If we can make the pandemic a time of opportunity to nail patriarchy in the head once and for all, we may be able to say that the Covid19 is worthy of it in the end. The Covid19 can’t stop what we are meant to do! And we are ever freshly charged to undertake the task of helping Life right HERE/NOW! That is the driving force under the Mago Work’s ongoing and new ventures. Lately, we have launched a new project, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, an academic peer reviewed journal on Goddess-related topics. All beings including non-human species, if we can survive, endure this time of the pandemic ordeal. And we are unsure what is coming at the end of this tunnel. Nonetheless, I am thankful for what we still have and can do. We are flexible, open-minded, and creative. We grin in tears longing for love and connection. And we have the spirit of making an ever new start. That is our power, we live fully. In fact, the Mago Work founded in 2012 was designed in order to survive and thrive during the time of crises on all levels. On one level, schools and educational institutes now go by online, which puts Mago Academy one of them, a pioneering survivor! That said, is it possible to confront patriarchy at the dead-end? How do we do that? I suggest that we restore Magoist Cetaceanism today among us.
Magoist Cetaceanism is about the bond between Magoists (followers of the Great Mother) and the natural world administered by whales. Why whales? Why not just women or mothers? To expose the bare face of patriarchy, we need to unveil the hidden/suppressed dimension of the cetacean divine, Whale Ruler the Great (Daewang Gorae), emulated by Magoist “Rulers” (Mother Queens and their descendant kings). How relevant are whales in our assessment of the Mother World? While whales manifest most unexpectedly in cultural and thematic expressions across time and space, it is rarely known that dragons are the cetacean symbolism. Traditional Korea is imbued with the cetacean totemism, a topic that requires a book to write about. I have noticed that dragons (the personification of the cetacean divine) are associated with ancient Goddesses including the Inanna group of Goddesses, far more vividly than we would expect.
As I am preparing for the upcoming Magoist Studies Salon on whales (for the rest four months of 2020), these thoughts are on my mind. Patriarchy must have hated the natural world represented by whales more than women/mothers. One may question if hate has a degree. It does! The natural world has been deprived of its existential status wholesale in patriarchy. Animals, birds, trees and plants are allowed no right of existence on their own. The following is the topic statement on Magoist Cetaceanism for the Salon:
The bond between Magoists and whales is made invisible in patriarchy. Both the female principle and the cetacean totemism remain esoteric at best. In Magoism, whales are venerated as the paragon of Magoist Queen Mothers who administer the human world on behalf of Mago, the Great Mother. Magoist Cetaceanism, restored, tells us that Magoism, the Way of the Great Mother, has been subjected to the process of matricide, mystification, and oblivion in the course of history due not only to its uncompromising female principle but also to its espousal with the cetacean totemism. Truth is that the cetacean totemism held by ancient Magoists is antithetical to patriarchal premises. Put differently, Magoist Cetaceanism cannot be admitted in patriarchy. For the seamless unity of humans and the natural world represented by whales undermines the very proposition of patriarchy. Pre-patriarchal sons may have come to set themselves against whales (dragons) out of jealousy, as the latter were worshipped as the terrestrial divine by their Shaman Queen mothers. Our message is that we humans are here to know the nurturing power of whales and collaborate with them. In fact, I hold that whales comprise one of the three divine realms, the terrestrial divine (Nine Dragons) together with the heavenly divine (Nine Magos) and the human divine (Nine Gomas). In the three-fold reality of WE/HERE/NOW, better known as the thought of Heaven-Earth-Human, cetaceans come as the second agent who represents the earthly realm. We will discuss whales as the terrestrial divine in light of the Magoist Cosmogony and Magoist Shaman Queens.
The very establishment of Magoism, the teaching of the Great Mother, Mago, may have been possible due to a consummate degree of progress or revelation on maternal cetology (study of whales by Magoist Mothers) circa 3898 BCE by Goma, the Magoist Shaman Queen founder of the nine-state Danguk confederacy. Put differently, the discourse of the mother divine (Nine Magos) has to do with the cetacean worship. At this point of a pre-patriarchal time, human mothers came to perceive the universe in the language of Sonic Numerology. The conscious promotion of Goddesses (the Great Mother and HER human daughters known as Heavenly Queen or Heavenly Mother) rose (that was still in pre-patriarchal times) and because of that, we today get to know them. This is all thanks to whales! In a pre-patriarchal world, the concern of Magoists was to overcome the problem of eating living beings for food. This is not a small issue. In fact, the Budoji calls it the first catastrophe (Christians call it the first disobedience, according to John Milton in Paradise Lost). Pre-patriarchal mothers faced to overcome the problem of food, which resulted in the change of human biology/psychology/consciousness once and for all. Magoists in the cradle of Mago Stronghold drank “the terrestrial milk” springing from the ground, the mineral water. And later, they ventured out to take arrow roots, pine needles, pine nuts, and the like for food. Later, they were likely to eat a dead whale, washed ashore. I am reaching the thought that humans can take organic materials that are freely given by the natural world/lifeforms not by killing them. Nobody wants to share? That is NOT true. All when not inflicted has an inborn behavior of sharing and giving. Why? The natural world is abundant like the quality of a mother and s/he gives and shares her sweets. We humans are given the lens of the Mother’s Heart/Mind/Soul. Where is the whale in this? Whales make the freely sharing behavior of all beings possible. They are the manager of water (rain/fog, wind, storms in the seas, rivers, lakes, wells, and air). All on earth give thanks to whales for their supervision/rule of water that enlivens all beings!!! Whales are compassionate, loving, and powerful. And all await whales to act in the time of drought, flood, and other atmospheric catastrophes. And we know that whales sing (their songs are carried to all terrestrial beings through water in seas and lands) and dance (their biology requires breathing in the air and thus making them plough the deep sea on behalf of all marine lifeforms)!!! And this is the ancient knowing of Magoist Koreans.
What are the grounds for this thinking? (1) Whales are venerated as the terrestrial administrator (ruler), the paragon of Magoist Shaman Queen rulers among whom we count Goma and Chiu. (2) Goma is conjectured to have been the key figure for Magoist cetology. The very teaching of Magoism crystallized in the Magoist Cosmogony is attributed to Goma. Goma discovered if not innovated the creative force of Sonic Numerology by observing whale behaviors (socio-biological-environmental). Whale songs/dances are indeed an embodiment of Sonic Numerology that brings forth the birth, growth, and transformation of all beings. The number nine is evident in the definition of a dragon, the nine-fold sonic personification of whales. (3) The Goma civilization including technologies of temple/palace and ship buildings has a high level of cetology (re-)discovered by them and availed to them. Here, both temple/palace and ship architectures all have to do with dragons, a topic to be discussed at length elsewhere.
Forthcoming themes of the Magoist Studies Salon. Go to Current Topic for the Magoist Studies Salon.
#9 September Magoist Cetaceanism (Magoism and ancient Korean Whale totemism)
#10 October The Cetacean Code of Korean Temple Bells
#11 November The Myth of the Pacifying Flute and Dragons as the Messenger of Whales
#12 December Whale riding homecoming journey; Ringing the Whale Bell at midnight to welcome Year 4 in the 13 Month 28 Day reconstructed Magoist Calendar
(Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.