as a way of celebrating Cosmogenesis, the Creativity that is present really/actually in every moment, but for which the Seasonal Moments provide a pattern/Poetry over the period of a year – in time and place. The pattern that I unfold is a way in which the three different phases/characteristics interplay. In fact, the way in which they interplay seems infinite, the way they inter-relate is deeply complex. I think it is possible to find many ways to celebrate them. There is nothing concrete about the chosen story/Poetry, nor about each of the scripts presented here, just as there is nothing concrete about the Place of Being – it (She) is always relational, a Dynamic Interchange. Whilst being grounded in the “Real,” the Poetry chosen for expression is therefore at the same time, a potentially infinite expression, according to the heart and mind of the storyteller. NOTES: [i] See Appendix C, *(6), Glenys Livingstone, A Poiesis of the Creative …

(Video) Gurang (Nine Goddesses), Gaeyang Halmi (Grandma Gaeyang), and Goddess Gom: Exploring Old Magoism in Korea by Helen Hwang

Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D. Read (Photo Essay 5) Gaeyang Halmi, Sea Goddess of Korea.
(Essay) Reviving and Celebrating the Nine-Goddess Symbolism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

In my ongoing research on the Great Goddess known as Mago, I have discovered the number nine gynocentric symbolism as the most prominent current that constitutes Magoism and named it the Nona (Number Nine) Mago religion/civilization/mythology. Like other civilizational inventions such as the calendar and musicology, numerology is an intellectual system of knowing the Way of Nature/Universe/Creatrix. And the number nine is no arbitrary number but is the numeric code of the Creatrix or the Primordial Mother. It codifies the cosmogonic beginning of the Primordial Mother, that is, the Primordial Mago Household. It refers to the primordial principle of the solar/terrestrial beginning.
(Pilgrimage Essay 2) Report of First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hwang

[Author’s note: The first Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Part 2 Traditional Korea and the Primordial Home of Magoism It was the time for the sacred, ancient mystery of Magoism to be reenacted once again for the Race of WE! Mago Pilgrimage was an open invitation to the deep knowing that Korean Magoism unfolds beneath the surface of patriarchal consciousness. It was a call from the Background [to borrow Mary Daly’s term, which, I explicate, refers to the biophilic reality wherein the deep memories of Goddess are alive, unfettering from the foreground, patriarch reality] to be present with Mago, the Great Goddess, Here and Now! Third eyes flashed, while open hearts unlocked the doors to the path. We heard the whisper, the chorus of the natural, cultural, and historical landscapes of Korea, the arcane music of the Female Beginning. The magic worked its own feats. As could be expected, undertaking the Mago pilgrimage entailed daunting tasks for me. Nonetheless, it was proven to me time and again that the purpose creates the means. The Korean saying, “Where there is a will, there is a way,” spoke to it well. We, the intercontinental pilgrims, were made welcome by supporters, organizers, and volunteers from the locale. We attracted fabulous scholars, teachers, artists, administrators, and activists along our paths. It was the first cross-cultural and cross-gender goddess event to be held in Korea in modern times! Excitement and anticipation were high. As a researcher of Mago and Magoism, I knew the Mago pilgrimage was the right thing to do. In fact, I had been faithfully following the direction that my heart beckoned to throughout my life. The consequences were the actions that I took. This time, however, I was rewarded with the fate-ful encounter; the very research of Mago came as a revelation to me. The topic of Mago emerged from nowhere at the juncture of my labyrinthine journey to non-patriarchal [gynocentric] consciousness. I was a student of feminist studies in religions. Without knowing what was in store for me, I knew that I was not content with the feminist theology of patriarchal religions of the West and the East. If any theme of these religions had appealed to me — I wished at times, to confess to my readers — during those years, my path would not have crossed with Magoism. My radical feminist quest was the cause for encountering Mago.

Category: Goddess feminist activism

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