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(Essay) Ceremonial Celebrants as Evocators of Presence by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This article is an edited excerpt from Chapter 6 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Gathering for Lammas ceremony, MoonCourt, 2016 In presiding as Mistress of Ceremonies/Priestess in the Seasonal ceremonies that I facilitated over the years, I have been conscious of the importance of my voice, my invocation of the reality of which I speak, when I speak. Spoken words – everyday ones – are actually always an invocation, a spelling of reality, but in ceremony/ritual this may become more conscious. The celebrant and/or co-celebrants are participating in the calling forth of Presence; within the consciousness of those present: calling forth this sacred depth. They will be enabled in that process by prior meditations upon, and awareness of, the truth of the Poetry they speak. They will also be enabled by the confident use of their breath and voice; and for many, this capacity would be enhanced with some singing or voice lessons, and expressive therapies (since so many of us are well-schooled in self-abnegation). Then when there is confidence in the self-expression and in understanding of the Poetry, in their voice: ” … the meaning is inseparable from the sound, the shape, and the rhythm of the words … it remains rooted in the sensual dimension of experience, born of the body’s native capacity to resonate with other bodies and with the landscape as a whole[i].” All others present participate in the calling forth of this Presence, in themselves and in others, and may take roles in this regard in some of the processes. It is my understanding that the Poetry itself has its own integrity, as does the speaker, and as do the recipients; the Poetry is not a monolithic inert slab of information, It speaks to our depths in a relational particularity – each person “selecting” Its valency for them. As Charlene Spretnak tells it in States of Grace: in the ceremonial creation of sacred space, the narrator and listener become “engaged witnesses, weavers of a web of being” where articulations of mythic dramas are “acts of relation that place all participants in deep accord with the life processes of the unfolding universe[ii].” The role of priestess or celebrant is a deeply relational role; it is not just putting out questions, statements. She is evoking, drawing forth, and is already in response to the particular person’s being – how they “select”/elicit a particular approach from her. The celebrant or co-celebrant listens deeply to the response, so the person is received. Sometimes, a particular invocation/blessing may be passed around the entire group, allowing individuals the opportunity to bless another, and to speak it. This kind of participation may also be structured into the creation of the sacred space – the remembering of the elements of Water, Fire, Earth and Air – whenever possible, enabling individuals to practice speaking with or “to the world”, instead of about it[iii]; that is, to practice relationship, which I understand to be the essence of PaGaian ceremony. NOTES: [i] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous,p.74-75. [ii] Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace, p.141. [iii] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous,p.71. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Spretnak, Charlene.States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.
(Essay 2) Feminism and the Future of Religion by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Meet Mago Contributor, Glenys Livingstone. Part 2 of a paper presented by the author at the National Socialist Conference Sydney, 1990. Feminism is not the only force pushing change to old stories, symbols, myths and images, but it is a significant one. And it has yet enormous resources, a labyrinth of archetypes and energy suppressed for thousands of years, gestating and complexifying, that have the power to scrape clear our eyes of the “learned cataracts”[1]. Interest in the Goddess archetype/metaphor and in Her religious traditions have grown visibly and audibly in the last 15 years, here in Australia. For some She is merely a cliche at this point, but that is an inevitable part of the process, a hurdle that can eventually be broken through in the bigger picture. The vision of the Earth as Gaia, a living being, as Goddess, is one that is gaining in strength. It has at its core, an ancient and wholistic understanding of Being, that can call humanity into different relationship with itself and with the universe. But real change is not inevitable. Even people who think they have changed (because they changed a pronoun, or pasted in a goddess), have not necessarily. Ongoing feminist critique and reflection is necessary to ensure the healing of fragmented archetypes that have confined us all. We must continue to speak, to review, to suspect, to research. We cannot make assumptions, we are a long way from having arrived at some kind of real inclusiveness and partnership. The old well-worn pathways are not that easily given over. It seems that there are a couple of clear directions pulling at the future of religion, as the feminist momentum continues to impact on it. And indeed it must be a worry for the religious powers that be. Those directions I describe as shamanic and pagan, which I will define in my own particular way, as follows. By shamanic, I mean that individuals are “storying” themselves, knowing themselves and thinking from within their own skin. Shamanism relies on direct lived experience for an understanding of the sacred, as opposed to relying on an external authority, external imposed symbol, story or image. Each person must claim their own inner power, imagine or visualize themselves and use this in the service of life. Myth/story which arises from within draws its power from a realm of pattern “which is common to people of all cultures and all times”[2]. The archetypes that arise, have done so since ancient times and have recurred across many cultures, in a diversity of form. This shamanic direction tends to come out of a feminist spirituality because here, women have learned to no longer take things on faith or presciption. It is a tendency of feminism to cure one from swallowing pre-scribed religion – all holy texts and myths must be reflected on suspiciously given their millenia of androcratic bias – and one is entered into the process of self-scription, of authoring, scribing oneself. Religion then becomes based on what we can feel, what we can know. We each then find “for ourselves our individual role in the matrix”[3], a way in which each being is part of the texture of the universal fabric. We are linked by a recognition in each other of a power that arises from within, not by some external word.
(Book Excerpt 2) Single Mothers Speak on Patriarchy Ed. by Trista Hendren & Pat Daly

Introduction by Trista Hendren Many people have wondered why I am going off track with my Goddess work to write about single mothers. To me, it’s all related. The way we treat mothers is indicative of how we view The Mother. “Under patriarchy, the mother is feared and hated, quite crazily, both for her power and her weakness; everything a man cannot courageously accept about himself is projected onto his mother, or wife.” –Monica Sjoo & Barbara Mor[i] To me, honoring real life mothers is just as important as setting aside our indoctrination to believe in a male God.
(Prose) Crocus Goddess: Harbinger of Spring by Sara Wright

This winter has been so mild that I feel that I am already perched on the edge of the next season. The brook has never been completely frozen and all through the winter I have had the pleasure of listening to flowing waters whenever I am snow shoeing or walking around my property. The birds and other animals can easily bathe (yes birds do bathe even in the winter if the temperatures are mild). Around the foundation of the house and next to my rock garden the sun melts the snow quickly and bare ground keeps appearing after every storm. Every time I am outdoors my eyes seem to seek out these spots to see if I can glimpse a blade of green. These are the first places that I usually look for crocuses in April, but this year I am already longing to see them!
Drowning in Woman’s Wisdom – A Birth in Reverse by Claire Dorey

[Extract from a work in progress.] Drowning in Woman’s Wisdom 1 / Claire Dorey Slipping into the lake intending to drown, a birth in reverse, she returns to source. She has no fear of the depths. It is the shallows that frighten her. She embraces the blackness, bitter cold lapping the nape of her neck. A cold kiss. Ice teeth snapping shut, sealing her into a liquid coffin of numb. Black is the warmest colour when you want to forget. Saw tooth pain of a lacerated back. Saw tooth wounding witnessing rape. The pain of ice water is a relief from all that. Below, slippery eels, the silt of the river bed and life ebbing away. Above, life and a slither of dawn reflecting on water. Surrender. Anguish. Time slowing down. She invites stagnation and decay to flow into her lungs. Hypothermia is red, blue and black. Red is a broken heart. Blue is a weak pulse. Black is consciousness slipping away. Near death experience opens the mind. Held by the water and dreaming of death she floats through the portal to connect with wild woman consciousness because this is where the wisdom and memory of drowned women are stored. Water is a sentient being. Water is a battery, a resonant library, an Akashic Record flowing with consciousness. Woman on land, seal in the sea, ancient tales of Selkies make sense to her now. “Be still,” whispers the Selkie, “I’ll stay with you a while.” On the way down she meets Ophelia. Haunting eyes staring upwards. Waterlogged dress weighing her down. Ophelia is dying an art establishment death…. a death in turquoise, encircled with water lilies! Our shero floats face down, arms out stretched, lake bed slipping away, sea weed hair flowing all around her. She is out of her depth and her screams are silent. It is very quiet and still down there! Part bird, part woman, part fish, the tug of love and loss as woeful melody unites all women, for this is where the Sirens are and they won’t let her drown. Where there is water there is life. “Where there is love there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi. Down here the Sirens sing songs of love, loss and fear as emotion washes over them. The river’s soul melody resonates because when one woman is violated we all feel violated. Deep in our hearts all women know the patriarch has colonised our bodies and this is why we respond to the Siren’s sigh. The Siren’s sigh is death and darkness and time standing still, a place of reckoning, before a painful rebirth. It’s an amniotic blackness where ideas are born. It’s a portal to wisdom through a veil of mist. This precious water, the elixir of life, brings life to all it touches, awakening seeds. Seeds of consciousness. Seeds of resistance! Seeds of saying NO! Tales of Swan Maidens swirl at the surface. An ‘amorous voyeur’, let’s call him ‘sex pest’, has stolen the Swan Maiden’s wings and is hiding in the bushes watching her bathe. Trapped in the water, she urges us to strap our wings on and rise up in resistance. Head of a woman, tail of a fish, the Mermaid understands human emotion. “Trust the process,” she murmurs, “I know it has been hard for you.” Part woman, part dragonfly, water nymphs play in the water reeds, reminding us of our daughters. We cannot abandon them now. We must return to the surface and connect with the spirit of the rescued dragged onto land. Breath in. Breath out. Waterlogged lungs. Oxygen for the blood. Calm for the nervous system. Fear of life overcome! She connects to the spirit of menopausal women who have returned to the ocean. Women who embrace a cold north sea, anticipating skin against water, because they know it is the right place to be. Feeding on cold water endorphins they suffer bouts of extreme happiness. Buffeted by waves they enter the sea with a sense of of naughtiness. It’s a body reset. A cold water buzz. A cure all. Bliss. An antidote to flushing. A balance for the nervous system. We women are creatures of cycles. We belong to the great watery vastness, swaying with the tides, swelling with the moon and moving in waves. Returning to the sea, when our own cycles are over, feels like coming home. “Yes, we did many things, then – all Beautiful…” – Sappho, Come Close. When women unite, even in spirit, something beautiful happens. There is joy in sorrow. Power in vulnerability. Strength in unity. And freedom in acceptance! One day all women will return from the ponds to impart their wisdom. “Granddaughter we do hear you calling us.” So what became of the women who were murdered in the waters? The witches and healers? The crones and the brewers? The midwives and the pagans? The sick, the old and the ugly? The rich women whose land they seized? The women who spoke out? The cat owners? The women who annoyed their husbands? The Women whose intuition was turned against them? The women who were forced into the Swimming Test and ducking-stool? “Let’s strip them naked, shave their heads and strap them to the ‘stool of repentance’ with iron bands. Let’s dunk them in the pond so the watery womb of imagination turns on them.” Guilty if she rejects the baptismal water and floats. Innocent if she drowns. See how it works? They set impossible rules for games we could never win. No wonder trauma is still our default setting. No wonder the Siren’s sigh! I wonder how many of us ordinary women would have been ‘scolded as cuckolds’ and drowned by the mob if we’d been living then. The patriarch used holy water as a persecutory device. They turned water wisdom into a judge and used it to absolve themselves of their sadistic, voyeuristic pleasure of watching acts of social humiliation, torture and brutality. They watched women drown and blamed the women and the water, not themselves. The Siren’s sigh is a powerful lament, feared because it speaks the truth. Injustice flows …
(Art Exhibition 1) Immortal Diamond Exhibition: The Trickster Figure in Art and Alchemy by Frances Guerin

[Author’s Note: “Immortal Diamond Exhibition: The trickster figure inart and alchemy” will be hosted in Assembly Point: Assembly Point:Guild 152 Sturt St Melbourne during the period of 30th Jan-26th Feb2023.] Art by Frances Guerin Queen of the Humaroos with King Parrots and roses, 2022 white earthenware, underglazes and glaze fired to 1100 degrees overall dimensions 50 cm x 25c x 30 cm This exhibition honours the dreamers of the first dreams. The language of dreams arises down the millennia at times, always unexpectedly, pointing to the great secrets written on stones and clay pots, the first music and powering the imagination of those inclined to listen and see. As a forest dweller, the experience of avian communication is not new. It was demonstrated early in these works’ development when, full of doubt about the subject matter, two King Parrots flew into the house and sat over a book by Carl Jung, then on a ceramic mandala. They then flew from the house to the studio, perching on unfinished paintings and ceramics and then on the kiln. This was so uncanny, so pertinent that the birds showed no fear but looked at me directly and only chose specific items that I became confident of the way forward. As the result this work is dedicated to them in the form of a tree of birds combined with a large Humaroo holding two parrots. Then in winter, a face appeared in the landscape of central Victoria in a dream announcing itself as Danisia, earthmother figure found in Europe of the same derivative as Danu the Irish Earthmother and possibly associated with the primordial Vedic goddess Danu meaning river or flow. (To be continued) https://www.magoism.net/2014/03/meet-mago-contributor-frances-guerin/
(Essay) The Equinoxes as Story of Redemption: Sacred Balance of Maternal Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

At 11:02 UT March 20th it will be Autumn and Spring Equinox at the same time on the Planet – the Seasonal Moments of balance of light and dark that occur in the dark part and in the light part of the year respectively. The story essentially enacted and told at these seasonal transitions is one of descent and return – the mystery and power of loss and return. The Autumn Equinox (sometimes named as Mabon) is inseparable from the Spring Equinox in its revelation. Spring Equinox is frequently named as Eostar, from which the Christian rituals of Easter have taken their name since the Middle Ages of the Common Era. The most popular story of descent and return in the Christian West, and also adopted within other cultures around the globe, is that of Jesus: a story celebrated in the Christian Easter rituals. Jesus is regarded literally by many, and at least nominally by many more, as the Redeemer – shaman if you like – who saves all of creation from eternal alienation and loss. Such stories of redemption may be understood in essence, as a desire for the restoration of Beauty – a sense of Cosmic order. The fact that Jesus’s story as told is based on more ancient stories of descent and return remains unkown to many, and the fact that the Cosmos Herself reveals such story often remains out of reach – disabling the perception of stories of descent and return that may be witnessed in what was/is most likely the primary place of such revelation – the phases of the Moon and seasonal experiences. Such Cosmic/Earth-based story may be more useful in our times, for the regaining of deep relationship with our place of being, since the saviour or redemptive quality – the return of Beauty – is revealed within our creative context Herself, and all participate in it by nature of being and becoming. It does not require an external entity to do the dying on behalf of all and resurrect by extraordinary miracle. The initiates who attended the ancient celebrations of the Autumn Equinox in Greece – the Eleusinian Mysteries – were awestruck when the ear of wheat was upheld: they got something in that moment, that the cut wheat held within it. It was Seed, a numinous reality, a holy thing. Both Equinoxes celebrate a sacred balance of loss and return which are inseparable, and they may both be understood in the Mystery of the Seed. The Seed essentially is, and represents, deep Creativity, that manifests in the flower of Spring and the fruit of the harvest in Autumn: seed becomes fruit, fruit becomes seed, as is commonly spoken in Pagan ceremony[i], and illustrated in the diametric slicing of an apple which reveals the core – the Kore, understood as the Daughter-Self within the Mother, in the heart-intelligence of the Mother, illustrating the continuity of the life thread. It is a religious relationship, expressed in icons of the Mother Demeter handing wheat to the Daughter Persephone. Such an icon came to be central to the Autumn Equinox rituals as we do them at my place, wherein the celebrant as Demeter hands each participant stalks of wheat tied with thin red ribbon/thread. The rituals of Autumn Equinox season express that the beauty and sustenance (the harvest) that we may enjoy everyday, unfold from the underworld, the deep dark Earth – into which the Seed goes. The metaphor expresses a stepping into the creative power of the Abyss: that the ancients could see in the Seed, and in the vulva shape of it … the Mother-Source, which was/is, at the same time, Daughter and continuity: ontological renewal. It was an initiation into the vision, the knowledge of the Seed, as a thread of life that continues beneath the visible. The metaphor arose at a time in the human story when the power of the seed was coming to be understood – thus it is often said poetically that Demeter gifted humans with agriculture. Demeter, the Grain Mother, is Earth-Mother (Gimbutas 1991:141) and identified with the triangle motif – the pubic triangle – which represents the sacred Source of Life (Gimbutas 1991:145). For millennia in Greece, this Seasonal Moment was the holy celebration of Persephone’s descent to the Underworld, and in earliest traditions of female-based metaphor, Goddess-centred sympathies, evidence suggests that Her descent may be understood as voluntary, as Charlene Spretnak tells it in her re-storying (1992:105-118), and as Marija Gimbutas’ research indicates (1999:160-161). The Daughter-Self of the Mother knows the necessity of the journey into the dark, if life is to be renewed[ii]: She (the Seed) thus comforts the dead, the lost, with the promise of renewal, the restoration of Beauty. Her descent is also a journey to self-knowledge, to Wisdom, to becoming Mother: as such, She is shaman, Redeemer. It is said in Pagan tradition that Persephone becomes “Queen” of the Underworld – that is, it is a descent to “Sovereignty”: it is meant that She is Caretaker in that world, and also, that the self must be known, is the primary location of the Sacred. It is not a sovereignty that lords it over others, but a sovereignty that knows its agency, and will dare the Journey required. As Sovereign, Persephone is all three dynamics of a female trinity at once: She as Seed is New Young One, Old One and Mother, a sacred balance of Creativity. It is a threefold Wisdom of deep reverence for the small self, in deep relationship with the web of life, directly participating in Cosmic Creativity. The Demeter-Persephone Mysteries celebrate a familiar-ity with the Deep, a descent to power: a power that is understood as the capacity an apple tree has to make an apple – not as a capacity for control (Judy Grahn in Spretnak 1982:265). It is an authority earned by shamanic capacity to travel the depths of transformation, and of vision to see the Thread of Life that continues beneath the visible, …
(Poem) Daffodils by Andrea Nicki

Their heads hang low from weeks of battering rain. They must find it hard to trust, meet the gaze of the new sun. Still, they hold their mouths open– a faithful chorus with perfect pitch yellow.
(She Summons Excerpt) The Seed Who Summons (Part 3) by Claire Dorey

Were Snake 1 by Claire Dorey Sophia has metamorphosised, from a slip of a viper, into a full grown python, patterned like a jaguar, coiling her visceral snake body around my ankle. She is immensely strong and I can feel her grip tighten. “Come down into the underworld with me,” she purrs, flipping me over as her sinews flex. She pulls me, head first, into a cavern beneath the roots of the cherry tree. The earth smells of petrichor – organic and fertile – and even though I’m plunging through the top soil, I feel weightless. I sense this is a sacred journey and I’m following in the footsteps of the enlightened. Inanna made this journey, so did Persephone. Dante wrote an epic poem about it. The game Snakes and Ladders is about it, and countless Romans descended into rock carved warrens to consult with priestesses – conduits to underworld consciousness – who sat over vents, breathing in the Earth’s vapours. “Even Alice went down a rabbit h-o-l-e,” I shriek, as we descend through the sub strata; past tree roots and rabbit warrens; past dormant seeds; past remnants of lost civilisations. We pass forgotten knowledge waiting to be rediscovered and stored up energy waiting to be released. I can feel the pulse of the Earth strengthen the deeper we go. As we descend I become unburdened – unlearning lifetimes of conditioning, stripping back to the essential essence of who I am and how I’m supposed to feel – light and free. We arrive at the agamogenesistic egg (there’s that word again!) – the divine consciousness – the transcendent heart of the Goddess – the primordial seed of knowing, at the Earth’s core. It is iridescent like an opal, spherical like the moon and although it has no density you can’t pass through it. Probably the best description I can give is to say it is like infinity; a ball of nacreous consciousness; a living, regenerative, breathing, crystal super brain, programmed with awareness; a matrix pulse of past, present and future nothingness; but it really is much more than that. If singing had density it would be like this. Sophia introduces me to the Grandmother Serpent, a sixty metre long, guardian, boa-constrictor who is coiled around the primordial egg. I am dumbstruck. “This is….” Sophia pauses, apologetic as she introduces me, “you know what, in all of this, I forgot to ask your name!” In this moment I also forget my name. I open my mouth but nothing comes out. “Can we give you a name then?” asks Grandmother Serpent. I move my lips and still no words come out. “Let’s call her Hekate,” says the Grandmother as she nudges me towards the seed of all creation. “Go on Hekate. Lie on it.” I lean my forehead on the giant ball of infinite knowingness and experience peace and connection like I’d never known before. There is an exchange of joy, so simple in its purity. Gone are any clouds of negative emotion – there is just joy…. yes joy is what this feeling is – ecstasy – probably what the vedic sages would describe as Bliss. So I’m leaning on the primordial egg in a state of Bliss when I become aware that a masculine entity has arrived. He wants a piece of the action and starts to lean into the egg. I recognise him as the menacing and brutish Hades, god of the underworld and rapist who abducted Persephone. I resent his presence, all the more because this rapist was immortalised by patriarchy. He has gnarled old horns, leathery hooves in place of feet, a vestigal tail, and his beard is charred and black and emits a pulse like a geiger counter, programmed to seek out victims. He grabs my fingers and we are locked in a battle of wills, knuckle to knuckle, across the surface of the primordial knowingness, until a crack appears. Eventually my flame-thrower will, which is stronger than his, shatters the egg and it breaks in two. As we cling to separate halves, the egg sheds a tear and the Bliss is gone. The tear becomes a gushing torrent, sweeping us up as supernatural forces turn us into water. The battle of wills has left us exhausted – dehydrated too – and in the confusion we drink ourselves until our egos fade away and then we find we are whole and pure again. The Grandmother Serpent spirals back around the primordial egg, like a giant bandage. “I will hold the two halves together until they heal,” she says. “You’ve done good Hekate.” Sophia is praising me. “You have transformed Hades into the Divine Masculine, Shiva’s spark, by disabling his reptilian brain, where the primitive and aggressive reflexes are. Now you can both rise to the surface.” “How do we do that?” we ask. “It’s simple,” replies Sophia, “Just strap on what we call the Isis jet pack.” I raise one eyebrow quizzically. “You must have heard of Isis,” thunders the Grandmother, “the Egyptian Moon Goddess who is depicted as a cobra or as a divine winged creature. Wings and Snake. What does this combination remind you of? Come on, its obvious!”. “She is what the vedic sages would call a Kundalini Goddess,” Sophia butts in. “To rise to the surface: release the three and a half coils of serpent power that resides in the base of your spine. Let this Sacred Feminine energy – primordial life force – rise through your chakras, then let the rising Kundalini propel you upwards.” We are back on terra firma, and I’m amazed I have been instrumental in bringing the Divine Masculine – a defeated, rinsed and purified Hades – back to the surface of the Earth. And here we both stand under my cherry tree – the carmine temple to fertility and disintegration and regeneration, that I planted forty years ago. “Would you Adam and Eve it!” (Cockney English Rhyming Slang for “would you believe it!”) How the …
I Cerridwn by Jennifer Powell

Art by Jennifer Powell I have long been held in the sway of the Welsh myths and Cerridwen had always held great power for me. She was seen as a triple Goddess as a shapeshifting Shamaness and a Birth and Death Mother. I was inspired by the image of her rising as the moon at twilight and taking the dying Sun into her body to sail across the ocean of night to birth the Sun at dawn. It gave me a hopeful sense of the potential of the new day and that the power of creating that day is now and has always been in my hands. This painting is about seven years old and as usual when it was finished it got stuck in a dark corner and I hardly saw it. Then a few months ago after the death of my beloved I had to move house. I decided to hang the painting in the study just a few feet from where I am now sitting at my computer. It wasn’t just the loss of my beloved but also the house we had shared together, and I felt like I had been disassembled, deconstructed. My life was never going to be the same again and I had to make myself anew. Because I had painted myself as Cerridwen the image gave me some comfort some hope. Perhaps it is because it is coming up to the anniversary of my great sorrow or maybe I had let myself get a bit overwhelmed, but I seemed to manufacturing difficulties for myself. I was contemplating this while looking at the painting and I noticed something I had never really seen before but there is a slight look of weariness in my painted face. I saw and felt my humanity I didn’t want to be responsible all the time I wanted to rest from the creation of myself and my life I wanted to sleep it all away. Last weekend I was visited by one of my oldest and dearest friends and we did what we have done whenever possible over the last fifty-five years, we drank gallons of tea and put the world to rights. We would share our joys and pains confess our struggles and pull tarot cards for inspiration and insight. The last card of the three incredibly pertinent cards had a line in it so powerful it vibrated through me like a great bell. It is from the Osho Zen Tarot pack and the card is called We Are The World. “When we can combine our tremendous inner wealth to create a treasure of love and wisdom that is available to all, we are linked together in the exquisite pattern of eternal creation.” All my adult life whenever I have been low or ill or in a dark place people have said to me, “Jennifer are you painting you know you are only well when you’re working.” They are right I know that, but it is not just the work although it certainly does help keep me sane. But it is about being caught up in that “exquisite flow” That creative energy that flows through the universe the energy with which the Divine makes itself manifest. It is time for me to get back into the boat create myself anew as a new dawn awaits me. https://www.magoism.net/2016/12/meet-mago-contributor-jennifer-powell/
(Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Benigni

Helen Benigni (Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania) is a published author and a Full Professor in English at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia. For several decades, Helen has been teaching classes in Comparative Mythology with an emphasis on Goddess studies. Her books, The Myth of the Year (University Press of America, 2003), The Goddess and the Bull (University Press of America, 2007), and The Mythology of Venus (University Press of America, 2013) incorporate the research findings of archeoastronomers to determine the myths associated with the cycles found on the ancient calendars of the Greeks and the Celts. Identifying the goddesses of the matri-local cultures of the ancients with the seasons represented by the lunar, solar and stellar bodies has been a major endeavor in the study of archetypes, with an emphasis on the feminine archetypes of the celestial realms. Helen’s research with the Hellenic Studies Center in Washington D.C., her many trips to ancient sites, and her collaborative efforts with scholars in mythology, astronomy, archeology, and art have led to her discovery of the presence of the Goddess in the night sky and the continued renewal of the Goddess in contemporary times.
(Poem & Art) Medial Woman by Arlene Bailey

Art, Between the Worlds” by Arlene Bailey ©2018 We are now in the time of the Medial Woman. She comes in my dreams beckoning me come walk between the worlds. Beckoning me keep my promise made before coming to this world. To live strongly. To live wildly. To live deeply. She lives in the light. She lives in the dark. An Edgewalker hovering in the liminal places of our psyche, she both sees and hears what is between the worlds. No longer constrained by society’s expectations of what a woman is, the Medial Woman is free to move as she is called. Feral and Wild and standing always in her sovereign knowing of Divine Female Power, the Medial Woman Calls. Are you Listening? _____________________________________ Medial Woman by Arlene Bailey, ©2020 https://www.magoism.net/2020/04/meet-mago-contributor-arlene-bailey/
(Announcement) Mago Wickedary of Goddess Feminist Activism, 4 Year Projects

Dear RTM Contributors and Readers, Upon our 5th anniversary on August 15, 2015, Mago Books is pleased to announce a practice of Maternal/Gynocentric Gift Economy in the form of Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary of Goddess Feminist Activism. Mago Books seeks encyclopedic articles on (1) persons/organizations, (2) feminist/gynocentric notions, (3) animals/plants/nature. These articles will be first published in Gynapedia, Online Gynocentric Encyclopedia. We aim at publishing them as three books in the form of E-Books and/or Print Books within the coming 4 years by Sept. Equinox of 2021. On a perennial basis, one can become Author for Gynapedia and create pages. Please find the proposal form below and submit it accordingly. What is the Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary Project about? It is one of the things that we CAN do in the face of ever-accelerating patriarchal assaults. We trust that the speed of our minds/hearts/souls runs faster than that of the former. The project is conceived as an extension and continuation of the Mago Gift Work aligned with Maternal/Gynocentric Gift Economy. Ultimately, we do this to give ourselves, communities, and the terrestrial eco-community what we are universally given by our mothers, ancestors, and the Cosmic Mother. Advocating the Gift Economy, Genevieve Vaughan writes, “We are born into a Gift Economy practiced by those who mother us, enabling us to survive. The economy of exchange, quid pro quo, separates us from each other and makes us adversarial, while gift giving and receiving creates mutuality and trust.” The project of Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary of Goddess feminist activism aims at channeling the Sisterly dynamic (Inter-cosmic Sisterhood) in which one’s self-motivated giving/sharing for the cause of ALL in WE empowers both the receiver and the giver, the Original Dynamic of the Creatrix. Simply put, we aspire to host the Metamorphic Nature of the Gift Economy; our giving/sharing of gifts/talents/resources transforms us all and saves the inter-specieal terrestrial community (Yes, we humans are responsible for the survival of animals, plants and nature as well). Outcome of such dynamic is Sisterly trust and bond that animate all in WE. In this mechanism, we experience the divine providence of our giving and receiving, which guides us into an ever-deepening commitment to look after the Whole. The term, Wickedary, is borrowed from Mary Daly’s Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language in Cahoots with Jane Caputi. As the title suggests, Mago Wickedary is propelled by the vision of Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, advocate of Magoism who was immensely influenced by Mary Daly. Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary of Goddess Feminist Activism is perceived as the third type of the collective writing project that the Mago Work has undertaken after She Rises series and Celebrating the Goddess series. Project Categories (not in priority order): (1) Persons and organizations (writers, researchers, advocates, poets, artists, musicians, and others) (2) Feminist/gynocentric notions (3) Animals, plants and nature Publishing Media: Gynapedia (Free Online Gynocentric Encyclopedia), E-books, and/or Print Books Deadline: Ongoing till Jan. 31, 2021. Primary Deadline Jan. 31, 2018. The Persons and Organizations Category: This book will build on the bio data of Mago Work collective writing projects’ contributors including She Rises Volume 1 and She Rises Volume 2, Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess Volume 1, Return to Mago E-Magazine, Mago Pool Circle and Gynapedia but does NOT exclude other Goddess feminist activist writers, artists, poets, researchers, advocates, musicians, educators, and others. Proposal Form for all three categories: 1. Your name, country/state/city of residence 2. Contact email, and/or website(s) 3. Categories of your articles (one may write for multiple categories): (1) Persons and organizations (writers, researchers, advocates, poets, artists, musicians, and others) (2) Feminist/gynocentric notions (3) Animals, plants and nature 4. List of your accomplishments (briefly describe them in the spirit of Gift Economy, if appropriate) 5. Please indicate if you can create page(s) in Gynapedia directly. If so, list your online article(s) instead of below. If you do not wish to become a Gynapedia Author, please refer to below: Proposed entry word count: up to 2000 words (include URLs for interlinking) Font: Times New Roman (12 font size, 1 spaced) Style: Chicago Style, footnotes (if applicable) Illustrations: As attachment of jpg files (must be 300 dpi) Submission: Email submission only, to Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang magopoolcircle@gmail.com (State “Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary Proposal” in the subject line of your email. Proposal Form for Persons and organizations: Write the summary of your biography (no more than 100 words strictly) AND answer the proposal form below (all together 1000 words). Attach your self-photo image and/or a couple of other images in your email. Please use the following proposal form (you may answer them selectively). 1. Your name, country/state/city of residence 2. Contact email, and/or website(s) 3. Your area of specialty (research, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, prose, art, photography, advocacy, social movement) 4. List of your accomplishments (briefly describe them in the spirit of Gift Economy, if appropriate) 5. What makes you become a Goddessian, feminist, and/or activist? 6. How did you come to arrive at where/what you are as a Goddessian, feminist, and/or activist? 7. As a Goddessian, feminist, and/or activist, what do you aspire for yourself, the young, and/or the world? 8. Something that you want to give/share with the Goddess feminist activism community and/or the world. 9. Please indicate if you can create page(s) in Gynapedia directly. If so, list your online article(s) instead of below. If you do not wish to become a Gynapedia Author, please refer to below: Proposed entry word count: up to 2000 words (include URLs for interlinking) Font: Times New Roman (12 font size, 1 spaced) Style: Chicago Style, footnotes (if applicable) Illustrations: As attachment of jpg files (must be 300 dpi) Submission: Email submission only, to Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (magopoolcircle@gmail.com) (State “Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary Proposal” in the subject line of your email.) Mago Books is seeking volunteer Authors and Coeditors for these books as well as Gynapedia. Please contact Dr. Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). In gratitude of RTM Editorial Volunteers! Support The Mago Work/The Mago Pod!

(Special Post 7) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. […]
(Special Post 1) Multi-linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

“Ma” in “Mago” and “Ma-Gaia” Mother Goddess, ca.7250-6700 BCE, Catal Huyuk Turkey [Conversation between Carol P. […]
(Special post) Laurie Baymarrwangga, Senior Australian of the Year 2012

Posted with permission in Return to Mago on ‘Australia Day’, 26 January 2014 (Australian time), […]
(Special Post 6) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that […]
(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 […]
(Special Post 4) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing eight sequels (all nine parts) are a revised version […]

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/Deep Autumn within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 4 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Samhain/Deep Autumn are: Northern Hemisphere – October 31st/November 1st Southern Hemisphere – April 30th/May 1st though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, thus actually a little later in early May for S.H., and early November for N.H., respectively. A Samhain/Deep Autumn Ceremonial Altar In this cosmology, Deep Autumn/Samhain is a celebration of She Who creates the Space to Be par excellence. This aspect of the Creative Triplicity is associated with the autopoietic quality of Cosmogenesis[i] and with the Crone/Old One of the Triple Goddess, who is essentially creative in Her process. This Seasonal Moment celebrates the process of the Crone, the Ancient One … how we are formed by Her process, and in that sense conceived by Her: it is an ‘imaginal fertility,’ a fertility of the dark space, the sentient Cosmos. It mirrors the fertility and conception of Beltaine (which is happening in the opposite Hemisphere at the same time). Some Samhain/Deep Autumn Story This celebration of Deep Autumn has been known in Christian times as “Halloween,” since the church in the Northern Hemisphere adopted it as “All Hallow’s eve” (31st October) or “All Saint’s Day” (1st November). This “Deep Autumn” festival as it may be named in our times, was known in old Celtic times as Samhain (pronounced “sow-een), which is an Irish Gaelic word, with a likely meaning of “Summer’s end,” since it is the time of the ending of the Spring-Summer growth. Many leaves of last Summer are turning and falling at this time: it was thus felt as the end of the year, and hence the New Year. It was and is noted as the beginning of Winter. It was the traditional Season for bringing in the animals from the outdoor pastures in pastoral economies, and when many of them were slaughtered. Earth’s tilt is continuing to move the region away from the Sun at this time of year. This Seasonal Moment is the meridian point of the darkest quarter of the year, between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice; the dark part of the day is longer than the light part of the day and is still on the increase. It is thus the dark space of the annual cycle wherein conception and dreaming up the new may occur. As with any New Year, between the old and the new, in that moment, all is possible. We may choose in that moment what to pass to the future, and what to relegate to compost. Samhain may be understood as the Space between the breaths. It is a generative Space – the Source of all. There is particular magic in being with this Dark Space. This Dark Space which is ever present, may be named as the “All-Nourishing Abyss,”[ii] the “Ever-Present Origin.”[iii] It is a generative Place, and we may feel it particularly at this time of year, and call it to consciousness in ceremony. Some Samhain/Deep Autumn Motifs The fermentation of all that has passed begins. This moment may mark the Transformation of Death – the breakdown of old forms, the ferment and rot of the compost, and thus the possibility of renewal.[iv] It is actually a movement towards form and ‘re-solution’ (as Beltaine – its opposite – begins a movement towards entropy and dissolution). With practice we begin to develop this vision: of the rot, the ferment, being a movement towards the renewal, to see the gold. And just so, does one begin to know the movement at Beltaine, towards expansion and thus falling apart, dissolution. In Triple Goddess poetics it may be expressed that the Crone’s face here at Samhain begins to change to the Mother – as at Beltaine the Virgin’s face begins to change to the Mother: the aspects are never alone and kaleidoscope into the other … it is an alive dynamic process, never static. The whole Wheel is a Creation story, and Samhain is the place of the conceiving of this Creativity, and it may be in the Spelling of it – saying what we will; and thus, beginning the Journey through the Wheel. Conception could be described as a “female-referring transformatory power” – a term used by Melissa Raphael in Thealogy and Embodiment:[v] conception happens in a female body, yet it is a multivalent cosmic dynamic, that is, it happens in all being in a variety of forms. It is not bound to the female body, yet it occurs there in a particular and obvious way. Androcentric ideologies, philosophies and theologies have devalued the event and occurrence of conception in the female body: whereas PaGaian Cosmology is a conscious affirmation, invocation and celebration of “female sacrality”[vi] as part of all sacrality. It does thus affirm the female as a place; as well as a place.[vii] ‘Conception’ is identified as a Cosmic Dynamic essential to all being – not exclusive to the female, yet it is a female-based metaphor, one that patriarchal-based religions have either co-opted and attributed to a father-god (Zeus, Yahweh, Chenrezig – have all taken on being the ‘mother’), or it has been left out of the equation altogether. Womb is the place of Creation – not some God’s index finger as is imagined in Michelangelo’s famous painting. Melissa Raphael speaks of a “menstrual cosmology”. It is an “ancient cosmology in which chaos and harmony belong together in a creation where perfection is both impossible and meaningless;”[viii] yet it is recently affirmed in Western scientific understanding of chaos, as essential to order and spontaneous emergence. Samhain is an opportunity for immersion in a deeper reality which the usual cultural trance denies. It may celebrate immersion in what is usually ‘background’ – the real world beyond and within time and space: which is actually the major portion of the Cosmos we live in.[ix] Samhain is about understanding that the Dark is a fertile place: in its decay and rot it seethes with infinite unseen complex golden threads connected to the wealth of Creativity of all that has gone before – like any …
(Photography & Poetry) Thoughts of Spring by Deanne Quarrie

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

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

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

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

Walking with Bb: a story exploring the psychic connection between one woman and her bear. Preface: The black bear – hunting season in Maine is brutal – four months of bear hell – five if one includes the month where hunters can track bears for “practice” with hounds – separate mothers and cubs, terrorize them, tree them and do anything but legally kill them. During the legal slaughter, Hunters bait bears with junk food by putting old donuts etc. in cans and shoot the bear while he or she is eating. Most bears (82 percent) are slaughtered in this manner, the rest are killed by hounding and trapping. The season begins in August and lasts through December. Trapping, by the way, is illegal in every state but Maine. Black bears are hated, and that hatred will, of course, eventually result in their extirpation. I had a shy (male) year old black bear visiting my house this past summer with whom I developed a friendship, and what follows is part of our story: Last Saturday I was walking down the road when I remembered that I had not done my daily “circle of protection” imaging for Bb (standing as he was the day he visited me at the window early in August). When I began to do this another picture of Bb moving on all four feet with his face turned towards mine super-imposed itself over his standing image. I could almost see his expression, but not quite. I didn’t know what this imaging meant beyond that we were communicating in some unknown way, and he was in the area (not a good thing on hunting Saturdays). He had not been coming in most nights and I was worried… That night he came. He is still making nightly visits five days later, the most sequentially consistent visits since September 15th, the day I believed that he had been shot. This experience prompted me to write about telepathy and precognition. It is close to All Hallows and the full Hunter’s moon (Nov 3). I keep listening to Charlie Russell’ story which reminds me that loving bears (especially male bears) is hard, almost a sure recipe for disaster, and that I was not alone in this deep concern for and fear of losing Bb. I can barely stand to remember my other bear losses and I can’t stand feeling them. Even after I wrote about the incident with Bb, the experience seemed to carry a charge that didn’t dissipate. Had I missed something? Next I wrote “Root Healer,” exploring the possibility that as I continued to act as Bb’s “little bear mother” now employing psychic techniques to keep him safe (in some desperation as it was the only means left open to me to protect this very vulnerable yearling), that Bb’s presence might also include a gift for me and that it might involve some kind of root healing for my body because Nature thrives on reciprocity. One idea I missed completely, for it was so obvious. Bb’s image was communicating to me that we were having a psychic conversation in that very moment. It was the first time in three months of imaging protective circles that moved with him that I had confirmation from him that we were communicating effectively in this unknown way. This rarely happens. Normally when I do this kind of work, I just do it. I don’t get direct confirmation that it’s working from the animal itself (except with Lily b). Knowing this helped me make another decision I might not have made so intentionally. The hunting season will last into mid December, and I will be traveling during that last month. I keep thinking that putting actual physical distance between Bb and I might pose more of a threat for his life and I have to remind myself that psychic phenomena are not distance dependent. I should be able to image that protective circle every day and feel that it is working. Bb has already shown me that it can but I fear adding distance because I don’t completely trust my own perceptions.* I suspect believing might be an additional dimension of ensuring success when it comes to psychic protection for this bear. But how do I incorporate belief into a picture that is so clouded with personal/cultural doubt? Half the time I don’t believe myself and virtually no one except Rupert Sheldrake, Iren and Harriet have ever taken my experiences seriously. I have to remind myself that I have done this work many times dealing with doubt and it worked anyway. The point of writing this reflection might be to put me on a new edge of increasing Bb’s odds of survival. If it’s possible that an attitude that embraces believing in what I do could help me protect Bb more effectively until hunting is over and its time for him to den in peace I want to claim it. The question I need to answer now is how to go about moving into a more trusting self as a woman who continues to walk with a bear at her side? The night after I wrote the above paragraph I dream of the doubters in the roles of my parents, and in a friend. I take these dreams seriously as doubters inside me and out. These dreams may be telling me that it is unreasonable to expect me to believe that what I do works when no one else does? The problem with this idea is that on some level I do believe. I feel as if I am walking with this bear, every single day. I think about him constantly. The only thing that got me out of the house yesterday was that he was out of chocolate donuts. Something is intensifying my relationship with Bb although I never see him. I am caught in a field of bear energy and information, perhaps through some version of beauty and the beast. That an archetype is …
(Prose) Desire: the Wheel of Her Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the concluding chapter (Chapter 8) of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Place of Being is a passionate place, where desire draws forth what is sought, co-creates what is needed[1]; within a con-text – a story – where love of self, other and all-that-is are indistinguishable … they are nested within each other and so is the passion for being. I begin to understand desire afresh: this renewed understanding has been an emergent property of the religious practice of seasonal celebration: that is, the religious practice of the ceremonial celebration of Her Creativity. It has been said She is “that which is attained at the end of desire[2].” Within the context of ceremonial engagement and inner search for Her, I begin to realize how desire turns the Wheel. As the light part of the cycle waxes from Early Spring, form/life builds in desire. At Beltaine/High Spring, desire runs wild, at Summer Solstice, it peaks into creative fullness, union … and breaks open at that interchange into the dark part of the cycle – the dissolution of Lammas/ Late Summer. She becomes the Dark One, who receives us back – the end of desire. It has been a popular notion in the Christian West, that the beautiful virgin lures men (sic) to their destruction, and as I perceive the Wheel, it is indeed Virgin who moves in Her wild delight towards entropy/dissolution; however in a cosmology that is in relationship with the dark, this is not perceived as a negative thing. Also, in this cosmology, there is the balancing factor of the Crone’s movement towards new life, in the conceiving dark space of Samhain/Deep Autumn – a dynamic and story that has not been a popular notion in recent millennia. Desire seems not so much a grasping, as a receiving, an ability or capacity to open and dissolve. I think of an image of an open bowl as a signifier of the Virgin’s gift. The increasing light is received, and causes the opening, which will become a dispersal of form – entropy, if you like: this is Beltaine/High Spring – the Desire[3]that is celebrated is a movement towards dis-solution … that is its direction. In contrast, and in balance, Samhain/Deep Autumn celebrates re-solution, which is a movement towards form – it is a materializing gathering into form, as the increasing darkness is received. It seems it is darkness that creates form, as it gathers into itself – as many ancient stories say, and it is light that creates dispersal. And yet I see that the opposite is true also. I think of how there is desire for this work that I have done, for whatever one does – it is then already being received. Desire is receiving. What if I wrote this, and it was not received or welcomed in some way. But the desire for it is already there, and perhaps the desire made it manifest. Perhaps the desire draws forth manifestation, even at Winter Solstice, even at Imbolc/Early Spring, as we head towards Beltaine – it is desire that is drawing that forth, drawing that process around. Desire is already receiving; it is open. Its receptivity draws forth the manifestation. And then the manifestation climaxes at Summer and dissolves into the manifesting, which is perhaps where the desire is coming from – the desire is in the darkness, in the dark’s receptivity[4]. It becomes very active at the time of Beltaine, it lures the differentiated beings back into Her. So the lure at Beltaine is the luring of differentiated beings into a Holy Lust, into a froth and dance of life, whereupon they dissolve ecstatically back into Her – She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire.” And in the dissolution, we sink deeper into that, and begin again. All the time, it is Desire that is luring the manifest into the manifesting, and the manifesting into the manifest. Passion is the glue, the underlying dynamic that streams through it all – through the light and the dark, through the creative triplicities of Virgin-Mother-Crone, of Differentiation-Communion-Autopoeisis[5]. Passion/Desire then is worthy of much more contemplation. If desire/allurement is the same cosmic dynamic as gravity, as cosmologist Brian Swimme suggests[6], then desire like gravity is the dynamic that links/holds us to our Place, to “that which is”, as philosopher Linda Holler describes the effect of gravity[7]. Held in relationship by desire/allurement we lose abstraction and artificial boundaries, and “become embodied and grow heavy with the weight of the earth[8].” We then know that “being is being-in relation-to”[9]. Holler says that when we think with the weight of Earth, space becomes “thick” as this “relational presence … turns notes into melodies, words into phrases with meaning, and space into vital forms with color and content, (and) also holds the knower in the world[10].”Thus, I at last become a particular, a subject, a felt being in the world – a Place laden with content, sentient: continuous with other and all-that-is. Notes: [1]“…as surely as the chlorophyll molecule was co-created by Earth and Sun, as Earth reached for nourishment; as surely as the ear was co-created by subject and sound, as the subject reached for an unknown signal.” As I have written in PaGaian Cosmology, p. 248. [2]Doreen Valiente, The Charge of the Goddessas referred to in Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p.102-103. [3]I capitalize here, for it is a holy quality. [4]Perhaps the popular cultural association of the darkness/black lingerie etc. with erotica is an expression/”memory” of this deep truth. [5]These are the three qualities of Cosmogenesis, as referred to in PaGaian Cosmology, Chapter 4, “Cosmogenesis and the Female Metaphor”: https://pagaian.org/book/chapter-4/ [6]Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, p.43. [7]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”, Hypatia, Vol. 5 No. 1, p.2. [8]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”,Hypatia, Vol. …
(Art & Poem) Spring Equinox by Sudie Rakusin & Annie Finch

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

(Goma Article Excerpt 2) 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]. Background Discussions Hanung (Her Title) and Sindansu (Divine Goma Tree) We will peel off the layers of patriarchal and Sinocentric devices that conceal her unparalleled supreme manifestations. In a conventional interpretation, we are told that Goma and Hanung are two different persons as the mother and the father of Dangun. This proves to be an androcentric invention to divest Goma of supremacy. Goma is not the consort of Hanung. Nor Hanung the male counterpart of Goma. Goma and Hanung refer to the same figure, not a heterosexual couple. It is her title (Hanung 桓雄) that is split from her (Goma) and made into a male ruler. Androcentric interpreters have noted the two homonyms “Ung (熊 bear)” and “Ung (雄 hero)” but made them two different figures. Thus, they deem that the former “Ung” refers to Ungnyeo, the bear-woman, whereas the latter “Ung” to Hanung, the male ruler. However, the latter “Ung” does not mean a male. It is true that logographic characters are characteristically polysemic. And Ung is no exception as it means “a hero,” “a great person,” or “a male bird.” When it is used to mean a male, it refers to a male bird or animal. The literal meaning of Hanung should be the heroic ruler (Sovereign) of Han (the People of the Creatrix). In short, the character “Ung (Hero),” as is in Cheonung (天雄 Heavenly Hero) and Sinung (神雄 Divine Hero), refers to Goma, the heroic founding ruler (Sovereign) of Danguk. The idea that Hanung is the male ruler remains unsupported. First of all, the present myth is rife with female symbols and images including the cave initiation, the divine tree, conception, and procreation. Indeed, the Goma myth is a completely pacific or rather pacifying story, void of conquering, killing or raping. Secondly, the idea of Hanung as a male founder is left without a direct connection with the bear clan (Ungjok) and the Goma words, a topic to be explicated in detail at a later section. Most critically, if Hanung were the male ruler, his association with Sindansu would be too superficial to give due meaning to the Korean foundation myth. The present myth ascertains that the protagonist of the Sindansu (Divine Goma Tree) motif is a female. Sindansu, the tree of life or the world tree, to be explicated at a later section, is credited with one of the most pivotal mythemes, if not the most, of the Korean foundation myth. It is the cosmic tree, which Goma envisioned for the common origin of all beings from the Triad Creatrix and prayed for conception without a male partner. The syllable, “dan (檀)” in “Sindansu,” refers to the divine tree in Mount Taebaek. It is the eponymous root of the terms that indicate the Goma people. It is used in such words as Danguk (Goma State), Dangun (Head of the Goma State), and Danmok (Goma Tree), to name a few. Note that “Danguk was the strongest among the states of the bear clan,” headed by queens,[1] indicating that Danguk was the the confederal mother state that led the nine daughter states. Put differently, Danguk represents the matriarchal (magocratic, referring to a society ruled by a Magoist shaman queen) confederacy of the bear clan states.[2] Goma’s alternative epithets including “Ungssi-ja (Decendant of the Goma Clan), “Ungssi-wang” (Ruler of the Goma Clan), and “Ungssi-gun” (Head of the Goma Clan) substantiate that she is the ruler and head of the bear clan.[3] Also note that Dangun, Goma’s dynastic successor, “was enthroned as the Descendant of Heavenly Sovereign, as she established the capital in Danmok, Asadal, succeeding Danguk.”[4] Danmok is another word for Sindansu. Its alternative meaning “the birch” comes from the sound of “bakdal (박달).” Prominent Koreanists tend to agree that the character “dan” is related to “barkdal (밝달),” “baekdal (백달),” and “baedal (배달),” all of which indicate the Korean people.[5] However, they do not seem to see the multi-connection among Sindansu, Danmok, Baedal and Goma (Ungnyeo). Thus, they fail to see the Magoist context of the Goma myth. The Goma myth is about Danmok and Sindansu, Goma’s tree in Mount Taeback (Great Resplendence). The Divine Tree of Mount Taebaek is wherein Hanung Goma descended to rule the world. Goma has been commemorated as Ungsang (熊常Eternal Tree) and Dangmok (堂木 Shrine Tree) throughout history. The Goma tree sheds light on the origin of the tree worship in Korea and beyond. According to the Handan Gogi, the veneration of Ungsang originated from the time of Danguk and revived throughout the period of Dangun Joseon.[6] In traditional Korea, it is enshrined as Dangmok (Shrine Tree) in village shrines, Seonhwang-dang. It is not haphazard that Korean women are noted for their prayers of conception under the shrine tree. Splitting Goma into Ungnyeo and Hanung has resulted in awkward phraseology especially concerning her procreation in the story. Ultimately, it proves to be an androcentric device to dismiss the mytheme of her parthenogenetic birth to a child, the virgin birth, a contradictory concept to the patriarchal mindset. She, the shaman queen of the bear clan, was enthroned as Hanung, the dynastic founder Hanung of Danguk. Also, her offspring, Dangun, is the new queen-founder of Joseon who succeeded Danguk, rather than her biological son. The Goma myth is the story of a polity not a family. I maintain that the shaman rulers in Old Magoism (Hanguk, Danguk, and Joseon) are predominantly women.[7] In addition to “Hanung,” other titles of Goma include “Cheongwang (天王 Heavenly Ruler),” “Cheonung (天雄Heavenly Sovereign),” “Sinung (神雄 Divine Sovereign),” “Cheonhwang (天皇 Heavenly Empress),” “Seonhwang (仙皇Immortal Empress), and “Daeung (大雄Great Hero).” The Goma worship in Korean culture remains too pervasive to be recognized. As suggested in these alternative epithets, it has shaped the landscape of Korean popular religions, in particular Shamanism and Buddhism. Most prominently, the Goma worship manifests in the form of revering the Shrine Tree (Dangmok) in Seonhwang-dang (Seonghwang-dang or …
(Book Excerpt 3) The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia

[Author’s Note: The following is from Chapter 8, The Consciousness of WE/HERE/NOW.] The Budoji stories the primordial drama of Mago’s beginning. It furnishes a yet-to-be-heard story of the beginning of the Great Goddess, the taboo story in patriarchy. It is the story of the Creatrix that patriarchy has attempted to erase. It can be temporarily forgotten but can never die because it is the story that is at the root of patriarchy. Ultimately, it is The Story that is happening HERE and NOW. The merit of the Magoist Cosmogony lies in the fact that it, through storying, restores the view of the whole, the macrocosmic view of the All. The holistic view necessarily involves the Great Goddess or the First Mother in that S/HE is the Creatrix. Time is not a linear concept, flowing from one end to the other. Time is the unified Present, happening NOW. It may be said that time is circular or cyclic, as all beings are constantly in motion to enhance the process of self-creation, which causes the whole to change ceaselessly. The Present hosts an infinite number of stories that take place in the undividable One Space HERE. The beginning of the Great Goddess is still happening and we are invited to re-cognize HER STORY in the HERE and NOW. The beginning is a process, not a single isolated event that took place in the remote past.[i] All things exist in the process of becoming HERE and NOW as part of WE. Put differently, the beginning of the Great Goddess is the LIVE SCENE/DRAMA/STORY. We are part of HER STORY. Mago’s beginning is the heart that pumps fresh blood to the body of the terrestrial becoming. The beginning of the Great Goddess is still taking place HERE/NOW. The terrestrial beginning is attributed to the Great Goddess who is self-born through the sonic movement of cosmic light. The beginning story of the Great Goddess is no ordinary one. It is of power and truth, that is, metamorphic. It provides the original text to the meaning of “salvation.” HER Beginning that is happening HERE/NOW holds all from falling into cacophony. For one thing, it delivers us from the patriarchal misconception of ultimate reality that does away with the Creatrix. The holistic view of the Creatrix is capable of saving us from misconceptions and misconduct. Ultimately, it guides us to live our life in harmony with the whole, HERE/NOW. The Magoist Cosmogony engenders the consciousness that WE ARE HERE/NOW. The universe is existent without beginning or end. In one ever-existing reality, things ceaselessly appear and disappear in relation to one another on all levels. All things are in the constant movement of autogenesis striving to arrive at a new position of balance. S/HE IS HERE/NOW telling us the STORY of WE. That is the source of our metamorphosis. Notes: [i] Process thought founded by Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, and John B. Cobb shares a common premise on that regard, although it does not associate ultimate reality with the Creatrix. (See Book Excerpt 1 and Book Excerpt 2. Available in Mago Bookstore.) Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.
(Essay 3) The Magoist Calendar: Mago Time inscribed in Sonic Numerology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This is my latest research that has led me to restore the 13-month, 28-day Mago Calendar, which will be included at the end of its sequels. See Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A), published in 2017.] THE SECOND CALENDAR Then, the Earth had increasingly so much work in all regions. Biodiversity went overboard. The terrestrial song became uncontrollable. The initial calendar became defunct. Lifeforms were left uncoordinated. The Earth fell into disorder, as she had no one to tune the song of earthlings in harmony with the cosmic music of creativity. The Earth was in need of sentient beings who could undertake the task. Mago’s descendants were to be born. Humans were entrusted to cultivate the earthly sound property by the Nine Mago Creatrix. The Budoji writes:
(Mago Almanac Planner Year 5 Excerpt 3) 13 Month 28 Day Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This and its sequences are a newly added portion in the Mago Almanac Planner Year 5, equivalent to the Gregorian Year 2022. Because the Budoji did not explain further about time units smaller than 1 day, I did not follow through some possible implications in previous Mago Almanac volumes. Next year’s Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar Year 5 or 5919 MAGOMA ERA is forthcoming in Mago Bookstore (October 25, 2021). PDF version is available for purchase.] We set the new moon day of the Winter Solstice month in 2017 as the New Year of Year 1. With that, we are able to tap Magoist days into Gregorian days that we moderns use. Then, how do we bring down a Magoist time in the scheme of the Gregorian time? How do we determine the onset of New Year in the Magoist Calendar? When would be the midnight of New Year in Year 1? That requires a translation of Mago time into Gregorian time. We can designate midnight as a midpoint in time equidistant from the sunset of New Year’s Eve to the sunrise of New Year. As local times vary around the globe, the midnight of New Year varies in states and cities. In Los Angeles, California USA, the first Magoist midnight falls on 23:29 on December 17, 2017 for Year 1. That would be 07:29 on December 18, 2017 in UTC. Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Midnight12/17/2017 23:2912/17/2018 23:2912/17/2019 23:2912/16/2020 23:30Sunset16:45, 12/1716:45, 12/1716:45, 12/1716:44, 12/16Sunrise6:53, 12/186:53, 12/18 6:53, 12/186:53, 12/17 (Sunset and sunrise times in Los Angeles, USA) The below table shows the first Magoist midnight (around 0.33 AM) falls on December 18, 2017 in Gyeongju, South Korea. That would be 15:33 on December 17, 2017 in UTC. Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Midnight12/18/2017 0:33.512/18/2018 0:32.512/18/2019 0:32.512/17/2020 0:32.5Sunset17:11, 12/1717:11, 12/1717:11, 12/1717:11, 12/16Sunrise7:28, 12/187:27, 12/18 7:27, 12/187:27, 12/17 (Sunset and sunrise times in Gyeongju, South Korea) We can imagine a spiral progression of years from Little Calendar (one year) to Medium Calendar (two years) and to Large Calendar (four years). Every year has one leap day, whereas every fourth year has another leap day in the middle of the year. Cyclic time, as it progresses, creates rhythm and harmony in the human world. Little Calendar (1 year)13×1=13 months364 days+1 leap day=365 daysMedium Calendar (2 years)13×2=26 months2x(364 days+1 leap day) =730 daysLarge Calendar (4 years)13×4=52 months4x(364 days+1 leap day)+1 leap day=1,461 days (End of the series) https://www.magoacademy.org/virtual-midnight-vigil-to-new-year/ https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang/
(Essay 1) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and her Tradition Magoism[i] This study documents and interprets a substantial body of primary sources concerning Mago [麻姑, also known as Magu or Mako] from Korea, China, and Japan. Much of this material has never been brought to light as a whole. In working with these various and sundry data including folklore, paintings, arts, literature, poetry, toponyms, rituals, historical and religious records, and apocryphal texts, I encountered an organic structure that relates these seemingly unrelated materials and named it Magoism. Magoism refers to an anciently originated gynocentric cultural and historical context of East Asia, which venerates Mago as supreme divine. Although “Magoism” is my coinage, its concept is not new. Magoism is referred to as the Way of Mago, the Origin of Mago, the Event of Mago, Reign of Mago, Heavenly Principle, or simply Mago in historical sources. In the West, its partial manifestation is known as the cult of Magu within the context of Daoism. One of the earliest verified records, the Biography of Magu (Magu zhuan) written by Ge Hong (284-364) dates back to proto-Daoist times.[ii] Nonetheless, “Mago” remains largely forgotten and misrepresented to the world especially in modern times. More incisively, her sublime divinity is made invisible despite strong evidence. No scholarship in the West has treated Mago as a topic in her own right. Mago’s multiple identities ranging from the cosmogonist to a grandmother, from the progenitress to the Daoist goddess, from the sovereign to a shaman/priestess in Korea, China, and Japan remain unregistered in modern scholarship. When mentioned, her transnational manifestation is not recognized cogently. She is often lumped together with other parochial goddesses from China. Other times, she is fetishized as a Daoist goddess of immortality. She is also known, among other representations, as the giant grandmother (goddess) who shaped the natural landscape in the beginning of time among Koreans. In any case, Mago is not deemed on a par or in relation with Xiwangmu (the Queen Mother of the West in Chinese Daoism) and Amaterasu, (the Sun Goddess of the Japanese imperial family), both of who represent the East Asian pantheon of supreme goddesses to the West. I hold that the paramount significance of Magoism lies in the fact that it redefines the female principle and proffers a gynocentric utopian vision to the modern audience. Its utopian cosmology is no free-floating abstract idea but imbedded in the mytho-historical-cultural reality of East Asia. I suggest Magoism as the original vision of East Asian thought. Put differently, Magoism is an East Asian gynocentric testimony to the forgotten utopian reality. In the sense that Magoism presents an East Asian gynocentric symbolic system, this study is distinguished from Western and androcentric discourse. In other words, its gynocentric universalism should not be subsumed under the discourse of Western or patriarchal universalism. Magoism prompts an alternative paradigm of ancient gynocentrism that redefine major notions of the divine, human, and nature in continuum. Mago, the great goddess, is the unifying and at the same time individualizing force in this system. Magoism enables a macrocosmic view in which all individualized parts are organically co-related and co-operating. As a religious system, it is at once monotheistic and polytheistic. That is, Mago is the great goddess in her multiple manifestations. Underlying the patriarchal edifices, the Magoist principle is the Source from which the latter is derived.
(Photo Essay 4) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hwang

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