January 1, 2018November 15, 2019 Glenys D. Livingstone

(Essay) MoonCourt: Goddess Ceremonial Space by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

MoonCourt is dedicated ceremonial space created for the celebration of Her Creativity, as this manifests in the Seasonal Moments, which are holy days of Earth, points of transition marking Earth’s orbit around our mother Sun. MoonCourt as it has been named, is sacred space for celebrating Earth’s everyday sacred journey, our everyday pilgrimage – where we actually are. It is a Goddess safe space where She may be spoken and announced in all Her beauty and power. MoonCourt is the emergent home of PaGaian Cosmology.

There are three seasonal markers on the wall: the window for the Winter Solstice dawn, the window for the Summer Solstice dawn, and the Equinox marker in between them. I found the simple placement of these markers in themselves to be mind-altering. I wrote soon after living with them for a while: “It is placing me in a new way.”

The Winter Solstice window is vulval in shape, designed and made especially, an open space with a wrought iron Triple Spiral held in its centre. The Summer Solstice window is a round plate of thick glass with a diamond shaped pattern centrally embedded in it. The marker for the Equinoxes, which has the same position on the horizon for both Spring and Autumn, is a downward pointing triangle, a classic Goddess pubic shape; at first with an image from Loughcrew Ireland included within it, then later and presently with an image of Demeter and Persephone within it.

The floor of MoonCourt is embedded with a thirty metre brass spiral which represents the unfolding Universe, from the Original Flaring Forth to the present moment: there are forty brass pins embedded along its length at appropriate measured distances, representing moments considered significant by present scientific and cultural understandings, and I always tell the story inclusive of Goddess perspective.

The foundations for MoonCourt began in early January of 2008; its advent was an organic process. The only certainties were (i) that the space would be home to the seasonal ceremonies that I had hosted for years, frequently in hired locations and only recently coming back to this ground, and (ii) that it would be made of earthen materials. We did not actually have a plan to go by, other than beginning with the noting and marking of the sunrise on the horizon for the Summer Solstice, the Equinoxes, and the Winter Solstice. My partner Taffy (Robert) Seaborne initiated and took an active role in MoonCourt’s construction, though it was my story, my cosmology (which did not yet have a name), which informed the design.

Moon through MoonCourt’s reciprocal roof: Her eye

As we reached for a name for this sacred space we wrote: “It is a place for getting caught by the Moon, where Her law/lore is laid out. The seasonal rituals as we do them are a celebration of the dance of Light and Dark – the rhythm of waxing peaking and waning, as Moon holds them within Her round face. It is to be a place for courting the Mother.” We did also think about naming it a MoonAsylum … as it is a “refuge for learning and celebrating Her Wisdom” and we often playfully regarded ourselves as Lunatics! MoonCourt is the name that emerged, partly due to a white marble that was found mysteriously placed exactly in the centre of the rubble of the foundations.

I continued to hold the all the seasonal ceremonies on the site as it was built … Earth does not stop turning; the celebration of Her Creativity, the sacred conversation, must always go on. Herewith a photo as it was for Autumn Equinox of 2008, when MoonCourt was the site for the Underworld part of the ceremonial process. I include it for the purpose of showing that one does not have to wait for magic to happen.

There are photos here in this link of MoonCourt’s beginnings, and all the way through to the present: https://pagaian.org/articles/mooncourt/ and also links there to three YouTube videos of MoonCourt’s construction.

Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone

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(Meet Mago Contributor) Annabelle Solomon

Annabelle Solomon (PhD) is an Australian quilt artist and tutor whose thesis and work is inspired by a feminist spiritual ecology. Her book “Seasons of the Soul: the Wheel of the Year in Quilts” (1999) relates her experience of the creative process in the creation of art quilts for the seasonal cycle in the Southern Hemisphere. Annabelle is motivated to encourage new ways of seeing ourselves as creative women, powerfully interacting with each other and our place on Earth. Living in the World Heritage National Park of the Blue Mountains, she currently enthusiastically practises her craft, and promotes the arts.
Refuge by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright Refuge is a place I go to be with other forests. A blessed place…even when I have a dog that is dying. Two free writes from the field where Nature is Queen of May and June… The Calling Clouds billowing, light gray, Mary’s window waves of glass ripple through a forest still stirring from winters sleep – the gorge a space in between hemlock and pine a silver river sliding over stone – trillium painted roses burgundy too, mayflowers leathery green, crowned with pearls – intoxicating scent for bumblebees and me – Mary’s house Holds Mystery in Place – Forest Sanctuary – smooth beech branches bud curled tightly a few days before lime leaves unfurl – I am listening – Lucy’s breathing more labored now, too thin she shivers – I have built a fire – Blackburnian warblers sing on – the breath of the forest holds us in a still place – moments stretching back to beginnings, opening a door to our return… comfort and belonging in all that is and will be – death of a beloved – I cannot know. Loon flies over the river and Mama Goose honks new horizons- A Calling – death is only a return to beginning – if only my longing didn’t hold a lake full of tears – In joy and sorrow Refuge speaks to belonging – belonging – belonging – 400 million years – rustling needles silently conversing – this Earth a miracle in the making – the Present All There Is… Refuge in Blue River grinding stone to sand – mosaic cracks in blue – forest breathes life with every death – one pulsing heart – S/he beats the drum – green frogs and warblers – fragrant woodland symphony – emerald longing soothed by song – Framing the window pearl white clusters – heart shaped leaves – beyond beech leaf butterflies flutter in lime – downed tree limbs – decomposers arise – build soul and soil from deep below – Mineral rich worms burrow into a myriad of threads – mycelial net embraces earth’s core – phoebe gathers mosses – deer hair softens the cup where she gives birth – ovenbirds trill – in such company even limed branches clasp palms in prayer – hemlock and pine praise the sky – Mother Trees Hum – Crowns needled in wonder – so many homes no one goes without – a whole community invites me in – Pine stands sentry a Guardian still. https://www.magoism.net/2014/12/meet-mago-contributor-sara-wright
Radical: A Tribute to Barbara Mor by Lise Weil

“It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never ‘radical,’ that it is only extreme, and it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension… (T)hought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its ‘banality. Only the good has depth and can be radical.” Hannah Arendt, in a letter to Gershom Scholem “We could call Trivia a journal of radical feminism if ‘radical’ were taken to refer, not necessarily to a particular political line, but to a habit of thought, as described in the O.E.D.: ‘going to the root origin; touching or acting upon what is essential and fundamental; thorough.’” Editorial, Trivia: A Journal of Ideas #1, Fall 1982 Recently I received a thank-you e-mail from a woman in Texas who had ordered a full set of Trivia: A Journal of Ideas, the print journal I founded in 1982 and from which this online journal originally sprang. The e-mail read, in part, as follows: “I have never been very comfortable with women. The radical feminist has given me the opportunity to become close with them. Something I had wanted all my life. I was raised with more males and gave birth to more males. I loved them, and wanted to know what had destroyed them. Radical feminists taught me who destroyed them…I owe much to the Radical feminists, those women in the past and present. My sons owe them.” I loved these lapidary, lucid sentences. They reminded me of why that word—“radical”–which I notice I’ve been avoiding lately in association with feminism—was one I insisted on, used proudly, back in the 80s. I never wanted to bother with any other kind of feminism. “Liberal”? “Socialist”? “Pacifist”? “Post-structuralist?” Un-unh. I wanted the real kind. The kind that brooked no compromise. That drilled down deep enough to root out all the lies and crippling beliefs we were heir to as women living in patriarchy. Later on, I became aware that “Radical Feminism” had gotten weighed down with ideological baggage, but at the get-go what it was to me was simply this: stripping everything down to barest truth. Daring to see what is and then speak it out. Those feminists of the 60s and 70s who were dedicated to uncovering what had been kept under wraps for centuries, for millennia, who lived and worked amidst the foul odor of what had been festering there, often at great personal cost, those were radicals, and they were my heroes. Their work took toughness and stamina and great HEART. I was forever indebted to them. Barbara Mor was this kind of radical, this kind of feminist. For me in fact she was perhaps the truest exemplar. (And through her writing continues to be.) Implicit if not urgently explicit in almost all of her work was a call for women to recognize our historical roots. “The First God” was her own title for her landmark ecofeminist book The Great Cosmic Mother (HarperCollins wouldn’t use it); “Hypatia,” written some twenty-five years later and as Barbara saw it “a condensation of The First God was about the first witch publicly murdered by the Inquisition. Barbara began a project on the 19th century suffragists when she discovered that they were about radically reinventing the world, her true lineage: “In my limited historic knowledge, the 19th century suffragists were blurred together with the infamous curmudgeon Carrie Nation & her Christian Temperance squadrons of saloon wreckers, wielding their humorless axes with the pious goal of shutting down all the fun in town. A few years later, on the SDSC campus, amidst anti-war, civil rights & women’s liberation protests, I got my Feminist awakening: I learned who those 19th c. women were, the history of their struggles to radically change the political, social, economic & religious worlds I’d thought would never change much, for women or anyone else. And aha! I learned that Elizabeth Cady Stanton was in fact a theoretical rebel, who, along with Matilda Joslyn Gage, worked & thought far beyond single-issue & reformist politics into a profoundly different vision of human life & interaction on this planet. I became a feminist historian of sorts, inspired by their vision–as many of us were; & as many of us lived to see, in the Reagan 80s, those feminist visions hit the wall & shatter into relatively lame adjustments to the intact patriarchal system, &women’s consequent switch from demanding change with a Fist to petitioning nicely for ‘the right to belong to’ the Man’s World that remained fundamentally unchanged.”[1] Dedicated as she was to exposing our radical roots, to shining light on what has been shrouded in darkness, forgotten or distorted, the past three decades of backlash, cooptation, and erasure were for Barbara a constant irritant. “..the burning vision I retain from the 60s-70s,” she wrote in a letter, “was our need to retrieve women’s work/history & embed it so weldedly into our art & culture & scholarship, these women’s contributions to human evolution would never get buried alive. And then for 2 decades or more I’ve been watching that burial happen again, richly in the name of Gender Studies….” [2] (Though the response of young, present-day readers of The Great Cosmic Mother must have been some consolation to her: “We were Cassandras in our time, & now younger people are realizing what a lot of the smartest politicos (&feminists among them) didn’t really take seriously; I’ve been told & read online that GCM that dumb NewAge book! Is more real & relevant now than when it was written, a young person’s response: they’re right!”[3]) Unabashed rage was the driving force behind much if not all of Barbara’s visionary writing, especially in The Blue Rental and maybe most of all in “Hypatia”: -this woman gets her ComeUppance -thinks shes so damn smart -a God who can lower the mighty presume to teach men abomination,beat her to her knees & grovel upside cocky head w/Gods big cock open her mouth to scream -utter philosophy her oral poetry i’ll give her oral -jism Up Her …
(Book Excerpt 1) Nun too Clever by Elaine Drew

[An excerpt from the the mystery novel Nun Too Clever, which looks at what life as a queen was really like for the fairytale maiden who landed the prince.] An Unexpected Death The king is off fighting in Cornwall. He is always off fighting somewhere or other. When the hurricanes hit, it was Kent. When the roof over the fire collapsed, he was in East Anglia. When some villagers started a blood feud, Egbert was in Mercia. It stands to reason he would be off being heroic when I heard about the body. The day had been ordinary enough, the most remarkable event a visit from a predictably long-winded cleric. Who would have guessed the life of a queen involved so much tedium? On this inauspicious day, I managed to put off the bishop until dinner, when I had no choice but to seat him next to me. The man is sufficiently unattractive to make it a blessing that he joined the priesthood and spared a woman. And it isn’t just his table manners. While he waited for a dish of jugged hare to be placed within reach, the bishop caressed a gold cross so large it was vulgar. The potage arrived first, and the bishop slurped it from his spoon. Between mouthfuls he droned on about the status of his ongoing effort to claim yet another parish for his diocese. Good Christians, I thought, are often surprisingly venal. The bishop wiped his mouth on the tablecloth. I took a break from Bishop Badwulf, turning to the elderly and deaf thane on my left. This old guy showed up from time to time and was always seated next to me. Before dinner I’d seen him limping around the hall, visiting with the other old warriors. They laughed and yelled stories at one another. One old fellow repeated the same story several times running, while another, vying for the limelight, tried to shout him down. My old thane was mercifully quiet. Whenever I tried to engage him, he seemed happy enough to offer his toothless smile and nod his head amicably. He was so hard of hearing that any attempt at conversation turned to gibberish. On the rare occasion he understood what I said, his answers were just as nonsensical. The first time I found him sitting next to me, I asked him about battles he had fought. The topic is a reliable icebreaker with warriors old and young. “Have you fought with the king, sir?” I asked. “He’s not my enemy,” said the old man. “I bet Your Royal Highness fights with him all the time.” The old thane never stayed for more than a night, but after the third time in as many months that I had to endure his company, I asked the butler why the old warrior merited a seat next to the queen. “His Majesty’s orders,” the butler had explained, if you can call that an explanation. I was left wondering, not for the first time, if Egbert populated the hall with particularly unappealing men during his absence, or if it just seemed that way. Turning to the old man, I steeled myself for our usual verbal joust. His eyes gleamed a little as he looked at me—or was he looking at the chicken pasties the servant was placing in front of me? I wasn’t sure, but there was no mistaking the hand on my thigh. I removed his hand and turned back to the bishop. As I watched him return his uncleaned spoon to a dish of pork roasted in wine, my appetite faded. I soldiered on. “How was your journey from Lichfield, Your Excellency?” “Uneventful, Your Royal Highness.” In his eagerness to speak, he didn’t feel the drop of sauce that slithered from a corner of his mouth. “That is, until I discovered the body.”(To be continued) https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-elaine-drew/
(Song) Off to work we go; we walk through the night in darkness by Janie Rezner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgpkPmjRBNo&feature=em-upload_owner
(Essay) Contemplating Triple Goddess as Creative Triad, a Depth of Love by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the conclusion of chapter 3 of the author’s book, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. She has three faces, but She is One. These faces kaleidoscope into each other, they blur, they support each other, they are in each other – if they were not life would not go on, for She is a continuous Thread, a multivalent Urge unfolding the Cosmos; in an infinite multiplicity of beings. The three are reflected in each other like a never-ending mirrored reflection, thus the numinosity associated with multiples of three since ancient times, and in many cultures; all such multiples were considered to speak a Divine Harmony of some kind.
(Essay 1) The Blending of Bön, Buddhism and the Goddess Gemu in Mosuo Culture by Krista Rodin

[Editor’s Note: This series is included as a chapter in Goddesses in Culture, History and Myth (Mago Books, 2018), a textbook on Goddess Studies related courses at the university level.] Goddess Gemu and Tara in Buddhist Temple, Lugu Lake, photo K . Rodin In a small formerly isolated region in SW China lies one of the most interesting still functional matriarchal societies, the Mosuo. There are about 8,000 Mosuo living in the Lugu Lake region. The Mosuo have survived various invasions into their lands, including the great Mongol chieftains and a few foreign powers whose representatives stayed to integrate their traditions with those of the indigenous people. Among the foreigners were Black Hat Böns, along with Yellow and Red Hat Buddhists, from the neighboring Tibetan Plateau. These distinct forms of Tibetan sacred traditions merged with indigenous worship to form a sacred tradition based on the Goddess Gemu that is unique to the Mosuo of Lugu Lake, which straddles the border of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. While there remain clear differences among the Buddhist and Bön monasteries, the Goddess Gemu is infused in all of them. Currently, this very beautiful area is undergoing yet another transformation, a more commercial one, as it has become a major domestic tourist destination for Han Chinese. The influx of tourists has brought needed income to the villages, their monasteries, and sacred sites, but it has also led to popularizing and secularizing the region’s peoples’ sacred legacy. This chapter unravels some of the various historical and religious strains within this region in order to demonstrate how what appears at first blush to be the binary opposites of patriarchal Tibetan ideologies and an indigenous matriarchal goddess worshipping community can merge into a rich story-telling tradition with corresponding sacred rituals, and how the survival of these traditions is now threatened by popularization and commercialization. The opposing forces to be discussed include: patriarchal Tibetan ideologies with an indigenous matriarchal goddess worshipping tradition, local vs. external pressures, and ancient sacred vs. modern secular economies. The Mosuo No one knows for sure from where the Mosuo originated. There are records of Mosuo families in the region starting around the 9th-10th century, and it is assumed that they migrated south from what is now Sichuan Province. As the name was originally written in a non-Latin script, the English spelling takes on various forms, which can at times be confusing. A few of the most common spellings for this ethnic group include: Mo-so, Muso, and Museo, although, the preferred English version today is Mosuo. According to Christine Mathieu who has extensively studied the Mosuo, “They may have gotten their name from the six Mo – so chief or chiefs who were Mou through their matrilines, because the Mu’s notions of kingship were derived from the Tibetan royal tradition and the ancient Bon ritual.” [1] Most scholars speculate that they came as traders then settled in the fertile valleys around the spectacular lake. From the earliest records, the Mosuo were considered to have had strange practices, and even Marco Polo, who visited nearby Lijiang, commented on what to him were the strange sexual mores of the people. Much later in the early 20th century, Joseph Rock wrote extensively on the Na-khi (Naxi) people of the region and included the Mosuo among them. This may be the source of Chinese government’s classification of the Mosuo as Naxi, one of the 54 officially recognized ethnic groups in China, although the two groups have distinctly different cultural traits as both Rock in his “The Life and Culture of the Na-khi Tribe of the China-Tibet Borderland,” as well as his articles for the National Geographic in 1931,[2] and Susanne Knödel in her 1998 “Naxi and Moso Ethnography” describe. [3] Among the differences are the sacred traditions, including the ‘priests’, the dongba in the case of the Naxi and the dabas and lamas for the Musuo, the social organization, language and script. The Naxi have a large collection of sacred texts based on a pictographic script, whereas knowledge of a Mosuo written language was lost until 1986 when a daba explained 32 characters, including pictograms and symbols for abstract ideas, to Han scholar Yuan Xuenheng, who then published them in his 1995 “The Daba Religion of the Yongning Naxi,” which is referenced in Knodel’s book.[4] Yongning Naxi is another term for the Mosuo. The Mosuo characters appear to be primarily related to calendaring, which would probably have been used by the daba to divine the appropriate days for rituals. Naxi Dongba texts, on the other hand, consist of complete stories. [1] Christine Mathieu, A History and Anthropological Study of the Ancient Kingdoms of the Sino-Tibetan Borderland – Naxi and Mosuo, Mellen Studies in Anthropology 2 (Lewiston: Mellen Press, 2003), 111. [2] Joseph Rock, The Ancient Na-Khi Kingdom of Southwest China 1-2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947; “Konka Risumgongba, Holy Mountain of the Outlaws,” National Geographic, LX. July 1931. 1-65. [3] Susanne Knödel, Die Matrilinearen Mosuo von Yongning: Eine quellenkritische Auswertung Moderner Chinesischer Ethnographen. Kolner Ethnologische Studien, Band 22, edited by Ulla Johansen und Thomas Schweizer, (Cologne: Cologne University Press, 1995), 214-215. [4] Ibid, 212. (To be continued.)Meet Mago Contributor, Krista Rodin.
(Art) Black Madonna Redeems the Snake by Yvonne Lucia

Artist statement: The Black Madonna is an archetype understood by many scholars to be related to the ancient Egyptian Goddess Isis. Her legacy is marked by passionate identification with the oppressed and with values of justice with compassion, equality, and transformation. In classical Christian iconography, a sweet-faced Virgin Mary is often depicted standing on a globe, crushing the head of a snake. This image was a brilliant way for the patriarchal church to eclipse Goddess cults: to have the asexual and passive Mary killing off the snake, an ancient symbol of the goddess, wisdom, and transformation . Meet Mago Contributor Yvonne M. Lucia
(Essay 1) The Kiss of Nong Toom by Matthew Chabin

If I call this a love letter, I do not (I must assure my wife) mean it in the usual sense, as a missive of personal, amorous courtship. If I call it an exposition on culture, gender, mythology and blood sports, I hit the limbs and miss the heart. If I call it a tribute to a wise and beautiful person I condemn my efforts to redundancy, for ample tributes have already been made. Let us then call the spirit of the thing erotic, in the precise sense of the term, which is something I also hope to clarify. Let us start with that, and see where it takes us. I do not recall exactly how or when I first heard of Parinya Charoenphol, aka Nong Toom, aka the Beautiful Boxer, only that my initial reaction was not very positive. A transvestite kick-boxer? Whatever dude. More things in heaven and earth, right? I was young, and my sense of hetero-normative manhood looked askance at the derangement of reliable binaries—man/woman; warrior/drag queen. It did not occur to me that certain of my most actively cultivated values—individualism, mental and physical toughness, self-awareness, creative adaptability—could hardly be more radically manifest than in the example of this remarkable person. My course in seeing things differently, how I came to admire, even revere, Ms. Charoephol, is a tale for other pages. My aim here is only to demonstrate why she, Nong Toom, merits inclusion in an elite circle of modern, mythic heroes, people who, in transforming themselves, have wondrously transformed their world. But first, a bit of fun with semiotics (oh, just a bit). What you see above is a modified semiotic square, or cube, to be precise. The forward plane is standard, representing the familiar social handles of male (M) and female (F), and their immediate negations/implications of not-male (-M) and not-female (-F). The background plane explores the extended, both/neither implications. The priorityof terms in the hybrid and double-negative categories may be variously interpreted, e.g. the difference between (M/F) and (F/M) may be taken in atransgender context to signify gender transitioning—female from male, male fromfemale—or as two instances of a freely fluctuating, gender-fluid identity.[1] The negative corollaries may refer to aperson of either sex who is stigmatized as lacking, or having lost, someessential gender marker, an effeminate man disavowed by his fellows or a woman shamed by some (generally sexual) indiscretion.[2] Or they may represent transgender individuals closeted by the pressures of family, religion or culture, forbidden fromexpressing their inner experience. Yet athird possibility is that they represent “gender clowns,” individuals who ape the stereotypes of the opposite gender for reasons having little or nothing todo with authentic identity, such as profit, satire, deception, or ticks of deeppathology.[3] Thisclown figure will be of special interest as we return to the story of NongToom. Because when a demure, muscular, sweet-faced teenager first took the ring conspicuously marked with in lipstick and rouge, the question her audiences asked was is this for real? Transvestites and transwomen in Thai society are often entertainers or prostitutes, and are widely accepted as such, but few people were ready to believe that a transwoman could also be an authentic Muay Thai boxer. They assumed her fights were staged, a ploy to boost ticket sales (not an unreasonable assumption given the shady profiteering that notoriously dogs the sport). It’s true that Nong Toom’s motives were largely financial; she, like many of the poor country boys she trained with, was trying to earn money for her impoverished family. But no one was laying down for her. On the contrary, her opponents were positively desperate to win, as the macho culture of Muay Thai made them afraid of losing to a “ladyboy.” And yet lose they did, one after another, laid low by Toom’s heavy kicks and cutting elbows. A devout Buddhist and truly gentle soul, Toom liked to give her defeated foes a kiss on the cheek (if they were still standing, that is), a way of saying “I was rough on you, I’m sorry.” Soon, nothing in the brutal sport was more feared than the shy, apologetic kiss of Nong Toom. His audiences quickly evolved a new theory to accommodate the evidence of her ability: if Nong Toom was a real fighter, she must then be a fake transwoman. This was an aspersion cast on her interiority, and in the nasty way of such things, she found herself internalizing it. She had started wearing makeup as an expression of what she felt to be her true self, but now, in the sight of the rowdy, taunting mobs, she had her moment of doubt. She began to wonder, am I a clown? It is here thatthe story of Nong Toom gets really interesting from a mythic/psychologicalstandpoint, right at the crux where the inner and outer conflicts spin out froma common paradox, and an inner/outer doubling begins to complicate thepicture. But what exactly are themythic/psychological taproots of this doubling? (Meet Mago Contributor) Matthew Chabin.

(Special post) Laurie Baymarrwangga, Senior Australian of the Year 2012

Posted with permission in Return to Mago on ‘Australia Day’, 26 January 2014 (Australian time), in recognition of the ill-treatment and misunderstanding of Aboriginal people that was set in train when, in 1788, white people first settled in the land now known as Australia.
(Special Post 2) "The Oldest Cilivization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: The following discussion took place in response to an article listed blow by the members of The Mago Cirlce, Facebook group of Goddessians/Magoists from May 6 to May 10, 2016. Readers are recommended to read the original article linked below that has invoked the converation.] “The Danube Civilization: Oldest in the World” in The Ancient Ones upon the ruins of our ancestors, published April 3, 2016.
(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 the members of The Mago Cirlce, Facebook group of Goddessians/Magoists from May 6 to May 10, 2016. Readers are recommended to read the original article linked below that has invoked the converation.] “The Danube Civilization: Oldest in the World” in The Ancient Ones upon the ruins of our ancestors, published April 3, 2016.

The Passing of Last Summer’s Growth by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The ‘passing of last Summer’s growth’ as is experienced and contemplated in the Season of Deep Autumn/Samhain, may be a metaphor for the passing of all/any that has come to fullness of being, or that has had a fullness, a blossoming of some kind, and borne fruit; and in the passing it has been received, and thus transforms. The ‘passing of last Summer’s growth’ may be in hearts and minds, an event or events, a period of time, or an era, that was a deep communion, now passed and dissolved into receptive hearts and minds, where it/they reside for reconstitution, within each unique being. Samhain is traditionally understood as ‘Summer’s end’: indeed that is what the word ‘Samhain’ means. In terms of the seasonal transitions in indigenous Old European traditions, Summer is understood as over when the Seasonal Moment of Lammas/Lughnasad comes around; it is the first marked transition after the fullness of Summer Solstice. The passing and losses may have been grieved, the bounty received, thanksgiving felt and expressed, perhaps ceremonially at Autumn Equinox/Mabon; yet now in this Season of Samhain/Deep Autumn it composts, clearly falls, as darkness and cooler/cold weather sets in, change is clearer. In the places where this Earth-based tradition arose, Winter could be sensed setting in at this time, and changes to everyday activity had to be made. In our times and in our personal lives, we may sense this kind of ending, when change becomes necessary, no longer arbitrary: and the Seasonal Moment of Samhain may be an excellent moment for expressing these deep truths, telling the deep story, and making meaning of the ending, as we witness such passing. What new shapes will emerge from the infinite well of creativity? And we may wonder what will return from the dissolution? What re-solution will be found? We may wonder what new shapes will emerge. In the compost of what has been, what new syntheses, new synergies, may come forth? Now is the time for dreaming, for drawing on the richness within, trusting the sentience, within which we are immersed, and which we are: and then awaiting the arrival, being patient with the fermentation and gestation. Seize the moment, this Moment – and converse with the depths within your own bodymind, wherein She is. Make space for the sacred conversation, the Conversing with your root and source of being, and take comfort in this presence. We may ponder what yet unkown beauty and wellness may emerge from this infinite well of creativity. The Samhain Moment in the Northern Hemisphere is 17:14 UT 7thNovember this year. Wishing you a sense of the deep communion present in the sacred space you make for this holy transition.
Artful Ceremonial Expression by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 8 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Beltaine/High Spring are: Southern Hemisphere – October 31st or 1st November Northern Hemisphere – April 30th (May Eve) or 1st May though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, thus actually a little later in early November for S.H., and early May for N.H., respectively. The twin fires lit in older times on hilltops in Ireland for Beltaine likely represented the two eyes of night and day.[i] With this vision, Goddess as Sun and Moon sees Her Land, and with the power of Her eyes (Sun and Moon) brings forth life and beauty. With the fire eyes, Goddess“reoccupied and saw her whole land…”[ii] The twin fires later came to be used to run cattle between as they headed out to Summer pasture, for the purpose of burning off the bugs and ticks of Winter; the fires may thus be understood to serve a cleansing effect and likely the origins of the tradition of the ceremonial leaping of flames by participants in Beltaine festivities. In PaGaian Cosmology this is poetically expressed as the Flame of Love that burns away the psyche’s “bugs and ticks,” and sees the Beauty present, and calls it forth. The Beltaine flames may be a celebration of Sun entering into the eye, into the whole bodymind: a powerful creative evocation upon which the Dance of Life depends, and as the cleansing power of love and pleasure. PaGaian focus for Beltaine is on the Holy Desire/Passion for life, and it may be accounted for on as many levels as possible … the complete holarchy/dimensions of the erotic power. On an elemental level, there is our desire for Air, Water, the warmth of Fire, and to be of use/service to Earth. There is an essential longing, sometimes nameless, sometimes constellated, experienced physically, that may be recognized as the Desire of the Universe Herself – desiring in us.[iii] We may remember that we are united in this desire with each other, with all who have gone before us, and with all who come after us – all who dance the Dance of Life. Beltaine is a time for dancing and weaving into our lives, our heart’s desires; traditionally the dance is done with participants holding ribbons attached to a pole or tree (a Maypole in the Northern Hemisphere, which may be renamed as a “Novapole” in the Southern Hemisphere), wrapping the pole with the ribbons. This is not simply the heterosexual metaphor as is thought in modern times (thanks largely to Freudian thinking) – it is deeper than that. As Caitlin and John Matthews point out: it is symbolic of a far greater exchange than that between men and women – in fact between the elements themselves. … the maypole, a comparatively recent manifestation in the history of mystery celebrations, can be seen as the linking of heaven and earth, binding those who dance around it … into a pattern of birth, life and death which lay at the heart of the maze of earth mysteries.[iv] Beltaine is a celebration of Desire on all levels – microcosm and on the macrocosm, the exoteric and the esoteric.[v] It brought you forth physically, and it brings forth all that you produce in your life, and it keeps the Cosmos spinning. It is felt in you as Desire, it urges you on. It is the deep awesome dynamic that pervades the Cosmos and brings forth all things – babies, meals, gardens, careers, books and solar systems. We have often been taught, certainly by religious traditions, to pay it as little attention as possible; whereas it should be the cause of much more meditation/attention, tracing it to its deepest place in us. What are our deepest desires beneath our surface desires. What if we enter more deeply into this feeling, this power? It may be a place where the Universe is a deep reciprocity – a receiving and giving that is One. Brian Swimme says, in a whole chapter on “Allurement”: You can examine your own self and your own life with this question: Do I desire to have this pleasure? Or rather, do I desire to become pleasure? The demand to ‘have,’ to possess, always reveals an element of immaturity. To keep, to hold, to control, to own; all of this is fundamentally a delusion, for our own truest desire is to be and to live. We have ripened and matured when we realize that our own deepest desire in erotic attractions is to become pleasure … to enter ecstatically into pleasure so that giving and receiving pleasure become one simple activity. Our most mature hope is to become pleasure’s source and pleasure’s home simultaneously. So it is with the allurements of life: we become beauty to ignite the beauty of others.[vi] Beltaine is a good time to contemplate this animal bodymind that you are: how it seeks real pleasure. What is your real pleasure? Be gracious with this bodymind and in awe of this form, this wonder. Beltaine is also a good time to contemplate light, and its affects on our bodyminds as it enters into us; how our animal bodyminds respond directly to the Sun’s light, which apparently may awaken physical desires. Light vibrates into us – different wavelengths as different colours – and shifts to pulse. It is felt most fully in Springtime (“spring fever”), as light courses down a direct neural line from retina to pineal gland. When the pineal gland receives the light pulse it releases “a cascade of hormones, drenching the body in hunger, thirst, or great desire.”[vii] We respond directly to Sun as an organism: it is primal. NOTES: [i] Michael Dames, Ireland, 195-199. [ii] Ibid., 196. [iii] I have been inspired and informed by Swimme’s articulations about desire, particularly in Canticle to the Cosmos, video 2 “The Primeval Fireball,” video 5 “Destruction and Loss,” and video 10 “The Timing of Creativity.” [iv] Matthews, The Western Way, 54. And for more, see “Creativity …
(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 …
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 7) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) at Mago Bookstore. YEARLY LEAP DAY AND EVERY FOURTH YEAR LEAP DAY Each Sa includes a Dan of the big Sa. A Dan is equal to one day. That adds to 365 days. At the half point of 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. Each year has a leap day (Dan), which makes a total of 365 days. Every fourth year is a leap year that has a leap day (Pan), which makes a total of 366 days. The Dan day comes before the New Year in the winter solstice month. And the Pan day comes before the first day of the summer solstice month in the fourth year. The above, however, does not indicate when the New Year comes. Logographic characters of Dan and Pan each suggest their meanings. While each year includes the Dan day (the morning), every fourth year has the Pan day. A unit of four years makes the Big Calendar. Dan (旦 Morning) Leap day for every first three years Pan (昄 Big) Leap day for every fourth year I have postulated that the year begins on the Dan day (one leap day), a day before New Year that comes in the month of Winter Solstice in the Norther Hemisphere. And the Pan day comes on the day before the first day of the 7th month that has Summer Solstice in the fourth year in the Norther Hemisphere. Years Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Months Dan Dan Dan Dan 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 Pan 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 11 11 11 11 12 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 Days 365 365 365 366 The Magoist Calendar’s intercalation involves one leap day every year and one leap day every four years. That is, each year has one extra day to make it 365 days. Every fourth year has an extra day to make it 366 days. Four years has a total of 1461 days (365×3+366), which makes the mean of 365.25 days. Considering that the month is following the sidereal period rather than the synodic period, it is inferred that the year also follows the sidereal year rather than the solar year. In fact, Magoist Calendar’s one year is very close to today’s 365.25636 days of the sidereal year compared to 365.24217 days of the solar year or the tropical year. Given that, as seen below, the Budoji mentions the tiniest discrepancy of one leap day for 31,788,900 years, the discrepancy between 365.25 and 365.25636 (0.00636 day) can be explained that the year was actually 365.25 days at the time of Budo circa 2333 BCE, 4440 years ago. In other words, there is a discrepancy of 0.12375936 seconds between 2017 CE and 2333 BCE. Regarding Lawful Numbers 2, 5, 8, it is involved as follows: 365 days (3+6+5=14, 1+4=5) Lawful Numbers 2, 5, 8 refers the unit of 365 days (364 days with one intercalary day). Further dynamics are unknown. The sidereal year refers to the time taken by the Earth to orbit the sun once with respect to the distant stars. In contrast, the solar or tropical year means the time taken by the Earth to orbit the sun once with respect to the sun. The sidereal year, 365.25636 days, is about 20 minutes and 24 seconds longer than the mean tropical year (365.24217 days) and about 19 minutes and 57 seconds longer than the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days. The difference occurs primarily because the solar system spins on its own axis and around the Milky Way galactic center making the solar year’s observed position relative. Time is no independent concept apart from space and the agent. The very concept of time is preceded by the agent bound in a space. It is always contextualized. In Magoism, both calendar and time are born out of the cosmogonic universe, the universe that is in self-creation. Like calendar, time is to be discovered or measured. It is a numinous concept. The very concept of time testifies to the reality of the Creatrix. Time proves the orderly movement of the universe into which we are born. Calendar patterns time, whereas time undergirds calendar. How can we measure time? We are given the time of the Earth that comes from its rotation, revolution, and precession in sync with the moon and the sun (and its planets). One type of time is the solar time. The solar time is a calculation of time based on the position of the sun. Traditionally, the solar time is measured by the sundial. The solar time is, however, specific to the Earth only. It is valid only for the-same-observed-location. It is not made to be used for the time of another celestial body. For example, Mars’ solar time has to be measured independently based on its own rotation and revolution rates. The solar time is an isolated time. It is static and exclusive, not made for the time of other celestial bodies. By nature, it is unfit for connection and communication across celestial bodies. The second type is the sidereal time. The sidereal time is a time scale based on the rate of Earth’s rotations measured relative to the distant stars.[29] Because the observed position is in the far distant stars beyond the solar system, the sidereal time may as well be called an extrasolar stellar time. We can think of the observer’s position of an imaginary cosmic bird far out there, infinitely far beyond not only the solar system and …
(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.

(Essay 2) Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess, from East Asia by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

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

[Author’s Note] The following is from Chapter One, “What Is Mago and Magoism and How Did I Study HER?” from The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia, Volume 1. Footnotes below would be different from the monograph version. PDF book of The Mago Way Volume 1 download is available for free here.] Magoism, East Asian Religions, and Magoist Mudangs As mentioned above, Magoism refers to the totality of human civilization that is ultimately gynocentric. Speaking from a narrow perspective, Magoism is the primordial matrix from which such East Asian religions as Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism were derived. In the light of Magoism, a patriarchal religion is redefined as a pseudo-Magoism that which has co-opted the Way of the Great Goddess (Magoism) with the androcentric reversal of the female
(Budoji Essay 4) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part 4: Magoist Origin of Immortals “I maintain that Immortals originally refers to Mago’s descendants in Mago Castle, the Primordial Paradise. They are the primordial clan community of the Mago Species, comprised of the divine, demigods, and humans.” [This is a translation and interpretation of the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), principal text of Magoism. Read the translation of Chapter 1 of the Budoji.] Magoist Origin of Immortals: All in the Mago Species are given the original nature of immortality or transcendence. Readers are advised to set aside the literal meaning in the English language of the words immortals or transcendents. Immortals is a translation of the East Asian term seon (仙, xian in Chinese). I choose the translation immortals over transcendents not because it is a better translation but because it is the most commonly used term by Western Daoist translators.[i] Although it is known as a Daoist term, I hold that it is pre-Daoist, namely Magoist, in origin. Primarily, it refers to the Mago Species (Mago and Her descendants) who dwelt in Mago Castle, the primordial home, to be discussed in detail in later chapters. Likewise, historical figures known as Immortals are Magoist rather than Daoist.