June 21, 2024June 18, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Book Review) Marguerite Mary Rigoglioso’s The Secret Life of Mother Mary: Divine Feminine Power For Personal Healing and Planetary Awakening by Mary Saracino

The Secret Life of Mother Mary: Divine Feminine Power For Personal Healing and Planetary Awakening, Marguerite Mary Rigoglioso, PhD (Bear & Company, July 2024); https://www.innertraditions.com/books/the-secret-life-of-mother-mary Reviewed by Mary Saracino Marguerite Read More …

June 4, 2024June 3, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Every Moment by Mary Saracino

“Every Moment a voice out of this world calls on our soul to wake up and rise….answer the call.” –Rumi Uninvited, unexpectedly a hawk’s dark wing against the starkly blue Read More …

May 17, 2024May 18, 2024 Mago Work1 Comment

(Poem) Crows by Mary Saracino

Crows don’t seek bread or sheltered warmth but something else more sustaining something that defies gravity & time the whims of shifting seasons unrelenting heat bitter cold sheets of pouring Read More …

May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 Mago Work1 Comment

(Poem) The Mother Lode of Memory by Mary Saracino

From the deep vein of memory my blood sings your name my bones recall the seed from which all things began planted in the ochre chambers of caves the curvaceous Read More …

May 1, 2024May 1, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Persephone by Mary Saracino

[Author’s Note: Originally published in TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Issue 6, September 2007, www.triviavoices.net.] She returns each spring to her mother’s wailing arms, hair unkempt after months beneath Earth’s layered Read More …

April 26, 2024April 25, 2024 Mago Work2 Comments

(Poem) A Prayer for Mother Earth by Mary Saracino

Hail Mother full of grace The Earth is full of beauty Blessed art thou among all beings And beloved is the fruit of thy womb Holy Earth, Mother Planet Pray Read More …

March 15, 2024February 23, 2024 Mago Work2 Comments

(Essay 3) Red Poppies Among the Ruins by Mary Saracino

[Author’s Note: Originally published in TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Issue 6, September 2007, www.triviavoices.net.] The Kurgan legacy survives to this day. Too often humankind worships the warrior culture, the power Read More …

March 5, 2024February 23, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Essay 2) Red Poppies Among the Ruins by Mary Saracino

[Author’s Note: Originally published in TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Issue 6, September 2007, www.triviavoices.net.] Inland, beyond the coastline, among the islands numerous hills and woodlands, rise remnants of nearly 8,000 Read More …

February 29, 2024February 29, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Essay 1) Red Poppies Among the Ruins by Mary Saracino

[Author’s Note: Originally published in TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Issue 6, September 2007, www.triviavoices.net.] Under the alchemy of the sea and sky, my bones began to listen. The warm wind Read More …

February 16, 2024February 16, 2024 Mago Work1 Comment

(Poem) If Trees Could Talk by Mary Saracino

If trees could talk would they say feed me don’t leave me pipe down do your homework clean your room work longer hours eat more vegetables or would they say Read More …

February 6, 2024January 20, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Tribute) Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum by Mary Saracino

On January 7, 2024, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, left this Earthly plane, and joined the Ancestors. She had turned 100 just four days before. Her passing is a loss to the Read More …

January 19, 2024January 14, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) I Am My Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams by Mary Saracino

I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams realized,a woman unafraid to speak her mindlive out loudunabashedly love who I choosewithout hesitationor shameI honor their passage in steeragecrossing an ocean to embracea Read More …

January 2, 2024December 14, 2023 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) The Moon Talks to the People on the Earth by Mary Saracino

Have you learned nothing from my waxing and waning, the ebb and flow of tides, the beacon of light in the night sky, my eternal gift to you? Fullness is Read More …

(Essay 2) Re-mything the Sacred Feminine by Mary Petiet

A symphony of voices is arising now at the time of our mother planet’s greatest peril. We remember and we awaken. We are powerful now because we are remembering. One story we can re-myth is the story of the summer solstice. In the modern west, that solstice is traditionally the time of the sun deity, when the days are at their longest and the sun is at its zenith. While the sun deity has been imagined differently by different cultures, as female in nature by the early Egyptians, the Germans and the Norse, the story we tell in the modern English speaking world is that the sun is male in aspect, and embodies the energy of the male. At the time of the solstice, the sun sits still for three days, high in the sky as it appears not to change position around the 21st of June in the northern hemisphere. Sol is the sun, and solstice means stand-still. The Earth stands still in the circle of the sun, pausing before its shift to shorter days.
(Prose) Hungering for Sovereign Ways by Lucy Pierce

Photo courtesy of Angela Rivas of Lunasol Photography for the book From This Place. The blood of my womb has been poured as an offering upon the earth of this country for decades of moon cycles. The birthing blood of three children has been given back to this land that I love, the placentas of my babies buried in the soil of Her body, this land that has held me in its boughs as a wee one, that has fed me with Her love all the days of my living life and before as I walked upon the Earth as an egg in the womb of my mother’s body inside my Grandmother’s womb. The coming of the people with whom I share skin to this land was a brutal violation, a violent desecration, a travesty of sorrow and cold blooded cruelty, theft, rape, torture, slavery, murder, massacre. There are no words for what was done, and continues to be done in the name of this imperative of domination and impotence, no words for what has been taken and damaged, for what that means for the First Nations people and for the dreaming of this land, what it means for the granddaughters and grandsons of those whose hands the atrocities moved through.For generations my people have dwelt here, and yet I hear the excruciating heart call, the hireath for my homelands that call to me, and that grieve for those that left and were lost in that tide of colony. For my people had already lost so much before they came to these shores, already they had been broken, their own roots torn from their old ways, their belonging severed with violence and persecution, torture and desecration of woman from her land, from her wisdom ways, from her herblore and her dreaming, from her ancient ways of being. Stolen was the language and the stories and the ways of belonging. The ancestors of my lineage hung in metal cages from castle walls for long cold years on end in the harsh seasons of Scotland, as punishment for their gender and their belonging to a line that crowned the kings of that land. My people were burnt at the stake for their knowing of the old ways and many learnt to betray in order that their blood line may survive, perhaps with a prayer that what was true was written in the blood and could perhaps be read again, reached back to, through the trauma of our loss, through the indecipherable language of our adaptation to brutality. Perhaps what it is that my heart hungers for so acutely was lost long before my people left to come here, but my heart still calls to that other land, where the bones of the ones who belonged sing to me of remembrance and hungering for the time before the madness, when it was not a crime to belong to your country, to belong to the Earth. Perhaps the time has come for us each to sink our roots through the agony of ages, the bedrock of shame and desecration, through the hunger and the exile, to find a way to belong again to the song of the Earth that keens beneath our feet, to remember how she fed us before we covered our souls with protection and normalised her rape and degradation, before we delineated ourselves from each other so divisively, as we had been raped and degraded and divided for so long. We have long forgotten what it was to live in pure integrity with our homeland. The pain stretches back so far, so many brutalized bones in the earth, so much haunted ash. But the bones and the blood of those who knew of another way, a more fierce and gentle way of belonging to the land sing still beneath them, back through the ages, across the great wheel of time. Perhaps we just need to listen more deeply, beyond our own trauma, through the layers of history, to Herstory and Her vast invitation to come home, wherever we have landed on Her beautiful body, to come home to Her.My womb is full of blood and hunger for sovereign ways, it is full of stories of my bloodline and the times before the dislocation and the severance. I say a prayer for all people to find their ways home, as I pour my blood, red upon the Earth, that is my home now, a displaced woman hankering for belonging on a stolen land. I have carried such shame for what has been done to an intact culture by the brutalizing force of my race, upon the indigenous people of this country. But I am trying to put that shame down now, because I know that I belong with all my heart and soul to the people who came before, that sang and danced upon the land, that fed her with their life blood and wove her a cloak of beauty with the fibres of the soul. I belong to the Earth beneath my feet. My soul remembers what it meant to belong to country. My soul remembers how much it hurt to have it taken away, the ripping severance. Maybe I remember also, that our Mother never left us and that she breaths and dreams and awakens with us all yet, in the stirrings of our blood, in the pulsing of the heartbeat, Hers and ours entwining. Maybe all the roots of all the races entwine in Her heart, touching one another through Her radiant core. Maybe that is the only way home now, through her molten heart, for all our stories to melt together in the fire of Her love, greater than any part, we are all children of the Earth.My heart is open, to learn and to grow, to give and to receive, to dismantle and to become, at the threshold of our evolutionary interface, as humans upon the Earth. (Meet Mago Contributor) Lucy Pierce.
(Essay) Cups – Semeiosis is the act of creating signs by Danica Anderson, Ph.D.

Artist Erin Hilleary Tasseography (feminine divining) is the immersion of Ecology & Mnemonics. Prehistoric cup marks are dated at 80,000 years old. Archeological evidence of cup marks on stone memorials cite the cup marks been made by women’s breasts. The cup origins appear to be breast symbolic of nurturance. Bioculinary Mortar and pestle- experimental archaeology re-created the use of prehistoric essential oils of rosemary, wild marjoram, coriander, bergamot, laurel, myrtle, cinnamon, parsley, bitter almonds, turpentine, fennel, lavender, and anise. Cyprus Mortar & Pestle dated as being 4,000 years old having olive oil as the base. Limestone material, the mortar and pestle, was unusual with more than 18 multiple cupels. In 1998, the Italian Archaeological Mission of CNR Channel News Radio brought to light the oldest known scent factory in Mediterranean prehistory. Coriander roots grow wild over a wide area of the near east and southern Europe. Fifteen desiccated mericaps were found in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B level of the Nahal Hemel Cave in Israel, which may be the oldest archeological find of coriander. Blood & Honey: Secret Herstory of Women Book Excerpt Just 10 days before U.S. President Bill Clinton and allies bombed the Republic of Srpska in 1999, I stood in a crowded, smoke-filled meeting room with Novi Travnik’ s middle-aged and older women who were war survivors and war crimes survivors. Some of the Bosnian Muslim women survived two wars. Cup readings—as a part of my trauma program—began with the overwhelming saturation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) I witnessed in Bosnia. No amount of money or material goods could erase the century of wars fought on South Slavic soil. Ingrained into genetic materials, trauma is the psycho-biological factor in that the body stores the memories and directs our brains—our neurological responses hard wired from perhaps older than Paleolithic bodies. We do not have 20,000 some years from which to practice random mutation and redirect our flight-or-fright response. Nor should we erase a staggeringly brilliant set of neurological responses to survive natural catastrophes, which in modern days and nights is vulnerably applied to stem man-made violence. Exposed to the aftermath of another major war on Bosnian soil, the Bosnian women who were middle-class or business owners before the war faced severe economic issues, escalated domestic violence pogroms and very real female human rights concerns. I founded my non-profit the Kolo: Women’s Cross Cultural Collaboration. The Kolo: WCCC since March 1999 implemented an engendered psychosocial educational trauma treatment and training format that also provided skills for Conflict Evolution leading to intimacy not violence. The Kolo: WCCC continues treatments and trainings to present day to stem the overwhelming chronic acute trauma situations, which rests on the women in their communities. The engendered Kolo format matured on the wisdom that the women were central as major caregivers and with an understanding of how trauma unless addressed will only continue the intergenerational trauma cycle and seed violence in war torn countries globally. https://www.magoism.net/2013/06/meet-mago-contributor-danica-borkovich-anderson/ (Meet Mago Contributor) Danica Anderson, Ph.D. Dr. Danica Andersonwww.kolocollaboration.org
(Art Essay 2) Conversations with Women and Plants: A transcendental opening via the Voynich portal by Claire Dorey

[Author’s note: Page numbers are referenced as they appear in the actual manuscript as per The Voynich Manuscript,Yale Books, not this PDF. Link to PDF of the Voynich Manuscript, holybooks.com. Feel free to peruse before reading.] Art by Claire Dorey Nature is nurture, is art, is patience, is medicine. When night flowers and thistles whisper in the breeze listen to their secrets and ask what you can grow in your imagination. Botanical spas were popular during the Renaissance and imagery shows women and men bathing together, yet in the Voynich the narrative is female. Ten nymph-women bathe, in a viridescent, brew, beneath what appears to be a medieval tent (p76a). Look closer: it has a ‘chicory’ canopy, symbolising the cosmic-plant energy of the astrological medicine wheel. Apotropaic magic rains on the bathers. Wavy petals, code for Alkaid’s power, fringe the ‘canopy’ and decorate a tubular ‘plant stem’ rising to the cosmos – a conduit for star magic. The ‘tent poles’ are ‘plant stems’ delivering divine and cerebral energy to the bather’s crown chakras. There are two ‘chicory canopies’, beneath which six women face four women, seemingly in conversation. Above the six, a crucifix. Above the four – none. Does this image show women in conversation, talking Christian and Pagan beliefs? “Whosoever counts these Lays as fable, may be assured that I am not of his mind.” – Marie de France. – “Marie de France Quotes.” BrainyQuote.com. Women “languish in the footnotes” of medieval history but the poetry of Marie de France (born 1160) implies some enjoyed sexual and intellectual freedom, contrary to church orthodoxy. “Rosemary is the jewel of the Mediterranean and in Italy it’s said that rosemary grows near homes filled with strong women.” – Paige Vanderbeck, Green Witchcraft: A Practical Guide to Discovering the Magic of Plants, Herbs, Crystals and Beyond. Prick of nettle, thorn of rose, women’s hands blister and bleed foraging for magic. Blood drops on the white, lacy ‘wild carrot’ flower symbolise plant wisdom passing from fingertip to fingertip. Beyond the bathtub the conversation is female. Umbilical cords link bathtub to bathtub, describing a lineage of womb spaces – a matrix of ancestral plant wisdom in flow, incubated by the sisterhood (pp 77a,78,79a,81,84,85). Motherwort (mother root) supports the heart-yoni connection. Women’s hands reach into plant stem conduits (flowers removed) representing foraging, distilling, brewing and administering astro-plant magic via ‘plant straws’ (p77,78a,79a,82,83,84a). Are they ‘talking’ emmenagogues, abortifacients, galactagogues, contraceptives and anodynes – herbs to support female body autonomy? Art by Claire Dorey One illustration is decidedly fallopian (p78a). A women sits upon an astral flower-womb, flanked by and connected to two women sitting upon flower-ovaries. Dangling from the flower-womb are what could be three magic mushrooms or three heart-shaped seeds – perhaps a homage to silphium, the possibly extinct contraceptive, aphrodisiac and abortifacient herb, revered by Minoans and ancient Egyptians. In The Offering of the Heart, a medieval tapestry, the heart became a romantic symbol. Three women, three seeds, three florets, seems like code for the Triple Goddess to me, perhaps referencing Hecate, Prosperina and Diana. Her own boss, lunar, forest Goddess Diana was patron of witchcraft in the middle ages. Leafy sheaths become bathtubs, climbing stems, in a vertical illustration down the page margin (p80a). It’s unclear which plant this is. It resembles Angelica, cow parsley, poison hemlock and the way silphium is drawn on Kyrenaica coins. This image tells a story. The nymph-woman at the top of the stem, taking a dip in her ‘leaf sheath’ bathtub, beneath an astral, medicine wheel, flower canopy, holds a crucifix. Further down the stem, a second nymph-woman reclines in her bathtub, holding a ring that could be part of a witches tool kit; a Celtic torc: an ancient Egyptian shen ring; or the rod-and-ring symbol held by Inanna – all divine infinity / protection symbols. Does this page discuss plant and religious poison? The myth of the nymph endured through the middle ages. In Greek mythology the flower nymph Chloris who, in fear, exhaled roses, helped Hera conceive by gifting her a flower stem. The stems sprout from an emerald pool (p80a bottom) where a mermaid bathes, surrounded by animals – spirit guides or animals poisoned by hemlock? I think she is Melusine, spirit of forest ponds, who married a supernatural man-beast. This image comes with a warning: no peeking on Saturday when Melusine grows her serpent tail or she’ll hex you with plant magic. This page is peppered with plant stalks resembling ‘rainbows’ – medieval symbol linking heaven and Earth, but I don’t think this references the godhead, since Christian iconography may conceal Pagan deities (the rose symbolises Mary and Isis). One nymph-women, who’s hands are inserted into a rainbow plant stem (purple Angelica or spotted poison hemlock?) has a mermaid tail. Another, sits upon a flower whose petals are sprouting aquatic tails. Is she Melusine, striding supernatural, Pagan and Christian realities, which her oftentimes split tail iconography may describe? Melusine’s lineage stretches to Atargatis, Delphyne, Medusa, Tiamat and the Lamia – aquatic, serpent Goddesses, predating patriarchy. If I’m correct then the ‘star map’ (in part one) could feature Melusine’s castle, Château de Lusignan and Avalon, the otherworld island of ‘wisdom apples’ and lush, healing vegetation. Shapeshifting, from human to dragon, Melusine flew off there. Perhaps the ‘rainbow stems’ reference psychoactive plants and ‘flying off’ describes ‘tripping’. ‘Unguentum pharelis’ (Flying ointment) induced hallucinations and illusions of flying. Threatened, patriarchy continued to link female power with poison – in 1834 Jean-Baptiste Dumas named chloroform after Chloris. Nymph Chloris metamorphosed into Flora, who is associated with flowers from the mythical Fortunate Isles, representing longitude 0 on the medieval map. Perhaps the ‘Voynich star map’ embodies the mythologies of all the Utopian Garden Paradises, including Eden. If this document of dichotomies were the World Tree I’ve probably travelled along one twig. Many mysteries wait to emerge. The Voynich portal has transported the wilderness of my imagination to some wild places: forest ponds inhabited by female spirits; nocturnal flower meadows …
(Poem) The Snot-Nosed Goddess: Tlazolteotl by Robin Scofield

refuses to be refused or refuse while her rubber mouth sews words like dunderhead, and dung beetles center daily meditations in dead leaves, industry for nothing, black munchers firing up decay in the sun’s macrowave, slipping the new moon out of an old skin.
When Betrayal Makes Sense by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright When I was a young woman, a divorced mother of two, working as a waitress I became obsessed by a window hanging in a local store. This cluster of grapes was fashioned out of thick, uneven hunks of stained glass that the artist had retrieved from bombed cathedrals in Europe. The grapes shimmered – ecclesiastical purple with limed green leaves. Although I could hardly afford to, I paid an outrageous $50.00 for this piece and hung it above my bedroom window. I never regretted the choice. Whenever I looked at the stained glass, I had the strange sense that there was a message hidden there. I ignored it. After my brother’s death two years later (my youngest son was two) I lost most of myself, but held on to my love for plants tending to them with deep affection and attention. My first word was ‘fower’ for flower so my relationship with plants stretched back to babyhood. I believed the flowers plants and trees that lived around my grandmother’s house were my close friends. I began to wonder – were those grapes an image for my love of all plants? Although I was socialized into Christianity I lost my tenuous connection to that religion in my twenties because it discounted nature as divinity, and it was in nature that I felt closest to Something I couldn’t define. I reconnected briefly at mid life when my children left home. During this second time around with Christianity I became friends with an Episcopalian priest who was a nature mystic. He sent me on my way, when he too, chose nature and left the church assuring me that I was in good hands…When he died, John became a bear. I was left in liminal space. Now when I looked at the grapes that still hung in my window I thought about Jesus. I remembered words about his being the vine, and something about fruit. Christianity might be dead, but Jesus seemed to live on in me in some peculiar way. Long ago I had acknowledged this figure as radical teacher who loved women and nature. He was a man betrayed by men who died a horrible death. When I read Elaine Pagel’s, the Gospel of Thomas the words of Jesus came to life with an authenticity that seemed to be missing in the Bible. “He who is close to me is close to the fire”. I was finally convinced. This piece of stained – glass was a vegetative aspect of Jesus. Soon after I moved to the mountains. Forests of fragrant evergreens embraced me. I wandered through tall pines spruce and fir feeling a sense of deep peace. I befriended all trees, and every animal that chose me. First it was the chickadees who lived in the pines…then doves and cardinals. I raised frogs each spring. I hadn’t been this happy since before my brother died… Deer, fox, coyote, porcupines, rabbits and bears were always around; the naturalist blossomed. I was becoming who I was meant to be. I forgot about Jesus. The trees became my Cathedral. When the logging machine began to strip the mountains of trees I was devastated. A year or two after moving I had a strange dream. In it I was a trailing emerald green vine that snaked along the ground. In addition to the green I was also deep purple. The startling sense of being that vine stayed with me. The luminescent colors reminded me of my grapes. When I met my first passionflower I was stunned by the astonishing deep violet blue crowns, the fragrance of these flowers, their deep green leaves. I began to root cuttings for myself and others. When I learned that this flower was associated with the crucifixion of Jesus, I felt uneasy, almost revolted. (I most definitely did not want to be identified with betrayal and crucifixion). I was not yet conscious of the extent of betrayal that had permeated my life. Instead, I blamed myself. I also started to hate Jesus believing that somehow I had gotten stuck to him and his crucifixion. I began to dread spring because the six – week period that led up to Jesus’s final betrayals and death was a time when personal betrayals occurred for me with frightening cyclic regularity. Twenty plus years passed before I finally wove my love and relationship to plants, the stained glass grapes, the vine that was me, trees, and the passionflowers into one cogent picture. Each of these images was showing me something I did not want to see. The plants spoke, not once, but again and again until I finally got the message… The same pattern of betrayal that dominated Jesus’s life also ruled mine. The grief and compassion I once felt over Jesus’s life and death returned, but this time I grieved primarily for me. The plants had led me home. Postscript: Both mythic and intergenerational family patterns live us whether we choose them or not. What’s important is to uncover the stories being told and come to terms with them even when they hurt. It’s probably not surprising to the reader that plants do speak to me on a regular basis – not through words, but through the truth of my body. https://www.magoism.net/2014/12/meet-mago-contributor-sara-wright/
(Book Excerpt 8) For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange by Genevieve Vaughan

[Editor’s Note: The following sequels are from For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange by Genevieve Vaughan. Footnotes may differ from the original text.] Giftgiving is the Ur-logic Linguists and philosophers have sometimes thought of explaining language in terms of underlying logical structures–either a simpler language, which would still not explain how language itself works, or some other elementary structure or process. One such process was that of cause and effect. It was thought that it might be possible to reduce subject-verb- object structures to an underlying cause-and-effect structure. One example that was often used was ‘John killed Mary,’ which was given a ‘translation’ in cause-and- effect terms: ‘John caused Mary to die.’ I am often horrified at the (probably unconscious) hostility to women that can be found in linguists’ examples. Perhaps it is evidence of the guilt they feel in denying the mothering paradigm (Mary?) as an explanation for language. Cause-and-effect was found by most linguists not to be an appropriate process to which to reduce language, perhaps because it is not informative enough. It certainly does not carry with it the human relational consequences that giftgiving does. I am proposing giftgiving as the logical process to which to reduce language. Not only can words be seen as need-satisfying gifts, but the syntactic structure of subject, predicate, object can be seen as deriving from giver, gift (or service), receiver. For example, in ‘The girl hit the ball,’ ‘girl’ is the giver, ‘hit’ is the gift, ‘ball’ is the receiver. The ‘translation’ would be, ‘The girl gave a hit to the ball.’ The intentionality of giftgiving can be found in many human actions and in the intentionality of speaking. A sense of motion and completeness which comes to us from a simple transitive sentence is similar to the motion and completeness that take place in giftgiving. In fact, giftgiving is transitive, a motion of something from one place or person to another. In the passive sentence ‘The ball was hit by the girl,’ emphasis is placed on the receiver rather than the giver of the gift. Mothering is the necessary social process in the beginning of life, and this is also the time in which language learning takes place. Mothering is a cultural universal, required by the biologynot of adults, but of infants. To each different culture, mothering must appear simply part of the nature of things but, for the mothers, the need to nurture is social and its accomplishment is intentional. Women’s ability to give milk is a biological advantage that makes caretaking more convenient, but they must do the caretaking in a cultural context within social parameters. In mothering, there is an intentional transfer of goods and services from adult to child, from giver to receiver. This experience is fundamental for children, because their lives depend upon it, and it is important and formative for the caretakers as well–if nothing else, because it is enormously time-consuming. It is not surprising that half of humanity is socialized from birth to do caretaking, because it requires a great deal of attention and commitment. A recent book, The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker, attributes our linguistic capacity to a biological endowment. Similarly, mothering was considered instinctual until recently. In both cases, the logic of the gift is what is being covered by denial. The caretaking situation is more fundamental than the condition of objectivity. The experience of free gifts given by the mother and received by the child is more basic to the human being than is the knowledge of cause and effect. The mother is the giver–her care is the gift or service–and the child is the receiver. This process is laid down when the child is learning language in alignment with a syntactic structure of subject (giver), predicate (gift), object (receiver). If words are verbal gifts that satisfy constant social communicative needs, in the structure of an interpersonal speech situation, the speaker would be the giver, the words and sentences the gifts, and the listener the receiver. Sentences are combinations of words, satisfying contingent communicative needs. It would not be far-fetched to think that the word combination process might also take place according to the logic of the gift. The hypothesis that language is based on giftgiving and receiving allows us to look at many different levels at which they may occur, so that aspects of language which seem to be mysterious can be explained as elements of a gift process at some level. First, there is the level of material co-munication–the mother gives gifts or services to the child. Second, there is verbal communication–the mother talks to the child. Third, words are social gifts, each satisfying a constant communicative need. Fourth, words are combined into sentences, which satisfy contingent communicative needs. Fifth, the message and the topic may also be considered gifts, as when we satisfy someone’s need to know something or to talk about something. Sixth, at the level of syntax (within the sentence), the relation between subject, predicate and object re-traces the relation between giver, gift, and receiver. It is important to look at this as a syntactic relation taking place at the level of words themselves, because at the level of things the words re-present, the ‘gift’ may be negative, as in ‘The boy hit the girl,’ or even ‘John killed Mary’ (translation: ‘John gave death to Mary’). At the level of material communication, such violence is contradictory and harmful, causing more grievous needs rather than satisfying needs. Nonetheless, at the level of sentence structure, the gift process can function independently from the level of experience. Thus, ‘The girl hit the ball,’ ‘Mother made a cake’ and ‘John killed Mary’ all have the same giver, gift, receiver sentence structure though on the level of reality, they are very different events. At the syntactic level, we can also look at the relations between adjectives and nouns, adverbs and verbs, as relations between gifts and receivers. In ‘The brown dog ran fast to the gate,’ ‘brown’ is given to …
(Photo Essay) Matrix, Mother, Womb by Lena Bartula

Matrix can be described as ‘something in which something else develops or forms.’ Also as ‘something shaped like a pattern of lines and spaces.’ In Spanish, it translates to “Matriz: womb.” In several exhibitions since 2008, visitors to my exhibitions have been invited to choose a pre-cut paper huipil, i.e. a blouse or dress in Mesoamerica that served as a message bearer. They can then use a marker provided, to write a tribute, message, or poem to an important woman in their lives, whether human, divine, mythological, etc. The collection now includes approximately 700 – 800 notes in all languages, all in praise and support of the feminine. It is interactive only when I’m available in the gallery to keep refilling with blank huipils. Each huipil is 2-sided, so it can be installed in a window or in the center of a room where visitors can pass between the ropes that hold it. It’s usually presented on a grid like those used in construction, or strung on a fine clothesline across a gallery. The first time I made one was in Albuquerque; the original idea came from seeing the film of the same name. It was such a heavily patriarchal title, I wanted to know more, so I began researching the etymology of the word. This came about synchronistically as I was preparing an exhibition titled Mensajes Guardados / Saved Messages. I was already working with the theme of huipil, enjoying the natural amalgamation of text = textile. While considering the multiple meanings of the word Matrix, I happened on a junkyard with these construction grids, and the project was born. I decided I wanted to ask visitors to write messages to Mother, any mother, and I began cutting up recycled maps, gift wrap, any kind of paper, to fit the grid openings. Every so often, there are many who decline my invitation to participate in what I call “our” exhibition. They can’t bear to think of it, because of unloving memories it triggered. I say “thank you for sharing that, but this isn’t only about paying glorious tribute to your Earth Mother, it can be broader than that,” and we begin the exploration of Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Mother gods, Fairy Godmother, etc. and slowly easing into the Good Mother / Bad Mother syndrome. Sometimes then it becomes a deep conversation, and other times, it’s too intense and the woman will simply excuse herself. The large number of ‘walking wounded’ around this subject increases both my awareness and my compassion. On the other hand, there are some expected notes, some loving, some irreverent, some of course, that I can’t read because of the language, so in reality, they could say almost anything. In the midst of the writing, and the reading of what others write, I witness and participate in rich conversations about things like the correlation between La Virgen de Guadalupe and Green Tara, for instance. Or the need for earth goddesses to arise in our consciousness as we battle the corporations that further impact climate change, water and air pollution and our food supply. Then too, the talk can turn to the finding and nurturing of our inner mother, and even our inner daughter. Each time this interactive Matrix is displayed, it gifts us all with a deeper interconnectedness within the grid. Meet Mago Contributor Lena Bartula
(Nine Poets Speak) Santa Rosalia by Maria Famà

[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.] Photo of a holy card of Santa Roslby Maria Famà Santa Rosalia five hundred years forgottenuntil a shepherd on Monte Pellegrinoin 162 a time of plague in Palermomet a beautiful spirit girlwho told him“I am Rosalia SinibaldiYou will find my bones in that caveGather them up bring them to PalermoTell them to parade them through the streetwith marching bands playing good musicIf you do this for meI will save you all from the plagueI promise it will never strike Palermo againI promise I will always protect PalermoAnd so it was doneAnd so it is still doneEvery JulyRosalia’s bones in a silver urn are paraded through the streetswith music singing fireworksa time of joy in Palermo honoring la SantuzzaPalermo’s little saint Santa Rosaliathe strong determined rich girlwho nine hundred years agorefused to marry her father’s choice for herhiked up Monte Pellegrino would not come downher spiritual hunger her spiritual thirsttoo great to live an ordinary lifeRosalia stayed in her cave for forty yearstalking to God communing with Naturebefriending sheep, goats, birds, batsshe prayed and prayed and prayedGenerations passed centuries passedRosalia was forgottenuntil she appeared offering her dealShe kept her promisehelping to keep the plague awayhelping Garibaldi and the Redshirts free Sicilyhelping the Allies free Sicilyhelping all who askSanta Rosalia helps busloads of tourists who visit her shrine baroque façade in front of her caveShe helps the brides trekking up the mountainto place their bouquets at her statueShe helps those who are troubled or need a favor or need to talk over a problem with herin gratitude many bring ex-votostiny golden arms, legs, eyes, hearts, brainshang on the shrine’s wallsSanta Rosalia,headstrong teenager hermit womanSanta Rosalia,Sicilian heroine,your fierce fervorblesses your fierce city. (Meet Mago Contributor) Maria Famà – Return to Mago E*Magazine

(Special Post) Discussion on Mother-Daughter Wound by Mago Circle Members

[Mago Circle members discussed and answered the question, “What do you think of this (the topic article below)? If you are a feminist, it is something that you would promote? If so, why? If not, why not?” The discussion took place on May 15, 2017 and shortly thereafter in The Mago Circle.] Topic Article: “For The Daughters Who Don’t Love Their Mothers – Screw Mother’s Day” by Sade Andria Zabala Everyone talks about a mother’s unconditional love. But what if it doesn’t exist? Daughters are socially expected to be close with their mothers. But are you one of the women who aren’t? Mother’s Day isn’t just for celebrating moms. It’s a day some of us dread because we are reminded we grew up (or are still) unloved, not good enough. (Read the whole article here.)
(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 Mother Teresa 4) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

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

Beltaine/High Spring within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 8 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Beltaine/High Spring are: Southern Hemisphere – October 31st or 1st November Northern Hemisphere – April 30th (May Eve) or 1st May though the actual astronomical date varies. 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. The twin fires lit in older times on hilltops in Ireland for Beltaine likely represented the two eyes of night and day.[i] With this vision, Goddess as Sun and Moon sees Her Land, and with the power of Her eyes (Sun and Moon) brings forth life and beauty. With the fire eyes, Goddess“reoccupied and saw her whole land…”[ii] The twin fires later came to be used to run cattle between as they headed out to Summer pasture, for the purpose of burning off the bugs and ticks of Winter; the fires may thus be understood to serve a cleansing effect and likely the origins of the tradition of the ceremonial leaping of flames by participants in Beltaine festivities. In PaGaian Cosmology this is poetically expressed as the Flame of Love that burns away the psyche’s “bugs and ticks,” and sees the Beauty present, and calls it forth. The Beltaine flames may be a celebration of Sun entering into the eye, into the whole bodymind: a powerful creative evocation upon which the Dance of Life depends, and as the cleansing power of love and pleasure. PaGaian focus for Beltaine is on the Holy Desire/Passion for life, and it may be accounted for on as many levels as possible … the complete holarchy/dimensions of the erotic power. On an elemental level, there is our desire for Air, Water, the warmth of Fire, and to be of use/service to Earth. There is an essential longing, sometimes nameless, sometimes constellated, experienced physically, that may be recognized as the Desire of the Universe Herself – desiring in us.[iii] We may remember that we are united in this desire with each other, with all who have gone before us, and with all who come after us – all who dance the Dance of Life. Beltaine is a time for dancing and weaving into our lives, our heart’s desires; traditionally the dance is done with participants holding ribbons attached to a pole or tree (a Maypole in the Northern Hemisphere, which may be renamed as a “Novapole” in the Southern Hemisphere), wrapping the pole with the ribbons. This is not simply the heterosexual metaphor as is thought in modern times (thanks largely to Freudian thinking) – it is deeper than that. As Caitlin and John Matthews point out: it is symbolic of a far greater exchange than that between men and women – in fact between the elements themselves. … the maypole, a comparatively recent manifestation in the history of mystery celebrations, can be seen as the linking of heaven and earth, binding those who dance around it … into a pattern of birth, life and death which lay at the heart of the maze of earth mysteries.[iv] Beltaine is a celebration of Desire on all levels – microcosm and on the macrocosm, the exoteric and the esoteric.[v] It brought you forth physically, and it brings forth all that you produce in your life, and it keeps the Cosmos spinning. It is felt in you as Desire, it urges you on. It is the deep awesome dynamic that pervades the Cosmos and brings forth all things – babies, meals, gardens, careers, books and solar systems. We have often been taught, certainly by religious traditions, to pay it as little attention as possible; whereas it should be the cause of much more meditation/attention, tracing it to its deepest place in us. What are our deepest desires beneath our surface desires. What if we enter more deeply into this feeling, this power? It may be a place where the Universe is a deep reciprocity – a receiving and giving that is One. Brian Swimme says, in a whole chapter on “Allurement”: You can examine your own self and your own life with this question: Do I desire to have this pleasure? Or rather, do I desire to become pleasure? The demand to ‘have,’ to possess, always reveals an element of immaturity. To keep, to hold, to control, to own; all of this is fundamentally a delusion, for our own truest desire is to be and to live. We have ripened and matured when we realize that our own deepest desire in erotic attractions is to become pleasure … to enter ecstatically into pleasure so that giving and receiving pleasure become one simple activity. Our most mature hope is to become pleasure’s source and pleasure’s home simultaneously. So it is with the allurements of life: we become beauty to ignite the beauty of others.[vi] Beltaine is a good time to contemplate this animal bodymind that you are: how it seeks real pleasure. What is your real pleasure? Be gracious with this bodymind and in awe of this form, this wonder. Beltaine is also a good time to contemplate light, and its affects on our bodyminds as it enters into us; how our animal bodyminds respond directly to the Sun’s light, which apparently may awaken physical desires. Light vibrates into us – different wavelengths as different colours – and shifts to pulse. It is felt most fully in Springtime (“spring fever”), as light courses down a direct neural line from retina to pineal gland. When the pineal gland receives the light pulse it releases “a cascade of hormones, drenching the body in hunger, thirst, or great desire.”[vii] We respond directly to Sun as an organism: it is primal. NOTES: [i] Michael Dames, Ireland, 195-199. [ii] Ibid., 196. [iii] I have been inspired and informed by Swimme’s articulations about desire, particularly in Canticle to the Cosmos, video 2 “The Primeval Fireball,” video 5 “Destruction and Loss,” and video 10 “The Timing of Creativity.” [iv] Matthews, The Western Way, 54. And for more, see “Creativity …
(Poem) Samhain by Annie Finch

In the season leaves should love, since it gives them leave to move through the wind, towards the ground they were watching while they hung, legend says there is a seam stitching darkness like a name. Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days, till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor. I turn my hand and feel a touch move with me, and when I brush my young mind across another, I have met my mother’s mother. Sure as footsteps in my waiting self, I find her, and she brings arms that hold answers for me, intimate, waiting, bounty: “Carry me.” She leaves this trail through a shudder of the veil, and leaves, like amber where she stays, a gift for her perpetual gaze. From Eve (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010) (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
(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 …
(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
(Art & Poem) Spring Equinox by Sudie Rakusin & Annie Finch

A SEED FOR SPRING EQUINOX . . . till I feel the earth around the place my head has lain under winter’s touch, and it crumbles. Slanted weight of clouds. Reaching with my head and shoulders past the open crust dried by spring wind. Sun. Tucking through the ground that has planted cold inside me, made its waiting be my food. Now I watch the watching dark my light’s long-grown dark makes known. Art and poem are included in Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2017). (Meet Mago Contributor) Sudie Rakusin (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch

(Excerpt) “Mago, the Creatrix from East Asia and the Mytho-History of Magoism” by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: The complete article, entitled ” is available in the textbook anthology, Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture,” edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (Mago Books, 2018). See Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “MAGO, THE CREATRIX FROM EAST ASIA, AND THE MYTHO-HISTORY OF MAGOISM” (4-31).] “Mago” refers to “the Creatrix” or “the Great Mother” who is commemorated by Magoists of all times in East Asia and beyond. It is the eponym of ancient Goddess names and their derivatives. Undergirding human cultures, Magoism has resurged time and time again in folk religious traditions, cultural expressions, and socio-political-spiritual movements in the course of history. Nonetheless, the topic of Mago (Magu or Mako) remains untreated in its own right in mainstream East Asian Studies. Espousing Sinocentric historiography, East Asian Studies has functioned to suppress non-Chinese East Asian histories. The problem with Sinocentrism lies in the fact that it normalizes ancient East Asian history as patriarchal, foreclosing the history of pre- and proto-Chinese Old Magoist East Asia/Korea. Partial aspects of Mago representation have been discussed by Korean folklorists and Daoist scholars. The identification of Mago, varying from the nature-shaper to a shaman ruler, to a priestess, and to a Daoist Goddess in her socio-cultural manifestations, must appear incoherent, if not anomalous, to non-Magoist researchers. Why does Mago appear as multiple identities? What does that have to do with pre-established studies? Conflict is tangible. Even if Magoism is denied its very name, a wealth of primary sources from Korea, China, and Japan has surfaced to the public.Among these sources are the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City) and the Handan Gogi (Old Record of Han and Dan) from Korea, which makes possible the very perception of Magoism. Magoism is an old concept that is explicitly and implicitly referred to as “the Principle of Mago,” “the Affair of Mago,” “the Reign of Mago,” “cult of Mago,” “the Origin,” or simply “Mago” in primary sources.[1] In a narrow sense, Magoism connotes the trans-patriarchal cultural tradition of the Creatrix, developed and propagated by ancient East Asian Magoists. In a broad sense, it refers to the worldwide manifestation of gynocentric cultures that embody the consciousness of the Great Mother. This study names the patriarchally unnamed, Mago and Magoism, the Creatrix and HER East Asian mytho-historical-ethnological manifestations. I have used uppercases for the pronouns of Mago to convey supremacy as needed. We will discuss the following: (1) Mago epithets, (2) a gamut of primary sources collected from Korea, China, and Japan, (3) Old Magoist East Asia/Korea and Pan-East Asian Magoism, and (4) the mytho-history of Magoism reconstructed in a six-period circular model of timespace and some pivotal events of each period. Reinstating Magoism, an anciently originated cultural matrix of East Asia that venerates Mago as cosmogonist, progenitor, and ultimate sovereign, is at the heart of this study. With Maoism or rather in it, we are able to attain the one unbroken panoramic view of human history from its cosmogonic beginning to the primordial home of Mago Stronghold, to Old Magoism, to proto-patriarchal Magoism, and finally to its contemporary revival. Primary sources guide the methodology, namely a transdisciplinary feminist study of the Creatrix. A time-old gynocentric (non-ethnocentric, supra-nationalist, and non-dualist) system of meaning emerges from a motley of sources including myths, histories, folktales, place-names, artistic and cultural expressions, religious, geographical and literary texts. The episteme interweaves across mythology, history, spirituality, thealogy, linguistics, ethnology and other disciplines. [1] The Budoji refers to the cosmogonic event and Old Magoism as “the Affair of Mago,” and “the Principle of Mago.” See the Budoji, Chapter 25. Hwanggung’s oath to return to “the Origin” refers to Magoism, see Budoji, Chapter 8. Daoist scholars dub the Daoist devotion “the cult of Mago.” In literature, “Mago” invoked with a strong nostalgic sentiment by her devotees indicates the bygone past of Old Magoism. For “the Reign of Mago,” see Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2015), 61-2, 97 note 41. [The complete article, entitled ” is available in the textbook anthology, Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture,” edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (Mago Books, 2018).] *** Below was the very first interview of Dr. Hwang, “Mago, the First Mother from East Asia by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang” [Excerpts from “Mago, the First Mother from East Asia,” Creatrix Media Live (CML) Roundtable Radio Talk with Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang. May 23, 2011] Jayne DeMente: Welcome Helen, I was fortunate to read some of your research and I applaud you because, we in the Western WSE movement have long needed to hear more from Asian women spiritual leaders and feminists and your reference to the Neolithic timeline… For our listeners and participants online, let’s lead with the question of who is Mago, was she a mother figure, what is Magoism, does any other deity pre-date her? Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: *Mago is the great goddess known to East Asians throughout history. She is the first mother of all, cosmogonist, and ultimate sovereign/ruler. She has many names. Among them are Triad Deity (Samsin), Grandmother (halmi), Auspicious Goddess (Seogo), Evil (Magui), and Old Goddess (Nogo). She is also known as the Giantess who shaped the natural and cultural landscape. Her manifestations are so multivalent that one may think they do not refer to the same goddess. She was well loved, given high esteem, celebrated by East Asians in the past. She was almost completely forgotten, however in modern times, up until the 1980s in Korea, when the principle text of Magoism, the Budoji, re-emerged. *Mago is a mother figure in the sense that she bore two daughters, Kunghee and Sohee, and managed her household called the Castle of Mago, the primordial paradise of humanity. She is the ancestor of all races. She takes care of everything on earth via the equilibrium of cosmic music/sound/vibration. *Magoism is the term that refers to the totality of culture/civilization venerating Mago as the great goddess. It is a tradition …
(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.
(Book Announcement 4) Introduction (part 2) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Editor’s Note: This Introduction is from She Rises: How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 2.] Pre-order available now! The Text of the Primordial Mother/the Creatrix/Mago She Rises Volume 2, like her predecessor, is born out of the Magoist vision.[i] It intends to raise the collective consciousness of WE, a cognitive symbolic system derived from the knowing of the Primordial Mother or the Creatrix. One may call it an embodied knowing or gynocentric epistemology. Our stories shed light on the holistic view in which all parts are revered as a microcosm of the Creatrix. The She Rises book is an emblem of gynocentric cosmology: All contributions are interconnected and the book is enriched by each and all contributions. This book is NOT just about what we have discovered and what we have experienced about Goddess feminism, activism, and spirituality but what and how we do with our discoveries and experiences. Where are we heading to with our knowing of S/HE? The collective consciousness of WE summons a gynocentric reality. This book is designed to show our togetherness in our uniqueness. It stands for unity that is enhanced by the diversity of individuals. The key phrase in the subtitle, “Goddess feminism, activism, and spirituality,” is a reminder of the all-embracing gynocentric way of our becoming. We ARE committed to the making of the book to reflect the gynocentric principle of unity in diversity. We allow our differences to lead us to a new (read gynocentric) territory without making ourselves fall into factionalism. Competition in a constructive manner helps us grow. But factionalism destroys us. We speak our truths not to argue or win. We speak our truths because they are true to us. Truth speaks, even when we can’t hear. And we trust ourselves to speak our truths in HER. And S/HE shall bring us together in WE. To trust in our contributors is the map that we editors have followed in She Rises collective books. In the process, we have learned that what we really need to be careful of, not the other camp of Goddessians, but what really divides us among Goddessians/Magoists. In my Introduction to She Rises Volume 1, I drew attention to the word “Goddess,” concerning our need to reclaim it despite its linguistic drawback. Summarily, we strategically adopt the word, “Goddess,” knowing its derivative and subsequently dualistic nature from the word “God” in the English language.[ii] We are aware of the functional nature of language, a means for the meaning that we intend to convey. We choose one word over another for our political and utilitarian reasons. Our use of the word “Goddess” has given us a common ground to come together and interweave the She Rises books. The Magoist vision of the book merits the stance that the Goddess is not just the female divine or a sum of female deities but the Great Goddess, the Primordial Mother. It is S/HE who allows us the holistic view of WE/HERE/NOW, the ultimate reality. We who are awakened in S/HE know that we ARE this S/HE reality. In writing my Introduction to the second book, another term has come to my attention, “feminine.” As seen in this book, some of our authors have favorably chosen the word, “feminine” in support of Goddess feminism, activism, and spirituality for reliable reasons. The context wherein the term is used is complex and highly suggestive of the female divine power. In their uses, some make it clear that the feminine refers to the female divine nature/power of women. Others use it in redefining and deconstructing patriarchal definitions of “the feminine.” It is true that “the divine feminine” or “the sacred feminine” has taken on popularity so much so that it appears almost indispensable in the Goddess Talk. Nonetheless, I hold that there is a point that we need to think and explore together the meaning of “feminine.” Linguistically speaking, referring to the gender quality of women, the meaning of “feminine” fluctuates. I find it worth broaching these questions to us: Is the term “feminine” empowering Goddess feminism? Why yes? Why no? These questions can only be answered by our authors and readers. We editors by no means advocate the purge of the term, feminine, from this book. Forcing unity is not gynocentric. We propose the question as an ongoing conversation among Goddessians. Here is my stance to the question, which is yes and no. When the context indicates an ancient (read gynocentric) or feminist meaning, the word “feminine” certainly empowers women. When “the divine feminine” indicates the Primordial Mother within an environment like this book, the word is empowering. Put differently, the meaning of “feminine” can be conveyed as gynocentric, that is, women-empowering, when “the divine feminine” refers to the Creatrix, the Great Goddess. In this case, the gender quality of “feminine” is coherent with the biological quality of “female.” The meaning of “feminine” in such context does NOT reflect the patriarchally-imposed qualities of women; the feminine is gynocentric and sacred. However, when the word “feminine” is used outside the gynocentric context, it becomes dubious in meaning, if not self-defeating, obstructing the impetus of women’s empowerment. Referring to the gender quality (read a social/patriarchal construct), of women, the meaning of “feminine” changes in different times and cultures. It is not free from socio-cultural settings. Being feminine today in the U.S. would be very different from being feminine two centuries ago. Also, being feminine today in one country would be very different from being feminine today in another country. On the other hand, the word, “female,” conveying the biological and biologically-derived quality of women, remains coherent in meaning across times and cultures. “Female” offers us a solid ground to build our feminist activism and feminist spirituality. Thus far, we women still hold the power of female biological and biologically-derived traits. The word, “feminine” alone risks a powerful conceptual ground for Goddess feminism. Precisely, it falls short in capturing the divine power of the Primordial Mother, the Creatrix. For example, I …

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