June 21, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin5 Comments

(Poem) Summer Solstice by Mary Saracino

On this longest day of the year I long for more time to write more poetry sing more songs, eat more chocolate cake, laugh more often I long to dance Read More …

May 24, 2013June 5, 2025 Mago Work Admin13 Comments

Meet Mago Contributor, Mary Saracino

MARY SARACINO is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet. Her most recent novel, Heretics: A Love Story (2014) was published by Pearlsong Press. Her novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Read More …

May 13, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Poem) A Mother’s Day Proclamation by Mary Saracino

“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have heart, whether our baptism be that of water or tears!” –Mother’s Day Proclamation, Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870 She Read More …

April 5, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin8 Comments

(Poem) Resurrection by Mary Saracino

Deep in the coils of memory our DNA sings ancient songs of life, death, regeneration. We each turn on our own axis, as the Earth turns through her seasons, winter’s Read More …

March 1, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) The Mother of Us All by Mary Saracino

“God was female for at least the first 200,000 years of human life on earth.” ~Barbara Mor & Monica Sjoo, The Great Cosmic Mother For 200,000 years we called you Mother Read More …

December 20, 2012October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Winter Solstice Prayer by Mary Saracino

Deep night, Dark night Night of the longest sigh Soulful night, Sacred night Night of the longest dreams Cold night, Holy night Night of unfurling desires Womb of the world, Read More …

November 5, 2012October 2, 2019 Mago Work6 Comments

(Poem) Motherlines by Mary Saracino

1. Margaret On the day I was born you nearly bled to death perhaps a sign that our lives were marked for strife but a mother’s womb is a thing Read More …

October 19, 2012October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Oh Mother, Our Mother by Mary Saracino

When the sun rises and the moon sets when the earth sings and the sky sighs will we remember that clouds are kin to every human that every woman, every Read More …

(Essay 1) The Old Sow by Hearth Moon Rising

Ahhh the lovely pig. Discriminating in taste, amiable in temperament, intelligent, affectionate, adaptable. The fertile mother surrounded by her hungry brood. The corpulent body of plenty. The bon vivant relishing her bath of clean cool mud. Little wonder the Sow Goddess was so revered in ancient times. From Egypt to Northern Europe, wherever there were forests or fields, wherever people hunted or grew grain, the sow held a central place in myth and worship. Yet even before Christianity maligned the pig (unfairly) as the epitome of greed, ignorance and filth, the Old Sow was beginning her popular decline. Not even the resurgent Goddess movement has been enough to restore the porcine beauty to her place of honor. The prolific breeding of the pig’s wild boar cousin (half a dozen piglets or more), her rapid growth, and her habit of feeding on carrion make her an embodiment of the goddess as creator, nurturer and death guardian. An animal important for community wealth or sustenance usually becomes a focus of worship. At one time the wild boar, weighing up to 500 pounds, provided a bounty of meat as well as a test of courage and wiliness for the hunter. Boar leather was used for shoes and tools, and boar bristles were used for brushes. By Roman times the wild boar was no longer an important food source in Celtic territories, but highly ritualized boar hunts continued. Paleolithic depictions of boars are present in cave paintings, although they are not as common as equine or bovine pictures. The lower jaw bone of a boar is frequently found in Paleolithic graves, including a Neanderthal cemetery in present-day Israel. The boar probably became a symbol of death because it supplements its vegetal diet with carrion. From Neolithic times the artistic record of the boar is more profuse, including a breast-and-boar-tusk theme at Catal Huyuk and terra cotta, amber, bone, and stone figurines from the Baltic and Balkan regions. In northern Italy a goddess figure carved in a boar’s molar has been found. Some Minoan seals have boar depictions. In Germanic lore the goddess Freya and her brother Freyr take the form of a boar. Freya is a bringer of wealth and a patroness of dead heroes. She is the most popular goddess of the seidr, the Germanic practice of shamanic visioning. The Celtic goddess Arduenna, mistress of the Gaulish forests, rides throughout her territory on the back of a wild boar. The Romans equated Arduenna with their huntress Diana, so she probably possesses similar characteristics in the realms of birth, protection and death. The ubiquity of Celtic boar imagery is striking: boars appear on swords, armor, cauldrons, bowls, jewelry, coins, and figurines. While the Egyptians partially anthropomorphized their animal deities and the Greeks entirely anthropomorphized theirs, Celts usually depicted deities in animal form prior to Roman influence. Since this practice was still recent at the advent of Christianity, artists reverted back to animal depictions in the early Middle Ages. This is why early Christian Celtic-Germanic art is so replete with animal images, and why many bishops objected to this so vehemently. The scarcity of boar imagery in Celtic Christian art is notable, given the profusion of other animals and the high representation of boars in pre-Christian art. Boars did continue to appear on jewelry, heraldry, and armor. Hearth Moon Rising is a Dianic Priestess living in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York and the author of Invoking Animal Magic: A guide for the Pagan priestess. www.invokinganimalmagic.com. She blogs at www.hearthmoonblog.com. Read Meet Mago Contributor Hearth Moon Rising. Sources: Barrett, Clive. The Egyptian Gods and Goddesses: The Mythology and Beliefs of Ancient Egypt. London: Diamond Books, 1991. Bottero, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Cooper, D. Jason. Using the Runes. Wellingborough, UK: The Aquarian Press, 1986. Germond, Phillippe. An Egyptian Bestiary: Animals in Life and Religion in the Life of the Pharoahs. London: Thames and Hudson, 2001. Gimbutas, Marija. The Living Goddesses. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989. Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. London: Penguin, 1960. Graves, Robert. The White Goddess. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948. Green, Miranda. Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. London: Routledge, 1992. Johnson, Buffie. Lady of the Beasts: The Goddess and Her Sacred Animals. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1994. O’Sullivan, Patrick V. Irish Superstitions and Legends of Animals and Birds. Dublin: Mercier Press, 1991. “Pigs,” Ancient Egyptian Bestiary, http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/bestiary/pig.htm “Pigs in Egypt,” Tour Egypt, http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/pigs.htm “Welcome to Eleusinian Mysteries,” Eleusinian Mysteries, http://eleusinianmysteries.org/SubjectIndexP_Z.html
How we came to begin the Nine Poets Speak series by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang & Mary Saracino

The Nine Poets Speak series is a project spun from the She Rises Poetry Salon hosted by Mago Academy in April 2025. It is part of our ongoing effort to showcase the contributions of poets and poetry to the Mago community and to the entire Divine Female community. Since the first poetry salon, the poet presenters have discussed some possibilities and agreed, on the one hand, to continue in the new format of the Tri-annual She Rises Salons. On the other hand, they would submit their poems to the Nine Poets Speak series to be published weekly in the Return to Mago E-Magazine. “The Nine Poets” does NOT refer to the designated figures but refers to an open circle of the poets whose poetry works are aligned with the Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality Movement, a specific thread that began as the She Rises trilogy (see the chart below). The number nine refers to the Nature’s Way patterned through the Ninefold Cosmic Music, the creative force of the Matriverse (Maternally perceived universe), which is represented as the Nine Mago Creatrix (based on Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang’s research on Ceto-Magoism, the Whale-guided Way of Mago, the Creatrix). Mary Saracino and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang are the co-planners of the Nine Poets Speak project. If you are interested in joining the “Nine Poets Speak,” submit your presentation proposal to Mary Saracino (marysar1004@msn.com) according to the guidelines indicated in Tri-annual She Rises Salons or the Call for Contributions of the Return to Mago E-Magazine. Selected References: The She Rises Trilogy Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3The April She Rises Salon Poets Lead the Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality Movement. https://www.magoism.net/2016/05/essay-reviving-and-celebrating-the-nine-goddess-symbolism-by-helen-hye-sook-hwang/ https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang https://www.magoism.net/2013/05/meet-mago-contributor-mary-saracino/
(Poem) Wildflower Moon Pyre and Prayer by Sara Wright

I stood out under the thick gray clouds And listened to the bird song, the roaring river flood, watched the swallows soaring overhead cutting the invisible link between earth and sky with sword like precision and wished I could stay… I stopped the thought pulling back the thread – Coming here at all was a gift beyond imagining.
(Poem) Goodbye Wyoming by Francesca Tronetti, Ph.D.

Eclipse morning sunrise, Wyoming The United States Covid death count is now 532K More dead than the population of most cities With almost 1,750 new dead each day, it increases The numbers creeping closer to the mark Even as the count rises in certain cities and states Governors and leaders push for reopening While people still refuse to wear masks in stores And Facebook is full of stories of CO2 poisoning There are now 550K dead from Covid in the United States Vaccines are being distributed rapidly across the country Everyone can get the vaccine, sometimes within 24 hours Go to the pharmacy website and sign right up I got the vaccine, my mothers, and grandfather too My knitting group friends have appointments But, their partners aren’t sure, nor are their families They bite their tongues; you can’t argue with them The death toll is now 578K cases 578 thousand Americans are now dead The population of the state of Wyoming Goodbye Wyoming You would think we’d mourn this news We have lost a state’s worth of people in a year But, the news is on privately conducted recounts Where people are searching for bamboo ballots Florida has opened back up, no masks, no distancing The governor says we don’t need masks And bans companies from asking if you had the vaccine People are flocking to malls and amusement parks The death toll is now at 581K dead And expects to spike again in the summer If we lose another 42 thousand lives It is goodbye, Vermont. (Meet Mago Contributor) Francesca Tronettie, Ph.D. https://www.magoism.net/2018/11/meet-mago-contributor-rev-francesca-tronetti-ph-d/
(Commemorating Mary Daly 1) My Memoirs of Mary Daly (1928-2010) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: My personal encounter with Mary Daly, a U.S. post-Christian feminist thinker, goes back to 1994. I stayed in Korea from 1994-1997 during which I translated two of Mary Daly’s early books, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation 하나님 아버지를 넘어서 (Seoul: Ewha Women’s University Press, 1996) and Church and the Second Sex 교회와 제 2의 성 (Seoul: Women’s News Press, 1997) in Korean. I carried with me to the U.S. A. our correspondences in the form of letters and documents mostly faxed to each other for the period of more than two decades. Later at one point I digitized them in images. Through these memoir series, I share some highlights of my memories with Mary Daly, her influence on my feminist thinking, and my own radical feminist journey to Magoist Cetaceanism.] I The new year Year 5 in the Magoist Calendar (2022 in the Gregorian Calendar) prompts me to revisit my encounter with Mary Daly. When something is in your mind consistently for a long time but you don’t take action to follow it up, you are carrying a mental baggage within you. I have carried Mary Daly in me for a long time. Time was not ripe until now. Even after she transitioned in 2010, I wasn’t ready. It feels timely now that I finally let the weight on my shoulders down. Why now? Because I was biding my time. I could not name what she was to me until now. To know what she is to me, I need to know what I am. And it is only now I feel I know what I am. Mary was an intellectual foremother to me. Don’t be mistaken, Mary did not act like my intellectual mother. She was like my big sister who had trust in me. Mary was not a caregiver to me or anyone. She cared but was not a caregiver. Mary treated me as her young colleague and an intellectual companion. I desperately needed my intellectual foremother and Mary was there for me.It’s been a long and arduous journey for me to see what I am. Unbelievably, I am entering the cronehood of age 60 in the New Year of 5919 Magoma Era (since the time of Goma in 3898 BCE). I have understood and accepted my own life’s mission and the way it has been achieved. I feel that my life has found its own roots. Things are falling into right places, I feel. This is the fifth year of the Magoist Calendar. I have restored for the world the luni-menstrual-soar 13 months 28 days calendar of ancient Magoist Koreans/Mother Peoples. Last week on December 17th, 2021, we, Mago Sisters and Associates, celebrated the whale bell ringing ceremony for the coming of the New Year. Whale bell ringing ceremony was not new this year. But this year’s one marked a leap. For the first time, I was able to hold it in the Moonlit Rock Garden of the Mago Academy Center where I currently reside for a small group of participants from around the world. We expressed gratitude for our lives and I called out the names of Mago Volunteers, Mago Sisters/Associates, and Mago Supporters. Living in the semi-wild place surrounded by mountains and hills that have streams of water running around the house for the last three and half years, I have found myself home. I have returned HOME! Year 4 or 2021 brought amazing encounters, events, and accomplishments. Among them are Virtual Mago Whale Pilgrimages (three tours throughout the year, each tour takes place daily for 6 days), which I conducted for the first time. Foremost, the fact that the Mago Work was able to continue to this day is a miracle. The Mago Work, self-established outside the patriarchal grid, has survived the harsh years of the rooting time. Personal is political and cosmic. Mago Academy Center is about to take off by receiving visitors. Despite the Covid19 pandemic or through the pandemic, the Mago Work has grown stronger. Last but not least, it is no coincidence that Jen Taylor and I undertook a new but belated project Commemorating Feminist Ancestors for Return to Mago (RTM) E-Magazine, announced in November, 2021. When I proposed this project to Jen Taylor, co-editor of RTM, who supported it open-mindedly and wholeheartedly, my memories of Mary Daly roared in the back of my mind. By all means, this essay commemorating Mary Daly is prompted by this call. And vice versa. My memories of Mary Daly urge me to march forward. (Call for Contributions) Commemorating our ancestor feminists: Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994), Mary Daly (1928-2010), Audre Lorde (1934-1992), Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008), Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004), and Your Hera https://www.magoism.net/2021/11/call-for-contributions-commemorating-our-ancestor-feminists/ Flashbacks: I met Mary in person four times over the period of 28 years from the time I contacted her in person until she died (1994-2010). We stayed in touch for these years by speaking to each other over phone lines at an interval of monthly at the least. Apart from phone conversations, we faxed, mailed, and emailed our letters and documents. I had met Mary in person in April of 1999 for the first time. She had completed her book, Quintessence, in 1998 and visited Claremont Colleges in California the following year to promote her book. I will return to this event at a later time. I had written two pieces for an online magazine, Feminism and Religion, on my encounters with Mary Daly upon the invitation by Xochitl Alvizo. A Cross-Cultural Feminist Alchemy: Studying Mago, Pan-East Asian Great Goddess, Using Mary Daly’s Radical Feminism as Springboard by Helen Hye-Sook HwangThe Mago Hedge School: Why Remember Mary Daly? By Helen Hye Sook Hwang II My personal encounter with Mary Daly goes back to 28 years ago. In retrospect, Mary may have wished that I came strongly to support her when she needed during these years but she never demanded me to do so. I wanted to support her in a tangible way …
(Essay) Finding Meaning and Inspiration at Midlife by Harita Meenee

Have you ever wondered why “midlife crisis” is such a taboo subject? If everybody who lives long enough goes through it at some point or other, then why isn’t it openly discussed? My sense is that there’s a lot of stigma around this phase in life. Being middle-aged often means feeling vulnerable and vulnerability isn’t particularly acceptable in the kind of world we live in. In a sexist society, women are expected to always be in tiptop shape. We’re supposed to stay fit and healthy, youthful-looking, and attractive, as well as caring, nurturing, and productive. At midlife, we realize that trying to fulfill all these functions is not just impossible—it’s detrimental to our physical and mental health. The constant pressure to measure up to impossible social standards is taking its toll on us. No wonder so many middle-aged women are feeling frustrated, stressed, and depressed. I’ve had my share of these feelings. Experts talk about middle age as the time when we have to give up the “unrealistic expectations” of youth. They usually fail to say what caused these “unrealistic expectations” to begin with: a social system that bombards us with false promises of happiness, success, and everlasting love. At midlife, many of us have come to see some unsettling patterns: Romantic relationships, after the initial enthusiasm fades, usually go down the path of estrangement. The hope of a fulfilling career evaporates in a world of poverty, unemployment, and alienated labor. Happiness seems like a faraway dream as our living standards are falling, sexism and racism are rampant, and the far right is rising. For me, the hardest part has been the realization of just how toxic this society is. As time goes by, I can see more and more clearly that we live in a social system that poisons everything: our environment, relationships, work, and economy, as well as our minds and bodies. I think midlife is the time when most people feel the full impact of that poison. These are painful realizations. Susan Rosenthal, one of my favorite authors, makes a powerful point in one of her articles: “Growing daily misery is compounded by the horror of perpetual war and environmental destruction. If you open your mind to the barbarism of capitalism, you are traumatised. If you close your mind to it, you lose your humanity.” I feel traumatized by the toxicity I see all around me, the poison that has affected my own life and those of others in myriad ways. Dealing with trauma is never easy, so I’m afraid I have no fast and hard solutions to offer. I can only discuss what has proven effective in my case: I have chosen to work part time, at least for as long as I can afford to. This has provided a huge relief from work-related stress and feelings of alienation. It has also given me the opportunity to focus on the things that are most meaningful to me. Devoting more time to my inner world, meditating, and writing about my thoughts and emotions, has had a significant healing effect on me. But going inwards is not enough. I’ve been an activist for decades, fighting for social justice and calling for an end to all forms of oppression and discrimination. I know from experience that mass movements can make a difference. They have an impact on a country’s politics and, of equal importance, on people’s minds. Those who are spiritually inclined sometimes say “we can change the world by changing ourselves.” I can certainly appreciate the importance of doing the hard work to bring about inner change. However, my involvement in activism has shown me that we change ourselves during our efforts to change the world. I won’t pretend that activism is an easy path. It has its share of stressors, risks, and disappointments. But it also has a powerful transformative effect. It takes us away from feelings of isolation and helplessness and shows us the way of solidarity and hope. My personal way of being an activist is infused by Goddess ideals and archetypal energies, as I have written in other articles. It has expanded my horizons and enriched my inner world. It has also helped me connect with many wonderful people who share my passion for social change. For me activism has always been a sacred path, a source of meaning and inspiration, and a way to connect with something greater than myself. In the women’s spirituality movement, we often say that the Goddess is the embodiment of change. What better way to honor her than to devote our life to changing the world? (Meet Mago Contributor) Harita Meenee. Originally published in Witches and Pagans. This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Nicole Shaw

Among other things, Nicole Shaw is a farmer, feminist, artist, founder of a women’s time barter group, Past President of the Nanaimo Women’s Resources Society which operates a women’s centre, President of the Errington Farmers’ Market, and founding member of the Bowen Road and Farmers’ Market. Her life purpose is creating deeper awareness. This is what motivates her and is the thread that weaves through her artwork, writing, activism, organic farming, advocating for local food production, and founding groups and organizations.
(Essay 2) The Role of Castration in the Worship of the Great Mother Goddess Cybele by Francesca Tronetti, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This essay and its sequels are part of a longer chapter for a book I am working on. The book is based on my dissertation research at the Maetreum of Cybele in Palenville NY. I wanted to share some of my historical research and I will be presenting more essays on Mother Goddess worship in the ancient world and contemporary interest in the Feminine Divine.] Attis, the son/lover of Cybele was not part of her mythology until around 1000 BCE. It was after this time that the vegetation god Attis was introduced and became part of the legends. The legends which reference Attis are primarily found in the Anatolian worship of Cybele and are believed by Stone to be surviving remnants of the earlier Goddess religion when she was the unnamed Great Mother.[1] While there are multiple variations of the myth of Attis, the most common tale concerning the death of Attis is this. Statue of Galli priest from late 2nd century CE Rome. Wikimedia Commons For Attis, the princely young shepherd of the fields had once been set upon by a lustful monster and, in revulsion and lest he be forced into unfaithfulness to his Holy Mother, tore his genitals from his body and died beneath an evergreen tree while his fallen blood nourished flowers beneath him. There his fallen body lay lifeless until Cybele herself came upon it. She wrapped his mutilated body in mourning cloth and took him, and the tree near which he had died, to the deep, dark cave where she lived on the summit of Mount Ida.[2] In a later myth, Attis resurrects after three days and becomes Cybele’s lover. The Romans were so enamored with Attis that each year they held a festival celebrating Attis’ death and resurrection. However, Attis was not the only figure who underwent castration to show his devotion to his deity. Castration appears in many ancient writings regarding Goddess religions, and there are repeated references to eunuch priests in ancient Sumer, Babylon, Canaan, and Anatolia.[3] The classical texts put the number of eunuch priests as high as five thousand in some cities.[4] In Anatolia, the eunuch priests referred to themselves as Attis to signify their commitment to the Goddess.[5] There are representations of priests in female clothing, such as the eunuch priests are said to have worn, found throughout the Near East. Stone quotes Stylianos Alexiou, former Curator of the Antiquities of Crete, who believes that: The priests and musicians wearing long feminine robes fall into a special category. This practice has led to the surmise that perhaps owing to Syrian influence; there existed companies of eunuch priests in the Cretan palaces. During a later period, the eunuch priests of Cybele and Attis in Asia Minor formed a similar class.[6] According to this theory the males castrated themselves in service to the Goddess. However, some scholars disagree with this interpretation. Stone theorizes that as men began to gain power, possibly as society shifted from egalitarian or matrifocal customs and became more patriarchal, they replaced priestesses even in Goddess religions. The priests may have initially earned their place in the temple by identifying with the Goddess’ castrated son/lover and undergoing castration themselves. Their castration may also have been an attempt to imitate the female priestesses who held power in the temples.[7] G. R. Taylor, who wrote the abridged version of Briffault’s The Mothers, agrees with this interpretation. Taylor writes, “The first step in the limitation of the status of women was to take over from them the monopoly of the religious function.”[8] Graves points out that “All priestly robes, skirts, aprons, sottanas are indeed everywhere of an essentially feminine character.”[9] Another possibility, one supported by the modern Cybeline priestesses, is that some of these men were what we today identify as transsexual or transgender. These men removed their maleness through ritual castration in order to identify as a woman and wear women’s robes. For whatever reason the priests castrated themselves, they did eventually take much of the power from the female priestesses during the Classical Period. However, even as the introduction of the Indo-European sky gods usurped the place of the Goddesses, which were diminished and sometimes changed into evil monsters,[10] humankind could not eliminate the feminine from this new version of the cosmos. The Goddess was kept alive by her inclusion in the male-centered religious pantheons as mothers, wives, daughters, and consorts. Though her ancient function as Mother of All Things was temporarily eliminated during this patriarchal period, mystery cults devoted to the worship of Demeter, Isis, and Cybele did remain active during this time until the rise of Christianity and the closing of the shrines and temples to the Goddess by the fourth century CE.[11] (To be continued) (Meet Mago Contributor) Francesca Tronetti, Ph.D. [1] Stone, When God was a Woman, 146. [2] Leeming, The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, 82–83. [3] Ovid, “Book 4: April 4, The Megalesian Festival of Cybele”; Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods, 48–49; Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis, 115; Stone, When God Was a Woman, 149; Catullus, “The Adventures of Atys” 1894. [4] Stone, When God Was a Woman, 149. [5] Ibid., 149. [6] Ibid., 149. [7] Ibid., 149. [8] Ibid., 150. [9] Briffault, The Mothers, 276. [10] Lemming, The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, 133. [11] Ibid., 133
(Call for Contributions) Special Topics & Four Categories of Contributors

RTM Editorial Circle is pleased to announce the following: Call for Contributions for Special Topics Four Categories of Contributors Have you check out the new look in our website? We have several new features on the sidebar widgests. Look forward to our creativities to bloom despite the devastating signs around us and globally. It is the time that WE shine and guide the mind/heart/soul in an ever more visible way! May the Mago Work connect and empower each of us in a special way!

(Special Post 6) 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 has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hwang Without knowing nine numerology, it is NOT possible for us to understand the depth of Magoism, an anciently originated tradition of Old Korea/East Asia that venerated the Creatrix. “Giants” are the hallmark for the Goma, the people of Danguk (nine-state confederacy led by Goma, the Magoist Shaman queen). Those giants are not described as a singular people. They come in “81 brothers,” as mentioned below. We know what “brothers” mean, it is 81 sisters! Changing or translating a female-connoted term to the male proves its agent to be patriarchal. And Chiyou or Chiu (in Korean) is the ruler of Nine Ris (Guri), another name for Nine Hans (Guhan). Check this out: “Chiyou (蚩尤) was a tribal leader of the Nine Li tribe (九黎) in ancient China.[1] He is best known as a king who lost against the future Yellow Emperor during the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors era in Chinese mythology.[1][2][3] For the Hmong people, Chiyou[4] was a sagacious mythical king.[5] He has a particularly complex and controversial ancestry, as he may fall under Dongyi[1]Miao[5] or even Man,[5] depending on the source and view. Today, Chiyou is honored and worshipped as the God of War and one of the three legendary founding fathers of China.” “According to the Song dynasty history book Lushi, Chiyou’s surname was Jiang (姜), and he was a descendant of Yandi.[6]According to legend, Chiyou had a bronze head with a metal forehead.[1] He had 4 eyes and 6 arms, wielding terrible sharp weapons in every hand.[7] In some sources, Chiyou had certain features associated with various mythological bovines: his head was that of a bull with two horns, although the body was that of a human.[7] He is said to have been unbelievably fierce, and to have had 81 brothers.[7] Historical sources often described him as ‘cruel and greedy’,[6] as well as ‘tyrannical’.[8] Some sources have asserted that the figure 81 should rather be associated with 81 clans in his kingdom.[5] Chiyou knows the constellations and the ancients spells for calling upon the weather. For example, he called upon a fog to surround Huangdi and his soldiers during the Battle of Zhuolu. TRIBE Chiyou is regarded as a leader of the Nine Li tribe (九黎, RPAWhite Hmong: Cuaj Li Ntuj) by nearly all sources.[1] However, his exact ethnic affiliations are quite complex, with multiple sources reporting him as belonging to various tribes, in addition to a number of diverse peoples supposed to have directly descended from him.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiyou Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Below is from my article, “Goma, The Shaman Ruler Of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea, And Her Mythology,” included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Mago Books, 2018). Goma is also credited for designating queens of the bear clan to state rulers. Another account of the Goma myth reads, “She looked after numerous spiritual persons and wise persons. Accepting women of the bear clan, Hanung made them rulers (后). Goma chose queens of the bear clan to make them nine state rulers. Note that Danguk is a nine state confedearcy. That Danguk’s nine states were headed by the queens of the bear clan is, among others, corroborated by Chinese mythological accounts. Chinese myth informs that Chiu, Huangdi’s opponent in an epic war, was aided by “a tribe of giants from the far north.”[1] In Chinese mythology, Gonggong and her minister, Xiangliu, symbolized as a dragon with nine heads in the body of a snake, are depicted as an enemy of Emperor Yu of Xia (ruled c. 2200–2100 BCE). Such a story is aligned with Sinocentrism inscribed in Chinese mythology that antagonizes pre-Chinese history of Old Magoist Korea/East Asia. In Chinese mythology, Gonggong (龔工) is described as a sea monster whose minister Xiangliu (相栁 Mutual Willow) is told to have been defeated by Yu, the Great.[2] Assuming the character hu (后 xia in Chinese pronunciation) to mean a male ruler’s wife, androcentric scholars have translated the above account as “Hanung received his queen from the bear clan. And he instituted the rite of matrimony.” This proves to be a modern androcentric bias in that hu originally means a “ruler.” This is the case of the logographic character whose original meaning has changed from “a female ruler” to “a male ruler” and to “the wife of ruler” over time. Ancient Chinese texts betray ample evidence. For example, Xiahou (夏后 Ruler of Xia) and Houyi (后羿 Ruler of Yi) respectively refer to a male ruler. Xiahou refers to Yu of Xia. Other ancient Chinese texts include the Classic of Poetry (詩經商頌玄鳥), the Zuozhuan (左傳) and the Book of Document (書經).[3] [1] C. Scott Littleton, ed. Mythology: The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth & Storytelling (San Diego: Thunder Bay Press, 2002), 414. Cited in Hwang, Finding Mago, 239 in note 494. [2] Lihui Yang, Deming An and Jessica Anderson Turner, Handbook of Chinese Mythology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 214-5. [3] Goma, “Goma, The Shaman Ruler Of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea, And Her Mythology” Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Mago Books, 2018), 272. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang I am realizing that even ancient Chinese people depicted Chiyou as female. When her image is cropped from the whole frame, it is hard to tell. But see her in the attached image of the whole frame. In comparison with Chinese heroes (supposedly including Yellow Emperor) on the left side, she and her ally are depicted as a figure in a curvy body line. Of course, Chiyou was pejoratively depicted as she was an opponent to the future Chinese emperor, […]
(Special Post Isis 3) 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 3 Isis, Arab Women Revolution, and Black Goddesses Naa Ayele Kumari Going back to the original topic of the post…. Some quotes ” Women are in half the society… How come there are only 7 in the Assembly… and they are all Islamist! ” I can’t beat up my wife and almost kill her and call it discipline… this is not discipline… this is abuse and insanity” http://youtu.be/y4umifTLSII 12-Year Old Explains Egyptian Revolution in Under 3 Minutes www.youtube.com Max Dashu It is tremendously heartening to see these insights being expressed, and spread. The Salafis have made such inroads, and now the pushback is happening. Harita Meenee Dear Naa Ayele Kumari, thank you actually reading my post and commenting something relevant to it. It’s refreshing when someone does hear what we have to say instead of projecting their own notions. Building a solidarity movement with those who are oppressed but fighting is very important during these critical times! Harita Meenee See also: https://www.facebook.co/intifadat.almar2a?fref=ts The uprising of women in the Arab world انتفاضة المرأة في العالم العربي حرية الفكر ، حرية التعبير ، حرية الاعتقاد ، حرية التنقل ، حرية الجسد ، حرية اللب…See More Glenys Livingstone … as you say Max …” way too much of it going on” – amongst people who should know better (I would have thought): “Dark goddess as terrifying, challenging, white goddess as benign; “black magic” as harmful; I see way, way too much of this going on out there.” And related to that in my mind is all the “love and light” business that is so common: the Ground of Being is Dark … it seems to me that mystics have always understood the quintessential darkness of Love/Deity. Max Dashu Sure. I would just like to add that the critique raised here addressed issues much broader than the substance of the article, which made some good points. But once the choice of graphics flagged the issue of representation, people had much more to say about that old yet still very fresh wound which is constantly reopened by the cultural habit of whitening Egypt, or interpreting Africa through a eurocentric lens. It is not on any one person to carry the weight of that; we all have a responsibility to address the issues, but especially those of us of European heritage need to familiarize ourselves with how this plays out over and over. Just as men have a responsibility to speak up in support of women when patriarchal assumptions are on board. We all can learn something from each other, along all the various axes of domination, and overthrow them in coalition. Naa Ayele Kumari I have often considered where the roots of this psychology comes from. It is dualistic thinking that causes us to compare and contrast, then sum up judgement of good or bad and place a value on each. It extends into competition and justification for war. It also doesn’t escape me that often this came with certain civilizations who systematically destroyed others. It didn’t just happen with blacks in Africa… but blacks in Asia and the Indus Valley as well. With the Aryan invasions of India, came the eventual introduction to lighter divinities and more emphasis on male divinities. Southern Indians, Sri Lankans are very dark… even more so than many African Blacks. The caste systems implemented by the Aryan invaders did the same thing to them casting them as “untouchables”. With that came the marginalization of their black female divinities such as Kali. Kali actually has 10-16 forms… from compassionate mother, the fountain of wisdom, to she of great beauty but she is minimized as just destructive and terrifying… especially as Brhaman, Vishnuu, and Shiva grow in popularity. One of Kali’s statues has her black self standing on top of Shiva because she conquered him. Later there is a discussion in on of the Hindu text explaining Kali (as Parvati) after being subdued by Shiva she becomes lighter. Further they have stories about him rejecting her and calling her blackie which made her do austerities to rid herself of her black skin. Naa Ayele Kumari It should not be overlooked that in the Story of Alice in Wonderland… a story intended to keep Goddess elements for future generations, has the Elder sister ( the Queen of Hearts) portrayed as man, ego, and power driven who cuts off heads and has a fierce dragon…a clear reference to Kali. The White goddess as the younger sister is her opponent… and her mission is to usurp the throne of the Queen of Hearts even though she was the rightful heir as the oldest … or primordial. Stories like these also reinforce the stereotypes and negative iconography. Max Dashu Yes, it is pervasive in many cultures of domination. Demons are portrayed as black not only in Europe, which we know well, but also in China and in a lot of Buddhist iconography. In modern India, the sweet goddesses are shown as pink, the wrathful as black; and Krishna (name means “dark”) is turned powder blue. (Another of his titles, s’yam, also meaning dark, is the word translated as “green” in Green Tara.) The countercurrents (Black Mazu, loving Kali – esp in Bengal and south India, Black Madonna) bubbled up from the common people, who knew and longed for something other than the dominant racialized hierarchy. Naa Ayele Kumari I am just discovering Mazu ( Matzu/LuShui) in China today! Never knew about her. This discussion has led me to look deeper for black goddesses in Asia. Max Dashu Taoist spiritual tradition often refers to Xüan Nü, which can be translated in several ways. You’ll usually see it rendered as “the Mysterious Female,” a phrase that occurs in the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching), and this is a valid translation; but what is less emphasized is that it also means “the Dark Woman.” In […]
(Special Post) Why I choose to be an RTM contributor by Glenys Livingstone

The contribution of my writing to Return to Mago E-Magazine has evolved since it began four years ago, into a deeply mutually enhancing relationship. The time and effort taken to write carefully and in alignment with my heartfelt passions and insights, and then to be able to publish to a receptive audience, has always been rewarding – for me personally and apparently for many who received it.

(Book Excerpt) Held in the Womb of the Wheel of the Year by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from the Introduction of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Meditation cushion in circle of decorated stones My ancestors built great circles of stones that represented their perception of real time and space, and enabled them to tell time: the stone circles were cosmic calendars.[i] They went to great lengths and detail to get it right. It was obviously very important to them to have the stones of a particular kind, in the right positions according to position of the Sun at different times of the year, and then to celebrate ceremony within it. I have for decades had a much smaller circle of stones assembled. I have regarded this small circle of stones as a medicine wheel. It is a portable collection, that I can spread out in my living space, or let sit in a small circle on an altar, with a candle/candles in the middle. Each stone (or objects, as some are) represents a particular Seasonal Moment/transition and is placed in the corresponding direction. The small circle of eight stones represents the flow of the Solstices and Equinoxes and the cross-quarter Moments in between: that is, it represents the “Wheel of the Year” as it is commonly known in Pagan traditions. I have found this assembled circle to have been an important presence. It makes the year, my everyday sacred journey of Earth around Sun, tangible and visible as a circle, and has been a method of changing my mind, as I am placed in real space and time. My stone wheel has been a method of bringing me home to my indigenous sense of being. Each stone/object of my small wheel may be understood to represent a “moment of grace,” as Thomas Berry named the seasonal transitions – each is a threshold to the Centre, wherein I may now sit: I sense it as a powerful point. As I sit on the floor in the centre of my small circle of stones, I reflect on its significance as I have come to know the Seasonal transitions that it marks, over decades of celebrating them. I sense the aesthetics and poetry of each. I facilitated and was part of the celebration and contemplation of these Moments in my region for decades. It was always an open group that gathered, and so its participants changed over the years but it remained in form, like a live body which it was: a ceremonial body that conversed with the sacred Cosmos in my place. We spoke a year-long story and poetry of never-ending renewal – of the unfolding self, Earth and Cosmos. We danced and chanted our relationship with the Mother, opened ourselves to Her Creativity, and conversed with Her by this method. All participants in their own way within these ceremonies made meaning of their lives – which is what I understand relationship to be, in this context of Earth and Sun, our Place and Home in the Cosmos: that is, existence is innately meaningful when a being knows Who one is and Where one is. Barbara Walker notes that religions based on the Mother are free of the “neurotic” quest for indefinable meaning in life as such religions “never assumed that life would be required to justify itself.”[ii] I face the North stone, which in my hemisphere is where I place the Summer Solstice. From behind me and to my right is the light part of the cycle – representing manifest form, all that we see and touch. From behind me and to my left is the dark part of the cycle – representing the manifesting, the reality beneath the visible, which includes the non-visible. The Centre wherein I sit, represents the present. The wheel of stones has offered to me a way of experiencing the present as “presence,” as it recalls in an instant that, That which has been and that which is to come are not elsewhere – they are not autonomous dimensions independent of the encompassing present in which we dwell. They are, rather, the very depths of this living place – the hidden depth of its distances and the concealed depth on which we stand.[iii] This wheel of stones, which captures the Wheel of the Year in essence, locates me in the deep present, wherein the past and the future are contained – both always gestating in the dark, through the gateways. And all this has been continually enacted and expressed in the ceremonies of the Wheel of the Year, as the open, yet formal group has done them, mostly in the place of Blue Mountains, Australia. PaGaian Cosmology altar/mandala: a “Womb of Gaia” map Over the years of practice of ritually celebrating these eight Seasonal Moments – Earth’s whole annual journey around Sun, I have been held in this creative story, this Story of Creativity as it may be written – it is a sacred story. Her pattern of Creativity can be identified at all levels of reality – manifesting in seasonal cycles, moon cycles, body cycles – and to be aligned with it aligns a person’s core with the Creative Mother Universe. I have identified the placing of one’s self within this wheel through ceremonial practice of the whole year of creativity, as the placing of one’s self in Her Womb – Gaia’s Womb, a Place of Creativity. All that is necessary for Creativity is present in this Place. All may come forth from here/Here – and so it does, and so it has, and so it will. NOTES: [i] See Martin Brennan, The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland (Rochester Vermont, Inner Traditions, 1994). [ii] Barbara Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 693. [iii] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 216. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Brennan, Martin. The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland.Rochester Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1994. Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: …
(Video) An Autumn Equinox Ceremony by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Autumn Equinox/Mabon Northern Hemisphere – September 21-23 Southern Hemisphere – March 21-23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRJNY1LSvIs&t=1175s …oOo… The purpose of this video is for ceremony, and I suggest pausing the video where it suits you, to add your own processing, embellishments and/or your own drum, percussion and voice wherever you please. I have made short spaces in the video where it could be paused. The script for this Autumn Equinox/Mabon ceremony is offered in Chapter 11 of my book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, with all acknowledgements and references there. In particular I mention here, credit for the story of Demeter and Persephone as told by Charlene Spretnak in her book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece. For more full participation in the ceremony, you could have one or more stalks of wheat or native grain tied with a red thread/ribbon, a garden pot with soil, a small garden trowel, a flower bulb (daffodil type), food and drink, that may represent your “harvest” – ready for eating and drinking. The elements of Water, Fire, Earth and Air on the altar in this video are placed in directions that are appropriate to my region in the Southern Hemisphere, and East Coast Australia: you may place yours differently, and transliterate when I mention the direction (which I do minimally). The images used are a collage of footage and photos from the 2024 Autumn Equinox ceremony at my place in Wakka Wakka country, South East Queensland Australia, and from previous Autumn Equinox ceremonies I facilitated over the decades in MoonCourt, Goddess ceremonial space in NSW Australia, Darug and Gundungurra country. My partner Robert (Taffy) Seaborne who has participated in all the Seasonal ceremonies since Samhain 2000, adds his voice to this video. Image credits: Demeter and Persephone (500 B.C.E. Greece). Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.72. Art of Demeter and Persephone on MoonCourt wall: Cernak Herself Music credit: “Gentle Sorrow” by Sky: which he has previously allowed me to use in my work. This piece of music is also used in the Autumn Equinox meditation on my PaGaian Cosmology Meditations published 2015.
(Art & Poem) Spring Equinox by Sudie Rakusin & Annie Finch

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

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

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

The dance begins with two concentric circles, which will flow in and out of each other throughout the dance, resulting thus in a third concentric circle that comes and goes. The three circles/layers are understood to represent the three aspects of Goddess, the Creative Triple Dynamic that many ancients were apparently aware of, and imagined in so many different ways across the globe. In Her representation in Ireland as the Triple Spiral motif, which is inscribed on the inner chamber wall at Bru-na-Boinne (known as Newgrange)[1], She seems to be understood as a dynamic essential to on-going Cosmic Creativity, as this ancient motif is dramatically lit up by the Winter Solstice dawn. It seems that this was important to the Indigenous people of this place at the time of Winter Solstice, which celebrates Origins, the continuing birth of all. Thus I like to do this Cosmogenesis Dance, as I have named it[2], at the Winter Solstice in particular. The three aspects that the dance may embody, and are poetically understood as Goddess, celebrate (i) Virgin/Young One – Urge to Be as I have named this quality – the ever new differentiated being (also known as Fodla in the region of the Triple Spiral)[3]. This is the outer circle of individuals. (ii) Mother – the deeply related interwoven web – Dynamic Place of Being as I have named this quality – the communion that our habitat is (also known as Eriu in the region of the Triple Spiral)[4]. This is the woven middle circle where all are linked and swaying in rhythm. (iii) Crone/Old One – the eternal creative return to All-That-Is – She who Creates the Space to Be as I have named this quality (also known as Banba in the region of the Triple Spiral)[5]. This is the inner circle where linked hands are raised and stillness is held. The three concentric layers of the dance may be understood to embody these. The Cosmogenesis Dance represents the flow and balance of these three – a flow and balance of Self, Other and All-That-Is. It may be experienced like a breath, that we breathe together – as we do co-create the Cosmos. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have named the three qualities of Cosmogenesis in the following way: – differentiation … to be is to be unique – communion … to be is to be related – autopoiesis/subjectivity … to be is to be a centre of creativity.[6] The three layers of the dance may be felt to celebrate each unique being, in deep relationship with other, directly participating in the sentient Cosmos, the Well of Creativity. The Cosmogenesis Dance as it is done within PaGaian Winter Solstice ceremony expresses the whole Creative Process we are immersed in. It is a process of complete reciprocity, a flow of Creator and Created, like a breath. There is dynamic exchange in every moment: that is the nature of the Place we inhabit. The dance may help awaken us to it, and to invoke it. The Cosmogenesis Dance on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR73MDMM9Fk For more story: Cosmogenesis Dance for Winter Ritual For Dance Instructions: PaGaian Cosmology Appendix I Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [1] The Triple Spiral engraving is dated at 2,400 B.C.E. [2] This dance is originally named as “The Stillpoint Dance”, or sometimes “Adoramus Te Domine” which is the name of the music used for it. I learned it from Dr. Jean Houston in 1990 at a workshop of hers in Sydney, Australia. I began to use the dance for Winter Solstice ceremony in 1997, and it was only in the second year of doing so that I realised its three layers were resonant with the three traditional qualities of the Female Metaphor/Goddess, and also the three faces of Cosmogenesis. I thereafter re-named and storied the dance that way in the ceremonial preparation and teaching for Winter Solstice. See Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology: pp. 280-281 and 311. [3] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p.192. [4] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p. 192. [5] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p. 192. [6] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p. 71-79. I have identified these qualities with the Triple Goddess, and the Triple Spiral in the synthesis of PaGaian Cosmology: see Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, particularly Chapter 4: https://pagaian.org/book/chapter-4/ References: Dames, Michael. Ireland: a Sacred Journey, Element Books, 2000. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Lincoln NE: iUniverse, 2005. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. NY: HarperCollins, 1992.

(Essay) The Mago Hedge School: Why Remember Mary Daly? by Helen Hye Sook Hwang

Prologue By writing this, I do not intend to defend Mary Daly’s position in any dispute. A controversial figure, Mary Daly never let go of her fight with those whom she thought on the other side of her feminist war. Like anyone else in history, Mary Daly belonged to her time and culture, and I leave her unresolved issues up to her. What I write here is my fond memory of her, whose feminist thought left an indelible mark on my being as well as humanity as a whole. Daly’s contribution remains to be reassessed from the fresh eye of new generations. In the meantime, I begin to speak for my part. Without Mary Daly’s thought, I would not have been in this place where I stand right now. It has empowered me to actualize my dreams to the fullest as a wo/man who was born and raised in Korea but had come from the One Home in origin. I first hear of the hedge school “Have you heard of the hedge school, Hye Sook?” asked Mary. “No, I haven’t heard of it,” I answered. This conversation took place during the conference called the Feminist Hullaballoo held in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2007. We met there and spent three days as chums. Mary was with another friend, Yvonne Johnson, so the three of us hung out together. It was a very special time for me – I felt as if I were wrapped up in the eye of the storm. (In fact, my life feels so.) At the conference, someone asked me how I came to be invited as a featured speaker. I was among such renowned feminist speakers as Sonia Johnson, Paula Gunn Allen, and Mary Daly herself. They felt like giants to me. I told her that Mary Daly invited me. Mary had asked me if I would like to go and speak at that conference. I did not have an inflated ego. I would not have been hurt if I were not chosen. But I said “Yes” without hesitation. At the time, it felt like another one of the many “outlandish” adventures that I had undertaken throughout my life. In retrospect, however, this was a very special “Yes” to the beginning of my life’s new phase. It was my debut as a radical feminist, so to speak – the first time I spoke to such a large number of radical feminists. Mary sat in the front row and listened to my talk. She nodded her head saying “It was great,” when I finished and came down to sit next to her. Mary was just getting to know my research on Mago in that year; that was what she was referring to. Nonetheless, what mattered to me was not how well I presented my research, but that I managed to do it! The jitters were over! I was returning Home and had just been baptized in public as a Wo/man, the whole being. [This talk was later published in Trivia: Voices of Feminism.] My two dreams When I accepted Mary’s invitation, I was thinking of my two dreams. I am a dream-listener. Or to be more accurate, my dreams have led me through. These dreams with regard to Mary Daly are in fact old; I dreamt them before my arrival in Claremont, California, in 1997. In the first dream, I was in the crowd when Mary spoke to a large audience. The venue was an open plaza and the stage was far away from where I was standing. Then, out of the blue, Mary called my name and asked me to come up to the podium. It sounded like a call to my soul. So I did. Then, she passed the microphone to me. I blacked out, not knowing what to say, and woke up. This dream told me what I lacked, a message to deliver to the world, which I did not have for some years. The second dream was a brief but sweet one. Mary and I were standing in an old-style classroom as co-teachers. The dynamic between us was intimate and enjoyable. Honored and proud, I felt in the presence of my old friends. The classroom was a dream-like space within a dream, as if we were in a time machine! More than two decades have passed since I had those dreams, and now I see that they were indeed self-fulfilling dreams. The first dream was fulfilled through the event of my speech to the Feminist Hullaballoo conference. By then, it was clear that I was going to speak about the topic of Mago, which I had encountered for my Ph.D. dissertation. It was the topic that I had searched for without knowing and I found it. Now I see that it found me! It is the tradition of my ancestors that has beckoned me to come Home. In Mago, I found an anciently originated gynocnetric reality, which encompasses everyone regardless and named it Magoism. Mary and I meet in person The first time I met her in person was in early April of 1999, in Claremont, California. I had been in contact with Mary Daly for about four years before then. We had spoken over the telephone, faxed, and snail-mailed across the Pacific Ocean while I was living in Korea from 1994 to 1997. Mary was invited to speak by the committee of Claremont Colleges programs including the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Claremont Graduate University, the program I was studying in. In fact, that was the program that Mary had suggested I apply for, and she had written a recommendation letter on my behalf. My first meeting with her is imprinted on my soul, and it feels as fresh as ever. It was an unusually cold spring day in Claremont. It even sprinkled some rain. She was staying at the Claremont Inn, only a couple of blocks away from my dormitory apartment. She had phoned me the day before her arrival. She called me …
Mago, the First Mother from East Asia by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Excerpts from “Mago, the First Mother from East Asia,” Creatrix Media Live (CML) Roundtable Radio Talk with Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang. May 23, 2011] Jayne DeMente: Welcome Helen, I was fortunate to read some of your research and I applaud you because, we in the Western WSE movement have long needed to hear more from Asian women spiritual leaders and feminists and your reference to the Neolithic timeline… For our listeners and participants online, let’s lead with the question of who is Mago, was she a mother figure, what is Magoism, does any other deity pre-date her? Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: *Mago is the great goddess known to East Asians throughout history. She is the first mother of all, cosmogonist, and ultimate sovereign/ruler. She has many names. Among them are Triad Deity (Samsin), Grandmother (halmi), Auspicious Goddess (Seogo), Evil (Magui), and Old Goddess (Nogo). She is also known as the Giantess who shaped the natural and cultural landscape. Her manifestations are so multivalent that one may think they do not refer to the same goddess. She was well loved, given high esteem, celebrated by East Asians in the past. She was almost completely forgotten, however in modern times, up until the 1980s in Korea, when the principle text of Magoism, the Budoji, re-emerged. *Mago is a mother figure in the sense that she bore two daughters, Kunghee and Sohee, and managed her household called the Castle of Mago, the primordial paradise of humanity. She is the ancestor of all races. She takes care of everything on earth via the equilibrium of cosmic music/sound/vibration. *Magoism is the term that refers to the totality of culture/civilization venerating Mago as the great goddess. It is a tradition largely unnoted but co-opted and distorted in major East Asian religions. The concept of Magoism helps one identify and understand Mago’s multivalent manifestations that are found trans-nationally. It also makes possible to name the female-centered original/primal civilization that gave birth to the forthcoming East Asian civilizations and religions. *Whether Mago is the earliest deity known to East Asia is unknown. In fact, there are goddesses unearthed from “pre-historic” archaeological sites without their names. The life-sized goddess statue was unearthed in the site of Hongshan Culture, northeastern region of present China dating from 4,700 to 2,900 BCE. The heavy use of jade along with the partly bear-figured female icon is congruent with the account of Magoism in the Budoji. Also, of course, there are numerous female figurines called dogu excavated in Japan’s “pre-historic” times. The ancient origin of Mago or Magoism has a merit to explain some facts that remain a mystery, so to speak. Korea is also known as the land of dolmens. Half of the world megaliths are populated in the Korean peninsula. There are numerous pyramids found in mainland China. There is a documentary film about the sunken temple beneath the sea of Okinawa Japan, etc. dating to 10,000 years ago. *Then, how early does Mago date to? It is difficult to date the earliest evidence of Mago or Magoism simply because written history does not exist in pre-patriarchal times. As you see here, when we talk about the earliest of something, everyone assumes it is of Chinese. So let me follow this line of thought: Ge Hong’s record on Magu from China dates to the early fourth century CE (Ge Hong 283—343 CE). However, Daoist scholar Robert Ford Campany states that the cult of Mago dates back to the Stone Age. It is more difficult to date Mago in Korean records simply because ancient written records did not survive. Two books, the Budoji and the Handan Gogi, alleged to have been written in the late 4th or early 5th century and subsequent later times, which refer to Mago otherwise known as Samsin (Triad Deity) remain controversial. Considering that the name Mago is embedded in Korean language as in “gom,” “geum,” and “gam,” whose meaning indicates ruler, sovereign, and head, the origin of Mago is as old as these words. Likewise, most materials that recount Mago as cosmogonist are of folklore, place names, literature, arts, and debris of historical and religious records, most of which are difficult to date for its origin. Anniitra Ravenmoon: Thank you Helen, you have done much academic research and hold several degrees, can you explain to us how your education or experience informed you regarding Mago? Helen: *I would say that encountering Mago as a doctoral research topic is ultimately prompted by my intellectual quest as a Korean feminist. Following radical feminism of Mary Daly, I wanted to seek spirituality that is not only non-patriarchal but also East Asian and Korean. This made me study feminism and East Asian religions, histories, and cultures, etc. I end up with so much to study over the past decade and a half. I did not take up graduate studies as a means to develop an academic career. I loved reading and studies from youth. This kind of attitude is not that practical in the job market. However, I believe this is the right path for me. To look back, I did not follow the ready-made conventional path of life. I was a dreamer and idealist. I still value those qualities in myself and others. I used to think to myself, if I had remained a Christian, I would not have sought Mago. How could I? Likewise if I had resorted to Buddhism, I would not have encountered Mago. Because I wanted to carve out my own spiritual path as a Korean feminist, I was able to encounter Mago. Another factor at work in my study of Mago is the cultural or spiritual tradition of cultivating the Dao, the Way, in East Asia. I wanted to find out what the truth was, how I could make the most out of my life and etc. So I tried the shoes of a Catholic overseas missionary for a while. Leaving Christianity behind, however, helped me realize the cultural heritage that I have within. It was …
(Video) 2013 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s note: The first Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Read Mago Pilgrimage Essay 1 and Mago Pilgrimage Essay 2. See Meet Mago Contributor, Hae Kyoung Ahn for “Ma Gaia Womb” chant music and Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hwang Ph.D.

Tag: Mary Saracino

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Mago Almanac Year 9 Monthly Wheels

S/HE: IJGS V4 N1-2 2025 (B/W Paperback)

Mago Almanac Year 8 (for 2025)

Program Booklets

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