September 9, 2019September 4, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Prose) Red Willow River by Sara Wright

Winding through the valley the river tells ancient stories about the peaceful people who lived along her red willow banks, long ago… I can almost see the women who gathered Read More …

September 4, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) Crowning by Liz Darling

The imagery represents the crowning of childbirth as the Goddess gives birth to the world, and perhaps a birth-like awakening into the Anthropocene as we begin to viscerally understand how Read More …

September 2, 2019November 15, 2019 Glenys D. LivingstoneLeave a comment

(Review) Vibrant Voices: Women, Myth, and the Arts, editors Sid Reger & Marna Hauk, by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

If you are passionate about Goddess in your heart and mind and life, you only need to see/hear the titles of the five sections of this book Vibrant Voices: Women, Myth, Read More …

June 24, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poetry) Peace in Connection by Belinda Subraman

Memories like bullets lifeless until held or loaded… The wind comes around again magnified from different angles. Crystals are in the net, an elephant in the room. Read More …

June 19, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art 2) Gather the Women by Pegi Eyers

The shared support and connection between women allows us to heal from the patriarchy that has waged war on us for millennia, and joining together in the true spirit of Read More …

June 1, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art 1) Gather the Women by Pegi Eyers

Gather the Women 1/2 The shared support and connection between women allows us to heal from the patriarchy that has waged war on us for millennia, and joining together in Read More …

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 Mago WorkLeave 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 …

(Essay 5) blackbird and a pear tree by Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum

A family story told in art, names, places, denied cultures, black and sensual madonnas, diversity of beliefs, visionary and healing Santa Lucia of Sicily During the second week of our journey we came to the African coast of south Sicily memorialized in the blockbuster film series, Il Commissario, which may be the best social history of this coast of the contemporary African Mediterranean. With 2014 eyes I looked incredulously at the region where my father and his family left for America in 1912—fleeing miseria, a misery connoting poverty and the humiliations of living in the poor south of Italy. Changed spectacularly since Wally and I were there in 2010, the stretch of Sicily fronting Africa has become a north Italian and international summer spa of northerners seeking the sun and sea. In August, 60,000 tourists come to the marinas of Ragusa Ibla, Scicli, Modica, and Noto. We arrived a few days after the end of high season when most of the tourists had gone . . . leaving high end hotels, restaurants, shops and white sandy beaches with a baroque backdrop. The mixture of ancient echoes, high technology, contemporary rock music, and the sun and the sea sent my senses reeling.
(Video) The Oracle Re-Members Gaia by Annalisa Derr, Ph.D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phiVbUM3HsY The Pythia, priestess of Apollo at Delphi, was the most renowned oracle of the ancient world. Leaders sought her counsel on matters ranging from warfare to agriculture. She stood as the mediatrix between the divine and human realms. Some traditions hold that Delphi was originally a sacred site dedicated to Gaia—the very heart of feminine-centered worship. In 2019, I journeyed to Delphi to encounter what remains of this ancient cult. Beckoned by the spirit of Goddess, Annalisa performed a ritual in the guise of an ancient Delphic priestess, re-matriating the tradition to its Gaian origins for contemporary times. Her ritual invocation wove together symbolic elements from the land (laurel, soil, and the mountainous terrain), the written word (lines from the Homeric Hymn to Gaia and inscriptions at Delphi), and goddess worship (menstrual fluids and the inverted triangle). In seeking embodied approaches to her research on menstrual sacrality and goddess devotion, Annalisa created She Bleeds the World into Existence—a site-specific, goddess-centered, menstrual art performance series. These one-time-only ritual performances have been presented in Italy, Greece, Southern California, and Seattle, WA. The Oracle Re-members Gaia was performed in 2019 at Delphi, Greece. https://www.magoism.net/2025/08/meet-mago-contributor-annalisa-derr-ph-d/
(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 GIFT My favourite placental metaphor is the tree. While raising my children on the West Coast of Canada, immersed in the coastal rainforests of our home, we have frequently observed gigantic overturned trees, blown over after big storms. These have incredibly splayed root systems, which get exposed when upturned, often reaching a whole story over our heads. Huge tree roots spread through circular clods of earth. From my midwifery studies, I recognized this familiar structure—a placental structure—on a massive scale. Like the veins and arteries of the placenta, tree roots filter into soil, seeking and exchanging nutrients, water, and succor from the Earth as Mother. This is just as we reached for nourishment from the bodies of our mothers, through latticelike roots of the placenta. In this amazing organic symmetry, our bodies incarnate a treelike form. I love to mediate upon and return to this image of the tree (of life) to understand the ecology of our lives and our interconnected origins with other beings. I see this as an embodied poetics that expresses gratitude and relationship to the trees, the earth, and the gift of life itself—an experience of Indigenous philosophy in the expressive notation of “all my relations.” From this vein or root of thought, I have been developing an application of what I would call “placental thinking,” with a nod toward Sara Ruddick’s Maternal Thinking. Maternal thinking recognizes the compelling intellectual work of mothering and its practice. It dispels the notion that motherhood is biologically determined or a purely instinctual occupation. Placental thinking understands placentas as being of great value and note, and extends the metaphor of placentas into mother-centred social philosophies and understandings. An application for placental thinking grows from my reading of the maternal gift economy work of feminist, matricentric (mother-centred) philosopher Genevieve Vaughan. Vaughan’s work on mothering as a gift economy realizes that the gifting work that mothers do provides the “free” infrastructure for our entire our social fabric. The gift is understood to be a one-way process, where materials and services flow from mother to child. Gifts are given, freely, as the giver does not expect rewards. In this way, mothers provide what children require for growth and wellbeing. This is unlike the exchange economy, which requires payment or reward from the receiver for any services or goods rendered. By difference, in the gift economy, the receiver is accorded the value by virtue of being given the gifts. Gifts are not exchanged but given through taking turns in giving gifts. Vaughan expands upon her theory in The Gift in The Heart of Language. She outlines the ways in which early language acquisition is rooted in this maternal gift economy. Babies develop communication through mirroring their mothers in practices of taking turns in giving gifts. Strikingly, mothers’ gift giving is first accomplished by the placenta in utero. The placenta embodies what I would call a “gift morphology”—with its rootlike vascular system that draws nourishment from the mother into the developing fetus in a one-way gifting of life blood. The mother’s body cleans up waste products and toxins from her baby via the placenta. This job is continued postbirth as the mother feeds baby via breast or bottled milk, and monitors the baby’s urination and bowel movements. The breast itself is an almost external placenta. Each breast has a treelike structure where vascular networks are held in soft tissues that produce nutritious milk from the body of the mother. The communication for milk production is physiologically cued by the baby and the mother’s response to baby. The timing and length of feeding activates the amount of milk that is produced by the mother. Through this flow of nourishment to baby, the mother provides yet another gift morphology. This relationship now includes a new flow and flowering of language through verbal, nonverbal, and body-centred communication between mother and baby. Especially poignant are expressions of affection through touching, holding, smiling, hugging, and kissing from mother to baby, and vice versa. Babies express their needs by tone of voice and physical actions, cueing specificities of care from their mothers. Children become more and more themselves through mirroring and response, self-expression, and mothers’ attentions and interactions with them. Communication is central to building the fabric of a new person’s social life, based from these early gifting relations. This early maternal gift economy does not approximate the exchange economy, where something is only given in exchange for something else. A child requires the mother’s immediate and constant giving, or the child will perish. The gift is also present in the earth’s resources as a continual free stream of goods that humans need. Yet much of human life is being commodified through exchange and market economies. Work, services, and the “free” goods of the earth itself have costs in their exchange value. Greed is common in the market economy, especially as corporations attempt to own everything, which renders invisible the original gifts—the trees, the earth, or the mothers. I follow Vaughan’s understanding of how gift and exchange economies are interlinked systems. The market economy needs the free gifts and resources of the gift economy. Mothers produce communicative bodies that eventually become the labour force for the market economy. We grow up inside the gift economies of our maternal and family relations, and whatever levels of gifting or exchange interactions and amassing of goods and services our families and societies provide us. For example, in societies such as Canada, the common people and governments currently value primary education and healthcare as being mostly “free” for all. This does not mean that these services do not cost anything, but they are made available as gifts to all to strengthen the wellbeing of the whole population. In other societies, such services are in the hands of forces of exchange, and may become subject …
(Poetry) Ice Age and Renewal? by Sara Wright

Last night She came – I heard her call my name. She broke through sea green waters, white capped waves, blocks of ice. My body hummed her song. And yet I mused. Who was She, this ancient denizen of the Deep? Whale songs so complex – so poorly understood lead me down Down Down Down to the bottom of the sea… To learn how to Breathe? To dive into unknown depths? To stand unbearable pressure? To re–surface unharmed? To breathe sweet water in too thin air? To keep on advocating? To hear to the Heartbeat of Creation Sounding? These are questions I pose to Whale in her bountiful Soul Skin – velvety smooth and firm. In Indigenous story an old woman stands at the edge of tidal waters – patiently, watches for whales to surface – walks into the sea when she hears them calling. A Star shines in the East. The Great Bear points true North. Perhaps Whale comes to me from the ocean to guide my aging body home (this little body once lost to me). Working notes… The Little Bear Moon is waxing according to some Northern Indigenous mythology… this is the month Black Bears give birth to their cubs. Wide awake and alert, these wild mothers care deeply for their young while staying snug in winter caves or dens dug under piles of stone or tree roots. The winter stars are bright and the Great Bear circumnavigates the sky each night. When I dreamed of a great whale rising out of the sea. –“Someone” who was “familiar” to me – I was surprised – although my love of whales stretches to childhood when I first saw the Great Blue Whale’s skeleton in New York’s Museum of Natural History. Later that fire was re –kindled in the 70’s by Judy Collins’ whale songs. In the nineties I dreamed that the sea pulled away and I was walking on the bottom of the ocean searching for a golden dolphin ring. More recently, my fascination with Helen Hye-Sook Hwang’s scholarly research on whales, and my friend Lise’s profound life changing experience with these mammals has brought them back into the center of my awareness. There is something compelling about dreaming of a whale surfacing from the deep while living in a drought driven high desert. And yet whatever this Presence signifies for me personally is overshadowed by the collective need on behalf of all humans to start listening to the songs that all of Nature is singing or screaming before the Great Silence descends upon us stilling each song and cry forever. The age of the Anthropocene is upon us, that is, an age that is shaped by humans. Without immediate intervention to stop this man made holocaust we will soon be the only surviving species left on Earth. According to the WWF Global Wildlife’s 2018 report the Earth’s wildlife population has dropped by 60 percent since 1970. Other species have become ‘functionally extinct’, meaning that although at present the species is still extant, there are not enough individuals left to save the species from extinction. Monarch butterflies are a good example – their populations have dropped by 90 percent in the last 20 years. Unimaginable loneliness is coming our way. We can start by dramatically lowering carbon emissions to help preserve the non-human species that still have a chance to survive. We can plant millions of carbon sequestering trees… Think about it. It is through our love of, and for Nature that most humans experience a sense of “renewal.” Where will you go when the Silence of Nature becomes deafening?
(Special Post 2) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Harriet Ann Ellenberger I got involved with women’s liberation in the early 1970s, so involved that it became my life for many years. During those beginnings of what is now called “the second wave of feminism,” everything was new to us and everything was mushed together — the political, the economic, the intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual. I liked that a lot; it felt as if all the parts of myself were coming together. During that time, I learned something crucial the imagery and concepts of patriarchal religion justify and are embedded in the material structures of oppression. I don’t know which came first, institutionalized oppression (of everyone; I’m not speaking here only of women) or the religious expression of that oppression. All I’m certain of is that patriarchal religion permeates, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary, which I use all the time, in conjunction with Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, conjured by Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi.
(Prose) Mycelial Madness by Sara Wright

Wikimedia Commons For those of us who are dedicated to feminism and to the sanctity of nature, here is one more way to understand the earth as our goddess. Her mysterious veil is the source of all life. Immanence is sacred. Mycelial Madness The last winter I spent in New Mexico I walked to the river every morning in the pre-dawn hour. No matter how much the wind would howl later on, at this time of the day nothing stirred besides the birds. Because I traveled the same path every morning circling round one wetland listening to river songs I would find myself slipping into a light trance as my feet hit the hard unforgiving ground. Every bush, cottonwood, russian olive, juniper was familiar, each was a friend. Although this wetland had been trimmed and paths mowed (parching open ground), the majority of trees, plants and grasses had been left intact and the river was nearby. During these light trance states I sensed that the ground beneath my feet was pulsing with some kind of light; that the earth was trying to communicate with me. At that time I didn’t know that I was walking over of miles of mycelium, because I didn’t know whether these networks extended throughout the desert although I assumed they did. But I felt or sensed something. I knew from trying to garden in NM that the surface of most of the ground seemed quite barren except for the piles of decaying cottonwood bark that I used as mulch, so where was the rest of the mycelium? Later I learned that across arid soils, a thin crust often forms within the top few centimeters of the soil surface as long as that surface is not disturbed. If the land is run over by too many cattle, four wheelers or other machines, mined or otherwise disfigured even by tilling a garden that precious skin will disappear. It takes hundreds or thousands of years to replace this layer of living matter. Surprisingly, this mantle is not exclusively formed from excess minerals, as I first believed, but is created by microscopic and macroscopic organisms that live together – fungi and algae. Whenever it rains, cyanobacteria, formerly called blue-green algae, bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that have been dormant awaken. Freed from drought, these microscopic creatures start making food and creating miniature tunnels as they move through the soil, reproducing as long as the soil is moist. The mucilage around algae filaments keep in the moisture the algae/fungi to thrive. As the soil dries out after rain, the threads of mycelium tightly bind all the soil grains, gluing soil particles together against wind and erosion. The value of this thin, living skin of the desert must not be underestimated. Mycelial fungal threads called hyphae communicate, grow every which way, exchange water and nutrients and store carbon underground. What fascinates me now is that l sensed the presence of these living networks beneath my feet although most were microscopic. Mycelial communication occurs by electrical impulses/electrolytes which emit sparks of light and something in me apparently could feel this pulse emanating through my feet. Fungal networks are the foundation of all life on earth. Four billion years ago alga met fungus as it crept out of the sea. Algae could photosynthesize but it needed fungi to break down nutrients like minerals from rock. The two developed a mutualistic partnership that still exists today. Between the two they create the soil that supports all terrestrial life. In temperate forests like mine here in Maine, billions of mutualistic/symbiotic mycorrhizal mycelial networks are quite visible, often tucked under leaves or threading their way through the forest floor. Pull off a dead piece of bark and you will find these threads, some are patterned like trees or sunbursts – all are beautiful. Wikimedia Commons Often during the spring summer or fall I try to imagine the billions of mycelium that are running under my feet as I walk into my field through the pines, or step across the brook into the cool hemlock forest that is carpeted with a plethora of emerald mosses, princess pine, pyrola and other spring ephemerals. I experience awe as I remind myself that all these underground threads are exchanging information, carbon, water and other nutrients with one another. What we learn is that although competition exists in every forest, cooperation between species is the norm. Trees even favor their own kin (Dr. Suzanne Simard). Most important and worth repeating is that during this time of climate change, stabilized mycelium stores masses of carbon – about 70 percent underground. I notice that the cold white blanket that separates me from this pulsing earth in the winter is not something I appreciate for long; winter used to be a time I loved to snowshoe, look for tracks, and watch wild animals. I still treasure the season, but not the snow, although I value the latter as a form of protection for plants and tree roots, as well as a source of some water (it takes 12 inches of snow to equal one inch of water). I have no desire to fly over the snow like a skier or on some screaming machine; instead I want to sink myself into earth’s bodily wholeness. Last summer was wet and the best mushroom year I ever remember. I spent the entire summer season in the forest looking for/identifying/and studying the ecological niches that abounded with mushrooms, the fruiting bodies of some mycelium. There are billions, trillions of mycelium that make up these underground networks but only about twenty thousand kinds of mushrooms in all. I noted with excitement that in my favorite forest I sometimes experienced that pulsing light under my feet while searching for mushrooms or ground covers, walking slowly and getting on my knees frequently to inspect a plant or mushroom more closely. Reflecting upon this phenomenon it seemed to me that I had shifted my awareness from thinking mind to experiencing …
(E-Interview) Judy Grahn by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Ad for a reading, Judy Grahn with a band,“High Risk” who recorded Common Woman Poems.About 1974- or 1975. Tickets were $2. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang It is my honor to e-interview Dr. Judy Grahn. Sometimes life turns serendipitously. I did not think that I would be working with Judy Grahn even two years ago. Magnetically, Judy has become an important figure for Creatrix Studies graduate and continuing education programs that Mago Academy has just launched this spring. Also, we are doing a double-sided project, the Tri-annual Poetry Salons and the weekly publication of poems written by the poets in the Return to Mago E-Magazine. Further, Judy has been actively participating the S/HE Conference since last year’s inaugural meeting. I have invited her to speak at the plenary session of the Roundtable Conversation, apart from presenting her research paper. Her involvement with The Mago Work rose like a wildfire for the last two years. However, my first encounter with Judy goes back about two decades ago. When I first met Judy in person in the early 2000s, I was a doctoral student. I was invited to her class meeting and her gathering with students. Details are fading. But I remember how I felt. I could not forget the hospitality that I received from her and her colleagues. It felt surreally good to be invited in her class meetings. Not that I did not know what a likely minded women’s community was like (I had been a member of a women’s overseas missionary community in the late 1980s and the early 1990s) but I was leading a new life as an aspiring scholar in the field of feminist theological studies. I was already used to an academic environment but had no idea how others would find me as a scholar-to-be. As I write this introduction of our interview talks, I feel surrounded by the magical air of Sisterly Interconnectivity. Helen What has your life work been? You have been recognized by many as a feminist poet of great respect and love. Tell us about your poems and how writing poetry has shaped your life and career. Judy Grahn From studying poetry mostly on my own starting as a kid at ten years old, I have learned to use poetry and poetic ways of thinking as a guiding force for my own life and for my society. One of the poet’s tasks is to press new or newly re-empowered words into the culture, to help change its direction. The first fifteen years of my activism, beginning when I was twenty-five in 1965, produced a satirical short fiction, using a then-unspeakable word, “The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke,” used as both feminist critique of mainline oppressive psychiatry and trans/nonbinary existence, and lesbian experience as distinguished from that of Gay men. This gave the underground term “dyke” a definition of, say, “lesbian warrior who fights in behalf of other women.” In 1969 I wrote a set of seven poems, “The Common Woman Poems,” several of which became anthems of feminist movements; the sequence ends with lines “the common woman is as common / as the best of bread and will rise/” which landed in posters distributed widely, helping to invite working class and other “ordinary” women into feminist activism and the idea of female power “rising” as well as being “common.” “The Common Woman Poems” end as “an oath I swear to you,” and my second set of poems, She Who (written in 1972) also end in a promise: “when She Who moves, the earth will turn over.” The She Who poems have a spiritual sense and are one reason I am considered, formally, a Foremother of Women’s Spirituality movement. My third major multi-part poem, “A Woman Is Talking to Death,” (written in 1973) is a self-and-society examination of forms of oppression, and ends with a third promise, after defining oppressed people as “lovers” (both mine and ours), and dedicating my life to doing everything I can to overturn the oppressions of sex, race, and class. My poetry teaches me and also holds me to moral principles I try to live up to. Researching and writing out my ideas and those of others, in prose, stimulates and expands my poetic voice. After 1980, women’s spirituality and new origin stories became my focus in both prose and poetry, which inform each other. I began a series of book length poems (three are completed) chasing a goddess of Western culture, with The Queen of Wands (1982), The Queen of Swords (1987), and The Queen of Cups, currently in completion. My prose contributed origin stories of the presence of LGBT peoples throughout history and cultures around the world (Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds, 1983, 1984, 1990, 1999), and Lesbian presence in poetry from Sappho to me and my contemporaries (The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition, 1985, 2023). This work resulted in awards, life-time achievement, Grand Marshall in both Seattle and San Francisco Gay Pride parades, and an award called “The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction”, established in 1996 by Triangle Publishers. Three of my long poems center on social and personal critiques of oppressive patterns in American society: racism, classism, sexism, and oppression of those deemed “mentally ill.” The poems are “A Woman Is Talking to Death” (1974), “Descent to the Roses of a Family,” (1985, with explanatory prose edition, (2020, 2023), and “Mental,” published in 2010 in The Judy Grahn Reader. In the 1990s I launched my major origin story, which I call “Metaformic Theory” extending a poetic term “metaphor” to “metaform” as something real, having form, a cultural phenomenon that can be traced to menstrual ritual somewhere, sometime. So, hopefully contributing a new word and concept. This journey began as a reclamation of menstruation as a positive subject, in a 1970 poem, followed by my article on menstrual power published in Charlene Spretnak’s The Politics of Women’s Spirituality, (1982), then a novel, Mundane’s World, (1988) a female-centered …
(Poem) Butterflies, Goddess, Love, and Freedom by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Photo credit: By Michele Castagnetti, CC BY-SA 4.0 Wikimedia Commons This poem revolves around three actual events: a couple of months ago I was lying under a rose scented geranium when what looked like a caterpillar dropped into my hair (though inside in winter, which means it couldn’t have been an actual caterpillar and I still don’t know what it was, rather than outside in summer), while I was sitting at my mother’s bedside as she was dying I heard the melody from Madama Butterfly and felt deeply comforted, and, finally, a friend told me the story of how she was watching a monarch butterfly fly for the first time and, just as it lifted off, a flock of monarchs arrived and they all flew off together. When I put the three events together, the message of this poem appeared. In a bold moment, risking oblivion for being’s adventure,The milky caterpillar unfurled her grasp on the leaf,Her emerald rose geranium nursery, and flung herselfLike a trapeze artist, into the swirling maelstrom of my hair, My Medusa’s snake strands winding and waving even at rest to catch herAs I lay on the cool, verdant Earth watching the roiling clouds. I had called the butterflies, the dragonflies and damselflies, the beesTo my garden, enticing with fragrant, nutritious milkweed, motherwort, Jerusalem artichoke.The mother butterfly answered with the gift of her larvae before heading home.I promised her I would lie on the ground, her child in the tangle of my hair,The place where women’s spiritual power nests.I promised her I would be still and comforting until the baby’s summer birth,My hands reaching into the soil and clasping fingers with the mycelium,Sending out the message that I am here for the duration.My eyes dim from the sunlight. My water evaporates to the heavens. To the ancient Greeks, the butterfly is the goddess Psyche, the soul,Essence of beauty and mother of joy.To the Nahua people in Mexico, the butterfly is the goddess Itzpapalotl, the soul,Who wears the symbols of death tattooed on Her face. Many years ago, as I sat vigil at my mother’s side while she was dying,I heard the melody from opera Madama Butterfly.It originated not from this realm,But from the portal opening for her to pass through,A leaving from this life that she loved but which was hers no more.Love is eternal. From that time, butterflies have symbolized to me grief and lossEven as I have craved witnessing their wings beating the air,Circling the garden’s blooms and berries.For years I have tried in vain to lure butterflies to my garden.Did they sense my bereavement and feel unwelcomeUntil now, right at this very moment? Outstretched on the embracing wet soil,The breath of herbs and grass soothing me,I have finally gained the message that my mother tendered to meIn the melody that had brought to my mind in that sad moment the flight of butterflies.“Freedom, freedom,” she had coaxed the angels to sing to me,In words untranslated for me till now.Like the butterflies breaking out of their cocoons,“With a mother’s love, with a Goddess’s love, with the Earth’s love,You are free. We could want no more and no less for you.” A butterfly rises from my hair, fluttering against my cheek.For one moment we see each other. She has human eyes,My mother’s eyes that are also my eyes,So that my mother lives on in me.The baby-no-more dries her wings as a flock of sister butterflies surrounds us.They fly away together and none looks back. I try to fly with them by willing my feet to rise into the skyBut I am heavy and earthbound.Now I am fully human, my fingers no longer part of the mycelium,My eyes no longer dim from the sunlight, my body no longer wet from dew.I take up my life again, myself but also more,With dried wings made not of filament, but of flesh and soul. Hello? Have you come to visit? Please, sit in my garden. We’ll have a cup of tea. We’ll chat. How are you? Did you know that butterflies have just come back to my garden this year? I welcome them when they come and wish them adieu when it is time for them to fly away. What else can I do? https://www.magoism.net/2016/08/meet-mago-contributor-carolyn-lee-boyd/
(Video) Serpentine Love Field by Dr Lila Moore

[Author’s Note: The nature of the sound in this video, which is noise known as pink noise. It should be played as a low frequency in the background. This sound occurs widely in nature and natural systems. It binds things and systems together, so it is sound with auspicious vibes. It is integrated, as you can read, in a ritualistic networked performance and video, which is based on a powerful ancient tradition of the Mother and her healing serpents, which was passed on to a Christian context. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise] https://vimeo.com/222802913 The Concept Serpentine Love Field is a resonance of an intentional field of compassionate love which was generated during online Networked Rites. Whenever the video is played, the resonance is activated through the streaming field. With time, the resonance is amplified and potentially becomes an attractor of similar resonances of love across space-time, beyond the arrow of time or the limits of terrestrial space. The Serpentine Love Field is the title of a networked ritual, which is a ritual that takes place offline and in cyberspace. The online ritual coincided with the annual ceremony of the Holy Snakes of Mary in the island of Kefalonia in Greece. The artwork, which includes videos and offline and online installations, is also the result of a pilgrimage experience and reflects processes of personal and collective transformations and altered states of consciousness. The streaming field was generated through the cybernetic interaction of five channels of perception: The Vision Channel, Motion Channel, Text Channel, Sound Channel and Intention Channel. These faculties of cognition channeled their feedback from the annual ceremony of the Holy Snakes of Mary in the island of Kefalonia, Greece. It is where people overcome traditional hostility for the creatures and hope for healing as they are embraced by their serpentine motion and touched by the smooth and elastic sensations of the snake’s skin. The channeled contents were uploaded to a cyber Introspection Pod, previously a video chat room, where they were activated with compassionate feelings, projected remotely by a few participants including Moonfiles, a Moon-based entity, and synchronized with the activity of the sun to amplify their intentional field. The Sound Channel added a stream of pink noise to amplify interconnectedness. The channels’ contents were activated once every 9 Lunar Days before being released as a streaming field of compassionate love. More Info The artwork, including its associate concepts and works, was presented and exhibited at academic conferences, art centers and platforms in Greece, UK, Germany, China and Cyberspace. It is explained in the following academic articles: Moore, Lila. (2015), ‘Fields of networked mind: Ritual consciousness and the factor of communitas in networked rites of compassion’, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 13: 3, pp. 331–339 Moore, Lila. (2017), ‘Techno-spiritual horizons: Compassionate networked art forms and noetic fields of cyborg body and consciousness’, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 15:3, pp. 325–39 The artwork as a field of resonance can be re-activated at the Chamber of Noetic Resonances, here: http://www.cyberneticinstitute.com/chamber. To join online ritualistic activations of auspicious resonances, subscribe to Dr Lila Moore Cybernetic Futures Inst. monthly newsletter at the above link. © Dr Lila Moore, All Rights Reserved (Meet Mago Contributor) Lila Moore, Ph.D.

(Special Post Isis 1) Why the Color of Isis Matters by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s note: The discussion took place in Mago Circle during the month of July, 2013. Our heartfelt thanks go to the members who participated in this discussion with openness and courage.] Part 1 Is Isis White (European) or Black (African)? Harita Meenee What could Isis have to do with the political situation in Egypt? Read on to find out! Isis, Egypt and the Revolution For the past few years Egypt has felt like a second home to me. Some cherished friends and co-workers live there, to whom my thoughts often travel. Also, Isis, the Egyptian great goddess once worshiped all over the Mediterranean, has been an ever-present source of inspiration… By: Harita Meenee, Author https://www.facebook.com/notes/harita-meenee-author/isis-egypt-and-the-revolution/457348724361326 Rick Williams Isis and that picture for me is kind of offensive in 2013. KMT [Kemet, Egypt] and AUSET [Isis] “worship” is an oxymoron. Kahena Dorothea Can you explain, Rick Williams, how it is an oxymoron? I am curious. Rick Williams First, Auset as a deity was not a singularly honored symbolic personage. KMT taught principles of BALANCE and UNIVERSAL COSMOLOGICAL TRUTH. There are NO images from the dawn of that age depicting her as EUROPEAN. [Threads curtailed] Helen Hwang I would strongly suggest that Rick and others who see Rick’s point educate us in Mago Circle. I know this is very difficult but we are here to learn and express differences from each other. We are all centers and please share your perspective and knowledge so that others can learn. I am doing that with patience and tolerance as well. Thank you all! Rick Williams I try to be as honest and respectful when I can, Helen. I only personalize things when ONE person says something. Yet there are those who know that the people of that land now weren’t the same people who honored the deities of mythology and that image isn’t of Auset. When will folks stop promoting fictitious images and uneducated observations? I could have beat around the bush and politely asked about the statue, why that one isn’t truly the same of Auset’s time? Helen Hwang Okay, conflicts and contradictions are everywhere. Nonetheless, we can’t be beat by those. We are exploring ways to be empowered by addressing our differences in Mago Circle. We trust that we have good intentions and yet we are not perfect. I do Mago Circle and Return to Mago because I believe there is a way for us to meet and talk with our differences, I can’t let that hope go! Thank us for talking to each other. Naa Ayele Kumari I can see both points. Egypt has a long and ancient history… One filled with invaders.. wars.. people who stole the magic and manipulated it for their own purposes… Those invaders changed images to make them in their own reflections all the while slowly destroying the indigenous images of power and strength as well as the sacred tradition they were built on.. As a woman of African descent, it is sometimes difficult to see the Hellenistic images of our mother.. because her original images were a woman of color. Racism… whether we chose to admit it or not has played an immense part in our oppression as a people and that includes the struggle for Egypt today. It is especially a sensitive issue because those images play a role in how people see and view black women… even today. The dark goddess is stereotyped as being a part of our shadow while the white goddess is caste as being all that is good in the world. What black women struggle to tell the world is that those projections are simply racist projections… and so we reject them. Still, I recognize that people like to experience the divine in their own image and that our Mother has been taken around the world… and by extension absorbed many names and faces because after all, she is mother not to just Africans… but to the World. Right now, we have dominant tradition of Islam… that at its roots has a feminine basis… (Islam came from the word Isis) all the while oppressing women by its dogma. The indigenous people of Egypt, the Badarians and Nubians… are oppressed by Arab invaders who have taken control, projected their own religions all the while wanting to destroy the remainder of the images of the ancients. Injustice recognizes injustice… and all the ways that it shows up. At the root of Egypt…is Isis… called also Esi and Auset by the indigenous people. She has been oppressed by many layers of invaders… Her daughter’s voices have been muted… Timeless icon that she is, as the tides are turning, so are the heavy oppressions being lifted. Women are finding and re-remembering their power… and as they do… Mama Esi.. is taking back her throne. Naa Ayele Kumari This is the Isis on the walls and temples of Egypt. Harita Meenee Seeing the people of Egypt as all white or all Black means stereotyping them. In fact the inhabitants of Egypt are of different colors: some are white, others are Black and many others are something in-between. The same was true in antiquity and it’s reflected in Egyptian art. Rick Williams Harita, really? What does that have to do with your choice of misrepresentation of that image? Please enlighten me, thank you. Harita Meenee Τhere is no misrepresentation, dear Rick Williams. If you read my note carefully, you’ll see that it talks about Isis as a goddess who was worshiped all over the Mediterranean–I’m not referring to just her Egyptian manifestation. The statue depicted is in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. I took this picture and processed it slightly so that it looks more like a painting than a sculpture. No change was made to the actual form or color of the statue. I’m attaching a photo of the museum label of this work of art. It may not be clearly visible, but it reads: Marble statue of the goddess Isis-Tyche-Pelagia. 1st-2nd century AD. The composite name means that, as was often the case in […]
(Special Post 1) "The Oldest Civilization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: The following discussion took place in response to an article listed blow by the members of The Mago Cirlce, Facebook group of Goddessians/Magoists from May 6 to May 10, 2016. Readers are recommended to read the original article linked below that has invoked the converation.] “The Danube Civilization: Oldest in the World” in The Ancient Ones upon the ruins of our ancestors, published April 3, 2016.
(Special Post Isis 2) Why the Color of Isis Matters by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s note: The discussion took place in Mago Circle during the month of July, 2013. Our heartfelt thanks go to the members who participated in this discussion with openness and courage.] Part 2 The Color Talk in Goddesses Kahena Dorothea Athena was also whitened which is sad. However the statues were worshiped by many women to whom they brought comfort. And their origins were later remembered by the abundance of Black Virgins that became important in Italy and other parts of Europe. I don’t see Dark Goddesses as shadows but as having depths of Creativity and Knowledge. My main Goddess is Kirke and the bast relief I have of her is a chocolate brown. Diane Horton The worship of Isis broadened from Egypt to all the countries bordering the Mediterranean, as well as the Middle East and the isles called now the British Isles. She and Her worship were virtually everywhere in the westernly known world of the time! She IS the Goddess of 10,000 Names! And as such she was adapted to each culture’s vision of Her. She was the basis of all the” Black Madonnas”. I do not think of this as Isis/Auset representing the “dark” Goddess as something somehow bad or to be dealt with, but rather that ancient darkness represents infinite potential, eternal creativity/fertility, the beginning and ending of all things, and the always deepening knowledge of magick. Max Dashu However, there is a politics of representation that we all need to be aware of, that pushes original African iconography down and away, and fronts Europeanized images. There is no possibility of “colorblindness” in such a system; a restoration of the original must be actively striven toward. This is incumbent on all of us not of (recent) African descent. Otherwise we perpetuate the injurious status quo, instead of overturning it. Harita Meenee I agree with those who say that race is largely a social construct. Its roots seem to lie in colonialism and the slave trade. I would also like to add that racism is used to oppress people of different nationalities and colors. Ηere in Greece the IMF neo-liberal policies are destroying our economy (and lives); they go hand in hand with a vicious racist campaign against immigrants, along with the rise of a neo-Nazi party. This is part of an effort to redirect people’s anger away from the government and bankers, towards those who are poor and foreign and often have a different color or religion. Fortunately, many grassroots activists are responding to this by building a strong anti-racist, antifascist movement. You can see our Facebook page below. It’s in Greek but the photos are quite revealing. If anyone is interested in learning more about the situation here, please message me and I’ll try to find some articles in English for you. https://www.facebook.co/19JanuaryATHENSvsFASCISM?fref=ts 19 Γεναρη – ΑΘΗΝΑ ΠΟΛΗ Αντιφασιστικη Μπροστά στη κλιμάκωση της φασιστικής απειλής και της ρατσιστικής βίας, στη εμφάν…See More Naa Ayele Kumari Let me put this in the context of something you might understand. This is a goddess group that honors the feminine and the power it represents. People in this group understand the oppression and misrepresentation of women. We understand the implications of misogynistic patriarchal thinking. We understand the implications of stealing the information, rites, and traditions from goddess centered cultures and rephrasing them into male dominated themes… especially those that then went on to oppress women today. This is the same thing that has happened as it related to race and our cultures. It infuriates us when a man may say… why do we have to focus on the goddess? Let us just accept that we are all human and no special consideration should be given to anyone because of their gender. Or, this is just a distraction or social construct and it really doesn’t matter. We understand the blatant disregard and ignorance of those statements. Yet, the same is true for race and people of other races. Your attitude and casual disregard perpetuates a lie that you are comfortable with and don’t wish to move from that comfort zone. It means you don’t have to be accountable for the injustices or oppression it continues to perpetuate in the larger culture toward people who do not look like you. As far as I am concerned, I truly believe that the dark goddess for many with white skin IS their shadow… It is the part of themselves that they deny and fear. That you may have come from black people may scare you… even when the science proves it. That deep down… you fear what you don’t understand. To even confront it is frightening… something that you would rather ignore and deny… Yet… here we are. Black, Yellow, Red… people.. women… who have been oppressed for thousands of year because of this… and are asking… to be seen in their true likeness… not as you wish them to be… or fear them to be. Naa Ayele Kumari Thank you Max Dashu, I so appreciate your scholarship and dedication to the truth where ever you find it… and Helen Hwang for staying open to it as well. [Someone withdrew the threads.] Rick Williams No, you can’t passively aggressively slither your way out of this, reread your own statements and that last post contradicts most of your ascertains. I can’t believe that you honestly say fire away at you like you’re some sort of martyr and VICTIM of being misunderstood, not at all, I understand you very well. I don’t think you understand yourSELF. That’s the real tragedy. Rick Williams “The Lips of Wisdom are Closed except to the Ears of Understanding.” It is in quotes, and it’s part of Ancient Wisdom, of Tehuti, DJehuti, or Hermes Trimegitus… The Great Scribe of KMT.. they have alot of pretty pictures of him all over KMT(Egypt).. still have no idea what you are saying have the time. Max Dashu Thank you Naa Ayele for taking the time to make the extremely apt analogy of women’s oppression to clarify the politics of race oppression […]

(Book Excerpt) Imbolc/Early Spring within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Imbolc/Early Spring are: Southern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – February 1st/2nd though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, thus actually a little later in early August for S.H., and early February for N.H., respectively. Some Imbolc Motifs In this cosmology Imbolc/Early Spring is the quintessential celebration of She Who is the Urge to Be. This aspect of the Creative Triplicity is associated with the differentiation quality of Cosmogenesis,[i] and with the Virgin/Young One aspect of the Triple Goddess, who is ever-new, unique, and singular in Her beauty – as each being is. This Seasonal Moment celebrates an identification with the Virgin/Young One – the rest of the light part of the cycle celebrates Her processes. At this Moment She is the Promise of Life, a spiritual warrior, determined to Be. Her purity is Her singularity of purpose. Her inviolability is Her determination to be … nothing to do with unbroken hymens of the dualistic and patriarchal mind. The Virgin quality is the essential “yes” to Being – not the “no” She was turned into. In the poietic process of the Seasonal Moments of Samhain/Deep Autumn, Winter Solstice and Imbolc/Early Spring, one may get a sense of these three in a movement towards manifest form – syntropy: from the autopoietic fertile sentient space of Samhain, through the gateway and communion of Winter Solstice to differentiated being, constant novelty, infinite particularity of Imbolc/Early Spring. The three are a kaleidoscope, seamlessly connected. The ceremonial breath meditations for all three of these Seasonal Moments focus attention on the Space between the breaths – each with slightly different emphasis: it is from this manifesting Space that form/manifestation arises. If one may observe Sun’s position on the horizon as She rises, the connection of the three can be noted there also: that is, Sun at Samhain/Deep Autumn and Imbolc/Early Spring rises at the same position, halfway between Winter Solstice and Equinox, but the movement is just different in direction.[ii] And these three Seasonal Moments are not clearly distinguishable – they are “fuzzy,”[iii] not simply linear and all three are in each other … this is something recognised of Old, thus the Nine Muses, or the numinosity of any multiple of three. Some Imbolc/early Spring Story This is the Season of the new waxing light. Earth’s tilt has begun taking us in this region back towards the Sun. Traditionally this Seasonal Point has been a time of nurturing the new life that is beginning to show itself – around us in flora and fauna, and within. It is a time of committing one’s self to the new life and to inspiration – in the garden, in the soul, and in the Cosmos. We may celebrate the new young Cosmos – that time in our Cosmic story when She was only a billion years old and galaxies were forming, as well as the new that is ever coming forth. This first Seasonal transition of the light part of the cycle has been named “Imbolc” – Imbolc is thought to mean “ewe’s milk” from the word “Oimelc,” as it is the time when lambs were/are born, and milk was in plentiful supply. It is also known as “the Feast of Brigid,” Brigid being the Great Goddess of the Celtic (and likely pre-Celtic) peoples, who in Christian times was made into a saint. The Great Goddess Brigid is classically associated with early Spring since the earliest of times, but her symbology has evolved with the changing eras – sea, grain, cow. In our times we could associate Her also with the Milky Way, our own galaxy that nurtures our life – Brigid’s jurisdiction has been extended. Some sources say that Imbolc means “in the belly of the Mother.” In either case of its meaning, this celebration is in direct relation to, and an extension of, the Winter Solstice – when the Birth of all is celebrated. Imbolc may be a dwelling upon the “originating power,” and that it is in us: a celebration of each being’s particular participation in this power that permeates the Universe, and is present in the condition of every moment.[iv] This Seasonal Moment focuses on the Urge to Be, the One/Energy deeply resolute about Being. She is wilful in that way – and Self-centred. In the ancient Celtic tradition Great Goddess Brigid has been identified with the role of tending the Flame of Being, and with the Flame itself. Brigid has been described as: “… Great Moon Mother, patroness (sic … why not “matron”) of poetry and of all ‘making’ and of the arts of healing.”[v] Brigid’s name means “the Great or Sublime One,” from the root brig, “power, strength, vigor, force, efficiency, substance, essence, and meaning.”[vi] She is poet, physician/healer, smith-artisan: qualities that resonate with the virgin-mother-crone but are not chronologically or biologically bound – thus are clearly ever present Creative Dynamic. Brigid’s priestesses in Kildare tended a flame, which was extinguished by Papal edict in 1100 C.E., and was re-lit in 1998 C.E.. In the Christian era, these Early Spring/Imbolc celebrations of the Virgin quality, the New Young One – became “Candlemas,” a time for purifying the “polluted” mother – forty days after Solstice birthing. Many nuns took their vows of celibacy at this time, invoking the asexual virgin bride.[vii] This is in contrast to its original meaning, and a great example of what happened to this Earth-based tradition in the period of colonization of indigenous peoples. An Imbolc/Early Spring Ceremonial Altar The flame of being within is to be protected and nurtured: the new Being requires dedication and attention. At this early stage of its advent, there is nothing certain about its staying power and growth: there may be uncertainties of various kinds. So there is traditionally a “dedication” in the ceremonies, which may be considered a “Brigid-ine” dedication, or known as a “Bridal” dedication, since “Bride” is a derivative of …
A Southern Hemisphere Perspective on Place by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

The season of Samhain is upon us. This playlist is an offering for this descent into the sacred darkness, and a companion for the journey into the underworld. Invocation of Witches features music by Loreena McKennitt, Marya Stark, Inkubus Sukubus, Wendy Rule, my band Spiral Muse, and many others. It is a soundtrack for ceremony and each song expresses a different face of the spirit of the witch. May this Samhain season guide you gently into the dissolution of what no longer serves, the honoring of what is complete and the cultivation of the inner space that will gestate what is yet to come. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2CFNoH9exhloz3w95P3Rlb?si=270cf01fabb8421c https://www.magoism.net/2023/10/meet-mago-contributor-alison-newvine/
(Slideshow) Summer Solstice Goddess by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

Spring At the highest point on the tree, you stretch, reaching for the sun. Your pink petals elegant in their grace, you stand alone. Bravest of all, for leaves have yet to come to offer shade Branches bare except for furry buds that will soon follow in imitation of your daring first move. Intrepid flower of Spring, I feel like you in my yearning for the Sun!
(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

(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 …
(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.
(2018 Mago Pilgrimage) Peak of Nine Wells in Yeongam (Spiritual Rock), South Jeolla by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This essay comprises a summary report and its unfolding awakenings to be unraveled in sequences. I dedicate this essay to my 2018 Mago Pilgrimage companions, Narayani Ankh, Kate Besleme, Hyunsuk Jee, and Julie Jang. Learn more about Mago Pilgrimage.] Hike Report The town, Yeong-am (Spirit Rock), emanates an aura from its Magoist natural, historical, and cultural legacies. Among them, what grabbed my attention include Wolchul-san (月出山 Moon Rising Mountain), Dogap-sa (Dogap Temple), and Gurim Village, known for the birth place of Doseon Guksa (State Master Doseon), a prominent Buddhist monk, the 9th century of Silla (827-898). I was most attracted to the Peak of Nine Wells (九井峰 Gujeong-bong) as well as the Loom Cave shaped in the form of a vulva, part of the Moon Rising Mountain ranges. Our goal was to hike the Peak of Nine Wells (hereafter Gujeong-bong). We took the seemingly shortest trail, through Cheonwang-bong (Peak of Heavenly Ruler), the highest peak of Moon Rising Mountain, 809 km above sea level. It took about 8 hours for the entire hike took about 8 hours and it was one of the two most strenuous and significant ones that I have taken. About 30 years ago, I climbed Mt. Halla in Jeju Island and had received the vision of my life. No longer a youth, I had a much clearer vision about my life and the act of high altitude hiking this time. With my two companions, Narayani Ankh and Kate Besleme, who showed no sign of hesitation or tiredness in the beginning and throughout the course, I embarked my day’s journey. With occasional breaks, we were able gain distance and progress. Beautiful streams adorned the valley. Rocks were emitting the oldest song of the earth. Our talks continued and deepened, when we had breath to spare. It was such a blessing that I had these two co-hikers from elsewhere! My mind zoomed in and worked in detail. All thinking and feeling became registered. Impromptu, I began to count my steps up on stiff wooden stairways. My counting one, two, three… and thirteen carried me to the top of the stairs. The 13 counting chant worked; There was no medium between me and WE/HERE/NOW. We were gifted a 360-degree bird’s eye view on Cheongwang-bong. Several ridges with the depth of Magoist history came within a vision. We took a small lunch break. On a high mountain top wherein all remains visibly related, everyone becomes kin. On Cheongwang-gong, we were instructed by the rangers we met along the journey about the ridge path to Gujeong-bong. Gujeong-bong would be about another one and half hour hike away from us. We passed by a few masses of gigantic boulder formations for which Wolchul-san is known for. Among them was the standing stone called the Phallic Rock, a name that I suspected to be original. For standing stones are called the Rock of Mago Halmi in other regions of Korea. In any case, the very existence of the Phallic Rock (남근바위 Namgeun Bawi) heralded the appearance of the Loom Cave, a misnomer for the Yoni Cave (여근바위 Yeogeun Bawi). Heart beatings escalated as we approached our destination. We finally reached the Loom Cave, which closely resembled the vulva. The cave was made of a huge boulder, three times taller than an average person in size. A small pond sat inside the entrance made the cave a real yoni of nature. I was pulled into the state of trance, as we made a final climb up the stairs around the left side of the Loom Cave. I was able to see that the Peak of Nine Wells is located on the top plain of the Loom Cave. It is part of the yoni cave! I saw a number of wells pocketed in various sizes of ponds. They numbered more than nine, about 13, variable in number in that a couple of them were made in between adjacent boulders. The biggest well was larger than one meter (3.3 feet) in diameter. Moderns do their typical things in a time like this, indeed odd out of other options or necessity to share with others: I took photos of the wells and my companions, which were absolutely beautiful as they were. However, mental imprints were not able to be contained then and in nature. WE/HERE/NOW embraced all on the spot, perhaps like a black hole. Casual conversations wouldn’t continue. The silence and the oneness fast permeated our time/space. Our minds worked on layers. The deepest mind was stored in the reservoir of the unspoken. Descending is good as a time/space of tuning/balancing oneself to the power of WE/HERE/NOW. There wasn’t much time left for us to return, while the sun was still out. We hurriedly descended a different tail. I was no longer the same person I was prior to the experience of hiking Gujeong-bong. No need to dig up and count the number of branches in one’s root. To live means to grow and evolve, as we are meant to be. To be continued. (Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.

Category: Women

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(Poetry) Peace in Connection by Belinda Subraman

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(Art 2) Gather the Women by Pegi Eyers

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(Art 1) Gather the Women by Pegi Eyers

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

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

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

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

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

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Mago Almanac Year 9 Monthly Wheels

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Mago Pod Bulletin #83 April 2026

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