May 28, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Book Excerpt 3) Inanna’s Ascent: Reclaiming Female Power, Edited by Trista Hendren, Tamara Albanna and Pat Daly

Making Our Stand Molly Remer “You may not remember, but let me tell you this, someone in some future time will think of us.” —Sappho I put on my boots and Read More …

May 23, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Doll Art 1) The Spirit Dolls by Hannah Baek Wha

The dolls came about through a series of synchronistic events, dreams and online communication, born from, inspiring and creating deep friendships with artists and medicine people of Native American heritage Read More …

May 9, 2019October 2, 2019 Deanne QuarrieLeave a comment

The Sacred Yoni, a Ritual for Women by Deanne Quarrie, D.Min.

The word Yoni is a Sanskrit word. Translated, it means womb, origin, source, and vulva. It is also known as the divine passage or sacred temple. The Yoni consists of Read More …

April 23, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Book Excerpt 2) Inanna’s Ascent: Reclaiming Female Power, Edited by Trista Hendren, Tamara Albanna and Pat Daly

Descent of the Dark Goddess for Personal Empowerment Sofia Wren Introduction During the Fall of 2017, I felt a calling stir in me to talk about the Dark Goddess. I Read More …

April 22, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Book Excerpt 5) “Placental Thinking: The Gift of Maternal Roots” by Nane Jordan

[This and the previous sequels are from a Chapter from Placenta Wit: Mother Stories Rituals, and Research, edited by Nané Jordan, Demeter Press, 2017, pp. 142-155.] BIRTH GIFTING: MOTHERS AT Read More …

March 1, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Prose & Poetry) Eurydice by Susan Hawthrone

When you subsume yourself in mythic figures, they often return under different guises. In the early 1990s I wrote this poem. EURYDICE Orpheus sings as he returns from the dead. Read More …

February 26, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 3) The Kiss of Nong Toom: High Stakes in the Semiotic Arena by Matthew Chabin

(PART III) Near the end of Beautfiful Boxer we are treated to a gorgeous, dreamlike scene which we might think of as The Last Temptation of Nong Toom. The setting Read More …

February 25, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Book Excerpt 4) “Placental Thinking: The Gift of Maternal Roots” by Nane Jordan

[This and the ensuing sequels are from a Chapter from Placenta Wit: Mother Stories Rituals, and Research, edited by Nané Jordan, Demeter Press, 2017, pp. 142-155.] PLACENTAL THINKING IN THE Read More …

February 20, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Prose) The Value of Women’s Spirituality Centers by Francesca Tronetti, Ph.D.

Life stressful, especially in this American economy. Wages are low and trying to find a good paying job takes a lot of time an effort. Writing new cover letters, and Read More …

February 15, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Art 8) Isis, Ishtar, Infancy the very beginning of by Megha

Honor the Cycles of your Sacred Temple Infancy – the very beginning of Remember the earliest part of your life, when you were a baby!!! It is extremely rare for Read More …

January 29, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 2) The Kiss of Nong Toom: High Stakes in the Semiotic Arena by Matthew Chabin

(PART II) In her exemplary work Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters: Shakespeare, Johnson and Comic Androgyny, Grace Tiffany outlines two traditional representations of the androgyne/ hermaphrodite figure: the sacred vs. Read More …

January 16, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Book Excerpt 3) “Placental Thinking: The Gift of Maternal Roots” by Nane Jordan

[This and the ensuing sequels are from a Chapter from Placenta Wit: Mother Stories Rituals, and Research, edited by Nané Jordan, Demeter Press, 2017, pp. 142-155.] PLACENTAL PRACTICES Attending to Read More …

(E-Interview) Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

https://www.spinifexpress.com.au/blog/start-your-radfem-library-with-these-must-have-books It is an honor and a privilege for me to e-interview Dr. Susan Hawthorne and Dr. Renate Klein, co-founders of Spinifex Press. Spinifex Press has published feminist books since 1991. I personally became aware of Spinifex Press or rather the book, Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed (Spinifex 1996) for the first time in 1996. Mary Daly, U.S. radical feminist thinker, recommended this book to me, when I was in Korea preparing for an admission to a graduate school in the U.S. It was the first feminist anthology written in the English Language, which I purchased through an international post service. I absorbed its articles like a clean sponge sucking water. And this was the book that I continued to read and cited in my term papers during my graduate courses for a long time. For the last decade, I grew to learn more about Spinifex Press through Susan Hawthorne who has been one of the substantive contributors to Mago Work projects (Return to Mago E-Magazine, Mago Academy, Mago Books, and the peer-review S/HE journal). Helen Hwang: What is Spinifex Press about? Susan Hawthorne: Spinifex Press is about making radical feminist ideas available. It is an independent Australian feminist press which publishes controversial and innovative feminist books with an optimistic edge. The optimistic edge is important because, although we publish books that are often difficult, such as books about violence against women, pornography, prostitution, as well as books that highlight racism, sexism, ableism, agism and the torture of lesbians, we still try to include seeds of hope. Our books also delve into the origins of patriarchy around the world. We have published books by Indigenous writers from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, North America and Africa. Our list includes a significant number of lesbian writers, as well as writers living with a disability or coming from a migrant or working-class background. Diversity has become a fashionable word in recent years, but we at Spinifex have been publishing diverse voices since we began in 1991. Hwang: When and how did it come about? Hawthorne: In the Australian summer of 1990, Renate Klein and I had a holiday in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. A beautiful area with a long Indigenous history and a great deal of rock art. As we slowed down from a hectic year, we began to talk about whether we had enough knowledge to start a small feminist press. We decided that we did, with Renate having a long background in international non-fiction publishing (the Athene Series) and as an academic journal editor in Women’s Studies (Women’s Studies International Forum and Issues in Reproductive and Genetic Engineering). I had four years’ experience as an editor of mostly fiction and poetry at Penguin Australia as well as an organiser of a nine-day feminist writers festival. We therefore had good contacts in Australia and internationally. We decided to jump into this adventure and so I left my job as Acquisitions Editor at Penguin while Renate continued in her teaching position in Women’s Studies at Deakin University in order for us to have a regular income. In our first year, we published four books, an anthology, Angels of Power, a crime novel, Too Rich, a women’s health book and a quiz book. By the second year we published seven books including one by an international writer and a book of cartoons. We were off. Each year we have published books that reflect the concerns of feminists during that period. Because the mainstream is always well behind what feminist are talking about, we are always ahead of the cultural curve. https://www.spinifexpress.com.au/blog/discover-our-african-titles Hwang: Tell us about your feminist commitment. Hawthorne: Our feminist commitment is very deep. For around 50 years we have each worked in different ways and in different parts of the Women’s Liberation Movement. I joined the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1973 and quickly became active in Melbourne’s first Rape Crisis Centre. I advocated for courses in Women’s Studies and Feminism and wrote about the Ibu women’s war in Nigeria, about the Australian writer Miles Franklin and in my final year in Philosophy wrote a thesis ‘In Defence of Separatism’ that was finally published in full in 2019. I travelled overseas and was especially taken by what I saw in Crete and was soon reading prehistory, myth and studying first Modern Greek then Ancient Greek. During this time, I wrote several long essays which were subsequently published, one on the Greek philosopher, Diotima and another on the Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite and Demeter. I was soon embarking on writing my novel. The Falling Woman, organising several writers’ festivals and then moving into publishing. Since beginning Spinifex, I have worked teaching Creative Writing at universities, I completed a PhD in Women’s Studies, Wild Politics, and I joined two women’s circuses and learnt to be an aerialist. I have also continued to write fiction, poetry and non-fiction and have been lucky enough to get three residencies in India, Italy and Turkey that allowed me time out to write. You can see many of my books here. Renate Klein: After having worked as a neurobiologist at Zürich University, Switzerland, and a chemistry and zoology high school teacher for a few years, I desperately felt I needed a big change in my life. I started teaching biology in the Women’s Studies Program at Berkeley University, USA, and ended up studying for a BA (Hons) in Women’s Studies because I realised that, as a scientist, my world was very narrow-minded. I then went on to get my doctorate at London University on the Theory and Practice of Women’s Studies in an international context and began working as the European Editor of Women’s Studies International Forum and an editor of The Athene Series. I also got heavily involved in the radical feminist resistance to reproductive technologies and genetic engineering by editing books, a journal and being a co-founder of FINRRAGE (Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering). Eventually, I ended up in Australia doing research …
(Art) Ring of Fire by Glen Rogers

Glen Rogers, Ring of Fire, Oil on Canvas, 60x50cm, 2020 She is in her power – drawing from the energy of the Sun and the Moon. She raises her arms, hands in prayer position, in gratitude for All That Is. She is grounded, in rhythm with Mother Earth and her Sacred Feminine energy. https://www.magoism.net/2021/01/meet-mago-contributor-glen-rogers/
(Poem) Sardinia’s treasures by Susan Hawthorne

In January 2014 I visited Sardinia because I had been reading about the extraordinary archaeological richness of the island. There are Paleolithic, Megalithic and Bronze Age treasures – of the last the most spectacular being the nuraghe, stone towers built without mortar – and on Sardinia I also stumbled across those marvellous baetyls, small breasted sacred stones. I am fascinated by our stone and rock heritage all around the world and Sardinia is one of those places that has seen many cultures pass through from prehistory right up to the present. This poem, about the travels of Agnese and Lupa (lamb and wolf), picks up on those histories. Lupa, the she-wolf is speaking at the beginning.
(Essay) Be-ing in the Church by Xochitl Alvizo

Sometimes it is difficult to make sense of the peculiar paths our religious lives take, much more so to make sense of one another’s paths which can be so different from our own. I was raised in a Mexican American family and grew up in Los Angeles, California (my parents say I was “made in Mexico, assembled in the U.S.”). And I grew up going to Spanish-speaking Catholic mass. I have often said that the God I know in Spanish is so different from the God I came to know in English when I began to roam Protestant circles in undergrad. Growing up, the Spanish speaking God I knew was as assumed and as basic as the air that kept us alive: always available and always with us in the good, the bad, and the ugly. God was a constant without which we could not exist. But in undergrad, my Protestant friends seemed to have a completely different understanding of God than the one I had grown up with. Theirs was a God that required obedience, a God of very specific expectations, and a jealous God at that! It was a very confusing time for me and my engagement with Christianity wavered. Then in graduate school, eight years after undergrad, something happened that revolutionized my life – I discovered radical feminists! As ironic as this might seem, radical feminists provided me with a way to make sense of Christianity. They gave me a language and the tools to both critique and engage Christianity and the church. I have often said that if it wasn’t for Mary Daly, I wouldn’t be able to call myself a Christian(!). I got to work with Mary Daly the last two years of her life, me and three other friends from grad school; Mary called us the hedge hags. We were part of Mary’s local community that shared in her day to day life, and ironically, we were all Christian identified women. Mary Daly grumbled about this of course, asking how we could continue to stay involved, and so we told her. Each of us gave Mary Daly our own account of the different and complicated reasons for staying involved in the church – not all of it making sense to her of course. But, we also share one common reason for staying that did make sense to Mary. We, adult, feminist, critically reflective women, have stayed involved in Christianity because there was something from deep within our be-ing that compelled us to do so, and be-ing was something Mary Daly did understand. Mary Daly taught me to participate in Be-ing, in Ultimate Intimate Reality. [1] What Mary wanted for me, and what she wanted for all women, was that I do that which awakens me, that which ignites my Elemental Passion [2] and connects me with the Divine. And for me, that meant I stayed; I stayed to continue my participation, critique, and engagement in the tradition that has been passed down to me and that continues to be a part of who I am (and a part of so many others whom I love and with whom I share my life). But I do so differently now. I participate and engage on the Boundary, the “Time and Space created by women Surviving and Spinning on the boundaries of patriarchal institutions.” [3] I live on the Boundary of Christianity and find my life’s passion there. It is there that I Rage, taking the “transformative focusing force that awakens transcendent E-motion,” [4] and it is there that my be-ing [5] takes place. Even though Mary first grumbled at the fact that these four feminist friends of hers were all women who “stayed,” she also knew we were women with the Courage to See, the Courage to Live, and the Courage to Sin. [6] Our path was not the one she envisioned for women, and she certainly would not have recommend our path to anyone else, but Mary Daly knew it was the right one for us (at least for the time being anyway), and she enCouraged us to Rage on! One of the reasons I appreciate this blog so much is because it helps keep me responsible; it reminds me of the many things of which I must be mindful as I participate in a religious tradition that has been the cause of so much harm. I am grateful that so many people participate in this blog with the Courage [7] to Con-Question. [8] Because of it, I continue to think deeply and critically about the Christian tradition I claim and I aim to participate in it in such a way that honors the insights and experiences of those who challenge me. I won’t always get it right, but I will always be making the effort. It can indeed be difficult to make sense of the peculiar paths our religious lives take, but maybe looking to make sense of it is beside the point. As I have commented on this blog before, the human spirit and lived reality do not fit nicely into simple or clear cut categories or explanations. But I do believe it is a beautiful and necessary practice to continue to engage one another across our different paths, Spinning and Weaving new creations as we do. ~~~~ Spinning: “Gyn/Ecological creation; Discovering the lost thread of connectedness within the cosmos and repairing this thread in the process,” Wickedary, p. 96. Weaving: “Original activities of Websters: creating tapestries of Crone-centered creation; constructing a context which sustains Sisters on the Otherworld Journey,” Wickedary, p. 99. [1] Be-ing: “Ultimate/Intimate Reality, the constantly unfolding Verb of Verbs which is intransitive, having no object that limits its dynamism,” as defined in Webster’s First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, conjured by Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi, p. 64. [2] That is to say, it ignites our E-motion: “Elemental Passion which moves women out/away from the fixed/framed State of Stagnation; Pyrogenetic Passion that fires deep knowing and willing, stirring Metamemory, propelling Wild Women on the Otherworld Journey,” from Mary Daly’s Wickedary, p. 74. [3] Wickedary, p. 67. [4] Wickedary, p. 91. [5] be-ing: v: actual participation …
(Essay 8) The Blending of Bön, Buddhism and the Goddess Gemu in Mosuo Culture by Krista Rodin

Daily Life Mosuo House with Buddhist Shrine, Lugu Lake. Photo, K. Rodin The Mosuo’s blending of various religions extends from their daily and annual festivals into the construction of their buildings. Their structures are built with wood and look like log homes with dragon-tiled roofs. They are constructed around a central courtyard and the complex has a grandmother’s house with separate ones for girls over the age of thirteen. The uncles, the grandmother’s sons, also live in the complex. There is a golden stupa room for the family priest/lama. While all women over sixty earn the right to be called grandmothers, a leading matriarch is chosen from the clan, she becomes known as the main Grandmother. Her room is the center of family activity. In a typical Mosuo house, the Grandmother’s room is off to the left in the courtyard. There are two steps up and down to enter the room and one is expected to bow when entering. The steps indicate there is something sacred about entry into Grandmother’s space. The room is in two main sections divided by a stoop on which the majority of the room sits. At the back of the entrance is a table with a fireplace in front of it, and in the back corner is a Buddhist shrine. There is a long bench along the wall for visitors to sit. From the rafters above hang various pieces of pig: arms, legs, face and inner organs. Often at the back on a table is a large pig carcass that has been cleansed of all inner organs, blood and bones, then filled with salt, pepper, wine and a preservative. The carcass is sewn back together and kept for 7-8 years somewhere dry in the house as a sign of wealth and prosperity. The tradition for doing this seems to have started in the distant past when people did not usually have enough to eat, nor any way to preserve meat beyond a few days. When one enters the room one needs to turn right to the main section, which is again divided into a right and left section. The right section is for the men to sit and has the male pole by it; the left side is where grandmother’s cupboard bed, the female pole and the women sit. The women’s pole is cut from the lowest level of the tree trunk, near the roots, while the male pole is taken from the middle section of the tree; both poles must be from the same tree and only by having both of them is the house strong enough. This structure is almost the diametric opposite of the style of a Mongolian ger. As in a ger, Mosuo young children sit in the middle. While fathers do not play a role in Mosuo culture, uncles do. The two most influential people in the family are grandmother and usually the eldest uncle. In the middle of her room at the front is the family’s hearth, which has a large open round iron inset with three prongs to hold pots. At the back of the circle, by the wall is a small insert for food offerings to the ancestors, the shanbalas. Offerings are given first to the ancestors prior to every meal. Fire plays a very important part in Mosuo culture and the hearth is intended to be kept burning as an eternal flame 24/7. They worship the non-gendered Fire God as well as the Goddess Gemu and particular Tibetan Buddhist deities. Fire means happiness and well-being as it provides warmth and cooks food. Ancestor spirits are not just in and around the hearth, but also in the heavens, so sometimes the smoke from cooked meat—pig, goat, yak—is sent up through the rafters to the heavens above. Incense is also offered to the ancestors as well as to the Fire God. On the opposite wall and facing the hearth is usually a poster of the Goddess Gemu on a white mare. She sits astride in a traditional Mosuo white skirt and pink-red bodice with rainbow colored ribbons flowing from her hair, headdress and the horse’s saddle blanket. The goddess holds a flute in one hand, indicating the importance of music to the culture, and a trident with conch in the other, indicating the strength religion brings with calling to the gods. Diagonally across from the Grandmother’s bed is a small door that is only opened for birth and death. It is opened when a baby is born, and when the body is taken out of the house after death wrapped in white cloth similar to a baby’s swaddling clothes. Once a person dies, both the daba and the lama are called. The daba immediately performs send-off rituals, while the lama looks for the most auspicious time for the funeral, based on the deceased birth and death data. Once the time has been chosen, which can be anywhere from a week to a month after death, funeral procedures begin. The three-day ritual begins with the Lama reciting scriptures for the deceased, the following day a wake is held with family and friends, and the third day the actual funeral proceedings take place under the auspices of both the daba and lama. The body is taken from the house and placed in a small log cabin-like box that is on top of a funeral pyre. Today various kinds of artificial inflammation devices are used to help the burning process. There are three major life event rituals and celebrations for the Mosuo: Birth, which is considered to include thirty days after a child is born, which is overseen by the women; the Coming of Age ceremony when children reach thirteen years of age which makes them adults— during this ceremony the children leave their kids’ clothes behind and change to adult clothes; and the third is Death, which is overseen by men. Rituals for all these events are conducted within the household. During the Cultural Revolution, these practices were abolished, along …
(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 the gift economy and gift imaginary and a wide range of other gender studies topics (www.kaarinakailo.info). Her main research covers postcolonial perspectives on the Sami, Finno-Ugric deities and folklore, the bear ceremonial, gendered violence and healing, the gender impact of globalization and the Finnish welfare state.
(In Memoriam) Carol Christ’s Foreword to my book, The Mago Way by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Late Carol P. Christ (1945-2021) accepted my invitation to write a foreword to my book, The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia, prior to 2015. This essay is her Foreword. I met Carol P. Christ in person on several occasions. As she mentions in her Foreword, Carol was invited to become the fifth scholar on my dissertation committee around 2003, a team of five faculty members from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont School of Theology, and Claremont Colleges. My first meeting with Dr. Christ was a tough one but our paths continued crossing thereafter. One semester, she taught a course (on the Goddess topic in relation to Process Theology) at Claremont School of Theology during which time we had some close interactions. I did not take her class but we may have run into each other in other events. She and I went out to a Chinese restaurant and had friendly conversations over lunch. At one point, we emailed each other frequently. And I remember myself making a phone call to her in Lesbos Island, Greece and we spoke. I had a first person narrative that Carol loved gardening and was later getting involved in political activism in her town. One day, Mary Daly called me to ask for the contact information of Carol Christ (Mary knew that I was in touch with Carol Christ). I had been in close contact with Mary Daly since 1994 (see my essay series of Commemorating Mary Daly). I must have mentioned to Mary that Carol published her book, She Who Changes, by Palgrave Macmillan. Daly was searching for a publisher for her latest book, Amazon Grace. So I bridged the two to speak to each other by phone. Indeed, Daly’s Amazon Grace was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006. In my memory of Carol P. Christ, I thank you, Carol, for the gift of your life and work. Rest in peace.] Foreword by Carol P. Christ, Ph.D. (Excerpt from The Mago Way by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang). With her dissertation and her on-going work Helen Hye-Sook Hwang has opened up a new way of thinking about East Asian Goddesses that decenters the Goddesses of particular national or religious traditions—such as Chinese Goddesses or Buddhist Goddesses. Her ground-breaking work suggests that seemingly independent Goddess traditions are rooted in a common East Asian prehistoric tradition which she names Magoism. Hwang shows that prehistoric Goddess traditions predate Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and other Eastern traditions, including Korean shamanism. Her work also reveals commonalities between prehistoric Goddess traditions in East and West, making it clear the “rebirth of the Goddess” is not an exclusively Western phenomenon. I first met Helen Hye-Sook Hwang when I was asked to become a late addition to her dissertation committee at Claremont Graduate University. Because of their lack of familiarity with her subject matter and radical approach to it, Hwang’s committee was mystified by her topic, “Seeking Mago, the Great Goddess.” I was asked to step in due to my knowledge of the work of Marija Gimbutas on the prehistoric Goddess of Neolithic Old Europe. Though I had not studied East Asian Goddesses in depth, my intuition, based on the history of European Goddesses, was that East Asian Goddesses had their roots in prehistory. Traditional scholarship, whether focused on Eastern or Western traditions, assumes that “history” begins with written records dated around 3000 BCE or later. Almost all written records, East and West, stem from patriarchal societies ruled by warrior kings. Written law codes reflect the subordination of women in patriarchal societies. However, comparison of early and later law codes indicates that in many cases women had legal and economic powers that were gradually eroded. Mythological texts also imply that women and Goddesses once held power that was later taken from them. The notion that history is defined by written records limits history to that last 5000 years, leaving the first 100,000 years of human history out of the picture. So-called “prehistory” includes the many long years when human beings survived by gathering and hunting in the Paleolithic era (Old Stone Age), as well as the early years of agriculture in the Neolithic era (New Stone Age), which began about 10,000 years ago in different areas of the world. Some would argue that the first 100,000 years of human history were pre-patriarchal and that patriarchy became normative at different times in different places, especially if patriarchy is defined by the control of female sexuality, private property, and war.[i] According to Marija Gimbutas, Neolithic Old Europe (c. 6500-3500 BCE) was peaceful, sedentary, highly artistic, egalitarian, matrilineal and probably matrilocal, and revered the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. The peaceful cultures of Old Europe were overthrown by nomadic warriors who entered Europe from the Russian steppes north and east of the Black Sea. Their culture was horse-riding, patriarchal, patrilineal, warlike, not highly artistic, and they worshipped male Gods identified with the shining powers of the sun and the shining bronze of their weapons. As the power of the patriarchal warriors grew, the Goddesses of Old Europe were subordinated to male Gods. Thus were developed the familiar Goddesses of Greek mythology: Athena who sprung fully armed from the head of Zeus, Hera, the betrayed wife, and Aphrodite the Goddess of sexual pleasure. Gimbutas taught us that these all-too-human Goddesses were cut off from their primordial roots in the powers of birth, death, and regeneration.[ii] Hwang’s work promises a similar revolutionary rewriting of cultural and religious history in “Old East Asia.” In addition to revealing a Goddess tradition at the root of later patriarchal traditions in East Asia, Hwang’s work raises the question of how and when East Asian traditions became patriarchal. It answers the question of where the later Goddesses came from, and why they were added to or became prominent in largely patriarchal traditions. As Hwang shows, the Goddess was already there and could not be fully suppressed or completely ignored. The origin of …
(Essay 2) Feminism and the Future of Religion by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Meet Mago Contributor, Glenys Livingstone. Part 2 of a paper presented by the author at the National Socialist Conference Sydney, 1990. Feminism is not the only force pushing change to old stories, symbols, myths and images, but it is a significant one. And it has yet enormous resources, a labyrinth of archetypes and energy suppressed for thousands of years, gestating and complexifying, that have the power to scrape clear our eyes of the “learned cataracts”[1]. Interest in the Goddess archetype/metaphor and in Her religious traditions have grown visibly and audibly in the last 15 years, here in Australia. For some She is merely a cliche at this point, but that is an inevitable part of the process, a hurdle that can eventually be broken through in the bigger picture. The vision of the Earth as Gaia, a living being, as Goddess, is one that is gaining in strength. It has at its core, an ancient and wholistic understanding of Being, that can call humanity into different relationship with itself and with the universe. But real change is not inevitable. Even people who think they have changed (because they changed a pronoun, or pasted in a goddess), have not necessarily. Ongoing feminist critique and reflection is necessary to ensure the healing of fragmented archetypes that have confined us all. We must continue to speak, to review, to suspect, to research. We cannot make assumptions, we are a long way from having arrived at some kind of real inclusiveness and partnership. The old well-worn pathways are not that easily given over. It seems that there are a couple of clear directions pulling at the future of religion, as the feminist momentum continues to impact on it. And indeed it must be a worry for the religious powers that be. Those directions I describe as shamanic and pagan, which I will define in my own particular way, as follows. By shamanic, I mean that individuals are “storying” themselves, knowing themselves and thinking from within their own skin. Shamanism relies on direct lived experience for an understanding of the sacred, as opposed to relying on an external authority, external imposed symbol, story or image. Each person must claim their own inner power, imagine or visualize themselves and use this in the service of life. Myth/story which arises from within draws its power from a realm of pattern “which is common to people of all cultures and all times”[2]. The archetypes that arise, have done so since ancient times and have recurred across many cultures, in a diversity of form. This shamanic direction tends to come out of a feminist spirituality because here, women have learned to no longer take things on faith or presciption. It is a tendency of feminism to cure one from swallowing pre-scribed religion – all holy texts and myths must be reflected on suspiciously given their millenia of androcratic bias – and one is entered into the process of self-scription, of authoring, scribing oneself. Religion then becomes based on what we can feel, what we can know. We each then find “for ourselves our individual role in the matrix”[3], a way in which each being is part of the texture of the universal fabric. We are linked by a recognition in each other of a power that arises from within, not by some external word.
The Circle Of Life And The Square of Opposition by Claire Dorey

Art by Claire Dorey [Author’s Note: Extract from a work in progress on the voice of the colonized, a female perspective on the Roman invasion of Ancient Briton.] I lie awake and fret when I sleep in the stone walled villa because it is square, a tight box of night terror, shadowy corners, perpendicular walls bearing down. Before the Romans coerced my parents into being quasi-monarchs, we lived in a round house, thatched roof, chinks of sky, breeze blowing through the walls. Squares are a symbol of invasion and occupation. My mother agrees. On dry nights we drag our bedding outside and sleep cocooned by the deep night so, if we need to, we can escape into the undergrowth. We have named the invaders, who are painfully, brutally, demonically carving up our Motherland, ‘The Squares!’ Phalanx of shields. Cage of oiled knees marching along a straight road. The fast track. Slaves in. Minerals out. Remote emperor’s approval rating soars. A dominator culture with weapons, plumb lines, grids and manuals, plowing through our sacred sites and breeding grounds, a bloodbath for voluptuous Mother Earth. Ours is a landscape inherited from the ancestors, stone circles tracking time, slabs of rock piercing her energy centres. We think the square is the shape of man’s divorce from nature, the shape of fear based living. “…. they have protected themselves with helmets and breastplates and [ ] with palisades and walls and trenches to make sure of suffering no harm by an incursion of their enemies. For they are influenced by their fears….” – Cassius Dio, Roman History. Epitome of Book LXII, Loeb Classical Library. We avoid walking past their fenced in forts. The soldiers, defensive, yet on the attack, heckle us from the ramparts. Man as microcosm, centre of the macrocosm, axis of the universe, is building structures in his own image, forgetting that the square fits inside the circle. They think the square is a symbol of man in perfect symmetry and that the human body dictates the dimensions of the universe. Man is seperating from the circle, the yoni, the Tel Mon, the Divine Feminine, the cosmos, the eternal return, the seed and the womb. It’s the ego pulling away from the Anu. “It is not alone by a circle, that the human body is thus circumscribed, as may be seen by placing it within a square.” – Vitruvius, Book III – De architectura. Geocentrism. Humanism. Anthropomorphism. All are alien to uterine cultures. Circles and squares are elements in sacred geometry, but the circle is the shape that encompasses all other shapes. The primordial shape of the creatrix, the one that came first, replicates to form the seed of life, the geometry of creation. Circular space is sacred space. The square fits inside the circle. “The square, a linear construct, is simply a unit,” say the Druid Priestesses, who mastered Pythagorean triples, long before Pythagoras gave these equations their name. We calculated the world was round thousands of years before Galileo was imprisoned for mentioning it. Mother Nature whispers the poetic language of least resistance, the path of the river, liberty and life unleashed. Her form appears organic to the observer yet within her there is complex, intelligent geometry. Perhaps Mother Nature is leaving the language of the square to humanity, so man can cost out his units in the format of a page. Mother nature has no need to cost the shapes she builds because wildness is never accountable! Straight lines and hard edges are the geometry of the coloniser, a capitalist construct, used to compartmentalise and monetarise space and time, a right angled prison of eternal slavery that keeps the cogs of empire turning. In circles everyone is welcome and it is personal, inclusive. Eyes looking inwards, we catch each other’s gaze. Hands held. An embrace. An unbroken chain. Everyone is invited to speak in a circle. In the square, the shape of hierarchy, man sits in rows, knowing his place, disconnected from the gaze of the community. Eyes down in shame, or focused forward to the top dog, the judge or preacher. In circles, the shape of infinite potential, there are no corners for the Shadow to hide in. The eyes of the community mirror back at you. Portals to inner wisdom and creativity open. Bad intentions can hide in the murky corners of squares, an ideal format for manipulation, suppression and propaganda, leading to the rigid caging of minds, with the potential for imprisonment. It’s a place for philosophical postulating, with a false sense of intelligence. Aristotle’s Square Of Opposition, which if you ask me is a nonsense, is a diagram of contradictions; a tight box for logic; a recipe for argument; a complex piece of over thinking, elevating bewilderment to an art form; a hare-brained attempt to slot the laws of the universe into a quadrilateral diagram, designed to raise the status of the philosopher! When you put the word SQUARE and OPPOSITION in the same sentence it reeks of ego and combat. Ancient Greek urban planner Hippodamus was the master of the quadrangle. His city grid system is an alien concept to us because we build our round houses where Mother Earth tells us to, harmonizing with her contours and vibration. We take the path of the serpent, the path of least resistance, meandering to protect the biosphere, avoiding nests and sacred trees, tuning into the Earth’s magnetism, in the same way birds do. Dividing Mother Earth’s sensual curves with meridians and parallels creates boundaries leading to battles for ownership. We observe cycles: the infinite geometries of the micro and macrocosm; the cycle of life, death and rebirth; the seasons and the motion of the cosmos. Our wide-eyed wisdom is encoded in the advent of dawn, in flower petals, the mathematics of the spiral. The forest and springs are our temples. Nature is our Goddess and the Goddess is the spirit of all nature. The Roman emperors deify themselves. They build quadrate temples and they …
(Conference Speech) The Maternal Economy and Patriarchal Capitalism by Genevieve Vaughan

Protest in Berlin, Germany against Turkey’s military offensive into north-eastern Syria on 10 October 2019, Wikipedia [Author’s Note: A few months ago I met several Kurdish women in Rome who were traveling around Europe telling people about the situation in their area, which lies between Syria, Turkey and Iraq and informing us about the women’s movement there and the women’s village they had created. I was invited to speak on Patriarchy and Capitalism at an international conference held by the Kurds last weekend and just the day after the conference was over the news came that the Turks were attacking the area. We do not know if the village will still exist tomorrow.This paper is the text of my speech. I am asking the RTM editor to include the statement of the women of the village, called ‘Jinwar’ (‘Jin’ in Kurdish means women and ‘war’ means place).] Dear friends of JINWAR, we, the women and children from the free women’s village JINWAR in Northern Syria, write this letter to you, who were in contact with us or had the oportunity visit us. During your time here you could get to know us, our village, and our daily life. You could see what we have built up: the houses made of clay, in which we live together, the school, the healing center for natural medicine which is supposed to be opened soon, our bakery, the garden, the fields, all the trees, which grow bigger and bigger and all of all our common life, far away from oppression and violence, based upon our will to live together as free women and children. All this is now under direct threat by the Turkish State, which openly launches attacks against Northern Syria. Erdogan’s plan is to extinguish the Kurdish people and to occupy our region. We can see the results of this politics in Afrîn, which has been occupied by Turkey, DAIŞ and other Jihadist groups. The situation in Afrîn turned out really bad for the people, especially for the women, whose rights are taken away, who suffer from violence and rape, who are sold and treated as slaves. The attacks and another occupation by the Turkish state in other parts of Northern Syria could mean the same brutal exploitation for women here. JINWAR is a place where women are able to live in a communal way and autonomously raise and educate their children freely and without huge daily influence of the dominant male mentality. Many brave women and men fought and gave their lives, in order to liberate this territory and make the possibility to build a new democratic system inspired by the concept of Democratic Confederalism. This system is based on ideas of Abdullah Ocalan concerning women’s freedom and self-administration of different ethnic and social groups, which are living here side by side together. Our village JINWAR is a part and in the same time a result of this revolutionary process. Furthermore, it is also practical example, how we, as women, can create alternatives in fields as communal living, ecology and economy. During this process many things have been built here in Rojava: Women are organizing autonomously in every city. Examples for this are “Kongreya Star” and “Mala Jin”(Women’s houses), where women are gathering and developing solutions for problems of the whole society. In the “Mala Jin” women are supporting each other in solving conflicts in families and the whole society. Women’s leadership and participation in decision making processes is also a key component of the direct democracy model being enacted in Rojava. Through that women could gain a new position in society and in politics. This achievements can be an example for all the women in the world. In the moment we are writing this letter different villages and places around have been bombed and many people have already been killed. Our village, our society, our lives and the life and future of all people here, especially women and children, is under urgent threat. We, as women and children from JINWAR call you to raise up your voices and take action against this war. Use all the possibilities you have to spread information and raise awareness about the Turkish occupation politics! Don’t stay silent! Lets stand up together for free life and for our common future! The Maternal Economy and Patriarchal Capitalism by Genevieve Vaughan “Woman and economy are interwoven components. Because she generates economy according to fundamental needs only, a woman-driven economy never experiences depression; it never causes environmental pollution; and it never poses a threat to the climate. When we cease to produce for profit, we will have achieved the liberation of the world. This in turn will be the liberation of humanity and life itself.” Abdullah Ocalan I was born in the USA in 1939 and have been working on the idea of a gift economy as the basic human and humanizing economy since the 1960’s,first as a young woman using the discipline of semiotics and later as a feminist devoted to social change. It is astounding to me that a Kurdish leader, a man who has been in solitary confinement for 20 years could have come up with such important ideas about women and the gift economy, some of them quite similar to mine and it confirms to me that though coming from very different directions we are travellers on the same path, trying to see the truth behind the false front of patriarchal capitalism, the system that is now destroying humanity and Mother Earth. It is not the true calling of feminism to integrate more women into the market but to provide a viable alternative to matricidal patriarchal capitalism. I believe that a general theory of mothering and the gift economy are necessary for the healing of our planet and our species. As the subtitle of one of our network’s anthologies says “A radically different world view is possible” and it is necessary now. The absence of this worldview from our cultural consciousness is one of the main causes of the …
(Photo Essay 2) Goddess Pilgrimage 2018 by Kaalii Cargill

[Author’s Note: In May 2018, I set out on a 3 month pilgrimage to Greece, Turkey and the prehistory sites of “Old Europe”. Once again my main focus was “visiting with the Grandmothers”.] GREECE continued Visiting with the Grandmothers – – at the National Archeological Museum in Athens: – at the Benaki Museum in Athens: – at museums in ancient Corinth and Mycenae (c1300 BCE): – at the Archeological Museum in Thessalonika (Neolithic): Meet Mago Contributor Kaalii Cargill
(Prose) The texture of your life by Nane Jordan

What is the texture of your life? Text-ure – from the root “text” with the -urrrreeeeeee. Texture is a feeling, in fingers touching fabric, rubbing to discern the sensation of crisp, soft, bristly, wrinkled, or firm. The texture of our lives is not something we work towards, or even earn. It’s not a goal, or a choice we make. It’s not owning a house, getting the right or wrong job, being in love, or being very, very, ill. Falling asleep last night I felt it, the texture of my life. Lying content in my own bed, at home at last, gazing at the dimming summer light through our window curtains, I was enjoying this stillness at the end of the day. And there (and then) it was, my texture, flowing out in all directions. There was/is peace in this sensing. Words miss what it is to sense one’s texture. Like a quilt or patterned design, I could see/feel all my various elements at work, a choreography of people, relations, places and time. Those I was born into, those I have given birth to. Those I love and have loved. Tragedies and triumphs are all equal in texture, it’s all part of the feel of the fabric. There is no judgement in texture. Texture might include my sense of going to Paris, or my simple gratitude of living in this East Vancouver neighbourhood. It’s made of all that, but it’s not about that exactly. Texture arises of its own accord. In texture, there is no worrying, manipulating, or making of circumstances and events, or feeling in the ways we might habitually feel about others in our lives. One simply rests in texture, recognizing it all, including the self you were meant to be-come in relation to all those selves around you, without having to pursue anything about this. Maybe it’s the passage of time that brings forward our textures. Is it a middle-age thing to know? In shedding form, we more and more recognize form. Texture is the ALL-ness of life, the good, the bad, the happy, the sad, the mediocre, the just-as-it-is. We don’t make it, yet we very much are it. It’s there in the weaving of life’s threads. One senses who one is, who is around us, the forces of what and who forms and gives us our particular shape, just as we form and give shape. And it is all good, good in the sensing of it all. https://www.magoism.net/2014/03/meet-mago-contributor-nane-jordan/ (Meet Mago Contributor) Nane Jordan.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Noris Binet

A native of the Dominican Republic, Ms. Binet is an artist, author and spiritual teacher. Her background is as a sociologist and she holds an honorary doctorate in counseling and philosophy from the IIHS in Montreal, Canada. She offers retreats, workshops and Satsangs, wherein she facilitates meditation and self-inquiry through her dharma poetry and the sound of the zither. She founded Women on the Inner Journey Foundation dedicated to providing a safe space for reclaiming the sacred feminine through art, movement and silence. Based upon her work of healing racial wounds in Nashville, TN, she published Women on the Inner Journey. A member of the Sonoma Writers Alliance (http://sonomawriters.blogspot.com), she lives in Sonoma, CA and Ajijic, Mexico. Selected artwork can be seen at www.norisbinet.org.

(Special Post 5) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that […]
(Special Post 3) 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, […]
(Special post) Interweaving Mago Threads by Mago Circle Members

“Mago” tradition Magoism is a new word to the modern Western vocabulary, yet it has […]
(Special Post 2) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that […]
(Special Post 2) "The Oldest Cilivization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: The following discussion took place in response to an article listed blow by […]
(Special Post Mother Teresa 3) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

Part III: The Debate, What Went Right/Wrong with Mother Teresa? [Editorial Note: The following is […]

Samhain/Deep Autumn within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 4 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Samhain/Deep Autumn are: Northern Hemisphere – October 31st/November 1st Southern Hemisphere – April 30th/May 1st though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, thus actually a little later in early May for S.H., and early November for N.H., respectively. A Samhain/Deep Autumn Ceremonial Altar In this cosmology, Deep Autumn/Samhain is a celebration of She Who creates the Space to Be par excellence. This aspect of the Creative Triplicity is associated with the autopoietic quality of Cosmogenesis[i] and with the Crone/Old One of the Triple Goddess, who is essentially creative in Her process. This Seasonal Moment celebrates the process of the Crone, the Ancient One … how we are formed by Her process, and in that sense conceived by Her: it is an ‘imaginal fertility,’ a fertility of the dark space, the sentient Cosmos. It mirrors the fertility and conception of Beltaine (which is happening in the opposite Hemisphere at the same time). Some Samhain/Deep Autumn Story This celebration of Deep Autumn has been known in Christian times as “Halloween,” since the church in the Northern Hemisphere adopted it as “All Hallow’s eve” (31st October) or “All Saint’s Day” (1st November). This “Deep Autumn” festival as it may be named in our times, was known in old Celtic times as Samhain (pronounced “sow-een), which is an Irish Gaelic word, with a likely meaning of “Summer’s end,” since it is the time of the ending of the Spring-Summer growth. Many leaves of last Summer are turning and falling at this time: it was thus felt as the end of the year, and hence the New Year. It was and is noted as the beginning of Winter. It was the traditional Season for bringing in the animals from the outdoor pastures in pastoral economies, and when many of them were slaughtered. Earth’s tilt is continuing to move the region away from the Sun at this time of year. This Seasonal Moment is the meridian point of the darkest quarter of the year, between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice; the dark part of the day is longer than the light part of the day and is still on the increase. It is thus the dark space of the annual cycle wherein conception and dreaming up the new may occur. As with any New Year, between the old and the new, in that moment, all is possible. We may choose in that moment what to pass to the future, and what to relegate to compost. Samhain may be understood as the Space between the breaths. It is a generative Space – the Source of all. There is particular magic in being with this Dark Space. This Dark Space which is ever present, may be named as the “All-Nourishing Abyss,”[ii] the “Ever-Present Origin.”[iii] It is a generative Place, and we may feel it particularly at this time of year, and call it to consciousness in ceremony. Some Samhain/Deep Autumn Motifs The fermentation of all that has passed begins. This moment may mark the Transformation of Death – the breakdown of old forms, the ferment and rot of the compost, and thus the possibility of renewal.[iv] It is actually a movement towards form and ‘re-solution’ (as Beltaine – its opposite – begins a movement towards entropy and dissolution). With practice we begin to develop this vision: of the rot, the ferment, being a movement towards the renewal, to see the gold. And just so, does one begin to know the movement at Beltaine, towards expansion and thus falling apart, dissolution. In Triple Goddess poetics it may be expressed that the Crone’s face here at Samhain begins to change to the Mother – as at Beltaine the Virgin’s face begins to change to the Mother: the aspects are never alone and kaleidoscope into the other … it is an alive dynamic process, never static. The whole Wheel is a Creation story, and Samhain is the place of the conceiving of this Creativity, and it may be in the Spelling of it – saying what we will; and thus, beginning the Journey through the Wheel. Conception could be described as a “female-referring transformatory power” – a term used by Melissa Raphael in Thealogy and Embodiment:[v] conception happens in a female body, yet it is a multivalent cosmic dynamic, that is, it happens in all being in a variety of forms. It is not bound to the female body, yet it occurs there in a particular and obvious way. Androcentric ideologies, philosophies and theologies have devalued the event and occurrence of conception in the female body: whereas PaGaian Cosmology is a conscious affirmation, invocation and celebration of “female sacrality”[vi] as part of all sacrality. It does thus affirm the female as a place; as well as a place.[vii] ‘Conception’ is identified as a Cosmic Dynamic essential to all being – not exclusive to the female, yet it is a female-based metaphor, one that patriarchal-based religions have either co-opted and attributed to a father-god (Zeus, Yahweh, Chenrezig – have all taken on being the ‘mother’), or it has been left out of the equation altogether. Womb is the place of Creation – not some God’s index finger as is imagined in Michelangelo’s famous painting. Melissa Raphael speaks of a “menstrual cosmology”. It is an “ancient cosmology in which chaos and harmony belong together in a creation where perfection is both impossible and meaningless;”[viii] yet it is recently affirmed in Western scientific understanding of chaos, as essential to order and spontaneous emergence. Samhain is an opportunity for immersion in a deeper reality which the usual cultural trance denies. It may celebrate immersion in what is usually ‘background’ – the real world beyond and within time and space: which is actually the major portion of the Cosmos we live in.[ix] Samhain is about understanding that the Dark is a fertile place: in its decay and rot it seethes with infinite unseen complex golden threads connected to the wealth of Creativity of all that has gone before – like any …
(Video) Winter Solstice Breath Meditation by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Winter Solstice/Yule Southern Hemisphere – June 20 – 23. Northern Hemisphere – December 20 – 23 Winter Solstice is a celebration of the Mother/Creator aspect of the Triple Goddess in particular – as both Solstices may be, as dark or light come to fullness. Winter Solstice Moment celebrates the ripe fullness of the Dark Womb, and the gateway from that fullness back into new growing light. It is a Birthing Place – into differentiated being, and Her birthing happens in every moment in the breath, and is seamlessly connected with all layers of being – of self, Earth and Cosmos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDsVZzXtoyM The Text in the Meditation[i] Take a deep breath and let it go. Notice the Void at the bottom of emptying your breath … feeling it, and feeling the Urge to breathe as it arises. And again … feeling it over and over – this breath that arises out of the full emptiness in every moment, birthing you in every moment. – Recall some of the birthings in your life, your actual birth – see it there in your mind’s eye … you coming into being – your Nativity, your Nativity. Recall projects you have brought into being, new beings within yourself, perhaps children, new beings in others, how you have been Creator and Created – even at the same time … who was birthing who? Staying for a while with the many, many birthings in your life. – recalling now Earth-Gaia’s many birthings out of the Dark everyday … the dawn is constant as She turns. See Her in your mind’s eye – the constant dawning around the globe, the constant birthing. Recall Earth’s many births right now of all beings – as day breaks around the globe – the physical, emotional, spiritual births. Her many, many birthings everyday, and throughout the eons. recalling now Universe-Gaia’s many birthings – happening in every moment – right now in real time and space … supernovas right now, stars and planets being born right now. Her many, many birthings in every moment and throughout the eons. – recalling now Universe-Gaia’s many birthings – happening in every moment – right now in real time and space … supernovas right now, stars and planets being born right now. Her many, many birthings in every moment and throughout the eons. Come back to your breath – this wonder – none of it separate … the Origin Ever-Present, birthing you in every moment – out of Her Fertile Dark, in real time and space. Feeling this breath, Her breath. NOTES: [i] Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, Winter Solstice ceremonial script, p. 195-196. Reference: Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology. Music: Fish Nite Moon by Tim Wheater, permission generously given Images: – Birth of the Goddess, Erich Neumann, The Great Mother, pl. 155. See https://pagaian.org/book/cover-goddess-image/ – Winter Solstice window, MoonCourt Australia 2016 – some sources unknown
(Prose) Halcyon for the Season by Deanne Quarrie

A bird for this season is the Kingfisher, also known as the Halcyon. The Kingfisher is associated in Greek myth with the Winter Solstice. There were fourteen “halcyon days” in every year, seven of which fell before the winter solstice, seven after; peaceful days when the sea was smooth as a pond and the hen-halcyon built a floating nest and hatched out her young. She also had another habit, that of carrying her dead mate on her back over the sea and mourning him with a plaintive cry. Pliny reported that the halcyon was rarely seen and then only at the winter and summer solstices and at the setting of the Pleiades. She was therefore, a manifestation of the Moon-Goddess who was worshiped at the two solstices as the Goddess of Life in Death and Death in Life and, when the Pleiades set, she sent the sacred king his summons for death. Kingfishers are typically stocky, short-legged birds with large heads and large, heron-like beaks. They feed primarily on fish, hovering over the water or watching intently from perches and they plunge headlong into the water to catch their prey. Their name, Alcedinidae, stems from classical Greek mythology. Alcyone, Daughter of the Wind, was so distraught when her husband perished in a shipwreck that she threw herself into the sea. Both were then transformed into kingfishers and roamed the waves together. When they nested on the open sea, the winds remained calm and the weather balmy. Still another Alcyone, Queen of Sailing, was the mystical leader of the seven Pleiades. The heliacal rising of the Pleiades in May marked the beginning of the navigational year and their setting marked the end. Alcyone, as Sea Goddess protected sailors from rocks and rough weather. The bird, halcyon continued for centuries to be credited with the magical power of allaying storms. Shakespeare refers to this legend in this passage from Hamlet: Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is the time. Hamlet, I, i 157 When I was a young mother, and my children were little, we lived in a house that had a creek in the back yard. There were small trees along the far bank of this creek and every day, a kingfisher would sit in the branches overlooking the creek. Sometimes he sat there very quietly for a very long time. Suddenly he would dive from his perch straight into the creek. Every time he did he came out and up into the air with a fish. It gave me great pleasure to watch him from my kitchen window. I love birds. I love learning about their habits because it teaches me ways of being that are closer to nature. I love drawing birds as well. When I was a young and more able, I was an avid bird watcher, out with my friends hoping for a sight never seen before. I love the story of the kingfisher and her connection to the Halcyon Days of the Winter Solstice. It is for most of us the busiest time of year. Whether it is for the Solstice or Christmas (often both) we are in a frenzy to get things done, making sure everything is just right and perfect. I celebrate the Winter Solstice. As a priestess, my days right now are very busy creating ritual. It is at the Solstice that many passage rites are happening with the women I work with. And of course, I celebrate with my family with our magical Yule Log each year. But I try to honor those seven days before and the seven days after by trying to have the frantic moments before the Halcyon Days begin and then even when busy, hold the peace and calm of that beautiful smooth sea in my mind. Peace and love and joy surrounding the Winter Solstice make it perfect. May the Peace of a Halcyon Sea be yours in this Solstice Season. Do hold the image of that little kingfisher in mind! Meet Mago Contributor, Deanne Quarrie
Samhain: Stepping Wisely through the Open Door by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Day of the Dead altar, via Wikimedia Commons According to Celtic tradition, on Samhain (October 31 for those in the north and April 30 for those in the south) the doors between the human and spirit worlds open. Faeries, demons, and spirits of the dead pour out of the Otherworld to walk the Earth. In the past, some would try to hurry ghosts past their houses or ward off evil spirits by setting jack o’lanterns in their windows. They avoided going outside, especially past cemeteries, lest they be snatched away to the Otherworld. In ancient times, some offered sacrifices to propitiate deities. However, others have invited in the souls of friends and family who have passed away. In Brittany, according to W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, people would provide “a feast and entertainment for them of curded-milk, hot pancakes, and cider, served on the family table covered with a fresh white tablecloth, and to supply music” which “the dead come to enjoy with their friends” (p. 218). Other cultures also have such welcoming traditions. In Korea, as so beautifully described by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang in her posts about her family’s mourning for her father (Part I and Part II), in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, and elsewhere, food and flowers are brought to cemeteries to honor those no longer in the realm of the living. Many of us live in a society where death is pushed out of sight and Samhain’s sacred traditions have devolved into Halloween, a commercialized children’s holiday. Still, it seems to me that the pandemic, climate catastrophes, and war have made death much more present in our everyday thoughts over the past couple of years than before, so perhaps this year’s Samhain offers us the opportunity to re-examine Celtic and other practices of the past and present to see what insights and meaning they may have for us. Jack o lanterns: By Mihaela Bodlovic, via Wikimedia Commons All these ancient practices respect the spirit world and its power. Whether you believe that the Otherworld can wreak havoc on us at Samhain or not, the realm where spirits dwell clearly has power. Its allure can take us away from focusing on mundane, daily challenges or, more positively, open our eyes to the value of relating to forces that can give richness and meaning to our lives. At the same time, we must remember that each domain has its own power. We can use our physical bodies in beneficial ways that those in the Otherworld cannot. We must respect the power of the Otherworld as well as our own. Some kinds of healing are only possible when we welcome those from the Otherworld into our lives in a healthy way, whether through holiday visits or every day through remembrance, meditation, prayer, or other means. I’m of an age when many of my beloveds are in the Otherworld and so I am beginning to find that the idea of being able to sit with someone I have lost is cause not for fear, but rather joy and comfort. Perhaps those who have longstanding wounds from the past can heal by remembering those we have lost at Samhain and forgiving them or ourselves or realizing that we are no longer bound to those who have hurt us and are now gone. Samhain can also reassure us of the truth of our intuitive sense that our beloveds who we grieve are with us still, in some way, on this night and throughout the year. When we participate in the celebration of Samhain’s opening of doors to the Otherworld, if only for a day, we are honoring our own participation into the great cycle of life, death, and rebirth. We are expanding our vision of ourselves to be more than our bodies on the Earth and experiencing ourselves as connected to many realms, seen and unseen, spirit and human. We are accepting that at some time we will also become ancestors, with all the responsibility that entails and the fulfillment of taking our place in the complex matrix of being that is our universe. When we interact with the souls of those we have lost in ways that are healthy for us, however we may choose and believe that happens, we can also better celebrate the realm of the living. Just as we may listen in various ways for positive messages from those whom we have lost, we can ensure that we are expressing important guidance to those who will come after us by who we are and how we live our lives. We can express that life is worth living, even with all its traumas, and that we respect both the boundaries and the doors between the worlds so that we may continue living fully in our physical bodies on our beautiful, awe-inspiring Earth. I hope my message to my descendants will be: Love your lives. Build on what we have done and do better. Leave behind what we left you that no longer serves. If you feel alone, remember that you have thousands of generations of mothers sending you unconditional love and also generations of women coming after you eager to pick up where you left off. According to Mary Condren in The Serpent and the Goddess, in the most ancient times, “Samhain had been primarily a harvest feast celebrating the successful growth and gathering of the fruits of the past year” (p. 36). While we in the north are coming into the season of death, those in the south are experiencing Beltane, the first moments of spring when the doors between the worlds are also open. The eternal cycle of life, death, and regeneration turns again. Whether you are celebrating Samhain or Beltane, know that this holy time offers us all a chance to enter into the task of maintaining harmony with those we have loved before and for bringing balance between life and death, winter and summer, and the realm of the living and …
Lammas/Late Summer in PaGaian tradition By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Traditionally the dates for this Seasonal Moment are: Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd however the actual astronomical date varies. See archaeoastronomy.com for the actual moment. Lammas table/altar Lammas, as it is often called[1], is the meridian point of the first dark quarter of the year, between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox; it is after the light phase has peaked and is complete, and as such, I choose it as a special celebration of the Crone/Old One. Within the Celtic tradition, it is the wake of Lugh, the Sun King, and it is the Crone that reaps him. But within earlier Goddess traditions, all the transformations were Hers[2]; and the community reflected on the reality that the Mother aspect of the Goddess, having come to fruition, from Lammas on would enter the Earth and slowly become transformed into the Old Woman-Hecate-Cailleach aspect …[3] I dedicate Lammas to the face of the Old One, just as Imbolc, its polar opposite on the Wheel in Old European tradition, is dedicated to the Virgin/Maiden face. The Old One, the Dark and Shining One, has been much maligned, so to celebrate Her can be more of a challenge in our present cultural context. Lammas may be an opportunity to re-aquaint ourselves with the Crone in her purity, to fall in love with Her again. I state the purpose of the seasonal gathering thus: This is the season of the waxing dark. The seed of darkness born at the Summer Solstice now grows … the dark part of the days grows visibly longer. Earth’s tilt is taking us back away from the Sun. This is the time when we celebrate dissolution; each unique self lets go, to the Darkness. It is the time of ending, when the grain, the fruit, is harvested. We meet to remember the Dark Sentience, the All-Nourishing Abyss, She from whom we arise, in whom we are immersed, and to whom we return. This is the time of the Crone, the Wise Dark One, who accepts and receives our harvest, who grinds the grain, who dismantles what has gone before. She is Hecate, Lillith, Medusa, Kali, Erishkagel,Chamunda, Coatlique – Divine Compassionate One, She Who Creates the Space to Be. We meet to accept Her transformative embrace, trusting Her knowing, which is beyond all knowledge. Lammas is the seasonal moment for recognizing that we dissolve into the “night” of the Larger Organism of whom we are part – Gaia. It is She who is immortal, from whom we arise, and into whom we dissolve. This celebration is a development of what was born in the transition of Summer Solstice; the dark sentient Source of Creativity is honoured. The autopoietic space in us recognizes Her, is comforted by Her, desires Her self-transcendence and self-dissolution; Lammas is an opportunity to be with our organism’s love of Larger Self – this Native Place. We have been taught to fear Her, but at this Seasonal Moment we may remember that She is the compassionate One, deeply committed to transformation, which is actually innate to us. Whereas at Imbolc/Early Spring, we shone forth as individual, multiforms of Her; at Lammas, we small individual selves remember that we are She and dissolve back into Her. We are the Promise of Lifeas was affirmed at Imbolc, but we are the Promise of Her- it is not ours to hold. We identify as the sacred Harvest at Lammas; our individual harvest isHer Harvest. We are the process itself – we are Gaia’s Process. Wedo not breathe (though of course we do), we borrow the breath, for a while. It is like a relay: we pick the breath up, create what we do during our time with it, and pass it on. The harvest we reap in our individual lives is important, andit is for us only short term; it belongs to the Cosmos in the long term. Lammas is a time for “making sacred” – as “sacrifice” may be understood; we may “make sacred” ourselves. As Imbolc was a time for dedication, so is Lammas. This is the wisdom of the phase of the Old One. She is the aspect that finds the “yes” to letting go, to loving the Larger Self, beyond all knowledge, and steps into the power of the Abyss; encouraged and nourished by the harvest, She will gradually move into the balance of Autumn Equinox/Mabon, the next Sesaonal Moment on the year’s cycle. References: Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess.Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990. Gray, Susan. The Woman’s Book of Runes.New York: Barnes and Noble, 1999. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. McLean, Adam. The Four Fire Festivals. Edinburgh: Megalithic Research Publications, 1979. Notes: [1]See note 3. [2]Susan Gray, The Woman’s Book of Runes,p. 18. This is also to say that the transformations are within each being, not elsewhere, that is the “sacrifice” is not carried out by another external to the self, as could be and have been interpreted from stories of Lugh or Jesus. [3]Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, The Year of the Goddess, p.143, quoting Adam McLean, Fire Festivals,p.20-22. Another indication of the earlier tradition beneath “Lughnasad” is the other name for it in Ireland of “Tailltean Games”. Taillte was said to be Lugh’s foster-mother, and it was her death that was being commemmorated (Mike Nichols, “The First Harvest”, Pagan Alliance Newsletter NSW Australia). The name “Tailtunasad” has been suggested for this Seasonal Moment, by Cheryl Straffon editor of Goddess Alive! I prefer the name of Lammas, although some think it is a Christian term: however some sources say that Lammas means “feast of the bread” which is how I have understood it, and surely such a feast pre-dates Christianity. It is my opinion that the incoming Christians preferred “Lammas” to “Lughnasad”: the term itself is not Christian in origin. The evolution of all these things is complex, and we may evolve them further with our careful thoughts and experience.
(Essay) The Emergence celebrated at Spring Equinox by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The Spring Equinox Moment occurs September 21-23 Southern Hemisphere, March 21-23 Northern Hemisphere. The full story of Spring Equinox is expressed in the full flower connected to the seed fresh from the earth; that is, it is a story of emergence from the dark, from a journey, perhaps long, perhaps short, through challenging places. The joy of the blossoming is rooted in the journey through the dark, and an acknowledgement of the dark’s fertile gift, as well as of great achievement in having made it, of having returned. Both Equinoxes, Spring and Autumn, celebrate this sacred balance of grief and joy, light and dark, and they are both celebrations of the mystery of the seed. The seed is essentially the deep Creativity within – that manifests in the Spring as flower, or green emerged One. the full story: the root and the flower As the new young light continues to grow at this time of Spring, it comes into balance with the dark at Spring Equinox, or ‘Eostar’ as it may be named; about to tip further into light when light will dominate the day. The trend at this Equinox is toward increasing hours of light: and thus it is about the power of being – life is stepping into it. Earth in this region is tilting further toward the Sun. Traditionally it may be storied as the joyful celebration of a Lost Beloved One, who may be represented by the Persephone story: She is a shamanic figure who is known for Her journey to the Underworld, and who at this time of Spring Equinox returns. Her Mother Demeter who has waited and longed for Her in deep grief, rejoices and so do all: warmth and growth return to the land. Persephone, the Beloved Daughter, the Seed, has navigated the darkness successfully, has enriched it with Her presence and also gained its riches. Eostar/Spring Equinox is the magic of the unexpected, yet long awaited, green emergence from under the ground, and then the flower: this emergence is especially profound as it is from a seed that has lain dormant for months or longer – much like the magic of desert blooms after long periods of drought. The name of “Eostar” comes from the Saxon Goddess Eostre/Ostara, the northern form of the Sumerian Astarte[i]. The Christian festival in the Spring, was named “Easter” as of the Middle Ages, appropriating Goddess/Earth tradition. The date of Easter, which is set for Northern Hemispheric seasons, is still based on the lunar/menstrual calendar; that is, the 1st Sunday after the first full Moon after Spring Equinox. In Australia where I am, “Easter” is celebrated in Autumn (!) by mainstream culture, so we have the spectacle of fluffy chickens, chocolate eggs and rabbits in the shops at that time. There are other names for “Eostar” in other places …the Welsh name for the Spring Equinox celebration is Eilir, meaning ‘regeneration’ or ‘spring’ – or ‘earth’[ii]. In my own PaGaian tradition, the Spring Equinox celebration is based on the Demeter and Persephone story, the version that is understand as pre-patriarchal, from Old Europe. In the oldest stories, Persephone has agency in Her descent: She descends to the underworld voluntarily as a courageous seeker of wisdom, and a compassionate receiver of the dead. She represents, and IS, the Seed of Life that never fades away. Spring Equinox is a celebration of Her return, Life’s continual return, and thus also our personal and collective emergences/returns.We may contemplate the collective emergence/returns especially in our times. I describe Persephone as a “hera”, which of old was a term for any courageous One. “Hera” was a pre-Hellenic name for the Goddess in general[iii]. “Hera” was the indigenous Queen Goddess of pre-Olympic Greece, before She was married off to Zeus. “Hero” was a term for the brave male Heracles who carried out tasks for his Goddess Hera: “The derivative form ‘heroine’ is therefore completely unnecessary”[iv]. “Hera” may be used as a term for any courageous individual: and participants in PaGaian Spring Equinox ceremony have named themselves this way. The pre-“Olympic” games of Greece were Hera’s games, held at Her Heraion/temple[v]. The winners were “heras” – gaining the status of being like Her[vi]. At the time of Spring Equinox, we may celebrate the Persephone, the Hera, the Courageous One, who steps with new wisdom, into power of being: the organic power that all beings must have, Gaian power, the power of the Cosmos. This Seasonal ceremony may be a rejoicing in how we have made it through great challenges and loss, faced our fears and our demise (in its various forms), had ‘close shaves’ – perhaps physically as well as psychicly and emotionally. It is a time to welcome back that which was lost, and step into the strength of being. Spring Equinox/Eostar is the time for enjoying the fruits of the descent, of the journey taken into the darkness: return is now certain, not tentative as it was in the Early Spring/Imbolc. Demeter, the Mother, receives the Persephones, Lost Beloved Ones, joyously. This may be understood as an individual experience, but also as a collective experience – as we emerge into a new Era as a species. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme speak of the ending of the sixty-five million year geological Era – the Cenozoic Era – in our times, and our possible emergence into an Ecozoic Era. They describe the Ecozoic Era as a time when “the curvature of the universe, the curvature of the earth, and the curvature of the human are once more in their proper relation”[vii]. Joanna Macy speaks of the “Great Turning” of our times[viii]. Collectively we have been away from the Mother for some time and there is a lot of pain. At this time we may contemplate not only our own individual lost wanderings, but also that of the human species. We are part of a much bigger Return that is happening. The Beloved One may be understood as returning on a collective level: …
(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.
Summer Solstice Poiesis by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

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 sacred ceremony of relationship with our place, can only be more dire in these times, as we are witness to, and aware of, …
The Passing of Last Summer’s Growth by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The ‘passing of last Summer’s growth’ as is experienced and contemplated in the Season of Deep Autumn/Samhain, may be a metaphor for the passing of all/any that has come to fullness of being, or that has had a fullness, a blossoming of some kind, and borne fruit; and in the passing it has been received, and thus transforms. The ‘passing of last Summer’s growth’ may be in hearts and minds, an event or events, a period of time, or an era, that was a deep communion, now passed and dissolved into receptive hearts and minds, where it/they reside for reconstitution, within each unique being. Samhain is traditionally understood as ‘Summer’s end’: indeed that is what the word ‘Samhain’ means. In terms of the seasonal transitions in indigenous Old European traditions, Summer is understood as over when the Seasonal Moment of Lammas/Lughnasad comes around; it is the first marked transition after the fullness of Summer Solstice. The passing and losses may have been grieved, the bounty received, thanksgiving felt and expressed, perhaps ceremonially at Autumn Equinox/Mabon; yet now in this Season of Samhain/Deep Autumn it composts, clearly falls, as darkness and cooler/cold weather sets in, change is clearer. In the places where this Earth-based tradition arose, Winter could be sensed setting in at this time, and changes to everyday activity had to be made. In our times and in our personal lives, we may sense this kind of ending, when change becomes necessary, no longer arbitrary: and the Seasonal Moment of Samhain may be an excellent moment for expressing these deep truths, telling the deep story, and making meaning of the ending, as we witness such passing. What new shapes will emerge from the infinite well of creativity? And we may wonder what will return from the dissolution? What re-solution will be found? We may wonder what new shapes will emerge. In the compost of what has been, what new syntheses, new synergies, may come forth? Now is the time for dreaming, for drawing on the richness within, trusting the sentience, within which we are immersed, and which we are: and then awaiting the arrival, being patient with the fermentation and gestation. Seize the moment, this Moment – and converse with the depths within your own bodymind, wherein She is. Make space for the sacred conversation, the Conversing with your root and source of being, and take comfort in this presence. We may ponder what yet unkown beauty and wellness may emerge from this infinite well of creativity. The Samhain Moment in the Northern Hemisphere is 17:14 UT 7thNovember this year. Wishing you a sense of the deep communion present in the sacred space you make for this holy transition.

(Book Excerpt 3) The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia

[Author’s Note: The following is from Chapter 8, The Consciousness of WE/HERE/NOW.] The Budoji stories the primordial drama of Mago’s beginning. It furnishes a yet-to-be-heard story of the beginning of the Great Goddess, the taboo story in patriarchy. It is the story of the Creatrix that patriarchy has attempted to erase. It can be temporarily forgotten but can never die because it is the story that is at the root of patriarchy. Ultimately, it is The Story that is happening HERE and NOW. The merit of the Magoist Cosmogony lies in the fact that it, through storying, restores the view of the whole, the macrocosmic view of the All. The holistic view necessarily involves the Great Goddess or the First Mother in that S/HE is the Creatrix. Time is not a linear concept, flowing from one end to the other. Time is the unified Present, happening NOW. It may be said that time is circular or cyclic, as all beings are constantly in motion to enhance the process of self-creation, which causes the whole to change ceaselessly. The Present hosts an infinite number of stories that take place in the undividable One Space HERE. The beginning of the Great Goddess is still happening and we are invited to re-cognize HER STORY in the HERE and NOW. The beginning is a process, not a single isolated event that took place in the remote past.[i] All things exist in the process of becoming HERE and NOW as part of WE. Put differently, the beginning of the Great Goddess is the LIVE SCENE/DRAMA/STORY. We are part of HER STORY. Mago’s beginning is the heart that pumps fresh blood to the body of the terrestrial becoming. The beginning of the Great Goddess is still taking place HERE/NOW. The terrestrial beginning is attributed to the Great Goddess who is self-born through the sonic movement of cosmic light. The beginning story of the Great Goddess is no ordinary one. It is of power and truth, that is, metamorphic. It provides the original text to the meaning of “salvation.” HER Beginning that is happening HERE/NOW holds all from falling into cacophony. For one thing, it delivers us from the patriarchal misconception of ultimate reality that does away with the Creatrix. The holistic view of the Creatrix is capable of saving us from misconceptions and misconduct. Ultimately, it guides us to live our life in harmony with the whole, HERE/NOW. The Magoist Cosmogony engenders the consciousness that WE ARE HERE/NOW. The universe is existent without beginning or end. In one ever-existing reality, things ceaselessly appear and disappear in relation to one another on all levels. All things are in the constant movement of autogenesis striving to arrive at a new position of balance. S/HE IS HERE/NOW telling us the STORY of WE. That is the source of our metamorphosis. Notes: [i] Process thought founded by Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, and John B. Cobb shares a common premise on that regard, although it does not associate ultimate reality with the Creatrix. (See Book Excerpt 1 and Book Excerpt 2. Available in Mago Bookstore.) Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.
(Essay 2 Part 1) Why Do I Love Korean Historical Dramas? by Anna Tzanova

Part 1 Fans, journalists, critics, and academia in multiple fields have studied this world phenomenon; have written blogs, articles, books; and presented in conferences, dissecting, and making predictions. Still, the magic and mystery of its success persists to be as thrilling as ever. This is the way I see it: DELIGHTING THE SENSES
(Mago Essay 3) Toward the Primordial Knowing of Mago, the Great Goddess by Helen Hwang

[The following sequels including this one are a modified version of my paper presented to Daoist Studies, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2010.] Part 3 Daoist Rendition of Mago, the Great Goddess Being the creatrix, progenitor, and ultimate sovereign, Mago has been addressed by many names. Her derivative names include Samsin Halmeoni (Triad Grandmother/Goddess), Cheonsin (Heavenly Deity), Daejosin (Great Ancestor Deity), Nogo (Crone/Grandmother), Gomo (Goddess Mother), Magui (Devil), Seogo (Auspicious Goddess), Seonnyeo (Female Immortal), Seonja (Immortal Person), and simply Halmi (Grandmother/Crone/Goddess) especially in Korea. To say the least, these names, respectively embedded in a particular cultural and historical background, reflect a complex and enduring feature of Magoism. One may wonder: How is it possible to assess that these goddesses with different names refer to the same goddess, Mago? While such a query is legitimate, its answer entails a prolix explication of inferences based on the comprehensive analysis of a large volume of data, a technique that requires all human faculties, not just rationality. Foremost, the name “Mago” is the primary defining factor to identify Her transnational manifestations in East Asia. This name crisscrosses otherwise seemingly unrelated data including folklore, arts, literature, poetry, and religious and historical records. Such toponyms as Mt. Mago, Rock of Mago, and Cave of Mago presently extant in Korea, China, and/or Japan further substantiate the coherence of Magoism in East Asia. Having established the patterns and styles of Mago stories, the researcher is able to identify a common motif that is shared by the stories and place-names of the goddesses with derivative names. In short, these stories are organically interconnected, reflecting the universality and particularities of Magoist theism. As with Her many names, the researcher or art historian requires the same technique to assess a broad range of Her visual representations. One can begin with a good number of paintings whose colophons designate Mago. Two of the most conspicuous colophons are “Magu gathering medicinal herbs” and “Mago presents longevity.” However, many icons including sculptures and embroideries do not have such an indication. In that case, one can tell the Mago icon by its pictorial themes recurring in the images that are identified as Mago. That said, there is no doubt that the Mago icon stands as the prototype of its numerous variations, which are beyond my documentation at this point. A large portion of Mago visual representations I have documented is casually referred to as “The Immortal Magu (麻姑仙, Magu Xian or Mago Seon)” by moderns. As such, it is assumed that She is a Daoist goddess. Would the Daoist appropriation of Mago’s visual images be accurate? I hold that the Daoist rendition of Mago is a specious stopgap, leaving many issues unattended. When B is derived from A, B alone can explain neither A nor B. Not only Her pre-Daoist origin but also Her supreme divinity as the Great Goddess remains unexplained. Furthermore, Daoism has offered no framework to explain the transnational dissemination of Magoist material culture in Korea, China, and Japan.
(Bell Essay 3) The Ancient Korean Bell and Magoism by Helen Hwang

Part III Nipples and Breasts of the Ancient Korean Bell, Revival of Old Magoism in Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE) Female sexuality and the divine are seamless. The ancient Korean bell bespeaks the divine, derived from female sexuality. Emitting reverberation, it casts a spell on the hearer. It is the sound that connects one with the Goddess and with one another. However, lapse of time has never been neutral. It has wrought the change of gender principle in society and in human consciousness. The female principle is severed from the divine. The divine without regard to the female is only astray or make-believe. When the seamlessness is broken, the bell loses its power to enchant. The ancient Korean bell, as a time capsule, sets us to the task of undoing the gender reversal. Unfettering of the arcane knowledge of Magoism is the gain. In proportion to the patriarchal progress in East Asia, Magoism, the gynocentric historical and cultural context, has been submerged. The fact that Magoism remains unregistered is a sign that moderns have drifted too far from the Female Origin. As a result, the female symbology of the bell is rendered irrelevant, if not obsolete. The bell and Buddhism are dysfunctional, if not mismatched. Or, maybe the Sillans who commissioned the bells in the 8th century CE saw Buddhism differently. Keeping at bay what makes the bell as the bell — the female symbology, Buddhist patriarchs have set a maze, heading only to “nothingness.” The sonority of the bell travels to the ear of people. However, deep hearing is thwarted by the patriarchal concept of the divine. Part III begins to deprogram the patriarchal conceptual barrier by shedding light on the core of its female symbology, the Nipples, the Bell Breasts, and the Breast Circumferences. Four Dimensional Mandala Is Here The relief of Nipples depicted elegantly and realistically is an attention grabber. For fear of being mistaken for something else especially by the generation to come, Sillan ancestors named them yudu (breast nipples). To be certain, they named the seat of the nipples jongyu (bell breast) and the enclosure of the breast yugwak (breast circumference). Detailed and refined artistry radiates the spirit of honor and veneration. As seen below, the nipples come in various styles showing the mastery of the bell casters in metallurgic technology. [The following images of Nipples are from the bells of different periods including Silla. The structures of nipples and breasts remain the same throughout history, characterizing Korean bells.] Sometimes, the nipples are depicted as the studs of lotus blossoms. Other times they are seated in lotus petals. Less frequently, the nipples are rendered as flat lotus flowers, perhaps to mitigate the graphic look. Regardless, the viewer can’t miss the number of the Nipples, nine. The nine nipples are aligned in three rows of three in the Bell Breast, which is enclosed by the Breast Circumference. Considering that the triad is the symbol of Mago as Samsin Halmi (The Triad Goddess), the three rows of three represent the triad in all ways, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. One is surrounded by the triad in all directions; an epiphany is stored to enact. Now the bell caster conjoins the number three symbol with the number four symbol. In ancient East Asia, the four corners represent all directions, that is, the whole world. Placed in four corners, thirty-six nipples in all (a set of nine nipples in four directions) represent the female occupying the whole world. Seong Nakju in his inquiry about the thirty-six nipples of an ancient Korean bell states that the first emperor of the Qin dynasty (the first state that united China) divided “the world” into 36 heavens in 221 BCE. (Seong Nakju, see below in Sources.) Unlike the rule of the first Qin emperor infamous for tyranny, the 36 Nipples hint at neither domination nor the hierarchical power of the patriarchal monarch. Instead, they saturate the whole world with the female anatomy. To be discussed at a later point, the nine nipples that came from the 8th century are a time-proven means through which we may enter the consciousness of the Bronze Age, if not earlier when they originated and of the times whenever they reappeared. The four dimensional mandala is revealed, biding its time to evoke one to the fifth direction. The bell delivers the triumph of the Goddess (female principle) to the world in an utterly outlandish manner! Her Way is peace, integration, and beauty. Behold, She is enthroned. Gom (Ungnyeo) and the Nine-State Confederacy of Old Magoism What does a set of nine nipples signify? What does it mean that the ancient Korean bell has four sets of nine nipples? In Magoism the nine nipples are not an isolated symbol. They are on a par with the nine-tailed fox and the nine dragons from East Asia. These are the ancient representations of the female divine. I have delineated elsewhere that the nine-tailed fox is associated with Xiwangmu (Queen Mother of the West) and the nine dragons with Gwaneum (Guanyin, Kannon). Other times, Goddess Herself manifests as of the nine forms. As I discussed, the nine maidens of Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea, is a good example (see “Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea,” Part IV). The nine-female symbology goes beyond East Asia. The concatenation includes the nine Muses, the nine forms of Durga, and the African Goddesses of Oya and Mumbi who are known to have nine daughters. As such, evidence of the nine-female symbolism is intense and cross-cultural. The recurring symbolism of nine in East Asia suggests the once prevalent mytho-history of Old Magoism. Old Magoism is characterized by the rule of Magoist shamans who invented and spread the gynocentric civilization of pre-Chinese East Asia worldwide. Precisely, the nine-female symbolism refers to Gom (Ungnyeo, Bear/Sovereign Woman), founder of the nine-state confederacy in pre-Chinese times (see Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea, Part V). In short, the framework of Magoism …
(Essay 2) Why Reenact the Nine-Mago Movement? by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: The sequel of this essay is released in preparation for 2015 Nine-Day Solstice Celebration Project.] Part 2 Goddess Goma, the Magoist Shaman Ruler, and Her Nona-Mago Tradition Not until the autumn of 2012 did the pervasive manifestation of the number nine symbolism in Magoism surface in my consciousness. The information that the shrine of Gaeyang Halmi (Gaeyang Grandmother/Goddess), the Sea Goddess of Korea, was once called the Temple of Gurang (Nine Goddesses 九嫏祠) awakened a deep memory in me. It was a revelation to me and I began to connect the dots! That summer, I had joined the field research team of Konkuk University’s Korean Oral Literature graduate program. With them I visited the Shrine of the Sea Saint (Suseong-dang 水聖堂) in Buan, North Jeolla, S. Korea to collect folklore from the locals. Only when I was processing the data that the team gathered to write a report, did I come across the original name of the shrine, the Temple of the Nine Goddesses. And the Nine Goddesses refer to Gaeyang Halmi and her eight daughters. It is unknown how and when it was replaced by the current name, the Shrine of the Sea Saint. It is evident, however, that a linguistic femicide took place; the female-connoted term, the Nine Goddesses, was replaced by the sex/gender neutral term, the Sea Saint.
(Goma Article Excerpt 1) Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea and Her Mythology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This essay was first included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, published in 2018 by Mago Books.] This essay may be called a Magoist study of the Korean foundation myth, also known as the Dangun myth. It reinstates Goma, better known as “Ungnyeo (Bear/Sovereign Woman),” the shaman ruler of pre-patriarchal Korea, who is the main character of the Korean foundation myth. Here “Mago” stands for the Creatrix and “Magoism” for pre-patriarchally originated indigenous tradition of East Asia that venerates the Creatrix.[1] Identifying Goma as the ruler Goddess of Old Korea/East Asia is by no means a new effort. She is, although few in number, alluded to the eponymous Goddess of ancient Korean States (Goma State, for example) in both historical sources and modern research. In fact, “Ungnyeo” is one of the most studied topics by Korean linguists, mythologists, and historians for it concerns the identity of the Korean people. Nonetheless, those studies tend to be monodisciplinary or androcentric in their approaches and consequently fail to assess her full-fledged supreme identity as the ancestor ruler of East Asian nations. This chapter engages in transdisciplinary, comparative, and feminist approaches to elucidating the Goma myth. At the outset, we will rename “the Korean foundation myth” “the Goma myth.” That is corollary in that she is the central figure of the story. Also it introduces Old Korea as the One People of the Creatrix, anciently known as Nine Hans (九桓 Guhan). The Goma myth restores the gynocentric multi-meaning of “Nine Hans” and “Magoist Koreans/East Asians,” which is non-ethnocentric and supra-nationalist in origin. The character, “Han (桓),” in “Nine Hans” and “Hanguk,” is complex in meaning as it connotes “one,” “whole, “great,” “good,” “same,” “bright,” “many,” “correct,” “middle,” “full” and the like. Thus, “Nine Hans” refer to the People of the Creatrix who have those qualities of the character “Han.” Koreanists have designated as Hanism (the Han thought) this inclusive and polysemic nature of the word “Han” characteristic of traditional Korean worldview.[2] Although naming it Hanism is insightful, it may be misleading without a full-fledged hermeneutics of Goma mythology. Goma, known as Ungnyeo or Gom, remains underestimated and misrepresented among modern Koreans. A common understanding of the Korean foundation myth goes that she was the bear who became a woman and married Hanung, the divine sage ruler of Old Korea, and gave birth to a son, Dangun, the founder of the proto-Chinese Joseon dynasty (2333 BCE-232 BCE). Goma is diminished to the role of a mother of an assumed male hero at best. Consequently, she is redacted from the mytho-historical context of Old Magoist Korea/East Asia (the pre-patriarchal gynocentric people of the Creartrix), and divested of her supreme identity as the dynastic founder of Danguk (3898 BCE-2333 BCE). Given the immensity and complexity of the topic and its data, it is admittedly impossible to treat them comprehensively within a chapter. While many salient themes are discussed, many others are not treated. Among the untreated are Nine Numerology and its cross-cultural manifestations beyond East Asia. This essay aims the following: (1) It provides some pivotal background discussions as well as overall characteristics of the Goma myth. (2) It introduces and delineates the four narratives of the Goma myth selectively chosen from various written texts. The fact that the topic of Goma has rarely been brought to light in its own right in the West adds to the difficulty. This has to do with the fact that pre-Chinese Korean/East Asian history is deemed heterodox, if recognized, in mainstream (read Sinocentric and patriarchal) East Asian Studies. Not only her supreme identity but also her Magoist mytho-historical context remains as non-data in the institutionalized practice of Korean Studies. Our task necessarily involves a controversial feminist methodology, debunking conventional interpretations as a product of Sinocentrism. Mainstream Koreanists have endorsed or internalized the Chinese ethnocentric worldview that is patriarchal and imperialist. Reversing the multiple reversals, the current work, as a result, exposes what is written out of the official East Asian mytho-historiography. Summary of the Goma Myth Goma had a great spirit from birth. Because of her vision of “benefiting the human world widely,” she was entrusted by the last shaman queen, Hanin of Hanguk (桓國 State of One People, c. 7199 BCE – 3898 BCE), with the task of restoring the Reign of the Creatrix. Toward the end of the Hanguk confederacy, clan names and their customs grew apart. And a belligerent tiger clan rose. They raided and plundered neighboring tribes. Goma conceived a will to pacify a social problem caused by this unruly patrilocal clan. Determined to constrain the tiger clan, she requested Hanin to send her to the troubled region. Hanin granted her wish and sent her to the region, Mount Taebaek (Great Resplendence). Leading the royal bear clan of 3,000 people, Goma arrived at Mount Taebaek and settled adjacent to the tiger clan. Rather than a military solution, she proposed a covenant for both the bear clan and the tiger clan to observe. Both clans underwent a trial, which was to dwell in a cave hall and endure 100 days without seeing the sunlight, living on mugwort and chive. I call her proposal the cave initiation, a socio-spiritual pledge to undergo the ordeal of the cave environment in order to tap into one’s innate power of restoring true human nature. The cave is a physical and metaphorical place for the womb of the Primordial Mother, the sacred space/time of unity, wholeness, and rebirth, wherein everyone once dwelt. The cave initiation represents a returning to the knowing of the common origin of all beings, the Crearix. Goma proffered the tiger clan an option of changing their predatory behaviors but they could not endure the cave initiation. The bear clan endured for three seven days (21 days) and attained the female character, the true human nature. The tiger clan was expelled to a remote designated land outside Four Seas, the territory of Old Magoist East Asia, by verdict of the law that Goma legislated. …

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Mago Pod Bulletin #66 April 2024

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