April 2, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin

(Poem) Prayer by Donna Snyder

O great and beneficent energy flow

cast out from me
that which is an abomination to my spirit.

Envelope me in your electric aura
and lend me its protection
and its strength.

Restore my vitality
and make it pure and sweet.
Heal my wounds with your tears.

Give me technicolor dreams
at midday and ¡por favor!
a safe haven in the night.

Cloak me with your starry mantle.
Cool my fever with your caress.

Bring to my cheeks
the scent of rain and clover.

Feed me honey with fresh yogurt in the morning
and mint tea or sage at noon.

In the evening stroke me
with the peacock feathers
of your benevolence.

Remind me of the sweetness of my existence
in your heart.

Keep me from ugliness
and lead me to recognize beauty in all its guises.

Forget not either my friends
or my enemies.

Bring peace with valor
to my soul.

Blessed be your presence throughout infinity.

Read Meet Mago Contributor, Donna Snyder.

We, the co-editors, contributors, and advisers, have started the Mago Web (Cross-cultural Goddess Web) to rekindle old Gynocentric Unity in our time. Now YOU can help us raise this torch high to the Primordial Mountain Home (Our Mother Earth Herself) wherein everyone is embraced in WE. There are many ways to support Return to Mago. Donate $3.00 to $10.00 is one way. For your time and skill, please email Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Please take an action today and we need that! Thank YOU in Goddesshood of all beings!

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0 thoughts on “(Poem) Prayer by Donna Snyder”

flameinthesnow says:

April 3, 2014 at 1:27 PM

This is amazing, Donna. Thank you.

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Donna Snyder says:

April 3, 2014 at 11:53 AM

Dear Sisters,

Thank you for the honor of sharing my poem. I wrote it on a dark and tumult filled night, sitting outside the gate of the Guadalupe Church here in El Paso. I hope it brings each reader a moment of respite from the world.

Respectfully,

Donna Snyder

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(Poem) Limen (extracts from a verse novel) by Susan Hawthorne

woman 2:the day passesthe sun burning downI feel inadequateimmobilised woman 1:I float feeling the wash of water beneatharms extended like billabongsnever quite reaching the itchy pointwhere mosquitos breed the river is a psalmsinging like a full-throated choir could my armsbe jabiruswings in slow beatcoming in to land? the dog interruptsmy river poemskisses meinsists I playshe runs in wild circlesto the water’s edgeshe is a crazed runnerjumping and turning in the air dog:late afternoonwe all go to the riverpaddle float sit on the bank you throw sticksthe big one sinksyou find itthrow itI run and swimthe stick sinks againyou can’t find it eitherbreak me anotherthrow it we are sitting on the river bankI smell the rainwe go backI shelterunder the car Notes The artwork in this book (and in this post) is by Jeanné Brown whose painting is also on the front cover. In 2010 three of us, two women and a dog went camping into a fairly wild part of far north Queensland. We swam in the river, missed our previous dog and sat and relaxed. A few days in it began to rain and one night we woke to find the car sitting silently in the river. We started to find our way out but before long we were bogged. We managed to get out of the bog with some local help, but we were stranded between rising rivers. And so we sat for three days first in the rain, then in the sun, until we were able to drive out along with several others. It was quite an adventure, helped by our beautiful dog, Freya and the birds and insects who visited us. Living with/in nature on the border between worlds is quite marvellous. We treasured this quiet time of absorbing all that was around us. Extracted from Limen, published by Spinifex Press, 2013. (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthrone https://www.magoism.net/2013/12/meet-mago-contributor-susan-hawthone/
(Essay) Living Goddesses and Asian Amazons by Anne Hilty

On Jeju Island, Korea, known as “The Island of 18,000 Gods,” the residents are living with Goddess even today. This ancient island community, its own sovereignty until subsumed by what is now known as Korea in 1105, has retained a culture largely distinct from that of Korea’s mainland. An active and millennia-old shamanist practice, inherited from Siberia and Mongolia with influences from China, Japan and the South Pacific region, is still integrated into the daily life of the island, even as it modernizes. An even older indigenous animism preceded the introduction of shamanism. To wit: there is a 2-week period just before Lunar New Year, called “shin-gu-gan” in local dialect, during which islanders move house if so inclined. Household gods, traditionally worshiped by all and still today by many of the elders, are thought to be delivering an annual account to the Emperor of Heaven during this time. As a result it is considered a “clean” period for moving, in that the household gods are not present and thus do not require worship and, upon their return, they can align with the new residents of the house for the coming year. As another example of the daily experience Jeju people have with the gods, the unique “hae-nyeo” or diving women have regular rites to Yowang and his wife, Yowang Buin, dragon king and queen of the sea, entreating their protection and beneficence. The central creator figure of this volcanic island is a goddess known as Seolmundae. A single female creator is highly unusual in the world’s mythologies; alternately envisioned as youthful, maternal or grandmotherly, she is the local representation of Maiden, Mother and Crone in one. Seolmundae is the embodiment of the central volcano by which this island and its surrounding islets emerged, within which she is said to be sleeping. “Seolmundae watches over us all,” the people of Jeju are fond of saying. By extension, they perceive the island’s remarkable topography, with its 368 secondary volcanic cones mostly rounded in shape, to be female. More than 400 remaining ritual spaces to Jeju’s multiple deities were documented in 2009 and 2010, most of them in natural settings and many still in use today. In addition to village rites that are shaman-led, residents can visit the shrines individually on certain days of each month. A majority of these places of worship are known as “halmang-dang” or goddess shrines. The word “halmang,” from the local dialect, can mean “goddess” or “grandmother” – and rightly so. Jeju, a matrifocal and egalitarian society at its core, has a particular fondness for goddesses. Combined with ancestor worship, the deities of this island are considered as members of the community in a familial way. There’s Jacheongbi, goddess of earth who brought to Jeju people the six grains on which their diet has been based – and who is also considered a goddess of love. Gamunjang-agi is the goddess of fate, fortune, destiny – who teaches Jeju people that their life path is of their own making. Samseung and her counterpart, Choseung, are the goddesses of childbirth and rearing – and sometimes, infant mortality. Geum Baekjo, mother of all shamanist gods on Jeju (though other indigenous gods predate her), divorced her husband and elected to become a “single mom” when she deemed that his values did not match her own. Jowang is the goddess of the hearth, who rules the house; her arch-rival, Noil-jeodae, governs the toilet area – and the two should never meet. In addition to Yowang and especially his goddess wife, Yowang Buin, whose worship is critical to the diving women, as it is on these sea gods that their life and livelihood depend, another goddess of great significance to this island community visits for two weeks each spring: Yeongdeung, she of wind and sea. Her farewell rite as conducted by the Chilmeori Shrine shamanist group has been designated by UNESCO as World Cultural Heritage. Many other villages also hold Yeongdeung worship rituals. Jeju is also known for its snake goddess worship. During the Joseon Dynasty of mainland Korea (1392~1897), many of the myths related to Jeju snake deities became distorted, the snake depicted as something to be conquered – perhaps a symbol for the island kingdom itself, which had retained a fair measure of autonomy and a high degree of distinctiveness prior to that time. The snake goddesses of Jeju were revered, even as it was understood that to forsake their worship meant dire consequences. Each household maintained small shrines to serpent goddesses of both indoor and outdoor granaries, while numerous village shrines were erected to other serpent deities. The spirit of this deity was said to be particularly aligned to the women, and passed from mother to daughter. The island has several legends of virgin sacrifice which led to maiden goddesses. Two of the most well-known are the goddess of outlying Mara Island, who protects the women divers there, and she of Gwancheong, an old government facility and fortress, entreated by those hoping to pass the civil service exam or be promoted. Many more goddesses can be found in Jeju’s pantheon. The women of Jeju are notoriously strong in character, mind and body, and have always been a force in this society. Even as the island community has modernized rapidly in the past half-century, the people retain this innate knowledge of Goddess – the women thus empowered – in their very DNA.
(Poem) Jonnet Lies Under the Thorn Tree, 1634 by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Thorn tree, photography by Carolyn Lee Boyd During the Witch Hunts, some of the accused were traditional healers continuing family traditions going back generations. I have often thought about these women, wondering why they continued to care for their patients even when they knew that they were increasing their risk of arrest. Whether they considered this or not, they were also essential for preserving traditional ways for us, their descendants who lived in what was to them a far future. Jonnet was a real person listed in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft of the University of Edinburgh. She was a traditional healer who mentioned charms and spells, as well as a thorn tree, a traditional gateway to the fairy world, at her trial. Might she have ever thought of escaping this world by vanishing into the fairy mound by the tree? While writing this poem is honor of her, I thought of so many women I’ve known who were healers or dedicated to making sure that traditional lifeways continue. I remembered how their dedication to their life mission was an essential part of who they are. I think I may understand better now what Jonnet may have been thinking. If you were she and thought you could escape into the world of fairy, would you have? What do we each need to do to make sure we continue to heal one another and that the wisdom of our ancestors, whomever they may have been, is available to future generations? Jonnet presses her body into the soft, wet, black, fruitful soil Beneath the thorn tree on Thorn Tree Hill. Can her human ear hear faint fairy feasting sounds? A fiddle, singing, dancing, dishes clanking, laughing — All merriment in that twilight realm her mother whispered about Fifty years ago, “listen for it with your Underworld ears.” Jonnet and her mother and all her mother’s mothers from forever Tended every village baby from its first breath To easing the pain of last sighs with herbs, charms and amulets. From the time the mantle of village healer fell onto her shoulders, Jonnet was always listening for the Knock on the door, the desperate plea For a tonic to ease a baby’s cough, a talisman against heartbreak, Never slept a night free from worry about some languishing neighbor. But now the minister speaks against her and some villagers do, too. She has heard rumors of other women healers Testified against, jailed, and burned just over the mountain. Now each morning she wakes up with panic gnawing at her belly. Will the next knock be the cart to take her away? Jonnet could quietly chant secret words into Thorn Tree Hill And she would vanish into the door of the Fairy Queen’s castle. She could leave behind hunger and cold and danger. She could stay a lifetime, or even just a few years and emerge Centuries in the future, when the panic would be silent, forgotten. Forever the women of her motherline have known the fairy mound spell And none have used it even in famine and war. How could they? Who would take care of the people? If she disappeared, what would her daughters and granddaughters learn About the responsibility that comes with the ancestral knowledge That is theirs by right? Everyone would say that the ministers and judges were right, The old ways are evil and women are of the devil. If she were not a witch, how could she disappear? And these trying times would never end. Jonnet lies beneath the thorn tree on Thorn Tree Hill, The incantation silent inside her trembling bones. She rises from the ground and brushes the soil and leaves from her skirt. She gathers more herbs for she has the second sight and knows that Tomorrow Elizabeth from the farm next door will be at her time And need help bringing new life into this sad world. But she will also say a prayer asking that someday, in the future, Women may stand up for love without fear, Do their work conscientiously in the day And rest peacefully at night. Everyone knows that a prayer left at a tree goes both to heaven Through the branches And to the fairy folk through the roots. Tomorrow the ministers and judges May dispatch her to one domain or the other But today she is alive and hears the sounds of a human world to heal. https://www.magoism.net/2016/08/meet-mago-contributor-carolyn-lee-boyd/
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 4) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) Free PDF available at Mago Bookstore. 13-MONTH YEAR AND 28-DAY MONTH A cycle of Little Calendar is called Sa (year). One Sa has thirteen Gi (months). One Gi has twenty-eight Il (days). Twenty-eight Il are divided by four Yo (weeks). One Yo has seven Il. A cycle of one Yo is called Bok (completion of a week). One Sa (year) has fifty-two Yobok. That makes 364 Il. This is of Seongsu (Natural Number) 1, 4, 7. This is a regular annual time of 364 days without intercalations: The cycle of Little Calendar (a period) is called year (Sa, one year). One year has 13 months (Gi). One month comprises 28 days (Il) and 4 weeks (Yo). One week has 7 days. One year has a total of 52 weeks (4×13), which is 364 days (28×13). The Magoist Calendar establishes 28 days for a month and 13 months to make the regular annual cycle of 364 days (28 x 13 = 364), to be supported by intercalations. A week comprises 7 days. A month has a total of 4 weeks. A year has a total of 52 weeks. Thus, it forms an interlocking interplay of 28-13-7-4-52-1-364 numbers. Numerologically, they belong the first group of three types of numbers, the Natural Numbers of 1, 4, 7. Each of 28 days, 13 months, 7 days, 4 weeks, 52 weeks, 1 day and 364 days constitutes a self-regulating spiral calendar and is connected with one another like an engine of differently sized cogwheels. For example, 1 day forms a daily spiral calendar. 7 days forms a weekly spiral calendar. 4 weeks forms a monthly spiral calendar (28 days). 28 days form a monthly spiral calendar (4 of 7 day weekly spirals or 28 daily spirals). 13 months form a yearly spiral calendar (13 of 28 months spirals, or 52 weekly spirals). Concerning the 28 day monthly spiral (4 of 7 weekly spirals), each day of the month is fixated with one of the seven weekdays throughout the year. The basic structure of a month looks as below. In this configuration, the 13th Friday is instated in the second of four weekly spirals. Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Regarding Natural Numbers, 1, 4, 7, it is involved as follows: 1 day (1) 13 months (1+3=4) 28 days (2+8=10, 1+0=1) 7 days (7) 52 weeks (5+2=7) 364 days (3+6+4=13, 1+3=4) Natural Numbers 1, 4, 7 refers to the basic sub-structures of an annual calendar (364 days). Each unit of the 28-13-7-1-52-364 scheme forms a self-regulating organic cogwheel that is in sync with one another. The logographic meanings of such terms as Sa (year), Gi (month), Yo (week) or Yobok (one week), and Il (day) are as follows: Sa (祀 Rituals, year) One year refers to the time to complete the cycle of rituals. Gi (期 Periods, month) One month refers to the period of the moon and menstruation cycle. Il (日Sun, day) One day refers to a day of the sun or light due to Earth’s rotation. Yo (曜 Resplendence of seven celestial bodies, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, week) A week include seven days dedicated to the seven celestial bodies. Bok or Yobok (曜服 Duties of the celestial bodies, completion of a week) One week refers to the cycle of seven daily rituals dedicated to the seven celestial bodies. The character, Sa (Rituals), that means a year, appears peculiar in comparison with other terms, Gi (Periods, lunar and menstrual) to mean a month, Il (Sun) to mean a day, and Yo (Resplendence of seven celestial bodies) to mean a week. Sa (Rituals) is apparently unmatched with other terms in that all of the latter involve the celestial bodies of the Moon, the Sun and the planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). Given that Earth is not implicated in these names, we may postulate that Sa is associated with Earth, referring to the Rite of Earth, the above key terms of the Magoist Calendar make sense, representing the Sun, the Moon, and solar planets including Earth. The Rite of the Earth hypothesis corroborates the definition of a year, the time taken for the Earth to make one revolution around the sun. In any case, the meaing of the character Sa suggest an inextricable relation between a year and rituals. Magoist terms Modern meaning Logographic meaning Corresponding celestial bodies Characteristic cyclic movement Sa祀 Year Rituals Earth Seasons Gi期 Month Periods Moon Menstruation Il 日 Day Days Sun Day and night Yo曜 Week Resplendence of celestial bodies Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn Rotations of solar celestial bodies To be continued. (Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang)
Navigating by the Star Goddesses by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Andrew Ruiz andrewruiz, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons I hike a conservation trail in late afternoon as a heavy hush infuses the air. Pink sun rays tinge the first fall leaves scarlet and a snake rustles the trail’s twigs. Swiftly, dusk flings a shadow mantle over the forest. Soon I am unable to see the small circle trail signs nailed high on trees or the undergrowth’s dirt paths. I raise my eyes to the stars, just barely visible so early. In truth, I can identify only the north star and big dipper even on the blackest of nights. Still, the impulse from millennia of humans navigating the seas and landscape by the stars has its way, and I look up. Eventually I find the main trail and make my way home, but I am bereaved that the stars who guided my ancestors for a hundred millennia are, in my ignorance, nothing but silence to me. So often we of the 21st century perceive our lives as a journey but are without the navigators who helped past sojourners determine where they were beginning and how to arrive at their destination. We may spend our lives seeking who we are, our life’s mission, and what we want to have accomplished at the end of our lives without goddesses to show us our proper relation to the Earth and Cosmos and the traditional wise women who once counseled us through life’s transitions and crises. Our global ancestors not only safely crossed sea and land by knowing to which direction heavenly bodies pointed but also by looking to the sky for guidance through life’s passageways with astrology or other celestial divination. In fact, the words for philosopher, wisdom-seeker, in both Old Irish and Scots Gaelic originate in their words for star-gazer. Could the goddesses whose myths are set among the stars, moon, and sun also help us find our way today? If I had gazed at the sky until evening I might have seen Venus, known to the ancient Sumerians as the evening and morning stars and associated with Inanna. They considered Venus’ never-ending cycles to be a source of stability in daily life. Similarly, I believe that the steadfastness granted to Inanna by Her deep self-understanding was key to the success of one of the greatest spiritual journeys ever taken, Her descent to the Underworld. There, in that land of the dead, She was judged and killed. However, because She profoundly knew Her own strengths and needs, She never waivered in Her purpose. She survived and ascended back home wiser and mightier. As we begin our own journeys, we can find that same self-knowledge within ourselves by witnessing the many challenges we have overcome and the good we have done, by truly seeing ourselves as spirited and sage beings who can come through life’s traumas and arise again. With a glimmering of perception of who we are now, we can look to goddesses who trekked from Earth to their rightful places in the sky for clues as to finding our proper headings into the future. The great Pacific goddess Hina lived on Earth but, according to version of her story I especially love, grew tired of doing all the family chores and flew to the moon to find peace where she still beats tapas to make cloth for clouds. This story reminds me of the importance of finding which positive value is most important to us, in this case peace, and making our way towards it however we can. What is the common destination of all your right decisions, whether peace, freedom, love, beauty, or any other name for the wholeness that all life strives for? Might the pursuits followed by the goddesses with whom you most resonate also help you make decisions as to which paths to take? The story of the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades, found all over the world, may be the oldest myth in human history. In these tales, often seven sisters arise together into the sky, reminding us that in seeking navigation for our own lives, we also become navigators for each other. Oftentimes friends and family can see our most treasured qualities and where we can most successfully go. Helping one another navigate hones our own skills and can give us perspective for finding our own way. Our travels are interconnected. We will find our ways together. At night’s end, the sun rises on the horizon over the forest trees, bringing to mind the story of the Scandinavian goddess Sol and what it tells us about how our journeys end, or perhaps how they never really do. Sol is chased through the sky until She is devoured at the end of the world, only to give birth to a daughter who then becomes the sun in a new sky. Like Sol, if we are to continue to grow, we must learn to navigate a constantly changing world even as we prepare to birth the next. We must realize that our real goal isn’t coming to an ending place, but rather to move the world better along the paths that we are all on together, knowing that what we do today may reverberate for generations. Agnes Tapley using a sextant for celestial navigation. U.S. National Park Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons We humans are natural wanderers and explorers, whether of inner or otherworldly dimensions or a New England forest in the liminal place between day and evening. But we need navigators, both within and outside ourselves, to arrive safely at our destinies. Sometimes we can find our navigators in myths of goddesses revered for millennia, whether those who rise to the sky or plunge into the Underworld. But in truth, once they have pointed the way, our best navigator is always within us, and her lantern is always there for us as we venture through our uncertain and chaotic, but ultimately beautiful and joyful lives. Sources: Patrician Monaghan’s Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, Peter Berresford Ellis’s The …
(Poem) Lavender by Andrea Nicki

You have come to understand that if women are like flowers you are most like lavender: wild, earthly, resilient, abundant
(She Summons Excerpt) Compassion, Wisdom, and Shadow: Remembering Our Humanity in the Hands of Goddess by Tahni J. Nikitins

[Editor’s Note: This piece is included in She Summons: Why… Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality?” Volume 1 (Mago Books, 2021).]There are many things lacking in our world today – many fundamental aspects of human experience that have for a long time been repressed and restricted, and have resulted in a vast array of societal and cultural ills. Deep, unflinching self-reflection and a willingness to stare into, embrace, understand, and navigate our own darkness, our own shadows, is one pivotal piece of the human experience that the vast majority shy away from. Far too often empathy, a critical aspect of engaging with, caring for, and understanding other humans, has gone unrewarded or even punished in societies that value rugged individualism over collective community. Compassion falls to the wayside, service to the community becomes undervalued and even criminalized, people become isolated, afraid, hurt, and angry. We live in deeply troubled times. The specter of climate change bears ever harder down on us, already taking lives as island communities lose land, as hurricanes come at us more fiercely and frequently, as polar vortexes wander the globe and huge swaths of land go up in flame. Fascism has made an unsettling come back. Water protectors are left in jail or with crippling legal fees while the pipelines they fought against hemorrhage oil into the water and soil that ecosystems and human communities depend on. And by and large, people are fed up. It has been through a long process of both outgrowing the narrow and simplistic worldview of the protestant church I grew up in that I came to walk neopagan paths. It was through the slow process of getting to know myself that I have grown into a paganism which values bodily and spiritual autonomy regardless of gender and values healthy relationships with the self, the community, and the planet – and which values all life as sacred, not only human life, and not only the lives of particularly relatable non-human animals. It is through the process of growing fed up with an inequitable status quo that does more harm than good, both to human communities and to the ecosystems that support them, that I have become so thoroughly enmeshed with the fierce Norse goddesses I work with. Goddesses of old, in their own, unique ways, can teach us how to access and fully experience our capacity for empathy, compassion, and the ways in which we can formulate simple acts of service as sacred acts. Many of them also offer a gateway to accessing the deeper, darker wells of our human nature, and a path to incorporating those shadows into ourselves, so that we can become truly whole, rather than the compromised, fragmented beings a perverse society demands us to be. Each goddess varies in Her approach to these things, and each approach to these goddesses will yield different journeys, different evolutions, and different outcomes. One of the beautiful things about goddess spirituality that is lacking in mainstream religious experience is the acknowledgment and acceptance that one size does not fit all. Depending on our cultural backgrounds, our neuro-chemical makeup, our experience with trauma or mental illness, etc. we will have different experiences and views of the world. Goddess spirituality provides the space for these differences. Much of goddess spirituality focuses on recovering the power that has long been denied to women and femmes by patriarchal governing powers, and doing so in a way that promotes peace and understanding. There are also, however, spaces within goddess spirituality which embrace feminine rage as sacred, too, and embrace the power of that rage, whether it come from Kali, Lilith, the Morrigan, or any number of other ancient, fierce, goddesses who do not shy away from a fight. We are, all of us, sacred. Goddess spirituality reminds us of this – that everything is sacred or nothing is. It pushes us to find the sacred within ourselves, even within our own shadows, and it pushes us to find the sacred in the simplicity of our lives. Under the tutelage of one goddess I have discovered an ability to meditate through basic housework – to find the quiet and stillness in mundane acts that gives my mind and soul a reprieve from a world that is often too loud, too busy, too harsh. Another goddess reminds me that even righteous rage in the face of inequity is sacred. She guides me toward acts of civil disobedience and resistance to oppressive systems that would smoother communities and snuff out lives in the name of wealth and power. Yet another guides me toward small and simple acts of community service in Her honor. As a polytheist and a pantheist who primarily follows the “Dark Deities” of the Norse pantheon, but who occasionally works with deities of other pantheons as well, I could easily write whole essays on the lessons I’ve learned from each goddess I’ve engaged with. They all have their own things to say, their own wisdom to impart, and they all have every potential to enact real change on this world through the sacred hands of their adherents. For now, I would like to look at three goddesses whose force I’ve felt in my life most potently, even though their myths have been lost to the ages. Sigyn Not much is remembered about Sigyn, but we do know this from her surviving lore: she was the wife of Loki and mother to his children, who she lost when one was turned into a wolf to kill the other. In the wake of this tragedy she stayed by her imprisoned husband’s side, holding a simple bowl above his head to capture the venom that dripped from a snake tied above him. The most common interpretation of Sigyn is as a goddess of loyalty and fidelity. Investigating scraps of lost lore, such as the meaning of her name (“victory woman”) and the kenning “Incantation Fetter,” we can clearly see that there was so much more to this goddess …
Brighid and the Oystercatcher by Jude Lally

Brighid of the Isles by Jill Smith Throughout tales of Brighid, of Goddess and Saint, the Oystercatcher is often on the periphery. The top image by Lewis-based author and writer Jill Smith, shows Brighid and the islands that make up the Outer Hebrides. While not a literal translation, the Hebrides, are known as the Isles of Brighid. St. Bride by George Lomsky. She holds an oystercatcher, showing the white of its wings and back forming a cross. The Hebridean isles of Eigg and Rum in the distance In Ireland the oystercatcher is known as Giolla Brighde, a servant of St Brigid. It is said that the bird returns to Irish shores (joining those who have overwintered) in great numbers on St Brigid’s Day, and so is seen as a harbinger of the coming of light and warmth as the days stretch out. Celtic Twilight The Victorian era was responsible for the ‘Celtic Twilight’ a great resurgence and romanticization of Celtic spirituality which fed into many different schools including from literature. Writer William Sharp writing under the name of Fiona McLeod, brought a new aspect to Brighid’s story, placing a young Brighid growing up on the Isle of Iona. We could easily dismiss this rewriting as it has happened in relatively recently, yet with each retelling, it incorporates new views and values providing a new perspective, and in this way, Brighid crosses yet another threshold. Mary of the Gael To the folks of the Highlands and the Western Isles of Scotland Brighid was ‘Mary of the Gael’. This use of the name ‘Mary’ meant she was referred to as the ‘Second Mary’. Folks of the Western Isles practiced what some term Celtic Christianity, which brought together aspects of an older pagan view merged with honoring of an early Christianity. Isle of Iona Fostermother of Christ The story of Brighid on Iona is that both she and her father (Durvach) leave Ireland and arrive on the shores of the Isle of Iona (off the West Coast of Scotland). On arrival, they meet with the Arch-Druid who acknowledges Brighid’s pivotal role in playing out an ancient prophecy as he announces: He advises Durvach to ‘treat Bride as though she were thy spirit, but leave her much alone, and let her learn of the sun and the wind. In the fullness of time, the prophecy shall be fulfilled.’ So Brighid grows up on the Isle of Iona often watching the Druids perform rituals on the small hill of Dun-i. One starlight night Bride is walking along the white sandy beach on the North of the Island. It’s the 24th of December and the first Christmas Eve. The night is calm, and the water reflecting the light of the moon and stars dances and shifts, ringed in dark circles as if caught in a net. Bride walks the shoreline singing to herself. St Bride being carried by angels to Bethlehem by John Duncan. As she looks up into the night sky she notices one bright shining star. She thinks it’s such a perfect night she’d like to sleep on the shore, but it is December and cold. As she reached the top of the shore she sits down among the sand hills. She pulls her mantle around her, her cloak of Scottish tweed that she wove herself. She watches and listens to the little oystercatcher under the moon with his black and white plumage and red feet. This little bird was the Saint’s servant. Then suddenly they heard a mighty roar – laughter and joy and the clapping of hands. A falling star shot through the night sky and then 2 angels appeared at her side. They offered her their hands in a white glow more glittering than snow ‘Bride’ they said. ‘Fear not at all, tonight in Bethlehem is born, the son of man, and ‘ere the morn, they mantle blue shall be his shawl’. And as excited as she was, she’s a little overcome by everything and starts to faint, but the angels catch her. When she opens her eyes she’s high up in the sky looking down on all the islands of the Hebrides set in the Atlantic. She feels the soft beating of the angel’s wings, one holding her feet, the other holding a pillow under her head. Leaving Iona far below, as she travels through the white clouds and the starlit sky the little oystercatcher, the servant of Bride, runs up and down the shore crying that she has left him, crying ‘Gille-gille-gille-gille B-r-i-d-e!, Gille-gille-gille-gille B-r-i-d-e!” Click on the image above to hear the call of the Oystercatcher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwhIe6kKKSY&t=31s Midwife of Birth and Death Another story that features the oystercatcher is in Brighid’s role as midwife. While Brighid was a figure much honored by midwives who tended to new life coming into the world in assisting mothers (and also animal mothers) Brighid is also a midwife to those souls leaving the world and returning home. In the chant listed above, ‘Pirililou’ mimics the call of the oystercatcher. It was a chant sung in the first days after death to facilitate the soul’s journey home. It was sung at the edge of the shore facing west, the direction of the otherworld. This song is sung by Sister Fiontullach of the Ceilie de Order. This chant which mimics the call of the oystercatcher suggests its role as a helper to Brighid as a midwife and the ritual of the passage of souls from this world. I live near the shore of the River Leven (coming from Loch Lomond) and joining the River Clyde and we have a healthy population of Oystercatchers. As I catch a glimpse of their red legs, and their ‘Gille-gille-gille-gille B-r-i-d-e!’ calls reach my ears, I am graced by the stories of Brighid, which always feels a comfort in itself, and an embrace of being wrapped tightly in her mantle. Links Brighid of the Isles (top image) by Jill Smith – Click for her webiste Website of the Ceilie De …
(Tribute 3) My Loving Father (7/31/1935-10/10/2020) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Bomun Sanseong (Mountain stronghold), photo by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Death does not take away the dead from the living. The death of a beloved causes a pain of separation for the living, triggering the ontological wound from being born into this (patriarchally inflicted) world. Our mourning for the death of our beloveds is real because we are part of the dead. Love transforms everything. Mourning is a gift of grace from the deceased. The dead embraces the living in the way that the living can’t do. My deceased father works miracles for his beloveds. He is finally free to show his love in a tangible manner. He is solid in his love for all. And he has made himself a guardian for his beloveds. I see and revere the legacy of a Korean Magoist male identity in him. I can tell my story. I flew to S. Korea to visit my mother second time this year because I wanted to support her when she was deeply grieving for my father. My belated visit earlier this year, due to the Covid pandemic, to my father’s grave made me realize that I needed to show my love for my mother before it was too late to do so. My grieving for my deceased father yielded to the sensitivity that I felt that my mother needed love and care. She was affected the most by his death. And the sensitivity that I had was his care for her to be implemented by me, I see now. Love flows in reciprocity. My mother and I had a lovely time together, while we both are grieving for him. It was a cosmic womb time for both of us (my mother and me), made possible by the love of my deceased father whom we love dearly. It was very special that I spent time with my mother alone for 3 weeks in her apartment, in fact for the first time in our adult lives. We both were deeply touched from our time together. As the purpose of my trip was to spend time with her, I did not make any other appointments but decided on focusing on our time together. Under the jet lag, I struggled a bit to be attentive for the first two weeks. Then, the third last week was amazing. Magic happened. It was a time, which felt like I was in her womb. Or we both were in the Womb of the Creatrix, Mago! It was a womb time for both of us. She wanted to take care of me (she used to say that she could not feed me well or dress well as much as she wished to when I was small) so I accepted that. If something made her happy and if she wanted to do something, I did not interrupt her. I was well fed (to the degree that I kept apologizing for her services in the beginning). We cooked together and talked and talked. We watched TV together and I listened to her stories of making new friends with neighboring women. She allowed me to go and carry on my writing task daily. She minimized her social activities to be with me (she usually does that). My brothers were genuinely good to my mother and me. They took us to their homes and entertained us. When the three of us, her children, were with her in my younger brother’s vacation house, my mother was so thrilled like a little girl. It was her time with her three children alone after my father transited two years ago. She did not stop laughing and smiling. In fact, throughout my three-week’s stay with her, her excitement was felt in her voice. It was clear that she felt loved and appreciated by her three children! And we went to my father’s grave. He received a 2 years anniversary ceremony from my family two months ago in October. Whenever my mother went to his grave, her grief became overwhelming. She wailed so much so that I could not release my own grief (see my tribute 2 to my father). Thus, I had not broached my wish to visit his grave to anyone until I had a chance to tell my youngest brother who happened to treat us in his home toward the end of my visit. I desperately needed one of my brothers to take us to the graveyard because no public transportation was available to this huge mountain cemetery park. It was a cold day when my youngest brother took us to his grave. My heart was getting clogged with tears. This time, to my surprise, my mother came to the grave but did not wish to stay longer because it was too cold, she said. Deep sorrow did not take up her heart this time! My conflict melted away. That allowed me to cry loudly as I wished. No one else was there. I told my brother to allow me to cry out alone. And he agreed. I had a good cry out alone. I wanted to stay longer but left the site to join my mother. It was important that I did not trigger her deep sorrow. My youngest brother gently hugged me and we walked to the car. I could not believe that my father was not there when I visited Korea. It is conventional that one mourns for the loss of a parent for three years for Koreans in old days. I comforted myself that I still have one more year to grieve for him, while appreciating his life to us and the world. One thing my mother and I refrained from talking about this time was my father/her spouse. I had been concerned in April when I visited her that she was grieving too much. So this time, I was cautious not to trigger her deep grief. Her health would be at stake, if she continued to be in such an intensive state of emotion. So my father was a pink elephant in the house that we pretended that we did not see, so to speak. That was …
(Book Review) Danica Anderson’s Blood and Honey by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D

This book is an entrance into the grief and hope of the Mother (Earth/Cosmic Mother), in a particular region of Her stress (South Slavic countries); which is a place wherein much of the old indigenous ways are still accessible, and are able to provide a meeting place for healing/wholing. The methods applied and described by Danica Anderson, the author, in this beautifully presented book, may provide a model for approach to healing deep trauma, which is becoming more common on a global scale in these times. The method primarily begins with “bearing witness”: most chapters begin with the paragraph heading “When and Where I Bore Witness”, and Danica notes that hearing and bearing witness to such stories requires courage and bravery. Key to the healing is this: After three raging wars on Balkan soil, the people have been forced to return to the Megalithic South Slavic way of life since many of the modern conveniences they once relied on have been destroyed. They work in the fields, prepare the same food, and practice the same domestic arts that their ancestors engaged in thousands of years ago. These small acts are re-enacted and woven into the fabric of their present moments because so much is unavailable to them in the aftermath of war. The return to the Megalithic South Slavic way of life provides something new, however[1]. I felt that the traumatic experiences and the aftermath in this specific place may serve as a prototype of the planetary situation unfolding presently on a large scale. Frequently there were whole paragraphs of this very rich book that I wanted to write out for you, but to be practical I had to choose, how to give you a taste of this book. It speaks to an essence, an essential component of healing the trauma of the world, a world beset with chronic war, besieged by reckless boys parading as leaders – really hoodlums and vandals. And the women – mothers and grandmothers, and all those who love them, get on with the sustenance of life as best they are able, in the midst. As Danica describes: South Slavic female justice is an evolutionary process that occurs through small acts done consistently and with great love. Sweeping up after the wars and baking sweets while boiling thick coffee in a wide –based and narrow necked pot called ajesvahas been done silently for generations, behind the scenes of what was cited as momentous humanitarian aid and policies that did not support or recognise them[2]. And commenting on the men sitting hunched in cafanas and drinking a thick demitasse of coffee: The men staring into their cups are alone; they have no companions, no kolo, just extreme loneliness … The men smoke and drink their coffee as their women walk by, carrying immense packages of potatoes to plant or bags of precious flour to bake with while their children pull at their skirts[3]. The shattering – emotional and physical, that Danica speaks of and witnesses could be read as the shattering which many currently experience in many other global regions, including our hearts, in the face of the extant and wanton destruction of forests, rivers, species and peoples including children. Danica states that amongst other definitions of the word ‘Balkan’[4], the translation from Serbo-Croation to English means ‘blood and honey’: that is, ‘Bal’ meaning honey and ‘kan’ meaning blood. Yet as Danica describes later in the book, the ‘blood’ part of the word is originally not the blood of war as one may think in this era. The blood in this “land of Blood and Honey” was not “the spilt blood of wars or genocide but the rivers, the waters that feed the land into honey: abundance”[5]. The term ‘Balkan” is connected to migratory patterns, to a land of (life) blood and honey; but the term now “has a meaning for a century of brutal wars and diaspora”, a migration that is now perverted to “a fleeing from violence”. And as Danica describes, it is the South Slav’s relations with “the Moist Mother Earth”, encoded yet still in the DNA, and in remnants of cultural practices, and especially in women’s everyday constant sustaining of life, that is at the core of the healing process. She says: “I have experienced the psychosomatic healing that exudes from the women’s kolo rituals, and oral memory tradition science of ancient round dancing and other practices, that is not easily captured by traditional empirical methods”[6]. She describes it as the “women’s evolutionary approaches surmounting what most would say are impassable obstacles and arduous struggles … largely ignored by those humanitarian and justice agencies that were there to help”[7]. In one of all the powerful chapters in Blood and Honey (a chapter called “Bogumile”), Danica writes of the loitering unemployed males “standing around with nothing to do”, lining the Novi Travnik streets and filling the cafes: and I thought, is this not a global problem – males with not enough to do, in a world that needs so much to be done? Young Bosnian males boast of their warrior skills, and don’t know what to do with them: domestic violence reigns, as military skills are called “a cultural right”, and “setting those warriors free in the domestic sphere obliterates the rights of women and children completely”[8]. Analogies can be drawn across the globe, even in countries that experience war in more covert ways, and not in any obvious way. Danica speaks of her struggle to listen to the men’s stories, and yet to not support the position of ‘entitled male’; but then, “in my struggle not to judge or retreat, I thought like a mother; he could be my son. He could be my brother”[9]. She yearned for the Bogumilemale that resides in the South Slavs (kin to what many may know as a ‘Green Man’), a spiritual guide “offering clarity and peace for the protection of all living things”[10]. Surely this is what the men need re-invoked within their psyches, if they are to …
(Essay 6) The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia by Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen

[This part and the forthcoming sequels are an elaborated version of the original article entitled “The Norse Goddesses behind the Asir Veil: The Vanir Mothers in Continental Scandinavia—a late Shamanistic Branch of the Old European Civilization?” by Märta-Lena Bergstedt & Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen, included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Mago Books, 2018) Edited by Mary Ann Beavis and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.] Travelling into World of the Vanir Mothers Fig. 15. Old forest lake, Sweden The mythological world of the Eddas was inhabited also by the Vanirs, and also many other explicit groups like the Jättar (Giants/Jotnar) and Elver/Alfer (Elvens).[1] In the Eddas, these groups most often came to represent the opponents to, or enemies of Asgård. The Asirs fought them to control or destroy them, and always kept a distance from them, unless profiting from any interrelations or intermarriages with them. If not in some way useful for the Asirs, they were generally seen as negative beings. In their original animistic contexts these groups may have represented something quite different. By means of general features of the animistic world view, and with the specific, but mostly unintended left-overs and information in the Eddas, combining it with archeological findings and general rules for the patriarchal shift, we have allowed a glance at the inhabitants of the old mythological world with positive glasses, and to let quite a different world shine through. JÄTTAR — the Giants Fig. 16. The Old Lady of the Forest, over 3 m high. Giants/ Jotnar (Jättar or Gyger) were born before beginning of time.[2] They were the oldest of all beings. In our understanding these first beings typify or metaphorically personify the basic physical elements. When they appear in their most compact and dense form, the primordial forces are almost uncontrollable; Earth materializes as rocks and mountains; Water as oceans, blizzards and hail; Fire as the heat of the sun and blazing fires, volcanoes and thunderstorms; and Air as hurricanes and gales. The names of the Giants, the “Big Ones” testify their connection to basic nature elements; they are Frost, Hoarfrost, Snowdrift, Snow, Sea, Shower, Flame, Thunder-flash, Fire, Gust, Storm, etc. In Ragnarök, the Fire-Giant Surt (Black) will lick the earth with his ravaging fire. Humanizing the Giants in the Eddas, the Asirs saw them as lumpy, heavy-sized, and incredibly strong beings. They lived their hard and raw lives in the far North, in Jotunheim, where the elements rage and the chaos forces; ice, gales, wild oceans, volcanoes and naked rocks reigned. Sometime records of their damaging strength will know that this Giant was only three days old – a lot though, if this giant is signifying or personalizing a rising hurricane or fire. Giants, in Asir optics, were entirely physical, totally lacking divinity, and having no glory from battlefield fighting attached to them. Therefore, in his spare time Asir-Thor was frenetically occupied with hunting them, especially the females,[3] to either break them, or to control them and their forces. ELVER and ALFER — the Elven Fig. 17. Glittering Elven Water. Photo: S. Rudehill In the Icelandic Sagas, the epithets Elven and Vanir are often interchangeable. The fair, shimmering Elven people are most often thought to be connected to and metaphors for the moving of elements – light (fire), water and air. We have come to conclude that the specific Elven feature is that of adding an energizing and moving, flowing, streaming or even electrifying aspect to the basic physical elements. The energizing of light would cause sunbeams streaming (Alf-röd-ul, a Vanir figure) and be connected to the continuous progression of light at dawn, day and dusk. The energizing of water makes rivers to flow, vapor to rise, and hazes to dance. It would add sharpness to the air (Egil, Egg-ilning, a Vanir figure)[4] and cause winds to blow. And for the moving of water, the Nordic word for crystal flowing rivers is elve or älvar. Rivers are surely Elven domiciles. The energizing of the physical elements may actually even mirror the archaic and classic understanding of the not four but five elements, co-creating our world; fire, air, water, earth, and ether.[5] Ether was traditionally understood as life-breath/living spirit, wit and consciousness, and thus not included in the element, air and wind. Elven energy will also cause affections to move. VANER – the Old Vanirs If Giants represent the basic physical elements, and the Elven, like electricity, set a moving energy (and life) to the physical elements, then Vanir entities give the impression to represent and personify abstract phenomena and conditions of life, meaning; fertility (the ability to grow), mating (the urge or force of love), warmth (phenomenon of kindness), beauty, death and re-incarnating (the ability to die and re-generate), etc. The regular cycles of seasons; winter, spring, summer, and fall – the on-going cycles of changes shared with organic life in the physical world; plants, humans, animals and stars. The old emblem of the Life-circle is personified in the maiden-mother-crone triad, throughout the old world, and in the Vanir world. But the word, Vanir, what may the very word denote? Academically, the explanation of the specific word vaner (Vanir) has not yet reached fully consensus. What is clear is that the word itself belongs to the Old Scandinavian domain. Scandinavian landscapes have hundreds of geographical Van-Vaner-names: Vansbro, Vanered, Vanatjärnen, Vantinge, Vansø, Vanhøje, and Vänern, testifying old presence. A sidelong glance will spot the many van-vaner-words in modern Scandinavian languages, the meaning of which most often lie within the sphere of “common, plain, non-admirable, powerless, wrong, distorted, customs and old habits, old ways”, etc. (Sw. vanlig, vanmakt, vantro, vanskapt, vantro, vansinne, vana, etc.). The Asir believing nobility may well have thought of the rural peasants of Vanir believers as people sticking to their old habits/ways (Sw. vanor), as well as even being unbelievers or wrong-believers (vantro), and thus twisted any van-words into negative connotations. The alleged natural beauty of the Vanirs on the other hand may be preserved in words like vän, vänlig, vän, etc. (beautiful, …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Alex Purbrick

Alex Purbrick lives in the Shetland Islands in the far north of Scotland. She is a Mother, Writer and Artist. Alex lived and worked for four years with the late Corbin Harney at his healing centre, Poohabah in Tecopa, California. She helped Corbin manage the day to day running of Poohabah as well as organise his speaking engagements to public groups throughput the Southwest. Alex is the editor of The Nature Way (University Nevada Press, 2009) which tells the life story of Corbin Harney and his spiritual teachings of living in harmony with nature and our Mother Earth. As a writer and artist Alex uses her words and art as a prayer for all nature continuing the vision that we are all One People on One Mother Earth.
(Whale Essay 2) Whales in Korean Linguistics by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Korean Cetacean Words, Expressions, and Sayings (Part 2A) “Gorae (고래)” is a vernacular word, which means a whale or cetacean in Korean. “Gyeong (鯨)” is a logographic syllable that indicates whales. In a vein of East Asian thought, whales are associated with the terrestrial divine. In Buddhism, a whale, specifically a narwhal, is euphemized as a mystical animal, Jicheongsu (地聽獸 the terrestrial animal who hears or an acoustic animal of the Earth), in association with Bodhisattva Jijang (地藏 Ksitigarbha). Jijang (Jizo in Japanese and Dizang in Chinese), Gim Gyogak of a Sillan royalty, is told to have crossed the West Sea of the Korean Peninsula to Tang China (618-907) by riding Jicheongsu. White in color, Jicheongsu is told to have had one horn. In iconography, Jicheongsu is depicted as a one-horned dragon-like beast. The list of cetacean words includes below: Gyeongjong (鯨鐘 Whale Bell), Hwagyeong (華鐘 Splendid Whale), or Janggyeong (長鐘 Old Whale) refers to Korean temple bells, which is discussed at length elsewhere. Gyeonggon (鯨鯤 Gon Whale, Jingkun in Chinese): Refers to a whale represented as a gigantic mythological fish. In the Zhuangzi, Gon (Kun in Chinese) is described as an imaginary fish in the northern sea whose size is immeasurably enormous. It swims freely and metamorphoses itself to a gigantic bird, Bung (鵬 Peng in Chinese), which takes a flight in the infinitely wide heaven southward. The utterance of Gon Whale in the Zhuangzi, one of the philosophical texts of Daoism together with the Laozi, holds key to unlock the link between Daoist philosophy and Magoist Cetaceanism, the trans-patriarchal thought of Magoist Cetaceanism. Gyeonggol (鯨骨 Cetacean bone) Gyeongnoeyou (鯨腦油 Oil from the cetacean head): Cooled compressed oil drawn from whale’s brain bones. Gyeongdo (鯨濤 Cetacean wave), Gyeongrang (鯨浪) or Gyeongpa (鯨波): A big wave of the sea. Gyeongrap (鯨臘 Cetacean wax) Gyeongryeop (鯨獵 Whaling) Gyeongseon (鯨船 Whaling ship) Gyeongseom (鯨銛 Whaling harpoon) Gyeongak (鯨鰐 Whales and crocodiles) Gyeongeo (鯨魚 Whale fish): Whale or the mallet of the Korean temple bell. Gyeongye (鯨鯢 Male whale and female whale). Ye (鯢) also refers to a whale. See Yechi (Whale Teeth) below. Gyeongyu (鯨油 Whale oil) Gyeongeum (鯨飮 Whale drinking): A heavy drinking of alcohol like a whale’s drinking water. Gyeongeum (鯨音 Whale sound): The sound of the Korean temple bell. Gyeongtan(鯨呑 Whale swallowing): Control of the powerful over the meek like a whale swallows a school of small fish. Gyeongpa (鯨波 Whale wave): A big wave, a loud roar. Gyeonghu (鯨吼 Whale lore): A loud roar of a whale. Yechi (鯢齒 Whale Teeth) The following cetacean expressions are the linguistic code for us to assess the multi-faceted aspects of Magoist Cetaceanism. Among them is the most popular expression, “the back of a whale 고래등.” The back of a whale as big as 40 meter-long for the largest whale is euphemized as “a moving rock in the sea,” “a mountain in the sea,” or “an island” in myth, iconography, and lore. The myth of Yeono-rang and Seo-nyeo (Yeono Man and Seo Woman) or the myth of the Precious Queen Seo, as such I renamed, is a prime example, to be discussed in a later section. The motif that a whale is mistaken for an island appears across cultures in such stories as Brendan the navigator and Sinbad the sailor. Also the expression, “the back of a whale,” is used to refer to the roof architecture of a traditional Korean house that addresses its large and magnificent appearance to moderns. Dudeul Village in Yeongyang, Gyeongbuk S. Korea “A roof-tiled house like the back of a whale 고래등 같은 기와집” refers to a big and majestic traditional house whose roof resembles the back of a whale. The roof can be a single roof or roofs. Used as a plural, this expression juxtaposes the roofs of a house or a village with the backs of whales, a pod of whales, in the sea (see the image). “A roof-tiled house like the back of a whale” has two cetacean implications. First, its roof is constructed after a whale’s back. Secondly, the very building with the whale-back-like roof represents a whale’s body. This is a complex topic to be discussed in detail at a later section. “Bang gorae (방고래 Room whale)” of the ondol system, an underfloor heating system of traditional Korean architecture in the form of a whale’s body, a topic to be discussed in conjunction with “A roof-tiled house like the back of a whale.” “Gorae gumeong (고래구멍 Whale entrance or hole)” is a dialect of the wood-burning furnace connected to Bang Gorae (Room whale).“Gorae rangbi (고래랑비 Whale Rain)” refers to a pouring rain in a short time. “Gorae gorae (고래고래)” is an onomatopoeia referring to a loud voice like that of a whale. “Goraesimjul-gata (고래심줄 같다 Like whale’s tendon)” refers to the property that is as strong as whale’s tendon. “Sul gorae (술고래 Whale-like drinker)” refers to one who heavily drinks alcohol. “Chingchaneun goraedo chumchuge handa (칭찬은 고래도 춤추게 한다Complementing makes even whales dance)” conveys a moral that positive comments make one happy.” “Gorae ssaume saeudeung teojinda (고래 싸움에 새우등 터진다The back of shrimp breaks when caught between whales in fight against each other)” refers to a small and meek party who gets sacrificed by the fights of big powers. (To be continued) https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang/ (Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

(Special Post Mother Teresa 1) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

[Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously […]
(Special Post 1) "The Oldest Civilization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: The following discussion took place in response to an article listed blow by […]
(Special Post Isis 2) Why the Color of Isis Matters by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s note: The discussion took place in Mago Circle during the month of July, 2013. […]
(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 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 […]
(Special Post 2) 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, […]

(Poetry & Photo Essay) Pongal by Susan Hawthorne

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

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. MoonCourt Ceremonial Space set for Autumn Equinox ceremony, 2013 Ritual/ceremony is often described as “sacred space.” I understand that to mean “awareness of the space as sacred”: all space is sacred, what shifts is our awareness – awareness of the depth of spacetime, and of the depth of all things and all beings. I understand “sacred awareness” as an awareness of deep relationship and identity with the very cosmic dynamics that create and sustain the Universe; or an awareness of what is involved in the depth of each moment, each thing, each being. Ceremony is a space and time given to expression, contemplation and nurturance of that depth … at least to something of it. Ceremony may be both an expression of deep inner truths – perceived relationship to self, Earth and Cosmos, as well as being a mode of teaching and drawing forth deeper participation. Essentially, ceremony is a way of entering into the depth of the present moment … what is deeply present right here and now, a way of entering deep space and deep time, which is not somewhere else but is right here. Every-thing, and every moment, has Depth – more depth than we usually allow ourselves to contemplate, let alone comprehend. This book, this paper, this ink, the chair, the floor – each has a history and connections that go back, all the way back to Origins. This moment you experience now, in its particular configuration, place, people present, subtle feelings, thoughts, and propensity towards certain directions or outcomes, has a depth – many histories and choices that go back … ultimately all the way back to the beginning. Great Origin is present at every point of space and time – right here. In ceremony we are plugging our awareness into something of that. In this holy context then – in this mindframe of knowing connection, everything one does is a participation in the creation of the Cosmos: for the tribal indigenous woman, perhaps the weaving of a basket; for another, perhaps preparing a meal; for you, perhaps getting on the train to go to a workplace. It is possible to regain this sense, to come to feel that the way one breathes makes a difference – that with it, you co-create the present and the future, and you may even be a blessing on the past. In every moment we receive the co-creation, the work, of innumerable beings, of innumerable moments, and innumerable interactions of the elements, in everything we touch … and so are we touched by them. The local is our touchstone to the Cosmos – it is not separate. Ceremony may be a way into this awareness, into strengthening it. Ceremony is actually ‘doing,’ not just theorizing. We can talk about our personal and cultural disconnection endlessly, but we need to actually change our minds. Ceremony can be an enabling practice – a catalyst/practice for personal and cultural change. It is not just talking about eating the pear, it is eating the pear; it is not just talking about sitting on the cushion (meditating), it is sittingon the cushion. It is a cultural practice wherein we tell a story/stories about what we believe to be so most deeply, about who and what we are. Ceremony can be a place for practicing a new language, a new way of speaking, or spelling – a place for practicing “matristic storytelling”[i] if you like: that is, for telling stories of the Mother, of Earth and Cosmos as if She were alive and sentient. We can “play like we know it,” so that we may come to know it.[ii] Ceremony then is a form of social action. I have found it useful to describe ceremony using and extending words used by Ken Wilber to describe a “transpersonal practice,” which is needed for real change: he said it was a practice that discloses “a deeper self (I or Buddha) in a deeper community (We or Sangha) expressing a deeper truth (It or Dharma).”[iii] My extension of that is: ceremony may disclose a deeper beautiful self (the I/Virgin/Urge to Be/Buddha), in a deeper relational community (the We/Mother/Place of Being/Sangha), expressing a deeper transformative truth (the It/Old One/Space to Be/Dharma). This is the “unitive body,” the “microcosmos” that Charlene Spretnak refers to in States of Grace.[iv] Since ceremony is an opportunity to give voice to deeper places in ourselves, forms of communication are used that the dreamer, the emotional, the body, can comprehend, such as music, drama, simulation, dance, chanting, singing.[v] These forms enable the entering of a level of consciousness that is there all the time, but that is not usually expressed or acknowledged. We enter a realm that is ‘out of time,’ which is commonly said to be not the “real” world, but it is more organic/indigenous to all being and at least as real as the tick-tock world. It is a place “between the worlds,” wherein we may put our hands on the very core of our lives, touch whatever it is that we feel our existence is about, and thus touch the possibility of re-creating and renewing ourselves. NOTES: [i] A term used by Gloria Feman Orenstein in The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), 147. [ii] As my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Susan Murphy once described it to me in conversation. [iii] Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything (Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1996), 306-307. [iv] 145. [v] As Starhawk notes, The Spiral Dance, 45. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. The Reflowering of the Goddess. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990. Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. New York: Harper and Row, 1999. Wilber, Ken. A Brief History of Everything. Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1996.
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 …
The Ceremonial Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

It is the Season of Samhain/Deep Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere at this time. In the PaGaian version of Samhain/Deep Autumn ceremony participants journey to the “Luminous World Egg” … a term taken from Starhawk in her book The Spiral Dance[i], where she also names that place as the “Shining Isle”, which is of course, the Seed of conception, a metaphor for the origins of all and/or the female egg: it is the place for rebirth. Artist: Bundeluk, Blue Mountains, Australia. The “luminous world egg” is a numinous place within, the MotherStar of conception: that is, a place of unfolding/becoming. The journey to this numinous place within requires first a journey back, through some of each one’s transformations, however each may wish to name those transformations at this time. The transformations for each and every being are infinite in their number, for there is “nothing we have not been” as has been told by Celts and others of Old, and also by Western science in the evolutionary story (a story told so well by evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris, particularly in her video Journey of a Silica Atom.) Ceremonial participants may choose selves from biological, present historical self, or may choose selves from the mythic with whom they feel connection; from any lineage – biological or otherwise. Selves may also be chosen from Gaia’s evolutionary story – earlier creatures, winged or scaled ones … with whom one wishes to identify at this time. Each participant is praised for their “becoming” for each self they share. When all have completed these journeys/stories of transformation, the circle is lauded dramatically by the celebrant for their courage to transform; and she likens them all to Gaia Herself who has made such transitions for eons. The celebrant awards each with a gingerbread snake, “Gaian totems of life renewed”[ii]. gingerbread snakes Participants sit and consume these gingerbread snakes in three parts: (i) as all the “old shapes” of self that were named; and (ii) remembering the ancestors, those whose lives have been harvested, whose lives have fed our own, remembering that we too are the ancestors, that we will be consumed; and (iii) remembering and consuming the stories of our world that they desire to change, the stories that fire their wrath or sympathy: in the consuming, absorbing them (as we do), each may transform them by thoughts and actions – “in our own bodyminds”. When all that is consumed “wasting no part”, it is said that “we are then free to radiate whatever we conceive”, to “exclaim the strongest natural fibre known” – our creative selves, “into such art, such architecture, as can house a world made sacred” by our building[iii]. This “natural fibre” is a reference to the spider’s thread from within her own body, with which she weaves her web, her home; and Spider has frequently been felt in indigenous cultures around the globe as Weaver and Creator of the Cosmos. Spider the Creatrix, North America, C. 1300 C.E., Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.13 In the ceremony, participants linked with a thread that they weave around the circle, may sail together for a new world “across the vast sunless sea between endings and beginnings, across the Womb of magic and transformation, to the “Not-Yet” who beckons”[iv]: to the Luminous World Egg whereupon the new may be conceived and dreamed up. Samhain/Deep Autumn ceremony is an excellent place for co-creating ourselves, for imaginingthe More that we may become, and wish to become. This is where creation and co-creation happens … in the Womb of Space[v], in which we are immersed – at all times: and Samhain is a good season for feeling it. References: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005 Sahtouris, Elisabet. Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution. Lincoln NE:iUniversity Press, 2000. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. NY: Harper and Row, 1999. Swimme, Brian. The Earth’s Imagination.DVD series 1998. NOTES: [i]p.210 [ii]a version of this Samhain script is offered in Chapter 7 PaGaian Cosmology [iii]These quoted phrases are from Robin Morgan, “The Network of the Imaginary Mother”, in Lady of the Beasts, p.84. This poem is a core inspiration of the ceremony. [iv]“Not-Yet” is a term used by Brian Swimme, The Earth’s Imagination, video 8 “The Surprise of Cosmogenesis”. [v]note that creation does not happen at the point of some god’s index finger, as imagined in the Sistine Chapel – what a takeover that is!
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 3) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) Free PDF available at Mago Bookstore. MAPPING THE MAGOIST CALENDAR According to the Budoji, the Magoist Calendar was fully implemented and advocated during the period of Old Joseon (ca. 2333 BCE-ca. 232 BCE) whose civilization is known as Budo (Emblem City). Indeed, the Magoist Calendar is referred to as the Budo Calendar in the Budoji. Budo was founded to succeed Sinsi and reignited Sinsi’s innovations including the numerological and musicological thealogy of the Nine Mago Creatrix. The Budoji expounds on the Magoist Calendar as follows: The Way of Heaven circles to generate Jongsi (a cyclic period, an ending and a beginning). Jongsi circles to generate another Jongsi of four Jongsi. One cycle of jongsi is called Soryeok (Little Calendar). Jongsi of Jongsi is called Jungryeok (Medium Calendar). Jongsi of four Jongsis is called Daeryeok (Large Calendar). A cycle of Little Calendar is called Sa (year). One Sa has thirteen Gi (months). One Gi has twenty-eight Il (days). Twenty-eight Il are divided by four Yo (weeks). One Yo has seven Il. A cycle of one Yo is called Bok (completion of a week). One Sa (year) has fifty-two Yobok. That makes 364 Il. This is of Seongsu (Natural Number) 1, 4, 7. Each Sa includes a Dan of the big Sa. A Dan is equal to one day. That adds up to 365 days. At the half point after the third Sa, there is a Pan of the big Sak (the year of the great dark moon). A pan comes at a half point of Sa. This is of Beopsu (Lawful Number) 2, 5, 8. A Pan is equal to a day. Therefore, the fourth Sa has 366 days. At the half point after the tenth Sa, there is a Gu of the big Hoe (Eve of the first day of the month). Gu is the root of time. Three hundred Gu makes one Myo. With Myo, we can sense Gu. A lapse of 9,633 Myo-Gak-Bun-Si makes one day. This is of Chesu (Physical Number), 3, 6, 9. By and by, the encircling time charts Medium Calendar and Large Calendar to evince the principle of numerology.[12] KEY TERMS Calendric Cycles Jongsi (終是 Ending and Beginning): Cyclic periods Soryeok (小曆 Little Calendar): One year Jungryeok (中曆 Medium Calendar): Two years Daeryeok (大曆 Large Calendar): Four years Names of Year, Month, Day, Week Sa (祀 Rituals, year): One year refers to the time that takes to complete the cycle of rituals. Gi (期 Periods, month): One month refers to the period of the moon and menstruation cycle. Il (日Sun, day): One day refers to the sun’s movement due to Earth’s rotation. Yo (曜 Resplendence of seven celestial bodies, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, week): Each weekday is dedicated to seven celestial bodies. Bok or Yobok (曜服 Duties of the Celestial Bodies, completion of a week): One week refers to the veneration of the seven celestial bodies. Names of Monthly Transition Days Hoe (晦 Eve of the first day of the month, 28th) Sak (朔 First day of the month, 1st, the dark moon) Names of Intercalation Days Dan (旦 Morning): Leap day for New Year Pan (昄 Big): Leap day for every fourth year Names of Time Units Gu (晷 sun’s shadow): Time measure, 1/300 Myo Myo (眇 minuscule): Time measure, a total of 300 Gu Myo-Gak-Bun-Si (眇刻分時 minuscule, possibly 15-minutes, minute, hour): Time measure, 9,633 Myo-Gak-Bun-Si is equal to a day Names of Three Types of Numbers in Nine Numerology Seongsu (性數Natural Number): 1, 4, 7 in the digital root Beopsu (法數 Lawful Number): 2, 5, 8 in the digital root Chesu (體數 Physical Number): 3, 6, 9 in the digital root THREE SUB-CALENDARS The Way of Heaven circles to generate Jongsi (a period, an ending and a beginning). Jongsi circles to generate another Jongsi of four Jongsi. One cycle of jongsi is called Soryeok (Little Calendar). Jongsi of Jongsi is called Jungryeok (Medium Calendar). Jongsi of four Jongsis is called Daeryeok (Large Calendar). The universe is infinite without beginning and ending. Everything runs the course of self-equilibration in relation to everything else. The Way of Heaven or the Way of the Creatrix circles and makes possible the infinite time/space to be measured and calculated. As the Way of Heaven circles, we are able to perceive Our Universe in finite measures of time/space. Time becomes measurable, as space is stabilized. Seasons and days-nights are demarcated in cyclic patterns, as the Earth makes the three cyclic movements of rotation, revolution, and precession. Calendar, born out of the inter-cosmic time, synchronizes human culture with the song/dance of the universe. The term Jongsi, which means an ending and a beginning, is equivalent to “a cyclic period” that is marked by the beginning and the end. Time (a day, a month, and a year) circles, as space (the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun) spirals. The Magoist Calendar has three sub-calendars: The period of one yearly cycle is called Little Calendar, whereas the period of two yearly cycles is called Medium Calendar and the period of four yearly cycles, Large Calendar. To be continued. (Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang) Notes [12] Budoji, Chapter 23. See Bak Jesang, the Budoji, Bak Geum scrib., Eunsu Kim, trans. (Seoul: Gana Chulpansa, 1986).
(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. …
(Essay) Contemplating How Her Creativity Proceeds by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

A bird for this season is the Kingfisher, also known as the Halcyon. The Kingfisher is associated in Greek myth with the Winter Solstice. There were fourteen “halcyon days” in every year, seven of which fell before the winter solstice, seven after; peaceful days when the sea was smooth as a pond and the hen-halcyon built a floating nest and hatched out her young. She also had another habit, that of carrying her dead mate on her back over the sea and mourning him with a plaintive cry. Pliny reported that the halcyon was rarely seen and then only at the winter and summer solstices and at the setting of the Pleiades. She was therefore, a manifestation of the Moon-Goddess who was worshiped at the two solstices as the Goddess of Life in Death and Death in Life and, when the Pleiades set, she sent the sacred king his summons for death. Kingfishers are typically stocky, short-legged birds with large heads and large, heron-like beaks. They feed primarily on fish, hovering over the water or watching intently from perches and they plunge headlong into the water to catch their prey. Their name, Alcedinidae, stems from classical Greek mythology. Alcyone, Daughter of the Wind, was so distraught when her husband perished in a shipwreck that she threw herself into the sea. Both were then transformed into kingfishers and roamed the waves together. When they nested on the open sea, the winds remained calm and the weather balmy. Still another Alcyone, Queen of Sailing, was the mystical leader of the seven Pleiades. The heliacal rising of the Pleiades in May marked the beginning of the navigational year and their setting marked the end. Alcyone, as Sea Goddess protected sailors from rocks and rough weather. The bird, halcyon continued for centuries to be credited with the magical power of allaying storms. Shakespeare refers to this legend in this passage from Hamlet: Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long; And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow’d and so gracious is the time. Hamlet, I, i 157 When I was a young mother, and my children were little, we lived in a house that had a creek in the back yard. There were small trees along the far bank of this creek and every day, a kingfisher would sit in the branches overlooking the creek. Sometimes he sat there very quietly for a very long time. Suddenly he would dive from his perch straight into the creek. Every time he did he came out and up into the air with a fish. It gave me great pleasure to watch him from my kitchen window. I love birds. I love learning about their habits because it teaches me ways of being that are closer to nature. I love drawing birds as well. When I was a young and more able, I was an avid bird watcher, out with my friends hoping for a sight never seen before. I love the story of the kingfisher and her connection to the Halcyon Days of the Winter Solstice. It is for most of us the busiest time of year. Whether it is for the Solstice or Christmas (often both) we are in a frenzy to get things done, making sure everything is just right and perfect. I celebrate the Winter Solstice. As a priestess, my days right now are very busy creating ritual. It is at the Solstice that many passage rites are happening with the women I work with. And of course, I celebrate with my family with our magical Yule Log each year. But I try to honor those seven days before and the seven days after by trying to have the frantic moments before the Halcyon Days begin and then even when busy, hold the peace and calm of that beautiful smooth sea in my mind. Peace and love and joy surrounding the Winter Solstice make it perfect. May the Peace of a Halcyon Sea be yours in this Solstice Season. Do hold the image of that little kingfisher in mind! Meet Mago Contributor, Deanne Quarrie

(Poem) Just Remember WE in S/HE by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Just Remember WE in S/HE Remember the Universe is without the beginning or the end. Remember the Creatrix is the Music of the Universe.
(Bell Essay 6) The Magoist Whale Bell: Unraveling the Cetacean Code of Korean Temple Bells by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: The part 6 and ensuing sequels are a new development from the original essay sequels on Korean Temple Bells and Magoism that first published January 11, 2013 in this current magazine. See (Bell Essay 1) Ancient Korean Bells and Magoism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.] Southern right whale from Wikimedia Commons Introduction The Korean temple bell is no mere Buddhist device. Calling it a Sillan Esoteric Buddhist invention in origin only adds to its mystification. Commissioned by Sillan rulers who represented traditional Magoist shaman rulers, Sillan temple bells administer sonic balance within and without all beings once and for all. In short, the Sillan temple bell reenacts the Magost Cosmogony HERE and NOW.[1] Engendering resonance to the self-creative power of cosmic music, Yulryeo (Rhythms and Tones), the Korean temple bell summons the paradisiacal reality of the Creatrix, Mago. Cast in the form of a female body, the bell structurally embodies the gynocentric principle of the Creatrix, the Mago Way. I have discussed earlier such features as nine nipples and apsaras. Here the dragon figure (Yongnyu) and the sound tube (Yongtong or Eumtong) in its head are focused. Multi-functional and polysemic, the dragon is there not only to be the loop for hanging but also to envelop the sound tube, seen below. Among others, the sound tube stands out as a distinctive feature of Korean temple bells that distinguishes them from their Chinese and Japanese counterparts. What is the sound tube of the Korean temple bell? Why do Korean temple bells have a sound tube? Answers to these questions concern a yet-to-be-unraveled undergirding theme of the Korean temple bell, the whale. Although its origin is debated, the sound tube signals Sillan cetacean veneration. In the mytho-history of Magoism, Silla (57 BCE-935 CE) stands as a prominent ancient Korean state, which succeeded and flowered ancient Magoist cetaceanism. Sillan cetacenism defines Silla as a new government that succeeded Old Magoist confederacies. In this context, we can assess a whale-shaped wooden mallet, which is no mere decorative addition to the bell. Nonetheless, the whale-shaped mallet is only a tip of the cetacean meaning of the bell. A whale (고래 Gorae in Korean) is the very model that the Korean temple bell (the bell hereafter) takes after, especially for its vocalizations. The bell mimics the music of whales. While the latter is heard in water, the former is heard in land. Its cetacean names corroborate such an assessment. The bell is called Janggyeong (長鯨 Eternal Whale), Gyeongjong (鯨鐘 Whale Bell), Hwagyeong (華鯨 Splendid Whale), or Geogyeong (巨鯨 Gigantic Whale). As such, the sound of the bell is alternatively called “the sound of whale (鯨音gyeongeum).” Ancient Koreans perceived whales, pre-human in origin and once a land animal, as the messenger of the Creatrix, Mago. In folk traditions, the phrase, “riding the back of a whale,” was widely popularized among East Asians throughout history, which means that one returns to Mago, by riding the back of a whale upon death. That ancient Koreans were cetacean venerators remains esoteric. The cetacean code of Korean temple bells holds the key to unraveling what has gone suppressed in patriarchy, the Magoist Cosmogony. By the Magoist Cosmogony, I mean a systematic origin story of our universe, as is recounted in the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City). I have summarized the Budoji’s cosmogonic chapters in my aforementioned book, The Mago Way, as follows: The Magoist Cosmogony highlights the sonic movement of cosmic elements as the Creatrix. In the beginning, there was light. The movement/vibration of light (cosmic music) in the universe caused creation to take place over eons. Stars were born in the previous cosmic era. In due time, Mago was born together with the Earth (the Stronghold of Mago) with her moons. Her (self-)emergence marks the beginning of earthly history. Mago listened to and acted in tune with the cyclic movement of the cosmic music. In further due time, S/HE bore two daughters, Gunghui (Goddess Gung) and Sohui (Goddess So) parthenogenetically. This Primordial Triad laid the foundation for the earthly environment for all species. Mago, assisted by HER two daughters, orchestrated the terrestrial plan to bring acoustic balance in harmony with the cosmic music/sound/vibration. S/HE delegated HER descendants to cultivate and manage the sonic equilibrium of the Earth [Italics added].[2] Precisely, the Sillan temple bell encodes the message that whales are the paragon of Magoists whose mandate is “to cultivate and manage the sonic equilibrium of the Earth.” Restoring Magoist cetaceanism is metamorphic. Antithetical to the very establishment of patriarchy, ancient Magoist Korean cetacean practice unfolds the Other World that has been ever HERE. This essay, assessing the sound tube as a Magoist code of Sillan cetaceanism, aims to delineate how the Magoist cetacean meaning came to be encoded in the sound tube of the bell by the Sillan rulers of the 7th and 8th centuries. In decoding the cetacean message, we are led to the myth of Manpasikjeok (萬波息笛 the pacifying flute that defeats all, hereafter the pacifying flute), a Sillan royal treasure that is hermeneutically construed as made of the tusk of a narwhal. A group of Korean scholars maintain that the sound tube was designed to represent the pacifying flute. The task of this essay is to go further and to re-read the myth of Manpasikjeok—a story of King Sinmun the Great (r. 681-692) of Silla (57 BCE-935 CE) who was told by a sea dragon to create a flute out of a mysterious bamboo tree growing in a mysterious mountain in the East Sea, alternatively known as the Sea of Whales—from the Magoist perspective. This story has been written and misinterpreted as an enigmatic Buddhist story. I hold that “Ruler (King or Queen) the Great (大王 Daewang),” unlike other kings of the ancient world, does not refer to a patriarchal monarch. It is a Magoist cetacean term that is related with “Ruler Whale the Great (Daewang Gorae),” referring to the blue whale for its gigantic size or whales collectively. By adopting the cetacean title …
(Pilgrimage Essay 1) Report of First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hwang

[Author’s note: First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place in June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Part 1 Magoist Alchemy and Consanguinity of All Peoples My study of Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, has hurled me into uncharted territory. (In fact, my life hurled me onto a labyrinthine path.) Mago is not a mere subject of my study. Or, study is not a mere brain activity for me. Mago has been the answer to my intellectual/spiritual quests. And I am to carve out my own destiny. Studying Magoism has become a way of life to me. Magoism is the term that I coined to name the mytho-historical-cultural context in which Mago is venerated. Assessing a large body of source materials that I documented, I learned that Magoism is one of the most comprehensive contexts that can explain East Asian civilizations as a whole. It feels right that reconstructing Magoism, the method that I employed in studying Mago, is the reason why I study Mago. Ever since I began to contemplate the topic of Mago for study in 2000, I have visited Korea, my native land, almost annually and undertook such activities as documentation, presentation, trips, and field research for the purpose of measuring the landscape of Magoism. In enacting those projects, I have worked with a variety of groups and individuals including feminists, scholars, friends, and the general public. For the last three years, I have organized various sizes of pilgrimages to near and far places with Koreans. Those experiences have gradually led me to the unfolding mystery of Magoist spiritual/intellectual reality. That said, it was my honor and privilege to organize and lead the very first intercontinental Mago Pilgrimage to Korea from June 6 to June 19 in 2013. This pilgrimage made a memorable landmark in Magoism. About a decade ago, Mago was hardly known among goddess people in the West. And the situation was not so far different from that in Korea. At that time, I was writing my Ph.D. dissertation on Mago from a multi-disciplinary perspective, not knowing what was forthcoming. The Mago Pilgrimage envisioned the remarkable change!
(Video) 2013 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s note: The first Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Read Mago Pilgrimage Essay 1 and Mago Pilgrimage Essay 2. See Meet Mago Contributor, Hae Kyoung Ahn for “Ma Gaia Womb” chant music and Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hwang Ph.D.
(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.
How do you say what The Mago Work is? by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang & Mago Circle Members

It took many years for me to pronounce the communal nature of the Mago Work. Defining the Mago Work necessarily endows us with the bird’s eye view of the Great Goddess, the primordial consciousness of WE in S/HE. Early this year, I asked people to define the Mago Work and their definitions are illuminating about what this book ultimately seeks to achieve.[1]