February 20, 2020February 20, 2020 Mago Work Admin

(Poetry) woman by Maya Daniel

she went through them–
twisting her spine, bleeding
and the baby’s cry is getting louder
her journey has come to this
she’s awake and the wilds followed her
the seed grows on her hand
she is a silent warrior
it is beautiful to live.

(Meet Mago Contributor) Maya Daniel

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[Photo Essay] Everything She Touches Changes by Kaalii Cargill

It is autumn in south-eastern Australia. The Seasonal Calendar of the Eastern Kulin people names this Waring Wombat Season. Misty mornings. Cool, rainy days. Long nights. Perfect weather for the native Mountain Ash, the giant Eucalyptus regnans, the tallest of all flowering plants. Many of these great trees were cleared in the late 1800s; European, American, and Asian plants were introduced. The land where I live now has Acacia, Ash, Aspen, Beech, Chestnut, Elm, Flowering Cherry, Gingko, Maple, Oak, Silver Birch, Sycamore, Tulip, and Walnut trees, many of them over a hundred years old. Their autumn turning reminds me that everything She touches changes. Some autumn images from my garden . . . Autumn mural panel – Priestesses. 2.4 x 1.2 metres, acrylic and enamel. Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera – Magnolia family) Earth Star fungus Snow in April! Just when the other trees turn for autumn, camellias begin to flower Meet MAGO Contributor Kaalii Cargill
(Video) "Mothers and Daughters" by Trista Hendren

[Editor’s Note: This video meeting was created and produced as part of 2015 Nine Day Solstice Celebration, organized by Mago Academy.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzmv6ePdLGk&feature=youtu.be
(Prose) Metamorphosis by Deanne Quarrie

Sometime between the ages of 35 and 55, give or take, a woman enters a phase in her life that can only be described as metamorphosis. Yes, most call it peri-menopausal or menopausal, but truly such changes occur in each woman’s life at this time and it truly is a metamorphosis. It is that time in her life when she stops producing as much estrogen but the production is often haphazard, sporadic and certainly unpredictable. This affects every aspect of her life. She might notice her eyes being dry in the morning, feeling like grating sand when she tries to open them. Her bleeding times may come on at different intervals or not at all. She may bleed more – she may bleed less. She may experience hot flashes – you ask, “What does that feel like?” Imagine a wave of hot air hitting you in the back of your neck and head – instantly causing you to break out in a sweat. You might even get red in the face! All of this, of course, is without warning, and happening at the most inconvenient times. You will often exclaim, “Is it hot in here?” Night sweats – now these are fun! You will find yourself waking up in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes able to go back to sleep but often not. It may take awhile for you to notice that along with this wakefulness come the drenched bed covers and sleepwear! Ye gads! This, my sisters, is the best of it. There is more you ask? Oh my, yes! Let’s talk about the mood swings! Imagine PMS every day – now, not all day – but all of the emotional expressions of PMS become your regular friends. Bitchiness, bad temper, impatience, foul moods, unexpected tears, and a general “leave me the heck alone” feeling! Your friends and family will wonder what is happening to the sweet, levelheaded woman who used to be in their lives. Actually, this is a very beneficial process of pushing aside all of the garbage we load ourselves down with and the phony fronts we feel we have to put on to be what is expected instead of who we really are. This process is truly a shedding – you are the Sacred Snake of Becoming! My whole world as I knew it, my relationships with friends and co-workers – everything changed for me when peri-menopause set in. I had spent my entire life up to that point controlling every emotion, making sure that what surfaced for others to see was “acceptable” to others. Having been raised in a very “British” home, emotions were something not displayed in front of others. Not silly laughter, not anger, and certainly not tears. I had a hysterectomy (uterus only) when I was 43. Because I had healthy ovaries, I knew that one day I would experience menopause as does every woman. But somehow, because I no longer had a period each month, it took me awhile to figure out who this new woman was that I was becoming. Everyone had always known me as steady, level, un-flappable. Never seen before were the sudden eruptions of temper or the instant fits of weeping. Even more important was the fact that I also, did not know this new woman emerging. It was frightening, to say the least. Fortunately, I had just recently found the Goddess and so when I figured out what was going on with my emotions, I decided to accept this new me and ride the ups and downs, the ever turbulent roller coaster of my life. I also decided to do it without hormone help and was far too new at this to even consider herbal assistance. It did not take me long to figure out that my anger would not kill me or anyone else. I also learned that I did not die from my flowing tears. I am not sure why I thought I would. Perhaps I had transferred my earlier fear of parental wrath into fear of the emotions themselves. One thing I did know, I was free of that paralyzing fear – free of embarrassment and free to fully experience the “feeling” me, the emotional woman I had buried deep inside. Gone were the muscle spasms of pent up tension. Gone were the headaches I had suffered for years. Gone too, were those I thought to be friends but who were not accepting enough to accompany me with love on this ride. Surprise, surprise, I have never missed them! If your friends wonder – share that with them. Tell them that you are the Sacred Snake shedding Her skin! You may even feel like “hissing.” This is your time of metamorphosis and in the end, a magnificent Crone will appear. Guaranteed! Oh, did I tell you that your hair will mysteriously disappear from all over your body as well? Ye gads, someone ought to tell you that pubic hair is not forever! Nor are thick eyelashes or shapely eyebrows. Those will suddenly grow in every direction imaginable. You might even get nose hair! The good news is you won’t have to shave your legs near as often and if you are like me – you will just quit shaving altogether! All of this is your practice zone for the Crone that is coming. The Crone who won’t give a darn what people think. This is your training ground for letting go of all of those “people pleasing” ideas. This transitioning time will allow you to test the waters for being outrageous and of course, will give your friends and family a taste of what is yet to come! This is your time to shed all the cumbersome clothing and the clinging trappings of a sedate life and learn to fly – even if one day you might need a cane! My advice for you is to accept this as a normal part of your life. Welcome the surging emotions for …
(Commemorating Mary Daly 1) My Memoirs of Mary Daly (1928-2010) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: My personal encounter with Mary Daly, a U.S. post-Christian feminist thinker, goes back to 1994. I stayed in Korea from 1994-1997 during which I translated two of Mary Daly’s early books, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation 하나님 아버지를 넘어서 (Seoul: Ewha Women’s University Press, 1996) and Church and the Second Sex 교회와 제 2의 성 (Seoul: Women’s News Press, 1997) in Korean. I carried with me to the U.S. A. our correspondences in the form of letters and documents mostly faxed to each other for the period of more than two decades. Later at one point I digitized them in images. Through these memoir series, I share some highlights of my memories with Mary Daly, her influence on my feminist thinking, and my own radical feminist journey to Magoist Cetaceanism.] I The new year Year 5 in the Magoist Calendar (2022 in the Gregorian Calendar) prompts me to revisit my encounter with Mary Daly. When something is in your mind consistently for a long time but you don’t take action to follow it up, you are carrying a mental baggage within you. I have carried Mary Daly in me for a long time. Time was not ripe until now. Even after she transitioned in 2010, I wasn’t ready. It feels timely now that I finally let the weight on my shoulders down. Why now? Because I was biding my time. I could not name what she was to me until now. To know what she is to me, I need to know what I am. And it is only now I feel I know what I am. Mary was an intellectual foremother to me. Don’t be mistaken, Mary did not act like my intellectual mother. She was like my big sister who had trust in me. Mary was not a caregiver to me or anyone. She cared but was not a caregiver. Mary treated me as her young colleague and an intellectual companion. I desperately needed my intellectual foremother and Mary was there for me.It’s been a long and arduous journey for me to see what I am. Unbelievably, I am entering the cronehood of age 60 in the New Year of 5919 Magoma Era (since the time of Goma in 3898 BCE). I have understood and accepted my own life’s mission and the way it has been achieved. I feel that my life has found its own roots. Things are falling into right places, I feel. This is the fifth year of the Magoist Calendar. I have restored for the world the luni-menstrual-soar 13 months 28 days calendar of ancient Magoist Koreans/Mother Peoples. Last week on December 17th, 2021, we, Mago Sisters and Associates, celebrated the whale bell ringing ceremony for the coming of the New Year. Whale bell ringing ceremony was not new this year. But this year’s one marked a leap. For the first time, I was able to hold it in the Moonlit Rock Garden of the Mago Academy Center where I currently reside for a small group of participants from around the world. We expressed gratitude for our lives and I called out the names of Mago Volunteers, Mago Sisters/Associates, and Mago Supporters. Living in the semi-wild place surrounded by mountains and hills that have streams of water running around the house for the last three and half years, I have found myself home. I have returned HOME! Year 4 or 2021 brought amazing encounters, events, and accomplishments. Among them are Virtual Mago Whale Pilgrimages (three tours throughout the year, each tour takes place daily for 6 days), which I conducted for the first time. Foremost, the fact that the Mago Work was able to continue to this day is a miracle. The Mago Work, self-established outside the patriarchal grid, has survived the harsh years of the rooting time. Personal is political and cosmic. Mago Academy Center is about to take off by receiving visitors. Despite the Covid19 pandemic or through the pandemic, the Mago Work has grown stronger. Last but not least, it is no coincidence that Jen Taylor and I undertook a new but belated project Commemorating Feminist Ancestors for Return to Mago (RTM) E-Magazine, announced in November, 2021. When I proposed this project to Jen Taylor, co-editor of RTM, who supported it open-mindedly and wholeheartedly, my memories of Mary Daly roared in the back of my mind. By all means, this essay commemorating Mary Daly is prompted by this call. And vice versa. My memories of Mary Daly urge me to march forward. (Call for Contributions) Commemorating our ancestor feminists: Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994), Mary Daly (1928-2010), Audre Lorde (1934-1992), Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008), Gloria Anzaldua (1942-2004), and Your Hera https://www.magoism.net/2021/11/call-for-contributions-commemorating-our-ancestor-feminists/ Flashbacks: I met Mary in person four times over the period of 28 years from the time I contacted her in person until she died (1994-2010). We stayed in touch for these years by speaking to each other over phone lines at an interval of monthly at the least. Apart from phone conversations, we faxed, mailed, and emailed our letters and documents. I had met Mary in person in April of 1999 for the first time. She had completed her book, Quintessence, in 1998 and visited Claremont Colleges in California the following year to promote her book. I will return to this event at a later time. I had written two pieces for an online magazine, Feminism and Religion, on my encounters with Mary Daly upon the invitation by Xochitl Alvizo. A Cross-Cultural Feminist Alchemy: Studying Mago, Pan-East Asian Great Goddess, Using Mary Daly’s Radical Feminism as Springboard by Helen Hye-Sook HwangThe Mago Hedge School: Why Remember Mary Daly? By Helen Hye Sook Hwang II My personal encounter with Mary Daly goes back to 28 years ago. In retrospect, Mary may have wished that I came strongly to support her when she needed during these years but she never demanded me to do so. I wanted to support her in a tangible way …
(Art) The Deep Within by Lucy Pierce

This piece sprang directly from the drum journey I participated in as a part of the preparation for the red tepee project, the rhythm of the drum taking me on a journey deep within my body, to surprise and enlighten me with what lay beneath.
(Poem) Moon Tide by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright Churning sea is receding – chasing a vanishing moon. One spiral shell washes up on white sand – tumbles my way, A Vision of Home? https://www.magoism.net/2014/12/meet-mago-contributor-sara-wright/
(Book Review) Susan Hawthorne’s Dark Matters: a novel by Harriet Ann Ellenberger

LOVE IN THE CROSSHAIRS Reflections on Susan Hawthorne’s Dark Matters: A Novel I am asking myself what accounts for the haunting power of Dark Matters, this latest in a long line of books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction by Susan Hawthorne. One clue may simply be the length of that trail of published work which precedes Dark Matters. No one creates a profound work of art by staying on the surface of life, but it is equally true that no can do it before they’ve taught themselves to be at home in their own language. Each sentence of Susan Hawthorne’s Dark Matters says what it says — and it also says, “my writer knew what she was doing.” Dark Matters vibrates through time, in part because the line of writing which leads to it includes more than Hawthorne’s own: that line begins with Sappho, the tenth muse, the rockstar of the Mediterranean, of whose multitudinous lyrics only fragments have survived the attempts to eradicate them, along with the memory of her and her companions. A whole machinery of cultural destruction has been brought to bear on the poet of love, and we are left with bits and pieces that nonetheless retain their power to evoke and to move. Like the remnants of Sappho’s lyrics, the novel Dark Matters itself is made up of fragments. Its structure echoes the story being told as well as the background story of lesbian history, a zigzag trail through landscapes and timescapes of erasure and memory. Telling the love story of Kate and Mercedes in fragmented episodes allows for intensity (both in the scenes of beauty and in the scenes of terror), alternating with relief from intensity. And the fragments are arranged in such a way that the reader, along with Kate’s niece Desi, gradually moves through a mist of unanswered questions and mysterious gaps toward a feeling for what drew Mercedes and Kate together and a comprehension of the forces that tore them from each other’s arms. The love story that is the heart of Dark Matters begins with Mercedes teaching Kate the tango, and from there they dance their way into a shared life. Mercedes’ family has fled torture in Chile to resettle in Australia, but when things go bad politically in her new home, the torturers show up again. In a dawn raid, armed and hooded intruders kill Priya (Kate and Mercedes’ beloved dog), shoot Mercedes, and seize Kate, transporting her to a remote detention center, where she is subjected to the textbook methods of torture, which few survive. For Kate, the lesbian and feminist, however, there is an added twist. The most sophisticated of the torturers, the one she calls Velvet Voice, is a man who has gone beyond his job description. He’s been tracking Kate as obsessively as a rejected suitor bent on revenge: he’s read her poetry and her political writings; he’s gone through her library and studied her performances. When he grinds his heel into her left hand, breaking the bones, he calls her “sinister sister.” He knows Kate, and breaking her spirit along with her body is not only his work, it’s his pleasure. He intends to turn everything she’s ever loved against her. Kate doesn’t know where she is, why she’s there, who authorized her being there, who else is being held in the building nor what is being done to them. She doesn’t know if Mercedes has survived. She doesn’t know what to expect next. She has been systematically robbed of situational awareness, the cues to orient herself in time and space blocked by her captors. All she has is her mind and her memory. And this is where the great richness of Dark Matters comes in because, as it turns out, Kate’s mind is very full. There are the memories of her life as a child, memories of her travels to her mother’s Greek homeland, later memories of journeys and conversations with Mercedes, and then there are the memories extending back thousands of years, to the time of the Eleusinian rituals, to a time when women had not yet been de-authorized, to a time when the old goddesses were a living presence in the life of the Mediterranean peoples. Memory is the mother of the muses, and as Kate remembers, she begins to write archaic-sounding poems in her head and one night she dreams, like her grandmother, in the old language of Classical Greece. To tell more of Dark Matters might be to ruin it for new readers, so I’ll stop here with one last thought: there is so much wisdom woven into this book, you can spend weeks teasing out the strands and pondering them. As Desi says, “Those goddesses are not dead. I mean not dead-dead! Not really dead! They keep coming back in cycles. It all depends on who you talk to.” Meet Mago Contributor, Harriet Ann Ellenberger
(Essay 3) The Giant Huwawa (a digression) by Hearth Moon Rising

Discussions about my last post in this series made me realize that some background about Mesopotamia might be useful for readers in understanding the myths surrounding Huwawa. Feminists tend to place events and ideas in terms of pre-patriarchy versus patriarchy, and this is challenging when considering early Mesopotamian civilization. Cylinder seal of grain and birds. Early seals denoted offices and institutions, not people. Photo: G. Garitan/Wikimedia Commons. To understand Mesopotamian cultures, we have to contemplate, first, the changes in the world at the end of the Ice Age. While a few hunter/gatherer societies persist to this day, in much of the world agricultural societies emerged at this time, when changing weather patterns diminished large animal populations. Most humans turned to a more plant-based diet and began farming and raising livestock, activities that could support a larger population or even make population growth desirable. An archeological record exists that parallels the transition from paleolithic territories to settled Neolithic communities. Samarra bowl with antelope, circa 6000 BCE. Early pottery in Mesopotamia typically features animals and geometric designs. Photo: Einsamer Schutze/Wikimedia Commons. In Mesopotamia there is no human Ice Age record, however, nor is one likely to be recovered, because Mesopotamia was uninhabitable before weather patterns changed dramatically. What wasn’t desert was under water. Settled communities were established around 6500 BCE, first in the north, eventually reaching into the south. People came from the north, northwest, east, and (probably) south, places where agriculture, pottery-making, and animal husbandry had already been established. Prehistoric peoples of Mesopotamia are categorized by their styles of pottery and architecture, which are not necessarily tied to one region or one time frame. How these things relate to ethnicity can only be conjecture. Words and place names incorporated into Sumerian and Semitic languages indicate that Mesopotamia was settled in prehistoric times by various Semitic groups and by peoples with no ties to other languages or even known language groups–in other words, they were not Semitic, Sumerian, Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Hurrian, etc. These “language isolate” settlers may or may not have been related to each other. Female figure from Samarra circa 6000 BCE. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. The early dominant Mesopotamian groups identified by their pottery arrived within five or six hundred years of one another. They developed dry farming methods in the north and canal irrigation in the central region. They were peaceful and left no signs of economic stratification. They made beautiful painted kiln-fired pottery. Clay figures were mainly of animals or women, and many of the symbols on pottery or figurines are recognizable to anyone who has studied the “Old Europe” treatises of Marija Gimbutas. This should be unsurprising, since Gimbutas has identified Anatolia (modern Turkey) as a root of Old European culture, and Anatolia borders Mesopotamia. It should not be assumed, however, that the elements of Mesopotamian culture that are commonly labeled matriarchal – feminine iconography, lack of sustained warfare, lack of economic exploitation, social equality between men and women – can be attributed to the Anatolian influence. These characteristics were endemic throughout the region. Vase from Uruk showing offerings to Inanna. 3200 B.C.E. Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin/Wikimedia Commons. Yes, but what about the Sumerians? The Sumerians were the last ethnic group to settle in prehistoric Mesopotamia, arriving between 5900 and 4300 BCE. That’s a big time gap. Whether you take the earlier or the later figure depends on whether you believe certain technological advances of the early fifth millennium emerged out of a long-settled multi-ethnic base or whether you believe they were introduced by another highly evolved culture. There are arguments on both sides. What is clear is that when the Sumerians arrived, whenever they arrived, they settled in a multi-cultural, advanced farming region that was largely, but possibly not entirely, pre-patriarchal. Where did the Sumerians come from? According to their own origin story, they arrived by boat from the south, probably meaning the Persian Gulf, into a region that was largely flooded but inhabited on neighboring sides. The Sumerians called themselves “the black-headed people.” This has led some scholars to surmise that they were dark-skinned, possibly related ancestrally to the Dravidian peoples of the Indian coast. Sumerian is not related to Dravidian, however, and is another language isolate. Were the Sumerians patriarchal when they arrived? Another unknown. I could make a guess, but I would have to include pages of explanation, and even then it would be tentative. By the time the Sumerians are clearly established, the first large city, Uruk, is emerging, but the increase in archeological data, so far, does not clarify things. The society grew to become male-dominated, which I believe had more to do with conflict engendered by the vast amounts of wealth generated by the cities than with specific ethnic groups. Early temple in Uruk. The accessibility and size of temples lead some to conclude that Sumer was not a highly stratified society. Illustration: Lamassu Design. In Uruk women as well as men held positions of leadership, no dominant class hoarded resources, and sexuality was open and uninhibited. Recorded names of bureaucrats and priestesses were not always Sumerian, though this was the official language. Presumably many languages were spoken on the streets in this multi-ethnic city that had 50,000 people by the beginning of the third millennium. Early writing circa 3000 BCE. Photo: Rama/Wikimedia Commons. Since “Sumerian” civilization was the product of many cultures, some scholars argue that questions of who the Sumerians were and where they came from are unimportant. Yet Sumerian is a language which carried a culture which pervaded Mesopotamia, in the north as well as the south, and it continued to influence political and religious life for millennia, long after patriarchal kingdoms had been established and the first cities had declined in importance. Learned people, women and men, studied Sumerian long after the language ceased to be spoken as a common tongue. Thus ideas and perspectives recorded in that language continued to be influential. The caveat is that we must remember that Sumerian beliefs were influenced …
(Book Excerpt 2) She who gives life, She who gives form: Female Cosmogonies (English Edition) by Luciana Percovich

[Author’s Note: She who gives life, She who gives form: Female Cosmogonies is an English translation of the original Italian book, Colei che dà la Vita Colei che dà la Forma. Below is from the back cover: How the creation of the universe was imagined and transmitted for millennia in different places on Earth long before the myth of Adam and Eve, and how it still speaks to our present. A collection of extraordinary creation lore stretching from Asia to Oceania, from Africa to America, from the Mediterranean to India, where the origin of the cosmos is referred as female. The Mother/Goddess was She who gave Life and Form, that is the Rules and Teachings necessary to the never-ending renewing of Creation. Before the rise of patriarchy, in the golden Ages of earthly Paradises, the daughters and sons of the Mother lived following the Path of Balance and Harmony between nature and human societies.] Introduction During the long first period of the history of humankind, female energy – a bridge between what is not yet manifested and what is manifested – and women, whose bodies are the channels that bring us to life, have been observed, portrayed and represented as the expression of creative energy. This is narrated through thousands of tales of creation in the mythologies of all traditions and attested to by the female figurines that have emerged from the deep past, especially during the last century. This book explores these primal ways of imagining creation and the first transformations they underwent. The theme is as old as human thought itself. Women and men have ever been pondering the irremediable asymmetry between the sexes (women and men are of woman born), the laws governing the flow of time, the transformations to which all forms of life are subjected, and the rules of harmony and change that divide and reconcile the opposing polarities on which creation thrives. For ages, women and their bodies provided powerful metaphors for the energies perceived as primary agents of movement and transformation, and as the source of wisdom necessary to preserve life. Cosmogonies and myths depicted them as Divine or Great Mothers giving form to the cosmos and to all its creatures, animate or not, visible or invisible, Mothers sometimes merging with the primal Ancestress of tribes or populations. In the following pages you’ll find just some of the thousands of numberless variations of myths rooted in the beginnings of human consciousnesses and still remembered: myths inspired by the sense of awe generated in the hearts and minds of our ancestresses and ancestors by the pure awareness of being alive, longing for containment to the riddles of existence, drawing from the limbo of cosmic memory where all the forms of life on earth settle and deposit. The resulting collection of tales of creation and/or cultural foundation might be likened to the geological samples retrieved from delving into the deepest layers of earth. Even if there can be little or no certainty as to their original form, the act of telling them anew is like scattering a handful of precious seeds. For the wisdom they contain is bountiful, not erased by their long sleeping in the dark for ages. While reading them, we have just to let them leaven onto our memories and hearts, and weave them into our awareness, thus deepening and spreading the roots with which we hold on the world. There are some experiences that reverberate through many different levels of our being and speak in such complex interconnected ways that we cannot but attribute them to realms of intuition or of the sacred. They give form to a fictional world unveiling all the concerns, desires and turmoil spiraling within when events perceived as distinct from ordinary time hit our sensibility; they are ways to come to terms with the mighty emotions which arise in us while we don’t find other words to account for them. From similar states of mind and moments of being myths were born: cosmogonies questioning the origins of life and providing the rules necessary to preserve it; narrations that are both fanciful and concrete, rendered through the timeless language of symbols untouched by whatever change deposited layer upon layer on their original source, and propelling unchanged and still radiating energy from the darkness of oblivion. “Religion, science and the measuring of time were not separated from the body and from the mystery of the biological rhythms of sexuality and fertility; they formed a single body of awareness. We have been projected away from this ancient holistic horizon, which we have just begun to rediscover.” Vicki Noble, commenting on the great art of the Paleolithic, leads us out of the realm of the central dogma of the last centuries. It is exactly from the viewpoint of such a “holistic horizon” that ancient cosmogonies speak, revealing complexities of vision and awareness that only the very latest scientific and philosophical developments have been regaining in western culture. The main impulse that has been guiding the evolutionary historical and productive development throughout the last 5000 years has been divergent from that horizon. It has been characterized by differentiation, by separation, and by fragmentation. To a certain extent, we may all have profited from this process, but at the same time it has enhanced a centrifugal tendency towards the individualistic and reckless shortsightedness that has brought about the great dismay we experience today. Within this horizon, far more ancient than that which is often recorded, cosmogonic myths and tales about the origins of the peoples inhabiting the continents speak of a feminine principle. Far from glorifying mother-roles in the manner proper to patriarchal cultures, which reduces women to mere means of reproducing physical life, such myths invest mothering with a manifest power to balance both cosmic and human concerns, to found and hold social groups together, to invent tools, manual skills and sacred rituals. These great Mothers and mythical Ancestresses were at the beginning, carefully …

(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.
(Special Post 4) Multi-Linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

[This is a summary of discussion that took place around 2014 in The Mago Circle, Facebook group.]Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: I am writing an entry on “Mago” for the Glossary of my book, The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia:Mago (麻姑): East Asian word for the Great Goddess. Read “Ma” as in “Mama” and “Go” as in “to go.” The logographic characters are pronounced/romanized as Mago in Korean, Magu in Chinese, and Mako in Japanese. When it is used in historical contexts, “Mago” refers to the Great Goddess AND HER cultural matrix, Magoism (Magoist shamans/priestesses/rulers and/or the bygone mytho-history of Old Magoist Korea). S/HE represents Ultimate Reality as One Undividable Unity. The Great Goddess embodies the Creatrix, the cosmic sonic system of Life. Through HER, we enter the view of the whole, the consciousness of WE/HERE/NOW. Also known to have originated from the Big Dipper (Seven Stars) in lore—part of the Big Bear constellation—the Guardian of the Polaris, S/HE is the Guardian of the solar system. S/HE causes the stabilization of the solar system. In that sense, S/HE is the Sun Deity or Heavenly Deity. Self-emerged with Mago Stronghold (Earth) and two moons of the Earth through the sonic movement of Pal-ryeo (Eight Tones), the Great Goddess oversees the cosmic music of Yul-ryeo (Rhythms and Tones), another term for the sonic movement of the universe. Mago gives birth to two daughters (Gung-hui) and (So-hui) parthenogenetically. Thus, they form the Mago Triad (Samsin). S/HE delegates HER two daughters to oversee the cosmic music of Oeum-chiljo (Five Pitches and Seven Tunes). Gung-hui and So-hui respectively give birth to four daughters parthenogenetically. The Primordial Mago Clan forms the Nine Magos, the archetype of Gurang (Nine Goddesses). Mago delegates eight (grand)daughters to oversee the cosmic music of Pal-ryeo (Eight Tones). S/HE causes the self-evolution of the Earth through which all terrestrial beings are brought into existence. In that sense, S/HE is the Earth Deity. As Samsin Halmi (Triad Grand-Mother), S/HE controls the birth and illness of children. Mago allows the Early Mago Clan in the paradise of Mago Stronghold to procreate progenies and entrusts them to take in charge of the terrestrial acoustic equilibrium. Revered as the Cosmogonist, Progenitor, and Ultimate Sovereign, Mago delegates the Mago Descent, the entirety of the divine, human ancestors, and humans, to oversee the acoustic harmony of the Earth in tune with the cosmic music. Hereupon, the paradisiacal Home of Mago Stronghold is established. S/HE is called by many names. Among them are Samsin (Triad Deity), Cheonsin (Heavenly Deity), Halmi (Grandmother/Goddess), Nogo (Ancient Goddess), and Seongo (Immortal Goddess). Also referred to as Mugeuk Nomo (None-Polarized First Mother) or Musaeng-nomo (Non-birthed First Mother) in Daoism. Mago appears resembling many Goddesses from around the world by way of such mythemes as the triad, parthenogenesis, cosmic music, animal companions, and the cosmogonist. “Mago” is linguistically identical or similar with “Mago” in Italian and Portuguese, “Magus/Magi” in Latin, “Magos” in Greek, “Maka” in Mycenaean Greek, “Magus” in Old Persian, and “Ma Guanyin” in East Asian languages, to name a few. Brian Kirbis: Funny, despite my fondness for language, I never made the connection. Though I have explored the lineage potential between naga and Nuwa 女娲. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: What did you find the linkage between naga and Nuwa, Brian? There is sometimes linguistic linkage relevant and other times mythological linkage… Brian Kirbis: Linguistic, iconographic, and mythological links are all available to us within a broad cross-cultural frame. My own analytic tendency is to see such mirror-image male-female representations as matrilineal and patrilineal essences which, in Chinese energy theory, reside in the kidneys (ancestral qi).Consider the Adam and Eve myth, for instance, with the figures on either side of the tree (spine, cosmic pivot, Milky Way), within which is contained the serpentine energy. There is ample information extant on such Tree of Life symbolism, all of which illustrates the inner energy body. The nagini-naga / Nuwa-Fuxi conjoint images in India and China absorb the serpent iconography into the human – an internalization of Kundalini energy.As you know, my area of interest is in the underlying cultural complex of tea-growing peoples located in Southwest China and upland Southeast Asia, an area replete with serpent mythology. Brian Kirbis: Comparison of Indian and Chinese representations of the Naga-Nagini and Fuxi & Nuwa. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Yes, indeed, there is similarity between the two. Interesting! Thanks for sharing them. Lizzy Bluebell: Brian Kirbis – fascinating – any idea what kind of tool each is holding in the sculpture? I see a chevron or M to the right of the Nagini’s head; (M and MA are fairly universal root symbols for Mother; Latin M encodes breasts, mounds, mountains, paps, tophets, etc. plus a general historical dispute over the importance of hills versus valleys.)I also note the inversion of right/left positions in the Nu Wa image.In terms of your statement – “The nagini-naga / Nuwa-Fuxi conjoint images in India and China absorb the serpent iconography into the human – an internalization of Kundalini energy.” — My thought: Have you ever considered it otherwise – that humanity has actually EXTERNALIZED chi energy into the form of the snake as a means of expressing it in non-vocal (sonic) symbolism which also manifests form via means of visualization as opposed to sonic/vocalizations or cymatics which creates form via RESONANCE.Helen – note that the tails are knotted – very important symbolic notion of ‘tying things’ as in the Shen Ring and Ankh – a masonic motif – related to measuring and containing within an Ouroborus SYSTEM which is closed, not cyclic or spiraling vis a vis Nature’s Way. It is the CLOSED CIRCLE as Plato’s “perfect form” which traps us in the flaws of re-peating and re-petitioning any ‘his-story’ we follow which does NOT HONOUR AND REVERE MAGO or hold her values close to HEART, as HEARD, in the HERD.Your original post (O/P thereafter) is fascinating and revealing and provides much to discuss on the topic of Zoroaster/Zarathustra and the Persian/Arabic/Semitic invention of Algebra and Astrology. In […]
(Special Post 8) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?

[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. Special thanks to Trista Hendren, founder and author of The Girl God, who passionately and painstakingly promotes the message of each contributor via Facebook’s memes. Without Trista’s devotion to the advocacy, this collective effort would not have continued. 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.] Marija Krstic-Chin To remember who we really are (nature, cycles, network, creative force, one, infinite…) for the benefit of all of humanity and all living things; and to unite and unify as we broadcast, hand down, protect and defend this truth and each other against the oppressive intentions and actions of patriarchal perpetrators, puppets, and pawns who seek to enslave us by various old and new divide-and-conquer strategies.

(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 …
The Ceremonial Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

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

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

Spring At the highest point on the tree, you stretch, reaching for the sun. Your pink petals elegant in their grace, you stand alone. Bravest of all, for leaves have yet to come to offer shade Branches bare except for furry buds that will soon follow in imitation of your daring first move. Intrepid flower of Spring, I feel like you in my yearning for the Sun!

(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
(Video) 2013 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s note: The first Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Read Mago Pilgrimage Essay 1 and Mago Pilgrimage Essay 2. See Meet Mago Contributor, Hae Kyoung Ahn for “Ma Gaia Womb” chant music and Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hwang Ph.D.
(Bell Essay 3) The Ancient Korean Bell and Magoism by Helen Hwang

Part III Nipples and Breasts of the Ancient Korean Bell, Revival of Old Magoism in Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE) Female sexuality and the divine are seamless. The ancient Korean bell bespeaks the divine, derived from female sexuality. Emitting reverberation, it casts a spell on the hearer. It is the sound that connects one with the Goddess and with one another. However, lapse of time has never been neutral. It has wrought the change of gender principle in society and in human consciousness. The female principle is severed from the divine. The divine without regard to the female is only astray or make-believe. When the seamlessness is broken, the bell loses its power to enchant. The ancient Korean bell, as a time capsule, sets us to the task of undoing the gender reversal. Unfettering of the arcane knowledge of Magoism is the gain. In proportion to the patriarchal progress in East Asia, Magoism, the gynocentric historical and cultural context, has been submerged. The fact that Magoism remains unregistered is a sign that moderns have drifted too far from the Female Origin. As a result, the female symbology of the bell is rendered irrelevant, if not obsolete. The bell and Buddhism are dysfunctional, if not mismatched. Or, maybe the Sillans who commissioned the bells in the 8th century CE saw Buddhism differently. Keeping at bay what makes the bell as the bell — the female symbology, Buddhist patriarchs have set a maze, heading only to “nothingness.” The sonority of the bell travels to the ear of people. However, deep hearing is thwarted by the patriarchal concept of the divine. Part III begins to deprogram the patriarchal conceptual barrier by shedding light on the core of its female symbology, the Nipples, the Bell Breasts, and the Breast Circumferences. Four Dimensional Mandala Is Here The relief of Nipples depicted elegantly and realistically is an attention grabber. For fear of being mistaken for something else especially by the generation to come, Sillan ancestors named them yudu (breast nipples). To be certain, they named the seat of the nipples jongyu (bell breast) and the enclosure of the breast yugwak (breast circumference). Detailed and refined artistry radiates the spirit of honor and veneration. As seen below, the nipples come in various styles showing the mastery of the bell casters in metallurgic technology. [The following images of Nipples are from the bells of different periods including Silla. The structures of nipples and breasts remain the same throughout history, characterizing Korean bells.] Sometimes, the nipples are depicted as the studs of lotus blossoms. Other times they are seated in lotus petals. Less frequently, the nipples are rendered as flat lotus flowers, perhaps to mitigate the graphic look. Regardless, the viewer can’t miss the number of the Nipples, nine. The nine nipples are aligned in three rows of three in the Bell Breast, which is enclosed by the Breast Circumference. Considering that the triad is the symbol of Mago as Samsin Halmi (The Triad Goddess), the three rows of three represent the triad in all ways, horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. One is surrounded by the triad in all directions; an epiphany is stored to enact. Now the bell caster conjoins the number three symbol with the number four symbol. In ancient East Asia, the four corners represent all directions, that is, the whole world. Placed in four corners, thirty-six nipples in all (a set of nine nipples in four directions) represent the female occupying the whole world. Seong Nakju in his inquiry about the thirty-six nipples of an ancient Korean bell states that the first emperor of the Qin dynasty (the first state that united China) divided “the world” into 36 heavens in 221 BCE. (Seong Nakju, see below in Sources.) Unlike the rule of the first Qin emperor infamous for tyranny, the 36 Nipples hint at neither domination nor the hierarchical power of the patriarchal monarch. Instead, they saturate the whole world with the female anatomy. To be discussed at a later point, the nine nipples that came from the 8th century are a time-proven means through which we may enter the consciousness of the Bronze Age, if not earlier when they originated and of the times whenever they reappeared. The four dimensional mandala is revealed, biding its time to evoke one to the fifth direction. The bell delivers the triumph of the Goddess (female principle) to the world in an utterly outlandish manner! Her Way is peace, integration, and beauty. Behold, She is enthroned. Gom (Ungnyeo) and the Nine-State Confederacy of Old Magoism What does a set of nine nipples signify? What does it mean that the ancient Korean bell has four sets of nine nipples? In Magoism the nine nipples are not an isolated symbol. They are on a par with the nine-tailed fox and the nine dragons from East Asia. These are the ancient representations of the female divine. I have delineated elsewhere that the nine-tailed fox is associated with Xiwangmu (Queen Mother of the West) and the nine dragons with Gwaneum (Guanyin, Kannon). Other times, Goddess Herself manifests as of the nine forms. As I discussed, the nine maidens of Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea, is a good example (see “Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea,” Part IV). The nine-female symbology goes beyond East Asia. The concatenation includes the nine Muses, the nine forms of Durga, and the African Goddesses of Oya and Mumbi who are known to have nine daughters. As such, evidence of the nine-female symbolism is intense and cross-cultural. The recurring symbolism of nine in East Asia suggests the once prevalent mytho-history of Old Magoism. Old Magoism is characterized by the rule of Magoist shamans who invented and spread the gynocentric civilization of pre-Chinese East Asia worldwide. Precisely, the nine-female symbolism refers to Gom (Ungnyeo, Bear/Sovereign Woman), founder of the nine-state confederacy in pre-Chinese times (see Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea, Part V). In short, the framework of Magoism …