April 19, 2016November 15, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Tribute) In Loving Memory of Lydia Ruyle (1935-2016) by Mago Circle Members

We posthumously honor Lydia Ruyle (August 5, 1935-March 26, 2016) as Patron of Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality. Mago Circle Members on June 11, 2016. Glenys Livingstone I feel blessed Read More …

April 17, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Maya Daniel

Maya Daniel is a pen name, living in the Philippines, in my 50s, and i am dishing out rebel poetry.

April 15, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Bones of a Generous Woman by Phibby Venable

Open this woman and she pours a torrent of sweet butter Tender shoots stretch her arms Her hands are a gentle torment washing away the grit of damaged lovers Dazzling Read More …

April 14, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(2015 Mago Pilgrimage) Neuk-do (Serpent Island) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

I wanted to visit Neuk-do because of the Mago story told in the region. Its name Neuk-do, which means the Serpent Island (구렁이섬), whispers a deep memory of the gynocentric Read More …

April 13, 2016November 15, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Video) Behind the Screen Interview with Joan Marler for Signs Out of Time by Donna Read

April 12, 2016July 27, 2022 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Book Review) Genevieve Vaughan’s The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning by Kaarina Kailo

(Book Review) The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning by Genevieve Vaughan (Mimesis International 2015) Genevieve Vaughan has published her third book regarding the reality Read More …

April 8, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Art Poem) Star of the Sea by Yvonne M. Lucia

April 7, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Nicole Schwab

Nicole Schwab is author of The Heart of the Labyrinth, a young woman’s poetic journey across the Andes, in search of our lost connection with the sacred feminine. It has Read More …

April 6, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Spanish/English Poem 1) Excerpts from Tinta negra/Black Ink by Xánath Caraza

[Author’s Note: these poems are from my new manuscript, Tinta negra/Black Ink. The poems do not have titles; they are simply numbered. Both poems were originally written in Spanish and translated Read More …

March 28, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Book Review) Hendren & Baartz’s New Love: a reprogramming toolbox for undoing the knots, reviewed by Elizabeth Hall Magill

I have often written of the work of undoing patriarchal thought—facing our assumptions, our fears, our wounds. While we all must do this inner work, to face patriarchal thought as Read More …

March 27, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Kaarina Kailo

Dr. Kaarina Kailo is municipal councellor and formerly ass. or full professor of women’s studies (Oulu University and formerly Simone de Beauvoir Institute in Montreal). She has published extensively on Read More …

March 24, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Leslie Carol Botha, WHE

Leslie Carol Botha is a Women’s Health Educator and consultant, and an internationally recognized expert on women’s hormones and their behaviors. She is the co-author of Understanding Your Mind, Mood, Read More …

March 23, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Essay 2 Part 3) Why Do I Love Korean Historical Dramas? by Anna Tzanova

Part 3 UNIVERSAL APPEAL The worldwide success of Korean historical drama began in 2004, when Dae Jang Geum (대장금), “The Great Jang Geum”, or “Jewel in the Palace”—a Sageuk relating a Read More …

(Poetry and Photography) Spring Lament 2020 by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright We Could Have Listened I made my way to the river, heard the song of a starving body barely rippling over black stone. Man’s* need to control her flow may win out this spring as more ditches are gouged, and she is flooded (not in time for the young cottonwoods whose roots are too shallow, but to grow human food and graze destructive cattle man must have to eat). A plague sweeps through poisoned air infecting us One by one… As I round the Bosque at daybreak breathing in grasses sweetened by last night’s rain crystals hang from bare branches, the decaying comfort of moist cottonwood leaves mutes all sounds beneath my feet. S/he* listens as I give thanks, witnesses my Lament… We could have listened to weeping trees, screaming plants dying animals witnessed holes in blue sky, stopped poisoning Earth’s precious ground. Nature tried to capture man’s arrogant attention as he built more walls between self and other ignoring mounting evidence supporting what Indigenous peoples have known for millennia: Interconnection is Fundamental to Life – Dead whales and krill, the slaughter of all but three percent of the Earth’s forests, missing birds, unbreathable air, melting ice – Some western gods of science still protest to no avail. How many people Have I heard say “Oh, it’s sad – too bad they’re are dying by the millions” as if humans were somehow Exempt. Unique. Those of us that heard the cries were ridiculed. Branded “ Voice of Doom”. We could have listened to weeping trees, screaming plants, dying animals, witnessed holes in blue sky, stopped poisoning Earth’s precious ground. Has Nature finally made her point with an invisible killer transmitted by wind that shrieks a dire warning? This rampant threat will reduce human populations, with the potential to eliminate a species by first destroying those most vulnerable. Millions may die before business returns to normal in this Straw Man’s world until the Next Time… We could have listened. to weeping trees, screaming plants, dying animals, witnessed holes in blue sky, stopped poisoning Earth’s precious ground. “Man” is used to define the human species as he still defines himself… I wonder what happened to humankind?“S/he” refers to Nature as being inclusive – male, female. transgender – Postscript I have been witnessing with increasing horror and grief the willful refusal of people to accept that any species except our own is capable of developing awareness or consciousness, has its own teleology, or its own reason for being. We use Nature as a commodity; as if every non human species was designed to meet our needs and those of no other. For much of my life my experiences and my dreams have taught me that all non -human species have awareness and possess an intelligence equal to our own – although intelligence in particular is expressed differently in Nature. It is clear from a lifetime of observations that all living things lead meaningful lives that we know nothing about. I have endured ridicule and derision for my ideas throughout my life. It wasn’t until this year that I was finally able to let go of trying to shift the trajectory that humans are on through my writing. Ironically it was my relationship with Nature that helped me understand that I had done what I could. Today most of my writing is focused on the fascinating aspects of Nature making my writing once again a joyful endeavor. In this process I finally got it, realizing that I had it backwards. Nature doesn’t need us; we need her. It is humans that are in need of deep healing. Nature will survive as a whole although at present many species are already extinct and so many others are dying. The fact that S/he will survive brings me great joy, and for that knowing in my bones I feel deep gratitude. The difference between me and most people is that I have known all my life how much I needed Nature to survive. It was this need that turned me into an advocate in the first place. Sadly, we humans don’t seem capable of living sustainably. (The exception, of course, refers to Indigenous folk who developed a culture based on shared resources and sustainability; pockets remain) I am just as much a part of the problem as anyone else, although I do carry awareness of my complicity and grieve deeply. There are many ways to look at the current pandemic. Many see it as the “enemy,” Nature at her worst – The “man against nature paradigm” is alive and well. Personally, it is as frightening to me as it is to others… I do not want to die from this virus and I am one of the people at the highest risk – But I am also aware that Nature is ultimately focused on the big picture (although she also has a deeply personal aspect), and the human species is a failed experiment as of now. Nature exemplifies the necessity of Interconnection and Community. Humans have failed to hear her anguished cries…and so I see this pandemic as a “natural event” – a way to begin to redress the horrific imbalances that we have created as humans at the expense of all of Nature. Nothing is personal here. Human induced Climate Change will no doubt do the rest. How ironic. It’s only a matter of time. Today in the northern hemisphere we celebrate the turning of the seasonal wheel into spring – the vernal equinox – normally a joyous time for many – but not this year. Instead, we are fearful and isolated in our homes … Outside my window the wind is howling and churning up so much dust that with emphysema I don’t dare go out. The raging wind also seems to be reminding me of the spread of this pandemic through polluted air, which fueled the writing of this prose and post. In this area BLM was supposed …
(Photo Essay 3) Pilgrimage in a Time of Plague by Kaalii Cargill

I offer these images in gratitude for the journeys I have taken and in the hope that the ways stay open for those of us who are called to visit ancestral places where Goddess was honoured . . . c 35,000 BCE. Hohle Fels, Schelklingen, Swabian Jura, Germany The path to Hohle Fels Cave Inside Hohle Fels (Hollow Rock) Cave Nigel Shaw & Carolyn Hillyer performing a ritual concert – THE ANTLERED DRUM – at Hohle Fels Cave, July 2018. 40,000 – 35,000 BCE, Geißenklösterle Cave, Germany. “The Adorant”, Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart. Karanovo, Bulgaria. This large excavated tell (mound) shows successive deposits spanning the early Neolithic through to the middle Bronze Age. Levels I and II represent the early Neolithic (6400 – 6000 BCE). Tell Yunatsite, Bulgaria. Another partly excavated tell spanning c6000 years. I worked on this archaeological site for 2 weeks in July 2018. Tell Yunatsite sunset. c 4500 BCE. Karanovo culture, Pazardzik, Bulgaria. Natural History Museum, Vienna Womb Cave (Utroba), Kardzhali, in the area Tangardak Kaya, near the village of Nenkovo, Bulgaria. Entrance to the Womb Cave – reached by climbing a 3 kilometre track and then a ladder! The entrance from inside the cave – there She is! Meet Mago Contributor Kaalii Cargill
(Poem) Joy by Vajra Ma

see, here, sister, where She pierced me this scar and this one and this one here petals in my body yantra here, trace them with your fingers
Celebrate Bees by Susun Weed

I love bees. I’m fascinated by native bees. My heart rejoices when I hear them buzzing. I love the carpenter bees that bumble around. Did you know that most wild bees are stingless? And that native bees are the best pollinators for native plants? And that very few people are allergic to bee stings? Really. Bees have been wrongly blamed. It’s wasp stings that folks are allergic to. But few take the time to notice the difference between wasp or a bee when just stung. Wasps are carnivorous. So you (being meat) react strongly to their bite. Bees are vegetarians. Their sting hurts, but doesn’t send your immune system into shock. Celebrate bees today. https://www.magoism.net/2024/12/meet-mago-contributor-susun-weed/
(Budoji Essay 4) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part 4: Magoist Origin of Immortals “I maintain that Immortals originally refers to Mago’s descendants in Mago Castle, the Primordial Paradise. They are the primordial clan community of the Mago Species, comprised of the divine, demigods, and humans.” [This is a translation and interpretation of the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), principal text of Magoism. Read the translation of Chapter 1 of the Budoji.] Magoist Origin of Immortals: All in the Mago Species are given the original nature of immortality or transcendence. Readers are advised to set aside the literal meaning in the English language of the words immortals or transcendents. Immortals is a translation of the East Asian term seon (仙, xian in Chinese). I choose the translation immortals over transcendents not because it is a better translation but because it is the most commonly used term by Western Daoist translators.[i] Although it is known as a Daoist term, I hold that it is pre-Daoist, namely Magoist, in origin. Primarily, it refers to the Mago Species (Mago and Her descendants) who dwelt in Mago Castle, the primordial home, to be discussed in detail in later chapters. Likewise, historical figures known as Immortals are Magoist rather than Daoist.
(Photo Essay 2) Goddess by Kaalii Cargill

[Author’s note: This series of photo essays is inspired by themes that have emerged for me as I’ve been visiting with the Grandmothers in Nature, archaeological sites, and museums around the World.] “The patriarchal denial of the Mother becomes the political denial of the people; which becomes the total mechanization, via capitalization, of the human body. And as the body moves, so does God move: the Biblical capitalist West has created God as a prison-keeper, as a factory-boss, rather than as a living cosmos. God as an assembly-line rather than a dance . . .” Barbara Mor, quoted in Jack Dempsey, (Tribute 2) Barbara Mor, “Relentless Love”: Letters 1988-2002 from a Writer’s Best Friend by Jack Dempsey. Return to Mago E*Magazine, July 17, 2018. Read the whole piece here: https://www.magoism.net/…/tribute-2-barbara-mor-relentless…/ The dance of the living cosmos – a play of light, moving water, birds soaring, women dancing . . . Magura Cave (Rabisha Cave), Bulgaria. Bat guano painting, 6000-8000 BCE. Devatashka Cave, Lovech Province, Bulgaria. Paleolithic cave shelter, Krumovgrad, Bulgaria. Amazing sky near “Badjaliata” Cave, Silistra, Bulgaria. Water dancing (somewhere in Europe) Nature playing, Goreme National Park. Anatolia. Magical portal, Vespasianus Titus Tunnel, Samandağ, Hatay Province, southern Turkey. The Pool of Abraham (Balikli Göl), Sanliurfa, Anatolia. Mythic street theatre, Gozo, Malta. Candles at Petra, Jordan. Blue Grotto, Malta. “Dance”, Henri Matisse (1909). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Aegina Island, Greece. Meet Mago Contributor KAALII CARGILL
(Prose) “Tree of Life” Dream by Sara Wright

Full Seed Moon 3/9/20 I see a beautiful fruit tree that is in full bloom with delicate pink blossoms and a man comes and attacks it violently – Oh, all the blossoms fall away, drifting tears cover the ground. Before this the little tree had bloomed “forever,” but man brought death to the blossoming tree and to the tree of life itself. Little interpretation is necessary to understand this dream on a collective level. The Tree Holocaust is upon us. The Anthropocene is destroying more forests every second. Billions of trees. The lungs of the earth. The Beings that gift us with rain. We have less than three percent of intact forest left on this planet. “Man” represents the age of the Anthropocene – each one of us – male or female. Every human being on this earth is complicit in tree obliteration and the terrifying violence associated with this slaughter. It’s important to note that the tree is weeping. (My sense is that the tree isn’t just weeping for being murdered but that s/he is weeping for those who would annihilate her/him). The most chilling part of this dream is that once the little tree bloomed “forever.’ Forever suggests timelessness – mythology routinely breaks through the artificial walls that separate diverse peoples from one another, and the way humans experience time with stories that include this word that transcends time. Past, present, future, merge simultaneously into the eternal Now – or did, but in the dream this reality has broken down irrevocably. Mythologically, the image/story/pattern of the Tree of Life is found in every culture. This is surely no accident. Indigenous peoples across the globe have been in a loving, respectful reciprocal relationship with trees since the dawn of humankind; each group has its own sacred tree and all trees are considered holy beings. Intuitively, and through reciprocal relationship these humans have known for millennia that we depend upon these beings for life. The Tree of Life as a pattern also indicates wholeness and inclusiveness. Note that many images of the tree of life like the one that I am using here – my Huichol string painting – also includes animals, birds and insects. Postscript Today it is no longer easy to dismiss trees as the background furniture of our lives or sneer at various mythologies because of their primitive ideas because we have learned that without trees humans will eventually cease to exist… Two other dreams have reiterated to me recently, “we are in too deep, and love is not enough.” One hopeful personal note? All winter the cottonwood trees have been “talking” to me in the Bosque, through my senses/and through the air by means of telepathy – a kind of instant communication without words. They tell me how thirsty they are, how much they love being seen and loved. They repeat that they accept their dying, and that new trees of another kind will replace them at some point in the future, although it won’t be soon. A healing balm flows through me as I listen with my heart to their plight. Because of them, acceptance flows through me like the river that parallels the Bosque, although sadness lingers because I love them and all their relatives so much. Sometimes in the Bosque I also see dead grasses pulsing pin-points of light – like fireflies under my feet – they keep me focused on the ground – inner sight – insight? Lately though the trees have fallen silent and the grasses no longer glow. Now my dreams repeat what I see with my own eyes and messages I have received in the Bosque – that protective bark is falling away from dying trees, leaves are yellowing/dropping because of drought, and that death is on the horizon for most trees through the Southwest as desertification intensifies. But in another dream I learn that elsewhere pockets of dark tree greening can still be found; I interpret this as hope that some trees may live on regardless of human stupidity. If we could save the trees; we could save ourselves. The reverse is equally true. If we save ourselves (and it’s humans that are in desperate need of healing the split between themselves and the rest of nature), the trees will survive. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright.
(She Summons Excerpt) Why We Need the Goddess at the Time of Great Global Crisis: Evolving a New Feminist Sacred Activist Vision by Kavita Byrd

[Editor’s Note: This essay was included in She Summons: Why Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality? Volume 1, coedited by Kaalii Cargill and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (Mago Books, 2021).] Given that the loss of the sense of the sacred in our lives – our relationship with the Earth as well as our values, our world-view, our systems – is clearly destroying the Earth and driving us to extinction – one would think that religions and spiritual paths would be the first to respond, to restore the sacred in our lives, to be on the front- lines in regenerating our planet and society. Yet both the traditional religions and New Age, post-modern spiritual approaches have failed to respond effectively to the global crises. Instead of challenging and transforming patriarchy, materialism and capitalism, the sources of the crises, they have often become complicit with them, both directly entwined with them and complacent about changing them. How can we bring spirituality, then, into a direct and powerful response to the existential crises we face, rather than simply serving the forces ofescapism, fatalism, elitism and complacency? In light of the ways our present forms of spirituality have fallen short of, even impeded, the robust response to the crises so much needed today, how we can create a new spiritual activist paradigm that can truly rise instead to the challenges of these times – the clarion call from nature herself and our own evolutionary imperative for radical transformation, both of our consciousness and our systems – in a fresh and effective way? Today the climate emergency, and impending social and ecological collapses it augurs, can no longer be ignored. Even the schoolchildren are rising up for their survival; it is a sacrilege to pretend not to hear their cries. If our spiritual orientations have been too weak or obsolete to defend them and our Earth, it is clear we need new visions. So what would a new sacred vision look like that supports and guides with its wisdom heartful, impassioned and clear-sighted action, reversing and healing the effects we have caused by the de-sacralization of our world? First of all, we need to know that going beyond our ego is not about disappearing into a void, a detached transcendence from the world, but going beyond the illusion of separation between ourselves and the world; and further, that that illusion itself is built upon a still deeper illusion that either are ever separate from their own eternal Source. What does this mean? That both we and the world (we and “the Earth”, we and the “other”, human or non-human) are held in an infinite space of light, peace and joy that, as we evolve, flows powerfully through both, healing the illusory rift between them. This evolutionary unfolding from the depths of our own true being lifts the veil not only between ourselves and the “other” but also between the present moment and the eternal Presence in which it is appearing, the here and now of our crisis-torn world and the infinite light of healing and guidance that bathes it, washes through it. A true non-dual realization does not pit our own liberation against compassionate action or caring for our world. It suffuses us with the love and wisdom to heal our ravaged planet, and also breaks open the time-space matrix and delivers us to our true nature, which is boundless, endless and whole. Taken in this way, our crises themselves are transmuted into an extraordinary stroke of grace, a source of salvation on both counts, worldly and eternal, of this world and beyond it. The seeming curse of destruction that has fallen upon us becomes a portal of blessing, redemption, an opening into the deathless. I said “first of all”, but really, if we begin to see this, we have the key to all: both healing our crises, planetary transformation, and a true spiritual awakening – the key that can crack open the illusory divisions that separate us from each other, our precious Earth, and, in the same stroke, our own infinite Source; the stroke of grace that can break open the grid of illusion, the prison bars of time and space, that keep us separated from our own limitless true nature, both in its formless Essence and all its myriad forms. In this most portentous of crises, we are being handed the master-key to the mystery of who we really are. There is a mercy in this crisis, unfathomable to our minds, but which if we meet it empty-handed, showers us with its light. When we can see through our chattering, self-identified thoughts, the prison of our own story and mind, and drop deep into our heart, we come to know ourselves as nothing, and everything at the same time; we come to know who we are really are; the infinite, deathless space that contains the whole of creation. This is the key, and power, to healing our own suffering and the rifts between us, the rifts between us and our Earth, the key to our transformation and ultimate liberation. Our liberation is not from life on this Earth, but from the illusion of separation between us and all of existence, in this world and beyond it. When the veil of mind is lifted, even the seeming separation between life and death dissolves. This is the true birth that beckons us, to Heaven here on this Earth and at the same time eternal. For those of us especially who have practiced Eastern spiritual traditions, we need a more profound and relevant understanding of their true import than we have needed before, a truly non-dual understanding that overcomes the seeming division between spirit and matter, the transcendent and immanent, our infinite true nature and its manifest forms. We are called now to go beyond the illusion of separation itself, from our own formless Essence and also all its forms, here on Earth, in the present. Spirit is not somewhere else, someplace we need to transcend to: it …
(Essay) Rediscovering Matilda Joslyn Gage as the pioneering anti-colonialist feminist thinker by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Wikipedia Image Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), the 19th century United States radical feminist thinker, activist, and author, stands as the forerunner of anti-colonial matriarchal feminist advocates. Gage, pointing out that U.S. federalism was borrowed from the structure of matriarchal Iroquois confederacy known as Six Nations, nestles her feminist thought at the root of non-Eurocentric matriarchal polities.[1] Historically, the U.S. government issued the Indian Appropriations Act in 1851 and 1871, which illustrates how legally the U.S. took over the territory of First Nations people. Having lived through the Gilded Age, the last few decades of the nineteenth century marked by a rapid expansion of capitalist economy during which more than a half of First Nations territories fell under the U.S. statehood, Gage saw what a woman was not expected to see, U.S. Founding Fathers betrayed First Nations people, the Clan Mothers of the Iroquois confederacy in particular. Gage witnessed that the U.S. government stole the constitution of the matriarchal Iroquois confederacy for its own agenda of perpetuating and expanding colonialist capitalist patriarchy. In 1987 and 1988 over a century later from her time, the U.S. House passed and amended “H.Con.Res.331, A concurrent resolution to acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations to the development of the United States Constitution and to reaffirm the continuing government-to-government relationship between Indian tribes and the United States established in the Constitution,” which reads: Acknowledges the contributions made by the Iroquois Confederacy and other Indian nations to the formation and development of the United States. Reaffirms the government-to-government relationship between the United States and Indian tribes. Reaffirms the trust responsibility and obligation of the Government to Indian tribes, including Alaska Natives. Acknowledges the need to exercise good faith in upholding treaties with the various tribes. [2] While the above appears to be a belated but necessary public recognition on the part of the U.S. Congress, Gage, if she returns today, would deplore it for it is a final seal to dismiss the fact that the very formation of the U.S. statehood exploited the matriarchal tradition of the Iroquois Confederacy. H.Con.Res.331 is a symbolic act that legitimizes the colonialist usurpation of matriarchal power. Patriarchal hijacking of the latter is justified in the name of democracy once and for all. Also gone are anti-colonialist U.S. feminist advocacies in the public domain. In the foreground, Gagean anti-colonialist matriarchal feminist thought has become further marginalized among feminists, if ever recognized. The young hear no anti-colonialist feminists in the so-called first wave of feminism in the nineteenth century. Students are encouraged to swallow the postmodern bubbles of anti-colonial feminist discourse, a deplorable impasse in the mind of women. In the Background, however, Gagean feminism ignites a new awareness that women from around the world CAN build alliances following nature’s diversity in unity within the worldwide tradition of Matriarchal Mothers. That is the underpinning of Magoist feminism, which propels the writing of this book. Targeting the patriarchal nature of U.S. federalism, Gage refused to become a mere suffragist feminist for white women exclusively. She saw an old colonialist Eurocentric patriarchy in pursuit of its new capitalist gains resettling as the U.S. statehood in Turtle Island. And Christianity was the engine that boosted its colonialist patriarchal politics. Christianity provided U.S. Founding Fathers with moral authority not only to dominate their own women but also to appropriate the matriarchal Iroquois confederacy for the making of the U.S. Constitution, a new colonialist rule disguised as democracy. Put differently, U.S. Founding Fathers were religiously sanctioned to keep women as a property of men and take the land as they advanced into new territories. They found no better ally than Christianity, which put forth the ideology that God is the male and vice versa. The male is God. In short, Gage demanded that the U.S. government must follow the footsteps of the matriarchal Iroquois confederacy. She was no mere women’s suffrage feminist but a radical advocate of matriarchal leadership in modern politics. For this, she, along with her colleagues, focused on Christianity, a driving force behind U.S. patriarchal and colonialist politics. Christianity needed to be shaken, if not dismantled. How did she do that? By outsourcing matriarchal rules of the worldwide non-Eurocentric world, Gage sought to undermine the espousal between Christianity and U.S. federalism. The suffragist right for white women would mean an agreement in the colonialist appropriation of Iroquois matriarchy, a subjugation not a liberation for white women. Thus, Gage urged that U.S. Founding Fathers must incorporate the matriarchal rule of the Iroquois confederacy. In this regard, Gage’s feminism was distinguished from her contemporary suffragist feminists including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Gage’s critique of Christianity, often lumped together with that of other feminists of her time, was never limited to an equal participation for women in the church or a liberation of women from its oppressive teaching. She opposed Christianity not only because it was oppressive against women but also because it was the colonialist religion, which endorsed white men to rule over against native peoples. For Gage, the newly formed U.S. government was nothing but a new form of patriarchy fully charged with its Eurocentric colonialist and capitalist goals. Gage foresaw the future wherein the U.S. would dominate international politics and spread a modern form of patriarchy, democracy. Seemingly secular, democracy promulgated by the U.S. government relies on Christianity. That Christianity is the largest religion of the planet is not irrelevant to the domination of Eurocentric U.S. democracy. Today without a direct support of Christianity, the modern political system of democracy has successfully instituted itself as an ideal form of government for modern nation-states. That would be a modern contribution of the U.S. to the world’s patriarchy. Consequently, moderns fetishize democracy at the expense of matriarchal socio-political practices. Gage’s critique opens the door to the insight that modern patriarchy is maintained through the international politics of Eurocentric colonial democracy represented by the United States. Gagean feminist thought, underestimated if not forgotten today even among feminists, sheds light on how …

(Special post) Interweaving Mago Threads by Mago Circle Members

“Mago” tradition Magoism is a new word to the modern Western vocabulary, yet it has its linguistic roots in many parts of the globe and in an ancient knowledge and know-how almost lost. Dr Helen Hwang determinedly and methodically is excavating the little-understood historical Mother-Goddess knowledge of Korea, and its traditions, the Mago, and Magoism, and in doing so is unlocking another previously invisible door, and replacing another ripped-off corner of the global map of significant, almost-lost tradition and forgotten knowledge. This is a most welcomed prospect. The newness of this discovery for those who learn of it fills them with excitement because every step to remember the ancient ways, particularly the lost Goddess ways, and those ways that hint of Source, are crucial to humanity remembering itself. Moderns have become accustomed to modes of mind that strip the soul and psyche of finer attunement to earth, sea, stars and each other. This renders most adrift on a sea of seeming limitless freedoms, to be picked up by any technological hook that would substitute for inner knowing. The map becomes the new computer wiring, insurance policy or bank regulation to follow. But once we scrape from our psyches the encrustation of mind most moderns have settled with (which calcifies the innate senses and finer antennae of knowing, emboldening technologically driven modes of mind and being to take their place), then we are on our way to a vivifying recollection. Here is an earlier presentation of the “mago” root word in “imago” or image. Not coincidentally, perhaps, it is connected to maps. (Mary Ann Ghaffurian, culled from Through a Darkened Door—Light, Part 2 by Mary Ann Ghaffurian PhD [http://magoism.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/through-a-darkened-door-light-part-2-by-mary-ann-ghaffurian-phd/]) A very special online, global group Dearest X, …Which brings to mind the “other” reason why I wanted to write to you … Other than just saying “hello” and letting you know that you are very much missed, I also wanted to share with you about a very special online, global group that I have had the honor of being a part of. This group is called Mago Circle and it was founded by my dear friend, “sister” and colleague, Helen Hwang. Helen’s work and commitment to restoring Mago, Ancestral Mother Goddess, to her rightful place as progenitor and creatrix of the Korean people, has not only been admirable but truly critical during a time when we are in real need for inspiration from thought leaders and scholars with a solid foundation in the arts and research of the sacred feminine. As you know, with the roots of Korean shamanism in the realm of women, it makes perfect sense that Korean spirituality must also have sprung within the womb of Woman … the great cosmic goddess, Mago. While Helen’s work is very much grounded in meticulous research — showcasing Korea to the rest of the world in all of Her depth, herstory, and vibrance — it is more importantly, founded in genuine intentions of love, transparency, and humility. I know that Helen can explain the depth, breadth, and height of her work much better than me so I think it will be better to have her directly share more of herself with you; what I simply hope to do through this letter is perhaps help serve as a familiar hand …. reaching out to you and letting you know that your presence and blessings as a well-regarded and much-admired Korean female shaman and scholar would be much appreciated in Mago Circle. Do you remember, X, … you once told me … about 20 years ago: “Sanity is insanity with a focus.” These words I still remember and hold true … they have helped me through times that were truly dismal and chaotic in my life, and with this reassuring and transformational way of looking at myself, looking at my life, looking at the world, I have made it through. My life continues to have its share of insanity, but I know that with focus, all sanity is restored. I know that my letter to you today may feel unexpected and random (especially after not having seen each other for so, so long), but as you know, somehow, life brings us through twists and turns that may seem awkward and strange at first, but upon retrospect, all makes complete sense. In closing, may I have the honor and pleasure of introducing Helen Hwang and the Mago Circle to you … I realize that you must be very busy, but it is my sincere hope that you will find a little time to acquaint yourself with Helen and this wonderful group of women (and men) who are very much dedicated to restoring the balance and peace of Korea and the world via Mago and her goddess sisters of many names… (Wennifer Lin, culled from her letter to her old friend) I share your call for staying connected with each other at a time of cultural and religious tensions. I too believe that all tensions arise from a patriarchal system of hegemony or domination. In the absence of patriarchal hegemony, there would be little or no tension among human beings. The belief in the Mother Goddess would remove the necessity for aggression and hence domination of other human beings or animals. In the eyes of the Mother, every living being is her creature. Hence love, kindness, nurturing and all that is beautiful would prevail everywhere. Am I sounding too idealistic or am I pining for a utopian society that is just not possible? But in theory, it is possible to return to the spirit of Mother, manifest in everything in nature and in our thoughts and actions. With admiration and preservation of Mother we can change the world for a better place. So with this in mind, I submit to all women (who are the living image of the Great Mother Goddess) and goddess lovers in the world to unite in our efforts to bring back the ideals of the Great Goddess. As an academic, I […]
(Special Post 1) 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.] Introduction by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Wennifer Lin-Haver Helen Hye-Sook Hwang I am asking each of us to consider writing a sentence or paragraph on “Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality?” This idea is prompted by Wennifer Lin-Haver, Founder of Mother Tree Sanctuary, and I agree that we need to and can create a sort of collective writing on the topic. What we write below will be included and published in The Girl God, Mother Tree Sanctuary, and Return to Mago. As a subaltern minority as we seem at the current point of time, Goddessians/Magoists [the term Mago means the Great Goddess] need to make extra efforts to make our voices and presences exposed to the public and inner circles. Length and style are open. Please also include your name, region/state/country, title, and/or website URL. We strongly encourage you if you are located in a place where Goddessians are rarely around. We intend to make a collective testimonial tapestry of WE as Goddessians/Magoists! Please keep this in your mind and join us in this collective effort. Thank you in advance. March 6, 2014 AF (Archaic Future)! Wennifer Lin-Haver Our “call” started as a conversation between Helen and me where I was expressing to her the real need for Mother Tree Sanctuary to be more articulate with exploring the significance and importance of Goddess in our lives. I was prompted to give such a response, when asked “why” we had to differentiate God and Goddess. “Isn’t everything God?” She asked. And “Isn’t Goddess also God?” “Isn’t it all the same as long was we’re all coming from our ‘higher’ self?” she asked. So I saw this warranted a longer and much deeper discussion. I initially thought I should formulate a response and post it as a Page or Tab in our website, but after some reflection with Helen, I saw how much better it would be if we replied to this question as a diverse and creative collective. I surely do not have all the answers as an individual but perhaps together, we can come up with something more whole, colorful and satisfying. I do hope you will contribute a little something! We are always grateful for all that you have to share.
(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 […]

(Audio) The Wheel of the Year as a ‘Turas’ by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The text part is an edited excerpt from the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, and the audio links are usually part of the Introduction to a year long PaGaian Cosmology course, but here freely offered. Womb of Gaia altar (Southern Hemisphere version) The eight points of the wheel in this and many Pagan calendars represent ‘seasonal thresholds’ (and there may be more or less in your region), the circuit of Earth about the Sun. This is the sacred site in which we, all this planet’s beings, find ourselves, in which we live everyday. We may think of this journey around Sun as the revolving walk of a pilgrim about a sacred site – what the Celts called a “turas.” The circle of eight stones/objects that I place in my wheel[i] represents this sacred Journey. Turas is a Celtic word meaning “journey,” “pilgrimage,” and refers especially to the circular, spiralling prayer used by people in Celtic countries as they walked sunwise around a sacred site[ii](and sunwise in the Southern Hemisphere is counterclockwise). The ceremonial celebration of the “Wheel of the Year” as it manifests in your place, as a whole year-long experience, participated in fully as an art process and relationship with Gaia, IS a sacred site – a kind of virtual sacred site, a morphic field: that is, the ceremonies themselves develop a kind of organism, an alive space (a womb). You can be held within it. One may enter consciously into this sacred site – real space and time – through the practice of ceremonial celebration of this annual journey, the Turas of our planet: and thus enter into the magic and power of deep Creativity – found in real time and space. For this reason I am religious about not doing festivals dictated by the Gregorian calendar, especially since they are out of sync with southern hemispheric seasons – Christmas, Easter. I am on a Journey, a pilgrim in real time and space, and indeed I have learned so much with this creative discipline … I am Her disciple. Below is a walking meditation, that I have developed to create a mini-experience of this everyday turas. It may be done around a simple version of a Womb of Gaia altar as pictured above, which has the Seasonal markers placed in a circle. TURAS EXPERIENCE – a walking meditation NOTE: if you are unable to walk around your altar that is okay … visualize the process as you sit. Begin sitting at the outer edge of your circle then move into the center as directed in the meditation, if you are able to. We begin walking sunwise (counter-clockwise for Southern Hemisphere), starting some distance out from your altar if possible. There are two links here: one for the Northern Hemisphere and one for the Southern Hemisphere. Below the links to the experience is the text for the walk. Northern Hemisphere: PaGaian Turas Experience N.H. (8:27min) Southern Hemisphere: PaGaian Turas Experience S.H. (7:03min) Let us begin, by walking sunwise, slowly around the edge of your circle, gazing upon the eight points of the mandala … aware that you are passing through the Seasons, as you always have done, every day of your life, joining Earth in Her everyday sacred journey. You are Earth making this Journey. After you have made a few circuits, begin to spiral in slowly and contemplating this particular Moment – all that it has taken for you to come to this Place and Moment … beginning with taking the time to be with this process, then all that led to your decision to do this, your personal story that brings you to this, the stories of your parents, of your grandparents … and further back … to stories of ancestors and other ancestral beings, who have walked this turas of Earth around the Sun – joining all these. … and contemplating where your ancestors may have come from, and where every atom in your body may have been … and slowly spiralling into the Centre. When you have arrived at Centre, you may consider this Centre, THE Centre, our Origin, which is always present. Ten percent of your bodymind which is hydrogen, is a direct result of the Original Flaring Forth, when all hydrogen was made. The Origin is present right here within you. And all the rest – carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and heavier elements – was born in stars. All this recycled many times over.[iii] Here in the Centre, you may celebrate Cosmogenesis, who you are PLACE YOUR HANDS ON YOURSELF your particular beautiful Self, new in every moment – Virgin OPEN UP YOUR ARMS in deep relationship and communion with Other, the web of life – Mother DIRECT YOUR HANDS AND ARMS DOWN TO EARTH directly participating in the sentience of the Creative Cosmos, the Well of Creativity – Old One. FOLDING YOUR ARMS OVER YOUR TORSO All present here … this Creative Dynamic unfolding the Cosmos. And now, with this memory, turning to your left (right for the Northern Hemisphere) and slowly spiraling back out to the circumference, to your place in this Moment of time. DRUM … slowly spiraling back out to the circumference, to your Place in this Moment of Time. DRUM until you/all have arrived at the circumference. And Here you are! And so, it is for every moment. NOTES: [i] I name this altar a “Womb of Gaia” altar, and it is one that students of PaGaian Cosmology create for the Introduction to the year long course. [ii] Matthews, The Celtic Spirit, 31. [iii] This paragraph is a quote from Australian molecular biologist Darryl Reanney when he gave an experiential paper at The Climbing River Foundation conference in Melbourne in 1990. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023. Matthews, Caitlin. The Celtic Spirit. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000.
(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 …
(Essay) The Wheel of the Year and Climate Change by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 2 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ The Wheel of the Year in a PaGaian cosmology essentially celebrates Cosmogenesis – the unfolding of the Cosmos, in which Earth’s extant Creativity participates directly, as does each unique being. The Creativity of Cosmogenesis is expressed through Earth-Sun relationship as it may manifest and be experienced within any region of our Planet. In PaGaian tradition this is expressed with Triple Goddess Poetry, which is 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 it does in the Seasons, happens because of Earth’s tilt in relationship with Sun: and that is because this tilt 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, 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[i]. 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 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[ii], and more recently a site of ongoing ritual activity as old as seventy thousand years has been found[iii]. 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. https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ 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 our 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[iv]. 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. At the moment the dance of dark and light remains predictable, but much else is in a process of transformation. As we observe and sense our Place, our Habitat, as our ancestors also did, we can, and may yet still make Poetry of the dance of dark and light, of this quality of relationship with Sun, and how it may be manifesting in a particular region and its significance for the inhabitants: we may still find Poetic expression with which to celebrate the sacred journey that we make everyday around Mother Sun, our Source of life and energy. It has been characteristic of humans for at least several tens of thousands of years, to create ceremony and symbol by which we could relate with the creative dynamics of our place, and perhaps it was initially a method of coming to terms with these dynamics – with the apparently uniquely human awareness of coming into being and passing away[v]. Our need for …
Artful Ceremonial Expression by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This article is an edited excerpt from Chapter 7 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. I always wore a special headpiece for the Seasonal ceremonies when I facilitated them over the years, and I feel that any participant may do so, not just the main celebrant. My ceremonial headpiece with its changing and continuous Seasonal decoration took on increasing significance over the years; it became a personal central representation of the year-long ceremonial art process of creating, destroying and re-creating. For the research period of my doctoral studies particularly, when I was documenting the process, I realised that this headpiece came to represent for me the essence of “She” – as Changing One, yet ever as Presence – as I was coming to know Her. In my journal for the Mabon/Autumn Equinox process notes one year I wrote: As I pace the circle with the Mabon headpiece in the centre, I see “Her” as She has been through the Seasons … the black and gold of Samhain, the deep red, white and evergreen of Winter, the white and blue of Imbolc, the flowers of Eostar, the rainbow ribbons of Beltane, the roses of Summer, the seed pods and wheat of Lammas, and now the Autumn leaves. I see in my mind’s eye, and feel, Her changes. I am learning … The Mother knowledge grows within me. The headpiece, the wreath, the altar, the house decorations, all participate in the ceremony: they are part of the learning, the method, the relationship – similar to how one might bring flowers and gifts of significance to a loved one at special moments. Then further, the removal and re-creation of the decorations are part of the learning – an active witness to transformation through time.
Imbolc/Early Spring – a Season of Uncertainty by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Traditionally the Seasonal transition of Imbolc/Early Spring, celebrated in early February in the Northern Hemisphere, and in early August in the Southern Hemisphere, has been a time of nurturing the new life that is beginning to show itself, around us and within. It is a time of committing one’s self to the new life and inspiration – in the garden, in the soul, and in the Cosmos. We may include in our celebrations and contemplations of this Season the beginnings of the new young Cosmos as She was, that time in our cosmic story when She was only a billion years old and galaxies were forming; and also the new which has continually emerged throughout the eons, and is ever coming forth. The flame of being, as it has been imagined by many cultures, within and around, is to be protected and nurtured: the new being requires dedication and attention. In the early stages of its advent, there is nothing certain about its staying power and growth: it may flicker and be vulnerable. There may be uncertainties of various kinds. There is risk and resistance to coming into being. The Universe itself knew resistance to its expansion when it encountered gravitation in our very beginnings, in the primordial Flaring Forth[i]. The unfolding of the Universe was never without creative tension. The Universe knows it daily, in every moment: and we participate in this creative tension of our place of being. Urge to Be budding forth Imbolc/Early Spring can be a time of remembering personal vulnerabilities, feeling them and accepting them, but remaining resolute in birthing and tending of the new, listening for and responding to the Urge to Be[ii]of the Creative Universe within. Brian Swimme has said (quoting cultural anthropologist A.L. Kroeber) that the destiny of the human is not “bovine placidity” but the highest degree of tension that can be creatively born[iii]. many flames of being, strengthening each other These times are filled with creative tension, collectively and for most, personally as well; there is much resistance, yet there is promise of so much good energy arising. We may be witness to both. This Season of Imbolc/Early Spring may encourage attention, intention and dedication to strengthening well-being: in self, and in the relational communal context, and opening to our direct immersion in the Well of Creativity. We may be strengthened with the joining of hands, as well as the listening within to the sacred depths, in ceremonial circle at this time. NOTES: [i]As our origins (popularly named as “the Big Bang”) are named by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme in The Universe Story. [ii]As I name this determined Virgin quality in PaGaian Cosmology. [iii]The Canticle to the Cosmos, DVD #8, “The Nature of the Human”. References: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Swimme, Brian. Canticle to the Cosmos. DVD series, 1990.
(Poetry & Photo Essay) Pongal by Susan Hawthorne

I am a secularist rather than a ritualist, but I can’t help but be drawn into the celebrations that people make when they honour the passing of the seasons. Even as a child I felt the disconnect between Christmas and the hot dusty days of summer. When Christians invaded and colonised Australia they brought their holidays but did not consider changing the dates to match the seasons. I was in India recently, invited as a speaker at the Hindu Lit For Life Festival in Chennai where I had lived ten years ago. The last day of the festival was the first day of Pongal. A friend, feminist economist Devaki Jain, who had grown up in Chennai eighty years earlier invited me to join her in a car ride to see Pongal celebrations in the streets. This is a Tamil festival dating back at least a thousand years, a sun festival, welcoming the next six months of the sun’s journey, also a harvest festival. During this time many women produce beautiful drawings, known as kolam. In my book Cow I wrote a poem about kolam which I think says more than I can explain here. what she says about kolam where they are drawn and when is all important early morning is auspicious it sets the shape of the day the hard ground is cleaned points of white grain sprinkled she works quickly she knows her design for the day runs the powdered grain from point to point it is a mandala a yantra a sign so the forces of the universe align themselves with her intentions Back to Pongal. The festival goes for four days. On the first day, which is called Bhogi, people are on the streets with the fruits of harvest, piles of tumeric and stacks of sugar cane tied in bunches. My friend, Devaki, bought flowers to take back to her room in the hotel. The second day, called Thai Pongal, I was invited to a harvest lunch at the house of my friend Mangai who is a playwright, theatre director and human rights activist. The word ‘pongal’ means ‘boiling over’ or’ overflow’ and I saw this in the cooking of the sweetened rice dish into which each of the twelve people present poured some water and milk as it almost overflowed the pot. This sweet rice dish was added to the collection of other dishes on the table. I cannot tell you what they were, but the meal was delicious. After lunch everyone relaxed, someone sang, we talked and caught up on news. The third day, is called Maatu Pongal, and cattle are at the centre of celebrations on that day. I don’t know if this line up of cattle had anything to do with the day’s celebration but there they were tied up alongside a very busy main road. These were not cows and I did not see any cows with decorated horns and flowers on their heads. on that day as I have on other occasions. On the fourth day, Kaanum Pongal, things begin to wind down. One of my co-speakers at the festival said she would be visiting family members on that day. The kolams are drawn again, sugar cane is consumed and people go back to their daily lives. What I liked about being in Tamil Nadu during the Pongal festival is that it felt absolutely right. The time of the year, the connection with harvest, so I did not feel the discomfort I so often feel in the midst of the out-of-season commercialised holidays as they are celebrated in Australia. Susan Hawthorne’s book Cow is available worldwide from distributors in USA, Canada, UK, from all the usual online retailers or from Spinifex Press. http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=215/ © Susan Hawthorne, 2019 (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne.

(Art) Nurture by Anna Tzanova

to feed and protect; to support and encourage; to foster and bring up; to train and educate; to develop and nourish; to care for and cherish… Such a multifaceted and meaningful word! It represents to me an essential quality of the Goddess. An aspect I strive to cultivate within, embody, and express externally. I use it to guide all my actions by asking myself, “Is this nurturing?”; “By doing this, what am I nurturing?” Very often, minds have been conditioned to counterpose nature and nurture, creating not only a divide, but also a controversy. The intrinsic feature of Nature is to nurture. The womb not only births, but nurtures. Nothing can be sustained or achieved without nurture. Nature teaches us the lesson of acceptance. Nurture – the lesson of patience. It also provides the opportunity and freedom of choice. Together, they intertwine and weave the entire Creation. What are you nurturing today? From She Rises: How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 2 (forthcoming, 2016). See (Meet Mago Contributror) Anna Tzanova.
(Essay 2) Magoist Cetaceanism and the Myth of the Pacifying Flute (Manpasikjeok) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Reversing the Reversed of the Buddhist Textual Erasure (Part 1) Dragon Loop and Sound Tube in the Temple Bell of Silla (57 BCE-935 CE) Restored Sillan Temple Bell (8-9th C), excavated in Uncheong-dong, Cheongju Among the many Sillan Magoist Cetacean expressions which stands out is the temple bell, traditionally known as the Whale Bell (鯨鍾 Gyeongjong). The Whale Bell, a signature device of Sillan Magoist Cetaceanism, has two distinctive features, the dragon loop and the sound tube. The dragon loop functions to hang the bell, which occurs in Chinese and Japanese bells as well. This is not to say that the dragon in Chinese and Japanese counterparts are the same as that of the Korean temple bell, a point which was discussed in an earlier part of my essay on the Korean temple bell. However, the sound tube is a feature exclusively present in Korean temple bells, which is, among others, a hallmark of the Korean temple bell, distinguished from its Chinese and Japanese counterparts. Cast adjacent to each other in the bell head, the two are depicted as if the dragon is carrying the sound tube on its back (see the image). By pinpointing the sound tube, a group of Korean scholars (Suyeong Hwang and Donghae Gwak) posit that the sound tube is a replication of the pacifying flute that defeats all (萬波息笛 Manpasikjeok), the seventh century Sillan treasure. Put differently, the Korean temple bell is an innovative remake of the pacifying flute, which is uniquely Sillan. To support their contention, they draw attention to the fact that the sound tube of some Korean temple bells comes in the form of bamboo nodes. Indeed, while most temple bells show the design of nodes etched in the upright pipe, some from the Goryeo period (910-1392) specify the nodes as those of a bamboo tree.[1] Ironically, the bell with the design of bamboo nodes is a whale-effacing variation of earlier Sillan ones with decorative nodes. The Sillan temple bells replicate the bamboo-looking cetacean flute not a bamboo-made flute. This indicates that the Buddhist erasure of Magoist Cetaceanism was gaining hegemony in the Goryeo period. In any case, what does the bamboo-like node design have to do with the pacifying flute? According to the myth of the pacifying flute, the pacifying flute is made from a mysterious bamboo tree grown in a mysteriously floating mountain in the sea. And the dragon loop is no mere functional or decorative design. In the story, the dragon presents the pacifying flute to King Sinmun the Great, the protagonist, with the message that he would be ruling the whole world with the sound. Even if agreeing that the pacifying flute is replicated as the sound tube, there is an enigma yet to be unraveled. How is the sound tube or the pacifying flute related with whales? What is the role of the dragon with regards to whales? Answering these questions requires reinstating the lost name for whales in the myth of the pacifying flute. Temple Bell in the Early Goryeo Period with the sound tube resembling bamboo nodes, Samseon-am in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Temple Bell in the Late Goryeo Period with the sound tube resembling bamboo nodes Truth is that the myth of the pacifying flute written in the Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three States), the 13th century Korean Buddhist text that depicts the mytho-history of Korea ultimately Buddhist, comes to us as an altered story. There involved a Buddhist obfuscation of Magoist Cetaceanism. As background, the Buddhist church could not but embrace folk and Shamanic practices in order to reach out to the populace. It must be said that the Buddhist church did not kill or antagonize Magoist Cetacean folk practices. Although seemingly peaceful, however, Buddhist authority aimed at the goal of a patriarchal religion: To subdue and coopt pre-patriarchal spiritual and folk practices, which is gynocentric and cetacean. The evidence of Magoist Cetaceanism had to be dismantled but not completely destroyed. To subdue the public recognition of Magoist Cetaceanism, Ilyeon, its Buddhist monk author, replaces the whale, a narwhal in particular, with “a moving mountain in the sea” and the tusk of a narwhal with “a bamboo tree growing atop the mountain.” By undoing the linguistic harness, we are able to assess the seventh century Sillan Magoist Cetaceanism. It is possible to reconstruct the cogent Magoist Cetacean story of the pacifying flute. At one point of time before the 13th century when the Samguk Yusa was written, there likely existed an original version of the story, which articulates the narwhal (외뿔고래 Oeppul Gorae or 일각고래 Ilgak Gorae) and its single tusk (Oeppul). If we reverse “a moving mountain” to “a pod of whales” and “the bamboo tree” with “the tusk of a narwhal,” the myth of the pacifying flute would make a perfect sense as follows: (A hypothetically original account of the Manpasikjeok myth) King Sinmun ordered the completion of Gameunsa (Graced Temple) to commemorate his deceased father, King Munmu. The main hall of Gameunsa was designed at the sea level to allow the dragon to enter and stroll through the ebb and flow of the sea waves. In the second year of his reign (682 CE), Marine Officer reported that a pod of whales (a little mountain) in the Sea of Whales (East Sea) was approaching Gameunsa. The king had Solar Officer perform a divination. The divination foretold that he would be given a treasure with which he could protect Wolseong (Moon Stronghold), Silla’s capital. This would be a gift from King Munmu who became a sea dragon and Gim Yusin who became a heavenly being again. In seven days, the king went out to Yigyeondae (Platform of Gaining Vision) and saw the whale (the mountain) floating like a turtle’s head in the sea. There was a bamboo-tree-like tusk (a bamboo tree growing) on its top, which became two during the day and one at night. The king stayed overnight in Gameumsa to listen to the dragon who entered the yard …
(Photo Essay 5) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hwang

Part 5: Gaeyang Halmi, How Does She Relate with Mago? The field research concerning Gaeyang Halmi was undertaken with the thought that Gaeyang Halmi is related to Mago in some way. Such assumption is on the grounds that the folktales of Gaeyang Halmi and Mago Halmi substantively share the same motifs. In fact, I had thought Gaeyang Halmi is another name of Mago Halmi. A scrutiny has proven that the picture of their correlation is far more complex than I first envisaged, exposing the hidden nexuses of Old Magoism. This last part aims at disentangling the grips. It is indispensable for me to invite my readers to the task of reconstructing ancient East Asian mytho-history. Gaeyang Halmi embodies a partial manifestation of Mago as the Sea Goddess. Nonetheless, such a statement lacks complex subtexts that this topic involves. The Gurang (Nine Maidens) mytheme of Gaeyang Halmi sheds light on the mytho-history of Old Magoism (read Magoism in pre- and proto-Chinese times characterized by shaman rulers). To be specific, Gaeyang Halmi in the gurang pantheon suggests a yet-to-be-known shaman ruler, “Ungnyeo” (Bear/Sovereign Woman), founder of the confederacy of the nine states, which I call Danguk (ca. 3898 BCE-2333 BCE). The gurang represented by Gaeyang Halmi is no small clue to the pervasive yet misunderstood civilization of Ungnyeo. “Ungnyeo” is eponymous of the female symbolism of nine, such as the nine-tailed fox in East Asia and the nine muses and the nine forms of Durga beyond East Asia mentioned in Part IV. In short, Gaeyang Halmi oscillating between “Mago” and “Ungnyeo” in Her identity testifies to the suppressed history of Old Magoism. Methodically, I have two types of mythological texts to decipher the overtones of Gaeyang Halmi’s mytheme: folklore (oral narratives) and the written myth. Goddess mythemes, malleable yet immortal, constitute the grammar blocks of the gynocentric language that often appears “awkward” if not “ridiculous” to moderns. They need to be analyzed and interpreted. Feminist techniques are apt to sort out the sediments and decipher the diastrophic disturbances caused by patriarchal advances in the course of time. Some parallels between Gaeyang Halmi and Mago Halmi folk stories are overt. Their stories are so similar that they appear to be an identical goddess: A: The motif that Gaeyang Halmi walks on the sea, often described as wearing namak-sin (wooden shoes) or only beoseon (Korean traditional socks), is also commonly told in Mago stories especially from Jeju Island[i] and other coastal regions. B: That Gaeyang Halmi walks around in the sea to measure its depth is also told in the stories of Mago from other coastal regions. C: The mytheme that Gaeyang Halmi had eight daughters recurs in the stories of Mago, especially from the region of Mt. Jiri. Mago is said to have had eight daughters and sent them to eight provinces. Given the above, it is evident that Gaeyang Halmi lore resembles that of Mago. Were the populace confused about these two goddesses? I hold that the confusion was not a mistake but a way to convey that Gaeyang Halmi is related to Magoism rather than Mago Herself. In folklore, “why” and “how”are the questions to be interpreted, not to be read.

Category: Women

(Tribute) In Loving Memory of Lydia Ruyle (1935-2016) by Mago Circle Members

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(Meet Mago Contributor) Kaarina Kailo

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(Meet Mago Contributor) Leslie Carol Botha, WHE

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S/HE: IJGS V5 N1 2026 (B/W Paperback)

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(Proposal Invitation) Join the November “Nine Poets Speak” Salon

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