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

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

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

September 19, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Meet Mago Contributor, MaryAnn Columbia

MaryAnn Columbia is an Obstetric Nurse and Holistic Healer at Massachusetts General Hospital, an academic teaching hospital and an international birthing center in Boston, MA. MaryAnn’s model of care is guided Read More …

March 6, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Essay) Gayatri Initiation by MaryAnn Columbia

Gayatri meditation is the highest form of meditation known in the Vedas. Sage Vishwamitra is the seer of the Gayatri Mantra, which first appears in the Rig Veda (III, 62, Read More …

(Art & Poetry) An Animal of Earth by Lucy Pierce

Art by Lucy Pierce There is a space, a gap, a chasm, a schism, a rift between my body and my eyes that perceive it. Like a cleft membrane, as though there were a mismatch between the formthat my acculturated eyes can narrowly receive,and the actual rugged peripheries and contours of my real life body.And in the space between a great grief dwells, unmet and in search of asylum. This space is filled with the wasteland that says I could never be enough,that I always was and ever will be, too big,too soft, too textured,not quite right, not deservedly worthy. When I look with these eyes, they see through the lens of this judgement,this critical imposition,punitive imperative,through the lens of this brittle world,and it leaves the animal of my bodyin perpetual isolation,forever unseen for all the beauty she expresses,all the generosity she exudes. There is a chasm of unlovedness,between the body and the eye,and I see now it has always been the eye that does not belong,the eye that imposes the exileon the perfectly imperfect body,that has only ever wanted love,only ever wanted to belong to itself,nothing more,just to belong to its own self.But every time the eyes look,they shame and demean,all they ever seeis the not-good-enoughness. I feel a whisper now,a longing to integrate the space between the eye and the body,I want to fill that space with silence,and in the stillness,I want to fill it with the presence of love.I want to bridge that gulf, with a gentle acceptance, a homely comfort,a tender generosity of heart.I want to retrieve my gaze from the worldand bring it home to my body, home to the animal of Earth.I want my eyes to belong to my soul,like a baby belongs to its mother,fiercely protectedby eyes that see only with love and the great responsibility of being a shelter from the harshness of the world.My beautiful body has been torn to shreds with the sharp edge of every mirror,or happened upon reflection. My eyes inflicting crueltywith razor sharp dexterity,amputating myself from belonging.With every gaze, a violence done. I want my eyes and my body to curl up together,to wrap themselves up tight,like my dog, when she curls around herself to sleep.I want them to be together, gently,for all the time that it might take for the world inside them to die,for the space between themto still and to close,to mend and to heal,for friendship to forge,so that finally they can belong againtogether in the one skin,singing the one song that says,you are enough,and you are home,and to know what a riotous blessing it isto be home in a body. To be home on the earth,in love. (Meet Mago Contributor) Lucy Pierce.
(Nine Poets Speak) Trees Aren’t Crazy or Cruel by Mary Saracino

[Editors’ Note: Learn about how the “Nine Poets Speak” series came to be in place here.] Trees Los Altos, Albuquerque, NM photo by Mary Saracino Trees aren’t crazy or cruel like humans. They don’t lie or kill. They don’t spew hate or rouse fear. They sway with the wind, dig roots deep into the soil, feed one another, create homes for birds shelter for weary travelers. They bear fruit and nuts, provide shade and solace. Their limbs bear ice and snow, sun and heat giving witness to the seasons as they flow through time. watching the world change and unfold each day something new to witness, something new to celebrate honor love https://www.magoism.net/2013/05/meet-mago-contributor-mary-saracino/
(Poetry & Art) Change is Coming by Arlene Bailey

Change is Coming, art by Arlene Bailey https://www.magoism.net/2020/04/meet-mago-contributor-arlene-bailey/
(Meet Mago Contributor) Dr. Adrian Cooper

Dr Adrian Cooper was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in September 1999. He has worked as a Consultant to the BBC TV Natural History Unit, and as a Writer / Presenter for the BBC World Service. He was an Associate Research Fellow in the Department of Geography, Birkbeck College, London University between 1992 – 2013.
A Bun in the Oven: Divine Trinity of Bread, Consciousness and Rebellion by Claire Dorey

Art by Claire Dorey Follows Understanding Tanit through Felt Experience, Visualising the Energy in Hathor’s Temple and Girls On Top (click to read). Flour is engrained in the creases of her hands. Wood smoke rises from the brick oven as she works the sour dough into ‘solar discs’ the same way her mother did. ‘Al-Shamsi’ / ‘solar bread’ baking is loaded with symbolism. ‘Shamsi’ means ‘sun’ – the dough rises in the sunshine. In Egyptian wood fired bread they twist three ‘handles’ into the dough and in ‘solarbread .. an ancient pharaonic heritage’ the number II and a circle, which could be vestiges of ancient symbols for ‘belonging to’ and ‘Ra’, are inscribed into the batter, possibly alluding to the holy bread of Ra. Joining the ‘handles’ forms a triangle across the bun circle which, in sacred geometry, represents divine Phi proportion, the mathematics of nature – the cryptogram of three-ness so many cultures enshrine into their mythology, including ancient Egypt: Osiris, Isis, Horus; Blue Nile, White Nile, Atbara; the three cosmic realms, Duat, Nun, Nut Intending to wrap up my search for meaning in triangular symbolism that seems so bound to rising female power, I spot a poetic sequence of hieroglyphs: Ankh – Conical Loaf – Hoe: ‘breath of life’ – ‘to give’ – ‘ love’, etched into the wall of Hathor’s shrine at the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. The symbol for ‘Conical Loaf’, a pot baked bread, is a small triangle within an elongated triangle (Gardiner X8). I’d followed the energy from Tanit’s cave Ibiza to Hathor’s temple Egypt, then up to Nut on the Hypostyle ceiling. I’m trusting this energy will let me go when it’s ready. It asks the observer to sit quietly with the symbols until meaning reveals itself. It’s dawning on me Hathor’s message is of ancient universal truths that astrophysics, astronomy and quantum explore. The ‘trinitisation’ of consciousness is encoded into the images there. “Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else.” – Leonardo da Vinci. Creativity and spirituality intertwine so can Hathor secrets decode bread symbolism and how is this relevant today? If traditional Egyptian bread baking is rooted in ancient practices it’s logical to assume, in the time of the Pharaohs, the solar bread, as Ra, embarked on a journey of returns, through the body of sky Goddess Nut, who swallows sun-Ra at night and births him each morning. Back then, eating the bread was to consume the sun-Ra, the vibration of the ‘mother baker’ and the omnipotent Mother Goddess. Hands bake divine wisdom into bread – female power rises and nourishes from within. It takes a village, both women and men, to feed a nation yet the pictogram for ‘bread’, a closed semi circle (Gardiner X1), is used as a determiner for feminine words, possibly comparing pregnancy to proofing with yeast; honouring female wisdom as a politically stabilising force; or in honour of bread Goddess Isis. As capitalist patriarchy and sky god religions rose bread baking was monetised. Even in ancient Egypt co-operative ovens became commercial enterprises because there was profit in baking, yet bread’s divine status still spoke in the temples. Monotheistic society rejected female spiritual power, viewing ‘women’s work’ as menial. Bread became ‘a gift from God’ and ‘the body of Christ’. When Jesus fed bread to the people it symbolised sharing, however the roots of sharing bread are etched in stone on temple walls, as the pictogram ‘Conical Loaf’ meaning ‘to give’ shows us. “Isis [ ] gives us the bread of earthly life; [ ] the Divine Baker Who makes the magical bread that gives us eternal life. [ ] Who feeds our bodies and souls.” – The Divine Bread of Isis, Isidora, Isiopolis. Isis is the Goddess of bread and direct speech and direct action – in ancient Egyptian texts no deity speaks more. Isis was vocal. Her husband Osiris was ‘Lord of Silence’ – the patriarch stole Her voice and Her bread when they conflated Her with Mary. An activator Goddess, associated with the passionate rose, it is Isis who gives women a voice. “bread for all, and roses too” – Helen Todd, American women’s suffrage activist. “Bread, more bread, and not so many words.” – Paris women heckling the National Assembly. “bread or blood” – women chant at the Richmond Bread Riots,1863. In 18C France food shortages led to the Bread Riots, the Flour Wars and the French Revolution. In 1977 Egypt stopped subsidising wheat sparking the Bread Riots. In Egyptian, ‘bread’ is ‘aish’ meaning ‘life’. Another pictogram for ‘give’ is a ‘hand offering a loaf’ (Gardiner D) – a wise gesture considering bread shortages spark riots. “Every society is three meals away from chaos.” – Lenin. The wings of Isis fan mass consciousness like the aroma of freshly baked bread wafting in the breeze. Love, harmony, nurture, protection, self-expression and rising into healing are powerful energies. The spirit of all the ancient Goddesses is within us all. Let it uncoil and rise like a serpent, breathing life and love into the causes important to us. Goddess wants us to be free, intellectually, spiritually, creatively and physically. Boudicca rising up in rebellion is a portrait of awakening female power. To align with resistance is to move into a surreal space. Ancient Egypt honoured this power, weaving it into the fabric of mythology: Hathor rampages as the Eye of Ra and Sekhmet had the potential to destroy humanity. Eventually conflated with Isis and as the personification of Sirius, the Goddess Sopdet, is the ’Triangle’ or ‘Sharp One’. The ‘Sopdet Triangle’ is similar to ‘Conical Loaf’ without the inner triangle. If there was ever confirmation of the triangle symbolising rising female power it is right there in Sopdet (echoes of Tanit’s symbol?). Perhaps the elongated ‘Conical Loaf’ pictogram, a triangle within a triangle, life within a womb, body as bread, yeast within dough, bread in a pot, love within cooking, rises up to Sirius. There’s more! One ceiling …
(Poem) A Story of the Goddess by Luke Buckham with art by Victor Hernández

With one’s whole body, as these dancers Nowadays her husband, a sea scorpion an equally fervid stabber the world has its legends of life a great feast and festival the rhythmical movement of the nymph The girl became world voracious, and impotent with a wild temper, she keeps watch her one eye over the mammals her severed fingers sprang from her body transformed gauze and a black backcloth towards humanity the chief deity of the lower autumn people an armless woman with whom she shares the arctic and there she still dwells, keeping this ballet without music from shaded bleachers far north hold her honor
(Prose) Asherah, Kali, Jesus? by Joanna Kujawa, Ph.D.

Let’s throw ourselves into the fascinating possibility of Christian Tantra, as described in James Hughes Reho’s (PhD) book Tantric Jesus: The Erotic Heart of Early Christianity. In his book, Reho makes a very brave attempt at proving (or suggesting?) the possibility of Christian Tantra. As someone who has studied Esoteric Hinduism and Tantra for years, I can vouch for Reho’s deep knowledge and understanding of Tantric principles and practices and for his attempt to apply them to Christian practices and teachings. To start with, the dance between Eastern and Western teachings is as ancient as the teachings themselves. I am a believer that spiritual traditions never develop in one particular cultural vacuum but have always informed each other for their mutual benefit. Also, I follow Joseph Campbell, in that the development of the human mythos is universal and only presents itself in different cultural disguises – but carries the same or a very similar message. By ‘mythos’ I mean here the primal individual and collective ‘knowledge’ of our place in the Universe which is somehow embedded in our Consciousness. From this standpoint, Reho’s research and attempt at unifying Tantric and Christian ideas makes perfect sense. First of all, in Tantric Jesus: The Erotic Heart of Early Christianity Reho looks for similarities between the Tantric teachings of Esoteric Hinduism and early Christianity. In this alone, he makes a big conceptual leap which one can only admire: he re-examines and re-defines the Christian understanding of Creation, and especially the Christian understanding of the human body. Reho believes that our current understanding of the body in Christianity is radically different from that of the understanding of early Christians. The Christianity that we know now, he says, was negatively influenced by ‘ascetic Neoplatonists’ which was not intended by the early Gospels or Jesus Himself. He says that he prefers to adhere to the mystical Christianity that ‘thrived largely outside the official institution’ of the Church. Between the second and fourth centuries, the Romanisation of Jesus’ teachings had occurred and he had merged with the Roman Sol Invictus – an all-powerful but remote figure of the Roman God. Jesus became ‘Christ the Conqueror’, and now we are faced with the ‘dogmatic baggage’ of that transformation not only of Jesus Himself but of His teachings as well. I have no argument with this part of the book, as it is historically true that the Roman Empire (Emperor Constantine especially) picked and chose from the early Christian tradition. Also, Reho accurately points to the complete loss of the Feminine Principle in Christianity as a significant part of the process of dogmatisation. In brief, for those of us who are familiar with the Hindu principle of Shakti as the feminine aspect of the Divine, Christianity became de-Shaktified. But, Reho argues, it was not always like this. In fact, he believes that the canonical Gospels, especially the Gospels of Mark and John, tried to bring the feminine back. Theprocess of de-Shaktification (or the removal of the Feminine) from Western tradition, Reho says after Biblical scholar Margaret Barker, started as the ‘Deuteronomic Reform’, of King Josiah of Judah and the high priest Hilkiah around 623 BCE, when they supposedly unearthed a mysterious scroll of the Law of Yahweh written by Moses himself. Josiah destroyed all the ancient temples and removed any traces of the Feminine from the Judaic scriptures. The face of the Feminine aspects banned from Judaic scriptures was that of the ancient Asherah, known also as the consort of Yahweh, in the same way as Shakti was the consort of Shiva in Esoteric Hinduism. Interestingly, Asherah was worshipped as the Queen of the Heavens – very much like the Sumerian Goddess Inanna or the Egyptian Goddess Isis. Indeed, in Egypt, the Jewish population worshipped Asherah (sometimes under the name of Anath) along with Yahweh. Asherah, like Shakti in Hinduism, was the active Power of God. Many representations of Asherah are very similar to representations of Inanna, and even those of the more ancient Ninmah, with poles, trees and serpents being used in relation to earlier interpretations of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. Like the Gnostic Sophia, she is often represented as a dove. Reho notes here the biblical significance of the presence of the dove during Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. In this interpretation, the dove represents Asherah/Sophia, which makes Jesus a child and beloved’ of the Goddess. Reho quotes from the Gospel of Mark where, during Jesus’ baptism, ‘a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am pleased”’. The interpretation here is that the dove is the Goddess (Asherah/Sophia) and that Jesus is initiated by Her, rather than by the all masculine and not a particularly friendly God. Since then, attempts to restore the traces of the Divine Feminine were made in Rabbinic Judaism, by ‘the re-emergence’ of the presence of Shekinah – the divine feminine dwelling in ‘the divine presence … as the feminine aspect of God’. In his search for the Feminine Divine in the canonical Gospels, Reho also re-interprets the Prologue of the Gospel of John, translated as ‘In the beginning was the Word’. However, in Greek (the language of the Gospel of John), ‘Word’ is ‘Logos’ – meaning not simply a word but the ‘incarnate Word’ or ‘Wisdom Word’ reminiscent of the Gnostic Sophia (the Wisdom of God) or the creative presence of Shakti. It is worth noting that the same notion was brought up by a Jewish philosopher from the first century in Alexandria, Philo of Alexandria, who also defined ‘Logos’ as the ‘dynamic and creative power of God’ – the exact definition of Shakti in Hinduism. Also in the Gospel of John, the turning of water into wine, according to Reho, symbolises ‘a movement away’ from the ascetism of John the Baptist towards a more inclusive and Goddess-friendly tradition which has its roots in the ancient sacrifice of bread and wine to the Goddess Asherah. In Reho’s book all …
(Photo Essay 4) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hwang

Part IV: Revival of the Gurang (Nine Maidens) Gaeyang Halmi There is more to reveal. As I write this part of the photo essay, I have encountered new information, previously made available online by individuals and organizations. It is reported that the “Suseong-dang” (水聖堂, Sea Saint Shrine) was once called the “Gurang-sa” (九娘祠, Nine Maidens Shine), of which I never heard before.[i] That Suseong-dang is a fake name blew my mind! Note the difference of gender between “the Nine Maidens Shrine” and “the Sea Saint Shrine”! The female-connoted term was stolen just like that! “Gurang-sa,” a female-referenced term as the character “rang” means a maiden, had to go due to its overt female representation. It is not without grounds that I was taken aback to see its present logography, “the Sea Saint Shrine,” on the information board.[ii] I almost heard a voice warning me, “This is not the place that you think it is!” That voice attempted to force me to leave the place without further investigation. However, I intuitively took a mental note, “Something is not correct here.” And I was right! Its name change sheds a consistent light on the meddling of patriarchal distortion/deception done to the tradition of Gaeyang Halmi. Readers are reminded of the lost painting of Gaeyang Halmi, which was replaced by that of the Sea God explicated in Part 2 of this photo essay (also Part 3). Like “the Sea God,” “the Suseong-dang” constitutes no reality. It is not only a conceptual deception but also a theft of the intangible cultural heritage, righteously committed by faceless patriarchal men disappeared into the lapse of time. It is clear that systematic erasure of the Female/Goddess has been in operation. Female power embodied whether in the name of the shrine or in the iconography was stripped away. However, it is proven once again that the Female is immortal because it constitutes the root of patriarchy. People smuggled the forbidden knowledge of the Female to later generations through oral stories. Thus, we find the folklore of the Female subversive.
(Essay) Three-Fingered Fish Goddess- South Slavic Intangible Oral Memory Traditions by Danica Anderson

Lepenski Vir is a Mesolithic site on the banks of the Danube in Serbia, close to the Iron Gates. Dusan Boric and Preston Miracle’s work on the Mesolithic and Neolithic sites of Padina and Hajduka Vodenica, Serbia revealed a long residence of Proto-Slavs from 10,000 BCE in the Danube Gorges. [Boric & Miracle, 341-371] At Lepenski Vir many Fish Goddesses were found reveling in the aquatic lushness of the Danube river gorges. Perhaps, as a tribute to the huge water reservoir, the Fish Goddesses were important relics for burials and a part of the architectural structures consisting of temples not residences. The impressive fact is age of Lepenski Vir dated to the time of Mesolithic-Neolithic transition 6300-5950 BCE. It is here that the ‘Three fingered Fish Goddess’ is remembered in modern day Orthodox religion. The Serbian Orthodox sign of the cross performed with three fingers is a South Slavic oral memory tradition that originated from Neolithic-Paleolithic. In the Lithic eras, the three fingered salute stood for the truncated tree in the vast forest indicating a crossroads or intersection. [Harding, 42; 62-63] Combining or sharing of iconography such as the crossed circle motif associated with Atlantis and Egyptian oral memory traditions to that of Hindu antiquity, we have the geographical coordinates origin (Indonesia first began this geography) and has to do with the intersection of the equator and the Meridian Zero. [online Atlantean Symbolism] With Egypt’s great Nile river, and the legend of Atlantis’ located in the middle of a large body of water to that of the great rivers, Danube and Sava in the Balkans we have in our modern life the same ancient monumental hybrid forms of commemorative practice. The Three Fingered Fish Goddess, held on to the intangible oral memory tradition transmission of important navigation skills for or inner ecology and that of the Slavic Moist Mother Earth. What is held in the archeological artifact of the Slavic Three Fingered Fish Goddess; her three fingered hands are held at the mid-section of her body; the equator. One of the most important insights of the cross and crossing oneself with three finger salute is that we are performing archaic oral memory traditions, what I name as ‘human geography.’ Related to the three fingered Fish Goddess—early Christians did the sign of the fish. In this sense early Christians were not performing a social memory but the sense of a continuous body of wisdom living from generation to all future generations. In doing so, the early Christians portrayed oral memory traditions. The practice of the sign of the cross or three fingered salute acknowledged relations to Aphrodite whose hand pose originated from the three fingered fish Goddess. Three-finger salute (Serb/три пpcтa or tri prsta)-patronymics is found in South Slavic-Serbian names, with “ic”, “ich,” to refer to little or son of. ‘Patri’ is word origins are for father, tracing the upheaval from the Great Mother Goddess. The Serb Orthodox religion took on the three fingered aspect of the Fish Goddess due to the Pagan-Earth Based Religions of the South Slavs once centered on the Moist Mother Earth, the archetypal feminine. With the early Christians, the removal of the troika- of daughter, mother and grandmother, three fingered salute and sign of the cross became modern day trilogies of the father, son and Holy Spirit instead. The Holy Spirit is the last thread to the Great Mother of what was once a cohesive, endogamous (anthropological marriage with accordance of custom or law) body of wisdom. We can move through the generations to present day to view how the cultic and performative practices of our ancestors are still held in our cultural situations. It shows the surrender to the evoke the substantive meanings from what their ancestors embedded in daily life acts. A painting by Paja Jovanovic “Takaovo” translates from Serbo-Croatian to ‘Here or done like this’. This indicates the lithic era for the sense of direction to be taken with the three fingered salute or cross. The intangible oral memory traditions began a twisted notion of ‘Here or done like this’ that now is a sign of inciting wars. For instance, the Serb folk Prince Milos Obrenovic in a three finger salute started the second uprising against the Turks- Ottoman Empire with – “Here we are and here you are” to incite a revolt- war. [Online, Three Fingered Salute] “Njegos” prince-bishop-Vladika who was a great poet, and “Karadorde Petrovic” 1768-1817- the first Serbian leader to start the uprising against the Ottoman Empire- is known as the Serbian House of Karadordevic. [Milne] Note how the house became the domain and power of males- father authority figures. The Montengrin peoples are termed Crni Dorde- Black George for his Montengrin Serb Vasojevici tribe’s dark complexion. The latter indicates the migratory route from middle of Africa, the lineage of our first Mother. The Vasojevici tribe handed down orally for more than thirteen generations their legacies with poems and songs and kolo dances (folk round dances). Serb folk wisdom states Nema krsta be tri prsta- there is no cross without three fingers. What has occurred in modern day era is the identity of the important meaning behind the three-fingered salute, the human geography, is now a mortuary practice to incite violence. The three finger salute went on with its gynocide and mass murder with Ante Pavelic- once leader in WWII for the Croatian Country that became the infamous Ustashi- Nazi SS arm murdering, Serbs, Muslims, Jews and Romano on a whole scale level. In 1991, the Serbian Renewal Movement political party, Belgrade used the three fingered salute for demands, and was stated by Srdan Serckovic, the vice-president to represent “St. Sava” Serbian patron saint known for teaching literacy and orthodox religion to the masses. The latter is the dominance of the father; patriarchy. In 2007 Eurovision employed a song contest with Serbian Marija Serifovic given the award in front of Bosnian television viewers. Marija Serifovic upset the Bosnian viewers with her three fingered salute- since most Bosnians are Muslim …

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

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that 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 Hye-Sook Hwang: I have come across the origin of the Dokkaebi (image, Heavenly Ruler Chiu, 14th Hanung of Danguk. Chiu represented the Magoist rule aided by her 81 giant sister clan allies (nine groups of Nine Hans) fought Huangdi (Yellow Emperor), one of the ancient rulers of pre-historic China. Chiu is known as the empeor of Guri-guk or Guryeo-guk (Nine Ri State or Nine Ryeo State), which is alternatiely referred to as Goryeo-guk and Goguryeo-guk by East Asians. She was worshipped as the deity of war and remembered/depicted for her helmet made of copper and iron. Records about her war against Hungdi inundates ancient Korean and Chinese texts and myths. About Chiu or Chiyou, it is too complex to discuss here. It is a topic to be treated in its own right. Suffice to say that even some of basic information from Wikipedia is illuminating. “Chiyou (蚩尤) was a tribal leader of the Nine Li tribe (九黎) in ancient China. 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. For the Hmong people, Chiyou was a sagacious mythical king. He has a particularly complex and controversial ancestry, as he may fall under Dongyi, Miao or even Man, 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. According to legend, Chiyou had a bronze head with a metal forehead. He had 4 eyes and 6 arms, wielding terrible sharp weapons in every hand. 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. He is said to have been unbelievably fierce, and to have had 81 brothers. Historical sources often described him as ‘cruel and greedy’, as well as ‘tyrannical’. Some sources have asserted that the figure 81 should rather be associated with 81 clans in his kingdom. 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.” “Chiyou is regarded as a leader of the Nine Li tribe (九黎, RPA White Hmong: Cuaj Li Ntuj) by nearly all sources. 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. Some sources from later dynasties, such as the Guoyu book, considered Chiyou’s Li tribe to be related to the ancient San miao tribe (三苗). In the ancient Zhuolu Town is a statue of Chiyou commemorating him as the original ancestor of the Hmong people. The place is regarded as the birthplace of the San miao / Miao people, the Hmong being a subgroup of the Miao. In sources following the Hmong view, the “nine Li” tribe is called the “Jiuli” kingdom, Jiuli meaning “nine Li”. Modern Han Chinese scholar Weng Dujian considers Jiuli and San Miao to be Man southerners. Chiyou has also been counted as part of the Dongyi.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiyou Above all, her depiction by ancient China is of a pejorative one. As we will see in the next part, she is contrasted with her opponent Huangdi (Yellow Emperor), a triumphantly depicted ancient hero of ancient China. Above Wikipedia. See her images created by ancient Koreans, the middle one in the three figures, depicted as a woman with female breasts, one of Dokkaebi images. There are other records that describe one of her allies. as one adorned with snakes in the head, which reminds me of Medusa. Silla (left), Baekje (Center), Goguryeo (right) http://lasvegaskim.com/Etc_Poem_55.htm Max Dashu: Oe-ri, Buyeo, in the Baekje period. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: That is where the rooftile at the center is excavated. That is the original image of Dokkaebi that Lydia Ruyle chose and depicted in her banner work. I could not connect this image with Chiu until now. We have the female ruler who subdued the patrilocal force of Yellow Emperor, the forebear of ancientChinese emperors. There are lots of myths and data that I have found on them. Chiu is also numerously depicted as Dokkaebi faces, which makes me think of its connection to the iconography of Medusa and Gorgon (who comes as Three Sisters). Eight-snake-headed Medusahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa Gorgon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon https://www.magoism.net/2013/06/art-dokkaebi-by-lydia-ruyle/ Lizzy Bluebell: ‘Gonggong’ is not a far stretch phonetically from ‘Gorgon’ – I note. Briefly here – because it is a complex explanation – much more can be said about the etymology. For example, “gorge” relates to deep mountain passes with water flowing through them as well as the human throat or gullet, (relating the word to both speech and eating) and mountains are/were Goddess terrain, later usurped by MON-A-Ster-ies. The masculine name Ge-Orge is code which relates to GE/Gaia/Gay as well as to ‘orgy’. Sanskrit “garg” begets English ‘gargle’, and a guttural (gut-her-all) sound. I’ve always seen the archetypal Medusa/Gorgon’s ‘snaking curls’ as the energy emmitted from her head by her Wild I-Deas, which returns us to the theme of the Pythia/Oracle/Snake connections too. “In Greek mythology, a Gorgon (/ˈɡɔːrɡən/; plural: Gorgons, Ancient Greek: Γοργών/Γοργώ Gorgon/Gorgo) is a female creature. The name derives from the ancient Greek word gorgós, which means “dreadful”, and appears to come from the same root as the Sanskrit word “garğ” (Sanskrit: गर्जन, garjana) which is defined as a guttural sound, similar to the growling of a beast,[1] thus possibly originating as an onomatopoeia. While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature and occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters […]
(Special Post 3) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 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.] Helen Hwang I study and advocate Goddess feminism or Magoism because it is a way of living for me. I find myself in Mago (the Great Goddess) who in turn leads me to the Way wherein I learn how to become the person who I can be. It has to be Mago, the Female Divine, because She is real! She is the Primordial Mother who is the Beginning and the End of everything to us on the planet Earth. She teaches me the real. I can’t negotiate Her to anything less. Helen Hye Sook Hwang, Ph.D. California http://magoism.net Bridget Robertson A Goddessian I was introduced to a form of meditative journeying by a resident in my grandmother’s retirement community. She approached to me. I know she was at least part Native American, and that alone made her the topic of much gossip in the building. Her Rose colored lipstick, deep brown eyes, wrinkles that only helped illuminate her face and a chiffon scarf that matched none of her clothes. I thought she needed help with her groceries. She didn’t. She had me stop the elevator. and directly asked about my looking tired. My response was about being, busy balancing all the areas of my life. In fact I was exhausted doling out time like pieces of pie.
(Special Post 1) Multi-linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

“Ma” in “Mago” and “Ma-Gaia” Mother Goddess, ca.7250-6700 BCE, Catal Huyuk Turkey [Conversation between Carol P. Christ, Ph.D. and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.] Carol P. Christ (CPC): Below is culled from “Gaia” in Wikipedia: The Greek word γαῖα (transliterated as gaia) is a collateral form of γῆ (gē, Doric γᾶ ga and probably δᾶ da) meaning Earth, a word of uncertain origin. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin. In Mycenean Greek Ma-ka (trans. as Ma-ga, “Mother Gaia”) also contains the root ga-. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (HHH): “Mago” and “Goma” are closely linked. Gom or Goma means the bear and Magoist shaman queen of the late fourth millennium BCE. She is also related with the Big Bear constellation. “Go” is used as a modifier referring to Mago or the Goddess in various texts of East Asia. “Mago” is related with “magi,” whose singular form is “magus” or “magos.” Will have to check for more details and the source. CPC: My intuition is that “ma” and “na” are baby talk for mother. In other words, preceding any language. Mycenean is IE language, “Pre-Greek” is not IE. CPC: Below is “Mother” from Wikipedia: Synonyms and translations The proverbial “first word” of an infant often sounds like “ma” or “mama”. This strong association of that sound with “mother” has persisted in nearly every language on earth, countering the natural localization of language. Familiar or colloquial terms for mother in English are: Aama, Mata used in Nepal Mom and mommy are used in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Philippines, India and parts of the West Midlands including Birmingham in the United Kingdom. Mum and mummy are used in the United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong and Ireland. Charles, Prince of Wales publicly addressed his mother Queen Elizabeth II as “Mummy” on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee. Ma, mam, and mammy are used in Netherlands, Ireland, the Northern areas of the United Kingdom, and Wales; it is also used in some areas of the United States. In many other languages, similar pronunciations apply: Maa, aai, amma, and mata are used in languages of India like Assamese, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu etc. Mamá, mama, ma, and mami in Spanish Mama in Polish, German, Russian and Slovak Māma (妈妈/媽媽) in Chinese Máma in Czech and in Ukrainian Maman in French and Persian Ma, mama in Indonesian Mamaí, mam in Irish Mamma in Italian, Icelandic, Latvian and Swedish Māman or mādar in Persian Mamãe or mãe in Portuguese Mā̃ (ਮਾਂ) in Punjabi Mama in Swahili Em (אם) in Hebrew A’ma (ܐܡܐ) in Aramaic Má or mẹ in Vietnamese Mam in Welsh Eomma (엄마, pronounced [ʌmma]) in Korean In many south Asian cultures and the Middle East, the mother is known as amma, oma, ammi or “ummi”, or variations thereof. Many times, these terms denote affection or a maternal role in a child’s life. HHH: The name for Goddess seems as ancient as the language itself. [“Ma” being the first intentional word to be spoken by a baby.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Scholars and mythologists agree that “ma” means both one’s mother and the Goddess, I quoted it in my dissertation written in 2004. Judy E Foster: Brilliant discussion, Helen and Carol! So many revelations… hard to keep up! But do continue, its fascinating – makes so much sense. (To be continued)Join the discussion of this and other topics in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group.

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVRoK2XNeqw The purpose of the 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. For more full participation in the ceremony, you could have some past photos of yourself, an altar with ancestor photos, a gingerbread snake, some apples sliced up, and some apple juice. The script for this Samhain ceremony is offered in Chapter 4 of my book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, with all acknowledgements and references there. However I want to acknowledge here the inspiration and some text of Robin Morgan’s poem “The Network of the Imaginary Mother” in her book Lady of the Beasts, for which I was given permission in my book. I also acknowledge here the paraphrase of some words by Starhawk in her book The Spiral Dance, used in the rite of Sailing to a New World. I also use a line from the poem Song of Hecate by Bridget McKern. 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). For the rite of the Transformation Journey (remembering old selves) I use an adaptation of a children’s game “In and Out the Windows”, where each participant travels in and out of upraised and linked arms of the circle, and when ‘in’ may speak and /or show photos of themselves from the past. Some may choose to remember any self from the entire evolutionary story, with whom they would like to identify. The game seems appropriate to what each being does existentially in so many ways, over the eons as well as in our personal lives. The chant can be found on YouTube. The photos used are a collage of footage and photos from the 2024 Samhain ceremony at my place in Wakka Wakka country, South East Queensland Australia, and from previous Samhain ceremonies I facilitated over the decades in MoonCourt, Goddess ceremonial space in NSW Australia, Darug and Gundungurra country. Music credit: All music used in this video is by Tim Wheater, which has previously generously allowed me to use in my work. The pieces used are from Tim’s CD Fish Nite Moon: they are Ancient Footsteps, Fish Nite Moon, Spiritbirth, and Conception. I thank my partner Robert (Taffy) Seaborne for his participation in the creation of the video.
(Essay) Contemplating How Her Creativity Proceeds by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the conclusion of chapter 5 of the author’s book, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. It is a chapter on the process of the Wheel of the Year. for the Northern Hemisphere version: https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ It seems to me that the main agenda of the Cosmos is ongoing Creativity, “never-ending renewal” it may be termed, and that this is expressed in Earth’s Seasonal Wheel through the transitions of Autumn,Winter, Spring, Summer; and in the ubiquitous process of a Cosmic Triplicity of Space to Be, Urge to Be and this Place of Being, a dynamic that has often been imagined as the Triple Goddess. In the flow of the PaGaian Wheel of the Year, the Seasonal transitions of the Wheel and the Triplicity of the Cosmos come together. There are two celebrations of the Old One/Crone or the Cosmogenetic quality of autopoiesis creating the Space to Be; and they are Lammas/Late Summer and Samhain/Deep Autumn, which are the meridian points of the two quarters of the waxing dark phase. At Lammas, the first in the dark phase, we may identify with the dark and ancient Wise One – dissolve into Her; at Samhain, we may consciously participate in Her process of the transformation of death/the passing of all. The whole dark part of the cycle is about dissolving/dying/letting go of being – becoming – nurturing it (the midwifing of Lammas/Late Summer), stepping into the power of it (the certain departure of Autumn Equinox/Mabon), the fertility (of Samhain/Deep Autumn), the peaking of it (at Winter Solstice). The meridian points of the two quarters of the waxing light phase then are celebrations of the Young One/Virgin or the Cosmogenetic quality of differentiation, the new continually emerging, the Urge to Be; and they are Imbolc/Early Spring and Beltaine/High Spring. At Imbolc, the first in the light phase, we may identify with She who is shining and new – as we take her form; at Beltaine, we may consciously participate in Her process of the dance of life. The whole light part of the cycle is about coming into being: nurturing it (the midwifing of Imbolc/Early Spring), stepping into the power of it (the certain return of Spring Equinox/Eostar), the fertility (of Beltaine/High Spring), the peaking of it (at Summer Solstice). In the PaGaian wheel of ceremony there are two particular celebrations of the Mother, the Cosmogenetic quality of communion; and they are the Solstices. If one imagines the light part of the cycle as a celebration of the ‘Productions of Time’, and the dark part of the cycle as a celebration of ‘Eternity’, the Solstices then are meeting points, points of interchange, and are celebrations of the communion/relational field of Eternity with the Productions of Time. This is a relationship which does happen in this Place, in this Web. This Place of Being, this Web, is a Communion – it is the Mother; the Solstices mark Her birthings, Her gateways. The Equinoxes then – both Spring and Autumn – are two celebrations wherein the balance of all three Faces/Creative qualities is particularly present: in the PaGaian wheel, the Equinoxes have been special celebrations of Demeter and Persephone – echoing the ancient tradition of Mother-Daughter Mysteries that celebrate the awesomeness of the continuity of life, its creative tension/balance. Both Equinoxes then are celebrations and contemplations of empowerment through deep Wisdom – one contemplation during the dark phase and one during the light phase. The Autumn Equinox is a descent to Wisdom, the Spring Equinox is an emergence with Wisdom gained. I like to think of the Equinoxes, and of the ancient icons of Demeter and Persephone, as celebrations of the delicate ‘curvature of space-time’, the fertile balance of tensions which enables it all. Her Creative Place The Mother aspect then may be understood to be particularly present at four of the Seasonal Moments, which are also regarded traditionally as the Solar festivals; and in this cosmology Sun is felt as Mother. I recognize these four as points of interchange: at Autumn Equinox, Mother is present primarily as Giver – She is letting Persephone go, at Spring Equinox, She is present primarily as Receiver – welcoming the Daughter back, at Winter Solstice the Mother gives birth, creates form, at Summer Solstice, She opens again full of radiance, and disperses form. The Mother is Agent/Actor at the Solstices. She is Participant/Witness at the Equinoxes, where it is then really Persephone who is Agent/Actor, embodying an inseparable Young One and Old One. The Old One is often named as Hecate, who completes the Trio – all seamlessly within each other. Another possible way to visual it, or to tell the story, is this: The Mother – Demeter – is always there, at the Centre if you like. Persephone cycles around. She is the Daughter who returns in the Spring as flower, who will become fruit/grain of the Summer, who at Lammas assents to the dissolution – the consumption. At Autumn Equinox She returns to the underworld as seed – Her harvest is rejoiced in, Her loss is grieved, as She becomes Sovereign of the Underworld – Her face changes to the Dark One, Crone (Hecate). As the wheel turns into the light part of the cycle She becomes Young One/Virgin again. Persephone (as Seed) is that part of Demeter that can be all three aspects – can move through the complete cycle. The Mother and Daughter are really One, and embody the immortal process of creation and destruction. Demeter hands Persephone the wheat, the Mystery, and the thread of life is unbroken – it goes on forever. It is immortal, it is eternal. Even though it is true that all will be lost, and all is lost – Being always arises again: within this field of time there is never-ending renewal, eternity. This is what is revealed in the ubiquitous three faces of the Creative Dynamic/ She of Old, the Triplicity that runs through the Cosmos. The Seed of Life never …
Artful Ceremonial Expression by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

(Book Excerpt) The Budoji Workbook (Volume 1): The Magoist Cosmogony (Chapters 1-4)

Introduction [Author’s Note: WorkBook, The Magoist Cosmogony Volume 1 (Chapters 1-4): The Budoji (Epic of the Emblem Capital City in English and Korean Translations with the Original Text in the East Asian Logographic Language) is a a newly arrived book by Mago Books on June 8, 2020.) It has been 20 years since I first read the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem Capital City), the principal text of Magoism, a term that I coined shortly after. The Budoji was, reappeared as a book in the 1980s in Korea, largely unknown among Koreans at that time. Primarily based on the Budoji, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the topic of Mago, the Creatrix, in 2003 and 2004. I had gathered a large corpus of primary sources, researched extensively on the topic and its related themes as well as relevant interdisciplinary works. That was to verify and support the Budoji’s validity as a reliable source. I knew that my dissertation marked the onset of my life’s search and research on Magoism. I spent the following sixteen years expanding, deepening and testing the premises that I posited in my dissertation. The subject of Mago became the axis of my life. I found myself a Magoist, following after my predecessors and contemporaries who are countless but mostly forgotten if ever known. I was finally home. The Budoji was at the root of my activities undertaken under the rubric of “The Mago Work” including teaching, publishing, and holding events like Mago Pilgrimages to Korea and Nine Mago Celebrations. The Budoji is the Book of Mago, the Creatrix, written in a systematically cogent narrative. The Budoji testifies to the forgotten mytho-history of Magoism from which modern civilizations are derived. Without the Budoji, the Origin Story of the Creatrix, would have remained unknown today. Without the Budoji, Magoism, the Way of the Creatrix, would have remained unnamed. The Budoji teaches, guides, and awakens people to the metamorphic reality of WE/HERE/NOW. Alleged to have been written in the early 5th century of Silla (57 BCE-935 CE), the Budoji ripe with noble (read matricentric) terms and symbols is salvific, offering matricentric soteriology. My task is to make the Budoji known to the world so that we can dis-cover the story of the Budoji as OUR STORY. In the Budoji, we are told why and how to live peacefully in harmony with all other people and all other species on earth and beyond. It is very slippery to write about it because of its multi-valent meaning, too bedazzling to articulate. Once told, however, the Budoji will begin to ferment something in your mind, something that has been with us all along and everywhere but made unseen. The nine-volume workbook series is an effort to make the unseen seeable and palpable. I must admit that my books, articles, essays, lectures, and events that I wrote and undertook with regards to Magoism for the last two decades are only the footnotes to the Budoji. I could not rely on traditional publications, journals, and educational institutes for my Magoist intellectual/spiritual productions. Out of necessity, I founded Return to Mago E-Magazine, Mago Books, and Mago Academy to build a wheel through which my scholarship on Magoism is interwoven and advocated. Synchronously, the birthing of my dissertation in a book form is approaching in support of the Budoji’s workbook. This book, with a slightly revised title, Seeking Mago, the Great Mother from East Asia: A Mytho-Historical-Thealogical Reconstruction of Magoism, an Archaically Originated Gynocentric Tradition of Old Korea (forthcoming June 21, 2020 by Mago Books)[1], is the thus-far available comprehensive source book to Magoism that I wrote. In 2015, I published The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia Volume 1 (Mago Books, 2015), based on the first two chapters of the Budoji. Since 2017, I have published Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar annually, based on the Budoji’s Chapters 21-23. My other articles include “Mago, the Creatrix from East Asia, and the Mytho-History of Magoism,”[2] “Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea, and Her Mythology,”[3] “Magos, Muses, and Matrikas: The Magoist Cosmogony and Gynocentric Unity,”[4] “Making the Gyonocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and her Tradition Magoism,”[5] “Issues in Studying Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia: Primary Sources, Gynocentric History, and Nationalism,”[6] and “The Female Principle in the Magoist Cosmogony.”[7] ……. How to Use the Budoji Workbook? The multivalent meaning of the Budoji’s verses will unravel gradually. At first, you may find the Budoji’s verses too dense or too technical to follow. Even in that case, I encourage you to keep reading the next chapters and the next volumes. Like a night dream, the text of the Budoji will grab your attention. However, its meaning will be slowly unfolding and unveiling in your mind. You may have more questions, as you continue to read. For the Budoji instills in the reader the deepest and broadest vision of the Great Mother, largely forgotten to moderns. The Budoji’s matricentric meaning system (the Way of Mago) takes all into consideration to awaken you including your experience, your interest, your passion, and your intellectual/spiritual aptitude. This workbook aims at initiating the process of knowing the Great Mother, Mago, and the mytho-history of Magoism (pre-patriarchal and trans-patriarchal) from within. In that sense, the Budoji Workbook is a manual with which one learns how to ignite the spark of Life that is inextinguishable and inexhaustible in the mind/heart. The Budoji Workbook allows you to interact with the verses of each chapter. You can take notes, draw images and symbols, or compose songs in the worksheets included after each chapter and in the Appendix. Personalized worksheets can serve as milestones as you proceed in the reading. Ultimately, the Budoji Workbook invites you to write, draw, or sing the storyline of each chapter in your own words and means. No preparation is required to read the Budoji. Once read, the Budoji will begin to speak to you and guide you from within. …
(Art) Nurture by Anna Tzanova

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

“Mago” tradition Magoism is a new word to the modern Western vocabulary, yet it has its linguistic roots in many parts of the globe and in an ancient knowledge and know-how almost lost. Dr Helen Hwang determinedly and methodically is excavating the little-understood historical Mother-Goddess knowledge of Korea, and its traditions, the Mago, and Magoism, and in doing so is unlocking another previously invisible door, and replacing another ripped-off corner of the global map of significant, almost-lost tradition and forgotten knowledge. This is a most welcomed prospect. The newness of this discovery for those who learn of it fills them with excitement because every step to remember the ancient ways, particularly the lost Goddess ways, and those ways that hint of Source, are crucial to humanity remembering itself. Moderns have become accustomed to modes of mind that strip the soul and psyche of finer attunement to earth, sea, stars and each other. This renders most adrift on a sea of seeming limitless freedoms, to be picked up by any technological hook that would substitute for inner knowing. The map becomes the new computer wiring, insurance policy or bank regulation to follow. But once we scrape from our psyches the encrustation of mind most moderns have settled with (which calcifies the innate senses and finer antennae of knowing, emboldening technologically driven modes of mind and being to take their place), then we are on our way to a vivifying recollection. Here is an earlier presentation of the “mago” root word in “imago” or image. Not coincidentally, perhaps, it is connected to maps. (Mary Ann Ghaffurian, culled from Through a Darkened Door—Light, Part 2 by Mary Ann Ghaffurian PhD [http://magoism.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/through-a-darkened-door-light-part-2-by-mary-ann-ghaffurian-phd/]) A very special online, global group Dearest X, …Which brings to mind the “other” reason why I wanted to write to you … Other than just saying “hello” and letting you know that you are very much missed, I also wanted to share with you about a very special online, global group that I have had the honor of being a part of. This group is called Mago Circle and it was founded by my dear friend, “sister” and colleague, Helen Hwang. Helen’s work and commitment to restoring Mago, Ancestral Mother Goddess, to her rightful place as progenitor and creatrix of the Korean people, has not only been admirable but truly critical during a time when we are in real need for inspiration from thought leaders and scholars with a solid foundation in the arts and research of the sacred feminine. As you know, with the roots of Korean shamanism in the realm of women, it makes perfect sense that Korean spirituality must also have sprung within the womb of Woman … the great cosmic goddess, Mago. While Helen’s work is very much grounded in meticulous research — showcasing Korea to the rest of the world in all of Her depth, herstory, and vibrance — it is more importantly, founded in genuine intentions of love, transparency, and humility. I know that Helen can explain the depth, breadth, and height of her work much better than me so I think it will be better to have her directly share more of herself with you; what I simply hope to do through this letter is perhaps help serve as a familiar hand …. reaching out to you and letting you know that your presence and blessings as a well-regarded and much-admired Korean female shaman and scholar would be much appreciated in Mago Circle. Do you remember, X, … you once told me … about 20 years ago: “Sanity is insanity with a focus.” These words I still remember and hold true … they have helped me through times that were truly dismal and chaotic in my life, and with this reassuring and transformational way of looking at myself, looking at my life, looking at the world, I have made it through. My life continues to have its share of insanity, but I know that with focus, all sanity is restored. I know that my letter to you today may feel unexpected and random (especially after not having seen each other for so, so long), but as you know, somehow, life brings us through twists and turns that may seem awkward and strange at first, but upon retrospect, all makes complete sense. In closing, may I have the honor and pleasure of introducing Helen Hwang and the Mago Circle to you … I realize that you must be very busy, but it is my sincere hope that you will find a little time to acquaint yourself with Helen and this wonderful group of women (and men) who are very much dedicated to restoring the balance and peace of Korea and the world via Mago and her goddess sisters of many names… (Wennifer Lin, culled from her letter to her old friend) I share your call for staying connected with each other at a time of cultural and religious tensions. I too believe that all tensions arise from a patriarchal system of hegemony or domination. In the absence of patriarchal hegemony, there would be little or no tension among human beings. The belief in the Mother Goddess would remove the necessity for aggression and hence domination of other human beings or animals. In the eyes of the Mother, every living being is her creature. Hence love, kindness, nurturing and all that is beautiful would prevail everywhere. Am I sounding too idealistic or am I pining for a utopian society that is just not possible? But in theory, it is possible to return to the spirit of Mother, manifest in everything in nature and in our thoughts and actions. With admiration and preservation of Mother we can change the world for a better place. So with this in mind, I submit to all women (who are the living image of the Great Mother Goddess) and goddess lovers in the world to unite in our efforts to bring back the ideals of the Great Goddess. As an academic, I …