September 3, 2013February 22, 2018 Mago Work Admin

Meet Mago Contributor, Angelika Heike Rüdiger

Having grown up close to nature in the countryside under the care of my grandmothers and my great-grandmother, my love for poetry, myth and legend was wakened and became firmly rooted. Later I studied physics and chemistry, obtained a degree in chemistry in 1991, and was awarded the title of Dr. rer. nat in 1996. A mother of three wonderful daughters, I moved into teaching in 2006. Finally I took up studies of Welsh in 2010, and at the same time I started to present my poetry to the public (at first under the pen name of “Nelferch Merchcoed”). In 2012 I was awarded the title of “Master of Arts” in Welsh language and literature, and currently I continue my part-time postgraduate studies for a PhD. My main source of inspiration flows from European folklore and mythology as well as from nature, but also from everyday life. An essay summarizing the major part of my work on Welsh folklore up to now has been published in Gramarye- The Journal of the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy tales and Fantasy Issue 2 (2012), p.29-48 entitled “Gwyn ap Nudd: Transfigurations of a character on the way from medieval literature to neo-pagan beliefs.”

I have published poetry under my pen-name, “Nelferch Merchcoed,” in the following pages and journals:

http://www.createwrt.net/Nelferch_Merchcoed_Poems/Poems_by_Nelferch_Merchoed.htm

http://cartyspoetryjournal.com/Issue_06/CPJ-VI.pdf

http://greenmanscreations.com/sophia/special-pre-issue-hidrellez-festival/

Published posts from the recent:

(Poem) The House of the Sidhe by Angelika Heike Rüdiger

(Poem) Herecura by Angelika Heike Rüdiger

(Poem) The Secret Ways by Angelika Heike Rüdiger

1 thought on “Meet Mago Contributor, Angelika Heike Rüdiger”

broken angel says:

March 24, 2014 at 3:54 PM

I am extremely interested in one of the God-Kings you research, Gwynn ap Nudd, however I am finding it extremely difficult to find your work. It is usually either out of stock or well over priced. I am wondering if you will be publishing the works in one collected book, and if so what it is called, or if you have some way to encourage the publishers to do reprints. Please feel free to contact me on this matter.

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(Art 4) Gatekeeper by Megha

She who guards the entry to your sacred sanctuary – call upon her , “She- the Gate Keepers of all Gate Keepers” Infancy – the very beginning of Remember the earliest part of your life, when you were a baby!!! It is extremely rare for anyone to remember their own infancy. An amazing amount of growth and development happens during that phase. This collection is aligned with the consciously heightened awakened growth that happened as Meghanaiyegee embarked on her own journey of remembering the Sacred Feminine. A journey to meeting HER, feeling HER, seeing HER, connecting with HER, whispering HER and becoming HER. Meet Mago Contributor Megha
(Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Abbott

Susan Abbott catches her creative inspiration from the individual and collective genius of rebellious women. She works in a gynographic milieu that affirms their sacred incendiary spirit. Her watercolors are known for their evocative bold colors and themes. She has shown her work in Joshua Tree, California at local galleries, shops, farmers markets, and her own Dancing Wind Studio Gallery. Her poetry chapbook “Nasty Woman Rise: The Dream and the Curse” was recently published by Cholla Needles. Her art also appears in “The Mojave Muse Major Arcana Tarot Deck” (2016) and “Woman Awake” (online journal). She has a Facebook page “Susan AbbottWatercolors” where you can see and order more of her work.
(Prose) Immaculate First Child by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

She had not really accepted that her body was female. Such a body had no validity, it was not the real thing. Yet here she was apparently pregnant. Her abdomen was beginning to bulge in a very unfamiliar way. She looked at it in amazement. That amazement in itself was one story, but it was one that could not be thought through right now. The story most pressing was, what was she going to do? She was young, single, a college student. Would she tell her mother? Would she marry the father? She was of spiritual inclination … a Christian hippie variety; sufficiently hippie to allow her to fall into bed with her bloke,
(Prose) Spiral Bracelets and Snakes by Susan Hawthorne

The Snake Goddess, from the Temple Repositories at Knossos, 1650-1550 BC. Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. From Wikimedia Commons “The spiral bracelets move. They creep down my shoulders and neck. The sun blazes orange and red on the horizon. I feel a tickling in my ears. I hear a faint whispering. Their tongues are licking the skin, the wax of my outer ears.”[1] Notes This short extract comes from towards the end of my novel The Falling Woman. I was writing this book between 1982 and 1992. At the time, I was thinking of the Cretan snake bracelets which I had seen in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in the late 1970s and mid 1980s. The extract is about a woman sitting inside a rock hollow in the Australian desert. It’s a story of two women who venture into the desert for a holiday, but it is also about how one of these women named Stella/Estella/Estelle is trying to figure out her own way of being in the world. They face the usual complications of travel to remote areas – punctured tyres, engine troubles, getting bogged in sand – but Stella also has to face her own mortality and the vagaries of epilepsy. The Trojan princess, Cassandra makes an appearance in the reference to the licking of the ears by snakes. Contemporary women face the same obstacle as Cassandra did. She was raped by Ajax and dragged away from the altar of Athena. For resisting rape, Cassandra was punished by the god Apollo. Previously, she was able to prophesy the future, but after this she was condemned to be disbelieved. Just as women these days are still disbelieved when they report rape. I have recently been rereading Whence the Goddess: A Source Book by Miriam Robbins Dexter. It is a treasure trove of information about the mythic history of goddesses from many parts of the northern hemisphere. She points out that although Athena is often regarded as the ally of patriarchy, in earlier times the snake is her companion.[2] And in her discussion of snake predecessors Miriam translates from the Aeneid[3] the description of Allecto, one of The Furies, that her, heart [loves] sad wars, rages, plots, and noxious crimes … she changes herself into so many forms, such fierce shapes, so many black serpents sprout up These are the serpents of resistance to the impositions of patriarchy. The Furies rail against the killing of women, the invasion of women’s scared spaces and of women’s ability to give birth, spill her own blood and thrive. As Marija Gimbutas showed in her book, The Language of the Goddess,[4] the snake is a symbol of women from the earliest periods of prehistory that predated the arrival of Indo-European societies and as Judy Foster also shows in her book Invisible Women of Prehistory,[5] the snake not only appears in Minoan and Indo-European derived societies but also in many parts of Africa and Australia. In this time of war and conflagration, we need more than ever a movement toward a society which respects the power of women and forsakes the violence of patriarchy. © Susan Hawthorne, 2023 [1] Hawthorne, Susan. 1992. The Falling Woman. Melbourne: Spinifex Press, p. 255. [2] Robbins Dexter, Miriam. 1990. Whence the Goddess: A Source Book. New York: Pergamon Press. p. 119. [3] Vergil. Aeneid, Book VII, lines 324-329. Cited in Robbins Dexter, p. 180. [4] Gimbutas, Marija, 1989. The Language of the Goddess. New York: Harper & Row. [5] Foster, Judy with Marlene Derlet. 2013. Invisible Women of Prehistory: three million years of peace, six thousand years of war. Melbourne: Spinifex Press. https://www.magoism.net/2013/12/meet-mago-contributor-susan-hawthone/
(Essay) Wild the World, Our Heartbeat to Hers by Carolyn Lee Boyd

You can feel it, the Earth’s life pulse, Her heart beating on and on. Her fulfillment of Her mission to create and nurture life through billions of years on our planet. Sit in some wild place quietly breathing in rhythm with all the non-human life you can see, move your hands through the waves on the beach, open your heart and know yourself as a part of all Creation. Longhorn cattle at Knepp Wildland: By Peter Eastern – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98133375 Miracles happen when we align ourselves with Nature’s ever-changing and abundant matrix of life — that dynamic force that coaxes a single daisy to rise out of the rock, that seeds fireweed after a forest blaze, that causes each generation of a disappearing bird species to multiply when they are given a chance. This revitalizing power has always been present on our planet, but for millennia, some humans have thought that we can rule and control Nature through domination and exploitation. In truth, as other humans have always understood and more are now coming to realize, a powerful way to be of service to the Earth as She seeks to heal Herself from all we have done to Her is to simply recognize, honor, and free this vibrant energy to create beauty, abundance, and wholeness for our wounded planet. This process is now being called “wilding” or “rewilding.” In the words of Isabelle Tree, who wrote the book Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm about working with her husband to wild their UK farm, Knepp Wildland, “Rewilding – giving nature the space and opportunity to express itself – is a leap of faith. It involves surrendering all preconceptions, and simply sitting back and observing what happens”1. They describe how with stunning speed plant, animal, bird, and insect species returned, filling their niches in the ecosystem, replenishing the soil, filling the land with blooms, trees, shrubs and the sky with birds and insects, and bringing vitality and abundance. As I consider the dynamic power of wilding, I can’t help but think of the Earth Goddesses all over the world who have embodied this living spirit of generation and regeneration and how working with them has been foundational to many aspects of women’s spirituality over the millennia, whether through Earth-based prophecy, magic, rituals, or other means. Which leads me to wonder, can we learn from some of these Goddesses and their traditions how to be better partners with the Earth in healing the land in our own time, and can we bring the benefits of this kind of alignment with Nature’s inherent energy to our other work to benefit our world? While Earth Goddesses exist all over the globe, let’s consider, for example, the Earth Goddess traditions of Europe that continued in folk culture and even in religious institutions even as European society became more and more isolated from and exploitive of the Earth. Max Dashu writes in her book Witches and Pagans, “In their day, people still openly invoked and venerated Mother Earth. One Anglo-Saxon manuscript reproduces chants directed to her at sowing, for example, with libations of milk, honey, and oil. Even ecclesiastical scribes painted her into their gospel illuminations, with verdure springing up around her, and sprouting between her toes. In the corners of ivory diptychs and church stonework, Frankish and German artists sculptured Mother Earth under the tree of life, or giving the breast to snakes, humans, cows, deer, and fish”2. Diana statue in Diana Garden at the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens in the River Oaks neighborhood of Houston, Texas: By Carol M. Highsmith – Library of Congress. Public Domain. Among the Earth Goddesses were some who seemed to especially embody this vital and abundant spirit of the Earth, and, at least in stories, to evoke it in the untamed women who followed them. Diana, known for leading women in spirit rides, was one such Goddess. Says Dashu, “early medieval sources understood Diana as a forest goddess, a spirit of the wilds, who also sometimes appeared to field workers”3. And another Earth goddess, “Frau Holle, the Good Lady is the spirit of the Earth, who inhabits the ground, its waters, and the air around it. Holy mounts…were known as her sanctuaries and dwelling places—and they became renowned as places for gatherings of witches”4. To me, these stories illustrate the importance of centering our relationship with the Earth as we seek to “wild” ourselves, to find our own freedom from old ways of thought as we turn to new ways of being of service to our planet. Then, we must feature this relationship in all our work. For example, when we advocate for peace and justice we can note not only its importance for the well being of people, but also the environment and all the non-human beings who live on Her. One primary mission of Frau Holle, as well as other Goddesses, was to ensure the proper progression of the seasons. According to Patricia Monaghan, Holle, “In German, Austrian, and Swiss folktales… was originally a weather goddess. Sunshine streamed when she combed her hair, snow covered the earth when she shook a feather comforter, and rain fell when she threw away laundry water”5. The weather and the seasons are how the Earth orders itself and makes sure that all things are done at the right time and are rightly arranged, and these have been greatly disordered by climate change. So, perhaps we begin to see that one way we can be of assistance in the Earth’s efforts to regain wholeness is to focus on climate change’s effect on the seasons in whatever work we do, including wilding. More broadly, we can work to make order out of chaos by advocating for humans being in sync with Nature’s rhythms and lifecycles both for our own health and that of the Earth. The world of the Earth Goddesses was one where the relationships between humans and non-human species were complex …
(Essay) Feminist Discourse: Gaian Concourse by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 2 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology:Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion The focus of my work in the authoring of a PaGaian Cosmology has not been an exploration or statement of a difference between some concepts of “feminine” and “masculine”, or “female” and “male”. It is the development of a metaphor based in female bodily experience that is ubiquitous in natural phenomena such as all bodily cycles, the moon cycle, plant cycles, and the seasons. I do not spend time “dismantling a dualism based on difference” as feminist theorist Val Plumwood describes that task.[i] However, my work does conform to features that Val Plumwood describes as required for “the reconstruction of relationship and identity in terms of a non-hierarchical concept of difference”[ii], and I do believe this work, in its social action – its experiential concourse – does conform to Val Plumwood’s features of “appropriate relationship of non-hierarchical difference”[iii]. Val Plumwood outlines two common problems that the female may be entrapped by, in the formation of identity as a “post-colonial” group: that is, as a group that has been “colonised”, situated as “Other”, or “backgrounded” – however one chooses to term it. Those two common problems are identified as (i) the denial of difference and (ii) the reversal syndrome (where the dualism and hierarchical arrangement are accepted, and value is reversed: that is, everything “female” is better than everything “male”)[iv]. My work does neither of these things. Difference is specifically addressed on various occasions, in theory and in regard to the visceral impact of language; and in the academic version of PaGaian Cosmology[v] it is further addressed in the experiences of participants in the ceremonies where there are people identified as of both sexes participating fully. In regard to the latter problem of “reversal syndrome” as defined by Plumwood, the Female Metaphor developed in this work does not fall into this entrapment, as “the new identity” which is identification with the dynamics of all being, is not “specified in reaction to the coloniser … (or) in relation to him.”[vi] Also, (the new identity) has not accepted “the dualistic construction of identity.”[vii] Definition of the Female Metaphor is not “in relation to the master”[viii], as Val Plumwood defines the possible problem: the nature of the Self in the Metaphor of this work always has agency and is centred in cosmic source, even while it remains deeply related, connected in the web of life. Sometimes expressions used by some participants in their responses seemed to indicate that some may still be caught in problems of “hierarchical difference”, but I perceive and accept this as a remnant or an individual interpretation and difference of understanding, which is part of a dualistic cultural heritage. This cannot be abolished in one swift move. It is true as Val Plumwood asserts in earlier writing[ix], that Gaian symbolism is not an automatic guarantee of change, but I believe that when such metaphor is approached in a ‘holarchical’ manner rather than with a concept of hierarchy, that the Gaian symbolism and story does have the innate capacity for participants to change. A sensuous identification of the dynamic self with the dynamic Earth and Cosmos, through female metaphor, may serve as a gateway for some to a larger self, even perhaps beyond the female metaphor. References Gross, Rita. “The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. Vol.16 No.2,1984, pp.179 -182. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology:Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Plumwood, Val.Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. NY: Routledge, 1993. Art: “I Wish I Could” by Deborah Milton. Original is sold but reproductions and notecards are available: deborahmltn@gmail.com. Notes: [i] Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, p. 60. [ii] Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, p. 60. [iii] Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, p. 60. [iv] Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, p. 60-62. [v] Glenys Livingstone, The Female Metaphor – Virgin, Mother, Crone – of the Dynamic Cosmological Unfolding: Her Embodiment in Seasonal Ritual as a Catalyst for Personal and Cultural Change, Western Sydney University 2002. https://www.academia.edu/27860395/The_female_metaphor_-_virgin_mother_crone_-_of_the_dynamic_cosmological_unfolding_her_embodiment_in_seasonal_ritual_as_a_catalyst_for_personal_and_cultural_change [vi] Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, p. 61. [vii] Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, p. 61. For a clear analysis of ways of dealing with “pairs”- in particular “feminine” and “masculine”, see Rita Gross “The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism: Reflections of a Buddhist Feminist”. She speaks of ”dyadic unity”, “hierarchical dualism” and “monolithic entity”. [viii] Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, p. 61. [ix] Val Plumwood, “Gaia, Good for Women?” Refactory Girl. Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone
(Commemorating Mary Daly 4) My Memoirs of Mary Daly (1928-2010) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: My personal encounter with Mary Daly, a U.S. post-Christian feminist thinker, goes back to 1994, if not earlier. I stayed in Korea from 1994-1997 during which I translated two of Mary Daly’s early books, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation 하나님 아버지를 넘어서 (Seoul: Ewha Women’s University Press, 1996) and Church and the Second Sex 교회와 제 2의 성 (Seoul: Women’s News Press, 1997) in Korean. I carried with me to the U.S.A. our correspondences in the form of letters and documents mostly faxed to each other for the period of more than two decades. Later at one point I digitized them in images. Through these memoir series, I share some highlights of my memories with Mary Daly, her influence on my feminist thinking, and my own radical feminist journey to Magoist Cetaceanism.]Mary had faxed me “Author’s Note to the Korean Edition of BGTF” dated September 23 1996, which I posted in a previous section of my memoire. My letter to her dated October 25 1996 shows that we talked on the phone between these two letters. My memory is vague, if Mary ever called me in Korea but I called her in the U.S. [It’s plausible that she called me too. She may have called me after faxing her letter to me.] In fact, I don’t have any recollection how I dealt with phone bills but it is possible that I had a way to handle international phone calls. Nonetheless, phone bills did not interfere my connection with Mary. That was not because I had enough money or was extravagant but because it was one of things that had to be done. Making a phone call to her was like turning on the light on the dark path that I just began to follow. Or connecting with Mary was like a dawn in my new day. At that time, I was taking matters in my own hands. My mother was the top priority. I consciously connected with my mother for the first time (I was emotionally separated from my mother from a very young age and I responded to our needs of reconnecting with each other). That is a topic that I need to mention in another space. And connecting with Mary Daly was the second priority. I needed to connect with her not for her but for myself. Translating her books was a medium that made that possible in a special way. It was upaya (a perfect means to to serve multiple purposes), to borrow a Buddhist term. Don’t be mistaken that I attempted to gain something like public recognition or money, if it could. Mary made it clear that I did not have any other hidden agenda. In retrospect, Mary was in a difficult situation with Audre Lorde’s claim, which turned out to be a deliberately falsity. She did not know that I was no Audre Lorde in any manner. I was a liberated woman who finally chose her own destiny. I just enjoyed being alone apart from patriarchal fetters at last and doing what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had withdrawn my membership from a Catholic overseas missionary congregation based in the United States in early 1994. I did not know Mary Daly personally then. For the first time, I began to shape my life with my own hands! Letting go of the old self and the patriarchal institutions that I blindly accepted, I held tight onto things that gave me joy; things that made me feel that I was alive. I was breaking out my own shell to be self-birthed as a self-identified woman, a radical feminist. I chose a few and right things for myself. My brother generously shared his small apartment with me when I just got out of the Philippines, my missionary field. Then, I needed a job to survive. Maryknoll Sisters in Korea were there to help me get on my own feet. They waited for me to join them and helped me when I left them. Everything seemed to fall in right places. I was able to teach English to some groups of neighboring children, while lecturing for an English language institute. I was lucky to get paid from these teaching opportunities. Making money was not that difficult for me at that time. My concern was to choose the right thing for the rest of my life rather than to make money to survive. In fact, nothing was difficult for me to do. Or I had nothing to lose. That is not to say that I has a source of income beyond what I earned. My life back in Korea was an easy one compared to the lives of people that I had met and lived together in the countries that I traveled and studied. The most important task was completed; I left Christianity and stopped feeding my dependency on patriarchal institutions. I jettisoned anything and everything that I did not need, which made me feel free and at peace at last. I was able to save some money to pay the tuition for the graduate school in the U.S. For the first time in my life that I made and saved money for myself. Prior to joining Maryknoll Sisters, I used to give away the money that I earned to those including my relatives who were in need of it. In my letter to Mary Daly that I share below, I gave Mary the amount of US$12,000 that I would receive from the Ewha Press. I did not give that money to her but I had my press to pay her the full royalty, part of which I was supposed to receive. In fact, I had forgotten about that until I found this letter of mine. I wanted to support Mary in the best way that I could do and I was happy that I could do it. I had completely forgotten about the money factor between Mary and myself. …
(Art 9) Yemeja, Ishtar, Infancy the very beginning of by Megha

Keeper of our spirits, carrier of our prayers to the four corners of the universe Infancy – the very beginning of Remember the earliest part of your life, when you were a baby!!! It is extremely rare for anyone to remember their own infancy. An amazing amount of growth and development happens during that phase. This collection is aligned with the consciously heightened awakened growth that happened as Meghanaiyegee embarked on her own journey of remembering the Sacred Feminine. A journey to meeting HER, feeling HER, seeing HER, connecting with HER, whispering HER and becoming HER. Meet Mago Contributor Megha
Cybele and Attis by Deanne Quarrie, D. Min.

I first “discovered” Cybele in my research for Bendis (my Priestess name). It appears that the two are very closely related with evidence found of both in Thrace (modern day Bulgaria). There is a temple in Bulgaria to this day that was for Cybele. She came up again for me in my research of drumming and priestesses. You see many images of her with her frame drum. She can be described as … “A mountain-dwelling goddess of holy madness … a full-breasted mature woman, crowned and carrying corn and keys, arrayed in a robe containing all the flower colors of the Earth.” [i] Ah – and how Zeus could not penetrate her but spilled his seed upon the Earth, which was of course, also her, as her body! (Could it be that he could not penetrate her because she chose to be made love to without penetration, that, for Cybele, there was more to the act than procreation? That Cybele, herself, preferred the love of a woman?) The child of this fertilization being Agdistis, was born of both sexes, and when he was grown, Dionysis, in an attempt to make his life easier, castrated him. From his blood, sprang the almond tree. Nana picked up this fruit of the almond and in placing in next to her skin, became pregnant and birthed Attis. Attis was beautiful and adored by Cybele but I suppose like all beautiful males, chose to turn his affections to another. Being the Great Mother, Cybele knew of this unfaithfulness and when caught, he castrated himself in contrition. It has only been recently that I have been able to look at this part of the myth with any comfort. If I look at what Dionysis did to Agdistis and then look at what parents and physicians do to children born today who are hermaphrodites, their intent being to make their lives easier by removing one sex, I completely understand the story. The sad thing today is that parents and physicians often make this choice for the child while still in infancy instead of waiting to see how the child matures. If I look at Attis, as feeling as though he were a woman, trapped in a man’s body and who loved Cybele as a woman loves a woman, then I understand his desire to change his body to not only love her as a woman, but to be in her image – to be a woman. In today’s world when men have sex change operations, to surgically remove the penis and create a vagina, I have heard that the majority continue to love women in lesbian relationships, rather than partner with men, as one might think. We hear a lot today of the plight of the transgender, the man trapped in a woman’s body and a woman trapped in a man’s body. Because I know how life begins in the woman with all fetuses beginning as female and the propensity to be either, it seems such a simple thing to see how this can happen. I also know that this is nothing new. This is something that has been for as long as there have been humans. If it has happened since the beginning of the human race, how can it be “unnatural?” I know that this myth of Cybele and Attis was celebrated as a springtime festival – with the blood of Attis lives resurrected once more in the Spring. However, in my reading, years ago (I did not save my references), I also saw stories in which Cybele made the promise that when Attis was reborn after he bled to death, he would be reborn as a woman. And so, the significance of this seems to me more relevant. Were I to wish to honor Cybele in ritual, the symbols I would choose would be a frame drum, corn, rainbow colors, a pine branch, and a large black rock. I would have the frame drum, because I know that the priestesses of Cybele played the frame drum in their rituals. The corn would represent her as the nourishing mother who provides with abundance. I would use ribbons of many colors for her rainbow-colored robe. The pine branch would honor Attis and his love for her. Finally, the large black rock would represent the huge mountainous presence of her body as the Mountain Mother. In ancient times, this stone was thought to be a meteorite and the stone that Zeus was thought to have raped. Such was her power! I would love to think that acceptance and yes, even embracing differences could be accomplished without violence. I see the violence happening and know in my heart it is not the way, for with the violence comes an even greater resistance. Let us call on Cybele and ask for ways to be more loving and compassionate on both sides of this divisive behavior. She has that power! (Meet Mago Contributor) Deanne Quarrie. [i] Monaghan, Patricia, The New Book of Goddesses & Heroines, Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, MN 1997

(Special Post 2) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Here is another image of the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra slain by Herakles. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(mythology)… Glenys Livingstone: Yes, the Hercules story is more documentation of the Old Battle, of the rise of the “hero” to slay the Mother, when in the earliest of times he served with his beauty and labours. It is so interesting to see the analogies in other cultures/places as you are doing Helen, especially in Asia – it seems important work. Your perseverance is paying off, and will. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Glenys, I am re-reading a book on Chinese mythology and found a lot more on the nine Magoist symbolism. Someday, I hope to write about the topic in its own right. Glenys Livingstone: This chapter’s work is good re the Old Battle in Greek mythology: Valaoritis, Nanos. “The Cosmic Conflict of Male and Female in Greek Mythology”, in From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas. Joan Marler (ed). Manchester CT: Knowledge, Ideas and Trends Inc., 1997, p.247 – 261. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Now back to the female divine who is depicted with the nine heads. See the nine-headed Guanyin/Kannon/Gwaneum. Also note that her icon comes in eleven-headed (the 8 Daughters and the Triad Creatrix, which makes eleven). http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/kannon.shtml Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: The symbol of nine dragons was adopted by imperial China. See the Nine Dragon Wall China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-Dragon_Wall Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: We connect the dots. When Guanyin is depicted with nine dragons, it conveys that the nine symbolism was/is once deemed sacred. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4a/17/b3/4a17b33d9a4ae53bad6466a0eaf11722.jpg How popular the Guanyin icon, three headed and eight armed, to this day! Simply Google “eight armed Guanyin.” Below is from the Late Ming Dynasty, China. https://www.google.com/search?q=eight%20armed%20guanyin… She comes in a different name, Ushnishavijaya, in Tibetan Buddhism. https://www.himalayanart.org/items/65445 Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: We can draw that the female deity such as Guanyin and Ushnishavijaya, just to name two, is venerated in association with the nine symbolism. Within the mytho-history of Magoism, I infer that Guanyin or Ma Guanyin is a persona embodying Goma, the Magoist Shaman ruler of Danguk (3898 BCE-2333 BCE), the head of Nine Hans (Magoist Koreans). Note that Magoist shamans or priestesses are called “Mago.” See my essay, “Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea and Her Mythology,” in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books), 2018. The insight that the major Goddesses in East Asia and beyond point to the same and old divine persona is NOT farfetched, considering that the nine-headed snake or dragon representing the female sovereignty of pre-patriarchal times is slain by male heroes across cultures. Judy E Foster: I’d have to agree with you here. As usual, interesting information! Patty Kay: My meditation this morning was on a history of mysticism. While I’m in the midst of appropriating all of the wonderful beliefs I find here, I also have found a strand in my own tradition that helps me understand why all the Divine Feminine stuff makes so much sense to me. I’ve been trying to determine when the patriarchal world view took over. According to this history, mysticism began to emerge in about 800 to 500 BCE. Could it be that mysticism kept alive the ancient understanding of the cosmos? This is just speculation, but in it I’m answering my own questions. (To be continued) Join us in The Mago Circle https://www.facebook.com/groups/magoism/.
(Special Post 4) Multi-Linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

[This is a summary of discussion that took place around 2014 in The Mago Circle, Facebook group.]Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: I am writing an entry on “Mago” for the Glossary of my book, The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia:Mago (麻姑): East Asian word for the Great Goddess. Read “Ma” as in “Mama” and “Go” as in “to go.” The logographic characters are pronounced/romanized as Mago in Korean, Magu in Chinese, and Mako in Japanese. When it is used in historical contexts, “Mago” refers to the Great Goddess AND HER cultural matrix, Magoism (Magoist shamans/priestesses/rulers and/or the bygone mytho-history of Old Magoist Korea). S/HE represents Ultimate Reality as One Undividable Unity. The Great Goddess embodies the Creatrix, the cosmic sonic system of Life. Through HER, we enter the view of the whole, the consciousness of WE/HERE/NOW. Also known to have originated from the Big Dipper (Seven Stars) in lore—part of the Big Bear constellation—the Guardian of the Polaris, S/HE is the Guardian of the solar system. S/HE causes the stabilization of the solar system. In that sense, S/HE is the Sun Deity or Heavenly Deity. Self-emerged with Mago Stronghold (Earth) and two moons of the Earth through the sonic movement of Pal-ryeo (Eight Tones), the Great Goddess oversees the cosmic music of Yul-ryeo (Rhythms and Tones), another term for the sonic movement of the universe. Mago gives birth to two daughters (Gung-hui) and (So-hui) parthenogenetically. Thus, they form the Mago Triad (Samsin). S/HE delegates HER two daughters to oversee the cosmic music of Oeum-chiljo (Five Pitches and Seven Tunes). Gung-hui and So-hui respectively give birth to four daughters parthenogenetically. The Primordial Mago Clan forms the Nine Magos, the archetype of Gurang (Nine Goddesses). Mago delegates eight (grand)daughters to oversee the cosmic music of Pal-ryeo (Eight Tones). S/HE causes the self-evolution of the Earth through which all terrestrial beings are brought into existence. In that sense, S/HE is the Earth Deity. As Samsin Halmi (Triad Grand-Mother), S/HE controls the birth and illness of children. Mago allows the Early Mago Clan in the paradise of Mago Stronghold to procreate progenies and entrusts them to take in charge of the terrestrial acoustic equilibrium. Revered as the Cosmogonist, Progenitor, and Ultimate Sovereign, Mago delegates the Mago Descent, the entirety of the divine, human ancestors, and humans, to oversee the acoustic harmony of the Earth in tune with the cosmic music. Hereupon, the paradisiacal Home of Mago Stronghold is established. S/HE is called by many names. Among them are Samsin (Triad Deity), Cheonsin (Heavenly Deity), Halmi (Grandmother/Goddess), Nogo (Ancient Goddess), and Seongo (Immortal Goddess). Also referred to as Mugeuk Nomo (None-Polarized First Mother) or Musaeng-nomo (Non-birthed First Mother) in Daoism. Mago appears resembling many Goddesses from around the world by way of such mythemes as the triad, parthenogenesis, cosmic music, animal companions, and the cosmogonist. “Mago” is linguistically identical or similar with “Mago” in Italian and Portuguese, “Magus/Magi” in Latin, “Magos” in Greek, “Maka” in Mycenaean Greek, “Magus” in Old Persian, and “Ma Guanyin” in East Asian languages, to name a few. Brian Kirbis: Funny, despite my fondness for language, I never made the connection. Though I have explored the lineage potential between naga and Nuwa 女娲. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: What did you find the linkage between naga and Nuwa, Brian? There is sometimes linguistic linkage relevant and other times mythological linkage… Brian Kirbis: Linguistic, iconographic, and mythological links are all available to us within a broad cross-cultural frame. My own analytic tendency is to see such mirror-image male-female representations as matrilineal and patrilineal essences which, in Chinese energy theory, reside in the kidneys (ancestral qi).Consider the Adam and Eve myth, for instance, with the figures on either side of the tree (spine, cosmic pivot, Milky Way), within which is contained the serpentine energy. There is ample information extant on such Tree of Life symbolism, all of which illustrates the inner energy body. The nagini-naga / Nuwa-Fuxi conjoint images in India and China absorb the serpent iconography into the human – an internalization of Kundalini energy.As you know, my area of interest is in the underlying cultural complex of tea-growing peoples located in Southwest China and upland Southeast Asia, an area replete with serpent mythology. Brian Kirbis: Comparison of Indian and Chinese representations of the Naga-Nagini and Fuxi & Nuwa. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Yes, indeed, there is similarity between the two. Interesting! Thanks for sharing them. Lizzy Bluebell: Brian Kirbis – fascinating – any idea what kind of tool each is holding in the sculpture? I see a chevron or M to the right of the Nagini’s head; (M and MA are fairly universal root symbols for Mother; Latin M encodes breasts, mounds, mountains, paps, tophets, etc. plus a general historical dispute over the importance of hills versus valleys.)I also note the inversion of right/left positions in the Nu Wa image.In terms of your statement – “The nagini-naga / Nuwa-Fuxi conjoint images in India and China absorb the serpent iconography into the human – an internalization of Kundalini energy.” — My thought: Have you ever considered it otherwise – that humanity has actually EXTERNALIZED chi energy into the form of the snake as a means of expressing it in non-vocal (sonic) symbolism which also manifests form via means of visualization as opposed to sonic/vocalizations or cymatics which creates form via RESONANCE.Helen – note that the tails are knotted – very important symbolic notion of ‘tying things’ as in the Shen Ring and Ankh – a masonic motif – related to measuring and containing within an Ouroborus SYSTEM which is closed, not cyclic or spiraling vis a vis Nature’s Way. It is the CLOSED CIRCLE as Plato’s “perfect form” which traps us in the flaws of re-peating and re-petitioning any ‘his-story’ we follow which does NOT HONOUR AND REVERE MAGO or hold her values close to HEART, as HEARD, in the HERD.Your original post (O/P thereafter) is fascinating and revealing and provides much to discuss on the topic of Zoroaster/Zarathustra and the Persian/Arabic/Semitic invention of Algebra and Astrology. In […]
(Special Post 5) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Annie Finch For me, Goddess is completely different from God–Goddess means acceptance of the sacred WITHIN the physical instead of transcending the physical; acceptance of death and life as equally sacred; and the holiness of changing cycles…. Annie Finch, Maine anniefinch.com Marie de Kock Why Goddess spirituality? Goddess spirituality is crucial for our survival and the survival of our planet. I’m referring to every woman’s connection and relationship with her own Spirit which resides in her heart, and her own divine ability to create, which springs from her womb. The womb is infinitely more than a reproductive organ; it is a replica of the Cosmic Womb or Mago. From that profound pool of infinite silent knowledge, women can access the solutions so urgently needed to recover the equilibrium the world with its God spirituality has lost, and women can dream the solutions into being. It is the intelligence of the heart and intelligence of the womb that humanity needs in order to balance out the ill effects of our noisy ‘rational’ left brained society. Women carry the keys to the wisdom within them. Female spirituality is the door. Marie is in Chile for now http://ninenormalwomenwithwings.com Leslene Della-Madre Goddess among many things to me is a verb–Goddessing. “Goding” isn’t the same. She is Love in action in all things–she is the cosmic gen-Her-ator bringing life into form from primordial chaos, the twin serpents of coming and going. She is the plasMA of the YoniVerse filling space with her divine essence creating great beaded necklaces of galaxies all connected to each other by electric pathways. She is the All and Eternal. Leslene Della Madre, California USA midwifingdeath.com Diane Horton Sacred Goddess Sisterhood Each of our stories as women who have come to embrace the Goddess are varied and interesting. Certainly interesting to each other, as our spirits long to resonate with another who has had a similar journey. Mine began while I was still a member of the Episcopal Church and a Christian. But relative to many, it was not that long ago, just 18 years. Some women have been knowing and worshiping the Goddess for more than 30 years, some have only just come to the reawakening and re-membering recently. Some of us call ourselves witches, some priestesses, or both. Some do not identify with either of those words and simply say they have immersed themselves in the Divine Feminine, or that they worship the Goddess. Some will say they are Pagan or Wiccan or Dianic Wiccan. Whatever we call ourselves, or do not call ourselves, we are all Sisters in Goddess, those who worship the Great Mother. And though our numbers are growing, seemingly almost daily, we are still in a minority. We need those who are articulate to voice our views and we need wise teachers who can share practices, philosophy and knowledge with those who are eager for such spiritual food. One of the great things about this Goddess Path is that, although there is much written and oral knowledge to be had for those who seek it, the deepest part of this path is experiential. Personal experience with Goddess, deep within ourselves, and having our eyes opened to Her all around us all the time, seeing and feeling Her magic in our lives, knowing Her love and nurturance in our hearts. We have no dogma, no set of rules or commandments, no rigid ideology. We have our own hearts to guide us into all acts of love and pleasure, compassion, humility and reverence which are Her rituals. When we express strength, hold our power and honor life, as well as giggle and laugh, those are Her rituals, too. There are the Women’s Blood Mysteries, which set women apart from men who worship the Goddess, but that should serve to unite women in a strong eternal bond, not alienate men. There is no place for hierarchy. We are all women equal to each other as daughters of the Goddess. We cannot, we must not, allow the patriarchal mindset to contaminate Feminine Spirituality. No hierarchy, no duality, no controlling others. If we want to see a world in which the Divine Feminine is prominent, the world that many of us believe is coming, we need to take a good, hard look at ourselves in the mirror of our Sisters’ eyes and all of us individually commit ourselves to Unity, Sisterhood and Unconditional Love. That does not mean we will never disagree, and sometimes disagree vehemently, but it does mean we do not allow those disagreements to fracture us as a body of women or to damage or destroy our Sisterhood. There are many teachers who have their own followings of students, their own coursework, their own publications and newsletters, their own festivals they work all year to organize and make manifest. This is a good thing! Especially with the national economy the way it is now many, many women cannot afford to travel very far from their homes, so the fact that there are festivals in diverse parts of the country is no doubt just as the Goddess desires. Those who know of Her and hear Her call are greatly benefited by all of these in mind, heart and spirit. We all need each other. We who can spread this information far and wide need to do so, not just think of and promote the one group or project we are involved in ourselves individually. This is the BIG PICTURE. This is how the movement moves forward. This is how the Goddess gathers Her women (and men). Unification of purpose. Standing together. Supporting each other in concrete ways. We are Women of Goddess. Her spirit […]

(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!
(Music) Songs for Samhain by Alison Newvine

The season of Samhain is upon us. This playlist is an offering for this descent into the sacred darkness, and a companion for the journey into the underworld. Invocation of Witches features music by Loreena McKennitt, Marya Stark, Inkubus Sukubus, Wendy Rule, my band Spiral Muse, and many others. It is a soundtrack for ceremony and each song expresses a different face of the spirit of the witch. May this Samhain season guide you gently into the dissolution of what no longer serves, the honoring of what is complete and the cultivation of the inner space that will gestate what is yet to come. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2CFNoH9exhloz3w95P3Rlb?si=270cf01fabb8421c https://www.magoism.net/2023/10/meet-mago-contributor-alison-newvine/
(Essay and Video) Cosmogenesis Dance: Celebrating Her Unfolding by Glenys Livingstone

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

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

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

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Traditionally the dates for this Seasonal Moment are: Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd however the actual astronomical date varies. See archaeoastronomy.com for the actual moment. Lammas table/altar Lammas, as it is often called[1], is the meridian point of the first dark quarter of the year, between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox; it is after the light phase has peaked and is complete, and as such, I choose it as a special celebration of the Crone/Old One. Within the Celtic tradition, it is the wake of Lugh, the Sun King, and it is the Crone that reaps him. But within earlier Goddess traditions, all the transformations were Hers[2]; and the community reflected on the reality that the Mother aspect of the Goddess, having come to fruition, from Lammas on would enter the Earth and slowly become transformed into the Old Woman-Hecate-Cailleach aspect …[3] I dedicate Lammas to the face of the Old One, just as Imbolc, its polar opposite on the Wheel in Old European tradition, is dedicated to the Virgin/Maiden face. The Old One, the Dark and Shining One, has been much maligned, so to celebrate Her can be more of a challenge in our present cultural context. Lammas may be an opportunity to re-aquaint ourselves with the Crone in her purity, to fall in love with Her again. I state the purpose of the seasonal gathering thus: This is the season of the waxing dark. The seed of darkness born at the Summer Solstice now grows … the dark part of the days grows visibly longer. Earth’s tilt is taking us back away from the Sun. This is the time when we celebrate dissolution; each unique self lets go, to the Darkness. It is the time of ending, when the grain, the fruit, is harvested. We meet to remember the Dark Sentience, the All-Nourishing Abyss, She from whom we arise, in whom we are immersed, and to whom we return. This is the time of the Crone, the Wise Dark One, who accepts and receives our harvest, who grinds the grain, who dismantles what has gone before. She is Hecate, Lillith, Medusa, Kali, Erishkagel,Chamunda, Coatlique – Divine Compassionate One, She Who Creates the Space to Be. We meet to accept Her transformative embrace, trusting Her knowing, which is beyond all knowledge. Lammas is the seasonal moment for recognizing that we dissolve into the “night” of the Larger Organism of whom we are part – Gaia. It is She who is immortal, from whom we arise, and into whom we dissolve. This celebration is a development of what was born in the transition of Summer Solstice; the dark sentient Source of Creativity is honoured. The autopoietic space in us recognizes Her, is comforted by Her, desires Her self-transcendence and self-dissolution; Lammas is an opportunity to be with our organism’s love of Larger Self – this Native Place. We have been taught to fear Her, but at this Seasonal Moment we may remember that She is the compassionate One, deeply committed to transformation, which is actually innate to us. Whereas at Imbolc/Early Spring, we shone forth as individual, multiforms of Her; at Lammas, we small individual selves remember that we are She and dissolve back into Her. We are the Promise of Lifeas was affirmed at Imbolc, but we are the Promise of Her- it is not ours to hold. We identify as the sacred Harvest at Lammas; our individual harvest isHer Harvest. We are the process itself – we are Gaia’s Process. Wedo not breathe (though of course we do), we borrow the breath, for a while. It is like a relay: we pick the breath up, create what we do during our time with it, and pass it on. The harvest we reap in our individual lives is important, andit is for us only short term; it belongs to the Cosmos in the long term. Lammas is a time for “making sacred” – as “sacrifice” may be understood; we may “make sacred” ourselves. As Imbolc was a time for dedication, so is Lammas. This is the wisdom of the phase of the Old One. She is the aspect that finds the “yes” to letting go, to loving the Larger Self, beyond all knowledge, and steps into the power of the Abyss; encouraged and nourished by the harvest, She will gradually move into the balance of Autumn Equinox/Mabon, the next Sesaonal Moment on the year’s cycle. References: Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess.Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990. Gray, Susan. The Woman’s Book of Runes.New York: Barnes and Noble, 1999. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. McLean, Adam. The Four Fire Festivals. Edinburgh: Megalithic Research Publications, 1979. Notes: [1]See note 3. [2]Susan Gray, The Woman’s Book of Runes,p. 18. This is also to say that the transformations are within each being, not elsewhere, that is the “sacrifice” is not carried out by another external to the self, as could be and have been interpreted from stories of Lugh or Jesus. [3]Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, The Year of the Goddess, p.143, quoting Adam McLean, Fire Festivals,p.20-22. Another indication of the earlier tradition beneath “Lughnasad” is the other name for it in Ireland of “Tailltean Games”. Taillte was said to be Lugh’s foster-mother, and it was her death that was being commemmorated (Mike Nichols, “The First Harvest”, Pagan Alliance Newsletter NSW Australia). The name “Tailtunasad” has been suggested for this Seasonal Moment, by Cheryl Straffon editor of Goddess Alive! I prefer the name of Lammas, although some think it is a Christian term: however some sources say that Lammas means “feast of the bread” which is how I have understood it, and surely such a feast pre-dates Christianity. It is my opinion that the incoming Christians preferred “Lammas” to “Lughnasad”: the term itself is not Christian in origin. The evolution of all these things is complex, and we may evolve them further with our careful thoughts and experience.

(Goma Article Excerpt 3) 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 published in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, published in 2018 by Mago Books.] The Goma Words The Bear Goddess In the coventional interpretation of the Korean foundation myth, “Ungnyeo (熊女)” is the name given to the bear (Gom) who received a female body upon enduring the trial of the cave initiation, married Hanung, and gave birth to a son who later became the founder of the ancient Korean state, Joseon (2333 BCE – 232 BCE). As such, “Ungnyeo” and “Gom” are unequivocally identified as the same figure. Nonetheless, the notability of “Ungnyeo” remains secular to most modern Koreans. That Gom is also involved with the bear constellation, the Northern Dipper in particular, remains esoteric at best. The bear mytheme of the Goma myth offers an insight to the etymology of both words, “Mago” and “Goma.” Given the mythological evidence that associates both Goma and Mago with the bear constellation, we may establish that the syllable “Go (姑 Ancient Goddess)” in “Mago” and “Goma” is derived from “Gom,” which means the bear in Korean. Modified by “Ma,” a universal sound for “mother,” both “Goma” and “Mago” refer to the Bear Mother. This assessment merits, among others, an explanation for the bear mytheme in the Goma myth in which Goma is depicted as the head of the royal bear clan. The bear is one of the most prominent symbols of Goma and Mago together with the nine and the tree. Goma, as the bear Goddess, holds together the animal bear, the bear worshipping people, and the circumpolar constellation of the Bears (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) in the Northern Hemisphere. Indicating the bear totem and the bear constellation, the bear symbol runs through her myths and linguistics. In the story, the cave initiation that Goma proposed intimates the ancient bear worshippers associated with the bear’s cyclic behaviors including hibernation for the long winter months in a cave. The bear symbol is important in that it connects Goma (the queen of the bear clan), Mago (the Goddess of the bear constellation), and their devotees, “the royal bear clan,” broadly recognized across cultures. It is not surprising to note that Goma and Mago appear conflated in cultural and devotional practices. Doumu (斗母 Mother of the Northern Dipper) is a prominent example of the amalgamated divine, Magoma. Doumu is well noted for her conflating manifestations among kindred Goddesses in Daoism. Marnix Wells states that Doumu is alternatively identified as Taiyi Yuanjun (太一元君 Goddess of the Great One) and Jiuhuang Daji (九皇大帝 the Great Emperor of Nine Emperors). Doumu is considered as “Mother of Dipper” known as Doumu Yuanjun (斗母元君 “Goddess of the Chariot”) and conflated with Taiyi Yuanjun (太一元君 “Goddess of the Great One”), who is one of the Three Pure Ones. She is considered the mother of the seven stars of the Dipper and two not visible ones, the Jiuhuang Daji (九皇大帝 “Nine Great Divine Kings”).[1] Here Taiyi Yuanjun corresponds to Mago (or the Mago Triad) and Jiuhuwang Daji to Goma (or the Nine Mago Creatrix). As such, Doumu is also related to the number nine symbol, which connects Mago and Goma, a topic to be explained below. Suffice it to say that Doumu, representing Magoma, is a female personification of the inter-cosmic reality unfolded through the circumpolar constellation of the Bears in the Northern Hemisphere in sync with the eco-biotic behavior of bears, as such venerated by their devotees. Goma and the Korean Identity Goma’s alternative names include “Ungnyeo (Female Sovereign),” “Hanung (Han Sovereign),” “Cheonung (Heavenly Soverein),” “Daeung (Great Sovereign),” “Seonhwang (Immortal Emperess),” and “Daein (Great Person)” as well as “Ungssi-ja (Decendant of the Goma Clan), “Ungssi-wang” (Ruler of the Goma Clan), and “Ungssi-gun” (Head of the Goma Clan). The Goma words also include such modifiers as “Ung,” “Gom (Gam, Geum, Geom, Kami)” and “Baedal (Barkdal, Baekdal), “Dan.” Given that her worship is old in origin and non-ethnocentric in nature, the Goma epithets are not limited to the above. It is conjectured that she was revered by other names including the aforementioned Goddesses across cultures. In fact, the Magoist hermeneutic of the Goma myth enables us to reassess variant Halmi (Great Mother/Grandmother/Crone) stories in Korea that have the Magoma mytheme. Among them are Gaeyang Halmi, Seogu Halmi, Angadak Halmi, Dangsan Halmi, to name a few. In any case, the epithet “Goma” is by no means a modern invention. Intriguingly, they are found in place-names, state-names and clan-names, to be discussed shortly. The link between “Ung” and “Gom” is not something unfamiliar to most Koreans. Researchers note that “Goma-seong (Goma Stronghold)” better known “Ungjin-seong” was the capital of ancient Baekje Korea from 475 to 538 CE.[2] However, “Gom” as an alternative epithet of “Goma” remains unfamiliar to many modern Koreans. Furthermore, little known is that “Ungnyeo” is derived from “Goma,” the queen of the bear clan. Korean linguists infer that “Ungsim (熊心)” is an Idu word and should be read “Goma.”[3] Accoding to them, the second character “Sim (心)” meaning “Maeum (마음)” in “Ungsim” is an indicator of its phonetic sound, “Ma.” Following the first character “Go” in “Gom (곰), “Ungsim” should be read as “Goma.” A compound of “Ung (熊)” and “Nyeo (Woman),” “Ungnyeo” is a euphemism for “Ungsim (熊心).” Idu (吏讀 Official’s Script) is an ancient Korean writing system that uses logographic characters for the Korean spoken language. Its use is noted during the early three states (Silla, Goguryeo, Baekje) to Joseon (1392-1919) periods. That Goma is the Idu word for Ungsim offers no small insight. It holds key to unlock a broad range of the Goma words found trans-nationally in East Asia and elsewhere. The Idu word “Ungsim” for “Goma” holds the key to unlock the Goma words that permeate ancient Korean history, language, and culture. Ungsim-yeon (熊心淵 Goma Lake) and Ungsim-san (熊心山Goma Mountain) and Ungsim-guk (熊心國 Goma State) are the most prominent examples. These place-names show how Goma mythology has shaped the landscape of ancient Korean mytho-histories. Ungsim-yeon (Goma Lake) is associated with Yuhwa (Willow Tree …
(Drama Review 1) Liminal Space/Time into WE: What Hotel del Luna Displays by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: Hotel del Luna is a 16-episode Korean television drama aired in 2919. Caution is required for the spoiler. This essay is prompted by this drama, which was discussed in a new class, Experience Korean Culture through Film (EKCF) offered by Mago Academy. I am ever grateful for this opportunity to assess matriversal (read Magoist) soteriology, eschatology, and cosmology implicated in this drama. This drama takes viewers to a liminal time/space. At the liminal timespace, we see how one meets the other. Almost all objects of the drama remind viewers of their liminal property. The female main character, neither living nor dead, stands between the living and the dead. The ghost-serving moon lodge she operates is visible to both ghosts and people. So is the tree of the moon spirit, a symbol for the tree of life or the world tree, which summons the moon lodge to take place. And so are all beings with physical forms. The liminal timespace is where we find ourselves in the Reality of WE/HERE/NOW.] Copyright origin unknown. Part I: Introduction with Synopsis Jang Manwol, the female protagonist, is fixated to the tree of the moon spirit (wolryeongsu 월령수) and entrusted as the representative of the moon lodge, which serves ghosts charged with unrelenting resentments, by the Mago Divine. Mago Halmi (Great Mother, Creatrix), by providing new opportunities, awaits Manwol until she takes actions to relieve her unyielding grudge, caused by the complex socio-political misfortunes in the 7th century. Manwol is, currently neither living nor dead, expected to die and take a ride to the realm of after-life (returning to the origin) just like other ghosts in her lodge. Together with her ghost employees, she operates a large luxurious hotel, Hotel del Luna, the latest name of the moon lodge. Standing in the liminal time/space, the hotel is equipped with an elegantly decorated spacious lobby, a sky-viewing terrace, a horizon-surrounded beach, and an amusement park as well as a multiple number of rooms, each of which is catered to serve the special needs of a ghost guest. At the heart of the lodge is the tree of the moon spirit. The hoteliers welcome ghosts, diagnose the story of han (unresolved resentments) that they carry in themselves and its remedy, and execute plots to resolve resentments in a peaceful manner, to be beneficial to ALL. Upon being healed and rejuvenated with a new perspective on their past lives and the Reality of Intercosmic Life, the ghosts leave the lodge to take the ride to the realm of after-life (jeoseung 저승). The dead are supposed to take this ride to the Origin. Ghosts with unrelenting resentments escapes this route and lingers in the in-between reality of the living and the dead. Until accepting the help of the male protagonist, Gu Chanseong, sent by the Mago Divine, Manwol stubbornly continues to roam around her inbetween space/time. Insofar as she holds onto her own oath to avenge, the tree of the moon spirit remains dormant, seemingly dead. The tree, a visual locus reflecting the inner landscape of Manwol (her predecessors and successors alike), connects ghosts and people and reveals the reality of Life to them. The young man, Chanseong, misses no opportunity to choose the good and to right the wrong in ghosts and people, which is the key to straightening up the entangled karmic consequences. He prompts Manwol to heal herself: She realizes the truth about her betrayer (she was consumed by her anger against him so much so that she could not know the truth; he did not betray her but saved her) and let go of her over-1,300 year-long desire to destroy him. Affected by the grudge-releasing actions of Chanseong, she gradually chooses the path to reconcile with her past, as the Mago Divine wishes for her. The tree of the moon spirit, showing a sign of life again by putting out leaves and flowers, harbingers the end of the moon lodge. Manwol and her ghost employees as well as Chanseong reach the timespace of saying good-bye to move on to the next stage of Life’s cycle. Mawol becomes the last ghost who get helped in her lodge. The Mago Divine is seeking a new owner for the lodge so that ghosts with resentments can continue to be served. The drama is potentially transforming the human psyche from within. Tantalizing, heart-breaking, and frightening stories of the dead and the living stretch the horizon to the whole — the realm of physical life (iseung 이승), the realm of afterlife (jeoseung 저승), and the in-between realm of ghosts. In the sense that its narrative structure is built on the Korean folk belief of Mago Halmi (Great Mother, Crone, and Creatrix), and Magoism, the Way of the Creatrix, I find this drama a composite text of Magoist thealogy (a systematic understanding of Mago, the Creatrix) at the core. What the hoteliers are doing is in fact the role of Mudangs (Korean Shamans). Although Mudangs and Muism (Korean Shamanism) are strikingly absent, the drama resonates with the Muist worldview. The core message is to release unrelenting resentments of the dead on the part of the living. Intriguingly, this drama does not speak directly to humans, “Humans, do not create cheok (hatred or suffering in other beings).” Perhaps, such is too clear a message to articulate. At any rate, we are supposed to gain the lesson by listening to the stories of ghosts. What we see is that troubled ghosts with resentment are helped and guided to the journey of afterlife. The dead are expected to take the ride to the realm of after-life immediately. Ghosts are those who would not follow the path of the dead. Viewers are told why some people become haunting ghosts upon death, why ghosts seek to interfere with humans, and why ghosts are tempted to take revenge upon humans. We may say that ghosts are the confused or disrupted souls. Ghosts face extermination by the Mago Divine if they harm humans or assist an evil ghost. Consequently, evil ghosts are precluded from the cycle of rebirth. That is …
(Essay 2) Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess, from East Asia by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This essay was first published in Trivia, Voices of Feminism, Issue 6, September 2007. Also to be included in the forthcoming anthology She Rises: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?] An Introduction to Magoism Mago is the Great Goddess of East Asia. Nonetheless, she remains barely known to the world. Her equals, Xiwangmu (the Supreme Goddess of Daoism) and Amaterasu (the Sun Goddess of the Japanese imperial family), are said to comprise the pantheon of East Asian cosmic goddesses. Considering that these goddesses are often aligned with the ancient culture of China or Japan, one notices that the pantheon of East Asian Great Goddesses thus omits both Mago and “Korean culture.”