November 15, 2016November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay 2) Restoring Her as Creative Triplicity: Place of Being by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is the second part in a series of edited excerpts from the author’s book, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Author’s note: In this three part series of Read More …

October 13, 2016April 17, 2021 RTM Editor2 Comments

(Essay Part 1) Restoring Her as Creative Triplicity: the Urge to Be by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is the first part in a series of edited excerpts from the author’s book, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Author’s note: In this three part series I Read More …

September 8, 2016November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay Part 3) Restoring Dea – Female Metaphor for Deity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is the third part in a series of edited excerpts from chapter 3 of the author’s book, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Before She appeared in human Read More …

August 2, 2016November 15, 2019 RTM Editor1 Comment

(Essay Part 2) Restoring Dea – Female Metaphor for Deity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is the second part in a series of edited excerpts from chapter 3 of the author’s book, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. In China, one of Her Read More …

July 25, 2016October 2, 2019 RTM Editor3 Comments

(Prose) My Thanks to Dolasilla by Claire French

It must have been around my twelfth year when I found the Saga of the Kingdom of Fanes in the local almanac of the South Tyrolean city of Bozen/Bolzano. It Read More …

July 20, 2016November 15, 2019 RTM Editor2 Comments

(Essay Part 1) Restoring Dea – Female Metaphor for Deity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is the first part in a series of edited excerpts from chapter 3 of the author’s book, PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Almost every ancient culture’s creation Read More …

July 11, 2016October 2, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Photo Essay 5) Goddess Pilgrimage – Italy by Kaalii Cargill

My journey took me next to mainland Italy. In an archaeological park outside Naples, I stood in the cave of the Cumean sibyl. The cave – Antro della Sibilla – Read More …

June 15, 2016November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay) Integrating the Co-essential Darkness by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

We live in times wherein beings the world over are witnessing global transformation. Such a scale of planetary change has happened before, but humans are integral to this one – Read More …

June 8, 2016October 2, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Essay) The Women of Fanes by Claire French

Old Agostino was the yardman in my uncle’s building yard. He was a hunchback with a large bony face, sad grey eyes and unkempt grey hair. His hands were like Read More …

May 20, 2016October 2, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Photo Essay 4) Goddess Pilgrimage – Sicily by Kaalii Cargill

I was lured to Sicily by my southern Italian heritage and photos of the Valley of the Temples, an archaeological site on the southern coast outside the town of Agrigento. Read More …

May 18, 2016November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Book excerpt) My Name is Medusa by Glenys Livingstone and Arna Baartz

The dark has its own way of caring, and coming up with something new. excerpt from the children’s book My Name is Medusa by Glenys Livingstone Illustrated by Arna Baartz Read More …

April 23, 2016January 9, 2021 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Claire French Ph.D.

[Editorial Note 2020, by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D.: With deep sorrow I share the passing of my friend and Mago contributor Dr. Claire French, a remarkable woman who lived through so Read More …

April 21, 2016November 15, 2019 RTM EditorLeave a comment

(Video) Mago Pilgrimage 2014 by Robert Seaborne and Glenys Livingstone

As a major part of the Mago Pilgrimage to Korea with Dr Helen Hwang in 2014, we pilgrims journeyed to the sacred Mt. Jiri. Our time there began with a Read More …

(Essay) The Brewer was a Lady by Hearth Moon Rising

Drinking beer with straws. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Like the swelling of the Tigris and Euphrates,You pour the filtered beer.Like the onrush of the sacred rivers, Ninkasi,You pour the filtered beer.~ Hymn to Ninkasi The grocery chain where I shop used to have a sign in the beer aisle that read: It was a wise man who invented beer. I didn’t speak to the management about that sign, though I was tempted, but eventually it was taken down. Because, you see, beer was almost certainly invented by a woman. I had intended to write this article on women and beer brewing, but I soon discovered that’s a topic for an entire book. It’s a book that needs to be written, because while there are many histories of beer, there is a dearth of material focused on women. The drinking of beer dates so far back in pre-history that we can’t ascertain where or when it first appeared. There is evidence for grain fermentation in Turkey 12,000 years ago and China 9,000 years ago. It is doubtful that brewing was “discovered” in one place and spread; it probably emerged independently all over the world, in both Eastern and Western Hemispheres. By the time a culture had pottery and grain stores, they were probably brewing. The drink may have been developed as a way of utilizing excess grain, with intoxication a happy byproduct. In recorded times women were always the early brewers. Since food production and processing was primarily directed and conducted by women in Neolithic societies, it is easy to see how brewing would be under a woman’s province. Ancient beer had an alcohol content of less than 1% or as high as 3.5%. The high figure comes from scientific analysis of beer brewed from a Mesopotamian recipe, and scholars speculate that most brewers in Mesopotamia and elsewhere did not attain the high figure. Jean Bottero asserts that alcohol content was so low that drunkenness was rare, though with examples of inebriation present in mythology, I have to wonder. Beer receipt. Photo: Jim Kuhn. Mesopotamia was indisputably the greatest beer culture of all time. There are at least half a dozen varieties described in the literature, and beer was consumed daily, usually diluted with as much as 75% water (which supports the idea that the alcohol content was not insignificant). In most countries, rich men switched primarily to wine with the introduction of the fermented grape, but Mesopotamians remained loyal to the barley grain even after they began producing their own wine. Beer was sipped communally through large bowls or vats, presumably to strain residual solids. The Mesopotamian gods drank quantities of beer several times a day in temple rituals. The goddess who presided over beer was named Ninkasi, and as far as we know she only involved herself in brewing, at least until she took on wine production. Even as Mesopotamian society grew complex, women continued to brew their own beer at home. Commercial brewers and taverns did a brisk business however. These businesses were run by women for millennia, but as patriarchy progressed men encroached on the territory. Taverns and the drinking of beer are prominent in many Mesopotamian myths. My favorite intoxication story is Inanna’s visit to Enki, the God of wisdom. After realizing how wonderful she is, Inanna decides to honor Enki with a visit. When she leaned against the apple tree, her vulva was wondrous to behold.Rejoicing at her wondrous vulva, the young woman Inanna applauded herself.(Wolkstein and Kramer, see below.) Inanna lives in the night sky as the star Venus, so I envision Inanna embarking in her sky-canoe to visit that other bright star in the sky, Jupiter. This is probably a story about a Venus-Jupiter conjunction. As Inanna journeys to Enki’s domain, the God of Wisdom, since he knows all things, anticipates her arrival. He tells his servant: Give her butter cake to eat.Pour cold water to refresh her heart.Offer her beer before the statue of the lion.Treat her like an equal. Inanna with reed arrows in her backpack restraining a lion. Photo: Sailko/Wikimedia Commons. Enki entertains Inanna at the Temple of Heaven, drinking liberally of his own beer. His generosity increases in proportion to his intoxication, and he offers Inanna all the accoutrements of civilization: music, writing, textiles, metal working, animal husbandry, the priesthoods. With increasing liberality, he bestows more and more gifts, and with the bestowal of each gift, Inanna says, “I take it!” As her canoe becomes heavy with shwag, Inanna wisely decides it’s time to head home. She is only a short way across the sky, however, when Enki begins to sober up. Enki asks his servant where his stuff is, and in reply the servant tells him that he has given it to Inanna. Enki sends his servant in pursuit of the Boat of Heaven to retrieve his treasures. Inanna is outraged at the request to return the gifts. “He gave them to me. They are mine!” she cries. Enki responds to Inanna’s determination by sending monsters to seize her boat and guide it back to him. He sends wave after wave of monsters, seven times fifty of them. Inanna stands her ground. Inanna asks her priestess Ninshubur to fight off the monsters and save her boat. Picture Inanna and her humble servant in their space canoe warding off monster after monster in an epic battle. From Earth it would look something like a meteor shower. Ninshubur rises to the challenge and wards off all the monsters as Inanna escapes with her valuable cargo. Inanna orders her boat to dock in her city of Uruk. There she unloads treasure after treasure, more than Enki had given her, even, to share with her people. She says: Let all the lands proclaim my noble name.Let the people sing my praises. Then Enki, perhaps recovering from his hangover, blesses the city of Uruk as well. Let the citizens of your city prosper,Let the children of Uruk rejoice. Sources: Alok Bannerjee, …
(Art 5) Grace, Ishtar, Infancy the very beginning of by Megha

At the center of Life, She dwells From the center of Life, She leads She who embodies darkness and light She Eternal Grace Infancy – the very beginning of Remember the earliest part of your life, when you were a baby!!! It is extremely rare for anyone to remember their own infancy. An amazing amount of growth and development happens during that phase. This collection is aligned with the consciously heightened awakened growth that happened as Meghanaiyegee embarked on her own journey of remembering the Sacred Feminine. A journey to meeting HER, feeling HER, seeing HER, connecting with HER, whispering HER and becoming HER. Meet Mago Contributor Megha
Sun and Earth Rise Over the Lake by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Our world is at a turning point between catastrophe and the opportunity for peace, equality, and environmental sustainability. Perhaps creating new stories that speak to the challenges of our time and more hopeful ways of being can help us make better choices for our future. Photography by Carolyn Lee Boyd You have asked how the people of the 21st century turned our planet from catastrophe to paradise, and I will tell you. It began with one woman. One morning she stumbled, thirsty and fragile, to the edge of what had once been a deep and wide lake full of fish, seaweed, ducks, loons, lampreys and turtles. As she scraped the sand to cup a few drops for her parched lips, she glanced at a faded reflection of the sun ascending over the small pool now deserted by all life except luminescent algae. She had witnessed a thousand other sunrises from this shore in decades past, and this morning’s sight brought to mind one such childhood dawn when her bare feet waded into the frigid water and a baby crayfish tickled her toes. She had taken so much for granted then — wild mint’s sweet taste, the geometric perfection of beached clamshells, the steady rhythm of the waves’ pulse. Her reminiscence brought her pleasure and she laughed. The path to the lake’s desolation began billions of years ago when Earth spun barren, desiccated, and desolate around the Sun’s inferno. In this lifeless void, the Sun and the Earth found each other in that liminal border between being and becoming and fell in love. Where others would have seen only sterility, they discovered in their tender bond the poetry of fire and air sparking birth and the magic of soil and water nurturing a diverse and abundant harmony of beings. Soon our planet teemed with colors, fragrances, tastes, sounds, textures, motion, and the jubilation of never-ending regeneration. The Sun and Earth bestowed on each species special talents such as healing, virtue, beauty, or strength. To humans they gave inner eyes to envision their planet as a paradise, opening like a lotus to the magnificence already present in it and a unique artistry to enhance its vibrancy with their own works of mind, body, and soul. Just as the love the Earth and Sun felt for each other powered the creation of life on our planet, so would the love of humans for the land and sky generate ever-new glorious futures. Earth and Sun’s trust in each other was reflected in their faith that humans would never forget our responsibility to all other life and so never envision into being only narcissistic pleasure or view ourselves as supreme over other creatures. By the 21st century, however, it was precisely because of this lack of reverence for our global home that many turned the miracle of imagination into mere selfish invention. They remade stunning landscapes into citadels of concrete, hollowed out the planet’s treasures, and banished millions of species of trees, flowers, animals, birds, and insects to oblivion. We traded millennia of awe for seconds of deathly intoxication. As their beloved dream world disintegrated, the Sun and Earth could not face one another and so they began to close their eyes to our planet. Sunlight’s soft glow dimmed, water never fell to the ground, fire destroyed what was left, and life all over the planet began to decline back into barrenness. But then the woman at the lake’s edge laughed. The sound echoed in the deep silence of the isolation of the Earth and Sun. They awoke and watched in wonder as the woman’s attention returned to the reflection of the sunrise on the lake and the power within her it evoked. Her love of the lake, begun in the the openness of childhood and growing within her all her life, sparked her fervor to recover the planet as it had been and more, just as the Sun had fired the original Creation. It was nourished and embraced by all the kindness and love from other living beings she had experienced from birth, just as the Earth’s impulse to generation had nurtured our planet’s burgeoning life. Now, to her, the sunrise’s reflection was not just light rays bouncing off the water’s surface, but a bridge between the world as it had become and the future paradise that was taking shape in her mind and soul. Photography by Carolyn Lee Boyd She became the spirit of energy and genius, her eyes raised to the hopeful enlightenment of the sun. She embraced wholeness and connectedness, her eyes lowered to the grace of the Earth. She imagined our planet as it might have been had she and all other humans always understood that love for the land and sky is at the heart of our miraculous gift of imagining a future as wondrous as she had believed the world to be as a child. She determined that, together, humans could birth this new world into physical being and, now knew that we could, we must. She rose on trembling legs and began to express the truth of our special artistry to all humans who would listen, wandering from village to village, eventually reaching every continent. Together we determined that our planet would not die. From our gathered mind’s eyes arose an aspiration for our planet so exquisite that to desecrate it rather than bringing it into being was unthinkable. We were finally inching towards fulfilling our destiny and we began to partner with the Sun and Earth to regenerate life in all its forms. Now, generations later, humans come again to the shores of the thriving lake, tasting the tiny, flavorful wild strawberries and wiggling their fingers playfully amongst the minnows. We have discovered our secret. Still, we have learned that our mission is no more or less than any other species, it is simply different, and all are as necessary to our planet’s paradise as we are. Billions of years ago the Sun and the …
(Essay) The Moon Goddess and the Bull by Helen Benigni

“The Lunar Creatrix” The human mind has forgotten that the patterns of the year as well as those patterns that go beyond the year are relevant and worth forming into archetypes that aid our understanding of our relationship with the Natural World. The archetypes of the precessional cycles of the moon, numerous as they are and yet buried as they are in myth and culture, have revealed themselves with the most obvious cycle first: the cycle of the ever-changing moon and the Goddess as Creatrix of that cycle. It is here where humans in Paleolithic times first began to count and conceptualize how the changing moon would affect their lives. Amazingly, our ancestors this far back in time, at the beginning of our realization of the connection between the starry dynamo and ourselves, came to the awareness that beyond the twelve cycles of the lunar year are the nutation cycle of the moon, where the moon rises in a different place on the horizon for 18.6 years and then returns forming a cycle of life. Added to this concept is the discovery that at nineteen years the sun meets the moon in its journey. Moreover, three of these lunar and solar cycles made up the lifetime of prehistoric humans. The archetype of these cycles of renewal upon which human life is based became paramount and was assigned to the Creatrix of life, The Goddess, and her consort, the bison, or later, the domesticated bison, the bull. In the Paleolithic Era, The Goddess of Laussel holds a bison horn which marks the cycles of precession. In the Neolithic Era, The Goddess has many symbols of regeneration to accompany her Bucrania or bull’s horns, and The Horns of the Bull become consecrated in the Neolithic temples of The Goddess. The emerging archetype of the Bronze Age Goddess and the Bull, which is measured on the Bucrania or The Horns of Consecration of the Mediterranean peoples, is paramount to the Minoan-Mycenaean culture. In the Knossos temple-complex of the Mother Goddess of Crete as well as in the temple-complexes of the Minoan-Mycenaean culture on the mainland in Greece, The Goddess and the Bull reach heights of importance and dominate the iconography. In the Bronze Age at this time in Europe and the British Isles, The Goddess and the Bull are prevalent in the iconography but relatively less important than the celestial events that accompany the archetype, which are measured on the stones of time. The amazing feats of the megalithic stone constructions of Bronze Age Europe and the British Isles, such as the building of the Aubrey Circle at Stonehenge, emphasize the advancement of the science and technology as well as the worship of The Goddess and the Bull in this culture. Because the archetype of The Goddess and the Bull was of such great importance to the Bronze Age peoples of the Mediterranean, they chose to use it as a central image in their religious practices. The modern interpretation of the disciplines as separate and the emerging ideology of the patriarchy where female deities were of secondary importance prevented a complete study of this archetype. Sir Arthur Evans and Martin P. Nilsson in the first half of the Twentieth Century did extensive excavations of the Minoan-Mycenaean culture, faithfully recording the details of their studies as archeologists yet ignoring the celestial alignments and the importance of The Goddess in the culture. Unfortunately, the seven-volume set of Evans’ work is now out of print and not accessible to the modern reader. By examining Evans’s study as well as the works of Nilsson and by visiting the sites, the iconology of The Goddess and the Bull became evident to me and could be put in perspective emphasizing the role of the Goddess as Creatrix. Evans records the archeological data of The Mother Goddess but ignores the role of the Astronomer Priestesses in the religion. Furthermore, he sees the temple complex as a king’s palace, an Iron Age concept that evolved much later with the emergence of the patriarchy. The absence of a divine king or priest is evident in the archeological data; however, in his era, Evans viewed data through the eyes of the firmly established patriarchy of the Mid-Twentieth Century. The Mother Goddess of the Minoan-Mycenaean culture emerges from the dust of ages and astounds our imagination, which has been throttled by the possibility that anything but a monotheistic father-God might exist. Without a father god or a king, the Mother Goddess, her young male consort, her Astronomer Priestesses, and the energies of the earth and heavens represented in the sacrifice of the Bull come to light as genuinely central to the culture. Moreover, in the nineteen-year cycle of the moon and the sun, The Goddess is represented as a mother with the obvious capabilities to regenerate and continue the cycles of the earth as they correspond with the cycles of the heavens. Seen as a source for renewal, she is rarely personified on a grand scale and subsequently remains a representative force of Nature. Only one massive statue has been un-earthed from the Minoan-Mycenaean temple-complexes that demonstrate her presence on a large scale as compared to the many large statues of goddesses in later civilizations, such as the Greek and the Celtic cultures. In Minoan-Mycenaean culture, her iconology takes the form of many small goddess figurines among countless artifacts with her image as a seated, maternal figure much like later representations of Hera, in the Greek Iron Age, and the Matrona, in the Celtic Iron Age. Furthermore, in Minoan-Mycenaean culture, her surname remains “Po-ti-ni-ja”, and her forenames are listed according to her attributes as Bird and Snake Goddess in the Mycenaean Linear B tablets; as further evidence of the Goddess’ presence, it is notable that the tablets at Knossos only mention priestesses and not priests. Again, her common surname as a pre-Hellenic goddess emphasizes her tendency to be seen as seemingly almost monotheistic rather than polytheistic and …
(Prose) A Chapter From My Life by Janie Rezner

A Chapter From My Life . . . for my upcoming book, A Wakeup Call from Mother God I should write a letter to Polly Shakas, thanking her for helping me get out of my marriage. I could also thank Bill Moeller. They were the principals in a most difficult and painful period of my life, and certainly in my children’s lives. My good friend Polly said, “why don’t you move out, and perhaps Janie will agree to go into counseling with you. I know of a very good psychiatrist in Iowa City who might be able to help you.” Said Polly to my husband when he came to her house to rant and rave about me. By this time, and it was the first time I had ever confided in anyone, I had told her a bit about my very troubled marriage. And, so it was that husband and I traveled to Iowa City on a gray day in winter to see Bill Moeller, head of the psychiatric outpatient clinic at Iowa City University Hospitals. Husband was ushered into Bill’s office first, and for an hour I sat alone in that dimly lit waiting room. Then it was my turn to go in. When I sat down in the chair, Bill said, “So you want a divorce.” I had not dared to even think the words in this horrific marriage, where I feared my husband’s volatile behavior, but having heard them, I knew indeed I did want a divorce. (I might add, I did not know anyone personally, who had been divorced.) I began crying. And, Bill said, “Now your husband has sat in that chair for an hour, crying. Are you going to do the same thing?” Well, I tell you that straightened me up, right away! No more tears for me! And so we talked. Actually, he did most of the talking, telling me things about husband’s and my relationship. He had just spent an hour with husband, and obviously could tell a great deal about what was going on, just by observing his behavior. He said so many things to me—things I remembered for years, but remember them no longer. He told me things about my life with husband that I couldn’t have begun to tell him, for I didn’t have the words then. I didn’t see patterns. I didn’t recognize behaviors. “Abusive husband” wasn’t a common word in the fifties, nor was sexual abuse or manipulation. And, the word “relationship” was unheard of. Bill did say something I still remember. He said, “You have grown in this marriage; your husband has not. We spent three hours talking in his office—and those hours flew by as the walls of my prison began to crack. At last, someone understood . . .without my having to describe it to them. Perhaps there was a way out. My hope sprang forth. In our next trip to Iowa City, going in separate cars this time at my insistence, husband and I met with together with Bill. Bill spoke for a few minutes, talking about the possibility of our attending group counseling, then looked straight at me and said, “But you probably don’t want to do that, do you? Then Bill asked husband, “Do you love Janie,” Husband said “yes.” Then he asked me, “Do you love husband?” I knew this was my moment to speak, and I said, “No.” I dared to do it because earlier Bill had described this joint visit as a “time to put your cards on the table.” . . . and I recognized immediately that he was telling me to speak the truth, and I trusted that he was going to help me through it. ~~~ After my “no” my husband jumped out of his chair, picked it up and threw it at me, hitting me in the leg, and ran out of the office, down the hall and out of the hospital. And I, standing there shaking in shock and fear and relief, realized that “I had been living in a prison, and didn’t know it.” ~~~ And, certainly no thought of what a third class citizen I was in this man’s world had even faintly touched my awareness. That my children’s and my abuse and much worse, was and is being experienced by millions and of women and children all over the world, subjugated SLAVES of the patriarchy, had not entered my consciousness back in 1966 in Davenport, Iowa. This story demonstrates the powerful brainwashing I was under—living in fear and denying it to myself, for how else could I live there every day and every night. And, I was afraid to leave for fear he would follow me.. It also shows this intuitive psychiatrist’s amazing intervention—he brought our marriage of twelve years to a head in two visits—hardly knowing either of us—and was very clear about where it needed to go. This is not typical therapeutic behavior. May every abused woman find such help. May every abused woman realize she has sisters who are suffering as she is suffering, as her mother and grandmother and great grandmother and great aunts suffered. May she realize that she lives in a world run by men that allows it’s mothers and children to be abused—to be tortured—to starve to death; a world run by men who not only allow it, but enjoy torturing and abusing and killing. May she know that this has gone on since the patriarchal archetype has covered and controlled the earth. And may she know it is dead wrong. Oquawka 2010 Meet Mago Contributor Janie Rezner
(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

Dolmen, Ganghwa Island, S. Korea (from Wikimedia) What is feminism to you? Do you have a feminist ancestor? How do you see your feminist ancestor in your life and work today? And what does it mean that we commemorate our feminist ancestors collectively? Return to Mago (RTM) co-editors, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Jen Taylor, are seeking stories, essays, poems, songs, tributes, artworks, and creative works in memory of our feminist ancestors including 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.Tell us and the world something about her or her works that have influenced you in a particular way. You may go further to share how you have encountered your ancestor feminist(s), and how your life has evolved because of your ancestor feminist. These questions may be helpful: (1) Who she was/is to you? (2) What has touched you to your core? (3) How have you grown deeper and wider with or through her visions in the course of time? (4) How do you find her influence in you today the same or different from the time when you first encountered it? We are proud of our feminist ancestors. By calling for contributions for this special project (commemorating our ancestor feminists collectively), we co-editors intend to create a timespace wherein a new consciousness may take shape that serves the All (not just women or humans but also the non-human beings). We acknowledge that feminism is a beacon not the destination. No feminist is flawless or stands outside her own cultural and historical contexts. Our individual commemorations do not have to aim at a final statement. Contrarily, our words would always be ephemeral. We are not here to judge our ancestors but acknowledge who they were and how they left an impact on us. “I am grateful for my feminist ancestors. Your fights and struggles, ultimately a gift to ALL, have made it possible for me to become myself and discover the matricentric reality of WE/HERE/NOW. A feminist consciousness reset my life in my late 20s. Feminism was an indispensable and powerful tool for me to carve out my own identity, a Magoist Cetaceanist or a matricentric naturalist advocate. I began to ask hard questions, who I am and how I should live my life. I longed for ultimate freedom and peace in mind/heart. My encounter with Mary Daly, the U.S. post-Christian feminist thinker, in the mid-1990s was destined. Her feminist thought paved my feminist path, a shortcut to my destination. It was an incubator for my own thinking to shape and unfold. For a few years, I could not tell the difference between Daly’s thinking and my own thinking. I was able to break the shell of my own egg from within, thanks to your courage to be and become a Woman. Like you, I never forgot who I was/is, a Korean-native feminist. I am humbled to say that owning my own ethnic and cultural identity is the source of my empowerment, which I extend to you and your intellectual daughters. Our collective consciousness is alive and continues to evolve!” Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.“Growing up, I had the sense that something was missing, but I didn’t know what. In my twenties, studying philosophy, I found comfort in the question of a pre-Socratic named Meno, “How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” For me, unearthing feminist ancestors lost to history was not driven by accident but destiny. Walking to my apartment in Brooklyn at age 25, I stopped to peruse a pile of books left out on the sidewalk. One in particular caught my eye: The Politics of Women’s Spirituality, edited by Charlene Spretnak. I opened it and found an inscription on the first page, “For Mom – The work is only now beginning… May 1990 Love, Lynn.” I knew I had found a treasure. The book was a portal and opened the world of so many feminist ancestors to me. Ntozake Shange’s declaration, “i found god in myself & i loved her fiercely,” sounded a trumpet call. Marija Gimbutas, Merlin Stone, Mary Daly, and so many others spilled from the pages. I read Gimbutas first because, at the time (1997), I was culturally conditioned to cringe at the concept of women’s spirituality. The word Goddess was unutterable. Gimbutas’ fierce scholarship fusing archeology and mythology broke my spell. My life was forever changed. I could name what was missing. The rest of the feminist ancestors in the book opened up to me, and the breadcrumb trail to so many others lay revealed like glistening stones in the moonlight.” Jen Taylor, Doctoral Student at CIIS We are also seeking reviewers who could give editors your feedback about a submission that we will receive. All inquiries must be directed to Dr. Hwang (ninemagos@gmail.com) and/or Ms. Taylor (jentaylor13@yahoo.com) via email. How to submit your contribution, please see here, Call for Contributions.
(Poem) The Ballad of Cantalily by Robin Scofield

White terns cross the cobalt mountains turned fire in the river. My name is Riddle speaker, the taste of wings rising. The reflection tastes like mercury, but my teeth are sweet. With faces like catchers’ mitts, the old crones look twice. In my hands I find birds to carry the seed for winter wheat. My name is what the sandpiper says to the river. The wolf moon lights my name, not a snake on the path. My name is not Golondrina, not full throttle at dawn. My name is not Zopilote, yet I eat the dead. My name is not snow goose yet I am invisible. My name stops before limestone slabs in Smuggler’s gap. My name is a train whistle the gates coming down. Robin Scofield is the author of And the Ass Saw the Angel and Sunflower Cantos from Mouthfeel Press. She has poems appearing or forthcoming in Pilgrimage, Cedilla Six, Interstice, and Mezcla II. She is a poetry editor for BorderSenses who lives in El Paso and writes regularly with the Tumblewords Project. “The Ballad of Cantalily” is included in Sunflower Cantos, published by Mouthfeel Press in August of 2012. In the book, Scofield creates her own cosmology, set forth through the mouth of the trickster goddess, Cantalily. Cantalily is a liminal figure both very much of the present as well as of the time before time.
(Essay 1) Finding Our Agency and Awareness in the Seeds of Self by Deepak Shimkhada and Lachele Schilling

[Editor’s Note: This and the next sequel is first published in She Rises: What… Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality? Volume 3 as an article entitled, “Finding Our Agency and Awareness in the Seeds of Self” co-authord by Deepak Shimkhada, Ph.D. and Lachele Schilling, Ph.D.] The Source Dr. Deepak Shimkhada It is possible humans might wonder how we got here: a work economy where most people spend eight-hour shifts making minimum wage, too tired and poor to tend to much beyond dinner, shower, and sleep; a concrete urban life where, yes, it is convenient to buy a carton of milk instead of walk out into nature and milk a cow, but, we feel a sense of loss for the spicy smell of grass and warm, tingling sun; a broken global structure of inequality where crumbling buildings in Bangladesh actually do crumble and catch on fire. Meanwhile, those in the Global North can buy a striped crop top for $3 at H&M. We continue on with our ramshackle awareness, blinking towards increased knowledge about how one community’s consumption and waste can create poverty and pollution in another, while waiting for someone to do something, accepting that this way of life is perhaps too embedded to un-root itself in time, and that even if the Industrial Revolution was a moderately recent chapter, human greed for wealth, power, and control is, if we are to take any indication from ancient literature about the tendencies and practices of human beings then, irreversibly encoded within our DNA. But we certainly do know how we got here. It’s how we always get anywhere. It is how a woman can look at her life and assess, at 40, it does not look like what she wanted it to be: she reviews the seeds that have been planted, which have been watered and which neglected. The seed is the embryonic state of all plants and vegetables, for animal, including human, reproduction. Gaia teems with life of all kinds because of the multitude of seeds intentionally and unintentionally finding placement. Seeds of Life Seeds are the reason we can be healthy, in taking in the eventual, after their long and hard journey to fruition, grains, fruits and vegetables in the form of food. It is also because of seeds that we might encounter beautiful landscapes in both the cities and the countryside. Gaia can breathe and dance because of the seeds of the past. If seeds were not so valuable, Monsanto would not be a billion dollar giant industry that aims to monopolize and patent seed banks. We owe all we have to seeds that we or someone else have planted. Every journey has a beginning that includes choices, even if it is the choice to be silent and not act. In addition to its biological function of reproduction and development, some mystical orders consider seeds to hold or be consciousness or energy itself. The dialogue between a student and a teacher concerning Brahman (Ultimate Reality) in the Chhandogya Upanishad is a case in point. The dialogue begins with the words of the sage Uddalaka: “My child, you are so full of your learning and so censorious, have you asked for that knowledge by which we hear the unhearable, by which we perceive what cannot be perceived and know what cannot be known?” “What is that knowledge, sir?” asked Svetaketu. His father replied, “As by knowing one lump of clay all things made of clay are known – so, my child, is that knowledge, knowing which we know all.” “But surely these venerable teachers of mine are ignorant of this knowledge; for if they possessed it they would have imparted it to me. Do you, sir, therefore, give me that knowledge?” “So be it,” said the father. And he said, “Bring me a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree [fig tree].” “Here it is, sir.” “Break it.” “It is broken, sir.” “What do you see there?” “Some seeds, sir, exceedingly small.” “Break one of them.” “It is broken, sir.” “What do you see there?” “Nothing at all.” It is only because humans collectively or individually can wait to pause until what was destined from the seed to manifest itself in the beautiful monstrosities of creation, where the thorny brambles intertwine and serpentine around our limbs and one feels rather trapped, stuck, a lotus rooted in the mud so intimately that to break away would cost our lives. Sensory beings, humans seem to be distracted by what we can touch, hear, and see. Thus the tools of publicity and advertisement ensure we cope with the human predicament in ways that produce profit for our companies and institutions instead of our well-being. But we need to gather our focus and attend to the emptiness, the void, where possibility exists. We need to re-orient ourselves to perceive what is essential in contrast to the spectacle that lusts for our eyes. Vedantic, Hindu and Buddhist traditions perhaps more explicitly or obviously than other traditions assert the non-duality of existence and access to the True Self (as opposed to the more monolithic, absolute, ideal false self) as being within generative energy itself. The father said, “My son, that subtle essence which you do not perceive there – in that very essence stands the being of the huge Nyagrodha tree. In that which is the subtle essence of all that exists has its Self. That is the True, that is the Self, and thou Svetaketu art That.” Not all significant change in the world takes highly advanced problem-solving skills. Some just take the simple wisdom that everything is connected and everything is eternal. If we can constantly remind ourselves of this, we might make the kinds of choices, plant and water the kinds of seeds that would produce a more compassionate, less-polluted and damaged world and life that we have collectively crafted of our own volition, whether we are aware or not. The dialogue goes on to say the following: “Pray, sir,” said the son, “tell …
(Review) Journey to the Heart Waters by Louisa Calio, reviewed by Karen Tintori

In the late 1970s, a journey of the heart tugged American-born Louisa Calio to Africa to reunite with a young man she’d met and loved several years prior in the US. The two friends shared a connection to Eritrea. He was born in Asmara, considered the “Rome” not only of Eritrea, but of Italy’s total African empire. His was a city built by Sicilians and, as WWII began, more than half of its residents were Italians. Now a different war was ravaging his country. Colonized first by Italy, then by Great Britain, and finally ceded to Ethiopia, Eritrea was then 17 years into a war for independence. Louisa, an Italian-American with Sicilian roots, felt profound empathy for the plight of the refugees fleeing the bombs pummeling their country, just as she still felt a profound pull to her beloved.

(Special Post) Why I choose to be an RTM contributor by Glenys Livingstone

The contribution of my writing to Return to Mago E-Magazine has evolved since it began four years ago, into a deeply mutually enhancing relationship. The time and effort taken to write carefully and in alignment with my heartfelt passions and insights, and then to be able to publish to a receptive audience, has always been rewarding – for me personally and apparently for many who received it.
(Special Post Mother Teresa 1) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

[Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] Part I: Why are we talking about Mother Teresa? [The conversation began among Anne Wilkerson Allen, Helen Hwang, and Wennifer Lin in a personal message and editor’s group. We agreed that Mother Teresa’s Western (Albanian) identity is hardly taken into consideration in the public perception of her as a secular and religious leader. Then, we decided to bring the topic to the Mago Circle.] Anne Wilkerson Allen: [A] posted this today and I think it is discussion worthy. Mother Teresa: Anything but a saint… scienceblog.com The myth of altruism and generosity surrounding Mother Teresa is dispelled in a paper by Serge Larivée and Genevieve Chenard of University of Montreal’s Department of Psychoeducation and Carole Sénéchal of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education… http://scienceblog.com/60730/mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint/#IdkpoWrDtMAAVCAg.99 Anne Wilkerson Allen: It is not my desire to bash the Church – I think everyone here is fully aware of the evils of patriarchy and the way the Church has used women, abused and killed women…but Teresa is an icon in the West, in particular, of saintliness. Even non-Catholics love her. Why? And is what she did really worthy of role modeling? Anne Wilkerson Allen: This was also on the thread. Not a huge fan of Hitchens, and I think calling her work a “death cult” is extreme, but I am interested in your opinions please. Christopher Hitchens – Mother Teresa: Hell’s Angel [1994] In 1994, three years before her death, journalist Christopher Hitchens made this documentary asking if Mother Teresa’s reputation was deserved… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76_qL6fiyDw Anne Wilkerson Allen: I would also like to talk about altruism and some of the areas we have touched on before…at what point is my “help” an imposition in a third world country? Is my desire to “help” spurred by years of programming or heart? I honestly don’t know anymore. Anne Wilkerson Allen: There is also a part of me that wonders if this deflection of blame and highlighting of Teresa’s faults now is yet another “Let the women take the fall” action. Anne Wilkerson Allen: NOT that I find her blameless – her advocacy against contraception and abortion is decidedly anti-female, but there is so much focus on the Pope and the priests now….I keep wondering when the abuses of the nuns is going to come to light. Anne Wilkerson Allen: I think Ireland recently had something in the news about this… Ireland apologizes for Catholic laundry scandal Ireland’s premier has issued a state apology to the thousands of Irish women who spent years working without pay in prison-style laundries run by Catholic nuns. Former residents of the now-defunct Magdalene Laundries have campaigned for the past decade to get the government to apologize and pay compensation to an estimated 1,000 survivors of the workhouses. Two weeks ago the Irish government published an investigation into the state’s role in overseeing the laundries. It found that more than 10,000 women worked in 10 laundries from 1922 to 1996, when the last Dublin facility closed down… http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57570107/ireland-apologizes-for-catholic-laundry-scandal/ Anne Wilkerson Allen: One of my friends was one of these girls. [Z]: I have wanted to bring attention to this issue for a long time but did not have a chance or was biting my time. Now Anne is pointing out some of the crucial issues about her, Mother Teresa, I am so thankful for this opportunity for us to sort out and think collectively. Thank you Anne! [Z]: Yes, the Catholic Laundry Scandal was shared here too!!! Anne Wilkerson Allen: It’s hard. She is iconic for many women. I did not know the sordid details or the horrors – not that it excuses anything….but when I was young, I saw her as someone to emulate….and thus became immolated…. [Z]: I have been thinking all along the way that she should not be a role model for women. Can you believe that I did even as a once Catholic Sister?!!! I know that many religious women out there will agree with me too. [Z]: My critique is not much on her as a person. But the fact that she represents morality for especially women makes me mad. Oh, there seems a lot more about reasons why we should debunk the mystique of Mother Teresa. Anne Wilkerson Allen: One of the things Hirchens pointed out was that it made Westerners feel good that this wonderful white woman was helping the poor in Calcutta….though she rarely seemed to be in Calcutta. Another friend told me that he knew one of the sisters of charity and that she told him they were encouraged to flog themselves on a regular basis….sick sick sick Anne Wilkerson Allen: This is why I have a problem with the mentality that says evil exists to teach us something…..that suffering exists to highlight our joy….there is just something WRONG with that. Anne Wilkerson Allen: We are all dark and light and in-between. [Z]: I am not surprised. Yes, definitely. What a waste of time and intelligence if not already damaging many turning the navigation backward!!! [Helen Hwang calls out the individual names to join the discussion, and is responded by what follows.] [B]: In Minneapolis there is a charity founder, Mary Jo Copeland, who helps the homeless & hungry. She just received an award from the President. She seems selfless, like Mother Teresa did (at least in […]
(Special Post Mother Teresa 3) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

Part III: The Debate, What Went Right/Wrong with Mother Teresa? [Editorial Note: The following is an edited version of the discussion that took place spontaneously on Mago Circle from March 1, 2013 for about two weeks. It was an extensive, heated, yet reflective discussion, now broken into four parts to fit the format of the blog. We thank each and all of the participants for your openness, generosity, and courage to stand up for what you believe and think! Some are marked as anonymous. As someone stated, something may have been “written in the heat of the moment” and some might like to change it at a later time. So we inform our readers that nothing is written in stone. As a matter of fact, the discussion is ongoing, now with Magoism Blog readers. Please comment and respond as you wish.] [C]: Unfortunately, Mother Theresa is not understood here in some of these comments: To be in any way critical of Mother Theresa using what was the state of the world in her time & the poor & dying as tools of compassion, even more so when left to die visibly barely cared for, as a teaching method must not be looked at as unfeeling on her part as it was her greatest sorrow to use them so horribly as means to an end, but they were what she had at hand. Was never her intention to use any money to save them, would negate their very suffering purpose as well. She did not believe we all had learned the lesson yet in her time so she had to pretend to be solving the problem while continuing the problem. You see, the money was a byproduct of no importance to her, used just to get the peoples’ attention by using what they valued, let the Church have it for other things for it had served it’s purpose by bringing her sought after awareness of the poor & dying into view. In pretending to like & accept attention to herself, honors, & even challenges to these choices, all for one purpose to fool, to get the poor & dying attention, is why she was so distressed near the end by the means she had to use to reach that end! And perhaps her sheer loss of hope at having to stoop to such measures which reflects on the sad state of the rest of us. Wondering here where the money went doesn’t understand anything of what she was trying to do. [C]: Thank You Naa Ayele Kumari for plowing through my thoughts enough to ‘like’ even! Could I be understood that Mother Theresa’s intentions were ‘higher’ than just taking care of the poor & dying in institutions, but to have the people understand there should be ‘feelings’ for them so they would never ever even have to be cared for in such ‘style’? She sacrificed these many nonpeaceful deaths to display, to show, to the whole world the direction it was heading, for the saving of the future multitudes of suffering & deaths if no one understood & cared soon. She dreamed these future lives would be right & good & their deaths would be the same attended by loved ones of their own, no need for group interference. She did not wish to just contain such tragedy, but to eliminate it from the whole earth forever. In the smaller scale view of some today the institutions are a necessary step, however Mother Theresa thought this a false step on a horrible path in the wrong direction, & she knew this, & dreamed beyond! To send away, to cage, the suffering, old, & sick in any society is a crime against Mother Nature no matter what the excuses or how pretty the packaged institution is presented! [Z] Did not foresee the discussion would provoke such indepth and rich responses. It feels that we are getting close to the bottom of the matter that has not been brought up for so long, not in my life time. Profound interactions that make us aware of the aspects of how our thinking and living can be based on the kind of values we hold. I treat each and all of you in the hand of our goddesses. Anne Wilkerson Allen: I think the Mother always moves us back toward compassion. Whether we have a sense of deity or not, we can all understand contextually how she was used and that her “beliefs” left her with such poverty of spirit that her entire life is under the microscope. I wonder, will the media ask what the Church has done with all their Billions or simply focus on a dead nun indoctrinated by the system? Diane Horton: No, I am sorry. [C], that is an incredible rationalization of Mother Teresa’s actions. Unbelievable actually. For you to justify her not using the extraordinary amount of money sent to her by saying that she chose to use these horrible deaths to bring attention to the sick and the dying and evoke compassion in people – that is the most megalomaniac position possible! Did she assume the role of God then?? That is outrageous! To think that she had the means to relieve these poor people’s sufferings and chose not to in order to USE them is even more heinous to me! I cannot wrap my head around how you think that is a good thing. She already HAD evoked compassion for these people. That’s why the money poured in! And all the “pretending” and lying you said she did for the greater good? NO. Compassion and empathy are a basic human response to suffering. “She sacrificed these nonpeaceful deaths” REALLY?! She had no right. And she was wrong. I can see no lofty ideal she was displaying there. Diane Horton: Forgive, me. I could not let what was said there lie. I won’t say anymore. Everyone has their own perspective. And each perspective together makes the whole. Blessed Be. [C]: On this […]

(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 …
Happy New Year, Year 2/5916 Magoma Era! by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“The Bell of King Seongdeok, known as the Emille Bell, a massive bronze bell at 19 tons is the largest in Korea.” Wikimedia Commons. Cast in 771, the bell reenacts the music of whales to remind people of the Female Beginning, the self-creative power innate all beings. Today is Day 2 of the New Year in the reconstructed Magoist Calendar characterized by 13 months per year and 28 days per month. We are heading toward the Solstice that falls on Dec. 21/22 (Day 5 of the first month in the Magoist Calendar), which happens to be the day of the first full moon of Year 2. Below is the details about the Magoist Calendar. https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/03/27/magoist-calendar-13-month-28-day-year-1-5915-me-2018-gregorian-year/ The Gregorian year 2018 marks a watershed in that we began to implement the Magoist Calendar. The Magoma Era is based on the onset of the nine-state confederacy of Danguk (State of Dan, the Birth Tree) traditinally dated 3898 BCE-2333 BCE. We just passed Year 1 or 5915 Magoma Era (the Gregorian 2018). For Year 1, we had the New Year Day on December 18 of 2017, the first new moon day before the December Solstice. That makes December 18 of 2017 our lunation 1, the first lunar year that the reconstructed Magoist Calendar determines its first day of the Year 1! Although relatively short in history, the Mago Work began to celebrate the Nine Day Mago Celebration on the day of December Solstice annually since 2015. With the reconstructed Magoist Calendar, we placed it in its due timeframe, the Ninth Month and the Ninth Day, which fell on August 8, 2018 (US PST) and celebrated it for the first time according to the Magoist Calendar. Apparently, this had to be a mid-Summer event. This left us with another seasonal event, the New Year/Solstice Celebration. For Year 2, we hold the 3 Day New Year/Solstice Celebration on December 20, 21, and 22 (December 22 to be the Solstice Dat in PST) and the Virtual Midnight Vigil as a precussor to the New Year Day. http://www.magoacademy.org/2018/07/17/2018-5915-magoma-era-year-1-nine-day-mago-celebration/ https://www.magoacademy.org/home-2/new-year-solstice-celebrations/ We just greeted the Year 2 by holding the event called Virtual Midnight Vigil during which we sounded the Korean temple bell, in particular the Emile Bell or the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok the Great, to the world. A few from around the globe (Germany, Korea, Italy and the US) participated in it or hosted their own local vigils. The Korean temple bell is the key symbol for the Magoist Calendar as well as the Magoist Cosmogony. It is not a coincidence that it is struck on the midnight of the New Year’s Eve. It is Korean tradition that even modern Koreans gather at the bell tower in Seoul to hear the sound of the bell at midnight. And these bells are gigantic weighing 19 tons in the case of the Emile Bell. That this convention has an ancient Magoist root remains esoteric. For not only they strike the bell 28 times in the evening indicating the 28 lunar stations that the Moon stops by in the sky throughout the year (please read below what the 28 day lunar journey means and how it is represented by women). But also the Korean temple bell is no mere acoustic device to play the beautiful sound only. It is designed to reenact the Magoist Cosmogony. https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/12/14/virtual-midnight-vigil-dec-17-2018-to-new-year-year-2-5916-magoma-era/ That said, that is not what’s all about the Korean Magoist convention of welcoming the New Year by sounding the temple bell, however. That the bell sound is a mimicry of the music of whales has been in the hand of wisdom seekers! Ancient Korean bells testify that whales are with us in the journey of the Moon and her terrestrial dependents headed by women. You may like to hear the sound of the Magoist Korean whale bell included in the Participation Manual for Virtual Midnight Vigil below. Happy New Year to all terrestrial beings in WE/HERE/NOW! https://www.magoacademy.org/2018/12/16/participation-manual-for-virtual-midnight-vigil-year-2/
(Poem) Samhain by Annie Finch

In the season leaves should love, since it gives them leave to move through the wind, towards the ground they were watching while they hung, legend says there is a seam stitching darkness like a name. Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days, till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor. I turn my hand and feel a touch move with me, and when I brush my young mind across another, I have met my mother’s mother. Sure as footsteps in my waiting self, I find her, and she brings arms that hold answers for me, intimate, waiting, bounty: “Carry me.” She leaves this trail through a shudder of the veil, and leaves, like amber where she stays, a gift for her perpetual gaze. From Eve (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010) (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
(Prose) Desire: the Wheel of Her Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the concluding chapter (Chapter 8) of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Place of Being is a passionate place, where desire draws forth what is sought, co-creates what is needed[1]; within a con-text – a story – where love of self, other and all-that-is are indistinguishable … they are nested within each other and so is the passion for being. I begin to understand desire afresh: this renewed understanding has been an emergent property of the religious practice of seasonal celebration: that is, the religious practice of the ceremonial celebration of Her Creativity. It has been said She is “that which is attained at the end of desire[2].” Within the context of ceremonial engagement and inner search for Her, I begin to realize how desire turns the Wheel. As the light part of the cycle waxes from Early Spring, form/life builds in desire. At Beltaine/High Spring, desire runs wild, at Summer Solstice, it peaks into creative fullness, union … and breaks open at that interchange into the dark part of the cycle – the dissolution of Lammas/ Late Summer. She becomes the Dark One, who receives us back – the end of desire. It has been a popular notion in the Christian West, that the beautiful virgin lures men (sic) to their destruction, and as I perceive the Wheel, it is indeed Virgin who moves in Her wild delight towards entropy/dissolution; however in a cosmology that is in relationship with the dark, this is not perceived as a negative thing. Also, in this cosmology, there is the balancing factor of the Crone’s movement towards new life, in the conceiving dark space of Samhain/Deep Autumn – a dynamic and story that has not been a popular notion in recent millennia. Desire seems not so much a grasping, as a receiving, an ability or capacity to open and dissolve. I think of an image of an open bowl as a signifier of the Virgin’s gift. The increasing light is received, and causes the opening, which will become a dispersal of form – entropy, if you like: this is Beltaine/High Spring – the Desire[3]that is celebrated is a movement towards dis-solution … that is its direction. In contrast, and in balance, Samhain/Deep Autumn celebrates re-solution, which is a movement towards form – it is a materializing gathering into form, as the increasing darkness is received. It seems it is darkness that creates form, as it gathers into itself – as many ancient stories say, and it is light that creates dispersal. And yet I see that the opposite is true also. I think of how there is desire for this work that I have done, for whatever one does – it is then already being received. Desire is receiving. What if I wrote this, and it was not received or welcomed in some way. But the desire for it is already there, and perhaps the desire made it manifest. Perhaps the desire draws forth manifestation, even at Winter Solstice, even at Imbolc/Early Spring, as we head towards Beltaine – it is desire that is drawing that forth, drawing that process around. Desire is already receiving; it is open. Its receptivity draws forth the manifestation. And then the manifestation climaxes at Summer and dissolves into the manifesting, which is perhaps where the desire is coming from – the desire is in the darkness, in the dark’s receptivity[4]. It becomes very active at the time of Beltaine, it lures the differentiated beings back into Her. So the lure at Beltaine is the luring of differentiated beings into a Holy Lust, into a froth and dance of life, whereupon they dissolve ecstatically back into Her – She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire.” And in the dissolution, we sink deeper into that, and begin again. All the time, it is Desire that is luring the manifest into the manifesting, and the manifesting into the manifest. Passion is the glue, the underlying dynamic that streams through it all – through the light and the dark, through the creative triplicities of Virgin-Mother-Crone, of Differentiation-Communion-Autopoeisis[5]. Passion/Desire then is worthy of much more contemplation. If desire/allurement is the same cosmic dynamic as gravity, as cosmologist Brian Swimme suggests[6], then desire like gravity is the dynamic that links/holds us to our Place, to “that which is”, as philosopher Linda Holler describes the effect of gravity[7]. Held in relationship by desire/allurement we lose abstraction and artificial boundaries, and “become embodied and grow heavy with the weight of the earth[8].” We then know that “being is being-in relation-to”[9]. Holler says that when we think with the weight of Earth, space becomes “thick” as this “relational presence … turns notes into melodies, words into phrases with meaning, and space into vital forms with color and content, (and) also holds the knower in the world[10].”Thus, I at last become a particular, a subject, a felt being in the world – a Place laden with content, sentient: continuous with other and all-that-is. Notes: [1]“…as surely as the chlorophyll molecule was co-created by Earth and Sun, as Earth reached for nourishment; as surely as the ear was co-created by subject and sound, as the subject reached for an unknown signal.” As I have written in PaGaian Cosmology, p. 248. [2]Doreen Valiente, The Charge of the Goddessas referred to in Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p.102-103. [3]I capitalize here, for it is a holy quality. [4]Perhaps the popular cultural association of the darkness/black lingerie etc. with erotica is an expression/”memory” of this deep truth. [5]These are the three qualities of Cosmogenesis, as referred to in PaGaian Cosmology, Chapter 4, “Cosmogenesis and the Female Metaphor”: https://pagaian.org/book/chapter-4/ [6]Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, p.43. [7]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”, Hypatia, Vol. 5 No. 1, p.2. [8]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”,Hypatia, Vol. …
Samhain: Stepping Wisely through the Open Door by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Day of the Dead altar, via Wikimedia Commons According to Celtic tradition, on Samhain (October 31 for those in the north and April 30 for those in the south) the doors between the human and spirit worlds open. Faeries, demons, and spirits of the dead pour out of the Otherworld to walk the Earth. In the past, some would try to hurry ghosts past their houses or ward off evil spirits by setting jack o’lanterns in their windows. They avoided going outside, especially past cemeteries, lest they be snatched away to the Otherworld. In ancient times, some offered sacrifices to propitiate deities. However, others have invited in the souls of friends and family who have passed away. In Brittany, according to W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, people would provide “a feast and entertainment for them of curded-milk, hot pancakes, and cider, served on the family table covered with a fresh white tablecloth, and to supply music” which “the dead come to enjoy with their friends” (p. 218). Other cultures also have such welcoming traditions. In Korea, as so beautifully described by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang in her posts about her family’s mourning for her father (Part I and Part II), in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, and elsewhere, food and flowers are brought to cemeteries to honor those no longer in the realm of the living. Many of us live in a society where death is pushed out of sight and Samhain’s sacred traditions have devolved into Halloween, a commercialized children’s holiday. Still, it seems to me that the pandemic, climate catastrophes, and war have made death much more present in our everyday thoughts over the past couple of years than before, so perhaps this year’s Samhain offers us the opportunity to re-examine Celtic and other practices of the past and present to see what insights and meaning they may have for us. Jack o lanterns: By Mihaela Bodlovic, via Wikimedia Commons All these ancient practices respect the spirit world and its power. Whether you believe that the Otherworld can wreak havoc on us at Samhain or not, the realm where spirits dwell clearly has power. Its allure can take us away from focusing on mundane, daily challenges or, more positively, open our eyes to the value of relating to forces that can give richness and meaning to our lives. At the same time, we must remember that each domain has its own power. We can use our physical bodies in beneficial ways that those in the Otherworld cannot. We must respect the power of the Otherworld as well as our own. Some kinds of healing are only possible when we welcome those from the Otherworld into our lives in a healthy way, whether through holiday visits or every day through remembrance, meditation, prayer, or other means. I’m of an age when many of my beloveds are in the Otherworld and so I am beginning to find that the idea of being able to sit with someone I have lost is cause not for fear, but rather joy and comfort. Perhaps those who have longstanding wounds from the past can heal by remembering those we have lost at Samhain and forgiving them or ourselves or realizing that we are no longer bound to those who have hurt us and are now gone. Samhain can also reassure us of the truth of our intuitive sense that our beloveds who we grieve are with us still, in some way, on this night and throughout the year. When we participate in the celebration of Samhain’s opening of doors to the Otherworld, if only for a day, we are honoring our own participation into the great cycle of life, death, and rebirth. We are expanding our vision of ourselves to be more than our bodies on the Earth and experiencing ourselves as connected to many realms, seen and unseen, spirit and human. We are accepting that at some time we will also become ancestors, with all the responsibility that entails and the fulfillment of taking our place in the complex matrix of being that is our universe. When we interact with the souls of those we have lost in ways that are healthy for us, however we may choose and believe that happens, we can also better celebrate the realm of the living. Just as we may listen in various ways for positive messages from those whom we have lost, we can ensure that we are expressing important guidance to those who will come after us by who we are and how we live our lives. We can express that life is worth living, even with all its traumas, and that we respect both the boundaries and the doors between the worlds so that we may continue living fully in our physical bodies on our beautiful, awe-inspiring Earth. I hope my message to my descendants will be: Love your lives. Build on what we have done and do better. Leave behind what we left you that no longer serves. If you feel alone, remember that you have thousands of generations of mothers sending you unconditional love and also generations of women coming after you eager to pick up where you left off. According to Mary Condren in The Serpent and the Goddess, in the most ancient times, “Samhain had been primarily a harvest feast celebrating the successful growth and gathering of the fruits of the past year” (p. 36). While we in the north are coming into the season of death, those in the south are experiencing Beltane, the first moments of spring when the doors between the worlds are also open. The eternal cycle of life, death, and regeneration turns again. Whether you are celebrating Samhain or Beltane, know that this holy time offers us all a chance to enter into the task of maintaining harmony with those we have loved before and for bringing balance between life and death, winter and summer, and the realm of the living and …
Imbolc/Early Spring – a Season of Uncertainty by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Traditionally the Seasonal transition of Imbolc/Early Spring, celebrated in early February in the Northern Hemisphere, and in early August in the Southern Hemisphere, has been a time of nurturing the new life that is beginning to show itself, around us and within. It is a time of committing one’s self to the new life and inspiration – in the garden, in the soul, and in the Cosmos. We may include in our celebrations and contemplations of this Season the beginnings of the new young Cosmos as She was, that time in our cosmic story when She was only a billion years old and galaxies were forming; and also the new which has continually emerged throughout the eons, and is ever coming forth. The flame of being, as it has been imagined by many cultures, within and around, is to be protected and nurtured: the new being requires dedication and attention. In the early stages of its advent, there is nothing certain about its staying power and growth: it may flicker and be vulnerable. There may be uncertainties of various kinds. There is risk and resistance to coming into being. The Universe itself knew resistance to its expansion when it encountered gravitation in our very beginnings, in the primordial Flaring Forth[i]. The unfolding of the Universe was never without creative tension. The Universe knows it daily, in every moment: and we participate in this creative tension of our place of being. Urge to Be budding forth Imbolc/Early Spring can be a time of remembering personal vulnerabilities, feeling them and accepting them, but remaining resolute in birthing and tending of the new, listening for and responding to the Urge to Be[ii]of the Creative Universe within. Brian Swimme has said (quoting cultural anthropologist A.L. Kroeber) that the destiny of the human is not “bovine placidity” but the highest degree of tension that can be creatively born[iii]. many flames of being, strengthening each other These times are filled with creative tension, collectively and for most, personally as well; there is much resistance, yet there is promise of so much good energy arising. We may be witness to both. This Season of Imbolc/Early Spring may encourage attention, intention and dedication to strengthening well-being: in self, and in the relational communal context, and opening to our direct immersion in the Well of Creativity. We may be strengthened with the joining of hands, as well as the listening within to the sacred depths, in ceremonial circle at this time. NOTES: [i]As our origins (popularly named as “the Big Bang”) are named by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme in The Universe Story. [ii]As I name this determined Virgin quality in PaGaian Cosmology. [iii]The Canticle to the Cosmos, DVD #8, “The Nature of the Human”. References: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Swimme, Brian. Canticle to the Cosmos. DVD series, 1990.

(Mago Almanac Planner Year 5 Excerpt 3) 13 Month 28 Day Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This and its sequences are a newly added portion in the Mago Almanac Planner Year 5, equivalent to the Gregorian Year 2022. Because the Budoji did not explain further about time units smaller than 1 day, I did not follow through some possible implications in previous Mago Almanac volumes. Next year’s Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar Year 5 or 5919 MAGOMA ERA is forthcoming in Mago Bookstore (October 25, 2021). PDF version is available for purchase.] We set the new moon day of the Winter Solstice month in 2017 as the New Year of Year 1. With that, we are able to tap Magoist days into Gregorian days that we moderns use. Then, how do we bring down a Magoist time in the scheme of the Gregorian time? How do we determine the onset of New Year in the Magoist Calendar? When would be the midnight of New Year in Year 1? That requires a translation of Mago time into Gregorian time. We can designate midnight as a midpoint in time equidistant from the sunset of New Year’s Eve to the sunrise of New Year. As local times vary around the globe, the midnight of New Year varies in states and cities. In Los Angeles, California USA, the first Magoist midnight falls on 23:29 on December 17, 2017 for Year 1. That would be 07:29 on December 18, 2017 in UTC. Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Midnight12/17/2017 23:2912/17/2018 23:2912/17/2019 23:2912/16/2020 23:30Sunset16:45, 12/1716:45, 12/1716:45, 12/1716:44, 12/16Sunrise6:53, 12/186:53, 12/18 6:53, 12/186:53, 12/17 (Sunset and sunrise times in Los Angeles, USA) The below table shows the first Magoist midnight (around 0.33 AM) falls on December 18, 2017 in Gyeongju, South Korea. That would be 15:33 on December 17, 2017 in UTC. Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Midnight12/18/2017 0:33.512/18/2018 0:32.512/18/2019 0:32.512/17/2020 0:32.5Sunset17:11, 12/1717:11, 12/1717:11, 12/1717:11, 12/16Sunrise7:28, 12/187:27, 12/18 7:27, 12/187:27, 12/17 (Sunset and sunrise times in Gyeongju, South Korea) We can imagine a spiral progression of years from Little Calendar (one year) to Medium Calendar (two years) and to Large Calendar (four years). Every year has one leap day, whereas every fourth year has another leap day in the middle of the year. Cyclic time, as it progresses, creates rhythm and harmony in the human world. Little Calendar (1 year)13×1=13 months364 days+1 leap day=365 daysMedium Calendar (2 years)13×2=26 months2x(364 days+1 leap day) =730 daysLarge Calendar (4 years)13×4=52 months4x(364 days+1 leap day)+1 leap day=1,461 days (End of the series) https://www.magoacademy.org/virtual-midnight-vigil-to-new-year/ https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang/
(Essay 2 Part 2) Why Do I Love Korean Historical Dramas? by Anna Tzanova, M.A.

Part 2 ENGAGING THE MIND It makes me cringe every time someone calls Korean drama, especially the historical genre, a soap opera. The fact that they are TV series doesn’t necessarily make them foamy. Quite the contrary, they are full of substance. They don’t go on and on for years, season after season. On average, most of them are 24 to 60, one-hour-long episodes. Some have fewer episodes, some have more episodes, but after they are done—we move on. It’s a good way to learn non-attachment. Korean historical drama is thought provoking. It is multidimensional in the way it presents characters and stories. Plots are well developed, intelligent, intriguing, and entertaining. Yes, there are some predictable outcomes, but there is also a lot of substance and artistic craftiness, as well as clever twists and fascinating surprises. Sageuk (Korean Historical Drama) can teach about history and culture, and also about mythology, philosophy, and spirituality. It reminds us of the values that are fading or have vanished in Western culture in the 21st century. The importance of subtleties in life is shown through plot development, rhythm, and acting. Reoccurring themes convey lessons like patience, acceptance, forgiveness, trust, integrity, perseverance, and courage… That is, the true meaning and practice of those. There is depth in the understanding of the writers, as well as in the corresponding depiction by actors. There is profundity, which evokes a reciprocal reaction in the viewers’ mind. The characters are likable—and their outlook on life and their behavior are admirable. They evolve and influence each other and their environment. There is this definitive sophistication in expression of emotion. Something akin to meditation. In Sageuk, “silence speaks”. Thus, the experience is not only pleasant, relaxing and/or exciting, but many times healing and enlightening. Confucian ideas mixed with Buddhist and Daoist ideals motivate the protagonists’ kind and considerate actions. A particularly valued quality in Korea is “착하다/착한 [chakhada/chakhan]”. I first heard it mentioned in an interview[i]/book[ii] presentation of Euny Hong. The translation in the dictionary reads, “good, nice, good-natured, kind-hearted, meek, obedient, docile, gentle, quiet.” Actually, it is all this and much more. It is a trait that when faced with, being cynical—as we often are in the 21st century—we can easily dismiss as being naive, gullible, submissive, and even foolish. However, in the words of Rumi, “Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates: at the first, you ask yourself, ‘Is it true?’ At the second gate ask, ‘Is it necessary?’ At the third gate ask, ‘Is it kind?’”. The heroines and heroes in Korean historical drama follow this teaching in words and action. Most epitomize pure heartedness. There is a child-like sweetness about many of them—come to think of it, by losing innocence, has humanity really gained wisdom? In the online edition of Entertainment Weekly, I encountered a quote by Jacqueline Sia, Director of Video Operations of New York based DramaFever—one of the largest databases of subtitled Asian films and TV programs. In speaking about Korean drama she states: “Portrayal of love is a little more PG,”[iii] an observation that strikes any novice in the genre. We have become used to quick climaxes, crash-and-burn liaisons, as well as media glorified dysfunctional relationships. The predominant understanding of sex (and certainly the one staring at us from the TV and cinema screens) is hurried, flat, and linear. There is a disconnect between sex and love. Profanity and violence pour daily from everywhere. Exhibiting symptoms of an empath can easily be diagnosed as a psychiatric condition, and yet we are conditioned to be less and less sensitive. In this background, complex and refined emotional states, longing, embodied sacredness, and the act of leaving much to the viewers’ imagination, seem to be suitable only for children. Are we awake and mature enough to realize that all the psychological and social implications of the well-manipulated programming we are subjugated to is already bearing fruit in ‘real life’? (Read Essay 2 Part 1. To be continued in Essay 2 Part 3.) Notes: [i] The Korean Society, “Euny Hong discusses with WSJ columnist Jeffrey Yang her first nonfictional book,” YouTube (November 6, 2014). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxHv2gT539o [ii] Euny Hong, “The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture,” Simon and Shuster (2014). [iii] Hillary Busis, “Korean Dramas: A Beginner’s Guide,” Entertainment Weekly (April 11, 2014). Description of Korean Historical Dramas: This course offers a series of Korean Historical TV-dramas or Sageug (사극) and discusses the traits of female characters as well as general features of Korean history, culture, art, aesthetics, thought, customs, and people. What makes Korean drama so unique? What is the “secret recipe” that makes it so popular internationally? Why is it that, after a few episodes, one can‘t wait to see the next one or the next new drama? Those questions have made many wonder, from audiences to journalists and critics. Participants are invited to explore answers to these questions and more. Our emphasis is on woman’s place in history, as well as her role as creator, healer and leader; her strife to discover and reinvent herself, her inherent wisdom, her abilities to surrender, without giving up, and her potential to adapt, thrive, and ultimately transform the world she is in. Our selection of dramas qualifies high criteria in story content, character development, actor portrayal, multiplicity of ideas and values, and abilities to educate, while engaging and entertaining the viewer. Facilitators (Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Ms. Anna Tzanova) will provide articles and audio-video materials concerning salient themes. (For more, see here) Info on online class, Korean Historical Dramas. See Meet Mago Contributor Anna Tzanova.
Mago, the First Mother from East Asia by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Excerpts from “Mago, the First Mother from East Asia,” Creatrix Media Live (CML) Roundtable Radio Talk with Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang. May 23, 2011] Jayne DeMente: Welcome Helen, I was fortunate to read some of your research and I applaud you because, we in the Western WSE movement have long needed to hear more from Asian women spiritual leaders and feminists and your reference to the Neolithic timeline… For our listeners and participants online, let’s lead with the question of who is Mago, was she a mother figure, what is Magoism, does any other deity pre-date her? Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: *Mago is the great goddess known to East Asians throughout history. She is the first mother of all, cosmogonist, and ultimate sovereign/ruler. She has many names. Among them are Triad Deity (Samsin), Grandmother (halmi), Auspicious Goddess (Seogo), Evil (Magui), and Old Goddess (Nogo). She is also known as the Giantess who shaped the natural and cultural landscape. Her manifestations are so multivalent that one may think they do not refer to the same goddess. She was well loved, given high esteem, celebrated by East Asians in the past. She was almost completely forgotten, however in modern times, up until the 1980s in Korea, when the principle text of Magoism, the Budoji, re-emerged. *Mago is a mother figure in the sense that she bore two daughters, Kunghee and Sohee, and managed her household called the Castle of Mago, the primordial paradise of humanity. She is the ancestor of all races. She takes care of everything on earth via the equilibrium of cosmic music/sound/vibration. *Magoism is the term that refers to the totality of culture/civilization venerating Mago as the great goddess. It is a tradition largely unnoted but co-opted and distorted in major East Asian religions. The concept of Magoism helps one identify and understand Mago’s multivalent manifestations that are found trans-nationally. It also makes possible to name the female-centered original/primal civilization that gave birth to the forthcoming East Asian civilizations and religions. *Whether Mago is the earliest deity known to East Asia is unknown. In fact, there are goddesses unearthed from “pre-historic” archaeological sites without their names. The life-sized goddess statue was unearthed in the site of Hongshan Culture, northeastern region of present China dating from 4,700 to 2,900 BCE. The heavy use of jade along with the partly bear-figured female icon is congruent with the account of Magoism in the Budoji. Also, of course, there are numerous female figurines called dogu excavated in Japan’s “pre-historic” times. The ancient origin of Mago or Magoism has a merit to explain some facts that remain a mystery, so to speak. Korea is also known as the land of dolmens. Half of the world megaliths are populated in the Korean peninsula. There are numerous pyramids found in mainland China. There is a documentary film about the sunken temple beneath the sea of Okinawa Japan, etc. dating to 10,000 years ago. *Then, how early does Mago date to? It is difficult to date the earliest evidence of Mago or Magoism simply because written history does not exist in pre-patriarchal times. As you see here, when we talk about the earliest of something, everyone assumes it is of Chinese. So let me follow this line of thought: Ge Hong’s record on Magu from China dates to the early fourth century CE (Ge Hong 283—343 CE). However, Daoist scholar Robert Ford Campany states that the cult of Mago dates back to the Stone Age. It is more difficult to date Mago in Korean records simply because ancient written records did not survive. Two books, the Budoji and the Handan Gogi, alleged to have been written in the late 4th or early 5th century and subsequent later times, which refer to Mago otherwise known as Samsin (Triad Deity) remain controversial. Considering that the name Mago is embedded in Korean language as in “gom,” “geum,” and “gam,” whose meaning indicates ruler, sovereign, and head, the origin of Mago is as old as these words. Likewise, most materials that recount Mago as cosmogonist are of folklore, place names, literature, arts, and debris of historical and religious records, most of which are difficult to date for its origin. Anniitra Ravenmoon: Thank you Helen, you have done much academic research and hold several degrees, can you explain to us how your education or experience informed you regarding Mago? Helen: *I would say that encountering Mago as a doctoral research topic is ultimately prompted by my intellectual quest as a Korean feminist. Following radical feminism of Mary Daly, I wanted to seek spirituality that is not only non-patriarchal but also East Asian and Korean. This made me study feminism and East Asian religions, histories, and cultures, etc. I end up with so much to study over the past decade and a half. I did not take up graduate studies as a means to develop an academic career. I loved reading and studies from youth. This kind of attitude is not that practical in the job market. However, I believe this is the right path for me. To look back, I did not follow the ready-made conventional path of life. I was a dreamer and idealist. I still value those qualities in myself and others. I used to think to myself, if I had remained a Christian, I would not have sought Mago. How could I? Likewise if I had resorted to Buddhism, I would not have encountered Mago. Because I wanted to carve out my own spiritual path as a Korean feminist, I was able to encounter Mago. Another factor at work in my study of Mago is the cultural or spiritual tradition of cultivating the Dao, the Way, in East Asia. I wanted to find out what the truth was, how I could make the most out of my life and etc. So I tried the shoes of a Catholic overseas missionary for a while. Leaving Christianity behind, however, helped me realize the cultural heritage that I have within. It was …

Author: RTM Editor

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