March 20, 2015October 2, 2019 RTM EditorsLeave a comment

(Poem) konigsberg summer by Christina Quinn

the baltic glistens with gold tears spilled from the eye of a goddess calcified in beauteous resin lovers who stroll the sand search for amber teardrops a pledge to those Read More …

March 18, 2015October 2, 2019 RTM Editors2 Comments

(Equinox poem) I Thought The Morning Crowed by Phibby Venable with art by Maria Arias

I thought the morning crowed a long sad repetition from behind the hills but it later became a rooster – so much smaller than his sound I was born in Read More …

March 16, 2015October 2, 2019 RTM Editors3 Comments

(Essay) What’s In an Empty Womb? by Amy Barron Smolinski, MA

Why is my uterus such a vital part of me? What makes it so important? My initial response to these questions, asked sincerely by a good friend offering support, was Read More …

March 14, 2015October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Tribute) In Memory of Barbara Mor by Harriet Ann Ellenberger and others

From Harriet Ann Ellenberger: TO BARBARA MOR — BRAVE CAPTAIN, FAITHFUL FRIEND March 8, 2015 International Women’s Day Dear Barbara, Now that you’ve flown free of your body, I won’t Read More …

March 13, 2015October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) March 2003 Ouyen Women’s Rain Dance (with Dorothea Mackellar) by Eileen Haley

Women of the Mallee district of Western Victoria dance for rain during the long drought of the early years of this century. They are accompanied by Dorothea Mackellar, Australia’s foremost Read More …

March 12, 2015October 2, 2019 RTM EditorsLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Amy Barron Smolinski

Amy Barron Smolinski holds an MA from Union Institute and University, where she focused on Sacred Feminine Studies under the late Patricia Monaghan. Amy’s thesis explored re-emerging Sacred Feminine manifestations Read More …

March 11, 2015October 2, 2019 RTM EditorsLeave a comment

(Art poem) Ing’s Ride by Ingrid Andrew

I am Ingrid. I am Ing’s ride. I ride the chariots of Spring. I scatter petals in my wake; and gather birds, and throw them on the wing. I am Read More …

March 10, 2015October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Marie de Kock

With her menopause and concurrent kundalini awakening in 2012, Marie connected the dots of wisdom from her first written female spirituality book and continued studies, 20 years of meditation, magical Read More …

March 9, 2015November 15, 2019 RTM Editor3 Comments

(Essay) Notes on Leaving Christianity by Glenys Livingstone (1989)

This is the first in a three part series of old articles and papers by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. that were written in the 1980’s and 1990’s, two of which were Read More …

March 7, 2015October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin3 Comments

(Poem & Art) Power to Women, Jealous Jack by Phibby Venable with art by Victor Hernández

Morning, and a chandelier of snow hangs heavy over the tin of Jack’s barn. He leans into the doorway, watching his house. From here, he can see the chimney spew the Read More …

March 6, 2015October 2, 2019 RTM Editors3 Comments

(Essay) Battered, Bruised but Not Broken: The Ancient Goose Goddess by Jeri Studebaker

As amazing as it sounds, a bird we now call “silly” was once a goddess so powerful she could (and did) create the mighty sun in the sky. One way Read More …

March 4, 2015October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Little Bear Requiem by Sara Wright

Look up at the star that bears your name. Re-member the story. Once you were loved, treated with deep respect. Your Ancestor Field bore a Bear Goddess, and bears her Read More …

March 3, 2015April 25, 2024 RTM Editor2 Comments

(Poem) Dear Goddess by Andrea Nicki

Dear Goddess, please forgive my sins. I have been too loving, too generous, too meek and mild, too sweet. I have been too many offerings of wine-blood and bread-body. I Read More …

(Art) She meets herself by Lucy Pierce

There are places within where the treasure is buried, the key deep within the earth of our being. Beneath the facades and the defenses and the layers of pretense. There are places that we hide even from ourselves and fierce and hard is the work of uncovering the treasure, digging in the dark earth for the keys.
(Photo Essay 6) Goddess Pilgrimage 2018

[Author’s Note: In May 2018, I set out on a 3 month pilgrimage to Greece, Turkey and the prehistory sites of “Old Europe”. Once again my main focus was “visiting with the Grandmothers”.] Magura Cave, Bulgaria The Magura Cave (Rabisha Cave) is located in north-western Bulgaria close to the village of Rabisha in Vidin Province. The total length of the 15 million year old cave is 2.5 km with one main gallery of six halls and three lateral galleries. The average temperature is 12°C, although I was so entranced by the art that I didn’t feel cold at all. There are also beautiful natural vaults and spectacular stalactites and stalagmites. In one of the caverns there are prehistoric paintings carved into the walls and decorated with bat guano (droppings). The paintings depict the silhouettes of people dancing and hunting, people wearing masks, animals, stars, tools, and plants. The paintings date from different eras – the early Paleolithic, the Neolithic, the later Neolithic, and the beginning of the Bronze Age. A solar calendar from the late Neolithic is the earliest solar calendar discovered in Europe. Descending into Magura Cave Magura Cave stalactites The images of figures with hands raised above their heads appear in most of the paintings. This motif appears in other cultures from as early as 40,000 BCE through to c400 BCE: The “Adorant” (mammoth ivory, c 40,000 BCE) was found in the Geißenklösterle Cave near Blaubeuren, Germany. Zygouries, Greece, 1300-1180 BCE. Another motif from the Magura Cave paintings is remarkably similar to the contemporary pictogram (Venus symbol) representing woman: Meet Mago Contributor Kaalii Cargill
(She Summons Excerpt) Why is the World calling for Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? by Jennifer Cooper

[Editor’s Note: This piece is included in She Summons: Why… Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality?” Volume 1 (Mago Books, 2021).] The week before quarantine began I felt a squirrel inside me telling me to pick up seeds, art supplies, bales of soil. A storm is coming, get what you need to grow. And my head hung low because my heart knew that victims of domestic abuse would be locked in their cages. Deep deep in their cages. A thought I could not shake although I didn’t know what to do. A month into quarantine an active shooter broke across my province; in what is now recorded as the largest mass shooting in Canada, (blatantly disregarding what the colonists did to the Indigenous people when they stole this land). As the headlines began to roll in I knew just what brand of unhinged this man was and that he has a much longer line of victims than the souls he took from the world that day. Every other survivor and victim knew what I knew. When the headline about what a nice guy he was came through, those survivors, victims, and I knew that narcissists are master manipulators and care deeply what others think of them. We knew how charming a monster could be. I read each headline that unrolled across the internet through the eyes of hundreds of victims. I heard what the media told them about how society sees them. And when the victim blaming burned the comments section I climbed into a shell. When I shell finally cracked open the bivalves this poem/ story/spell fell out: A Calling she wakes in the night to find the fear of a thousand strangers sewn like galaxies to the fabric above her bed, the linen sail that she and her love use to slip past the moon the fears glitter at her they take what’s left of the streetlamp after the woods and the window are through and wave it at her like golden flags in the dark she follows the fine and pearly webbing from each flag to its anchor, to the spiders in their traps sunlight flaring inside her she casts her own threads, whipping them out across an aerial view of the world out to cities of light bundles and to souls in between she finds them and binds the monsters spin spin spin the web glows and she growls or she hums plucking fears all lit up from within she weaves in the light she spins and she spins capturing monsters and tying off binds when the monsters have all been bound left dangling for their makers, she retracts her eight legs they become her eight roots reaching down through the earth to the flame underground, she sends a warm glow to the spiders then each of the spiders she snip snip snip snips free severs the threads left behind the ones with the hooks and tied off with dark binds she unhooks and she snips and she prunes off disease with silk and lamplight she patches their flags back to sails, she sews instructions into pillows nightly: the dark threads must be snapped and the hooks be unhooked thread by thread, snip snip snip soon the hooks will be gone and the threads won’t grow back, rest, heal, and then help the others with a sigh of relief from each spirit released she takes up the silver thread to her sail free of fear, she climbs back to her sweet starboat bed Jennifer Cooper: As an ecologist, my written word is a reflection of the world through a lens trained to pick up on the fine web between fine details. I live on the shore of Sydney Harbour in Nova Scotia with my children, partner, and bunnies. Delighting in anarchy, I like to transcend pigeonholes by using art and imagination to inspire scientific education and science to paint art and poetry all the while sharing my writing, artwork, and gardening with my children.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Leslene della-Madre

Is a long time student for over 40 years and practitioner of the path of the Sacred She. She is a radical feminist, author, poet, mystic, “shemama” (soul midwife), death midwife, music lover, initiate in several shamanic traditions, mother and grandmother. She is the founder of Winged Women Return, a center for feminist shamanic studies where she holds classes, ritual and healing circles. She lived on The Farm in Tennessee as a pioneer in the “back to the land” movement that was born from the psychedelic revolution of the 1960’s where she lived for nearly eleven years. She gave natural birth to two daughters who became the founders of the all female music collective, The Goddess Alchemy Project, originally based in Oakland, California. Leslene has served as spiritual adjunct to the mental health field assisting psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists and physicians in capacities as colleague and healer. She is the author of Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother as well as numerous articles, essays and poetry, published in anthologies, magazines, and journals. (While writing She Who Spins the Coils of Creation Leslene learned through a geneology pursuit that she is a cousin of Einstein which was a synchronous discovery.) She was a featured poet in 2012 for the online journal, Sibella Poetry. For a number of years Leslene hosted a cable television show, Wildfire, Tell-A-Vision for Women in Northern California. She also created a transformational retreat for the Center for Spiritual Living in Northern California, Womanspirit, over twenty years ago where hundreds of women have continued to experience life-altering change. She has appeared on elder panels with Grandmother Agnes Pilgrim, the late chairwoman of The Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers and is an international workshop facilitator and presenter working with women on the collective journey of dismantling patriarchy and re-membering the sacred circle of sisterhood. www.midwifingdeath.com www.leslenedellamadre.com
(Video 15) Genevieve Vaughan & Chiquie Estrada in Maternal Gift Economy: Breaking Through by Genevieve Vaughan

(Words of Invitation) Drawing on Maternal Gift Economy theory, the suppressed wisdom of women, and the traditions and ethics of Indigenous societies, this integrated programme of presentations sponsored by the International Feminists for a Gift Economy Network will offer new insights, perspectives, and challenges to the underlying market-based mentality of the dominant world order. In this time of crisis and systemic upheaval, the model of the Maternal Gift Economy on which our survival depends at the beginning of life, is being revealed and celebrated. The interdependence of all living beings can now be made visible and honored. Mother Earth provides the model of an economy based on gifting that we receive as young children from our nurturers—before we are alienated into market exchange. We must make the transition from the exploitive Euro-American patriarchal/dominating and capitalistic ideology to a gift-based economy and culture grounded in the values of nurturing and care rather than competition and greed. We invite you to join us in exploring the possibilities in this series of presentations and dialogues that bring together those who have been laboring to articulate the principles of the Maternal Gift Economy, protect Indigenous values, and practice peaceful and just community building. The time is now for all humans to cooperate rather than compete. Please join us! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37P5JsIocpg Endless Economic Colonisation or Return to the Maternal Gift. Presented by Genevieve Vaughan International Feminists for a Gift Economy. June 19, 2021 For more information on the Maternal Gift Economy, see here. https://www.magoism.net/2014/06/meet-mago-contributor-genevieve-vaughan/
(Poem) Laying the Bed by Freeda Cathcart

ShutterStock image, copyright permitted by author’s subscription How hard it was Where to begin When to end How very hard it was Beneath the surface The ancient boundaries Revealed the seeds of Life Choking among the weeds The rain loosened the ground And after much toil The garden’s form Began to emerge Removing the undesirable Appreciating the surprises Exploring All the possibilities Digging down into the Existence of All Deeper. Deeper, deeper Peering into each other’s soul Succumbing to the rhythms Surrendering to universal time Solid separateness melts Into liquid Oneness The vibrating explosions Thrusting through to heaven These are the moments that sustain us Reaping the harvest of All the effort We are surrounded by Love The beds firmly established The earth easily parts Setting the impatience into the hole Piling up the compost A small investment for prosperity Gazing into each other’s eyes The hazel green waves Flecked with golden grains of sand Meet the blue sky Pulsating as One meets the Other Good morning, my dear… (Meet Mago Contributor) Freeda Cathcart https://www.magoism.net/2022/06/meet-mago-contributor-freeda-cathcart/
Autumn Gold by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright Fall is the season of ‘the cutting away’, a poignant time to celebrate the deepening darkness as we turn inward. I think the powers of the goddess are strongest at this time of year… I wrote this wistful poem in celebration of Autumn as I am experiencing it this year… perhaps the personal reflection that follows is the kind of thinking that is capable of opening a door to a new way of perceiving? Autumn Gold Autumn gold stains the maples beech hay ferns too each day a deeper glow bittersweet bleeds into lemon liming veins scarlet sears a leaf or two salmon rose blurs… fir balsam hemlock spires reach skyward forest green needles soak in drops of rain. Fire on the mountain comes late frost filled nights and crimson swamps are still a dream… Earth speaks so concretely about just how fast change is occurring here and everywhere. At the end of September muted color has been the norm along with what I once would have called “too warm” night temperatures. Where is the swamp fire? My field has been cut, the flower garden shorn, my beloved insect ridden apple tree is bare, apples eaten. Her smooth trunk is a study in pure grace – dove gray curves against pale ochre, faded sage. Red Deer no longer climbs the hill but moves swiftly through bowed ferns, rounding the house to feast on the second apple tree’s ripened apples. Grouse will soon perch in ruby laden trees. One crabapple is so thick with fruit that a daily sweep must be done to get out the door. Turkeys scratch a well – seeded ground layered with next year’s wildflower heads, grass -like mulch. After the brutality of two months of summer heat and endless humidity this quiet descent into post equinox fall seems almost anticlimactic. I am scanning the sky for flashes of brilliant leaf color or peering intently at forest ground…. Wild orchids bloom on. Mushrooms abound. I imagine the billions of miles of mycelia just beneath my feet wondering which threads will support the twenty thousand species of fruiting bodies that will burst out of the ground somewhere on this earth, many seduced by rain. Around here frequent, almost daily showers have the rivers singing, and my brook pool is deepening, filled to the brim with healthy oxygen rich fish. These next few weeks will mark the end of the Season of Abundance as Nature orchestrates the Cutting Away. We notice then that the trees are stripped of their vibrant fall colors and leaves during this period that precedes winter white. The bones of the mountain appear; the evergreens have been chipped. I lean into the coming darkness a time to reflect and pose questions… One query I repeat year after year. How can I express my gratitude for nature’s bounty most effectively while including times of attrition as part of the whole? Only recently, within the past few years have I heard someone else articulate the former aspect of this question. Scientist, author, and ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks to the necessity of developing an attitude of reciprocity when engaging with nature. What she means here is that it’s critically important not to take nature’s gifts for granted. Like a sunset, an owl, or a decaying woodland trunk. She points out that most westerners treat nature as if ‘it’ (note the denial of personhood for lack of a better word) is a commodity, existing for the sole purpose of serving humanity. As a naturalist and earth person I have never understood this attitude/belief because it never seemed real. My experiences with animals and trees taught me as a child that this thinking didn’t make sense. During adolescence this denial of nature’s personhood – Nature was inanimate – animals and plants didn’t have souls – became the core issue that split me away from the Christian church. Forced to choose between the two I chose nature and with it, guilt. (I was freed from the latter when I reclaimed my Native roots.) When I first heard Kimmerer’s words about reciprocity they rang with authenticity. All Indigenous peoples know that intimacy with nature involves relationship because every living being in nature is a relative but I had not thought of this relationship as being one of reciprocity though I tried to live it. Nature wants and needs to be seen, appreciated and loved as individuals and as a whole. Still, gratitude did not seem to be enough; it felt like I needed to do more. Of course, gratitude has both a passive and active aspect. Giving thanks and giving back… I advocate for nature through my writing of course, but this seems to be more about me than nature. In many ways writing about this earth l love so much is a way to deal with what otherwise would be intolerable personal grief over what’s happening to our blue green planet. In other words writing helps keep me sane. I think incorporating the acceptance of grief into the story on a larger scale might be part of the answer. If ever there was a time to integrate the need for radical cutting away on a cultural level it is now. Changes in nature and politics are dramatic and unwelcome and one way I can deal with this present is to find a way to take the long view, which incorporates deep time into the whole. As Richard Powers quotes “we are born, live and die in the middle of things; this is not a good story”. Entering deep time is easier if I am, for example, watching a snapping turtle, knowing that this species has been in its present form for 60 – to 200 million years. My life in this context disappears into Time…But I cannot stay here. So at present I can celebrate the cutting away as a seasonal change but that is all. I suspect that my periodic inability …
(Poem) The Nüshu (Women's Script) Poets by Donna Snyder

The words are hidden in strands of silk or letters A secret language for women’s voices only a language broken and bound prettily like feet a silken dress conceals the secret poet she is she walks before portraits in a Taoist temple also envy of male scholars celebrated empirically a hidden poet sends a basket of flowers to a girl in the scarf she wove words hidden in plain view songs of summer mountains wistful for her friend secret lessons for the girl as if she were a boy as if a schoolboy slated for imperial examinations a fisherman’s child wife she sends hidden lessons she writes her dreams in their woman’s language she weaves pictures of wild sea creatures in her gift the friend’s delight rings in her blood as loud as waves lowered eyes see shoes given by her lord and husband but tonight she will dream of sea creatures and passion and in the morning sea salt will outline her girlish lips Written March 21, 2009 at Tumblewords Project after hearing about the secret language of Chinese girls and women used to teach each other poetry and other matters, and to maintain passionate friendships. Vestiges of the language have persisted into the modern era, with only a few women still knowing the words. Read Meet Mago Contributor, Donna Snyder.
(Essay 1) Mary Magdalene: The Myth and the Mirror by Joanna Kujawa

For ages, tradition portrayed Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. Was it just the simple male fantasy of a beautiful sinner saved by Grace? The story itself probably wasn’t true. Two apostles (Mark 16:9 and Luke 8:2) describe how Yeshua expelled seven demons from Mary Magdalene, but nobody seems to know what this means. Hindu-inspired interpretations suggest the episode was in fact an awakening of Kundalini energy in her seven chakras, and a transformational experience in which all past negative tendencies could be expelled. Who knows?

(Special post) The Goddess Inanna: Her Allies and Opponents by Hearth Moon Rising

Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld is one of the most fascinating myths ever told. Not just because it is profound and enlightening, although it is certainly that. It’s an exciting journey that ignites the imagination, and female characters are at the hub of the action. This is a tale of power: power that is demanded, power that is won, power that is appropriated, and power that cannot be escaped. The story follows the fertility goddess Inanna, who brought civilization to Mesopotamia, as she seeks to expand her realm by venturing into the world below. Inanna’s experiences in the great below, her escape, and the wild events that unfold as a result of her caper are the focus of the tale.
(Special Post 6) 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.] Esther Essinger “Why Goddess, when “GD” is perpetrating so much grief? 1) First, it’s vital to know that Goddess is NOT “GD” in a skirt. It is demanded of NO one that they “believe” or “have faith”, so there can be no guilt (and no punishment! (No Hell below us, thank you John) in NOT choosing to interest oneself in these particular Stories, myths, legends and tales which center the Cosmic Female, the Universal Mother, Mother Earth /Mother Nature at their core. No evangelism happening here!
(Special Post Mother Teresa 4) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

Part IV: Illumination and Consensus Reached [Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] Diane Horton: [C], how is it that you do not see that MT had no right to sacrifice other people for any purpose whatsoever? None of us have the right or the place to “sacrifice those we care about” for anything. She was not “above them”. And she had abundant means to do far more for them, to cure and comfort them. If indeed she imagined she had some lofty motivation as you so fervently believe, to use the power she had to withhold medical care from the poverty stricken sick and dying in some misguided and ultimately cruel attempt to bring the world’s attention to their suffering and produce compassion within those who would not otherwise feel it is the most monstrous miscarriage of any expression of what you might refer to as “love” that I have heard of outside of Jim Jones killing all of his followers in Ghana. That’s not Love. That’s not Compassion. That is Manipulation, and manipulation is ego-based. Anne Wilkerson Allen: Yes. It is an indoctrination so deep and so prolonged that it takes a lifetime to overcome…and we rely on the love and compassion of others to help bring us to this understanding….thanks, Diane. Diane Horton: Love you, Anne. [C]: Is thinking that any human being sacrificing inside their very soul, their morals, & all that entails, is actually of lesser value than outside human pain, suffering, even death itself, right? Diane Horton: I’m not sure I understand the question really, but I’ll try a response: one’s inner and outer life are of equal importance because they are all the whole person.

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 …
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 …
Samhain: Stepping Wisely through the Open Door by Carolyn Lee Boyd

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

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 9 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. The dates for Summer Solstice/Litha are: Southern Hemisphere – December 20-23 Northern Hemisphere – June 20-23 A Summer Solstice altar The ‘moment of grace’[i] that is Summer Solstice, marks the stillpoint in the height of Summer, when Earth’s tilt causes the Sun to begin its ‘decline’: that is, its movement back to the North in the Southern Hemisphere, and back to the South in the Northern Hemisphere. This Seasonal Moment is polar opposite Winter Solstice when it is light that is “born,” as it may be expressed. At the peak of Summer, in the bliss of expansion, it is the dark that is “born.” Insofar as Winter Solstice is about birth, then Summer Solstice is about death. It is a celebration of profound mystical significance, that may be confronting in a culture where the dark is not valued for its creative telios. Summer Solstice is a time for celebrating our realized Creativity, whose birth we celebrated at Winter Solstice, whose tenderness we dedicated ourselves to at Imbolc/Early Spring, whose certain presence and power we rejoiced in at Spring Equinox, whose fertile passion we danced for at Beltaine/High Spring. Now, at this seasonal point, as we celebrate light’s fullness, we celebrate our own ripening – like that of the wheat, and the fruit. And like the wheat and the fruit, it is the Sun that is in us, that has ripened: the Sun is the Source of our every thought and action. The analogy is complete in that our everyday creativity – our everyday actions, and we, ultimately, are also “Food for the Universe”[ii] … it is all how we feed the Universe. flowers to flames – everyday creativity consumed Like the Sun and the wheat and the fruit, we find the purpose of our Creativity in the releasing of it; just as our breath must be released for its purpose of life. The symbolism used to express this in ceremony has been the giving of a full rose/flower to the flames.[iii] We, and our everyday creativity, are the “Bread of Life,” as it may be expressed; just as many other indigenous traditions recognize everyday acts as evoking “the ongoing creation of the cosmos,”[iv] so in this tradition, Summer is the time for particularly celebrating that. Our everyday lives, moment to moment, are built on the fabric of the work/creativity of the ancestors and ancient creatures that went before us; and so the future is built on ours. We are constantly consuming the work and creativity of others and we are constantly being consumed. The question may be asked: “Who are you feeding?,”[v] and consideration given to whether you are happy with the answer. It is the Sun that is in you. See how you shine. Summer Solstice is a celebration of the Fullness of the Mother – in ourselves, in Earth, in the Cosmos. We are the Sun, coming to fullness in its creative engagement with Earth. We affirm this in ceremony with: “It is the Sun that is in you, see how you shine.” It is the ripening of Her manifestation, which fulfills itself in the awesome act of dissolution. This is the mystery of the Moment. Brian Swimme has described this mystery of radiance as a Power of the Universe, as Radiance: the shining forth of the self is at the same time a give-away, a decline of the self – just as the Sun is constantly giving itself away. This Solstice Moment of Summer is a celebration of communion, the feast of life – which is for the enjoying, not for the holding onto. Summer and Winter Solstices are Gateways – between the manifest and the manifesting, and Summer Solstice is a Union/Re-Union of these, a kind of meeting with the deeper self. Winter Solstice may be more of a separation, though it is usually experienced as joyful, because it is also a meeting, as the new is being brought forth. The interchange of Summer Solstice may be experienced as an entry into loss – the Cosmological Dynamic of Loss, as manifestation passes. Beltaine, Summer Solstice and Lammas – the next Seasonal Moment, may be felt as the three faces of Cosmogenesis in the movement towards entropy.[vi] The light part of the annual cycle of Earth around Sun is a celebration of the Young One/Virgin quality of Cosmogenesis, with Her face gradually changing to the Mother/Communion quality; and through the Autumn, the dark part of the annual cycle, it is a celebration of the Old One/Crone quality, whose face will gradually change also, back to the Mother/Communion. They are never separate.In this cosmology, desire for full creativity has been celebrated as the allurement of the Cosmos, and being experienced as gravity, as relationship with Earth, our place of being, how She holds us. At both Solstices there is celebration of deep engagement, communion. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023. Spretnak, Charlene. States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993. Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. New York: Harper and Row, 1999. Swimme, Brian. Canticle to the Cosmos. DVD series. CA: Tides Foundation, 1990. NOTES: [i] As Thomas Berry named the Seasonal transitions. [ii] Swimme uses this expression in Canticle to the Cosmos, video 5 “Destruction and Loss.” [iii] This is based on the traditional Litha (Summer Solstice) rite described by Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, 206. [iv] Spretnak, States of Grace, 95. [v] As Swimme asks in Canticle to the Cosmos, video 5 “Destruction and Loss.” [vi] Just as Samhain, Winter Solstice and Imbolc may be felt as the three faces of Cosmogenesis in the movement towards toward form – syntropy.
(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) Gurang (Nine Goddesses), Gaeyang Halmi (Grandma Gaeyang), and Goddess Gom: Exploring Old Magoism in Korea by Helen Hwang

Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D. Read (Photo Essay 5) Gaeyang Halmi, Sea Goddess of Korea.
(Goma Article Excerpt 1) Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea and Her Mythology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This essay was first included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, published in 2018 by Mago Books.] This essay may be called a Magoist study of the Korean foundation myth, also known as the Dangun myth. It reinstates Goma, better known as “Ungnyeo (Bear/Sovereign Woman),” the shaman ruler of pre-patriarchal Korea, who is the main character of the Korean foundation myth. Here “Mago” stands for the Creatrix and “Magoism” for pre-patriarchally originated indigenous tradition of East Asia that venerates the Creatrix.[1] Identifying Goma as the ruler Goddess of Old Korea/East Asia is by no means a new effort. She is, although few in number, alluded to the eponymous Goddess of ancient Korean States (Goma State, for example) in both historical sources and modern research. In fact, “Ungnyeo” is one of the most studied topics by Korean linguists, mythologists, and historians for it concerns the identity of the Korean people. Nonetheless, those studies tend to be monodisciplinary or androcentric in their approaches and consequently fail to assess her full-fledged supreme identity as the ancestor ruler of East Asian nations. This chapter engages in transdisciplinary, comparative, and feminist approaches to elucidating the Goma myth. At the outset, we will rename “the Korean foundation myth” “the Goma myth.” That is corollary in that she is the central figure of the story. Also it introduces Old Korea as the One People of the Creatrix, anciently known as Nine Hans (九桓 Guhan). The Goma myth restores the gynocentric multi-meaning of “Nine Hans” and “Magoist Koreans/East Asians,” which is non-ethnocentric and supra-nationalist in origin. The character, “Han (桓),” in “Nine Hans” and “Hanguk,” is complex in meaning as it connotes “one,” “whole, “great,” “good,” “same,” “bright,” “many,” “correct,” “middle,” “full” and the like. Thus, “Nine Hans” refer to the People of the Creatrix who have those qualities of the character “Han.” Koreanists have designated as Hanism (the Han thought) this inclusive and polysemic nature of the word “Han” characteristic of traditional Korean worldview.[2] Although naming it Hanism is insightful, it may be misleading without a full-fledged hermeneutics of Goma mythology. Goma, known as Ungnyeo or Gom, remains underestimated and misrepresented among modern Koreans. A common understanding of the Korean foundation myth goes that she was the bear who became a woman and married Hanung, the divine sage ruler of Old Korea, and gave birth to a son, Dangun, the founder of the proto-Chinese Joseon dynasty (2333 BCE-232 BCE). Goma is diminished to the role of a mother of an assumed male hero at best. Consequently, she is redacted from the mytho-historical context of Old Magoist Korea/East Asia (the pre-patriarchal gynocentric people of the Creartrix), and divested of her supreme identity as the dynastic founder of Danguk (3898 BCE-2333 BCE). Given the immensity and complexity of the topic and its data, it is admittedly impossible to treat them comprehensively within a chapter. While many salient themes are discussed, many others are not treated. Among the untreated are Nine Numerology and its cross-cultural manifestations beyond East Asia. This essay aims the following: (1) It provides some pivotal background discussions as well as overall characteristics of the Goma myth. (2) It introduces and delineates the four narratives of the Goma myth selectively chosen from various written texts. The fact that the topic of Goma has rarely been brought to light in its own right in the West adds to the difficulty. This has to do with the fact that pre-Chinese Korean/East Asian history is deemed heterodox, if recognized, in mainstream (read Sinocentric and patriarchal) East Asian Studies. Not only her supreme identity but also her Magoist mytho-historical context remains as non-data in the institutionalized practice of Korean Studies. Our task necessarily involves a controversial feminist methodology, debunking conventional interpretations as a product of Sinocentrism. Mainstream Koreanists have endorsed or internalized the Chinese ethnocentric worldview that is patriarchal and imperialist. Reversing the multiple reversals, the current work, as a result, exposes what is written out of the official East Asian mytho-historiography. Summary of the Goma Myth Goma had a great spirit from birth. Because of her vision of “benefiting the human world widely,” she was entrusted by the last shaman queen, Hanin of Hanguk (桓國 State of One People, c. 7199 BCE – 3898 BCE), with the task of restoring the Reign of the Creatrix. Toward the end of the Hanguk confederacy, clan names and their customs grew apart. And a belligerent tiger clan rose. They raided and plundered neighboring tribes. Goma conceived a will to pacify a social problem caused by this unruly patrilocal clan. Determined to constrain the tiger clan, she requested Hanin to send her to the troubled region. Hanin granted her wish and sent her to the region, Mount Taebaek (Great Resplendence). Leading the royal bear clan of 3,000 people, Goma arrived at Mount Taebaek and settled adjacent to the tiger clan. Rather than a military solution, she proposed a covenant for both the bear clan and the tiger clan to observe. Both clans underwent a trial, which was to dwell in a cave hall and endure 100 days without seeing the sunlight, living on mugwort and chive. I call her proposal the cave initiation, a socio-spiritual pledge to undergo the ordeal of the cave environment in order to tap into one’s innate power of restoring true human nature. The cave is a physical and metaphorical place for the womb of the Primordial Mother, the sacred space/time of unity, wholeness, and rebirth, wherein everyone once dwelt. The cave initiation represents a returning to the knowing of the common origin of all beings, the Crearix. Goma proffered the tiger clan an option of changing their predatory behaviors but they could not endure the cave initiation. The bear clan endured for three seven days (21 days) and attained the female character, the true human nature. The tiger clan was expelled to a remote designated land outside Four Seas, the territory of Old Magoist East Asia, by verdict of the law that Goma legislated. …
(Book Excerpt 4) The Mago Way by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note] The following is from Chapter One, “What Is Mago and Magoism and How Did I Study HER?” from The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia, Volume 1. Footnotes below would be different from the monograph version. PDF book of The Mago Way Volume 1 download is available for free here.] This chapter,[i] interweaving the personal (how I came to study Mago) and the political (why I advocate Magoism), informs the general and particular tenets of Magoism. My study of Mago was, although it took the form of a doctoral dissertation, ultimately motivated by my self-searching quest as a Korean-born radical feminist. I came to encounter the Great Goddess known as Mago in East Asia by way of several detours on my life’s journey. Like my non-Western and

Return to Mago E-Magazine (RTME)

(Poem) konigsberg summer by Christina Quinn

Like this:

(Equinox poem) I Thought The Morning Crowed by Phibby Venable with art by Maria Arias

Like this:

(Essay) What’s In an Empty Womb? by Amy Barron Smolinski, MA

Like this:

(Tribute) In Memory of Barbara Mor by Harriet Ann Ellenberger and others

Like this:

(Art) March 2003 Ouyen Women’s Rain Dance (with Dorothea Mackellar) by Eileen Haley

Like this:

(Meet Mago Contributor) Amy Barron Smolinski

Like this:

(Art poem) Ing’s Ride by Ingrid Andrew

Like this:

(Meet Mago Contributor) Marie de Kock

Like this:

(Essay) Notes on Leaving Christianity by Glenys Livingstone (1989)

Like this:

(Poem & Art) Power to Women, Jealous Jack by Phibby Venable with art by Victor Hernández

Like this:

(Essay) Battered, Bruised but Not Broken: The Ancient Goose Goddess by Jeri Studebaker

Like this:

(Poem) Little Bear Requiem by Sara Wright

Like this:

(Poem) Dear Goddess by Andrea Nicki

Like this:

Seeking Mago, the Great Mother from Old Korea

S/HE: IJGS V5 N1 2026 (B/W Paperback)

Mago Almanac Year 9 Monthly Wheels

Fall 2026 Creatrix Studies Learners Virtual Gathering

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: