October 2, 2019October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin

(Art & Poetry) An Animal of Earth by Lucy Pierce

There is a space, a gap, a chasm, a schism, a rift between my body and my eyes that perceive it. Like a cleft membrane, as though there were a mismatch between the formthat my acculturated eyes can narrowly receive,and the actual rugged peripheries and contours of my real life body.And in the space between a great grief dwells, unmet and in search of asylum. This space is filled with the wasteland that says I could never be enough,that I always was and ever will be, too big,too soft, too textured,not quite right, not deservedly worthy.

When I look with these eyes, they see through the lens of this judgement,this critical imposition,punitive imperative,through the lens of this brittle world,and it leaves the animal of my bodyin perpetual isolation,forever unseen for all the beauty she expresses,all the generosity she exudes. There is a chasm of unlovedness,between the body and the eye,and I see now it has always been the eye that does not belong,the eye that imposes the exileon the perfectly imperfect body,that has only ever wanted love,only ever wanted to belong to itself,nothing more,just to belong to its own self.But every time the eyes look,they shame and demean,all they ever seeis the not-good-enoughness.

I feel a whisper now,a longing to integrate the space between the eye and the body,I want to fill that space with silence,and in the stillness,I want to fill it with the presence of love.I want to bridge that gulf, with a gentle acceptance, a homely comfort,a tender generosity of heart.I want to retrieve my gaze from the worldand bring it home to my body, home to the animal of Earth.I want my eyes to belong to my soul,like a baby belongs to its mother,fiercely protectedby eyes that see only with love and the great responsibility of being a shelter from the harshness of the world.My beautiful body has been torn to shreds with the sharp edge of every mirror,or happened upon reflection. My eyes inflicting crueltywith razor sharp dexterity,amputating myself from belonging.With every gaze, a violence done.

I want my eyes and my body to curl up together,to wrap themselves up tight,like my dog, when she curls around herself to sleep.I want them to be together, gently,for all the time that it might take for the world inside them to die,for the space between themto still and to close,to mend and to heal,for friendship to forge,so that finally they can belong againtogether in the one skin,singing the one song that says,you are enough,and you are home,and to know what a riotous blessing it isto be home in a body. To be home on the earth,in love.

(Meet Mago Contributor) Lucy Pierce.

1 thought on “(Art & Poetry) An Animal of Earth by Lucy Pierce”

Sara Wright says:

October 3, 2019 at 8:16 AM

An Animal of Earth…. this is a stunning piece of writing – I could feel every word – and the overflowing grief of Woman’s anguish… this piece needs to be read again and again for nuance and beauty.

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(Essay 1) Body Prayer by Mary Petiet

‘All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.’ Julian of Norwich I am laying in shavasana, corpse pose, the final assimilating pose of any Hatha yoga practice. I am sprawled on my back on my yoga mat and my right hand receives a pleasant weight that I can wrap my arm around. I hold this weight and I know suddenly in that inner way of knowing that I am holding my own soul. I come back from shavasana slowly and look at my friend on the mat beside me. She is near tears. She says, “I held my father in my right hand.” We regard each other across our mats, slowly, slowly, coming back to ourselves. I have practiced yoga for eight years with the same teacher. In that time we have left the YMCA, where we used to practice, for the far more intimate church hall where we now meet. The core of our group consists of about eight women, and we gather twice weekly. My teacher is not a guru, she does not foster dependence. Rather she leads, and she gives us the tools to possibly lead ourselves.
(Poem) Eclipse of Hope by Harriet Ann Ellenberger

Acutely Personal, Eerily Collective In early autumn of 1985, I had been living for four months in a Studio of One’s Own, a beautifully airy structure built by women for women artists on Ann Stokes’ land, a low wooded mountain-top in New Hampshire across the river from Brattleboro, Vermont. It was the first time I’d lived alone and the first time I’d lived in the woods. I was there to write a serious book of prose and to chart a new direction for my life. Instead, I’d been getting up at the crack of dawn to write in my journal, walking the trails all over the old mountain, and skidding wildly from ecstatic vision to paralyzing despair. My journal entry for 1 October 1985 reads: “11 a.m. I am EXHAUSTED. 11:30 a.m. Well, shit, I just wrote a poem.” It was, astonishingly, a real poem, one of the first I’d written since childhood, but there was a tongue-tangle, marking a conceptual muddle, in the second stanza that I couldn’t for the life of me disentangle. Eventually, I put the poem away and even forgot I’d written it. Twenty-six years later, in the midst of an e-mail to a friend about something else altogether, the lines as they were meant to be surfaced in my mind. Why did it take so long? Well, I’ve come to think that humankind has a species-soul, a deep current that courses invisibly beneath the surface of our individual lives. When that soul is in trouble, we can feel it. In the mid-1980s, it was clear to any witness of my life that I personally was in trouble, my past gone and my future unknown. But I couldn’t altogether articulate what that felt like. By the summer of 2011, though, human beings were clearly and collectively in the same kind of trouble: past gone, future unknown. And suddenly, with so much company, I could say how that feels. Have human beings already precipitated the final decline of our mother the Earth? If not, how far will she need to go to restore balance and renew life? Will humans become extinct in the process, the way we’ve sent so many other species into extinction? These are the questions I ask myself, but I don’t know the answers. I only know how it feels now to be human, and on the brink. ◊ ECLIPSE OF HOPE A moon blots out a sun. Darkening silence comes between us. In place of my house, stands a tower of stone. At its crown — the lightning catcher, she who writes on the blank rune. Below, my departing selves wait with their boats. Driftwood burns. I mark in sand the sign of migration. My eyes sting. At my wingbones four winds rise. – Harriet Ann Ellenberger Note: “Eclipse of Hope” first appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Trivia: Voices of Feminism http://www.triviavoices.com/eclipse-of-hope.html
(Book Excerpt 7) For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange by Genevieve Vaughan

[Editor’s Note: The following sequels are from For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange by Genevieve Vaughan. Footnotes may differ from the original text.] General and Particular Processes One aspect of communication through language is that it narrows down the range of possible experience at the moment to a shared present which, of course, may include mention of other times and places, as well. It often provides a theme or story line around which we can organize our behavior, revisit and interpret our experience together. The story line, and the topics of our conversations, are also gifts of common ground from which our diverse subjectivities grow. I believe the way language works is by combining constant and general items in particular and contingent ways. We can identify the constant and general items by taking them out of the flow of speech in naming and definition. Their generality is in evidence when they stand ‘alone’ in this way. ‘Dogs are four-legged tail waggers that bark’ lets us consider dogs in general and the word ‘dogs’ in its generality. However, it is the use of words by the many in innumerable combinations in particular sentences that gives them their generality. Words are the common products of the collective, but so are general communicative needs. When any ‘thing’ becomes pertinent or valuable enough to the many, so that people often need to form inclusive relations with each other in its regard, a word arises socially to fill that need. If the need to form the inclusive relations is only contingent and fleeting, we satisfy it by creating a sentence–combining words that satisfy needs regarding the constant aspects of the thing or topic. A contingent and fleeting communicative need can arise regarding any part of on-going experience. In ‘After the storm, the sun made the water drops sparkle,’ a contingent communicative need for a relation with others regarding a particular transitory situation is satisfied by combining words, which are also used elsewhere in other sentences regarding other contingent situations. The elements of those situations are relevant to the society of verbal communicators repeatedly, so that a common need arises for a verbal gift that can be given for them, and a constant word arises to satisfy the need.[1] A single word can also be used to satisfy needs regarding different kinds of things in homonymy. One kind of ‘thing’ can become related to different words in synonymy. Needs build upon each other, and communicative needs can arise with regard to verbal as well as to nonverbal contexts. If the situation giving rise to a contingent communicative need is complex, we can put together a discourse by combining sentences, which we use to satisfy a variety of contingent communicative needs regarding that situation. Sentences work together in discourses to bring forward a common topic and to satisfy a variety of communicative needs arising in its regard. (To be Continued) Meet Mago Contributor, Genevieve Vaughan
(Book Review) Lise Weil’s In Search of Pure Lust by Sara Wright

In this remarkable memoir one woman’s life is set in the collective context of the women’s movement as a whole, and through Lise’s eyes we get to see the “both and” quality of her struggle to understand what went wrong not only in her personal relationships with women, but between the powerful women who inspired the women’s movement in the first place. We can only heal this wound personally and collectively if we are willing to self – reflect, ask difficult and painful questions, and are willing to take responsibility for our own actions, something that the author is willing to do. By addressing our own mother-daughter and woman to woman betrayals, choosing to respect one another’s differences regardless of sexual orientation, color, race, religion etc. we can finally unite with one purpose – to save ourselves and the planet… What Lise proposes – namely that Lesbian Visionary Thinking opened the door to women re –imagining women as powerful agents in their own lives even as they became women who acted upon these visions is, I believe, truth. Lesbian visionaries envisaged a woman centered culture and created one. Many of us realize today that without a feminist standpoint, the ravages of patriarchy are going to destroy us all. We have much to learn from reading this story. I should probably mention that I am not a lesbian. I am, however, a woman who loves other women – a woman who has struggled with the same questions about relationship and betrayal throughout her life and one who believes that every woman needs to read this book because if we are going to shift this deadly patriarchal paradigm into a “eqalitarian matriarchal” one (as Carol Christ defines it) women must lead the way. And to do that we have to begin to heal what is broken in ourselves. The publication of this book is also uncannily timely because we are at such a critical crossroad – Women from all walks of life are waking up to the fact that during the last election 52 percent of American women voted for a power –driven, mentally ill, misogynist. We must interrupt this cycle of women choosing crazy, abusive men over compassionate, politically astute women who could be in the position to change the world. Lise’s personal story is a compelling one. Ruthlessly honest, she struggles with a complex web of personal relationships set in the context of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. This book helps others like me who came to feminism late – as a middle aged woman – experience what it must have been like to have women’s reading circles, bookstores, places where women gathered with joyful abandon to share ideas and re –imagine the world. The depth and breadth of Lise’s honesty leaves the reader without doubts about this woman’s personal integrity. The book is also a page – turner. I finished this deeply moving memoir that ended on a positive note feeling bereft – I didn’t want it to end. In closing, I think every woman can find parts of herself In Search of Pure Lust because Lise’s story is Everywoman’s Story whether she chooses to acknowledge it or not. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright.
(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 …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Leslene della-Madre

Is a long time student for over 40 years and practitioner of the path of the Sacred She. She is a radical feminist, author, poet, mystic, “shemama” (soul midwife), death midwife, music lover, initiate in several shamanic traditions, mother and grandmother. She is the founder of Winged Women Return, a center for feminist shamanic studies where she holds classes, ritual and healing circles. She lived on The Farm in Tennessee as a pioneer in the “back to the land” movement that was born from the psychedelic revolution of the 1960’s where she lived for nearly eleven years. She gave natural birth to two daughters who became the founders of the all female music collective, The Goddess Alchemy Project, originally based in Oakland, California. Leslene has served as spiritual adjunct to the mental health field assisting psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists and physicians in capacities as colleague and healer. She is the author of Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother as well as numerous articles, essays and poetry, published in anthologies, magazines, and journals. (While writing She Who Spins the Coils of Creation Leslene learned through a geneology pursuit that she is a cousin of Einstein which was a synchronous discovery.) She was a featured poet in 2012 for the online journal, Sibella Poetry. For a number of years Leslene hosted a cable television show, Wildfire, Tell-A-Vision for Women in Northern California. She also created a transformational retreat for the Center for Spiritual Living in Northern California, Womanspirit, over twenty years ago where hundreds of women have continued to experience life-altering change. She has appeared on elder panels with Grandmother Agnes Pilgrim, the late chairwoman of The Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers and is an international workshop facilitator and presenter working with women on the collective journey of dismantling patriarchy and re-membering the sacred circle of sisterhood. www.midwifingdeath.com www.leslenedellamadre.com
(Essay) Ecogynocentrism: Worshiping the Goddess Means Honoring the Land by Moses Seenarine, Ph.D.

[Excerpt from Cyborgs Versus the Earth Goddess: Men’s Domestication of Women and Animals and Female Resistance by Moses Seenarine] Long before male ‘civilization’ began, humans lived in female-centered, sustainable clans for thousands of years. Self-sufficient, gynocentric communities honored the Earth in all of her forms – as nature, animals, plants, water, soil, and so on. Sustainability was ensured by humans adherence to holistic, gynecological laws for long-term, land management. The Earth, her forms, and her laws were all inter-related and worshiped as various Goddess figures. Reclaiming the Goddess means putting the interest of women and girls first. Further, it connotes a reclaiming of love for the Goddess and all of her forms – flora, fauna, land, water, and ice. Affirming the Goddess implies a profound concern for long-term female survival and well-being of the seventh generation of females. Sustainable gynocentrism, or ecogynocentrism, was accomplished in the past, and it can be achieved again in the future. For millennia, the so-called ‘pre-agrarians’ were deliberately organizing communities of plants to make them more abundant, convenient, and predictable. Across the world, prehistoric female-centered communities altered the landscape and surrounding flora for their own benefit, for instance, through fire-farming and forest gardening. The Stone Age practice of forest gardening focused on fostering the growth of low-input, but productive and sustainable units of highly diversified trees, palms, bushes, and vines. Prehistoric women were experts at extracting vegetative matter for food, and using different flora for medicine, tools, ritual, and art. Living in harmony with nature was part of women’s inner orientation. Plant food and other flora were integral parts of the gynocentric gift economy as well. With long-term, land management techniques, early humans created vast plains through controlled and periodic ‘patch burning.’ This practice was called ‘bushfire’ in Australia and Africa, ‘wildland fire’ in North America, and ‘jungle fire’ in India. The Bantu of Africa have a detailed vocabulary to describe different stages of grass growth in relation to fire. And the nomadic Bushmen of South Africa burn old grass at the end of the dry season, in order to promote the growth of roots and bulbs in the coming rainy season. Using fire, Aborigines increased the amount and diversity of food available in Australia. They managed clearings, shrubs, forests, undergrowth, tree corridors, and other forms of vegetation with periodic burnings. Aborigines maintained habitats for valuable plant species, for example, grassland for tubers, wetlands for reeds and rushes, and so on. Tubers like yam daisy were an essential staple, and they require areas of open country, so fire-farming was used widely to encourage their growth. Sustainable land management was practiced for millennia in the Stone Age by women in different regions of the globe. Female clan leaders adhered to ecological laws and sanctions passed down by their gynocentric ancestors. These laws demanded the continuance of every form of life, and they helped prehistoric women and men to remain sustainable over long periods of time. Females were at the forefront of experiments related to plant domestication and females’ plant technology allowed New Stone Age communities to feed rapidly increasing populations. Most gatherers could not easily store food for long due to their migratory lifestyle, whereas those with a sedentary dwelling could store their surplus grain. Farming required more long-term planning, tools, and facilities and women invented and shared these technologies as part of their gift economy. Amazingly, aspects of gynocentric cultures exist in the present-day to some extent. Women have preserved bits and pieces of their gynocentric past, which can provide answers to our Global social and economic crises. Across the Earth, female-centered societies worshiping Earth goddesses, evolved peacefully, cooperatively, and in harmony with nature. Females not only have the solutions to end male violence, they have practiced equality for a very long-time. Women-led hominid clans survived many extreme climate changes, and they were thriving at the end of the last ice-age. However, the vast scale of female creativity, invention, technology, and accomplishment during the Stone Age have been entirely erased. Yet, it was ecogynocentrism that made the modern era possible and may prove essential for our future survival. (Meet Mago Contributor) Dr. Moses Seenarine
(Doll Art 2) The Spirit Dolls by Hannah Baek Wha

“Mary, Mari and Me” by Hannah Baek Wha The dolls came about through a series of synchronistic events, dreams and online communication, born from, inspiring and creating deep friendships with artists and medicine people of Native American heritage in New Mexico, Nebraska and of Mexico. Each doll was entirely hand assembled by Hannah, and created as a deeply spiritual meditation to connect to the unique “Spirit” heart of each individual. Hannah always treats each Spirit Doll with great care. If there is a face, she paints the face and eyes in only when the entire doll has been sewn, out of respect for the spirit of the doll in its creation. Once the face has been painted/acknowledged, the doll is then carefully wrapped in a shawl so that it feels safe and protected while watching it’s clothing being hand sewn. Once each doll is complete, there is a blessing ceremony comprising of smudging, drumming and spoken prayers before the doll is sent to its human spirit guardian. The name “Spirit Doll” was suggested for the dolls by her spiritual father, the Elder 3Crows of the Asanti Dakota tribe. The term Spirit Dolls is from a description in the book Fool’s Crow, Wisdom and Power Through the making of the Spirit Dolls, Hannah has been invited to the United States, to study the Red Road with a medicine woman in New Mexico, as well as her spiritual father 3Crows. (Meet Mago Contributor) Hannah Baek Wha.
(Prose & Photography) Guinevere: Queen, Sovereign, Grail by Nuit Moore

Photograph is a portrait of my sister, portraying Guinevere in an Arthurian series, by Nuit Moore in 2004, in her radiant flush of potent youth and beauty. Queen Guinevere, the Queen of the May, Gwenhwyfar which is Welsh for ‘White Phantom’, and tells of her ancient roots as radiant fae, fair and and ethereal. She is a magical figure of sovereignty, and her true nature expresses her foundation as the Goddess in whose holy lap sacred kingship is granted- She is one whose nature is aligned with the connection between her heart and her sexuality. She is the potent Flower Maid, with rival suitors who wish to claim her source of power. She is the Grail Queen, embodying the Sacred Land, the Earth Goddess herself, and whoever wins union with her wins the right of sacred rule and stewardship. She is a much misunderstood and often maligned character- for in Guinevere’s mythos we find what happens to female sovereignty of this nature and power when held under the mantle of later religions- her very sacred nature restrained, repressed, dictated, punished. It is only when she is able to flourish in her nature that the land has any chance of flourishing with her. (Meet Mago Contributor) Nuit Moore.

(Special Post Isis 2) Why the Color of Isis Matters by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s note: The discussion took place in Mago Circle during the month of July, 2013. Our heartfelt thanks go to the members who participated in this discussion with openness and courage.] Part 2 The Color Talk in Goddesses Kahena Dorothea Athena was also whitened which is sad. However the statues were worshiped by many women to whom they brought comfort. And their origins were later remembered by the abundance of Black Virgins that became important in Italy and other parts of Europe. I don’t see Dark Goddesses as shadows but as having depths of Creativity and Knowledge. My main Goddess is Kirke and the bast relief I have of her is a chocolate brown. Diane Horton The worship of Isis broadened from Egypt to all the countries bordering the Mediterranean, as well as the Middle East and the isles called now the British Isles. She and Her worship were virtually everywhere in the westernly known world of the time! She IS the Goddess of 10,000 Names! And as such she was adapted to each culture’s vision of Her. She was the basis of all the” Black Madonnas”. I do not think of this as Isis/Auset representing the “dark” Goddess as something somehow bad or to be dealt with, but rather that ancient darkness represents infinite potential, eternal creativity/fertility, the beginning and ending of all things, and the always deepening knowledge of magick. Max Dashu However, there is a politics of representation that we all need to be aware of, that pushes original African iconography down and away, and fronts Europeanized images. There is no possibility of “colorblindness” in such a system; a restoration of the original must be actively striven toward. This is incumbent on all of us not of (recent) African descent. Otherwise we perpetuate the injurious status quo, instead of overturning it. Harita Meenee I agree with those who say that race is largely a social construct. Its roots seem to lie in colonialism and the slave trade. I would also like to add that racism is used to oppress people of different nationalities and colors. Ηere in Greece the IMF neo-liberal policies are destroying our economy (and lives); they go hand in hand with a vicious racist campaign against immigrants, along with the rise of a neo-Nazi party. This is part of an effort to redirect people’s anger away from the government and bankers, towards those who are poor and foreign and often have a different color or religion. Fortunately, many grassroots activists are responding to this by building a strong anti-racist, antifascist movement. You can see our Facebook page below. It’s in Greek but the photos are quite revealing. If anyone is interested in learning more about the situation here, please message me and I’ll try to find some articles in English for you. https://www.facebook.co/19JanuaryATHENSvsFASCISM?fref=ts 19 Γεναρη – ΑΘΗΝΑ ΠΟΛΗ Αντιφασιστικη Μπροστά στη κλιμάκωση της φασιστικής απειλής και της ρατσιστικής βίας, στη εμφάν…See More Naa Ayele Kumari Let me put this in the context of something you might understand. This is a goddess group that honors the feminine and the power it represents. People in this group understand the oppression and misrepresentation of women. We understand the implications of misogynistic patriarchal thinking. We understand the implications of stealing the information, rites, and traditions from goddess centered cultures and rephrasing them into male dominated themes… especially those that then went on to oppress women today. This is the same thing that has happened as it related to race and our cultures. It infuriates us when a man may say… why do we have to focus on the goddess? Let us just accept that we are all human and no special consideration should be given to anyone because of their gender. Or, this is just a distraction or social construct and it really doesn’t matter. We understand the blatant disregard and ignorance of those statements. Yet, the same is true for race and people of other races. Your attitude and casual disregard perpetuates a lie that you are comfortable with and don’t wish to move from that comfort zone. It means you don’t have to be accountable for the injustices or oppression it continues to perpetuate in the larger culture toward people who do not look like you. As far as I am concerned, I truly believe that the dark goddess for many with white skin IS their shadow… It is the part of themselves that they deny and fear. That you may have come from black people may scare you… even when the science proves it. That deep down… you fear what you don’t understand. To even confront it is frightening… something that you would rather ignore and deny… Yet… here we are. Black, Yellow, Red… people.. women… who have been oppressed for thousands of year because of this… and are asking… to be seen in their true likeness… not as you wish them to be… or fear them to be. Naa Ayele Kumari Thank you Max Dashu, I so appreciate your scholarship and dedication to the truth where ever you find it… and Helen Hwang for staying open to it as well. [Someone withdrew the threads.] Rick Williams No, you can’t passively aggressively slither your way out of this, reread your own statements and that last post contradicts most of your ascertains. I can’t believe that you honestly say fire away at you like you’re some sort of martyr and VICTIM of being misunderstood, not at all, I understand you very well. I don’t think you understand yourSELF. That’s the real tragedy. Rick Williams “The Lips of Wisdom are Closed except to the Ears of Understanding.” It is in quotes, and it’s part of Ancient Wisdom, of Tehuti, DJehuti, or Hermes Trimegitus… The Great Scribe of KMT.. they have alot of pretty pictures of him all over KMT(Egypt).. still have no idea what you are saying have the time. Max Dashu Thank you Naa Ayele for taking the time to make the extremely apt analogy of women’s oppression to clarify the politics of race oppression […]
(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.
(Special Post 3) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Xiang Yao or Xiangliu is the Chinese equivalent to Hydra in Greek mythology. And Hercules is to Yu, the Great, founder of the Xia dynasty. We will see in the course of this discussion that the myth of Yu, the founding ruler of Xia, the oldest dynasty of China, who slains the nine-headed snake, is only a variation of its older prototype, the myth of Huangdi who fought Chiu, the alliance of the Nine Han Giants (East Asian/Korean Magoists). “According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Xiangliu was a minister of the snake-like water deity Gonggong. Xiangliu devastated the ecology everywhere he went, leaving nothing but gullies and marshes devoid of animal life. Eventually, Xiangliu was killed by Yu the Great, whose other labors included ending the Great Flood of China. In other versions of the story, Xiangliu was killed by Nüwa, after being defeated by Zhurong, but his blood was so virulently poisonous that the soil which it soaked could no longer grow grain.[1] An oral version of the Xiangliu myth was collected as late from Sichuan as 1983, in which Xiangliu is depicted as a nine-headed dragon, responsible for floods and other harm.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangliu Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Ancient China had to demonize the pre-Han myth of the nona Mago because it bespeaks the matriarchal/gynocentric history that it overthrew… the past that had to be severed in order to fake patriarchal originality. With this in mind, we have a better look on patriarchal mythopoeia, which appears to be complex but, nonetheless, transparent in its motive to hide/hijack pre-patriarchal gynocentric histories. “One of the most harrowing myths from ancient China is the story of Gonggong’s rebellion. You can revisit the whole story here, but the quick version is that the evil water god Gonggong attempted to drown the world and was only prevented from doing so by the heroic last resort actions of the beneficent creator goddess Nüwa, who cut the legs off the cosmic turtle in order to set things to rights. In the chaos of the climactic battle, however Gongong’s chief minister and partner in crime Xiangliu the nine-headed snake monster completely escaped. Filled with bitterness about Gonggong’s failure, Xiangliu crawled away across the soggy lands of Szechuan (which were water-logged after the nearly world-ending floods). Wherever he went, the snake monster left permanent fens and swamps which were toxic to life. His very being had become steeped in poison, and his progress through the damp and moldy world had to be stopped. Yu the hero, the third of the three sage kings, finally caught up with the nine-headed monster and killed him in a pitched battle. Yet still there was a problem: Xiangliu’s pestiferous blood has poisoned the whole region, which now stank of rot. Crops would not grow and civilization began to falter. Yu dug up the blood soaked soil again and again, but the corrupted blood of the monster just sank deeper into the ground. Finally, Yu excavated a deep valley by Kunlun mountain and rid the world of Xiangliu’s toxins. With all of the land he had excavated he built a great terraced mountain for the gods. Yu then went forth to found the kingdom of Xia, the first civilized state in Chinese history. Of course some people say that Yu did none of this, that, it was the goddess Nüwa who once again came forth to battle the monster and undo the damage he had caused. Then, with accustomed modesty she let Yu take the credit and begin his kingdom (for Nüwa cared not for empty praise and hollow glory but only for the well-being of her children).” https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/xiangliu-the-nine-headed-snake/ Max Dashu: These patriarchal heroes! Nova Scheller: What a fascinating thread…that the nine headed hydra correlates to the nine headed dragon as a linkage to patriarchy or gynocentric/ matriarchal beginnings…the root being in Korea! Dropping into your work of so many years…a privilege as well as informing some of my personal awareness. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Nova Scheller, indeed! The myth of slaining the nine-headed snake/dragon across cultures shows; (1) The onset of patriarchy did not come naturally but forcefully, which proves that patriarchy is not original. It was a reaction to what had been before, its matrix. Patriarchy faked its originality by inventing the myth of demonizing and killing the female principle. (2) Patriarchal rules established across cultures adopted the mythic motif of slaining the nine-headed snake or dragon, which appears to be of Chinese origin. (3) The Nine Mago mythic system preserved in Korean Magoism testifies to gynocentric/matriarchal beginnings, which were remembered by peoples of the ancient world. (4) Furthermore, Korean Magoist mythology explains the origin/meaning of the nona Goddess symbol. Let’s explore how the Nine Mago pantheon was remembered in East Asian myths and religions. For this, we need to unravel the patriarchal mythopoeia of Goma, the Shaman ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: In principle, we can tell if an ancient rule/culture was patriarchal or gynocentric by the myth of the nine-headed snake/dragon. In the case of ancient China whose heroes are told to have killed the opponent, the nine-headed snake. Nonetheless, the people’s memory of pre-patriarchal gynocentric history never dies. The nine symbolism is still described as auspicious. It revives time and time again throughout history. In other words, ancient China was a small regional power, only modern scholarship seals it all mighty China. Find out what other ancient myths concern about the nine female symbolism. (To be continued) Join us in The Mago Circle https://www.facebook.com/groups/magoism/.

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/
(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, …
(Video) A Samhain Ceremony by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVRoK2XNeqw The purpose of the video is for ceremony and I suggest pausing the video where it suits you, to add your own processing, embellishments and/or your own drum, percussion and voice wherever you please. I have made short spaces in the video where it could be paused. For more full participation in the ceremony, you could have some past photos of yourself, an altar with ancestor photos, a gingerbread snake, some apples sliced up, and some apple juice. The script for this Samhain ceremony is offered in Chapter 4 of my book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, with all acknowledgements and references there. However I want to acknowledge here the inspiration and some text of Robin Morgan’s poem “The Network of the Imaginary Mother” in her book Lady of the Beasts, for which I was given permission in my book. I also acknowledge here the paraphrase of some words by Starhawk in her book The Spiral Dance, used in the rite of Sailing to a New World. I also use a line from the poem Song of Hecate by Bridget McKern. The elements of Water, Fire, Earth and Air on the altar in this video are placed in directions that are appropriate to my region in the Southern Hemisphere, and East Coast Australia: you may place yours differently, and transliterate when I mention the direction (which I do minimally). For the rite of the Transformation Journey (remembering old selves) I use an adaptation of a children’s game “In and Out the Windows”, where each participant travels in and out of upraised and linked arms of the circle, and when ‘in’ may speak and /or show photos of themselves from the past. Some may choose to remember any self from the entire evolutionary story, with whom they would like to identify. The game seems appropriate to what each being does existentially in so many ways, over the eons as well as in our personal lives. The chant can be found on YouTube. The photos used are a collage of footage and photos from the 2024 Samhain ceremony at my place in Wakka Wakka country, South East Queensland Australia, and from previous Samhain ceremonies I facilitated over the decades in MoonCourt, Goddess ceremonial space in NSW Australia, Darug and Gundungurra country. Music credit: All music used in this video is by Tim Wheater, which has previously generously allowed me to use in my work. The pieces used are from Tim’s CD Fish Nite Moon: they are Ancient Footsteps, Fish Nite Moon, Spiritbirth, and Conception. I thank my partner Robert (Taffy) Seaborne for his participation in the creation of the video.
(Video) An Autumn Equinox Ceremony by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Autumn Equinox/Mabon Northern Hemisphere – September 21-23 Southern Hemisphere – March 21-23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRJNY1LSvIs&t=1175s …oOo… The purpose of this video is for ceremony, and I suggest pausing the video where it suits you, to add your own processing, embellishments and/or your own drum, percussion and voice wherever you please. I have made short spaces in the video where it could be paused. The script for this Autumn Equinox/Mabon ceremony is offered in Chapter 11 of my book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, with all acknowledgements and references there. In particular I mention here, credit for the story of Demeter and Persephone as told by Charlene Spretnak in her book Lost Goddesses of Early Greece. For more full participation in the ceremony, you could have one or more stalks of wheat or native grain tied with a red thread/ribbon, a garden pot with soil, a small garden trowel, a flower bulb (daffodil type), food and drink, that may represent your “harvest” – ready for eating and drinking. The elements of Water, Fire, Earth and Air on the altar in this video are placed in directions that are appropriate to my region in the Southern Hemisphere, and East Coast Australia: you may place yours differently, and transliterate when I mention the direction (which I do minimally). The images used are a collage of footage and photos from the 2024 Autumn Equinox ceremony at my place in Wakka Wakka country, South East Queensland Australia, and from previous Autumn Equinox ceremonies I facilitated over the decades in MoonCourt, Goddess ceremonial space in NSW Australia, Darug and Gundungurra country. My partner Robert (Taffy) Seaborne who has participated in all the Seasonal ceremonies since Samhain 2000, adds his voice to this video. Image credits: Demeter and Persephone (500 B.C.E. Greece). Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.72. Art of Demeter and Persephone on MoonCourt wall: Cernak Herself Music credit: “Gentle Sorrow” by Sky: which he has previously allowed me to use in my work. This piece of music is also used in the Autumn Equinox meditation on my PaGaian Cosmology Meditations published 2015.
(Essay) Winter Solstice/Yule within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Dates for Winter Solstice/Yule Southern Hemisphere – June 20 – 23. Northern Hemisphere – December 20 – 23 This Seasonal Moment is the ripe fullness of the Dark Womb and it is a gateway between dark and light. It is a Birthing Place – into differentiated being. Whereas Samhain/Deep Autumn is a dark conceiving Space, it flows into the Winter Solstice dark birthing Place – a dynamic Place of Being, a Sacred Interchange. This Seasonal Moment of Winter Solstice is the peaking of the dark space – the fullness of the dark, within which being and action arise. It is the peaking of emptiness, which is a fullness. As cosmologist Brian Swimme describes: the empty “ground of being … retains no thing.” It is “Ultimate Generosity.”[i] In Vajrayana Buddhism, Space is associated with Prajna/wisdom – out of which Upaya/compassionate action arises. Space is highly positive – something to be developed, so appropriate action may develop spontaneously and blissfully.[ii] In Old European Indigenous understandings, the dark and the night were valued at least as much as light, if not more so: time was counted by the number of nights, as in ‘fortnights,’ and a ‘day’ included both dark and light parts … it was ‘di-urnal’. I have been careful with my language about that inclusion in the ceremonial ‘Statement of Purpose’ for each Seasonal Moment. This awareness is resonant with modern Western scientific perceptions about the nature of the Universe: that it is seventy-three percent “dark energy,” twenty-three precent “dark matter,” four percent “ordinary matter.”[iii] The truth is that we live within this darkness: it is the Ground of all Being. In Pagan traditions since Celtic times, and in many other cultural traditions, Winter Solstice has been celebrated as the birth of the God; and in Christian tradition since about the fourth century C.E., as the birth of the saviour. But there are deeper ways of understanding what is being born: that is, who or what the “saviour” is. In the Gospel of Thomas, which was not selected for biblical canon, it says: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.”[iv] This then may be the Divine Child, the “Saviour”: it may be expressed as the new Being forming in the Cosmogonic Womb,[v] who will be born. We may celebrate the birth of the new Being, which /who is always beyond us, beyond our knowing … yet is within us, burgeoning within us – and within Gaia. What will save us is already present within – forming within us. The Winter Solstice story may emphasize that what is born, is within each one – the “Divine” is not “out there”: it may be said, and expressed ceremoniously, that we are each Creator and Created. We may imagine ourselves as the in-utero foetus – an image we might have access to these days from a sonar-scan during pregnancy. This image presents a truth about Being: we are this, and it is within us, within this moment. Every moment is pregnant with the new. It will be birthed when holy darkness is full. Part of what is required is having the eyes to see the “new bone forming in flesh,” scraping our eyes “clear of learned cataracts,”[vi] seeing with fresh eyes. That is what the fullness of the Dark offers – a freshening of our eyes to see the new. And the process of Creation is always reciprocal: we are Creator and Created simultaneously, in a “ngapartji-ngapartji”[vii] way. We are in-formed by that which we form. In Earth-based religious practice, the ubiquitous icon of Mother and Child – Creator and Created – expresses something essential about the Universe itself … the “motherhood” we are all born within. It expresses the essential communion experience that this Cosmos is, the innate and holy Care that it takes, and the reciprocal nature of it. We cannot touch without being touched at the same time.[viii] We may realize that Cosmogenesis – the entire Unfolding of the Cosmos – is essentially relational: our experience tells us this is so. The image of The Birth of the Goddess on the front cover of my book PaGaian Cosmology expresses that reciprocity for me, how we may birth each other and the healing/wholing in that exchange. It is a Sacred Interchange. And it is what this Event of existence seems to be about – deep communion, which both Solstices express. Babylonian Goddess, Ur 4000-3500 BCE. Adele Getty, Goddess, 33. Birthing is not often an easy process – for the birthgiver nor for the birthed one: it is a shamanic act requiring strength of bodymind, attention, courage, and focus of the mother, and resilience and courage to be of the new young one. Birthgiving is the original place of ‘heroics,’ which many cultures of the world have never forgotten, perhaps therefore better termed as “heraics.” Patriarchal adaptations of the story of this Seasonal Moment usually miss the Creative Act of birthgiving completely, usually being pre-occupied with the “virgin” nature of the Mother which is interpreted as having an “intact hymen.” The focus of the patriarchal adaptation of the Winter Solstice story is the Child as “saviour”: even the Mother gazes at the Child in most Christian icons, while in more ancient images Her eyes are direct and expressive of Her integrity as Creator. NOTES: [i] Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, 146. [ii] See Rita Gross, “The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 179-192. [iii] These figures as told by cosmologist Paul Davies with Macquarie University’s Centre for Astrobiology, Australia. [iv] Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas, saying number 70. See https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html . [v] Melissa Raphael’s term, Thealogy and Embodiment, 262. [vi] The quotes come from a poem by Cynthia Cook, “Refractions,” Womanspirit (Oregan USA, issue 23, March 1980), 59. [vii] This is an Indigenous Australian term for reciprocity – giving and receiving at the same time. I explain it a bit further in PaGaian Cosmology, 256-257. [viii] An expression from Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 68. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living …
(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/

(2014 Mago Pilgrimage Report 1) Sweat Lodge in Gyodong, Ganghwa Islands by Helen Hwang

[Author’s Note: Revised verison of this report is published in Celebrating the Seasons of the Goddess (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2017). 2014 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea (Oct. 7-Oct. 20) was participated by a culturally mixed group of pilgrims from the U.S. Australia, and Korea. Among non-Koreans were Dr. Glenys Livingstone (co-facilitator), Mr. Robert (Taffy) Seaborne, and Ms. Rosemary Mattingly. For details, read 2014 Mago Pilgrimage. View the video on our visit to Ganghwa Islands by Robert (Taffy) Seaborne.] 2014 Mago Pilgrimage granted me ever unfolding revelations. The first of them that I would like to mention concerned the sweat lodge called Hanjeung-mak (汗蒸幕, Chamber of chill and steam).[1] Until we visited the traditional sweat lodge in Gyodong, Ganghwa Island, it did not occur to me that the origin of its modern variations[2] has to do with the rebirthing experience in the Womb of Mago. (Here Mago means the Great Goddess or the Primordial Mother.)
(Photo Essay 5) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hwang

Part 5: Gaeyang Halmi, How Does She Relate with Mago? The field research concerning Gaeyang Halmi was undertaken with the thought that Gaeyang Halmi is related to Mago in some way. Such assumption is on the grounds that the folktales of Gaeyang Halmi and Mago Halmi substantively share the same motifs. In fact, I had thought Gaeyang Halmi is another name of Mago Halmi. A scrutiny has proven that the picture of their correlation is far more complex than I first envisaged, exposing the hidden nexuses of Old Magoism. This last part aims at disentangling the grips. It is indispensable for me to invite my readers to the task of reconstructing ancient East Asian mytho-history. Gaeyang Halmi embodies a partial manifestation of Mago as the Sea Goddess. Nonetheless, such a statement lacks complex subtexts that this topic involves. The Gurang (Nine Maidens) mytheme of Gaeyang Halmi sheds light on the mytho-history of Old Magoism (read Magoism in pre- and proto-Chinese times characterized by shaman rulers). To be specific, Gaeyang Halmi in the gurang pantheon suggests a yet-to-be-known shaman ruler, “Ungnyeo” (Bear/Sovereign Woman), founder of the confederacy of the nine states, which I call Danguk (ca. 3898 BCE-2333 BCE). The gurang represented by Gaeyang Halmi is no small clue to the pervasive yet misunderstood civilization of Ungnyeo. “Ungnyeo” is eponymous of the female symbolism of nine, such as the nine-tailed fox in East Asia and the nine muses and the nine forms of Durga beyond East Asia mentioned in Part IV. In short, Gaeyang Halmi oscillating between “Mago” and “Ungnyeo” in Her identity testifies to the suppressed history of Old Magoism. Methodically, I have two types of mythological texts to decipher the overtones of Gaeyang Halmi’s mytheme: folklore (oral narratives) and the written myth. Goddess mythemes, malleable yet immortal, constitute the grammar blocks of the gynocentric language that often appears “awkward” if not “ridiculous” to moderns. They need to be analyzed and interpreted. Feminist techniques are apt to sort out the sediments and decipher the diastrophic disturbances caused by patriarchal advances in the course of time. Some parallels between Gaeyang Halmi and Mago Halmi folk stories are overt. Their stories are so similar that they appear to be an identical goddess: A: The motif that Gaeyang Halmi walks on the sea, often described as wearing namak-sin (wooden shoes) or only beoseon (Korean traditional socks), is also commonly told in Mago stories especially from Jeju Island[i] and other coastal regions. B: That Gaeyang Halmi walks around in the sea to measure its depth is also told in the stories of Mago from other coastal regions. C: The mytheme that Gaeyang Halmi had eight daughters recurs in the stories of Mago, especially from the region of Mt. Jiri. Mago is said to have had eight daughters and sent them to eight provinces. Given the above, it is evident that Gaeyang Halmi lore resembles that of Mago. Were the populace confused about these two goddesses? I hold that the confusion was not a mistake but a way to convey that Gaeyang Halmi is related to Magoism rather than Mago Herself. In folklore, “why” and “how”are the questions to be interpreted, not to be read.
(Mago Essay 2) Toward the Primordial Knowing of Mago, the Great Goddess by Helen Hwang

Part 2 Gynocentric Study of Mago’s Visual Representations [The following sequels including this one are a modified version of my paper presented to Daoist Studies, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2010.] Mago [麻姑, also known as Magu or Mako] remains underrepresented if treated in modern scholarship. Little attention has been given to the topic of Magu in its own right. In the West a handful of scholars have mentioned Mago within the context of Daoism. Her transnational and trans-temporal manifestations in Korea, China, and Japan are largely unrecognized. That Magu is known as multiple identities throughout history in East Asia has gone unnoticed. In my study of Mago, that Mago’s supreme divinity as the Great Goddess has been rendered unintelligible over time under the rule of patriarchy offers a crucial insight leading to a befitting method. First of all, the perception of Her as the Great Goddess enables one to recognize a large volume of primary sources, otherwise left unattended, from across national, regional, temporal, and typological boundaries. Secondly, the primary materials in turn allow one to assess the supreme nature of the Great Goddess, Mago, apart from the theological framework of the monotheistic male god. By being a non-Western and non-patriarchal tradition, Magoism warrants a distinctive thealogy characterized by self-equilibrium and interdependence of components, part of which was discussed in Part I. Thirdly, a trans-disciplinary method is corollary in processing a variety of multi-genre materials that would not be neatly categorized in a mono-disciplinary data-pool. To say the least, it liberates itself from the tyranny of monolithic methodology, which dissects to take only a portion of data from the whole and treat it as if it is a single independent entity. In short, methodology and thealogy, being mutually supportive, lead the researcher to a rather unexplored conceptual territory, which I call gynocentrism. Gynocentrism takes the female principle as an operating system. Its system has been thwarted within the discourse of androcentric perspectives. Gynocentrism is a submerged mode of thinking in the patriarchically indoctrinated psyche. Made to be subliminal, the gynocentric mode of thinking elicits the Mago (Great Goddess) consciousness. Consequently, Mago consciousness upholds the infrastructures of gynocentric thinking. What distinguishes gynocentrism from feminism is that it redefines the male as a derivative of the Female. Gynocentrism reflects the principle of all mothers of living beings. In that sense, my study of Mago is a gynocentric endeavor to chart an alternative paradigm of doing thealogy within the context of East Asian history, mythology, and culture. It is a misunderstanding that Magoist thealogy or Magology (the study of the Great Goddess) concerns the divine only. Gynocentric thealogy is not locked into a separate domain apart from humanity, nature, and the universe. Put differently, Magology is not a mere conceptual tool that explains the divine. It summons gynocentric histories, myths, and cultures that are to be restored and rewritten. It calls for rethinking everything in a fresh light. In the sequels to follow, I bring to light a series of Mago’s visual representations expressed in paintings, ceramics, embroideries, woodprints, sculptures, and topographies, and examine Her multivalent identities in light of the large corpus of Magoist written and oral texts. Mago’s visual icons are beyond one’s documentation. They, especially those from China, are still a favored item in modern day’s auction markets. Several hundred images that I have documented are simply incomplete. Some sample images are chosen to show an array of historical/cultural/social productions, once honored and valued highly by many. Through the economy of commodification, these images have carried the cultural memory of the Great Goddess. While a number of her visual icons are undated, many are from the Yuan (1271 to 1368), Ming (1368 to 1644), and Qing (1644 to 1912) dynasties of China, the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) of Korea, and certain historical periods of Japan. Also, many are from modern times. In them, Mago/Magu/Mako is depicted as: (1) An immortal/transcendant (仙 xian or seon, immortal or transcendant). (2) A mendicant. (3) A sea goddess. (4) A mountain goddess. (5) A crone. (6) The ancestor of shamans. And (7) A non-anthropomorphic identity or giantess as the nature-shaper or cosmogonist of local topographies such as mountains, rocks, caves, and seas. The notion of a giantess is employed to describe Her transcendental nature. In this case, Mago-named topographies alongside folk stories describe Her feature/identity of immeasurability. Needless to say, these identities overlap and merge, making up an overall picture of Mago as the Great Goddess. That is, She is each and all. These visual icons, stylized with symbolic objects, respectively demonstrate specific Magoist cultural memes once prevailing and favored among East Asians. A throng of objects such as medicinal herbs, especially lingzhi mushrooms, flowers, hoes, baskets, vessels, and animals, forms the coded syntaxes of the arcane language. In particular, a troupe of animals including deer, crane, dog, and monkey highlights the drama. Also, colophons carry not only the cultural meme but also prestige and authority for its producers and possessors. (To be continued.) [i] I have discussed this in detail in Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Seeking Mago, the Great Goddess: A Mytho-Historic-Thealogical Reconstruction of Magoism, an Archaically Originated Gynocentric Tradition of East Asia, Ph.D. dissertation (Claremont: Claremont Graduate University, 2005), 335-342; 353-361.