December 21, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin

(Poem) Yule Tree by Andrea Nicki

A man asks me to be the angel

who tops his family tree, watches over humans

comforts unhappy husbands

the angel with low expectations: “men will be men”

I buy myself a green, layered cape

something to wear in my women’s creative dance class

On Winter Solstice, I am a swirl of tree

the women join hands and circle me

my arms are snowy fir boughs

alive with squirrels and birds

Meet Mago Contributor, Andrea Nicki.

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(Book Excerpt 4) On the Wings of Isis: Reclaiming the Sovereignty of Auset, ed. by Trista Hendren et al.

Daring to Sit in the Red Throne deTraci Regula In the early years of my devotion to the Goddess Isis, I was fascinated by the “staircase” on her head. I quickly learned that this was the Throne symbol, and that the Throne of Isis supported, delineated, and held the rulers of Egypt during the long path of Egyptian history. It was a strong symbol of sovereignty, and like the ankh-like tyet or the amulet of Isis, was often considered to be colored red. Some see Isis as merely a personification of the throne, but to me her complex mythology indicates that she was quite a bit more than just a chair imbued with divine energy. She was the female throne, the female seat, the embracer and birther of the pharaoh or of whomever took their place at that seat. This “red throne” has emerged for me at various moments in my journeys to explore ancient sites of Isis. On one visit to Greece, I encountered an actual “red throne” while visiting the ancient site of Cenchreae where the ruins of the famed temple of Isis described by Apuleius in his “Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass” stands. There, the throne was a vivid red plastic chair sitting by the submerged outline of the temple, looking out onto the bay. It seemed to be waiting for a goddess – or, I hoped, one of her priestesses – and so I sat down on it and gazed at the water. In Apuleius’ novel, the scene at Cenchreae takes place at night when Lucius, despondent at being magically trapped in the form of an ass, pleads for help. A magnificent vision of Isis takes form in front of him, and the Goddess offers him words of comfort and describes how she has arranged that he will lose his asinine form by eating roses carried by one of her priests in the sacred procession that launches the season of navigation. When I sat down on that red throne, it was not midnight, but midday. In Greece, noon is an equally magical time as the middle of the night. It is considered dangerous to be in the full, sharp sunlight, and it is seen as a time when many spirits are abroad and can do mischief. Even vampires are said to walk at noon in Greece. My experience, fortunately, was different. As I gazed at the water, the sparkling sunlight gleamed so bright that it seemed to wash away my ability to see any colors at all. The water turned grey, the sky turned white, and the obelisk-like shape of the sunbeam on the water directly in front of me looked like moonlight on a night sea. Though it was high midday on a beach in the heart of summer, Isis was transforming the moment into Lucius’ midnight vision. Every sparkle seemed to be a word, a hint of the mysteries beyond. I sat frozen in the “red throne” for a long time. When I finally moved, even the bright red chair had for the moment lost its color. I closed my eyes for a time, and finally, when I opened them, the world was back to normal, in full color. A strong wind came up after I rose from the chair, shaking it and tipping it over. In the stiffening breeze, It seemed amazing that this symbol of the throne had remained perfectly upright on the beach as if waiting for my moment and had not blown away before. I had another encounter with the experience of sovereignty that the Throne can convey. This was a number of years ago at the Throne Room of the Minoan Palace of Knossos. This divine chair was often described as the “Throne of Minos,” the controversial, erratic, womanizing king of ancient Crete. At that time, it was possible to sit for an instant on a replica of the throne nearby in the anteroom. But the replica chair was narrow and rounded, carved in wood after the design of both the ancient stone, one which still stayed in place in the room beyond, and of the charred image of a throne chair that had left its imprint against an interior wall on that spring day long ago when Knossos had burned. Years later, a savvy guide at Knossos would point out that the proportions of the chair were made for a woman, not a man, and he suggested it was made for a queen or a high priestess. Sitting in this chair gave me several sensations. There was, first of all, the sense of apartness. Only one could be in the chair at a time, and though there was a line of those ready to take my place, for that instant it was indeed mine. But that was not all. There was also the sense of concentration and containment, of restricted movement and because of that, focused attention. One would look ahead at what was in front of the throne. You could not easily escape this. Finally, there was the sense of support. The form of the throne may have restricted me, but it also relaxed my limbs and held me in a posture suitable for meditation and inner attentiveness. All of these traits I find in the energy of Isis as I explore her in personal and direct worship. I returned to Cenchreae last fall with a group of priestesses. This time, it was late afternoon. There was no red plastic throne chair; only the ruins which had been covered with a tidal flow of water at my first visit were fully visible now. We frolicked on the shore and said our blessings. I did not experience the day-to-night effect again, but instead enjoyed the lively spirit and perhaps something of the festival spirit that Apuleius had described. While Isis may have acquired the meaning of being the throne, supporting, guarding, and guiding the usually-male occupant, I think the earliest occupant of the Throne would be Isis …
(Video) The Magoist Calendar written by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Ph.D, by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

At a recent Zoom meeting planning for the S/HE Divine Studies Online Conference, the gathering heard Helen Hye-Sook Hwang read her poem The Magoist Calendar of the 13 Months and 28 Days. We all enjoyed hearing it so much, and we suggested that Helen make a video of it. Helen asked for help to do it, then I volunteered. So here it is, really a collaborative effort: Helen’s poem, and with much of her creative input to my actual video making. We are very pleased to present it to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4hTFvGe3SE
(Photo Essay 6) Grandmothers by Kaalii Cargill

“Visual images of the Goddesses stand in stark contrast to the image of God as an old white man, jarring us to question our culture’s view that all legitimate power is male and that female power is dangerous and evil. The image of the naked Eve brazenly taking the apple from the serpent, then cowering in shame before a wrathful male God, tells us not only that female will is the source of all the evil in the universe, but also that the naked female body is part of the problem. This image communicates to the deep mind the message that female will and female nakedness must be controlled and punished by male authority. In contrast, the Goddesses show us that the female can be symbolic of all that is creative and powerful in the universe. The simplest and most profound meaning of the image of the Goddess is the legitimacy and goodness of female power, the female body, and female will.¨- Carol P. Christ (1997). Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in feminist Spirituality. New York: Routledge. Hohle Fels, Germany, 42,000 – 37,000 BCE Willendorf, Austria, 28,000-25,000 BCE Savignano, Italy, 25,000-20,000 BCE Göbekli Tepe, Anatolia, 10th Millennium BCE Çatalhöyük, Anatolia, 7100-5700 BCE Thessaly, Greece, 6500-5300 BCE Méhtelek, Hungary, 6000-5000 BCE. Skorba, Malta, 4500-41000 BCE Bulgaria, 5th millennium BCE Ukraine, 4000-3500 BCE Alacahöyük, Anatolia, 2500-2000 BCE Mycenae, Greece, 1250-1180 BCE Solygeia (ancient Corinth), Greece, 6th Century BCE Demeter, Morgantina, Sicily, Italy, 420 – 410 BCE Meet MAGO Contributor KAALII CARGILL
(Essay) Commemorating Our Ancient Mothers by Danica Anderson

Memorial Day for me is commemorating our ancient mothers. These artifacts standing together remind me of the empowerment and great balancing of life with female solidarity lost to us today. This is for all the mothers, daughters who died under the patriarchy. Ossuaries are oral memory practices assuring rest, peace, and respect;—all sanctuary properties associated with the domovi for South Slavs. Patterned after the megalithic dolmens, ossuaries are modern-era icons of megalithic dolmens containing the bleached bones of departed ancestors. Within the Serbian Orthodox memorial liturgies, the practice for bleaching bones is evident in the memorial cycle.
(Invocation) Sekhmet of the Red Power, Blood Power, the Devourer by Nuit Moore

Photograph: Ritual Dance of the Activated Red Sekhmet from the author’s performance in 2013. O Sekhmet! Of the red power Blood power The devourer We hear your roar on the crescent shore- now is the hour! Lion Queen fertile breasted Scarlet zenith crested Flame of the eclipse glow and the lunar crimson flow You reveal the visceral raw Unveiling all, Unveiling all, In the abyss of the maw. O Sekhmet! Of the red power Blood power The devourer https://www.magoism.net/2019/02/meet-mago-contributor-nuit-moore/
Meet Mago Contributor, Eileen Haley

Eileen Haley (Australia) Eileen is a creative writer, quilter and translator. Her first political activism was in the anti-Vietnam War and women’s liberation movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. She spent 12 years in Mexico in the 1970s-80s and has an enduring love for that country. She has been a member of the Goddess Association in Australia (GAIA) since 2007 and croned at the 2010 GAIA Conference.
(Prose) Medea by Susan Hawthorne

I have been interested in Medea for decades and today I thought I might make it to Georgia to see the statue of Medea in Europe Square Batumi. The statue has Medea holding aloft the Golden Fleece. Medea has a gold helmet and wears a gold necklace. But luck was not on my side, as hire cars are not permitted to drive from Turkey to Georgia. The statue is not old, it was put in place only in 2007. So why have I been so fascinated by Medea? It started back in about 1982 when I was studying Ancient Greek. I also grew up on a sheep farm so the life cycle of sheep is very familiar to me. Medea is a woman who knows her magic, she has powers that only few others have. As a powerful woman (she is the grand daughter of the sun god, Helios) she is also dangerous. The brief story is that Jason and his merry band of Argonauts sail to Colchis (probably around Poti in modern day Georgia) in order to steal the Golden Fleece. I’ve not yet worked out the significance of the fleece, but in this part of the world at that time, sheep were wealth. I play with the trope of sheep and lambs throughout my book Lupa and Lamb (2014) in an imagined poem written in her language, Kartvelian. Medea helps Jason defeat the Titans (a tough task) and also assists in the theft of the fleece through the use of herbs. Her knowledge of magical medicine runs in the family as her aunt Circe (a goddess) is the sister of Medea’s father, Aeëtes. After fleeecing the King of Colchis (her father) of the fleece, she and Jason flee from Colchis with Medea’s brother, Apsyrtus, on board. They are pursued and in order to slow down the pursuit, Medea kills her brother, tosses his parts on the sea and gets away. This was a bad move because by heading out with Jason she has given up her land and all the landed power she had. She tries to hang on to it, but when Jason falls for the princess at Corinth, Glauce, and decides to marry her, Medea is ropable (Glauce, by contrast, still has her land). She pretends that she can cope and offers Glauce a special gown. The gown is saturated in poisonous herbs and both she and her father, Creon, die a horrible death. In the end, Medea kills her two sons and Jason is killed by a large piece of wood that falls off the Argo and hits him on the head. I think this is a story of the transition period into patriarchy, she probably lived around 3300 BP (1200 BCE). The woman, Medea, still believes she has the power and that she can get her way. But she makes the mistake of making herself landless, effectively homeless. She kills her sons in order to prevent Jason creating a dynasty which, she realises will come down through the paternal line (she might even think she is doing her sons a favour, even women do bad things sometimes). After this crime, she escapes in a flying chariot and moves in with Aegeus in Athens. It’s not a happy story, but chances are that parts of the story have changed a lot, while others say interesting things about women. It is interesting to note in this time that Medea has to take refuge in a strange land and she escapes from one place (her home) to another (Corinth) to a third (Athens) and finally heads back to Asia to live with the people who began to call themselves Medes (in northwest Iran). (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne. http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=268/ The poem in Lupa and Lamb is called ‘Lost text: Kartvelian: Medea’s lambs, 1200 BCE’ © Susan Hawthorne, 2018
(S/HE V3 N1 Book Review) Max Dashu, Women in Greek Mythology: Pythias, Melissae, and Titanides, Reviewed by Lisa R. Skura

[This is from S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (V3 N1, 2023) Its Ebook edition and paperback are available at Mago Bookstore.] When I heard about the opportunity to review a new book by Max Dashu, the creator of the online Suppressed Histories Archives, I jumped and danced widdershins with excitement! Dashu is not only a font of information—with her Suppressed Women’s History online, her online classes, her lectures at various women’s events, as well as her books—but also an encyclopedic touchstone to reclaim women’s herstory and empowerment. Dashu communicates that her purpose in writing this book is to expose the truth of our past: The Hellenic cultural record illustrates how dominant narratives not only reflect but encode and enact social relations, behavior, attitudes. They are enforced by magnetizing them into the spoken, written, visual fabric of life, through legend, rite, and custom. The myths of gods who rape, and men who carry off maidens, shape men’s values and actions as well as the expectations and fears of women. Through repetition in language, story and rite, a worldview is activated and maintained, one that defines the chattel status of women, and demands female obedience, submission, sacrifice, and suicide. (xii) Dashu points out that the most ancient and powerful divinities were female and that many were associated with the needs of life such as fresh, clean water sources. Dashu does not mince words in the preface and goes right for the source of distortions and propaganda created by the misogynist “Classical” systems that have subjugated women and others for millennia. This book is brilliant and contains the information academia ignores. In Chapter 2, Dashu discusses Marija Gimbutas’s Kurgan theory, which was ridiculed and vilified by various—mostly male—scholars but is now being confirmed by work in linguistics and DNA studies (63). Jealous male competitors tried to cut out Gimbutas’s tongue, like in the Greek myth of Philomel, but the physical evidence for her theory is now undeniable. Gimbutas committed the sin of demonstrating the importance of worshipping goddesses as not just handmaidens and sacred consorts for men but as female deities who empowered women’s fertility and the fertility of the Earth. A particular male scholar who vehemently tried to discredit her quietly apologized and scuttled away, his tail between his legs, but he had already defamed her and her work. Female scholarship is always in danger of suppression, and that is why it is important to have to have scholars such as Dashu expose the androcentric viewpoint of history and Epic poetry, which are inherently male biased and promote rapist ideologies and warfare as male glory and fame. Although to some it might seem as though I am beating the Indo-European horse to death by emphasizing the importance of female scholars, but many people to this day still believe that women contributed nothing to civilization, are unimportant, easily replaceable, and even that they have no souls. Such revisionist histories, propaganda, and male bias place the female as “Other” and outside male civilization, when in fact female ingenuity and inventions have always been at the center of the creation of civilization. Dashu describes how women have been denied access to education and opportunities: Athena is thought to be a goddess of civilization, the arts, the sciences, and crafts—especially weaving as well as wisdom. It is ironic that a goddess represents many of the things denied to women throughout much of history, such as the same education as men, and that women are then accused of not contributing anything to Western civilization. (14) Even indisputable facts and reality are flagrantly tossed away or suppressed by male scholars’ biases and religious viewpoints and replaced with a miasma of male assumptions and misinformation. Even the rapes of women as a literary tool are euphemized, and Dashu points out how such practices are downplayed in epic poetry: The poets refrain from describing the rapes. They all happen offstage —which is the origin of the word “obscene,” something too shocking to be performed onstage. These stories loom large in ancient Greek culture, already glorified from the historical distance of half a millennium, and they are saturated with an intensely patriarchal sexual politics. (75) I believe that this is how rape has been normalized in patriarchal culture and why rape kits sit untested in police evidence rooms and how the very worst abusers of women can still hold the highest offices in the land. As a weaver and spinner and mythologist, I love Dashu’s use of the textile metaphors. Like other scholars have, Dashu makes the connection between textile work and women’s suppressed voices. Woman’s textile work became demonized in patriarchy as fate goddesses became associated with weaving and spinning male destiny, something that needs to be defeated rather than being associated with wisdom and creating life. In chapter 2 Dashu discusses the idea of story cloths and female communication, but the interpretation that stood out different was in the myth of Arachne and Athena on page 110. While most accounts of this myth describe Athena’s weaving as depicting the gods defeating the hubris of humans and Arachne’s weaving as depicting the hubris of the gods, Dashu calls out the euphemizing of male violence against women for what it really is and suggests that Arachne is showing her contempt for all the serial rapist gods. Athena is the patriarchal daughter; Zeus, her father swallowed her mother, Metis, who represented wisdom, and Zeus gave birth to Athena from his forehead using an axe. Therefore, Athena will always be on the side of men over women, just as some female supreme court justices in the United States will be. In Chapter 3, “Goddesses Revised,”Dashu engages what many other female scholars propose about Hellenic goddesses, that they are far more ancient than the patriarchal characterizations of them, and how epic male poets reenvisioned those goddesses, reducing their stature in patriarchy, yet were unable to eliminate them. Dashu points out the work of various scholars who suggest not only that Hera …
(Prose) Portals by Sara Wright

Lately, as I meander around the Bosque and down the paths to the river I am seeing portals everywhere I look. I walk under one made of golden cottonwood boughs, another graced by willows, a few created by rusty iron or wooden gates – all pathways to the beyond. Portals are gateways or doorways into other worlds, or a different way of seeing and it is not lost on me that perhaps I am “seeing” portals everywhere in Nature because according to the Celtic/Native American calendars we are approaching the end of the wheel of the year here in Northern New Mexico as well as elsewhere. Perhaps I need to discover a new way of seeing. I can set this intention for the coming year even as I pass through each gate…Climbing through this mountainous twelve month cycle of steep ascents/descents has exhausted my soul, body, and spirit. All Hallows, the Feast of the Dead, All Souls day mark the end of the yearly cycle for many including me. Then we will enter the space in between. Although Indigenous people’s calendars are more fluid, around here, for example, the Tewa speaking peoples will tell you that in November “they do nothing” as one man from Santa Clara Pueblo recently quipped to me. The Harvest is in. Frost is on the horizon. There are no tribal dances until the winter solstice. Around us our beloved Cottonwoods are slowly losing their golden canopies. The owls are silent. Migrating Sand hill cranes serenade us with their haunting collective cries. Only the tracks and scat of animals remind us that our wild companions are still out and about. Some Indigenous peoples from the north call this full moon “the leaves falling moon” or “the white frost on grass moon” names that seem particularly apt when describing what is happening. I could also name this moon “making tracks in the mud moon.” The period that we are about to enter in about a week is a space where the veil lifts… It is a time of rest and reflection, a time to dream the world (and ourselves) into another way of being, perhaps. A mystical time for those of us who are sensitized to All That Is. It is my favorite time of year. In Northern New Mexico it is also the ‘season of light’. The dance between the sun star and her mountain shadows is a source of ongoing amazement, exhilaration, and deep wonder, peaking at dawn and at eventide with each becoming a portal into the other. As scalloped hearts and bear paw leaves drift to the ground and branches (some curved like claws), stretch their fingers and limbs towards an ever deepening blue or shark gray sky, I watch juncos, sparrows, and nuthatches feasting on fluffy chamisa and golden aster seeds. Last night the almost full moon hid her face behind rose pearled clouds. I create a conscious intention beginning with this poignant and oh so beautiful, so poignant “leaves falling in drifts” moon to find a way to move through this next year with more grace and less chaos in my life acknowledging that I am not certain how to Earth myself in a more generous way except by developing a new way of seeing. Extremes of every sort have defined my days this year with me plunging into despair and grief over climate change and woman hatred. Eerily, my concern for the Earth has often been mirrored by personal crisis. The veil between Earth and self seems to have evaporated like the mist that rises over the river in delicate plumes reaching towards a now golden sun or ever deepening dusk. I can’t help wondering if this merging might be a natural response to aging and/or my heightened sensitivity, a result of being in such an intimate relationship with Nature? Perhaps as Earth Chaos intensifies I will continue to experience my own extremes even more deeply? If the latter is the case my hope and intention is to carry the awareness that this state is “natural” under the circumstances. To accept what is, might be I the greatest challenge I face. One portal to acceptance as I already mentioned might be to shift my awareness into a different way of seeing. I can create this intention without knowing exactly what I mean… As I pass under the portal of the end of this year entering “the space in between” my earnest hope is that I will not lose myself, even when I stand alone in a sea of humanity whose (personal and political) behavior mystifies me, or that I will not succumb to despair, or make an unnecessary descent into rage or sorrow. I remind myself that to stay with the truth of what is, as I experience it, is also heroic (although I never feel this way) and that others who cannot be present to their lives in a meaningful way will try to dismiss my life as inauthentic (too emotional, too sensitive, too fill – in – the blank, blah, blah, blah,) because witnessing human horrors with great compassion is too threatening. Rape is still rape regardless of disbelief. Like the deer in my dreams who bed down in tall grasses before the open gate may I too surrender to what is, and to that which is unknown. Animal Peace is the gift offered when we are present to the moment. And like the worms living in my compost heap who create ‘black gold’ in the process of living out their lives, may I find a way to do the same… perhaps through sight – insight. A lot to ask for, I know. Still, as I pass under this next portal the help I need is near… All I need to do is to follow the tracks of the animals that are so dear. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright

(Special Post) BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE FOR EL PASO ARTIST MARIO COLÍN by Donna Snyder

Born in Juárez in 1959, Mario Colín lived his entire life in the Five Points area of Central El Paso, where he attended Houston Elementary and Austin High School. From the age of fifteen, he worked as a construction worker, building silos and other large construction projects across the U.S.A., at some point hitch hiking from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic shores. In his late twenties, he began to focus all his attention and energy on art, which had been an interest since early childhood, working as a muralist and portrait painter. Much of his art is of a religious nature, although he also painted secular art, portraits, and historical scenes. Colín painted his first mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe in collaboration with deceased artist Chuck Zavala in 1987 at Esparza’s Grocery, a small store in Central El Paso. It has now become a shrine, with community members building a stone arch and bringing flowers and candles, and has been pronounced a religious site by the parish church. Since that first mural, Colín has painted over 40 pieces of public art, many of which have become landmarks. Many of those murals are in that same Central El Paso neighborhood, on or near Piedras, including the House of Pizza, Los Alamos Grocery, The Elbo Room bar, the former Sanitary Plumbing at Piedras and Fort Boulevard. Colín twice painted a 25 foot mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe, at Alameda and Zaragoza, across from the Ysleta mission. The first version, painted in 1997, became decayed, but was a popular landmark. That mural has appeared in periodicals, art books, calendars, many newspaper articles, and in photographs exhibited in the El Paso Art Museum and galleries. In 2004, Señor José Villalobos donated and members of the community contributed money to pay laborers to replaster the wall of the century-old adobe building where it is located, and Colín repainted the entire mural for donations from passers-by and community members. Colín’s work has also been featured on the International History Channel and Canal 44, XHUI TV, in a Ford television commercial, and numerous times in the El Paso Times and the defunct El Paso Herald-Post, as well as in periodicals such as Texas Monthly, Dallas Morning News, Texas Observer, Austin American Statesman, Stanton Street magazine; literary journals such as Mezcla and GypsyMag.com; in documentaries including Walls that Speak: El Paso’s Murals, directed by Jim Klaes; in art books such as Colors on Desert Walls: The Murals of El Paso and Texas 24:7, and in various editions of Chicano Studies: Survey and Analysis, a text book used throughout the country.
(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 of the discussion that has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Here is how Goma is known among the ancient Chinese. She is called The Mysterious Woman of the Nine Heavens (Jiutian xuannu). Nine Heavens refer to the confederacy of nine states, Danguk or Nine Hans. Statue of Jiutian Xuannü, Wikimedia Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiutian_Xuann%C3%BC Another icon of Jiutian Xuannu below. https://www.tinyatdragon.com/blogs/spiritual/jiu-tian-xuan-nu-mysterious-lady-of-the-nine-heavens?fbclid=IwAR0n1Ld6tmxqTec23Pzg3DxRjEQ-DbjdGF1DU_Jjlt4eMbHdTOO9Jd7ePnc Lizzy Bluebell: Oh – now I see what the Buddha riding the deer was carrying; her Gourd. A very interesting link, thanks.”…these statues in Taoism are not for worshipping or praying. They are like a container, a magic tool, which is used to program the energies into profiles and be used for different things in Taoist magic. The outsiders cannot understand too much, and so these “Taoist secrets” are often hidden from the public in the old days or even today.” Lizzy Bluebell: Very informative passage on the power of the NINE:”Nine is the pattern of giving off power, or using up the energies of things to give off powers, just like a flashlight burning it’s battery up for the light. Sky is the pattern that relates to any pool of resources or elements that are considered the proactive party that is “starting” something or the giving side of a situation.Remember that we talk about patterns in Taoism, and it applies to everything including our FU talismans words and these special terms like Jiu Tian / Gau Tin.A practical example for this term can be used as in if you are trying to go to the kitchen and cook something for lunch. Your “sky” here is all the things in the kitchen, and ground is the kitchen itself where you put the food into “process” them. So the 9-sky stage is to have picked out the food you like and let them show themselves to let you know which one is the best to use, maybe some just smell better or some look fresher to you. Nothing has been done yet, but you are now able to “start” something because you can at least feel and sense the food’s potentials and power.” Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Lizzy Bluebell, Oh it is gourd. Yes, I forgot about the gourd symbol for Mago/Magu. It is a container for the elixir from which one drinks. It is a common pictographic/literary theme and I have images of Magu with the gourd. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Lizzy Bluebell, this is one heuristic analogy. Ancient Magoists depicted/perceived the universe as Nine Heavens, an equivalent to Nine States on earth for it is the lens of Nine Numerology through which they saw everything. Because ancient China removed the history of Goma, they spiritualized/philosophized the teaching of Nine Numerology. If we have Goma’s history (and the mytho-history of Old Magoism), we can perceive the meaning of Nine Heavenly directly (not through theories or analogies). Wherever and whenever the consciousness of Nine Numerology surfaces is a manifestation of Goma’s rule/civilization/religion. This will remain forever insofar as humanity continues because Nine Numerology is the principle of nature including humans. I would say that the teaching/principle of Nine Numerology is Goma’s self-redemptive soteriological gift. Insofar as we understand and honor the Nine Mago Creatrix/Nine Numerology (the female divine in general), we are endowed with the power of self-redemption. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Lizzy Bluebell, the character “Xuan or Hyeon 玄” refers to the quality of gynocentric spirituality, which has been made esoteric or mystic. It refers to the spirituality of the Great Goddess (Magoist spirituality). Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Nine Hans or Nine Heavens manifests in such place-names as Kyūkoku (九国, Nine States). Kyushu (Nine Provinces) Island, Japan, seemingly a replica of Danguk (confederacy of nine states) representing the Nine Mago Creatrix, reflects the ancient glory of the Goma’s gynocentric rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyushu Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Doumu (Mother of the Northern Dipper) also comes in the icon of eight arms. Doumu, Song Dynasty, Wikimedia Commons Domu, Wikimedia Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doumu Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: She is often conflated with Marici seated on a boar in her iconography (affine to Gemu of the Mosuo and Durga on a tiger/lion). Here Marici is depicted as four-headed and eight-armed. Marici, Wikimedia Commons Marici (Buddhism) – Wikipedia Judy E Foster: So similar to the Indian Goddess… Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Indeed! I am afraid that we may not be able to feature some of the nine forms of Durga from “Hinduism”. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang There is more, Marici. Marici, Wikimedia Commons File:Marichi, Buddhist Goddess of Dawn, China, Qing dynasty, 18th… Marichi, Source below. Marichi (Buddhist Deity) – Kalpoktam (3 faces, 8 hands)… Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: This is new info. on the nine tripod caldrons of ancient China. “The Nine Tripod Cauldrons (Chinese: 九鼎; pinyin: Jiǔ Dǐng) were ancient Chinese ritual cauldrons. They were ascribed to the foundation of the Xia (c. 2200 bce) by Yu the Great, using tribute metal presented by the governors of the Nine Provinces of ancient China.[1] At the time of the Shang Dynasty during the 2nd millennium bce, the tripod cauldrons came to symbolize the power and authority of the ruling dynasty with strict regulations imposed as to their use. Members of the scholarly gentry class were permitted to use one or three cauldrons; the ministers of state (大夫, dàfū) five; the vassal lords seven; and only the sovereign Son of Heaven was entitled to use nine.[2] The use of the nine tripod cauldrons to offer ritual sacrifices to the ancestors from heaven and earth was a major ceremonial occasion so that by natural progression the ding came to symbolize national political power[3] and later to be regarded as a National Treasure. Sources state that two years after the […]
(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, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Harriet Ann Ellenberger I got involved with women’s liberation in the early 1970s, so involved that it became my life for many years. During those beginnings of what is now called “the second wave of feminism,” everything was new to us and everything was mushed together — the political, the economic, the intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual. I liked that a lot; it felt as if all the parts of myself were coming together. During that time, I learned something crucial the imagery and concepts of patriarchal religion justify and are embedded in the material structures of oppression. I don’t know which came first, institutionalized oppression (of everyone; I’m not speaking here only of women) or the religious expression of that oppression. All I’m certain of is that patriarchal religion permeates, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary, which I use all the time, in conjunction with Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, conjured by Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi.

(Book Excerpt) Held in the Womb of the Wheel of the Year by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from the Introduction of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Meditation cushion in circle of decorated stones My ancestors built great circles of stones that represented their perception of real time and space, and enabled them to tell time: the stone circles were cosmic calendars.[i] They went to great lengths and detail to get it right. It was obviously very important to them to have the stones of a particular kind, in the right positions according to position of the Sun at different times of the year, and then to celebrate ceremony within it. I have for decades had a much smaller circle of stones assembled. I have regarded this small circle of stones as a medicine wheel. It is a portable collection, that I can spread out in my living space, or let sit in a small circle on an altar, with a candle/candles in the middle. Each stone (or objects, as some are) represents a particular Seasonal Moment/transition and is placed in the corresponding direction. The small circle of eight stones represents the flow of the Solstices and Equinoxes and the cross-quarter Moments in between: that is, it represents the “Wheel of the Year” as it is commonly known in Pagan traditions. I have found this assembled circle to have been an important presence. It makes the year, my everyday sacred journey of Earth around Sun, tangible and visible as a circle, and has been a method of changing my mind, as I am placed in real space and time. My stone wheel has been a method of bringing me home to my indigenous sense of being. Each stone/object of my small wheel may be understood to represent a “moment of grace,” as Thomas Berry named the seasonal transitions – each is a threshold to the Centre, wherein I may now sit: I sense it as a powerful point. As I sit on the floor in the centre of my small circle of stones, I reflect on its significance as I have come to know the Seasonal transitions that it marks, over decades of celebrating them. I sense the aesthetics and poetry of each. I facilitated and was part of the celebration and contemplation of these Moments in my region for decades. It was always an open group that gathered, and so its participants changed over the years but it remained in form, like a live body which it was: a ceremonial body that conversed with the sacred Cosmos in my place. We spoke a year-long story and poetry of never-ending renewal – of the unfolding self, Earth and Cosmos. We danced and chanted our relationship with the Mother, opened ourselves to Her Creativity, and conversed with Her by this method. All participants in their own way within these ceremonies made meaning of their lives – which is what I understand relationship to be, in this context of Earth and Sun, our Place and Home in the Cosmos: that is, existence is innately meaningful when a being knows Who one is and Where one is. Barbara Walker notes that religions based on the Mother are free of the “neurotic” quest for indefinable meaning in life as such religions “never assumed that life would be required to justify itself.”[ii] I face the North stone, which in my hemisphere is where I place the Summer Solstice. From behind me and to my right is the light part of the cycle – representing manifest form, all that we see and touch. From behind me and to my left is the dark part of the cycle – representing the manifesting, the reality beneath the visible, which includes the non-visible. The Centre wherein I sit, represents the present. The wheel of stones has offered to me a way of experiencing the present as “presence,” as it recalls in an instant that, That which has been and that which is to come are not elsewhere – they are not autonomous dimensions independent of the encompassing present in which we dwell. They are, rather, the very depths of this living place – the hidden depth of its distances and the concealed depth on which we stand.[iii] This wheel of stones, which captures the Wheel of the Year in essence, locates me in the deep present, wherein the past and the future are contained – both always gestating in the dark, through the gateways. And all this has been continually enacted and expressed in the ceremonies of the Wheel of the Year, as the open, yet formal group has done them, mostly in the place of Blue Mountains, Australia. PaGaian Cosmology altar/mandala: a “Womb of Gaia” map Over the years of practice of ritually celebrating these eight Seasonal Moments – Earth’s whole annual journey around Sun, I have been held in this creative story, this Story of Creativity as it may be written – it is a sacred story. Her pattern of Creativity can be identified at all levels of reality – manifesting in seasonal cycles, moon cycles, body cycles – and to be aligned with it aligns a person’s core with the Creative Mother Universe. I have identified the placing of one’s self within this wheel through ceremonial practice of the whole year of creativity, as the placing of one’s self in Her Womb – Gaia’s Womb, a Place of Creativity. All that is necessary for Creativity is present in this Place. All may come forth from here/Here – and so it does, and so it has, and so it will. NOTES: [i] See Martin Brennan, The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland (Rochester Vermont, Inner Traditions, 1994). [ii] Barbara Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 693. [iii] David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 216. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Brennan, Martin. The Stones of Time: Calendars, Sundials, and Stone Chambers of Ancient Ireland.Rochester Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1994. Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: …
(Video) Autumn Equinox/Mabon Poetry by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The Autumnal Equinox occurs each year in the range of March 20-23 in the Southern Hemisphere, and in the range of September 20 -23 in the Northern Hemisphere. Autumn Equinox is a point of sacred balance: it is the point of balance in the dark part of Earth’s annual cycle. Sun is equidistant between North and South as it was/is at Spring Equinox, but in this dark phase of the cycle, the trend is toward increasing dark. Henceforth the dark part of the day will exceed the light part: thus it is a Moment of certain descent … and a sacred Moment for feeling and contemplating the grief and power of loss, for ceremoniously joining personal and collective grief and loss with the larger Self in whom we are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZflKLkvP8 Below is the text of the video. It is based on the traditional poetry for PaGaian Autumn Equinox/Mabon ceremony[i]. This is the Moment of the Autumnal Equinox in our Hemisphere – the moment of balance of light and dark in the dark part of the cycle. The light and dark parts of the day in the South and in the North of our planet, are of equal length at this time. We feel for the balance in this moment – Earth as She is poised in relationship with the Sun … breathing in the light, swelling with it, letting our breath go to the dark, staying with it. In our part of Earth, the balance is tipping into the dark. We remember the coolness of it. This is the time when we give thanks for our harvests – all that we have gained. And we remember too the sorrows, losses involved. The story of Old tells us that Persephone, Beloved Daughter, is given the wheat from Her Mother – the Mystery, knowledge of life and death. She receives it graciously. But she sets forth into the darkness – both Mother and Daughter grieve that it is so. Demeter, the Mother, says: “You are offered the wheat in every moment … I let you go as Child, most loved of Mine: you descend to Wisdom, to Sovereignty. You will return as Mother, co-Creator with me. You are the Seed in the Fruit, becoming the Fruit in the Seed. Inner Wisdom guides your path.” We give thanks for our harvests – our lives they are blessed. We are Daughters and Sons of the Mother. Yet we take our Wisdom and all that we have gained, and remember the sorrows – the losses involved. We remember the grief of the Mother, of mothers and lovers everywhere, our grief. Persephone descends. The Beloved One is lost. Persephone goes forth into the darkness to become Queen of that world. She tends the sorrows. The Seed represents our Persephones, who tends the sorrows – we are the Persephones, who may tend the sorrows. We go out into the night with Her and plant our seeds. Persephone blesses us with her fertile promise: “You have waxed into the fullness of life, And waned into darkness; May you be renewed in tranquility and wisdom[ii].” These represent our hope. The Seed of life never fades away. She is always present. Blessed be the Mother of all life. Blessed be the life that comes from Her and returns to Her. We tie red threads on each other: we participate in the Vision of the Seed – of the continuity of Life, that continues beneath the visible. The Mother knowledge grows within us. Our hope is in the Sacred Balance of the Cosmos – the Thread of Life, the Seed that never fades away: it is the Balance of Grief and Joy, the Care that we may feel in our Hearts. NOTES: [i] Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, p. 239-247. [ii] Charlene Spretrnak, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, p. 116. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Spretnak, Charlene. Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: a Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992/1978.
(Essay) The Wheel of the Year and Climate Change by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ The Wheel of the Year in a PaGaian cosmology essentially celebrates Cosmogenesis – the unfolding of the Cosmos, in which Earth’s extant Creativity participates directly, as does each unique being. The Creativity of Cosmogenesis is expressed through Earth-Sun relationship as it may manifest and be experienced within any region of our Planet. In PaGaian tradition this is expressed with Triple Goddess Poetry, which is understood to be metaphor for the creative dynamics unfolding the Cosmos. At the heart of the Earth-Sun relationship is the dance of light and dark, the waxing and waning of both these qualities, as Earth orbits around our Mother Sun. This dance, which results in the manifestation of form and its dissolution, as it does in the Seasons, happens because of Earth’s tilt in relationship with Sun: and that is because this tilt effects the intensity of regional receptivity to Sun’s energy over the period of the yearly orbit. This tilt was something that happened in the evolution of our planet in its earliest of days – some four and a half billion years ago, and then stabilised over time: and the climatic zones were further formed when Antarctica separated from Australia and South America, giving birth to the Antarctica Circumpolar Current, changing the circulation of water around all the continents … just some thirty million years ago[i]. Within the period since then, which also saw the advent of the earliest humans, Earth has gone through many climatic changes. It is likely that throughout those changes, the dance of light and dark in both hemispheres of the planet … one always the opposite of the other – has been fairly stable and predictable. The resultant effect on flora and fauna regionally however has varied enormously depending on many other factors of Earth’s ever changing ecology: She is an alive Planet who continues to move and re-shape Herself. She is Herself subject to the cosmic dynamics of creativity – the forming and the dissolving and the re-emerging. The earliest of humans must have received all this, ‘observed’ it, in a very participatory way: that is, not as a Western industrialized or dualistic mind would think of ‘observation’ today, but as kin with the events – identifying with their own experience of coming into being and passing away. There is evidence to suggest that humans have expressed awareness of, and response to, the phenomenon of coming into being and passing away, as early as one hundred thousand years ago: ritual burial sites of that age have been found[ii], and more recently a site of ongoing ritual activity as old as seventy thousand years has been found[iii]. The ceremonial celebration of the phenomenon of seasons probably came much later, particularly perhaps when humans began to settle down. These ceremonial celebrations of seasons apparently continued to reflect the awesomeness of existence as well as the marking of transitions of Sun back and forth across the horizon, which became an important method of telling the time for planting and harvesting and the movement of pastoral animals. https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ It seems that the resultant effect of the dance of light and dark on regional flora and fauna, has been fairly stable in recent millennia, the period during which many current Earth-based religious practices and expression arose. In our times, that is changing again. Humans have been, and are, a major part of bringing that change about. Ever since we migrated around the planet, humans have brought change, as any creature would: but humans have gained advantage and distinguished themselves by toolmaking, and increasingly domesticating/harnessing more of Earth’s powers – fire being perhaps the first, and this also aided our migration. In recent times this harnessing/appropriating of Earth’s powers became more intense and at the same time our numbers dramatically increased: and many of us filled with hubris, acting without consciousness or care of our relational context. We are currently living in times when our planet is tangibly and visibly transforming: the seasons themselves as we have known them for millennia – as our ancestors knew them – appear to be changing in most if not all regions of our Planet. Much predictable Poetry – sacred language – for expressing the quality of the Seasonal Moments will change, as regional flora changes, as the movement of animals and birds and sea creatures changes, as economies change[iv]. In Earth’s long story regional seasonal manifestation has changed before, but not so dramatically since the advent of much current Poetic expression for these transitions, as mixed as they are with layers of metaphor: that is, with layers of mythic eras, cultures and economies. We may learn and understand the traditional significance of much of the Poetry, the ceremony and symbol – the art – through which we could relate and converse with our place, as our ancestors may have done; but it will continue to evolve as all language must. At the moment the dance of dark and light remains predictable, but much else is in a process of transformation. As we observe and sense our Place, our Habitat, as our ancestors also did, we can, and may yet still make Poetry of the dance of dark and light, of this quality of relationship with Sun, and how it may be manifesting in a particular region and its significance for the inhabitants: we may still find Poetic expression with which to celebrate the sacred journey that we make everyday around Mother Sun, our Source of life and energy. It has been characteristic of humans for at least several tens of thousands of years, to create ceremony and symbol by which we could relate with the creative dynamics of our place, and perhaps it was initially a method of coming to terms with these dynamics – with the apparently uniquely human awareness of coming into being and passing away[v]. Our need for sacred ceremony of relationship with our place, can only be more dire in these times, as we are witness to, and aware of, …
Lammas/Late Summer in PaGaian tradition By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

Photo by Carolyn Lee Boyd In times past, Creation’s Winter cupped me in her icy hand of sanctuary Gathered in, I sucked dormant life, and slumbered Till Earth’s rebirthing groans awakened my new body Now, older and full of life’s weeping and wondering awe At all that has happened in my decades on Earth I must shake myself into consciousness My seed’s opaque, blinding hull disintegrates and Bodyless, at last I can see through Goddess eyes I ache as my blood paints each flower petal I spin the whirlwind that cannot stop creating abundance I push the seasons through the year that mortals believe revolve of their own accord. Through Goddess eyes I can see me, I inhabit Winter’s hand as my own. I make the cold to slow creation of outside of me To gather the seed into fertile stillness within. That burgeons in my own time. https://www.magoism.net/2016/08/meet-mago-contributor-carolyn-lee-boyd/
(Music) Songs for Samhain by Alison Newvine

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

(Mago Pilgrimage video 2) Ganghwa Island by Robert (Taffy) Seaborne

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ANT2cPDN-g The first day of Mago Pilgrimage 2014 to Korea, organised by Dr.Helen Hwang, was to Ganghwa Island, starting actually on Gyodong Peace Island: the group included locals, and together we walked up to the Rock of Constellation Marks located atop the Ruin of Hwagae “Castle”/Stronghold. The scenic view up there is from the Ruin of Gwanmi Stronghold (not a fortress, as present minds may think, but a “strong” place). I state all this here about the name because there was a bit of confusion in my mind when making the video. Along our way we came across an ancient sweat lodge – named Hanjeung-mak – shaped like a womb and similar to ancient constructions in other lands. As we walked we could also at some points, see across to the Demilitarized Zone and North Korea, and some in our group expressed deep distress about the loss and splitting of families, with this division.
(Mago Almanac Planner Year 5 Excerpt 1) 13 Month 28 Day Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This and its sequences are a newly added portion in the Mago Almanac Planner Year 5, equivalent to the Gregorian Year 2022. Because the Budoji did not explain further about time units smaller than 1 day, I did not follow through some possible implications in previous Mago Almanac volumes. Next year’s Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar Year 5 or 5919 MAGOMA ERA is forthcoming in Mago Bookstore (October 25, 2021). PDF version is available for purchase.] Angbuilgu (仰釜日晷 Concave Sundial) dated in 1434 of Joseon Dynasty Korea (13 horizontal lines are engraved, indicating 24 seasons and 7 vertical lines indicating times of a day) UNITS OF TIME MEASURE At the half point of the eleventh Sa, there is one 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. 1 Gu (approx. 3.71 miliseconds) refers an infinitesimal discrepancy that occurs every eleven years or every ten and a half years precisely. Because Gu (a noncognitive time unit) is a time too small to count, Gu can only be treated as 1 Myo, equivalent to 300 Gu. As shown in the below table, Myo is still a tiny unit of time. 9,633 Myo equals 1 day, which is 288,990 Gu (300×9633=288,990). Because of this, there will be one extra day (9,633 Myo) every 31,788,900 years. This means, the Magoist Calendar has another (the third) leap day every 31,788,900 years (11 x 300 x 9,633). 31,788,900 years is a long time, which we will presumably not take into consideration for the Magoist Calendar dating 3898 BCE (the beginning year of Goma’s Danguk confederacy) that we are under. Because the units of Gak, Bun, and Si are not further explained in the Budoji,[1] it is difficult to designate what they indicate. Although the terms of Gak, Bun, and Si are familiar to moderns as time indicators, what each unit indicates is unknown. Given that 9,633 Myo (Gak-Bun-Si) equals 1 day (1 Il 日 일), it is conjectured that Gak-Bun-Si refers to time segments equivalent to hours, minutes, and seconds in today’s 24 hour a day scheme. 1 Myo is approximately 1.115 seconds, as 9,633 Myo is approximately 8,640 seconds. If we project the time of 1 day into a circle, the whole circle indicates 1 day. Doing this implies that time/space is inseparable in a circular notion of timespace. To specify a size of time smaller than 1 day, we can first divide the circle into two halves. Let’s call the half circle or a half day A. A (equivalent to 12 hours) equals 4,816.5 Myo or 1,444,950 Gu. Then, we divide the half circle into two halves. And let’s call it B. B refers to a quarter of 1 day or B (equivalent to 6 hours), which equals 2,408.25 Myo or 722,475 Gu. Likewise, C refers to one eighth of 1 day, equivalent to 3 hours), which equals 1,204.125 Myo or 361,237.5 Gu. A subsequent division by 2 aligns with the Physical Numbers, 3, 6, 9 in the digital root.[2] Given one sidereal day to be 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.0916 seconds or 23.9344696 hours, 1 A would be 11 hours, 58 minutes, and 2.0458 seconds. 1 B would be 5 hours, 59 minutes, and 1.0229 seconds. 1 C would be 2 hours, 59.5 minutes, and 0.51145 seconds. The circle represents the sidereal day of 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.0916 seconds. Note that the time divisions of 1 day (A, B, and C) follow the order of 1, 2, 4, and 8. Precisely, this is what the Magoist Genealogy of the first three generations that I illustrated above and elsewhere: The Magoist Cosmogony recounts that from one (Mago, the Great Mother) born are the two daughters (Gunghui and Sohui), which makes the triad. From the two daughters born are the four twins, which makes eight. This is observed in meiosis (cell division for sexually reproducing organisms) from one to two and to four and to eight and so forth. The Mago triad and the eight granddaughters are called Nine Magos.[3] The calendar is not just an indication of times or seasons. It is an indication of the life-organizing principle. The Magoist Calendar is a summary of cosmic and planetary life systems. From a microcosmic entity to a macrocosmic universe, all runs by the same force of Sonic Numerology, the metamorphic reality of WE/HERE/NOW. Beings, time, and space are the three inseparable aspects of one reality.(To be continued) [1] It is indeed regretful that the sequence book of the Budoji, Yeoksiji (Book of Calendar and Time), that treats calendar and time has been lost. We have only the Budoji available, the first book of 15 books of the Jingsimnok (Record of Cleansing Mind/Heart), a compendium of 3 volumes that have 5 books in each. Doubtless that the Yeoksiji (Book of Calendar and Time), the third book of Volume 1, would detail the rest of time measures and sub-calendars. [2] D would refer to one sixteenth of 1 day, equivalent to 1.5 hours, which equals 602.0625 Myo (3 in the Digital Root) or 180,618.75 (9 in the Digital Root). If we divide one eighth of 1 day by 3, it is one twenty-fourth of 1 day or E (equivalent to 1 hour). A total of 24 segments. E equals 401.375 Myo or 120,412.5 Gu. These numbers do not follow the suit of 3, 6, and 9, Chesu or Physical Numbers. 401.375 is 2 in the Digital Root and 120,412.5 is 6 in the Digital Root. [3] See this book, 112. https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang/
(Essay 1) The Magoist Calendar: Mago Time inscribed in Sonic Numerology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This is my latest research that has led me to restore the 13-month, 28-day Mago Calendar, which will be included at the end of its sequels. See Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A), published in 2017.] Magoist Calendar is the inter-cosmic genealogical chart of the Creatrix in which all is found kindred. It unfolds the one standard unified time, which I call the Cosmic Mother’s Time or the Mago Time, wherein all beings in Our Universe from microcosmic quarts to macrocosmic celestial bodies are perceived in continuum. The Cosmic Mother’s Time is an inclusive time in which everyone is re-membered and celebrated. It is revelatory for its numinous nature, which some may call a mystery. The Mago Time is happening