March 8, 2023January 28, 2023 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) When the Mists Shall Part by Arlene Bailey

I come from a time before time A time that existed in sucha way that the inhabitantsof this planet understoodthings beyond this plane,things beyond this world It was a time Read More …

February 8, 2023January 28, 2023 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Between the Realms by Arlene Bailey

The Old Ones have gatheredRound me, holding my handsAnd sheltering my broken heart,Supporting my body and soulAs I am stripped of everythingI’ve ever known, everything thatGives me meaning and heretoforeHas Read More …

January 11, 2023January 12, 2023 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Shrouded in the mist of long forgotten dreams by Arlene Bailey

As we move deeper into the dark inner time, with ancestors and ancient ideas and writings that slip through our consciousness, I can’t help but think about the beauty of Read More …

December 29, 2022December 26, 2022 Mago Work2 Comments

(Poem & Art) The Unbecoming by Arlene Bailey

What if we looked to the ancient Being that resides within us? What if we listened to Her voice and purpose for being? Listened to the Ancients and their stories Read More …

May 24, 2021April 29, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) The Remembering by Arlene Bailey

I remember you sister Whale Remember when I had a tail and fins Sister Dolphin Remember when we would swim for hours plunging the depths and traversing the breath of Read More …

April 28, 2021March 15, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Fling Open the Doors by Arlene Bailey

Where are we going Mother And how will we get there Sister By staying connected Woman And allowing for difference There’s a storm brewing You can feel it on the Read More …

March 3, 2021January 21, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) The Daughter Line by Arlene Bailey

I am the daughter of a daughter. Who is the daughter of a daughter. Who is also the daughter of a daughter. Some of us are mothers but all of Read More …

February 12, 2021February 1, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Once upon a time by Arlene Bailey

Once upon a time, All of life coexisted in harmony and beauty. The sacred art of the Cosmos and Nature dwelling side by side. Shades of blue and green, Earth Read More …

January 19, 2021January 17, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Holding the Rim by Arlene Bailey

One by one they walked through the woods. Eyes watching them, they knew they were not alone as the animals and spirits of the night, Ancestors and Cosmic Beings held Read More …

January 6, 2021January 6, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem) Be still She says by Arlene Bailey

Stop the Being and Doing for you can’t listen when you are so active. You can’t hear when so outward. Stop the planning and the cleaning. Those are Autumn actions Read More …

December 28, 2020November 9, 2020 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Poem & Art) Vision Weaver by Arlene Bailey

On the longest night of the year,as seeds sleep deep within the dark moist Mother,out of the void I step. Mirroring the essence of the moon,symbol of my own birth, Read More …

December 15, 2020December 15, 2020 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Poem & Art) The Soul of Woman by Arlene Bailey

I’m a Depth Diver traversing those realms where most fear to tread. Asking the questions and feeling into all the emotions of lifetimes wrapped in the shackles of the ideas Read More …

November 10, 2020November 9, 2020 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Poem & Art) The Place of the Next Light by Arlene Bailey

I’ve held it all in, all the hopes and dreams, the cries of despair… Held it all in until today. Until today when I felt this net of despair fall Read More …

(Poem) Omen by Sara Wright

This morning as I walked I saw an owl veer into the hemlocks, just above my head. Chestnut patterns stenciled on her feathery breast, powerful barred wings soaring in flight.
(Photo Essay) The Miracle of Becoming by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright We use the word “transformation” very casually in our culture. Humans including feminists have ‘adopted’ the word to describe an inner shift in mental awareness, and of course this can happen, although not usually after a weekend spiritual retreat. The dictionary defines transformation as a dramatic change in form or appearance. In animals, transformation becomes a metamorphosis – a true change in form during that creature’s life cycle. In physics the word denotes an induced or spontaneous change of one element to another by a nuclear process. As a naturalist and ethologist it seems to me that humans may not really know what the word transformation really means. Doesn’t transformation include both mind and body? Perhaps we need to turn to nature to find out! One point becomes abundantly clear. Transformation is fraught with danger and only some creatures (and humans?) are able to survive the shift. What follows is a story of transformation that moved me to tears. When the extraordinary creature emerged from a split translucent capsule I could hardly believe my eyes. Although I have witnessed butterfly transformation many times over the course of my life none have moved me like this butterfly birth did. For more than a week I had been eyeing the lime green capsule with its golden rim and specks imagining I could even see the butterfly inside! Patiently I waited and hoped. Anything could happen. Once about 45 years ago I raised a monarch whose wings were disfigured. S/he could not fly; so I knew what could go wrong… Yesterday morning the capsule was black – too black I thought – I could barely see the outline of the monarch. Black capsules that are not translucent usually contain dead butterflies. No one knows why. The miracle occurred while my back was turned! The next time I looked there was a perfect pale butterfly hanging next to the split capsule. S/he hung on the tree for hours moving deeper under cover of some nearby leaves. Camouflaged as a leaf. I worried about the cool weather. Insects need warmth; butterflies are coldblooded creatures. I took pictures of exquisite markings talking to the butterfly softly. Wishing her well. I was astonished when s/he moved up the twig and clasped my finger. Some inexplicable life force passed between us…Moments later the butterfly resumed her place under a leaf, her shiny black legs moving so deftly for one so young. By mid afternoon the monarch was flexing her beautiful deep orange wings now filled with the fluid that had been stored in her abdomen, and I finally noticed that she was a he! Two black spots told the tale. I picked a bouquet of some of the monarch’s favorite flowers and left it clipped to a branch nearby and placed another bouquet on the ground as the dusky cloak of night closed in. The temperature had dropped so I wasn’t surprised that the butterfly stayed hidden in her bower for the night. The next morning dawned a magnificent blue and gold September day. When I opened the door the butterfly was gone. No wind and mild temperatures will make ‘my’ monarch’s first flight to seek food more pleasurable. This monarch will be the one that makes the perilous 2000 mile flight to central Mexico. If he survives he will spend the winter with many others roosting in mountain trees until early spring when he will begin the journey north, mate with a female who will lay eggs, and then both will die. The next generation continues the flight. Others of their kind will finish the trip repeating the scenario again, some arriving here in western Maine around mid July. Most monarchs live only long enough to mate and lay eggs but this last instar lives about nine months. An extraordinary story. ________________________________________________________________________ This summer has been an amazing one because I have seen more monarch caterpillars than I ever have seen in my entire life, although I live in an area surrounded by fragrant milkweed. I started seeing monarchs here at the beginning of August. Some days I counted two or three caterpillars on one leaf. Some were less than an inch, others larger. Every morning I examined the milkweed and found more! I was thrilled yet baffled. What was going on here? Most folks know that monarchs are in steep decline – 80 percent are gone. I visited our local land trust whose pollinator garden attracts a multitude of monarchs. I spoke to the woman who runs the land trust. She told me people were seeing them everywhere, so I wasn’t alone. I also have a friend who has some milkweed in his garden and he was finding caterpillars daily – up to 40 in one day. I had less, but enough, so I thought, until in mid – August mine began to disappear. At first I assumed chrysalids were forming. Then I discovered that caterpillars of all ages were being cut in two and left for dead on the leaves they had been eating. Next came some black insect I was unable to identify because after sucking the life out of the chrysalis or capsule that the caterpillar spun to transform; only a black oozing blob remained. This destructive predator pattern eventually divested almost all of the caterpillars on my milkweed. Chrysalids too. Researching Monarch predators in some depth I learned there were just too many, and it seemed that all of them lived here. Even the tiny caterpillars on my butterfly weed only lasted a day before vanishing. I re-visited the land trust and saw many caterpillars, some chrysalids and many adult monarchs, but also learned that some of their capsules weren’t hatching. It was hard to draw any conclusion from the crowds that floated over the masses of Mexican sunflowers. The magnificent abundance of pollinators in such a small area was not the norm for most. I didn’t know how inflated the monarch population might be as a …
(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. What I found was an ancient landscape alive with myth and magic. For a thousand years, Sicily was the centre of Magna Graecia, the colonial settlements west of Greece. Gods, Goddesses, and nymphs still inhabit almost every hill, lake and spring. I flew from Malta to Catania to search for traces of Proserpina and Ceres (Greek: Persephone and Demeter). Proserpina is the Goddess of Sicily – her name comes from the word ‘proserpere’ – to emerge. Ask a Sicilian about Proserpina, and you will hear the tale of her abduction by Pluto on the banks of Lake Pergusa, close to the mountain town of Enna in the centre of Sicily.
(Book Review) Genevieve Vaughan’s The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning by Kaarina Kailo

(Book Review) The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning by Genevieve Vaughan (Mimesis International 2015) Genevieve Vaughan has published her third book regarding the reality and transformative potential of the gift economy, a logic and matrix of practices that imply the liberation of all genders. The new theory provides solutions to the most urgent need in neoliberal capitalist societies: to overturn the civilizational crises that capitalism and patriarchy have caused with the distortion and appropriation of the Gift. The Gift in the Heart of Language provides sobering and mind-altering perspectives on the gift economy in all of its manifestations.
(Poem & Photography) Inspiration is Always Present by Sara Wright

Copyrighted by Sara Wright I walk with care clearing paths iced over lead feet dragging a broken foot my companion Listen to first spring bird song – chickadees and doves! January thaw a steel fixture punctuated by frozen slippery hell – Temperatures soar and dip swelling wild waves – Soul stay attached to body Be Octopus* Sensing feeling tasting her way befriending the Other – Keep a keen eye on shifts one is coming perhaps relief from nightmares too. I look to rushing brook for inspiration natural joy open waters flowing stone sooth muscles loosens old bones. Rigidity will not do! See the Hemlock bent so low She won’t break My Talisman As mystic she reminds me Endurance Is All. *There is a moving documentary that I have watched a number of times called: “My Octopus Teacher” about a man who befriends an octopus who in turn becomes attached to him… A naturalist who is thrilled by the wonder of his experience with this animal he remains stuck in the colonized western thought process. “An octopus shouldn’t be this intelligent” he states after saying that 2/3rds of the octopus brain is in its tentacles, only a 1/3 in actual brain – here we see the colonization. Humans are STUCK on brains and measure every other species by brain capacity – refusing to acknowledge that many creatures don’t even have brains and yet they do fantastically intelligent things – if we have brains – brain and body create intelligence as a whole. BODY carries everything intellect does not – inner knowing – intuition – feeling – sensing – experiencing ALL WAYS OF KNOWING THAT COMPLIMENT THE BRAIN IF THERE IS ONE – Materialistic science calls befriending ‘ lower animals’ nonsense – informs me that receiving communication from a tree or dog or fern is just fantasy – when I am using ALL MY DESNES TO DISCERN WHEN OTHERS DO NOT… IF CREATURES HAVE BRAINS IN THEIR SKULLS FINE – IF THEY ARE LIKE THE OCTUPUS THEIR BRAINS ARE IN THEIR TENTACLES. I use my brain and all my senses…This man falls in love with his octopus but doesn’t acknowledge it beyond saying he feels wonder and grief… This film could show us other ways of seeing if we would just allow ourselves to move beyond the stupid brain box we are stuck in Not all species are interested in technology – humans are – that’s fine – we have created marvels but just because animals choose NOT to doesn’t make them less intelligent… human have brought the earth into crisis – not the rest of nature – does this give us a hint? https://www.magoism.net/2014/12/meet-mago-contributor-sara-wright/
(Meet Mago Contributor) Glenys Livingstone

Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D. (Australia) Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Social Ecology) has been on a Goddess path since 1979: her path has included diverse spiritualities and a scientific perspective, inner work as well as academic scholarship. Her studies have been in theology, ritual, archaeomythology, social ecology, psychology, sociology and education. Glenys is the author of PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion,which fuses the indigenous traditions of Old Europe with scientific theory, feminism and a poetic relationship with place. She was born and lives in country Australia, where she has facilitated Seasonal ceremony for decades, taught classes, and mentored apprentices. Her new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony documents the synthesis of her work over the past decades. She is the author of the children’s book My Name is Medusa, and co-editor of the anthology Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom. In 2014, Glenys co-facilitated the Mago Pilgrimage to Korea with Dr. Helen Hwang. Glenys is a contributor to Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality: Elders and Visionaries, edited by Miriam Robbins Dexter and Vicki Noble (2015), and also to Goddesses in World Culture, edited by Patricia Monaghan (2010). She produced PaGaian Cosmology Meditations CDs and teaches a year-long on-line course “Celebrating Goddess and Cosmogenesis in the Wheel of the Year” for both hemispheres. Her website is http://pagaian.org. Previously Published Posts by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D. Older Posts: (Essay 1) The Power of Metaphor: Spelling Ourselves, Our World by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Solstice meditation) Three Candles Meditation by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay 2) Feminism and the Future of Religion by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay 1) Feminism and the Future of Religion by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Review) Women and Spirituality: the Goddess Trilogy by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Review) Signs Out of Time by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay 2) Gaia as Universe-Earth-Self: a Unity of Being by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay 1) Gaia as a Cosmic Name by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay) Re-Storying Goddess: A PaGaian Cosmology by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D. (Essay 2) Con-Text: Personal/Cultural/Cosmic Stories by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D. (Solstice Poem) O Mother Sun by Glenys Livingstone (Essay 1) Con-Text: Personal/Cultural/Cosmic Stories by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay) Moon Goddess: Primordial Trinity and Cosmic/Personal Heritage by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Seasonal essay) Spring Equinox Southern Hemisphere September 2013 by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay 2) The Terms ‘Feminine’ and ‘Masculine’ by Glenys Livingstone (Essay 1) The Terms ”Feminine” and “Masculine” by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay 2) The Body – Essential or Not? by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay 1) The Body – Essential or Not? by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Essay) The Equinoxes as Story of Redemption: Sacred Balance of Maternal Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Poem) Mother-Warrior by Glenys Livingstone (Poem) Precious Body Unknown by Glenys Livingstone (Poem) Transformation by Glenys Livingstone ‘En-trancing Gaia’s Womb through Seasonal Ceremony: Re-creating Her Sacred Site’ by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. Winter-Spring EarthGaian Wisdom: Invoking the Power of Brigid, the Mother Creator by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. (Video) PaGaian Winter Solstice by Glenys Livingstone Winter-Spring EarthGaian Wisdom: Invoking the Power of Brigid, the Mother Creator by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.
(Review) She Appears! Encounters with Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion by Sandy Boucher; reviewed by Mary Saracino

In She Appears! Encounters with Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion, Sandy Boucher has compiled a sustaining feast of personal stories and artwork about the beloved Asian Goddess, the Celestial Bodhisattva of Compassion, Kwan Yin. Like Boucher, many—but not all—of the contributors to this volume are Buddhists—meditators, Zen priests, nuns, teachers, students. All have been profoundly touched by the very real presence of Kwan Yin in their lives.
Becoming Plant by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright “I did not know to recognize you as individuals when I bought you, but I know to recognize you as individuals now…” Xochitl Alvizo This morning, I read an excellent essay by Xochitl Alvizo about ‘extending compassion’ by choosing to become vegan. Her personal story touched me deeply because it was a tale of awakening to the sanctity of animal life. My story was different, but perhaps just as compelling. I include my partial response to her article here: I grew up as a meat eater, and ANIMAL lover… by my mid – twenties I started to feel very uncomfortable about eating meat, so gradually I ate less and less… I took a philosophy course. The professor shocked me. Was becoming vegetarian the answer? Wasn’t I still eating living things? By then I had already developed deep personal relationships with plants both inside and out – I already knew they responded to being loved and cared about. If I really wanted to get away from killing things, then would I be willing to take a pill to get the nutrients I needed instead of eating any more food he asked? I loved to cook. I loved food. I loved plants and animals. No, I thought. For me answering this question honestly was the source of a harsh awakening. No matter what I ate I was killing living beings. I finished that class with a burning question – how do I make peace with being an omnivore? I held that question in my heart. By then I had lost my taste for meat. It was ten years before I received an answer. My study of Indigenous peoples taught me that what I ate was less important than how I ate. The critical thing was to express my GRATITUDE to the beings whose lives were sacrificed for me to live… to be mindful… to stay aware. And so, I have tried to live this way ever since. Staying aware is hard. I have a trickster who often owns my mind. I say ‘try’ because often I forget. I rarely eat meat, but my dogs do because they are carnivores and I buy it. I also eat fish. I see myself as a participant in the Circle of Life where we must kill living beings be they fungi, plants, or animals to live regardless of who we are. I am also aware that most non- Indigenous people don’t have the kind of relationship I do with plants. I did not know how to recognize you as individuals when I first knew you, but I know how to recognize you as individuals now… (Paraphrasing Xochitl) Photo by Sara Wright When I was a toddler, I helped my grandmother in her vegetable garden. This was when I planted my first seed, a summer squash. When it came time to harvest the vegetables, the little person picked the squash and put the vegetable to sleep in her wooden doll’s bed. When the squash finally shrunk into an unrecognizable shape the story ended. For the child eating the squash was never an option, though no doubt I ate the ones my grandmother cooked. Clearly, the toddler sensed something about the sanctity of plants that I later ‘forgot’. As a young adult and mother, I had a houseful of plants that flourished but also seemed to be responding to my touch and care in uncanny ways. Sometimes I sensed something – an invisible current running between us. Plants have feelings, I concluded, not quite believing myself. As soon as my children were older, I planted vegetable and flower gardens that also flourished. I possessed a green thumb, some said. By mid -life I began to have strange experiences with individual plants and trees that spoke to me without words. I dreamed I was a vine with eyes in her leaves that crawled over the ground. I began to make tinctures from plants I gathered after sensing that a particular plant would help me. I went to Amazon to study medicine plants and learned that each healer had his own garden, that all plants spoke and healed various illnesses directly or through dreams. The roots of orchids lit up a luminous green whenever I repotted them. Sometimes the roots pulsed, heating up in my hands. I moved to the mountains from the coast because I was compelled to live in a wilder place. As soon as I did, I had frightening dreams about the death of thousands of trees. Trees were warning me of their collective demise, and I didn’t want to believe them. Strip logging began. Today almost every mountain is at least partially bare and all, but those on protected lands carry ugly scars. We have less than 100 acres of old tree growth left in Maine. I began to grow passionflowers, developing an eerie relationship with this species. Could this be the vine of my repetitive dream? Whenever I gave a rooted cutting to someone who would turn out to be an unworthy person the plant would die. I stopped giving my plants away. I went to New Mexico and stayed with a man I shouldn’t have, even though we had no romantic relationship. Within two months one of my passionflowers died. I was being warned, I knew. (Thank goodness I had left one plant home in the care of a friend).I was living in hell. When I became ill and was forced to leave this man’s house, I mourned the loss of that plant like a grieving mother. I spent a few years in New Mexico elsewhere. Suzanne Simard’s work with trees who communicated with one another through mycelial networks took on a new dimension. This fungal net of underground life that stretched across the earth became increasingly important to me. Fascinated by a world I knew nothing about and couldn’t see, I did a lot of research during this period. Some days when I walked along the river before dawn, …
(Budoji Essay 1) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“The Great Goddess Myth is the first and last revelation to humankind. Where the Primordial Mother is, there is Home!” Part 1 Introduction When I first read the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), the principal text of Magoism, my life journey took an unexpected turn. The power of the Magoist cosmogony began to work on me, and suddenly I was returning Home with/to/in Mago, the Great Goddess! Before, “Home” had seemed an unreal destination, a mirage that lured voyagers to its abyss of nowhere. I had been stripped of “Home.” The Magoist cosmogony gifted me with a vision of what I had been seeking as a feminist voyager. I meant to return Home. In Mago, I felt no longer free-floating, but this was not without its price. My radical feminist searches brought me no material benefits; rather, to become Myself was the reward. Layer after layer of patriarchal deception had to be peeled off. And for women who, like me, came from the non-Western, formerly colonized world, reversing the reversals required a deeper analysis of racism, ethnocentrism, and colonialism. I underwent the process of becoming Me, a process which also led me to WE. Personally, Homecoming means an integration of myself within the mytho-historical-cultural context of Magoism. However, Homecoming in the Great Goddess can never be an isolated individual act. Magoism unfolds the Primordial Home wherein all beings are kindred. The Primordial Home is for everyone. Everyone is destined to return Home in the Great Goddess because She is Here for us all. She will be Here for as long as humanity survives. Homecoming is a harbinger; it signals the arrival of WE, a very old concept that was misconstrued if not tabooed in patriarchy. The nature of my life has changed. “I” is no longer in the way of “WE.” “I” and “WE” do not stand against each other. Furthermore, “I” is transformed by “WE,” just as are all things in the universe. Scalar turns to vector. Chaos yields to order. The labyrinth leads to the Source. My feminism is rewarded with gynocentrism, the Goddess Matrix in which the female principle by far surpasses patriarchy. As many admit, Myth, the story of the divine, is etiological, meaning it explains the origin of things. I hold that only the gynocentric cosmogonic myth can be fully etiological, shedding light on the primal beginning. Myth is inherently gynocentric, for it is derived from the perception of the Primordial Mother, the oldest divine in human history. Put differently, Myth tells us that the Divine is She, that Female is the original divine. Myth is ultimately inseparable from the Great Goddess. The Primordial Mother is the macrocosmic translation of a mother. She is the Metaphor for life-giver and life-raiser. Divinity issues from Her. In Her, everything, including the God, is endowed with divinity. The etiological and metaphoric nature of Myth is fully illumined only in the story of the female beginning. The Goddess Myth told to/by us testifies to what patriarchy can’t or doesn’t tell. It is a language distinguished from that of patriarchy, dominating if not violent. The nature of Its language is persuasive and pacific. The truth It tells awakens one to Home. It is intrinsically soteriological, and herein lies the urgency of Myth: It shows the Way that humanity needs to know and follow in order to survive and flourish. The Great Goddess Myth is the first and last revelation to humankind. Where the Primordial Mother is, there is Home! Mago is not necessarily the “creator” of things. In the Magoist cosmogony, there is no one who created or creates anything alone. (I have used the term “cosmogony” in place of “creation” to avoid the conflation of Magoist thought with the origin-stories of patriarchal religions.) Instead, all things are interdependent and the power of auto-genesis is embedded within the universe itself. In explaining that, the Magoist cosmogony does not employ a magical or a logical jump. In the time of beginning, cosmic rays dance in accordance with the law of nature. Mago and primordial matter are self-born through the movement of cosmic music. Mago is, above all, the Cause of human existence. All things on Earth are indebted to Mago for She initiated the process auto-genesis of the Earth itself. In short, She is the Source of Life on Earth. Without Her, nothing is possible for us.

(Special Post 1) "The Oldest Civilization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

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

Although the term “Dreamtime” is often not considered an adequate translation of the cosmology, religion or spirituality of Indigenous Australians, Munya Andrews of the Bardi people from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, acknowledges this and chooses to name her recently published book with it, explaining that: “I love the term … For me, it conjures up a magical and mysterious world.”, and she feels that the term aligns perfectly with the common global religious concept that Diety is beyond words and human understanding. For me, as Munya Andrews describes “Dreamtime”, it seems resonant with the sense of “ever-present Origins”[1]; that is, original space and time that is omnipresent. This is a space/place that I understand to be referred to as “between the worlds” and “beyond the bounds of space and time”, by Indigenous Europeans (Pagans), a tradition with which I am familiar. I understand it to be a sentient world in which we are immersed actually, and which may be revealed to the observant person in synchronous moments. With practice one may live with clearer everyday connections with this world, and Munya’s book is an important contribution to making those connections from within the cosmology of her people; and for “all beautiful souls to keep the Dreamtime alive”, as she says in the book’s dedication. This book provides informative story that should be part of every Australian’s education at various levels: it lays a groundwork and also elicits deepening understandings. The teachings offered in Journey into Dreamtime should be considered essential knowledge for living on this land named Australia, whereas heretofore most present occupants have often not had easy access to such learning. This very readable and small book provides some basic facts: for example, that there are “250 or so Indigenous nations, each having their own language, their own names and ‘country’ or tribal lands.”; and that terms such as Koori, Nunga or Murri are “pan-Aboriginal” names taken on since colonisation, for the sake of asserting a distinct Indigenous identity, in the face of forced removal from families and land. In the course of the seven chapters Munya develops understanding of Dreamtime, and also understandings of Indigenous Law, Songlines, sacred sites, bush doctors/bush medicine, Rainbow Snake, and Kindredness. I found all of this really helpful, an invitation into a world of being and relationship; and it is told with frequent analogies from Western science and academic and spiritual texts, with which the reader may be more familiar, enabling the bridge into Indigenous science and worldview. There is a list of suggested readings offered, along with links and details for further connection and learning. At the conclusion of each chapter of Journey into Dreamtime there are “Dreamtime Reflections”, posing questions for personal consideration, inviting personal participation and pathways into some actual sense of an alive self in relationship with the alive world described. This book needs to be in spaces/places where everyday people can read it, like waiting rooms of all kinds (where there are frequently Bibles); as well as in every library, and especially Australian libraries. I highly recommend Journey into Dreamtime as an educational resource, for your self, for educational programs, and/or for any group that you may gather. Aunty Munya, as she names herself, has an impressive track record of speaking engagements, mentioned at the conclusion of the book, and invites you to have her speak to your organisation. She describes her life purpose as “to create better understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal people and to leave behind a legacy of Dreamtime wisdom for generations to come.” May it be so, as readers of Journey into Dreamtime absorb its teaching and resources. To order a copy of Journey into Dreamtime visit Evolve Communities NOTES: [1]“ever-present origin” is the English translation of Jean Gebser’s Ursprung und Gegenwart, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlag, 1966.
(Special Post 3) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Helen Hwang I study and advocate Goddess feminism or Magoism because it is a way of living for me. I find myself in Mago (the Great Goddess) who in turn leads me to the Way wherein I learn how to become the person who I can be. It has to be Mago, the Female Divine, because She is real! She is the Primordial Mother who is the Beginning and the End of everything to us on the planet Earth. She teaches me the real. I can’t negotiate Her to anything less. Helen Hye Sook Hwang, Ph.D. California http://magoism.net Bridget Robertson A Goddessian I was introduced to a form of meditative journeying by a resident in my grandmother’s retirement community. She approached to me. I know she was at least part Native American, and that alone made her the topic of much gossip in the building. Her Rose colored lipstick, deep brown eyes, wrinkles that only helped illuminate her face and a chiffon scarf that matched none of her clothes. I thought she needed help with her groceries. She didn’t. She had me stop the elevator. and directly asked about my looking tired. My response was about being, busy balancing all the areas of my life. In fact I was exhausted doling out time like pieces of pie.

Lammas/Late Summer within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 10 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd, Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd These dates are traditional, though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox, thus actually a little later in early February for S.H., and early August for N.H., respectively. a Lammas/Late Summer table The Old One, the Dark and Shining One, has been much maligned, so to celebrate Her can be more of a challenge in our present cultural context. Lammas may be an opportunity to re-aquaint ourselves with the Crone in her purity, to fall in love with Her again, to celebrate She Who creates the Space to Be. Lammas is a welcoming of the Dark in all its complexity: and as with any funerary moment, there is celebration of the life lived (enjoyment of the harvest) – a “wake,” and there is grieving for the loss. One may fear it, which is good reason to make ceremony, to go deeper, to commit to the Mother, who is the Deep; to “make sacred” this emotion, as much as one may celebrate the hope and wonder of Spring, its opposite. If Imbolc/Early Spring is a nurturing of new young life, Lammas may be a nurturing/midwifing of death or dying to small self, the assent to larger self, an expansion or dissipation – further to the radiance of Summer Solstice. Whereas Imbolc is a Bridal commitment to being and form, where we are the Promise of Life; Lammas may be felt as a commitment marriage to the Dark within, as we accept the Harvest of that Promise, the cutting of it. We remember that the Promise is returned to Source. “The forces which began to rise out of the Earth at the festival of Bride now return at Lammas.”[i] Creativity is called forth when an end (or impasse) is reached: we can no longer rely on our small self to carry it off. We may call Her forth, this Creative Wise Dark One – of the Ages, when our ways no longer work. We are not individuals, though we often think we are. We are Larger Self, subjects within theSubject.[ii] And this is a joyful thing. We do experience ourselves as individuals and we celebrate that creativity at Imbolc. Lammas is the time for celebrating the fact that we are part of, in the context of, a Larger Organism, and expanding into that. Death will teach us that, but we don’t have to wait – it is happening around us all the time, we are constantly immersed in the process, and everyday creativity is sourced in this subjectivity. As it is said, She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire:”[iii] the same Desire we celebrated at Beltaine, has peaked at Summer and is now dissolving form, returning to Source to nourish the Plenum, the manifesting – as all form does. This Seasonal Moment of Lammas/Late Summer celebrates the beginning of dismantling, de-structuring. Gaia-Universe has done a lot of this de-structuring – it is in Her nature to return all to the “Sentient Soup” … nothing is wasted. We recall the Dark Sentience, the “All-Nourishing Abyss”[iv] at the base of being, as we enter this dark part of the cycle of the year. This Dark/Deep at the base of being, to whom we are returned, may be understood as the Sentience within all – within the entire Universe. The dictionary definition of sentience is: “intelligence,” “feeling,” “the readiness to receive sensation, idea or image; unstructured available consciousness,” “a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness.”[v] The Old Wise One is the aspect of the Cosmic Triplicity/Triple Goddess that returns us to this sentience, the Great Subject out of whom we arise. We are subjects within the Great Subject – the sentient Universe; we are not a collection of objects, as Thomas Berry has said.[vi] This sentience within, this “readiness-to-receive,” is a dark space, as all places of ending and beginning are. Mystics of all religious traditions have understood the quintessential darkness of the Divinity, known often as the Abyss. Goddesses such as Nammu and Tiamat, Aditi and Kali, are the anthropomorphic forms of this Abyss/Sea of Darkness that existed before creation. She is really the Matrix of the Universe. This sentience is ever present and dynamic. It could be understood as the dark matter that is now recognized to form most of the Universe. This may be recognized as Her “Cauldron of Creativity” and celebrated at this Lammas Moment. Her Cauldron of Creativity is the constant flux of all form in the Universe – all matter is constantly transforming. We are constantly transforming on every level. a Lammas/Late Summer altar These times that we find ourselves in have been storied as the Age of Kali, the Age of Caillaech – the Age of the Crone. There is much that is being turned over, much that will be dismantled. We are in the midst of the revealing of compost, and transformation – social, cultural, and geophysical. Kali is not a pretty one – but we trust She is transformer, and creative in the long term. She has a good track record. Our main problem is that we tend to take it personally. The Crone – the Old Phase of the cycle, creates the Space to Be. Lammas is the particular celebration of the beauty of this awesome One. She is symbolized and expressed in the image of the waning moon, which is filling with darkness. She is the nurturant darkness that may fill your being, comfort the sentience in you, that will eventually allow new constellations to gestate in you, renew you. So the focus in ceremony may be to contemplate opening to Her, noticing our fears and our hopes involved in that. She is the Great Receiver – receives all, and as such She is the Great Compassionate One. Her Darkness may be understood as a Depth of Love. And She is Compassionate because of …
(Essay) The Wheel of the Year and Climate Change by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ The Wheel of the Year in a PaGaian cosmology essentially celebrates Cosmogenesis – the unfolding of the Cosmos, in which Earth’s extant Creativity participates directly, as does each unique being. The Creativity of Cosmogenesis is expressed through Earth-Sun relationship as it may manifest and be experienced within any region of our Planet. In PaGaian tradition this is expressed with Triple Goddess Poetry, which is understood to be metaphor for the creative dynamics unfolding the Cosmos. At the heart of the Earth-Sun relationship is the dance of light and dark, the waxing and waning of both these qualities, as Earth orbits around our Mother Sun. This dance, which results in the manifestation of form and its dissolution, as it does in the Seasons, happens because of Earth’s tilt in relationship with Sun: and that is because this tilt effects the intensity of regional receptivity to Sun’s energy over the period of the yearly orbit. This tilt was something that happened in the evolution of our planet in its earliest of days – some four and a half billion years ago, and then stabilised over time: and the climatic zones were further formed when Antarctica separated from Australia and South America, giving birth to the Antarctica Circumpolar Current, changing the circulation of water around all the continents … just some thirty million years ago[i]. Within the period since then, which also saw the advent of the earliest humans, Earth has gone through many climatic changes. It is likely that throughout those changes, the dance of light and dark in both hemispheres of the planet … one always the opposite of the other – has been fairly stable and predictable. The resultant effect on flora and fauna regionally however has varied enormously depending on many other factors of Earth’s ever changing ecology: She is an alive Planet who continues to move and re-shape Herself. She is Herself subject to the cosmic dynamics of creativity – the forming and the dissolving and the re-emerging. The earliest of humans must have received all this, ‘observed’ it, in a very participatory way: that is, not as a Western industrialized or dualistic mind would think of ‘observation’ today, but as kin with the events – identifying with their own experience of coming into being and passing away. There is evidence to suggest that humans have expressed awareness of, and response to, the phenomenon of coming into being and passing away, as early as one hundred thousand years ago: ritual burial sites of that age have been found[ii], and more recently a site of ongoing ritual activity as old as seventy thousand years has been found[iii]. The ceremonial celebration of the phenomenon of seasons probably came much later, particularly perhaps when humans began to settle down. These ceremonial celebrations of seasons apparently continued to reflect the awesomeness of existence as well as the marking of transitions of Sun back and forth across the horizon, which became an important method of telling the time for planting and harvesting and the movement of pastoral animals. https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ It seems that the resultant effect of the dance of light and dark on regional flora and fauna, has been fairly stable in recent millennia, the period during which many current Earth-based religious practices and expression arose. In our times, that is changing again. Humans have been, and are, a major part of bringing that change about. Ever since we migrated around the planet, humans have brought change, as any creature would: but humans have gained advantage and distinguished themselves by toolmaking, and increasingly domesticating/harnessing more of Earth’s powers – fire being perhaps the first, and this also aided our migration. In recent times this harnessing/appropriating of Earth’s powers became more intense and at the same time our numbers dramatically increased: and many of us filled with hubris, acting without consciousness or care of our relational context. We are currently living in times when our planet is tangibly and visibly transforming: the seasons themselves as we have known them for millennia – as our ancestors knew them – appear to be changing in most if not all regions of our Planet. Much predictable Poetry – sacred language – for expressing the quality of the Seasonal Moments will change, as regional flora changes, as the movement of animals and birds and sea creatures changes, as economies change[iv]. In Earth’s long story regional seasonal manifestation has changed before, but not so dramatically since the advent of much current Poetic expression for these transitions, as mixed as they are with layers of metaphor: that is, with layers of mythic eras, cultures and economies. We may learn and understand the traditional significance of much of the Poetry, the ceremony and symbol – the art – through which we could relate and converse with our place, as our ancestors may have done; but it will continue to evolve as all language must. At the moment the dance of dark and light remains predictable, but much else is in a process of transformation. As we observe and sense our Place, our Habitat, as our ancestors also did, we can, and may yet still make Poetry of the dance of dark and light, of this quality of relationship with Sun, and how it may be manifesting in a particular region and its significance for the inhabitants: we may still find Poetic expression with which to celebrate the sacred journey that we make everyday around Mother Sun, our Source of life and energy. It has been characteristic of humans for at least several tens of thousands of years, to create ceremony and symbol by which we could relate with the creative dynamics of our place, and perhaps it was initially a method of coming to terms with these dynamics – with the apparently uniquely human awareness of coming into being and passing away[v]. Our need for sacred ceremony of relationship with our place, can only be more dire in these times, as we are witness to, and aware of, …
Beltaine/High Spring within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

I am a secularist rather than a ritualist, but I can’t help but be drawn into the celebrations that people make when they honour the passing of the seasons. Even as a child I felt the disconnect between Christmas and the hot dusty days of summer. When Christians invaded and colonised Australia they brought their holidays but did not consider changing the dates to match the seasons. I was in India recently, invited as a speaker at the Hindu Lit For Life Festival in Chennai where I had lived ten years ago. The last day of the festival was the first day of Pongal. A friend, feminist economist Devaki Jain, who had grown up in Chennai eighty years earlier invited me to join her in a car ride to see Pongal celebrations in the streets. This is a Tamil festival dating back at least a thousand years, a sun festival, welcoming the next six months of the sun’s journey, also a harvest festival. During this time many women produce beautiful drawings, known as kolam. In my book Cow I wrote a poem about kolam which I think says more than I can explain here. what she says about kolam where they are drawn and when is all important early morning is auspicious it sets the shape of the day the hard ground is cleaned points of white grain sprinkled she works quickly she knows her design for the day runs the powdered grain from point to point it is a mandala a yantra a sign so the forces of the universe align themselves with her intentions Back to Pongal. The festival goes for four days. On the first day, which is called Bhogi, people are on the streets with the fruits of harvest, piles of tumeric and stacks of sugar cane tied in bunches. My friend, Devaki, bought flowers to take back to her room in the hotel. The second day, called Thai Pongal, I was invited to a harvest lunch at the house of my friend Mangai who is a playwright, theatre director and human rights activist. The word ‘pongal’ means ‘boiling over’ or’ overflow’ and I saw this in the cooking of the sweetened rice dish into which each of the twelve people present poured some water and milk as it almost overflowed the pot. This sweet rice dish was added to the collection of other dishes on the table. I cannot tell you what they were, but the meal was delicious. After lunch everyone relaxed, someone sang, we talked and caught up on news. The third day, is called Maatu Pongal, and cattle are at the centre of celebrations on that day. I don’t know if this line up of cattle had anything to do with the day’s celebration but there they were tied up alongside a very busy main road. These were not cows and I did not see any cows with decorated horns and flowers on their heads. on that day as I have on other occasions. On the fourth day, Kaanum Pongal, things begin to wind down. One of my co-speakers at the festival said she would be visiting family members on that day. The kolams are drawn again, sugar cane is consumed and people go back to their daily lives. What I liked about being in Tamil Nadu during the Pongal festival is that it felt absolutely right. The time of the year, the connection with harvest, so I did not feel the discomfort I so often feel in the midst of the out-of-season commercialised holidays as they are celebrated in Australia. Susan Hawthorne’s book Cow is available worldwide from distributors in USA, Canada, UK, from all the usual online retailers or from Spinifex Press. http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=215/ © Susan Hawthorne, 2019 (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne.
(Essay) The Emergence celebrated at Spring Equinox by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The Spring Equinox Moment occurs September 21-23 Southern Hemisphere, March 21-23 Northern Hemisphere. The full story of Spring Equinox is expressed in the full flower connected to the seed fresh from the earth; that is, it is a story of emergence from the dark, from a journey, perhaps long, perhaps short, through challenging places. The joy of the blossoming is rooted in the journey through the dark, and an acknowledgement of the dark’s fertile gift, as well as of great achievement in having made it, of having returned. Both Equinoxes, Spring and Autumn, celebrate this sacred balance of grief and joy, light and dark, and they are both celebrations of the mystery of the seed. The seed is essentially the deep Creativity within – that manifests in the Spring as flower, or green emerged One. the full story: the root and the flower As the new young light continues to grow at this time of Spring, it comes into balance with the dark at Spring Equinox, or ‘Eostar’ as it may be named; about to tip further into light when light will dominate the day. The trend at this Equinox is toward increasing hours of light: and thus it is about the power of being – life is stepping into it. Earth in this region is tilting further toward the Sun. Traditionally it may be storied as the joyful celebration of a Lost Beloved One, who may be represented by the Persephone story: She is a shamanic figure who is known for Her journey to the Underworld, and who at this time of Spring Equinox returns. Her Mother Demeter who has waited and longed for Her in deep grief, rejoices and so do all: warmth and growth return to the land. Persephone, the Beloved Daughter, the Seed, has navigated the darkness successfully, has enriched it with Her presence and also gained its riches. Eostar/Spring Equinox is the magic of the unexpected, yet long awaited, green emergence from under the ground, and then the flower: this emergence is especially profound as it is from a seed that has lain dormant for months or longer – much like the magic of desert blooms after long periods of drought. The name of “Eostar” comes from the Saxon Goddess Eostre/Ostara, the northern form of the Sumerian Astarte[i]. The Christian festival in the Spring, was named “Easter” as of the Middle Ages, appropriating Goddess/Earth tradition. The date of Easter, which is set for Northern Hemispheric seasons, is still based on the lunar/menstrual calendar; that is, the 1st Sunday after the first full Moon after Spring Equinox. In Australia where I am, “Easter” is celebrated in Autumn (!) by mainstream culture, so we have the spectacle of fluffy chickens, chocolate eggs and rabbits in the shops at that time. There are other names for “Eostar” in other places …the Welsh name for the Spring Equinox celebration is Eilir, meaning ‘regeneration’ or ‘spring’ – or ‘earth’[ii]. In my own PaGaian tradition, the Spring Equinox celebration is based on the Demeter and Persephone story, the version that is understand as pre-patriarchal, from Old Europe. In the oldest stories, Persephone has agency in Her descent: She descends to the underworld voluntarily as a courageous seeker of wisdom, and a compassionate receiver of the dead. She represents, and IS, the Seed of Life that never fades away. Spring Equinox is a celebration of Her return, Life’s continual return, and thus also our personal and collective emergences/returns.We may contemplate the collective emergence/returns especially in our times. I describe Persephone as a “hera”, which of old was a term for any courageous One. “Hera” was a pre-Hellenic name for the Goddess in general[iii]. “Hera” was the indigenous Queen Goddess of pre-Olympic Greece, before She was married off to Zeus. “Hero” was a term for the brave male Heracles who carried out tasks for his Goddess Hera: “The derivative form ‘heroine’ is therefore completely unnecessary”[iv]. “Hera” may be used as a term for any courageous individual: and participants in PaGaian Spring Equinox ceremony have named themselves this way. The pre-“Olympic” games of Greece were Hera’s games, held at Her Heraion/temple[v]. The winners were “heras” – gaining the status of being like Her[vi]. At the time of Spring Equinox, we may celebrate the Persephone, the Hera, the Courageous One, who steps with new wisdom, into power of being: the organic power that all beings must have, Gaian power, the power of the Cosmos. This Seasonal ceremony may be a rejoicing in how we have made it through great challenges and loss, faced our fears and our demise (in its various forms), had ‘close shaves’ – perhaps physically as well as psychicly and emotionally. It is a time to welcome back that which was lost, and step into the strength of being. Spring Equinox/Eostar is the time for enjoying the fruits of the descent, of the journey taken into the darkness: return is now certain, not tentative as it was in the Early Spring/Imbolc. Demeter, the Mother, receives the Persephones, Lost Beloved Ones, joyously. This may be understood as an individual experience, but also as a collective experience – as we emerge into a new Era as a species. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme speak of the ending of the sixty-five million year geological Era – the Cenozoic Era – in our times, and our possible emergence into an Ecozoic Era. They describe the Ecozoic Era as a time when “the curvature of the universe, the curvature of the earth, and the curvature of the human are once more in their proper relation”[vii]. Joanna Macy speaks of the “Great Turning” of our times[viii]. Collectively we have been away from the Mother for some time and there is a lot of pain. At this time we may contemplate not only our own individual lost wanderings, but also that of the human species. We are part of a much bigger Return that is happening. The Beloved One may be understood as returning on a collective level: …
(Essay and Video) Cosmogenesis Dance: Celebrating Her Unfolding by Glenys Livingstone

The dance begins with two concentric circles, which will flow in and out of each other throughout the dance, resulting thus in a third concentric circle that comes and goes. The three circles/layers are understood to represent the three aspects of Goddess, the Creative Triple Dynamic that many ancients were apparently aware of, and imagined in so many different ways across the globe. In Her representation in Ireland as the Triple Spiral motif, which is inscribed on the inner chamber wall at Bru-na-Boinne (known as Newgrange)[1], She seems to be understood as a dynamic essential to on-going Cosmic Creativity, as this ancient motif is dramatically lit up by the Winter Solstice dawn. It seems that this was important to the Indigenous people of this place at the time of Winter Solstice, which celebrates Origins, the continuing birth of all. Thus I like to do this Cosmogenesis Dance, as I have named it[2], at the Winter Solstice in particular. The three aspects that the dance may embody, and are poetically understood as Goddess, celebrate (i) Virgin/Young One – Urge to Be as I have named this quality – the ever new differentiated being (also known as Fodla in the region of the Triple Spiral)[3]. This is the outer circle of individuals. (ii) Mother – the deeply related interwoven web – Dynamic Place of Being as I have named this quality – the communion that our habitat is (also known as Eriu in the region of the Triple Spiral)[4]. This is the woven middle circle where all are linked and swaying in rhythm. (iii) Crone/Old One – the eternal creative return to All-That-Is – She who Creates the Space to Be as I have named this quality (also known as Banba in the region of the Triple Spiral)[5]. This is the inner circle where linked hands are raised and stillness is held. The three concentric layers of the dance may be understood to embody these. The Cosmogenesis Dance represents the flow and balance of these three – a flow and balance of Self, Other and All-That-Is. It may be experienced like a breath, that we breathe together – as we do co-create the Cosmos. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have named the three qualities of Cosmogenesis in the following way: – differentiation … to be is to be unique – communion … to be is to be related – autopoiesis/subjectivity … to be is to be a centre of creativity.[6] The three layers of the dance may be felt to celebrate each unique being, in deep relationship with other, directly participating in the sentient Cosmos, the Well of Creativity. The Cosmogenesis Dance as it is done within PaGaian Winter Solstice ceremony expresses the whole Creative Process we are immersed in. It is a process of complete reciprocity, a flow of Creator and Created, like a breath. There is dynamic exchange in every moment: that is the nature of the Place we inhabit. The dance may help awaken us to it, and to invoke it. The Cosmogenesis Dance on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR73MDMM9Fk For more story: Cosmogenesis Dance for Winter Ritual For Dance Instructions: PaGaian Cosmology Appendix I Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [1] The Triple Spiral engraving is dated at 2,400 B.C.E. [2] This dance is originally named as “The Stillpoint Dance”, or sometimes “Adoramus Te Domine” which is the name of the music used for it. I learned it from Dr. Jean Houston in 1990 at a workshop of hers in Sydney, Australia. I began to use the dance for Winter Solstice ceremony in 1997, and it was only in the second year of doing so that I realised its three layers were resonant with the three traditional qualities of the Female Metaphor/Goddess, and also the three faces of Cosmogenesis. I thereafter re-named and storied the dance that way in the ceremonial preparation and teaching for Winter Solstice. See Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology: pp. 280-281 and 311. [3] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p.192. [4] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p. 192. [5] Michael Dames, Ireland: a Sacred Journey, p. 192. [6] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p. 71-79. I have identified these qualities with the Triple Goddess, and the Triple Spiral in the synthesis of PaGaian Cosmology: see Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, particularly Chapter 4: https://pagaian.org/book/chapter-4/ References: Dames, Michael. Ireland: a Sacred Journey, Element Books, 2000. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Lincoln NE: iUniverse, 2005. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. NY: HarperCollins, 1992.

(Book Announcement 5) Introduction (part 3) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Editor’s Note: This Introduction is from She Rises: How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 2.] Pre-order available now! Engendering the Gynocentric Economy In the sense that the She Rises collective writing project does NOT begin with a ready-made blueprint, it is distinguished from a standard anthology. More to the point, this book is a book of the Goddess. By saying that, I do not mean that it is just about the Goddess. It is created in a gynocentric way and it serves a gynocentric purpose. Motivations matter; the task of the She Rises collective writing was first undertaken as a way of enhancing the Goddess/Mago Movement in 2014.[i] It has taken place spontaneously by the hand of volunteers. It relies on the gynocentric economy, a system of enabling the life of all beings operated through voluntary collaboration and egalitarian coordination. As an extension of the Gift Economy that Genevieve Vaughan advocates, the gynocentric economy is based on the voluntary sharing of one’s available resources for the whole.[ii] Gift-givers not only give what we can give freely but also enable a whole new (read non-patriarchal) mode of doing economic activities. In other words, they summon gynocentric reality to take place. Gynocentric economy secures free gift-giving activities and at the same time is shaped by the latter.
(Bell Essay 8) The Magoist Whale Bell: Decoding the Cetacean Code of Korean Temple Bells by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This and ensuing sequels are excerpts of a new development from the original essay sequels on Korean Temple Bells and Magoism that first published January 11, 2013 in this current magazine. See (Bell Essay 1) Ancient Korean Bells and Magoism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.] Singing Humpback Whales, wikimedia commons Whales as the Cosmic Music Maker That whales (Gorae in Korean) are foundational to the Korean temple bell remains subliminal to this day. How do we assess the cetacean code of the Korean temple bell? What is the relationship between these two seemingly unrelated objects? We are given the whale-shaped mallet of the bell to begin with. Intriguingly, two Buddhist temples are noted today for the wooden whale-carved mallet of their bells: Sudeok-sa in Yesan, South Chungcheong, and Seonam-sa in Suncheon, South Jeolla.[1] Other temple bells reportedly have the whale mallet as well, although not as much distinctly carved as the two. The Divine Bell of King Seongdeok the Great is known as such. What is the significance of the Korean temple bell that has a whale as its striker? However, the whale-shaped wooden mallet is only a visible symbol of Sillan cetacean veneration. The whale motif is not just physically present in the mallet but also signified in its name or title. Among many alternative names of the Korean temple bell are cetacean names; Janggyeong (長鯨 Eternal Whale), Gyeongjong (鯨鐘 Whale Bell), Hwagyeong (華鯨 Splendid Whale), and Geogyeong (巨鯨 Gigantic Whale). Here the character “gyeong 鯨” means a whale.[2] These whale names suggest that the bell itself is conceived as a whale. Korean temple bells are the code of Magoist cetaceanism. By the very nature of a temple bell that is to awaken all beings to put it bluntly, we can establish that the sound of a whale is elevated to the purpose of a temple bell. Or vice versa. The sound of a temple bell is identified as that of a whale. At the outset, suffice it to say that whales are admired and revered for their vocal behaviors so much so that they are represented in Sillan temple bells. The cetacean representation of the Korean temple bell comes unexpected to us. Why is the song of a whale not the song of a bird or another animal? And what does it mean that the Korean temple bell employs cetacean names? These are no small questions. Answering them requires digging into the deepest layer of what has gone under the surface about Magoist Korean whale culture. I have discussed elsewhere in detail about how Korean cetaceanism is steeped in linguistics, myths, place-names, and custom.[3] For the immensity and complexity of the topic, this essay leaves out the discussion of such salient features of whales as their pre-human origin, evolution from land to sea, sizes and trans-oceanic migratory journeys. Summarily, whales connect and bridge the human mind beyond anthropocentrism. Here we will focus on how cetacean veneration is encoded in the Korean temple bell, in particular the sound tube. Ancient Korean Magoists deemed whales as the cosmic music makers. The cetacean names of Korean temple bells redefine the bell as the acoustic instrument that conveys the music of whales. Note the plural in bells and whales. Korean temple bells are meant to be recognized as a chorus, like whales in the sea, to respond to the sonic property of all beings. In fact, the Korean temple bell is never an isolated single sound wave, to be discussed below. What is emitted from both is harmonized music. It is noted that the music of whales can travel hundreds of kilometers underwater.[4] That the song of whales travel as far as hundreds of kilometers underwater is juxtaposed with the sound of the Korean temple bells that travel far. The former is transmitted through water waves, while the latter is transmitted through air waves. Humpback Whales Whales compose music. Among cetacean species, known for their vocalizations are the blue whale, the fin whale, the humpback whale, the minke whale, and the killer whale.[5] In particular, such baleen whales as humpback whales and blue whales have been relatively well studied for their vocalizing behaviors. The range of humpback whales’ sound frequencies is known as follows: The range of frequencies that whales use are [sic] from 30 Hertz (Hz) to about 8,000 Hz, (8 kHZ). Humans can only hear part of the whales’s songs. We aren’t able to hear the lowest of the whale frequencies. Humans hear low frequency sounds starting at about 100 Hz.[6] In comparisons, the vocalizations of blue whales are known to range from 10 to 40 Hz at a fundamental frequency (the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform). It is also noted that blue whales off the coast of Sri Lanka make music of “four notes duration lasting about two minutes each, reminiscent of the well-known humpback whale songs.”[7] To be discussed below, the frequencies of the two most noted Korean temple bells range from 65 Hz to 103.02 Hz, which fall within the range of these whales’ vocalizations. A significant volume of scientific research has been harvested on the music of humpback whales. Katy and Roger Payne are, according to an article by Bill McQuay and Alison Richards, the first scientists who identified the calls of male humpback whales as songs.[8] They report that humpback whales do not merely sing but compose music. McQuay and Richards describe the song of humpback whales as follows: Surprisingly researchers have noted that at any given moment all males in a group will sing the same version of a song, even when separated over large distances, while whales in another region or hemisphere will sing a completely different song, but in unison with other whales in their area. These sounds are loud, deep and low-frequency (20Hz – 10 kHz). They can be heard many miles away and may go on for hours or even days. Individual songs can last anywhere from a few minutes up to a half hour at which point they may then be repeated again. …
(Photo Essay 5) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hwang

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

Category: Arlene Bailey

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S/HE: IJGS V3 N2 2024 (B/W Paperback)

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Mago Pod Bulletin #73 November 2024

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