December 8, 2014November 15, 2019 Mago Work Admin6 Comments

(Essay 2) Re-Visioning Mythologies of Gender/Sex by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This is the second part of a slightly edited essay by the author published in Goddess Pages in 2008 More on “Creative Potency” The main problem in issues of sex Read More …

November 17, 2014November 15, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 1) Re-Visioning Mythologies of Gender/Sex by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This is the first part of an essay by the author published in Goddess Pages in 2008. “Gender” might be described as “one’s perception of their self” as being either Read More …

(Meet Mago Contributor) Karen Tintori

Karen Tintori is an internationally bestselling fiction and non-fiction author whose novels have been translated into more than 25 languages and made into films. Her critically acclaimed Trapped: The 1909 Cherry Mine Disaster (Atria Books, 2002) was among the Chicago Tribune’s 2002 Favorite Books. Unto the Daughters: The Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family (St. Martin’s Press, 2007) was nominated for a 2008 Michigan Notable Book Award. She contributed to Italian Women in Chicago: Madonna Mia! Qui Debbo Vivere? (Casa Italia, 2014) and has written for Primo Magazine. More at: www.karentintori.com and http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Tintori
Lessons From the Mother Tree by Sara Wright

Last night I was reading Forest Scientist Susanne Simard’s new book “Finding the Mother Tree”. She was writing about how uncanny it was that her personal life has paralleled that of trees, the forests, the plants, the fungi, the mycorrhiza (underground networks). “There should be a special word for the type of mourning you know is to come she states.” Suzanne has been studying the way forests communicate above and below ground for more than thirty years without ever shifting the way our forests are being treated. Forestry remains unchanged. Clear cutting continues to ravage the earth. This weaving of Nature’s ways through human lives has also been my life experience, although I am a naturalist and not a scientist. (I capitalize the word “nature” to accord her the Sovereignty that is missing because most humans see Nature as a “resource” to be used – not a Living Being). I take note of the fact that so many of these tree advocates are women. As a naturalist I observe and listen to Nature by paying close attention to weather patterns, to flourishing or withering leaves, bowed or broken trees, to wind, to parched ground, to birds, to animals, to water, to fire, water, earth and air, and by being emotionally present to whatever is happening in my own backyard while scanning earth and sky for ‘signs’ of what’s to come. I receive information if not through a bird sighting, a porcupine, a clump of moss, a dying tree, lack of rain, or by walking in a bear’s tracks then answers come through dreams. For months now my dreaming body has been forecasting the immanent loss of our forests. These dying tree dreams are not just about what’s happening here. Because there is a collective level attached to dreaming these vignettes also involve the future of all life, as we know it. Most people refuse to contemplate that an earth losing its forests to greed and overpopulation will lead to an inability to breathe and the death of most sentient creatures, trees, and plants. Ecological Species Collapse and Climate Change seem abstract or non-existent to so many. A few like Eileen Crist warn that we will have lost more than half of the non – human species on earth by the end of this century. As Susanne writes, “I was born to the wild. I come from the wild. I can’t tell if my blood is in the trees or if the trees are in my blood”. I feel much the same. As far as I can tell I belong to the trees, the forest, clear waters, to animals, and to rain. As the relentless drought saps the life force out of the trees and flowers, I listen to the whine of giant buncher machines (run by men) that continue to rape the last of our forested earth. I want to curl inward like a bear choosing sleep to survive the ‘winter’. But I cannot because it is my job to witness. Thus, I am living through a grieving process so monumental that few can imagine. As the poet Rilke states, “ Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins”. As the trees fall, the climate warms, the animals, birds, and waters disappear, I am losing the will to live. Too many losses have emptied my life of meaning. A few weeks ago on the anniversary of the day I buried my brother’s ashes I was down by the brook visiting his spirit at Trillium rock. I was sitting on a little bench that my dad once fashioned reliving the day I brought my brother’s ashes ‘home’, gazing at the unfurling wild trillium I planted in the crevice to mark his gravesite by the brook. A spiral ammonite nestled in the overhang above also identifies the site. This is a place my brother would have loved because we spent our childhood in the woods playing in/around a streams and marshes. Davey’s spirit finally came to peace here as his favorite bird, the Red tailed hawk, watched over him. Every year I re-imagine what it would have been like to spend my life with this little brother I so adored. Davey was more than a sibling to me; he was the male counterpart of myself. When I lost my fleet footed brother I lost a self and an internal sense of personal power. I have never recovered either. Men with guns moved in instead. For many years I searched for my brother in others, gravitating towards anyone who seemed to love some aspect of Nature. Some loved animals, others trees, wildflowers, bears, or some other aspect of the natural world but no one loved them all… not like he did. I no longer seek him in others, accepting the fact that my brother was unique, that we shaped each other’s lives as children/adolescents and that I lived on for both of us. I became a fierce defender of all Nature writing my way through my own hell. I will die this way. After spending quiet time at Trillium Rock I started up the hill. Suddenly, I was possessed by words so shocking that I almost collapsed: I’m so glad Davey’s dead. Living with the horrors of Biodiversity collapse and Climate Change would have killed this most sensitive of male souls, this son of the Great Mother, a young man who had no use for power. Finding home in Nature, he was Earth’s lover, content to be part of the whole. A man like this has no place in a culture that predicates itself on power, vengeance, violence and greed. As the truth sunk in I recalled the words he had written in his journal so very long ago. “My sister is the survivor”. He was right. Until now. At this very moment few drops of drizzle splashed over my face, or perhaps they were tears. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright …
(Announcement) RTM soars in traffic and a new RTM contributors group

Dear Readers and Contributors,I am happy to announce that RTM (Return to Mago E-Magazin) has taken a substantive leap in readership for the last four months. We have been here for nine years publishing five times a week and that is about the time! We THANK YOU our contributors for choosing RTM as a primary venue to share your creative works unflaggingly. Comments from our readers are also harvested in a good number daily for which I thank you RTM readers!If you are an RTM contributor and have not been invited to the RTM Contributors Google group, please email me or join:rtm-contributors@googlegroups.comI have not been able to match all contributors with their emails yet. So help help me come forward to join this new venu for us. I will continue to build the list and let’s see how this space can be used for us all.You can turn off the email notification, if you like. See “Mymembership settings” toward the bottom in the left side menu bar tochoose your options. We welcome new contributors and here is how to become one.Ongoing Call for Contributions Thank you and Happy New Year by the 13 Month Magoist Calendar!Helen Hwang, Ph.D. Current Primary Editor
(Poem) Prologue from Limen by Susan Hawthorne

Credit for cover and art: Jeanné Browne © 2013 a cormorant goes fishingsilver splashof fish in her beakthe water a still arc buzz of dragonfliesthensilent as a snakeit’s periscope up andperiscope downtraversingsky air water mud kookaburras gatherfor their daily laughon the banks of the Einasleigh how we bare ourselvesinto the sweetnessof sand mud and timeit’s birds again and yet againour ears ringing withpossibilities of laughterand sorrow tonguesunforked for renewalmuscles unwoundready for life’s next pounce day 1 woman 1:the river is a necklace of poolsit grapples its way through the landlike a badly executed parting of hair woman 2:three years we camp in the same placethe landscape is rearrangedDevonian rocks abrupt against sand our inner landscapes are changed toothat first year grief-filled for our dog on the other side of the rivera black spirit dog arrivessniffing the Styxshe standslooks our directionwades in, drinks and leaveswhen my tears— a bee leaves its stingin my finger woman 1:that first yearwe watch the other side of the riverlonging for the space to be filledbut spirit dog is gone too ants devour an old bird carcassa kite contemplates prey from a leafless branchthe kite swoops the carcass late in the day a wind drift of butterfliesecholalic laughter of kookaburrasin the melaleucaits paperbark ruffledas a frilled ballgown woman 2:sorrow lifts in the second yearwith you four-legged frienddog-paddling across the riveryour tail a rudderyour mouth a wide smile dog:last year I showed youmy puppy swimming styleyou held me in your arms woman 1:we raced across the riverme with a head startyou catching upwriggling slippery as a seal woman 2:this yearno water where previously we had swumin easy nakedness thunderclouds gatheron the horizon Susan Hawthorne, poem extract from Limen, a verse novella, © 2013 Note In the Australian summer of 2007, my partner and I went camping. We had not long lost our dog, River. It was a sad time, but the following year we were joined by a new dog, Freya who has a speaking part in many of the poems. The Australian bush is a wonderful place and for many days we saw no sign of people. Later in the trip, we became stranded by rising floodwaters and so spent more days than we had intended. This sequence of poems is just the beginning. Solitude, communing with wildlife, trees, rocks and rivers is my idea of happiness. https://www.magoism.net/2013/12/meet-mago-contributor-susan-hawthone
(Meet Mago Contributor) Sharon Smith

Sharon Smith is a poet and writer with a passion for helping women reconnect with their Authentic Selves and Voices and discover their Sovereignty as Sacred Beings in their own right. She loves and honors the Great Mother in all Her many forms, and has a deep connection to Nature. She has developed a teaching, “Crone to the Bone”, designed to bring back the honoring of the aging female. Sharon currently lives in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and follows an eclectic spiritual path that is a blending of Native American and Celtic Teachings, both in her ancestral line.
(Essay) The ‘G’ Word and ‘F’ Word: Death Consciousness by Danica Anderson PhD

The ‘G’ words, gender and the Goddess, are being rendered passé and many women prefer not to hear of or be associated with them. Recently, the media used the Goddess Isis’ name and bestowed it upon a terrorist group. However, this desecration of the sacred and the maligning of the Goddess is nothing new in the media. For instance, in 2004, the Roman Catholic fanatic Riordan, education master for the state of California, “during a public appearance at a Santa Barbara library, told a young girl that her first name, Isis, meant ‘stupid, dirty girl.’ He later apologized and said he was joking” (Peter Nicholas, 2004). When I read the Roman Catholic Riordan’s remark about the Goddess Isis’ name my immediate reaction was how his remarks display an aggression against the Goddess and all those females who mirror the Goddess yet have no understanding or knowledge of Her. All the media attention on ISIS, an ultraviolent terrorist group, reveals an ignorance of the Goddess Isis’ prehistory and spirituality. The ignorance of Isis has led to the demonization of the Goddess. The misuse of the Goddess Isis as the name of a terrorist group engaged in gynocide (mass murder of females) and mistreatment of anyone of the female gender further condones violence against women.
(Essay 2) The Blending of Bön, Buddhism and the Goddess Gemu in Mosuo Culture by Krista Rodin

[Editor’s Note: This series is included as a chapter in Goddesses in Culture, History and Myth .] Legends of the Goddess View of Dragon Mt. and Lugu Lake from Goddess Gemu’s Cave, photo K. Rodin The Naxi and the Mosuo may have originated from the same group in the distant past as they have similar funerary rites in which the soul of the deceased is guided back to the spiritual home of the ancestors. According to Knödel, during the ceremony a Daba practitioner or Dongba priest lists the places the soul is to travel. The journey begins at the place where the person resided during life and ends where the clan’s ancestors reside in the afterlife.[1] The ancestors live in physical places in the region; for the Mosuo in Yongning on Lugu Lake it is on the south side of Mt. Chha-na-dorje. The Lijiang Naxi, on the other hand, land on the holy mountain Junarulo. Both Naxi and Mosuo identify themselves by clan, i.e., siri, which is like a lineage. According to Knödel, for the Mosuo the siri comprises the children of a particular mother. The children stay within the mother’s household; traditionally, the Mosuo did not marry, but instead had ahzu (often spelled ‘ahxia’) relationships, mutually agreed upon bonds between a couple that could be stopped at any time on the wishes of either party. As there is neither a financial nor social obligation to either partner, the Mosuo tend not to have acrimonious split-ups. The men visit the women at night, but leave before daybreak returning to their mother’s households where, as uncles, they help raise the children. Some of the current tourist information about the region cites Rock’s mistaken statement that the Mosuo do not know who their fathers are. While this is not accurate, it is true that fathers are not responsible for taking care of their offspring; instead they have the obligation to help take care of their nieces and nephews. The practice of matrilineal uncles being the leading male figures in the clan is not unique to the Mosuo, but is found in a number of other southern Tibetan and Northern Nepali cultures, including the Tamang, who share a number of other similar shamanic traditions with the Mosuo, although not the ahzu relationships. Chinese exploitation of these traditions with the intent to increase regional tourism has led to the misunderstanding that the Mosuo believe in “free love” with rotating partners every night, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Ahzu relationships, or ‘walking marriages’ are often for a lifetime. The concept of Mosuo “walking marriage” goes back to the Goddess Gemu in their creation stories, of which there are many. One of the most common is that Gemu was the most beautiful girl in the known world. She fell in love with Hu Zhau, a dragon and he with her. This was a forbidden love as dragons belong in heaven and people on earth. Nonetheless, the two lovers arranged to meet at night; Hu Zhau would go to Gemu’s house after dark where they would then spend the night together. Hu Zhau always had to leave before daybreak so no one would know about their relationship. One night, he fell into a deep sleep and didn’t wake up in time. Heavenly King found out and decided to punish him by turning him into a mountain. Gemu was so upset that she cried and cried and cried; over seven days and nights her tears created Lake Lugu, which took the shape of a broken heart. Heavenly King then turned her into a mountain as well, where she rules from a cave. Today the mountain lovers still meet crossing the waters after dark. Gemu is the female mountain, which is also called the Lion Mountain as it looks like a lion lying on its side; it is on the left of the Dragon Mountain, which is a reversal of typical traditional Chinese gender role placement. The Goddess resides within a large cave from where she judges people after death and sends those who haven’t been good down the dark unending hole of Hell, while those who were good ascend to Heaven. There are many versions of her story. In some she was at one time a young human girl whom the god of the sky wanted for himself. In others, she is a sky god from the beginning. In either case, she was unhappy in the sky and fell into a forbidden love, which led to an ahzu relationship. A different version recounted by a young Yongning townswoman, Sadama, is that Gemu was a very beautiful girl who all the boys and men wanted to marry, but she wasn’t interested in any of them. She was renown for her winemaking skills, so she said that whoever came and drank her wine and didn’t get drunk was the one she would marry. Her wine was so good, though, that everyone did imbibe too much. Then one day when she was at a festival she saw a young handsome archer, Hulung. The two immediately fell in love. The sky god interfered forbidding their marriage as he wanted Gemu for himself, wine is after all the drink of the gods. Hulung warned Gemu to run away and save herself, but she wanted to stay with him no matter what happened. He threw a special necklace his mother had given him for protection to Gemu, but she wasn’t able to catch it. The great god in his jealous anger turned both of them into mountains; they could see each other but never touch. For the Mosuo the idea of “walking marriages” extends even to the heavens. It is said that the moon is the ahzu of the sun, although he visits her only once a month. Venus is considered the azhu of Polaris, although he visits her only once a year.[2] [1] Knödel, 214-215. [2] Chuan-kang Shih, “Mortuary Rituals and Symbols among the Moso,” Naxi and Moso Ethnography: Kin, …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Theresa Krier, Ph.D.

Theresa Krier, Ph.D.Theresa Krier is a Professor Emerita of English literature, specializing in medieval and Renaissance writers, and their ancient ancestors in poetry and philosophy. Her work on gender includes the books Gazing on Secret Sights: Classical Imitation and the Decorums of Vision (Cornell University Press); Birth Passages: Maternity and Nostalgia, Antiquity to Shakespeare (Cornell University Press); Dawns Rising: Poetry, Perception, and Irigarayan Thought on Phenomena (unpublished, because the delicious ease of retirement makes her adverse to seeking the strains of publication in her riper years); and essays on Renaissance literature. Her favorite premodern poets are those goddess-haunted writers who love spacious mythopoeic narratives–Homer, Sappho, Hildegard, Hadewijch, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton. She is presently navigating the changeful waters of retirement, writing, piano, and the beautiful motions of qigong. She and her canine companion Russet — along with the spirits of the dogs and horses who preceded Russet as companions–can be reached at theresakrier1@gmail.com.
(Essay) The Descent – Another Initiation by Bridget Robertson

I would say that my heart has been breaking but in truth it actually broke. It was the third story this week. Stories of another woman murdered. Each one was senseless, marginalized, disowned and disregarded. In any given week I am sure that I hear thousands of these stories. But those numbers become too large to make an impact. They get rolled and curled into statistics, the greatest lies of all. No, it is the ones about an individual that have the most affect. Leave a mark. The way out is an old one, a descent. A journey into the Sacred Cave of Darkness once again and each time is unique. There are a few things in common with the descent of Goddess Inanna/Ishtar. At each step I must give up something. My defenses, comforts, protections, rhythms, righteousness, certainty, and finally my beliefs and values including my Cronehood are taken from me. I am laid bare, alone, wounded and exposed. All of my tears have already been shed. What is left is emptiness, the final price of entry. Having been here before will not matter. This is not a place of comfort. Nor is it a punishment. It is another initiation, held in a place of complete darkness.

(Special Post) Discussion on Mother-Daughter Wound by Mago Circle Members

[Mago Circle members discussed and answered the question, “What do you think of this (the topic article below)? If you are a feminist, it is something that you would promote? If so, why? If not, why not?” The discussion took place on May 15, 2017 and shortly thereafter in The Mago Circle.] Topic Article: “For The Daughters Who Don’t Love Their Mothers – Screw Mother’s Day” by Sade Andria Zabala Everyone talks about a mother’s unconditional love. But what if it doesn’t exist? Daughters are socially expected to be close with their mothers. But are you one of the women who aren’t? Mother’s Day isn’t just for celebrating moms. It’s a day some of us dread because we are reminded we grew up (or are still) unloved, not good enough. (Read the whole article here.)
(Special Post 1) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Introduction by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Wennifer Lin-Haver Helen Hye-Sook Hwang I am asking each of us to consider writing a sentence or paragraph on “Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality?” This idea is prompted by Wennifer Lin-Haver, Founder of Mother Tree Sanctuary, and I agree that we need to and can create a sort of collective writing on the topic. What we write below will be included and published in The Girl God, Mother Tree Sanctuary, and Return to Mago. As a subaltern minority as we seem at the current point of time, Goddessians/Magoists [the term Mago means the Great Goddess] need to make extra efforts to make our voices and presences exposed to the public and inner circles. Length and style are open. Please also include your name, region/state/country, title, and/or website URL. We strongly encourage you if you are located in a place where Goddessians are rarely around. We intend to make a collective testimonial tapestry of WE as Goddessians/Magoists! Please keep this in your mind and join us in this collective effort. Thank you in advance. March 6, 2014 AF (Archaic Future)! Wennifer Lin-Haver Our “call” started as a conversation between Helen and me where I was expressing to her the real need for Mother Tree Sanctuary to be more articulate with exploring the significance and importance of Goddess in our lives. I was prompted to give such a response, when asked “why” we had to differentiate God and Goddess. “Isn’t everything God?” She asked. And “Isn’t Goddess also God?” “Isn’t it all the same as long was we’re all coming from our ‘higher’ self?” she asked. So I saw this warranted a longer and much deeper discussion. I initially thought I should formulate a response and post it as a Page or Tab in our website, but after some reflection with Helen, I saw how much better it would be if we replied to this question as a diverse and creative collective. I surely do not have all the answers as an individual but perhaps together, we can come up with something more whole, colorful and satisfying. I do hope you will contribute a little something! We are always grateful for all that you have to share.
(Special Post) 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.

(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.
The Ceremonial Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. The Cosmos is a ceremony, a ritual. Dawn and dusk, seasons, supernovas – it is an ongoing Event of coming into being and passing away. The Cosmos is always in flux, and we exist as participants in this great ritual event, this “cosmic ceremony of seasonal and diurnal rhythms” which frame “epochal dramas of becoming,” as Charlene Spretnak describes it.[i] Swimme and Berry describe the universe as a dramatic reality, a Great Conversation of announcement and response.[ii]Ritual/ceremony[iii] may be the human conscious response to the announcements of the Universe – an act of conscious participation. Ceremony then may be understood as a microcosmos[iv] – a human-sized replication of the Drama, the Dynamic we find ourselves in. Swimme and Berry describe ritual as an ancient response humans have to the awesome experience of witnessing the coming to be and the passing away of things; they say that a “ritual mode of expression” is from its beginning “the manner in which humans respond to the universe, just as birds respond by flying or as fish respond by swimming.”[v] It is the way in which we as humans, as a species, may respond to this awesome experience of being and becoming, how we may hold the beauty and the terror. Humans have exhibited this tendency to ritualize since the earliest times of our unfolding: evidence so far reveals burial sites dating back one hundred thousand years, as mentioned in the previous chapter. We often went to huge effort in these matters, that is almost incomprehensible to the modern industrialised econocentric mind: the precise placing of huge stones in circles such as found at Stonehenge and the creation of complex sites such as Silbury Hill may be expressions of some priority, indicating that econocentric thinking – such as tool making, finding shelter and food, was not enough or not separate from the participation in Cosmic events. Ritual seems to have expressed, and still does actively express for some peoples, something essential to the human – a way of being integral with our Cosmic Place, which was not perceived as separate from material sustenance, the Source of existence: thus it was a way perhaps of sensing “meaning” as it might be termed these days – or “relationship.” Swimme and Berry note that the order of the Universe has been experienced especially in the seasonal sequence of dissolution and renewal; this most basic pattern has been an ultimate referent for existence.[vi] The seasonal pattern contains within it the most basic dynamics of the Cosmos – desire, fullfilment, loss, transformation, creation, growth, and more. The annual ceremonial celebration of the seasonal wheel – the Earth-Sun sacred site within which we tour – can be a pathway to the Centre of these dynamics, a way of making sense of the pattern, a way of sensing it. One enters the Universe’s story. The Seasonal Moments when marked and celebrated in the art form of ceremony may be sens-ible ‘gateways’ through the flesh of the world[vii] to the Centre – which is omnipresent Creativity. Humans do ritual everyday – we really can’t help ourselves. It is simply a question of what rituals we do, what story we are telling ourselves, what we are “spelling”[viii] ourselves with – individually and collectively. Ceremony is actually ‘doing,’ not just theorizing. We can talk about our personal and cultural disconnection endlessly, but we need to actually change our minds. Ceremony can be an enabling practice – a catalyst/practice for personal and cultural change. It is not just talking about eating the pear, it is eating the pear; it is not just talking about sitting on the cushion (meditating), it is sittingon the cushion. It is a cultural practice wherein we tell a story/stories about what we believe to be so most deeply, about who and what we are. Ceremony can be a place for practicing a new language, a new way of speaking, or spelling – a place for practicing “matristic storytelling”[ix] if you like: that is, for telling stories of the Mother, of Earth and Cosmos as if She were alive and sentient. We can “play like we know it,” so that we may come to know it.[x] Ceremony then is a form of social action. NOTES: [i] Spretnak, States of Grace, 145. [ii] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 153. [iii] I will use either or both of these terms at different times: I generally prefer “ceremony” as Kathy Jones defines it in Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, 319. She says that ritual involves a repeated set of actions which may contain spiritual or “mundane” elements (such as a daily ritual of brushing one’s teeth), “whereas ceremony is always a spiritual practice and may or may not include ritual elements.” The PaGaian seasonal celebrations/events are thus most kin to “ceremony,” although I do not perceive any action as “mundane.” However, “ritual” is more commonly used to speak of how humans have conversed with cosmos/Earth. [iv] Spretnak, States of Grace, 145. [v] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 152-153. [vi] Ibid. [vii] Abram speaks of “matter as flesh” in The Spell of the Sensuous, 66, citing Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Invisible and the Invisible (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1968). [viii] Starhawk used this term on her email list in 2004 to describe the story-telling we might do to bring forth the changes we desire. [ix] A term used by Gloria Feman Orenstein in The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), 147. [x] As my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Susan Murphy once described it to me in conversation REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Jones, Kathy. Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess. Glastonbury: Ariadne Publications, 2006. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. The Reflowering of the Goddess. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990. Spretnak, Charlene. States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
A Southern Hemisphere Perspective on Place by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

IMBOLC DANCE From the east she has gathered like wishes. She has woven a night into dawn. We are quickening ivy. We grow where her warmth melts out over the ice. Now spiral south bends into flame to push the morning over doors. The light swings wide, green with the pulse of seasons, and we let her in We are quickening ivy. We grow The light swings wide, green with the pulse till the west is rocked by darkness pulled from where the fire rises. Shortened time’s reflecting water rakes her through the thickened cold. Hands cover north smooth with emptiness, stinging the mill of night’s hours. Wait with me. See, she comes circling over the listening snow to us. Shortened time’s reflecting water Wait with me. See, she comes circling From Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003) Art is included in Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2017). (Meet Mago Contributor) Sudie Rakusin (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
(Poetry & Photo Essay) Pongal by Susan Hawthorne

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

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Dates for Winter Solstice/Yule Southern Hemisphere – June 20 – 23. Northern Hemisphere – December 20 – 23 This Seasonal Moment is the ripe fullness of the Dark Womb and it is a gateway between dark and light. It is a Birthing Place – into differentiated being. Whereas Samhain/Deep Autumn is a dark conceiving Space, it flows into the Winter Solstice dark birthing Place – a dynamic Place of Being, a Sacred Interchange. This Seasonal Moment of Winter Solstice is the peaking of the dark space – the fullness of the dark, within which being and action arise. It is the peaking of emptiness, which is a fullness. As cosmologist Brian Swimme describes: the empty “ground of being … retains no thing.” It is “Ultimate Generosity.”[i] In Vajrayana Buddhism, Space is associated with Prajna/wisdom – out of which Upaya/compassionate action arises. Space is highly positive – something to be developed, so appropriate action may develop spontaneously and blissfully.[ii] In Old European Indigenous understandings, the dark and the night were valued at least as much as light, if not more so: time was counted by the number of nights, as in ‘fortnights,’ and a ‘day’ included both dark and light parts … it was ‘di-urnal’. I have been careful with my language about that inclusion in the ceremonial ‘Statement of Purpose’ for each Seasonal Moment. This awareness is resonant with modern Western scientific perceptions about the nature of the Universe: that it is seventy-three percent “dark energy,” twenty-three precent “dark matter,” four percent “ordinary matter.”[iii] The truth is that we live within this darkness: it is the Ground of all Being. In Pagan traditions since Celtic times, and in many other cultural traditions, Winter Solstice has been celebrated as the birth of the God; and in Christian tradition since about the fourth century C.E., as the birth of the saviour. But there are deeper ways of understanding what is being born: that is, who or what the “saviour” is. In the Gospel of Thomas, which was not selected for biblical canon, it says: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.”[iv] This then may be the Divine Child, the “Saviour”: it may be expressed as the new Being forming in the Cosmogonic Womb,[v] who will be born. We may celebrate the birth of the new Being, which /who is always beyond us, beyond our knowing … yet is within us, burgeoning within us – and within Gaia. What will save us is already present within – forming within us. The Winter Solstice story may emphasize that what is born, is within each one – the “Divine” is not “out there”: it may be said, and expressed ceremoniously, that we are each Creator and Created. We may imagine ourselves as the in-utero foetus – an image we might have access to these days from a sonar-scan during pregnancy. This image presents a truth about Being: we are this, and it is within us, within this moment. Every moment is pregnant with the new. It will be birthed when holy darkness is full. Part of what is required is having the eyes to see the “new bone forming in flesh,” scraping our eyes “clear of learned cataracts,”[vi] seeing with fresh eyes. That is what the fullness of the Dark offers – a freshening of our eyes to see the new. And the process of Creation is always reciprocal: we are Creator and Created simultaneously, in a “ngapartji-ngapartji”[vii] way. We are in-formed by that which we form. In Earth-based religious practice, the ubiquitous icon of Mother and Child – Creator and Created – expresses something essential about the Universe itself … the “motherhood” we are all born within. It expresses the essential communion experience that this Cosmos is, the innate and holy Care that it takes, and the reciprocal nature of it. We cannot touch without being touched at the same time.[viii] We may realize that Cosmogenesis – the entire Unfolding of the Cosmos – is essentially relational: our experience tells us this is so. The image of The Birth of the Goddess on the front cover of my book PaGaian Cosmology expresses that reciprocity for me, how we may birth each other and the healing/wholing in that exchange. It is a Sacred Interchange. And it is what this Event of existence seems to be about – deep communion, which both Solstices express. Babylonian Goddess, Ur 4000-3500 BCE. Adele Getty, Goddess, 33. Birthing is not often an easy process – for the birthgiver nor for the birthed one: it is a shamanic act requiring strength of bodymind, attention, courage, and focus of the mother, and resilience and courage to be of the new young one. Birthgiving is the original place of ‘heroics,’ which many cultures of the world have never forgotten, perhaps therefore better termed as “heraics.” Patriarchal adaptations of the story of this Seasonal Moment usually miss the Creative Act of birthgiving completely, usually being pre-occupied with the “virgin” nature of the Mother which is interpreted as having an “intact hymen.” The focus of the patriarchal adaptation of the Winter Solstice story is the Child as “saviour”: even the Mother gazes at the Child in most Christian icons, while in more ancient images Her eyes are direct and expressive of Her integrity as Creator. NOTES: [i] Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, 146. [ii] See Rita Gross, “The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 179-192. [iii] These figures as told by cosmologist Paul Davies with Macquarie University’s Centre for Astrobiology, Australia. [iv] Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas, saying number 70. See https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html . [v] Melissa Raphael’s term, Thealogy and Embodiment, 262. [vi] The quotes come from a poem by Cynthia Cook, “Refractions,” Womanspirit (Oregan USA, issue 23, March 1980), 59. [vii] This is an Indigenous Australian term for reciprocity – giving and receiving at the same time. I explain it a bit further in PaGaian Cosmology, 256-257. [viii] An expression from Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 68. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living …

(Essay) Reviving and Celebrating the Nine-Goddess Symbolism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

In my ongoing research on the Great Goddess known as Mago, I have discovered the number nine gynocentric symbolism as the most prominent current that constitutes Magoism and named it the Nona (Number Nine) Mago religion/civilization/mythology. Like other civilizational inventions such as the calendar and musicology, numerology is an intellectual system of knowing the Way of Nature/Universe/Creatrix. And the number nine is no arbitrary number but is the numeric code of the Creatrix or the Primordial Mother. It codifies the cosmogonic beginning of the Primordial Mother, that is, the Primordial Mago Household. It refers to the primordial principle of the solar/terrestrial beginning.
(Book Announcement 5) Introduction (part 3) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Editor’s Note: This Introduction is from She Rises: How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 2.] Pre-order available now! Engendering the Gynocentric Economy In the sense that the She Rises collective writing project does NOT begin with a ready-made blueprint, it is distinguished from a standard anthology. More to the point, this book is a book of the Goddess. By saying that, I do not mean that it is just about the Goddess. It is created in a gynocentric way and it serves a gynocentric purpose. Motivations matter; the task of the She Rises collective writing was first undertaken as a way of enhancing the Goddess/Mago Movement in 2014.[i] It has taken place spontaneously by the hand of volunteers. It relies on the gynocentric economy, a system of enabling the life of all beings operated through voluntary collaboration and egalitarian coordination. As an extension of the Gift Economy that Genevieve Vaughan advocates, the gynocentric economy is based on the voluntary sharing of one’s available resources for the whole.[ii] Gift-givers not only give what we can give freely but also enable a whole new (read non-patriarchal) mode of doing economic activities. In other words, they summon gynocentric reality to take place. Gynocentric economy secures free gift-giving activities and at the same time is shaped by the latter.
(Essay 1) How Did I Fall In Love with Korean Historical Drama? by Anna Tzanova, M.A.

Go to online class, Korean Historical Dramas. “To become a kairomancer¹, you need to learn to trust your feelings as you walk the roads of this world, to develop your personal science of shivers, to recognize in your gut and your skin and in free-floating impressions that you know far more than you hold on the surface of consciousness. You need to take care of your poetic health, reading what rhymes in a day or a season. You want to expect the unexpected, to make friends with surprises, and never miss that special moment.” ~ Robert Moss² After a year and a half of work without a day off; driving 100-150 miles every other day; writing past midnight every night; at the end of July 2011, overwhelmed by fatigue, I finally decided to take a weekend off. Little did I know, that time off would last over seven months, during which I would not only change my job, but also acquire a new passion.