October 27, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Book Excerpt 3) Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess, the Girl God anthology by Trista Hendren

Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess: a Girl God Anthology. Edited by Trista Hendren, Pat Daly and Noor-un-nisa Gretasdottir I realized yesterday that I have expected feminism to fix the entire world and now Read More …

October 20, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Book Review) Christ & Plaskow's Goddess and God in the World by Mary Ann Beavis

Review of Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016. Pp. 330, $29 U.S., ISBN: 9781506401188. The remarkable book Read More …

October 17, 2016February 9, 2020 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Essay 2) Iyami and the Female Roots of Power in the IfaOrisha Tradition by Ayele Kumari, Ph.D.

An OponIfa and Odu binary language Ifa utilizes palm nuts and a divination chain called Opele to secure answers or Odu. The entire system is extremely feminine in nature in Read More …

September 29, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Book Excerpt 2) Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess, the Girl God anthology by Trista Hendren

Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess: a Girl God Anthology. Edited by Trista Hendren, Pat Daly and Noor-un-nisa Gretasdottir Several weeks ago on the news, we saw pictures of 40,000 people starving to death Read More …

September 22, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Book Excerpt 1) Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess, the Girl God anthology by Trista Hendren

Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess: a Girl God Anthology. Edited by Trista Hendren, Pat Daly and Noor-un-nisa Gretasdottir Part 1 Introduction by Trista Handren “It is a patient pursuit to bring water Read More …

September 1, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Mago Stronghold Essay 3) The Forgotten Primordial Paradise by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Part 3: Indelible Old Magoism Encrypted in China’s “Mago Stronghold” The Mago word “Mago Stronghold” has narrowly survived patriarchal linguistic censorships. Sometimes it is preferably or deliberately employed as a euphemism. Read More …

August 22, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay) The Gift Economy by Genevieve Vaughan

Two basic economic paradigms coexist in the world today. They are logically contradictory, but also complementary. One is visible, the other invisible; one highly valued, the other undervalued. One is Read More …

August 18, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Special Post 2) "The Oldest Cilivization" 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 Read More …

August 16, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Art) Nuestra Senora La Virgen de Guadalupe by Lydia Ruyle

Nuestra Senora La Virgen de Guadalupe is the present name of the Great Mother Goddess of Mexico. The Spaniards brought Black Madonnas with them to the western hemisphere where they Read More …

August 15, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 3) Kinship and Power of Place by Sara Wright

The following day I went to see where Ghost Ranch was located, the first place that Georgia lived (and bought), where she painted many of her landscapes. I was not Read More …

August 12, 2016November 15, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Update & Happy 4th Birthday to Return to Mago E-Magazine!

Happy 4th Birthday to Return to Mago E-Magazine!

August 11, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(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 Read More …

August 8, 2016October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 2) Kinship and Power of Place by Sara Wright

As some of us know, while making a pilgrimage, time stretches out like a rubber band, and once the threshold has been crossed one is catapulted into sacred space where Read More …

(Photo Essay 5) Goddess Pilgrimage 2017 by Kaalii Cargill

[Author’s Note: In July 2017, I set out on a 4 month pilgrimage to the Unites States, Italy, France, Spain, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. I name it a “pilgrimage” because my main focus is what I call “visiting with the Grandmothers”, although I also encountered many other wonderful people and places. This series of Photo Essays is an invitation for you to visit with the Grandmothers I met on my journey . . .] Pompeii and Naples Turn a corner in Pompeii and the past whispers secrets, reminding us that everything She touches changes, She changes everything She touches . . . The Temple of Isis in Pompeii included frescoes of mythological scenes, snakes, and lunar symbols. Isis was associated with fertility and honoured as a Mother Goddess and for Her powers in healing and magic. There is still a hint of the ceremonies in celebration of the Goddess Isis in current Marian processions. My Calabrese father (b1922) carried a superstitious fear of Naples from his childhood. I believe this fear came down through the generations from the days when Naples was the centre of practices involving magic and the mysteries of death. Visitors to Pompeii can see the Temple of Isis, but most people do not know that there is also a small square in Naples where a statue of a Nile river God marks the centre of the Egyptian quarter of the ancient Greek city. The Egyptian collection at the Naples National Museum of Archaeology is one of the most important in the World for Roman era history. Meet Mago contributor Kaalii Cargill
(Prose) Starting the Garden by Francesca Tronetti

Wikimedia Common’s image Spring is still many weeks away, but for the gardener, the process of life has already begun. While the compost pile thaws, breaks down, then freezes with the new snow. Starting and stopping over and over again. Until one day, the sun stays out and warm. Birds have started to return from their winter roosts. The buzzards are back, searching for the carrion frozen in the snow. It is the middle of March, and the seeds for the garden have been planted. Sage and basil fill one starter tray. Canterbury bells, delphinium, lupine, cosmos, perennial flowers, fill a few more. After spending eight weeks in the fridge, a large tray of lavender seeds sits in the sun, waiting for its warmth to coax them to grow. They will be started in the gentle sun, but once they break the surface, they will be under the care of grow lights, giving them the eight hours of growth they need to thrive. Another tray is filled with vegetable seeds, and five types of peppers are waiting to sprout. Three are hot peppers, bound for the community garden. Two are sweet peppers, some for the community, some for me. My mini peppers have such a high germination rate that I will be giving away seedlings to my coworkers this year, I hate to let them go to waste, so the sprouting seeds will have to go into the soil soon. Eggplant, beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and kale, are planted and sitting under the sun. It is the time to watch and wait, to check the moisture in the soil while the first greens poke their heads above the starting mix. For the first few weeks, they don’t need anything from us aside from water. Nature has provided them with the nutrients they need to start on their way. But, they are not in nature; they are in a sterile mix with minimal nutrition. After a time, the gardener must provide what nature normally would. Carefully measured amounts of liquid fertilizer must be added each week, half of what would be used for full-size plants. After that, the seedlings will be transplanted every few weeks to larger pots, giving the roots room to grow; until late May or early June when they are placed in the sun-warmed soil of the garden. Those seeds which do not like to be started and moved will also be planted into this soil. Squashes and sunflowers, lettuce and spinach, beet and carrots, flowers and herbs. They can be bought in pots at a garden center, but they prefer to start, live, and flower in one place. So much activity occupies the gardener inside and outdoors in the next few months. Growing and tending tender seedlings, digging up rocks and raking in compost, and setting up beds and supports, which will soon be used. Then there are the little things, the bird feeder, roosts, and water sources for pollinators. Laying out a plan to mix flowers and vegetables in a manner pleasing to the eye. Wikimedia Common’s image If Persephone was returning to her mother’s arms today, she would see the earth still barren and covered with snow. But her siblings, the daughters and sons of other goddesses and gods are helping to make her return joyous. When we finally step out, there will be instant explosions of color which will last until the snow again covers the ground. Beginning with the first flowers, there are continuous blooms from the fruiting trees as they entice bees to visit them, from the tall flowers planted for the butterflies, from the vegetables as they ripen and fill the eyes with shades of yellow, orange, red, and purples. The color will continue into the fall, when the warm colors take over from the sunflowers, pumpkins, corn, and winter squash. This entire life cycle of the summer is dependent on the now. When it is too cold to work outside; when the blowing winds will kill the tender spouts. It starts now, with a few seeds placed in small pots, covered, and set out to warm in the weak sun. https://www.magoism.net/2018/11/meet-mago-contributor-rev-francesca-tronetti-ph-d/
(Essay) 2014 Mago Pilgrimage by Rosemary Mattingley

The Mago Pilgrimage in Korea in 2014 was a journey of connection and reconnection for me at different levels. Mago is the primordial goddess of east Asia. Her energy clearly underlay our pilgrimage and enabled such a profound journey, events, insights and effects, both at the time and since then in what I’m called to do. It was 25 years since I’d lived in Japan for eight years and travelled in east Asia, and 32 years since I had visited Korea for two weeks. Korea was my second love at quite an early age; Mongolia was my first. It was exciting to return at a different level of life’s spiral – not for study, work or sightseeing, but this time to consciously experience my spirit interacting with place and energy.
(Essay 4) Circe the Island Witch by Hearth Moon Rising

The last essay in this series mentioned Robert Graves’s assertion that Circe is a falcon goddess. If so, her type of falcon would be Eleonora’s Falcon, a medium-sized raptor that nests in the Mediterranean, particularly in rocky islands in the Aegean Sea. Eleonora’s Falcon is approximately the size of the Peregrine Falcon, with dark gray upper coloring and either a gray or reddish underside. Like all falcons, Eleonora’s has the fast-moving, agile flight pattern adapted for preying on other birds. Unlike other falcons, Eleonora’s raises chicks in the late summer, mining the fall migration of songbirds as a food source. In late autumn, this falcon migrates along the African coast to Tanzania and Madagascar. What does Eleonora’s Falcon have in common with our picture of Circe, aside from having a high profile on isolated Aegean islands? Keeping in mind that the name of Circe’s island is Aeaea, listen to the cries of this falcon: From Xeno-Canto These chilling cries remind us that this bird is a predator – a hunter like the archetypal death goddess. Also like Circe, this falcon takes hostages, crippling birds taken on the wing and storing them in crevices for later consumption. Despite the fierceness and isolated habitat of Eleonora’s Falcon, humans have been the major predators of this bird, both for eggs and fat tasty chicks. This was once an esteemed falconry bird, especially popular with women. In light of this history, the following advice of Hermes in dealing with Circe is interesting. Hermes tells Odysseus, Do not press any advantage over her, but at the same time do not allow her to dominate you. This is classic strategy for managing a bird in falconry. Here is a five minute video showing Eleonora’s Falcon in her natural environment. https://youtu.be/LOMtlXzKzCY You can listen to more Eleonora’s Falcon calls here. The next essay will look at a historical woman who had much in common with Circe as a falcon goddess.
(Video Prose) Kuan Yin and the Networked Dance of Connectivity and Compassion by Dr. Lila Moore

In November, I visited Shanghai for the first time. I travelled there to participate in the Consciousness Reframed Conference at the De Tao Masters Academy. There, I presented a paper on the Techno Spiritual Horizons of Art and Compassionate Networked Art Forms. It was also an opportunity to meet Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion, face to face, at the Jade Buddha Temple. Prior to my visit, my view of the Goddess was rather limited, especially in comparison to the actual encounter which, unexpectedly, granted me a magnificent vision.
(Poetry) A Cactus Made of Rainbows by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright Raspberry spines prick my skin but do not harm me as I gently dislodge you from stones and soil, praying out loud for permission. You thrive here as the Bears do under tall red pines and lichened boulders. Aspens, Spruce, Juniper all murmur love songs on Changing Woman’s mountain. Is that why they call you a Rainbow cactus? Were you there when She was born under soft deerskin pulsing with a whole spectrum of Light? Did the Bears watch you From swaying tree tops offer generous blessings for the gift of your life? I step so carefully, so as not to crush your little village thriving under my feet. I gather you as a small family, believing you need to grow together to thrive. Your roots are shallow hugging jagged rocks at odd angles. I feel amazement – Such tenacity. I note your need for protection from merciless west wind and sun. Yet you thrive with so little – a blessing from the Cloud People and you burst miniscule roses from thorny skin. I imagine a waxing frog moon overflowing with pride. I found a bear paw not far from where you lay – White flint worked by those who once tread lightly on sacred ground, soul heart and body bound to each rock and tree. (Bears still leave their marks on smooth white aspen bark). The People spoke in tongues most can no longer hear. Oh, my grateful heart sings praises for this precious body that vibrates ancient strumming sound… Your collective Voices vie for my attention as I move effortlessly through the veil, bowing my head to acknowledge your Bountiful Grace. Time gathers herself around me False lines and boundaries disappear. I am so easily comforted by Now. If only I could stay here… When I wend my way down the mountain with a prickly clump of your people, I am filled with Light. Perhaps Changing Woman was right – Her children’s father was a round rainbow cactus after all. Working notes Yesterday I visited the mountain that once called me to this place, although I couldn’t name her then… three years later I am drawn back again and again to this Mesa forged in Light to gather stones made of the flint that was traded throughout the Americas by the pre – Puebloan peoples. The Powers of Place embrace me again and again as I climb, hearing voices, and I am filled with wonder… In Navajo mythology Changing Woman – she who grows old and young again but never dies – was born under a rainbow of light created by a myriad of colors – orange, gold, gray smoke, ebony, pink and burnt orange – of the stone called chert that is found in a single band that stretches around this mountain. This flint was worked into tools that were traded throughout the continent… Changing Woman (parthogentically) birthed two boys who left her. When they asked about who their father was she retorted that maybe he was a round cactus! (a tongue and cheek response?) Their grandmother later told them their father was the sun but my guess is that their real father was a prickly round rainbow cactus that grows close to the ground on the slopes of Changing Woman’s beloved mountain, the mountain where she was born. This “marriage” was one woven from Light, tenderness, thorns, and tenacity. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright.
(Art) The Sovereign Feminine, An INTUIT Card collage meditation by Cynthia Tom

Art by Cynthia Tom Owning the “Self.” Take the time to remember the Soul purpose you came here to fulfill. Keep the lessons and the love, but shed the negative conditioning from your ancestral family of origin to become your sovereign self. https://www.magoism.net/2021/07/meet-mago-contributor-cynthia-tom/
(Poem) Goddesslines/Motherlines: A Poem of Three Goddesses for Your Three Bodies By Swami Pujananda Saraswati

Kali-Durga: She Who Destroys About us and peace. Though war keeps raging around us, Ongoing genocides for depopulation. No end to the lies surrounding overpopulation. True we are many! But there is no scarcity other than what is artificially constructed for profit –while surplus grains go on being burned day by day! Demons in control of markets! So, there is famine, poverty, wars for depopulation. Women! Mothers! Your boys are killing your children, daughters and sons, all children of Mothers. Your small gods turned robotized demons out of control. They are now in control. Kali Ma! Kali Ma! Kali Ma! (While all along, secretly I am a lover of the Flute Player, chariot driver in the Gita.) Lakshmi: She Who Gives Abundance and Rules Your Feelings Like grains of rice in boiling water, the karmic mix pulls some upwards, some down (some evolving, some devolving) in this playground of Mother Divine challenging us with others, similar, different, as all move in cycles fueled by desires. Neutral? Are desires ever neutral? In this place of many reducing desires is non-violence. All you want, many more want too. It becomes vulgar. Try non-interference as a way of caring. There comes a time for doing less and less, bring the love you cradle, listen and do not listen. Discern what is lasting from what is not. Keep discerning, question what moves you… Are you conserving energies for the Big Merging with Goddess? Or will She find you distracted with only the personal. The personal alone pulls you away from Her embrace. Care for your little body, bodies and Big Body Gaia in every move, thought-emotion. This way you´ll be ripe when it´s time for the Big Merging. And then, whatever She does to you comes out in a sweet note. Om Sri Lakshmiai Namah! Om Sri Lakshmiai Namah! Om Sri Lakshmiai Namah! Saraswati: Waters of Wisdom Goddess One and many is who you are. Your nature, your truth, your peace, your shelter, your beginning and end. When you see the pain around you, witness Her dancing for your freedom! This is Her show. Only She can move you. See Her in your breath, feelings, thoughts. She is the water that surrounds us. This is Her embrace. Stay sweet, always sweet for Goddess’ sake. I´m telling you, out there it’s a desert. Stay sweet, my love. Om Aim Saraswatiai Namah! Om Aim Saraswatiai Namah! Om Aim Saraswatiai Namah! *According to Yogic spirituality, which offered the first framework for complex systems thinking, the person experiences or lives in three bodies simultaneously: physical, mental-emotional, spirit or transcendental. [These poems are previously included in She Rises: What… Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality? Volume 3.] (Meet Mago Contributor) Swami Pujananda Saraswati.
(Essay Part 1) Language for Goddess: Divine Expression by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D

This essay is part 1 of an edited excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. ‘Goddess’, as I understand the term, is the female metaphor for the Great Creative Principle of the Universe. As such, She is both the Matrix, and immediately also an wholistic template of Being; that is, She is whole and complete within Herself, and She is a complete illustration of the process of coming into being and passing away. Her three aspects are often based on chronological/biological phases of a woman’s life, but the aspects are not in any way limited to those biological phases … those particular phases are actually just one of the valencies of the three omnipresent cosmic qualities of being that the ancients in many cultures noticed and celebrated. It seems that the three aspects were understood as a dynamic of ultimate Creativity, which is why they were so revered and celebrated. One witness to that is the Triple Spiral engraved in central position at Bru-na-Boinne (Newgrange) in Ireland. The significance of the Bru-na-Boinne monument may yet to be fully understood, as the heretofore ethnocentric minds of researchers only now begin to remember the Goddess centred minds that built it. This is true also of other monuments and artifacts in Old Europe, which have puzzled patriarchal Earth-alienated minds.[1] I propose that the Triple Spiral encoded at Bru-na-Boinne may specifically celebrate the triple faced female metaphor – ‘Goddess’ – as ‘Cosmic Dynamic of Creativity’; it seems so since it is lit up at the moment of Winter Solstice, the Seasonal Moment that especially celebrates Origins and the renewal of Earth-Sun creativity.[2] I understand ‘Creativity’ as another name for the Mystery of Being, and it is what I understand as the essence of Being. As Loren Eiseley reflects, No utilitarian philosophy explains a snow crystal, no doctrine of use or disuse. Water has merely leapt out of vapor and thin nothingness in the night sky to array itself in form. There is no logical reason for the existence of a snowflake any more than there is for evolution.[3] ‘Creativity’ is also a term used by process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead for “the Category of the Ultimate”[4] and he refers to it as threefold in nature.[5] Thus, so do I understand ‘Goddess’ – the dynamic, triple-faced metaphor: She may enable the identification of life itself, as we witness it, experience it, and inter-act with it, with the manifestation of the ultimate Mystery at the heart and origin of existence. To further this identification I have associated the three faces of the Female Metaphor – Goddess – with three characteristics of what is scientifically known as Cosmogenesis, the omnipresent creative dynamic essential to all structure and form in the Universe. These qualities of Cosmogenesis are referred to by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry in their story of the Universe. They describe them as three central tendencies, which are “the cosmological orderings of the creative display of energy everywhere and at any time throughout the history of the universe.”[6] The three chronological/biological phases of a woman’s life in which the faces of Goddess are mirrored are: pre-menarchal young one, menstrual mother, and post-menopausal elder; and thus they have been known as Virgin/Maiden, Mother/Creator, Old One/Crone. It is necessary to ‘re-story’ these terms, since women and men in these times, no longer understand them in their full integrity – diminished, trivialized and even demonized as they have been by millennia of patriarchal narrative. Whereas, in the earliest of times of consciousness, and even later, these phases seem to have been sensed as aspects of the Great Creative Process whereby life continued, they had in recent patriarchal times lost their sacred essence. Indeed the Great Creative Process itself, expressed in the female as sacred, had become background. The mother became mere vessel, and ‘useful’ in this mode. The young virgin became a prize to be taken, the older virgin became a harsh deviant to be avoided. The old one became ‘used up’ and troublesome. Adam McLean advises that: To find the Triple Goddess … we must go back to an early stratum of myth. Long before the ascendancy of the Christ myth, the primal myths of the Goddess had been overlaid with generations of masculine Gods usurping her place in the scheme of things, taking over her sacred centres and grasping for themselves some facet of her attributes. If we go back to the earliest myths of humankind we will find the goddess in her purest, usually triune, form.[7] The re-storying of women – the Being of the female, is a preface to being able to speak sensibly of how Virgin-Mother-Crone could be a metaphor for the mystery of being. It is then possible to relate these three aspects to the evolutionary cosmic dynamics – to ‘Cosmogenesis’ – as a way of deepening awareness of them in the present moment and as a way of entering into the Female Metaphor more fully; as a way of comprehending or sensing ‘Goddess’. The seasonal celebrations then may become a way of accessing the Metaphor, embodying ‘Goddess’, and developing personal and cultural relationship to the Cosmos. The process of celebrating Her annual cycle of Creativity is a process of joining Earth in Her annual journey of descent and return, in Her divine expression. Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [1] See Paul Devereaux Earth Memory p.34 and 120-124, Michael Dames The Silbury Treasure, Claire French The Celtic Goddess, p.22. [2] other valencies may be included, as with all poetry and art. [3] Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, p.27. [4] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p.28. [5] More of this is described in PaGaian Cosmology, Chapter 4: see “Whitehead’s ‘Threefold Creative Composition’”. [6] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.72. [7] Adam McLean, The Triple Goddess, p.12-13. REFERENCES: Dames, Michael. The Silbury Treasure: The Great Goddess Rediscovered. London: Thames and Hudson,1976. Devereux, Paul. Earth Memory: The Holistic …

(Special post) Laurie Baymarrwangga, Senior Australian of the Year 2012

Posted with permission in Return to Mago on ‘Australia Day’, 26 January 2014 (Australian time), in recognition of the ill-treatment and misunderstanding of Aboriginal people that was set in train when, in 1788, white people first settled in the land now known as Australia.
(Special Post 1) Multi-linguistic Resemblances of “Mago” by Mago Circle Members

“Ma” in “Mago” and “Ma-Gaia” Mother Goddess, ca.7250-6700 BCE, Catal Huyuk Turkey [Conversation between Carol P. Christ, Ph.D. and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.] Carol P. Christ (CPC): Below is culled from “Gaia” in Wikipedia: The Greek word γαῖα (transliterated as gaia) is a collateral form of γῆ (gē, Doric γᾶ ga and probably δᾶ da) meaning Earth, a word of uncertain origin. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin. In Mycenean Greek Ma-ka (trans. as Ma-ga, “Mother Gaia”) also contains the root ga-. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (HHH): “Mago” and “Goma” are closely linked. Gom or Goma means the bear and Magoist shaman queen of the late fourth millennium BCE. She is also related with the Big Bear constellation. “Go” is used as a modifier referring to Mago or the Goddess in various texts of East Asia. “Mago” is related with “magi,” whose singular form is “magus” or “magos.” Will have to check for more details and the source. CPC: My intuition is that “ma” and “na” are baby talk for mother. In other words, preceding any language. Mycenean is IE language, “Pre-Greek” is not IE. CPC: Below is “Mother” from Wikipedia: Synonyms and translations The proverbial “first word” of an infant often sounds like “ma” or “mama”. This strong association of that sound with “mother” has persisted in nearly every language on earth, countering the natural localization of language. Familiar or colloquial terms for mother in English are: Aama, Mata used in Nepal Mom and mommy are used in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Philippines, India and parts of the West Midlands including Birmingham in the United Kingdom. Mum and mummy are used in the United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong and Ireland. Charles, Prince of Wales publicly addressed his mother Queen Elizabeth II as “Mummy” on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee. Ma, mam, and mammy are used in Netherlands, Ireland, the Northern areas of the United Kingdom, and Wales; it is also used in some areas of the United States. In many other languages, similar pronunciations apply: Maa, aai, amma, and mata are used in languages of India like Assamese, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu etc. Mamá, mama, ma, and mami in Spanish Mama in Polish, German, Russian and Slovak Māma (妈妈/媽媽) in Chinese Máma in Czech and in Ukrainian Maman in French and Persian Ma, mama in Indonesian Mamaí, mam in Irish Mamma in Italian, Icelandic, Latvian and Swedish Māman or mādar in Persian Mamãe or mãe in Portuguese Mā̃ (ਮਾਂ) in Punjabi Mama in Swahili Em (אם) in Hebrew A’ma (ܐܡܐ) in Aramaic Má or mẹ in Vietnamese Mam in Welsh Eomma (엄마, pronounced [ʌmma]) in Korean In many south Asian cultures and the Middle East, the mother is known as amma, oma, ammi or “ummi”, or variations thereof. Many times, these terms denote affection or a maternal role in a child’s life. HHH: The name for Goddess seems as ancient as the language itself. [“Ma” being the first intentional word to be spoken by a baby.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Scholars and mythologists agree that “ma” means both one’s mother and the Goddess, I quoted it in my dissertation written in 2004. Judy E Foster: Brilliant discussion, Helen and Carol! So many revelations… hard to keep up! But do continue, its fascinating – makes so much sense. (To be continued)Join the discussion of this and other topics in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group.
(Special Post) Discussion on Mother-Daughter Wound by Mago Circle Members

[Mago Circle members discussed and answered the question, “What do you think of this (the topic article below)? If you are a feminist, it is something that you would promote? If so, why? If not, why not?” The discussion took place on May 15, 2017 and shortly thereafter in The Mago Circle.] Topic Article: “For The Daughters Who Don’t Love Their Mothers – Screw Mother’s Day” by Sade Andria Zabala Everyone talks about a mother’s unconditional love. But what if it doesn’t exist? Daughters are socially expected to be close with their mothers. But are you one of the women who aren’t? Mother’s Day isn’t just for celebrating moms. It’s a day some of us dread because we are reminded we grew up (or are still) unloved, not good enough. (Read the whole article here.)

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 …
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/
(Book Excerpt) Imbolc/Early Spring within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Imbolc/Early Spring are: Southern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – February 1st/2nd though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, thus actually a little later in early August for S.H., and early February for N.H., respectively. Some Imbolc Motifs In this cosmology Imbolc/Early Spring is the quintessential celebration of She Who is the Urge to Be. This aspect of the Creative Triplicity is associated with the differentiation quality of Cosmogenesis,[i] and with the Virgin/Young One aspect of the Triple Goddess, who is ever-new, unique, and singular in Her beauty – as each being is. This Seasonal Moment celebrates an identification with the Virgin/Young One – the rest of the light part of the cycle celebrates Her processes. At this Moment She is the Promise of Life, a spiritual warrior, determined to Be. Her purity is Her singularity of purpose. Her inviolability is Her determination to be … nothing to do with unbroken hymens of the dualistic and patriarchal mind. The Virgin quality is the essential “yes” to Being – not the “no” She was turned into. In the poietic process of the Seasonal Moments of Samhain/Deep Autumn, Winter Solstice and Imbolc/Early Spring, one may get a sense of these three in a movement towards manifest form – syntropy: from the autopoietic fertile sentient space of Samhain, through the gateway and communion of Winter Solstice to differentiated being, constant novelty, infinite particularity of Imbolc/Early Spring. The three are a kaleidoscope, seamlessly connected. The ceremonial breath meditations for all three of these Seasonal Moments focus attention on the Space between the breaths – each with slightly different emphasis: it is from this manifesting Space that form/manifestation arises. If one may observe Sun’s position on the horizon as She rises, the connection of the three can be noted there also: that is, Sun at Samhain/Deep Autumn and Imbolc/Early Spring rises at the same position, halfway between Winter Solstice and Equinox, but the movement is just different in direction.[ii] And these three Seasonal Moments are not clearly distinguishable – they are “fuzzy,”[iii] not simply linear and all three are in each other … this is something recognised of Old, thus the Nine Muses, or the numinosity of any multiple of three. Some Imbolc/early Spring Story This is the Season of the new waxing light. Earth’s tilt has begun taking us in this region back towards the Sun. Traditionally this Seasonal Point has been a time of nurturing the new life that is beginning to show itself – around us in flora and fauna, and within. It is a time of committing one’s self to the new life and to inspiration – in the garden, in the soul, and in the Cosmos. We may celebrate the new young Cosmos – that time in our Cosmic story when She was only a billion years old and galaxies were forming, as well as the new that is ever coming forth. This first Seasonal transition of the light part of the cycle has been named “Imbolc” – Imbolc is thought to mean “ewe’s milk” from the word “Oimelc,” as it is the time when lambs were/are born, and milk was in plentiful supply. It is also known as “the Feast of Brigid,” Brigid being the Great Goddess of the Celtic (and likely pre-Celtic) peoples, who in Christian times was made into a saint. The Great Goddess Brigid is classically associated with early Spring since the earliest of times, but her symbology has evolved with the changing eras – sea, grain, cow. In our times we could associate Her also with the Milky Way, our own galaxy that nurtures our life – Brigid’s jurisdiction has been extended. Some sources say that Imbolc means “in the belly of the Mother.” In either case of its meaning, this celebration is in direct relation to, and an extension of, the Winter Solstice – when the Birth of all is celebrated. Imbolc may be a dwelling upon the “originating power,” and that it is in us: a celebration of each being’s particular participation in this power that permeates the Universe, and is present in the condition of every moment.[iv] This Seasonal Moment focuses on the Urge to Be, the One/Energy deeply resolute about Being. She is wilful in that way – and Self-centred. In the ancient Celtic tradition Great Goddess Brigid has been identified with the role of tending the Flame of Being, and with the Flame itself. Brigid has been described as: “… Great Moon Mother, patroness (sic … why not “matron”) of poetry and of all ‘making’ and of the arts of healing.”[v] Brigid’s name means “the Great or Sublime One,” from the root brig, “power, strength, vigor, force, efficiency, substance, essence, and meaning.”[vi] She is poet, physician/healer, smith-artisan: qualities that resonate with the virgin-mother-crone but are not chronologically or biologically bound – thus are clearly ever present Creative Dynamic. Brigid’s priestesses in Kildare tended a flame, which was extinguished by Papal edict in 1100 C.E., and was re-lit in 1998 C.E.. In the Christian era, these Early Spring/Imbolc celebrations of the Virgin quality, the New Young One – became “Candlemas,” a time for purifying the “polluted” mother – forty days after Solstice birthing. Many nuns took their vows of celibacy at this time, invoking the asexual virgin bride.[vii] This is in contrast to its original meaning, and a great example of what happened to this Earth-based tradition in the period of colonization of indigenous peoples. An Imbolc/Early Spring Ceremonial Altar The flame of being within is to be protected and nurtured: the new Being requires dedication and attention. At this early stage of its advent, there is nothing certain about its staying power and growth: there may be uncertainties of various kinds. So there is traditionally a “dedication” in the ceremonies, which may be considered a “Brigid-ine” dedication, or known as a “Bridal” dedication, since “Bride” is a derivative 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, …
(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: …
(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

(Photo Essay 2) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part II: The Lost Iconography of Gaeyang Halmi We visited the Suseong Shrine a second time on July 11, 2012. I looked inside the Shrine wherein a shaman ritual was being performed by a Mudang (Korean Shaman)[i] and her assistants. The Mudang in colorful ritual outfit appeared to console her female client on behalf of the spirit. The ritual continued another hour or so and we waited outside until she finished her performance. We had come here on the day of arrival in Jungmak-dong, Buan. The shrine was locked, apparently not being in use. On our second visit, the shrine was packed with four people and their instruments and equipment. It was so compact that it left no room for another person to sit; however, it was pumping up the sober energy. In fact, I have no recollection of which musical instruments were being played inside the shrine. Nonetheless, it feels like that I was hearing the sharp and high banging of the kkwaenggwari (gong) accompanied by the janggu (hourglass drum) rhythm [symbolizing the sound of thunder and rain respectively]. The “musical” sound that I heard shook off the debris of ordinary thoughts and took me to the Other Side of Reality. I began to see things clearly the way they are. I was stepping into the history of this place that I was going to discover.
(Essay 1) How Did I Fall In Love with Korean Historical Drama? by Anna Tzanova, M.A.

Go to online class, Korean Historical Dramas. “To become a kairomancer¹, you need to learn to trust your feelings as you walk the roads of this world, to develop your personal science of shivers, to recognize in your gut and your skin and in free-floating impressions that you know far more than you hold on the surface of consciousness. You need to take care of your poetic health, reading what rhymes in a day or a season. You want to expect the unexpected, to make friends with surprises, and never miss that special moment.” ~ Robert Moss² After a year and a half of work without a day off; driving 100-150 miles every other day; writing past midnight every night; at the end of July 2011, overwhelmed by fatigue, I finally decided to take a weekend off. Little did I know, that time off would last over seven months, during which I would not only change my job, but also acquire a new passion.
(Bell Essay 7) 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.] Whale Mallet, Temple Bell in Sudeok-sa, Chungnam Korea Sources and Methods of Studying the Magoist Whale Bell It is not possible to present the topic in any comprehensive manner due to its complex and outlandish nature. As a whole, its elusive manifestations makes some of this essay’s premises provisional, leaving room for definite conclusions. I suggest that this essay be read as a primer to the large topic, Korean Magoist cetaceanism. I have built this essay on my previously published essay sequels on the Korean temple bell as well as my book, The Mago Way: Re-discovering the Great Goddess Mago from East Asia, on the Magoist Cosmogony.[1] It also draws from my forthcoming essay on Korean Magoist cetacean culture. Importantly, I am indebted to the work of Sungkyu Kim, advocate of Korean cetaceanism, for his valuable insights on the Korean temple bell and Korean cetaceanism in general. While his cross-cultural assessments of ancient Korean cetacean customs are often compelling, his cetacean hermeneutic on the pacifying flute story is in particular indispensable in securing the evidence of Sillan cetacean worship by the generations of Sillan rulers. That said, however, what distinguishes this essay from his work lies in the recognition that Korean cetaceanism is not monolithic totem worship. I hold that Korean cetaceanism was born and flowered within the context of Old Magoism. Here Old Magoism refers to the pre-patriarchal (read pre-Chinese) tradition of East Asia that venerates the Great Goddess, Mago.[2] In turn, the cetacean consciousness of ancient East Asian Magoists enabled a revelation of the Magoist Cosmogony. Thus, Korean cetaceanism is inextricably intertwined with the mytho-history of Magoism. It went underground, as the symbolic power of women inscribed in Magoism was removed from the public space in the course of history. In this light, Kim’s cetacean thought remains revisionist rather than reconstructionist, meaning not radical enough, unable to ask such critical questions as how the Sinocentric mytho-history of Korea or the Buddhist historiography has rendered Korean cetaceanism invisible and what that means to Koreans and the world. Most critically, Kim’s discussion of the Sillan whale bell and the pacifying flute underestimates their musical (read cosmogonic) implications. They are not of a mere musical instrument to call the whale to dance. True that the concept of music is much underestimated outside the context of the Magoist Cosmogony as a whole. The whale bell as well as the pacifying flute represents the regalia of Sillan Magoist rulers who undertook the Magoist mandate of bringing the terrestrial sonic resonance to harmonize the cosmic music of Yulryeo. The whale bell marks a new watershed wherein Sillan rulers successfully reinvented the legacy of Magoist shaman rulers of Old Magoism from the ancient inland mountain culture into the maritime culture of Silla. Stories on the pacifying flute and Manbulsan (Mountain of Ten Thousand Buddhas), the two major myths directly concerning the cetacean code of Korean temple bells, are drawn from the Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three States), the 13th century text that recounts myths, legends, and historical events of ancient Korean States including Silla (57 BCE-935), Goguryeo (37 BCE-668), Baekje (18 BCE-660), and Gaya (42-562) from an orthodox Buddhist perspective.[3] To be noted is that the Samguk Yusa (1281), together with another official historical text of Korea, the Samguk Sagi (1145), is a Sinocentric text that tailors ancient Korean history and territory to fit the historical framework of China. As a Sinocentric text, the Samguk Yusa takes a pro-Chinese perspective and presents ancient Korea as a humble little brother who owes Imperial China for his civilized culture. In it, Korean history and territory are curtailed to fit those of Imperial China. Put differently, the Samguk Yusa is a product of a Buddhist evangelist author, Ilyeon (1206-1289), whose interest was in establishing Buddhism of China and India at the cost of traditional Korean Magoism. Among modern Korean historians who are critical of Sinocentric Korean historiography is Sin Chaeho (1880-1936). As Sin’s advocacy of Korean ethnic historiography is largely aligned with the mytho-historical reconstruction of Magoism, I borrow his assessments of the Samguk Yusa and the Samguk Sagi here. Sin maintains that the loss of pre-Chinese Korean history primarily owes to the two survived Korean history books, the Samguk Yusa and the Samguk Sagi, that reduce and distort ancient Korean history. Precisely because of the Sinocentric (read patriarchal and imperialist) take, these two books have survived the persecution of pre-Chinese Korean Magoist historical books. Sin’s poignant criticism goes on to say that the Samguk Yusa employs the Sanskrit words for the names of people and places from the pre-Buddhist period of Wanggeom Joseon and that the Samguk Sagi ascribes Confucian phrases to the speech of Korean warriors who dismiss Confucius thought.[4] What Sin does not see is, however, that the authors of both books chose to be pro-Chinese or pro-Indian to subvert the female-centered tradition of Old Korea, Magoism. In short, they resort to Buddhism and Confucianism, the two major patriarchal religions of East Asia, respectively over against indigenous Magoism. The patriarchal time was waging a war against Magoists and life in general. I hold that both texts mark the milestones that escalated the process of patriarchalization in Korea, which took place much slowerly and later than in China. Damage is not done to Korean history only. A lie brings more lies. In the case of the Samguk Yusa, the portrayal of Sillan Buddhism is distorted. On the surface, the Samguk Yusa treats Esoteric Buddhism as a reservoir of miraculous legendary stories that fertilized orthodox Buddhism. On a deeper level, it dismantles a tie between Magoist cetacean worship and Esoteric Buddhism. The Samguk Yusa’s Buddhist perspective aligned with the Sinocentric historical framework is inherently inadequate in defining Sillan Esoteric …

Category: Feminism

(Book Excerpt 3) Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess, the Girl God anthology by Trista Hendren

Like this:

(Book Review) Christ & Plaskow's Goddess and God in the World by Mary Ann Beavis

Like this:

(Essay 2) Iyami and the Female Roots of Power in the IfaOrisha Tradition by Ayele Kumari, Ph.D.

Like this:

(Book Excerpt 2) Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess, the Girl God anthology by Trista Hendren

Like this:

(Book Excerpt 1) Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess, the Girl God anthology by Trista Hendren

Like this:

(Mago Stronghold Essay 3) The Forgotten Primordial Paradise by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Like this:

(Essay) The Gift Economy by Genevieve Vaughan

Like this:

(Special Post 2) "The Oldest Cilivization" and its Agendas by Mago Circle Members

Like this:

(Art) Nuestra Senora La Virgen de Guadalupe by Lydia Ruyle

Like this:

(Essay 3) Kinship and Power of Place by Sara Wright

Like this:

Update & Happy 4th Birthday to Return to Mago E-Magazine!

Like this:

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

Like this:

(Essay 2) Kinship and Power of Place by Sara Wright

Like this:

(Search) Co-editors for the textbook: The Divine Mother, Nature and Matriarchal Societies

Mago Almanac Year 8 (for 2025)

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

(She Rises Salon) Meet Dr. Stephanie Mines in Her Vision of the MA/Ph.D. Program on Regenerative Health for A Climate Changing World

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: