September 28, 2021September 16, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Book Excerpt 6) On the Wings of Isis: Reclaiming the Sovereignty of Auset, ed. by Trista Hendren et al.

The Rulers of Our Own Damn Lives Monica Rodgers It was so quick, I would later call the episode a “stress hallucination.” In that moment, as my six-year-old daughter clung Read More …

September 27, 2021September 27, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(She Summons Excerpt) I am in Everything by Alex Purbrick

I am in Everything Minds swirling in panicked fears, Lives running too fast, No time to wipe tears. Elders warned this age would be, One of great speed, fury and Read More …

September 23, 2021September 25, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(She Summons Excerpt) The Seed Who Summons (Part 1) by Claire Dorey

There is a seed deep underground that the serpent knows about. Inanna knew. Isis did too. “What were they doing, our ancestral mothers, with their hands full of snakes?” I Read More …

September 20, 2021September 3, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Essay 2) Goddesses in Hinduism: “All the Mothers are One” by Mary Ann Beavis, Ph.D.

[Editor’s Note: This essay is from the same title, “Goddesses in Hinduism: “All the Mothers are One”‘ by Mary Ann Beavis with Scott Daniel Dunbar included in Goddesses in Myth, Read More …

September 17, 2021September 18, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(She Summons Excerpt) The 2020 Vision of MotherWorld by Kathy Jones

MotherWorld is the society in which Mother Earth, Mothers and the values of mothering and caring for each other and for all Her creatures and Nature – are placed in Read More …

September 16, 2021September 25, 2021 Kaalii CargillLeave a comment

(Essay) Fear Is The Mind Killer by Kaalii Cargill

“Buying a car without warranty or a buying a used car with no warranty is clearly something you’d never want to do . . .” https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/should-i-buy-a-used-car-without-a-warranty-31054 Why, then, would we choose Read More …

September 15, 2021September 15, 2021 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Dual-language Essay 1) The Goddess of Spirals by Noris Binet

I began a drawing about the great Mother Goddess. The drawing was calling me. It wanted to be born. The goddess’ body is a swirl of spirals. I felt navigating Read More …

September 13, 2021September 3, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

Moving towards the Dark… “Elder”berry Musings… by Sara Wright

“I wake up under a tropical dome that has been with us most of August. The thick air feels like it is smothering me, and with emphysema that may not Read More …

September 10, 2021September 10, 2021 Mago Work Admin3 Comments

Sun and Earth Rise Over the Lake by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Our world is at a turning point between catastrophe and the opportunity for peace, equality, and environmental sustainability. Perhaps creating new stories that speak to the challenges of our time Read More …

September 9, 2021July 16, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Pandemic Poem 9) Underway by Jyoti Wind

My indoor geranium is getting ready to bud. In my neighborhood, I’m surrounded by re-incarnated monks and nuns. Mountain lions come down from the hills to roam the empty streets. Read More …

September 2, 2021September 2, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Tribute) In Memoriam, Carol Patrice Christ (1945-2021) by Mara Lynn Keller

“In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewal.” — Carol P. Christ Carol Patrice Christ died peacefully on Read More …

September 1, 2021August 27, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Video 4) Sherri Mitchell & Jodie Evans in Maternal Gift Economy: Breaking Through by Genevieve Vaughan

[Words of Invitation] Drawing on Maternal Gift Economy theory, the suppressed wisdom of women, and the traditions and ethics of Indigenous societies, this integrated programme of presentations sponsored by the Read More …

August 31, 2021January 24, 2022 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(She Summons Excerpt) Flying Lessons: Inquire Within for Hungry Ghosts by Cynthia Tom

Growing up with a Chinese culture that values the son, but negates the daughter, Cynthia Tom uses art to unravel and address embedded feelings of being invisible and unnecessary. In Read More …

(Meet Mago Contributor) Aisha Monks-Husain

Aisha Monks-Husain is a student, an activist, and a writer. Monks-Husain earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Chapman University. She is currently applying for her Masters in Comparative Literature, emphasizing in Middle Eastern literature to help bridge the gap between Eastern and Western cultures. Monks-Husain aspires to write about her experiences as a first-generation American with the mixture of British and Pakistani cultures in her life.
(Poem) Whale Dancer Prayer by Mary Saracino

a drawing I made, Vibrant Life, photo credit: Mary Saracino In the heart of the whale In the belly of the sea In the womb of memory Dream Dream Dream Sing Sing Sing Dance Dance Dance One love One life One world One people One peace https://www.magoism.net/2013/05/meet-mago-contributor-mary-saracino
(Poem) Crossing Over by Harriet Ann Ellenberger

When I was little,my mother bought me a Golden Book,and each night we read the storythat repeated the words,“Nobody knows but the old black crows.” Crows know everythingbecause they eat everything. Crows bring good luck,especially in travel. I ask it be a world-wise crowwho calls me to the other way. — Harriet Ann Ellenberger (1992) Author’s Note: Having contributed to Return to Mago since its inception, and believing as I do in the Mago Work, it gives me great pleasure to announce here my new e-book, The Ones You Love: Poetry and Prose 1968-2024. I want my e-book to be distributed as a gift along friendship networks. You can receive your copy by writing me directly at Harriet Ellenberger akadesmoines@gmail.com. Please tell any of your friends you think might be interested. Thanks. https://www.magoism.net/2013/05/meet-our-contributor-harriet-ann-ellenberger/
(Essay I and II) Precession of the Umbilical Cords – Brigid and Medusa Entwined by Claire Dorey

Photography by Claire Dorey Part I When you died you stood at the foot of my bed and suggested I, “Work with the light.” At this point I want to stop this story to explain how you’re not the only newly, deceased soul to stand at the foot of my bed and peer at me over the bedstead. Sleepy, muzzy-eyed, swaddled in sheets, sometimes I think the veil for willful souls detouring from their walk from this world into that Other one. They come with a mélange of messages, some uplifting, some downright mean. I’ve been told I’m a disappointment and received nuggets of wisdom. Back to this story. I thank your recently departed self for your wise and kind advice and try to explain to you that, “People like me don’t work with the light. We work with the darkness.” When you were living you glowed. You were the lightest, brightest, most radiant, golden-haired princess, a painter creating with light, holding your lantern, like Brigid does. Your spark lit all in your orbit, so much so we believed darkness couldn’t touch you. You were Venus de Milo, [Sandro Botticelli – The Birth of Venus] rising from a scallop shell, speaking in ‘roses’. Your life-scape was your canvas, an aquamarine seascape, sprinkled with adoration, love, perfume and petals. I ask you to look at me sprawled across my mattress, really look at me. “Do you see any light here?” I whisper. My darkness is not one of solitude. I am not alone here. This mattress I cower on churns in the abyss of the dark night of the soul, adrift in a midnight sea as if it were the Raft of Medusa [Theodore Géricault]. Haunted by demons and turbulent flashbacks, waves of trauma lash at my sanity. Some nights I stay awake to avoid meeting my own wounding. This is a place of survival. Asleep or awake, the fear is the same. Night is always tempestuous. I forgive you for suggesting I work with the light, when my reality is plunging the darkest depths of the churning subconscious because, even though your flame warms like a summer’s day, I know that a Black Dog walked beside you. I was the opposite. Even though my life was heavy and difficult, an angel always walked with me. I was Medusa, Persephone and Nyx. You were Brigid, Theia and Venus. When a star (Venus) shone in my darkness she lit up my entire world and lifted me up. When the darkness (Nyx) came into your world she was too much for you. You crumbled. Anubis, cloak of dark, when the blackbird sang her holy poetry, soothing your soul, your Black Dog led you to your soft bed where you quietly swallowed poison. Eclipse, shadow, staying sane, digging in, people like me hope someone someday will find empathy for those tangled in the roots of the trauma tree. Try not to shy from the detail of other people’s suffering. Let’s not shovel their trauma into the shadows, or fear their transformation when it happens. Their light is our healing. Medusa, one aspect of the Divine, suffered unimaginable pain. Her hard won knowledge, so sharp and focused, the fire in her eyes turned men to stone. Her gorgon head, serpent wisdom burning bright, was stuffed in a sack and put to work on behalf of the patriarch, but Her spirit resides as an eye in the stars, watching, waiting. [Algol, the Demon Star, representing Medusa, is a trio of stars, within the Perseus constellation.] So this Brigid who summons me now is the one who whistles for souls lost to the night. She is the meandrous, dewy Brigid who emerges as a serpent from a hoary mound, at Imbolc, the first day of Celtic spring. “The serpent will come from the hole On the brown Day of Bríde,” – Scottish Gaelic proverb. Women who work with the dark ache for the arrival of She Who Spins, the Divine Female in perpetual celestial motion, shifting darkness to light, light to darkness. Watching from the stars, or biding time deep within Mother Earth, omnipotent, cyclical, cosmic and chthonic, She winters as the Queen Bee and flower bulb beneath the soil, in caves, in seeds, in rivers, in the depths of the sea, in the dark subconscious, waiting for spring. These weavers of justice, balance and destiny set change in motion when the celestial heavens move, shards of hope, as piercing as Medusa’s gaze, illuminating the lies and injustice of this age of treachery. This is when new ideas are born. Reversal of all that went before is the power of the year wheel; Ursa Major spinning round the North Star; the nocturnal portals for working with star energy; lunar cycles cleansing the body and rivers in a powerful tidal surge of letting go; the precession of the equinoxes; the cogs of the Ages. This power is represented in the symbolism of simple things: a Cros Bhríde woven from reeds; a white feather fluttering on the sidewalk; an egg incubating life. The etymology of ‘Imbolc’ varies. In modern Irish i mbolg means ‘in the belly of the mother’. In some mythologies Brigid is nourished by ewe’s milk, but this Brigid has swallowed bitter herbs and is pupating beneath a mound, moulded from fistfuls of autochthonous soils, resting, waiting, creative spirit kept alive by the idling pulse of a slumbering Mother Earth. “Taste this tree, even if her elixir is to your distaste.” – Ulonda Faye [1]. This ritual was always about ‘over-wintering’ the bones in silent connection to the Earth as ‘living being’. When Brigid rises, in serpent form, through rupturing turf, halo of flames searing the raw February dawn, She is ritually reborn, cleansed, ecstatic and aware. Now that, like Her, I have emerged squinting, from the dark, I ask Brigid, “Should I work with the light?” I ask because, as Emily Dickinson describes it, “I am out with lanterns looking for myself.”[2] I yearn to bask in …
(S/HE V2 N1 Essay 3) The Ancient Korean Whale-Bell: An Encodement of Magoist Cetacean Soteriology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Editor’s Note: This essay to be posted as sequels is from the second volume of the S/HE journal. See S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (Volume 2 Number 1, 2023). Page numbers and footnote numbers differ in this page.] How I Study and Discuss the Whale-Dragon Bell? Personally, I began to explore the Korean temple bell as a matricentric symbol with regards to the Magoist Cosmogony, the cosmogonic account of the Budoji, the principal text of Magoism.[1] Apparently, its distinctive feature including the Nine Nipples in a Breast Circumference as well as its protruding body resembling a pregnant woman’s belly did not accord with the central teaching of Buddhism (see [Figure 10]). I intuited that the bell’s sonic-visual-artistic language was an expression of the Magoist Cosmogony. However, the female or matricentric perspective did not lead me further. Shortly after, I realized that the Sillan bell was not about women or mothers in separation from the natural world headed by whales. It was not about women versus men. It led me to a pre- and trans-feminist perspective. While searching for the origin of these female and numeric symbols of the bell, I came to pay attention to the dragon expressed in the Dragon Loop and the Dragon Tube. Some scholars in Korea indicate that the bell’s dragon image is associated with myth of the Pacifying Flute that Defeats All (萬波息笛 Manpasikjeok), hereafter the Pacifying Flute.[2] Some of them maintain that the Dragon Tube is the replica of the Pacifying Flute. To my astonishment, I learned that the myth of the Pacifying Flute concerns not only the dragon but also the tusk of a narwhal, which was made into the Pacifying Flute. In the myth, the dragon is identified as the sea waves that carried the “singing” of whales from the sea. I soon learned that whale totemism is not limited to the whale bell or the Pacifying Flute. The cetacean symbol of a dragon opened my eyes to see how individual themes can fit within the span of Magoism. I sensed that cetacean totemism underlies the very consciousness of the Magoist Cosmogony. Within the hypothesis of Magoist Cetaceanism to be originated from Goma’s Danguk confederacy of Nine Hans, seemingly isolated or odd pieces of data began to fit the whole picture.[3] My research on Magoist Cetaceanism has expanded with an overwhelming volume of data.[4] Some of them are shared below in the Introduction as a background discussion. That Magoism is inseparably tied with cetacean veneration remains codified. And both, Magoism and cetacean totemism, are not registered in the conscious mind of mainstream academics and the public. This essay carves out a new method, a simultaneous de- and re-construction of currently endorsed data and their interpretations concerning early Sillan history and early Buddhism. For example, I have grouped the history of Silla into three periods based on the royal matrilineages (see Appendix I and II). Also, I rely on the insight that Sillans intended to redefine Buddhism within the scope of Magoist Cetaceanism. The whale-dragon bell was a new soteriological apparatus invented by Cetacean Magoists of Unified Silla to invoke the matriversal consciousness of the Magoist Cosmogony. The Sillan whale-dragon bell is a total package. The very feature, which this paper discusses for the two bells, is rife with the maternal-sono-aquatic-numeric symbols, which unfold the matriversal reality of WE/HERE/NOW.[5] Finally, the whale-dragon bell displays a pre- and trans-feminist perspective in which the issue of equality between women and men poses no conflict. The matriversal bond between humans and whales embraces all entities as interdependent beings. The task of unravelling the meaning of the Sillan whale-dragon bell is daunting in that we moderns have lost the language of matriversal whale totemism, Magoist Cetaceanism, which undergirds ancient Korean culture and history. In the figures below (Figures 5, 6, and 7), this essay employs three simultaneous approaches in examining the semantics of the whale-dragon bell. Apparently, a linear model falls short. The first approach, a matriversal approach, considers and explores the three arenas, Magoist Cetaceanism, Sillan Magoist Political Vision, and the Magoist Cosmogony ([Figure 5]). The second multi-semantic approach unpacks overlapping sub-categories, each of which is unfolding to new meanings ([Figure 6]). The last mytho-historical approach begins with Unified Silla to her predecessors, Budo Joseon, Danguk, to the Magoist Cosmogony, and to the Cosmic Music (Sonic Numerology) ([Figure 7]). By crisscrossing these three approaches, I weave the sections with sub-sections in the order of Introduction, Background Discussions, and the Two Bells: The Sangwonsa Bell and The Divine Bell. (To be continued) [1] See Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, “Unveiling,” 4-70. [2] For the discussion of the Pacifying Flute from the perspective of Magoist Cetaceanism, I began to write and published as three parts (ongoing). See Helen Hye Sook Hwang, “Magoist Cetaceanism and the Myth of the Pacifying Flute (Manpasikjeok),” Return to Mago E-Magazine, October 29, 2019, https://www.magoism.net/2019/10/essay-1-magoist-cetaceanism-and-the-myth-of-the-pacifying-flute-manpasikjeok-by-helen-hye-sook-hwang-ph-d/. [3] That Goma is deemed as the progenitor of Korean Shamans/Mudangs is the premise that many Koreanists would agree. See Neunghwa Yi in Joseon Musokgo (Investigation of Joseon Muism), quoted in Young-Jin Kim, “Accepting Shamanism and Reconstructing Sacred Space in Silla Buddhism (신라불교의 무격 수용과 신성공간의 재구성),” Bulgyoe Hakbo (불교학보), 68 (2014), 165. The whale veneration, pre-patriarchal in origin, undergirds the matriversal civilization of Goma at the time of the Danguk confederacy of Nine Hans (c. 3898 BCE-2333 BCE). Put differently, whale totemism constitutes the foundation of Goma’s matriversal civilization from which modern civilizations are derived. [4] I organized and held Mago Whale Pilgrimages for two years during the Covid years of 2021 and 2022. One Pilgrimage comprises three Tours and each Tour includes six daily meetings for one week. [5] The matriversal reality of WE/HERE/NOW is a concept unfolded in the Magoist Cosmogony. See Hwang, The Mago Way, Chapter 8. https://www.magoism.net/2013/07/meet-mago-contributor-helen-hwang/
(Poem) Forest by Susan Hawthorne

I have been thinking about climate grief recently and the effect that climate catastrophe is having on so many parts of the world, so many animals and the natural environment. My other worry is the terrible effect of crossing from the wild to the human in ways that should not be happening. Rainforests are not especially hospitable to humans and there is good reason for this. They are important sinks for the planet and for the health of biodiversity. The poem below begins with a saying from the Djiru people who are the traditional custodians of the land in Far North Queensland where I live. The poem was written after Category-5 Cyclone Larry in 2006 when we were battered by 300 kph winds. At that time, cassowaries were starving and locals cut fruit to put out so they wouldn’t starve. This photo was taken in May 2020 and we have not had a big cyclone since 2011. Photo by Susan Hawthorne Forest Casuarius casuarius johnsonii no wabu, no wuju, no gunduy no forest, no food, no cassowary ―Djiru saying. A girl goes into the forest the forest is a rainforest her guide is a cassowary the cassowary knows her way through the forest she knows all the fruits of the forest she is mistress of the forest the fruits are red blue orange green and yellow the girl must collect the fruit Along comes a big wind a wind that lifts and twists the trees round and round so that their trunks are spiralled the wind hauls trees out of the earth and throws them every which way the girl shelters under the heavy black feathers of the cassowary which pin her to the ground When the big wind has passed the girl is disoriented she no longer knows which way is up she hardly knows which is east or west which is sun which is moon clouds scud across the sky but they have lost their shapes no longer are there stories in the clouds just loss The cassowary tries to comfort the girl at first there is plenty of fruit fallen fruit native plum lilly pilly quandong the girl wanders behind disconsolately from time to time she nibbles at the rotting flesh but it soon sours the bitter seed takes over from the soft flesh As the days pass the cassowary must wander further and further afield she ventures into places she’s never been before followed by the girl soon the fruit is nowhere to be found the two sit down to wait for windfall quietly they drop into sleep quietly they die ‘Forest’ is from my collection Earth’s Breath. https://www.spinifexpress.com.au/shop/9781876756734?rq=Earth%27s%20Breath Please note: Spinifex Press has a new website, so old links might not work. Please check out the new site with a Medusa photo I took in Rome. https://www.magoism.net/2013/12/meet-mago-contributor-susan-hawthone/ (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne, Ph.D.
(Essay) The Internet and Research on Goddess History and Culture by Francesca Tronetti, Ph.D.

NYC Public Library Research Room”Not everyone has access to large research libraries, instead the internet has become their information source.” Francesca Tronetti Scholars are consistently engaged in research of one type or another. Whether they are looking for primary sources, reevaluating established works, or considering new findings, there is always something new to discover. Academic scholars are fortunate enough to have credentials which allow them access to libraries and museum collections that laypeople cannot access. Laypeople which include pagan individuals who wish to research and revive ancient traditions but may not have the background in history, anthropology, classical studies, or religious studies. Instead, they spend hours trolling through libraries, used bookstores, and online archives. They find and bring together multiple sources to create a better understanding of an ancient religious practice. When Cathryn Platine began researching the worship of Cybele in the ancient world in the 1990s the internet personal webpages were being posted, online bookstores were reprinting ancient texts, and the forum boards allowed people to connect with other like-minded researchers. Cathryn remembers finding niche publishing houses which often were the only source for some documents. She remembers “Llewellyn Press started by publishing great arcane books you could not get anywhere else, they republished antique books of ceremonial magic.”[1] Today Llewellyn does not offer these arcane books, most of which were primary source material. The rare books Cathryn bought from Llewellyn are now mainly produced by reprint publishers such as Kessinger Publishing and can be ordered through their website[2]or found on Amazon.com. The internet also played a vital role in Cathryn’s research on the worship of Cybele in Phrygian and Rome. She did most of her research during the 1990s in the early days of the internet. During this time, educational institutions and museums across the globe were beginning to digitize their collections and make them available online. Maps of archaeological excavations, pictures of the artifacts, and site reports were also starting to appear online. Tufts University began the creation of the Perseus Digital Library,[3] an online collection of ancient texts and stories with translations and complete publishing information. Additionally, individuals were making out-of-print material available for free online. One book was vital to Cathryn’s research and my dissertation, and its story demonstrates how crucial it was to have documents available online. Much of the history of Cybele’s worship which Cathryn told me, and which she wrote in her book The Cybeline Revival,[4] was without citation. She told me, “When we started this, we weren’t paying attention to citing things, we wanted to get [the information is written] down and share it.” Over Yule of 2016, when I had returned to the Maetreum to pick up books and talk to Cathryn and Viktoria, I asked Cathryn where she had gotten some of her quotes. Specifically, I was interested the phrase “I have drunk from the cymbal,” a quote which I had spent a year looking. Cathryn’s book was the only source I had for the phrase, and in all my research I had never found it in any other writing. This time, while sitting in her office, she directed me to her bookshelves and told me that she might have the source for that phrase. Cathryn told me to pull out a blue binder and inside was the title page to a book, printed off the internet, Pagan Regeneration: A Study of Mystery Initiations and Secret Rites in the Graeco-Roman World by Harold R. Willoughby.[5] I looked through the text, and there was the quote, twice with two different cited sources. I was elated, for a year I had been searching for this reference and here it was. Cathryn told me that I could borrow the binder to look at, but I could not take it out of the house. Willoughby’s book had been out of print for decades, and she was not going to lose her only hard copy.[6] She found the PDF copy online in the late 1990s or early 2000s and had printed it out, which she said was good because the website she found it on no longer existed. Curious to see if I could find a print copy, I did a Google search. Sure enough, it had been republished and was now available on Amazon. Pagan Regeneration was first published in 1929, and the next publishing date I found was 2009. Aside from the online copy, Cathryn had found, Willoughby’s book had not been reprinted for almost eighty years. This experience, and other stories she told me demonstrated the amount of work that went into her research on Cybele. Some of the older texts had, in the 1990s, been out of print for between twenty and seventy years[7] if not longer. The availability of out of print material, whether through an online archive, a reprinting publisher or the sale of a book on eBay or Amazon, is of immense advantage to professional and lay scholars. Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult has never been republished after its translation into English in 1977, even though it is referenced in any book or project dealing with the worship of Cybele or her cult. Having the primary source in your hands, rather than using a quote of a quote of a paraphrase, is vital to gathering factual data and researching reliable conclusions. Online publishing scholarly and out-of-print material gave Cathryn, and the other priestesses access to the information they needed to revive the worship of Cybele. It is true that the internet is now home to conspiracy websites and sometimes the ravings of people claiming to be experts. However, we cannot forget that it was the first place where people could access material that had previously been available to academics. And, the internet continues to be a place where researchers of all backgrounds can share information and sources to enhance our understanding of the material and spiritual world. (Meet Mago Contributor) Rev. Francesca Tronetti. [1] Platine, in interview with author, October 28, 2015. [2] Kessinger …
(Book Review) Nané Jordan and Chandra Alexandre eds., Pagan, Goddess, Mother (Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2021) Reviewed by Barbara Bickel

[Editor’s Note: This book review was first published in S/HE: An international Journal of Goddess Studies Vol 1 No 1, 2022.] Pagan, Goddess, Mother, opens with the “charge of the Goddess” by Doreen Valiente, as adapted by Starhawk. The charge or ‘call to deeply care’ for mothers and children captivatingly continues through the thirteen compelling chapters of this book. I read the full book in three sittings, and had difficulty putting the book down even as I drifted off to sleep during my second round of reading at the end of a long day. The stories of women committed to living life fully awake to the significance of Earth, Goddess and Mother are a balm for the wounded, yet awakening earthling, mother, child in all of us. The honouring and reverence of, for and with the Divine Mother and mothering acts of love is the catalytic thread bonding each chapter to the other. The co-editors, Jordan and Alexandre, as matricentric feminists, create a clear and encompassing matrix of thought for the many pathways travelled by the contributing authors. They generously include a chapter of their own stories of interconnecting yet distinct paths of coming to women’s spirituality, the Goddess, and mother-centred devotions. In a vulnerable heart held way, they open the reader to a matricentric life-focused and nesting worldview in high contrast to the death-focused nest destroying patricentric worldview that has been spiraling off center for centuries, wounding all; men, women and children, more-than-humans and our mother Earth in its path. The love of the mother, expressed in the vision of a contemporary Goddess spirituality, that “draw[s] from and legitimizes female-centred and material embodied social powers, with diverse expressions of the feminine being possible beyond gender norms” (Jordan & Alexandre, p. 20) pours out from the pages of this book. Section 1is entitled “Priestess, Witch, Artist, Midwife: Mother Stories”and opens with a call for the “Mamapriestess” in Molly Remer’s chapter as she brings the priestess, mother and Goddess to presence through poetry, autobiographic storytelling, and scholarly valuation of the divine mother and female body. Sarah Rosehill, in chapter two further deepens understandings of the passionate mama through her story of a difficult birth and single motherhood by sharing how the teachings of Anamanta and pagan spiritual practices helped her, as her title states, in “Finding my Footing as a Witch and a Mother.” An image of Mother Mary with her direct and attending gaze graces the cover of the book. This symbolic painting emerged from Asia Morgenthanler’s sacred art practice described in chapter three “Remothering and the Goddess,” where Morgenthanler through her making practice, explores the inner child and the inner mother. Through making she writes that we become aligned with all creation and can transform ourselves. Foremothers and minks slide with parallel ease into our imaginaries in the poetics of chapter four written by Elizabeth Cunningham entitled “Minks.”In this chapterwe witness the spontaneous presence of prayer in a sacred moment shared between mother and teenage daughter. Chapter five, the last in this first section, follows a life full of lessons learned by Alys Einion, a mother, priestess, and midwife in her chapter entitled “‘Call Unto They Soul’: Reflexive Authoethnography of a Pagan, Priestess,Goddess-Worshipper, and Mother.” Responding to the call of the Goddess she reflects upon a lifetime of trust in the Goddess in the midst of uncertainty in “birth, death, life, nurturing, abandonment, destruction, construction and communion” (87). Section II is entitled “Scholarship from Pagan Goddess Motherlines” and traverses challenging and conflicting aspects in Pagan practices, pre-Christian Goddess cultures and Christian influenced occult teachings. Christina Hoff Kraemer’s chapter six, entitled “Pagan Mothering, Body Sovereignty, and Consent Culture” launches this section with teachable and valuable approaches for understanding how children can be raised to know the manifestation of the divine life force in their bodies. The understanding that the divine manifests in bodies is honoured and supported through nurturing healthy body boundaries, encouraging sovereignty and empathetic beingness with all others. Chapter seven questions cultural and religious confines in India that continue to limit women’s sovereignty in Kusmita Muhkerjee Debnath’s critical and vulnerable dive into historical and present practices of the Hindu religion and culture. In her search for female agency in stories of goddesses she has grown up with, she instead finds the perpetuation of a god centered subserviency and thus rejects her cultural and religious teachings regarding the prescribed role of women. Critical reflections continue in chapter seven, Georgia van Raalte’s chapter eight, entitled “The Path of the Cold Hearth-Stone: Reflections on Sex, Saturn, and Solitary Working.” This chapter offers a critical scholarly overview of early occultist Dion Fortune’s teachings, which have and continue to have a significant impact on contemporary goddess, pagan and occult practices and communities. Of significance for this book is Fortune’s recognition of motherhood as a spiritual path alongside her consequent separation of motherhood from priestesshood. Van Raalte rejects Fortune’s elimination of an occult liberational “left-hand path of exuberant endurance” (130) for those without privilege and means to enter dedicated priestess practice. Van Raalte then offers a third “Path of the Cold-Hearth-Stone, which is the path of struggle and submission as a negative ecstatic liberation theology of motherhood” (132) as an essential addition to Fortunes’ two paths for women, that of the Adept and the Path of the Hearth-Fire. Section III is entitled Empowering Spirited Mother-Daughter Lineages. Chapter nine opens this section with Laura Zegel’s powerful and practical focus on mothering daughter’s groups and is entitled “The Spiritual Dimension of Mother-Daughter Groups: Healing with Artemis, Demeter, and Persephone.” Studies of mother-daughter groups and her personal experience in a long-term mother-daughter group inspires mother-ways to support the spiritual, emotional and relational growth of young and mothering women living in a patriarchal culture that has altered, for its own means, the goddess-centred understandings of Artemis, Demeter and Persephone. Chapter ten then, aptly and poetically walks us directly to a garden-planting-nurturing moment of a present day Persephone and Demeter in the rhythmic prayer-filled words of poet-mother Jennifer …
Our Mother (Prayer by Patricia Lynn Reilly, Music by Gary Floyd, Art by Andrea Redmond) by Alison Newvine

In honor of the passing of legendary gay punk rock star and Divine Mother devotee Gary Floyd, we are sharing a piece of his music composed for the prayer “Our Mother” written by spiritual feminist author Patricia Lynn Reilly. This version was recorded live by Spiral Muse at herchurch in San Francisco in 2018. https://youtu.be/An-Vm5EMCyI?si=h5rqJZmi-nZNsZEh https://www.magoism.net/2023/10/meet-mago-contributor-alison-newvine

(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 Mother Teresa 3) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

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

Born in Juárez in 1959, Mario Colín lived his entire life in the Five Points area of Central El Paso, where he attended Houston Elementary and Austin High School. From the age of fifteen, he worked as a construction worker, building silos and other large construction projects across the U.S.A., at some point hitch hiking from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic shores. In his late twenties, he began to focus all his attention and energy on art, which had been an interest since early childhood, working as a muralist and portrait painter. Much of his art is of a religious nature, although he also painted secular art, portraits, and historical scenes. Colín painted his first mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe in collaboration with deceased artist Chuck Zavala in 1987 at Esparza’s Grocery, a small store in Central El Paso. It has now become a shrine, with community members building a stone arch and bringing flowers and candles, and has been pronounced a religious site by the parish church. Since that first mural, Colín has painted over 40 pieces of public art, many of which have become landmarks. Many of those murals are in that same Central El Paso neighborhood, on or near Piedras, including the House of Pizza, Los Alamos Grocery, The Elbo Room bar, the former Sanitary Plumbing at Piedras and Fort Boulevard. Colín twice painted a 25 foot mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe, at Alameda and Zaragoza, across from the Ysleta mission. The first version, painted in 1997, became decayed, but was a popular landmark. That mural has appeared in periodicals, art books, calendars, many newspaper articles, and in photographs exhibited in the El Paso Art Museum and galleries. In 2004, Señor José Villalobos donated and members of the community contributed money to pay laborers to replaster the wall of the century-old adobe building where it is located, and Colín repainted the entire mural for donations from passers-by and community members. Colín’s work has also been featured on the International History Channel and Canal 44, XHUI TV, in a Ford television commercial, and numerous times in the El Paso Times and the defunct El Paso Herald-Post, as well as in periodicals such as Texas Monthly, Dallas Morning News, Texas Observer, Austin American Statesman, Stanton Street magazine; literary journals such as Mezcla and GypsyMag.com; in documentaries including Walls that Speak: El Paso’s Murals, directed by Jim Klaes; in art books such as Colors on Desert Walls: The Murals of El Paso and Texas 24:7, and in various editions of Chicano Studies: Survey and Analysis, a text book used throughout the country.

(Essay) Winter Solstice/Yule within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Dates for Winter Solstice/Yule Southern Hemisphere – June 20 – 23. Northern Hemisphere – December 20 – 23 This Seasonal Moment is the ripe fullness of the Dark Womb and it is a gateway between dark and light. It is a Birthing Place – into differentiated being. Whereas Samhain/Deep Autumn is a dark conceiving Space, it flows into the Winter Solstice dark birthing Place – a dynamic Place of Being, a Sacred Interchange. This Seasonal Moment of Winter Solstice is the peaking of the dark space – the fullness of the dark, within which being and action arise. It is the peaking of emptiness, which is a fullness. As cosmologist Brian Swimme describes: the empty “ground of being … retains no thing.” It is “Ultimate Generosity.”[i] In Vajrayana Buddhism, Space is associated with Prajna/wisdom – out of which Upaya/compassionate action arises. Space is highly positive – something to be developed, so appropriate action may develop spontaneously and blissfully.[ii] In Old European Indigenous understandings, the dark and the night were valued at least as much as light, if not more so: time was counted by the number of nights, as in ‘fortnights,’ and a ‘day’ included both dark and light parts … it was ‘di-urnal’. I have been careful with my language about that inclusion in the ceremonial ‘Statement of Purpose’ for each Seasonal Moment. This awareness is resonant with modern Western scientific perceptions about the nature of the Universe: that it is seventy-three percent “dark energy,” twenty-three precent “dark matter,” four percent “ordinary matter.”[iii] The truth is that we live within this darkness: it is the Ground of all Being. In Pagan traditions since Celtic times, and in many other cultural traditions, Winter Solstice has been celebrated as the birth of the God; and in Christian tradition since about the fourth century C.E., as the birth of the saviour. But there are deeper ways of understanding what is being born: that is, who or what the “saviour” is. In the Gospel of Thomas, which was not selected for biblical canon, it says: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.”[iv] This then may be the Divine Child, the “Saviour”: it may be expressed as the new Being forming in the Cosmogonic Womb,[v] who will be born. We may celebrate the birth of the new Being, which /who is always beyond us, beyond our knowing … yet is within us, burgeoning within us – and within Gaia. What will save us is already present within – forming within us. The Winter Solstice story may emphasize that what is born, is within each one – the “Divine” is not “out there”: it may be said, and expressed ceremoniously, that we are each Creator and Created. We may imagine ourselves as the in-utero foetus – an image we might have access to these days from a sonar-scan during pregnancy. This image presents a truth about Being: we are this, and it is within us, within this moment. Every moment is pregnant with the new. It will be birthed when holy darkness is full. Part of what is required is having the eyes to see the “new bone forming in flesh,” scraping our eyes “clear of learned cataracts,”[vi] seeing with fresh eyes. That is what the fullness of the Dark offers – a freshening of our eyes to see the new. And the process of Creation is always reciprocal: we are Creator and Created simultaneously, in a “ngapartji-ngapartji”[vii] way. We are in-formed by that which we form. In Earth-based religious practice, the ubiquitous icon of Mother and Child – Creator and Created – expresses something essential about the Universe itself … the “motherhood” we are all born within. It expresses the essential communion experience that this Cosmos is, the innate and holy Care that it takes, and the reciprocal nature of it. We cannot touch without being touched at the same time.[viii] We may realize that Cosmogenesis – the entire Unfolding of the Cosmos – is essentially relational: our experience tells us this is so. The image of The Birth of the Goddess on the front cover of my book PaGaian Cosmology expresses that reciprocity for me, how we may birth each other and the healing/wholing in that exchange. It is a Sacred Interchange. And it is what this Event of existence seems to be about – deep communion, which both Solstices express. Babylonian Goddess, Ur 4000-3500 BCE. Adele Getty, Goddess, 33. Birthing is not often an easy process – for the birthgiver nor for the birthed one: it is a shamanic act requiring strength of bodymind, attention, courage, and focus of the mother, and resilience and courage to be of the new young one. Birthgiving is the original place of ‘heroics,’ which many cultures of the world have never forgotten, perhaps therefore better termed as “heraics.” Patriarchal adaptations of the story of this Seasonal Moment usually miss the Creative Act of birthgiving completely, usually being pre-occupied with the “virgin” nature of the Mother which is interpreted as having an “intact hymen.” The focus of the patriarchal adaptation of the Winter Solstice story is the Child as “saviour”: even the Mother gazes at the Child in most Christian icons, while in more ancient images Her eyes are direct and expressive of Her integrity as Creator. NOTES: [i] Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, 146. [ii] See Rita Gross, “The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 179-192. [iii] These figures as told by cosmologist Paul Davies with Macquarie University’s Centre for Astrobiology, Australia. [iv] Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas, saying number 70. See https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html . [v] Melissa Raphael’s term, Thealogy and Embodiment, 262. [vi] The quotes come from a poem by Cynthia Cook, “Refractions,” Womanspirit (Oregan USA, issue 23, March 1980), 59. [vii] This is an Indigenous Australian term for reciprocity – giving and receiving at the same time. I explain it a bit further in PaGaian Cosmology, 256-257. [viii] An expression from Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 68. REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living …
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 …
(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) Conceiving, Imagining the New at Samhain by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

It is the Season of Samhain/Deep Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere at this time. In the PaGaian version of Samhain/Deep Autumn ceremony participants journey to the “Luminous World Egg” … a term taken from Starhawk in her book The Spiral Dance[i], where she also names that place as the “Shining Isle”, which is of course, the Seed of conception, a metaphor for the origins of all and/or the female egg: it is the place for rebirth. Artist: Bundeluk, Blue Mountains, Australia. The “luminous world egg” is a numinous place within, the MotherStar of conception: that is, a place of unfolding/becoming. The journey to this numinous place within requires first a journey back, through some of each one’s transformations, however each may wish to name those transformations at this time. The transformations for each and every being are infinite in their number, for there is “nothing we have not been” as has been told by Celts and others of Old, and also by Western science in the evolutionary story (a story told so well by evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris, particularly in her video Journey of a Silica Atom.) Ceremonial participants may choose selves from biological, present historical self, or may choose selves from the mythic with whom they feel connection; from any lineage – biological or otherwise. Selves may also be chosen from Gaia’s evolutionary story – earlier creatures, winged or scaled ones … with whom one wishes to identify at this time. Each participant is praised for their “becoming” for each self they share. When all have completed these journeys/stories of transformation, the circle is lauded dramatically by the celebrant for their courage to transform; and she likens them all to Gaia Herself who has made such transitions for eons. The celebrant awards each with a gingerbread snake, “Gaian totems of life renewed”[ii]. gingerbread snakes Participants sit and consume these gingerbread snakes in three parts: (i) as all the “old shapes” of self that were named; and (ii) remembering the ancestors, those whose lives have been harvested, whose lives have fed our own, remembering that we too are the ancestors, that we will be consumed; and (iii) remembering and consuming the stories of our world that they desire to change, the stories that fire their wrath or sympathy: in the consuming, absorbing them (as we do), each may transform them by thoughts and actions – “in our own bodyminds”. When all that is consumed “wasting no part”, it is said that “we are then free to radiate whatever we conceive”, to “exclaim the strongest natural fibre known” – our creative selves, “into such art, such architecture, as can house a world made sacred” by our building[iii]. This “natural fibre” is a reference to the spider’s thread from within her own body, with which she weaves her web, her home; and Spider has frequently been felt in indigenous cultures around the globe as Weaver and Creator of the Cosmos. Spider the Creatrix, North America, C. 1300 C.E., Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.13 In the ceremony, participants linked with a thread that they weave around the circle, may sail together for a new world “across the vast sunless sea between endings and beginnings, across the Womb of magic and transformation, to the “Not-Yet” who beckons”[iv]: to the Luminous World Egg whereupon the new may be conceived and dreamed up. Samhain/Deep Autumn ceremony is an excellent place for co-creating ourselves, for imaginingthe More that we may become, and wish to become. This is where creation and co-creation happens … in the Womb of Space[v], in which we are immersed – at all times: and Samhain is a good season for feeling it. References: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005 Sahtouris, Elisabet. Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution. Lincoln NE:iUniversity Press, 2000. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. NY: Harper and Row, 1999. Swimme, Brian. The Earth’s Imagination.DVD series 1998. NOTES: [i]p.210 [ii]a version of this Samhain script is offered in Chapter 7 PaGaian Cosmology [iii]These quoted phrases are from Robin Morgan, “The Network of the Imaginary Mother”, in Lady of the Beasts, p.84. This poem is a core inspiration of the ceremony. [iv]“Not-Yet” is a term used by Brian Swimme, The Earth’s Imagination, video 8 “The Surprise of Cosmogenesis”. [v]note that creation does not happen at the point of some god’s index finger, as imagined in the Sistine Chapel – what a takeover that is!
A PaGaian Wheel of the Year and Her Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. for larger image see: https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ Essentially a PaGaian Wheel of the Year celebrates Cosmogenesis – the unfolding of the Cosmos, none of which is separate from the unfolding of each unique place/region, and each unique being. This creativity of Cosmogenesis is celebrated through Earth-Sun relationship as it may be expressed and experienced within any region of our Planet. PaGaian ceremony expresses this with Triple Goddess Poetry 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 expressed in the seasons), happens because of Earth’s tilt in relationship with Sun: because this 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,[i] 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.[ii] 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 (as of this writing) 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,[iii] and more recently a site of ongoing ritual activity as old as seventy thousand years has been found.[iv] 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. 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 anyone’s 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.[v]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. In PaGaian Cosmology I have adapted the Wheel as a way of celebrating the Female Metaphor and also as a way of celebrating Cosmogenesis, the Creativity that is present really/actually in every moment, but for which the Seasonal Moments provide a pattern/Poetry over the period of a year – in time and place. The pattern that I unfold is a way in which the three different phases/characteristics interplay. In fact, the way in which they interplay seems infinite, the way they inter-relate is deeply complex. I think it is possible to find many ways to celebrate them. There is nothing concrete about the chosen story/Poetry, nor about each of the scripts presented here, just as there is nothing concrete about the Place of Being – it (She) is always relational, a Dynamic Interchange. Whilst being grounded in the “Real,” the Poetry chosen for expression is therefore at the same time, a potentially infinite expression, according to the heart and mind of the storyteller. NOTES: [i] See Appendix C, *(6), Glenys Livingstone, A Poiesis of the Creative …
A Southern Hemisphere Perspective on Place by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the Introduction to the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion, which was an outcome of her doctoral research/thesis entitled The Female Metaphor – Virgin, Mother, Crone – of the Dynamic Cosmological Unfolding: Her Embodiment in Seasonal Ritual as Catalyst for Personal and Cultural Change. This doctoral work was in turn a documentation and deeper research of the Seasonal ceremonial celebrations that the author was already engaged in for over a decade. The whole of the process is here named as her “Search”. photo credit: David Widdowson, Astrovisuals. The site of seasonal ceremonial celebrations will always be significant. In my case, the place in which I have created them has been notably in the Southern Hemisphere of out Planet Earth. The fact of my context being thus – the Southern Hemisphere – had contributed in the past to my deep internalized sense of being “other”, and dissociated from my senses, since almost all stories told were based in Northern Hemisphere perspective. Yet at the same time this context of inhabiting the Southern Hemisphere contributed to my deep awareness of Gaia’s Northern Hemisphere and Her reciprocal Seasonal Moment: thus, awareness of the whole Planet. My initial confusion about the sensed Cosmos – as a Place, became a clarity about the actual Cosmos – which remained inclusive of my sensed Cosmos. PaGaian reality – the reality of our Gaian “country” – is that the whole Creative Dynamic happens all the time, all at once. The “other”, the opposite, is always present – underneath and within the Moment. This has affected my comprehension of each Sabbat/Seasonal Moment, its particular beauty but also a fullness of its transitory nature. Many in the Northern Hemisphere – even today – have no idea that the Southern Hemisphere has a ‘different’ lunar, diurnal, seasonal perspective; and because of this there often is a rigidity of frame of reference for place, language, metaphor and hence cosmology[i]. Indeed over the years of industrialized culture it has appeared to matter less to many of both hemispheres, including the ‘author-ities’, the writers of culture and cosmos. And such ‘author-ity’ and northern-hemispheric rigidity is also assumed by many more Earth-oriented writers as well[ii]. There has been consistent failure to take into account a whole Earth perspective: for example, the North Star does not need to be the point of sacred reference – there is great Poetry to be made of the void of the South Celestial Pole. Nor need the North be rigidly associated with the Earth element and darkness, nor is there really an “up” and a “down” cosmologically speaking. A sense and accountof the Southern Hemisphere perspective with all that that implies metaphorically as well as sens-ibly, seems vitally important to comprehending and sensing a whole perspective and globe – a flexibility of mind, and coming to inhabit the real Cosmos, hence enabling what I have named as a ‘PaGaian’ cosmological perspective, a whole Earth perspective. It has also been of particular significance that my Search has been birthed in the ancient continent of Australia. It is the age of the exposed rock in this Land, present to her inhabitants in an untarnished, primal mode that is significant. This Land Herself has for millennia been largely untouched by human war, conquest and concentrated human agriculture and disturbance. The inhabitants of this Land dwelt here in a manner that was largely peaceful and harmonious, for tens of thousands of years. Therefore the Land Herself may speak more clearly I feel; one may be the recipient of direct transmission of Earth in one of her most primordial modes. Her knowledge may be felt more clearly – one may be taught by Her. I think that the purity of this transmission is a significant factor in the development of the formal research I undertook – in my chosen methodology and in what I perceived in the process, and documented; from my beginnings as a country girl, albeit below my conscious mind in the subtle realms of which I knew little, to the more conscious times of entering into the process of the Search. In this Land that birthed me, ‘spirit’ is not remote and abstract, it is felt in Her red earth[iii]. Aboriginal elder David Mowaljarlai described, “This is a spirit country”[iv], and all of Her inhabitants, including non-Indigenous, may be affected by the strength of Her organic communication. It took me until the later stages of my research to realize the need to state the importance of this particular place for the advent of the research: the significance of both the land of Australia, and the specific region of the Blue Mountains in which I was now dwelling, as well as the community of this particular region, which all lent itself to the whole process. The lateness of this perception on my part, has to do with the extent of my previous alienation; but the fact that it did occur, is perhaps at least in part attributable to the unfolding awakening to my habitat that was part of the project/process. The specific region of the “Blue Mountains” – as Europeans have named them – is significant in that I don’t think that this project/process could have happened as it did in just any region. David Abram says, “The singular magic of a place is evident from what happens there, from what befalls oneself or others when in its vicinity. To tell of such events is implicitly to tell of the particular power of that site, and indeed to participate in its expressive potency[v]”. Blue Mountains, Australia: Dharug and Gundungurra Country The Blue Mountains are impressive ancient rock formations, an uplifted ancient seabed, whose “range of rock types and topographical situations has given rise to distinct plant communities”[vi]; and the presence of this great variation of plant communities, “especially the swamps, offer an abundance and variety of food sources, as well as habitats for varied fauna”[vii]. I feel that this is the case for …

(Book Excerpt 3) The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia

[Author’s Note: The following is from Chapter 8, The Consciousness of WE/HERE/NOW.] The Budoji stories the primordial drama of Mago’s beginning. It furnishes a yet-to-be-heard story of the beginning of the Great Goddess, the taboo story in patriarchy. It is the story of the Creatrix that patriarchy has attempted to erase. It can be temporarily forgotten but can never die because it is the story that is at the root of patriarchy. Ultimately, it is The Story that is happening HERE and NOW. The merit of the Magoist Cosmogony lies in the fact that it, through storying, restores the view of the whole, the macrocosmic view of the All. The holistic view necessarily involves the Great Goddess or the First Mother in that S/HE is the Creatrix. Time is not a linear concept, flowing from one end to the other. Time is the unified Present, happening NOW. It may be said that time is circular or cyclic, as all beings are constantly in motion to enhance the process of self-creation, which causes the whole to change ceaselessly. The Present hosts an infinite number of stories that take place in the undividable One Space HERE. The beginning of the Great Goddess is still happening and we are invited to re-cognize HER STORY in the HERE and NOW. The beginning is a process, not a single isolated event that took place in the remote past.[i] All things exist in the process of becoming HERE and NOW as part of WE. Put differently, the beginning of the Great Goddess is the LIVE SCENE/DRAMA/STORY. We are part of HER STORY. Mago’s beginning is the heart that pumps fresh blood to the body of the terrestrial becoming. The beginning of the Great Goddess is still taking place HERE/NOW. The terrestrial beginning is attributed to the Great Goddess who is self-born through the sonic movement of cosmic light. The beginning story of the Great Goddess is no ordinary one. It is of power and truth, that is, metamorphic. It provides the original text to the meaning of “salvation.” HER Beginning that is happening HERE/NOW holds all from falling into cacophony. For one thing, it delivers us from the patriarchal misconception of ultimate reality that does away with the Creatrix. The holistic view of the Creatrix is capable of saving us from misconceptions and misconduct. Ultimately, it guides us to live our life in harmony with the whole, HERE/NOW. The Magoist Cosmogony engenders the consciousness that WE ARE HERE/NOW. The universe is existent without beginning or end. In one ever-existing reality, things ceaselessly appear and disappear in relation to one another on all levels. All things are in the constant movement of autogenesis striving to arrive at a new position of balance. S/HE IS HERE/NOW telling us the STORY of WE. That is the source of our metamorphosis. Notes: [i] Process thought founded by Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, and John B. Cobb shares a common premise on that regard, although it does not associate ultimate reality with the Creatrix. (See Book Excerpt 1 and Book Excerpt 2. Available in Mago Bookstore.) Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.
(Essay 2 Part 1) Why Do I Love Korean Historical Dramas? by Anna Tzanova

Part 1 Fans, journalists, critics, and academia in multiple fields have studied this world phenomenon; have written blogs, articles, books; and presented in conferences, dissecting, and making predictions. Still, the magic and mystery of its success persists to be as thrilling as ever. This is the way I see it: DELIGHTING THE SENSES
(Book Excerpt 1) Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: Year 4’s Mago Almanac celebrates the birth of Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey. The Magoist 13 month 28 day calendric movement has grown steadily and we welcome the public as well!] PREFACE: What Mago Almanac Planner Offers The Mago Almanac Planner for Personal Journey enchants people and our societies to live with a sense of the natural timespace patterned by the luni-menstrual rhythm in company with the earth’s song and dance. This is not a statement of poetic fancy unsupported by science or mathematics. We are invited to walk through the matrix of Sonic Numerology, the organizing force of Life. The 13 month 28 day Magoist Calendar returns calendric regularity to us. Calendric regularity is the very vision that unfolds the metamorphic reality of WE/HERE/NOW. Unlike the 12 month irregular day calendar that modifies the natural rhythm to serve the purpose of controlling people, the Magoist Calendar guides human activities within the natural rhythm to harmonize the human world with the natural world. The Mago Almanac Planner is built to provide flesh to the bones of the Mago Almanac. Taking the latter as foundation, Mago Almanac Planner partitions a year into the units of weeks and days. The regularity of 28 days makes it possible to lay out 52 weeks and 364 days with one or two extra days seamlessly. The rhythm of nine numbers becomes transparent. Each day of a year is named accumulatively in order i.e. the first to 364th. Likewise, each week of a year is named accumulatively in order i.e. Week 1 to Week 52. Each day is given the daily number, the moon phase, and/or 24 Seasonal Marks. Special days include such double dates as New Year (1st Moon 1st Day), double second (2nd Moon 2nd Day), double third (3rd Moon 3rd Day), and so forth. By writing the Mago Almanac Planner, I have observed that Double Ninth (9th Moon 9th day) overlaps with the 16th mark of 24 Seasonal Marks, Ipchu (立秋 Entering Fall) or Lammas in the Northern Hemisphere. The day of Double Ninth is indeed the center point of a year! Also the interval of 24 Seasonal Marks is about every 15 days, whereas that of 8 Seasonal Marks is about every 45 days. In three Appendixes, I have provided a traditional style of one year calendar, Year 4’s 364 Days (52 Weeks) with 2 Extra Days and their Gregorian Dates or the conversion chart, Large Calendar 1 (Years 1-4) marked in Gregorian C. Dates, and Year 4 Lunar-Menstrual Chart in which one can add their menstrual dates in relation to the moon phases and seasonal marks. As a whole, the Mago Almanac Planner is designed to personalize one’s own celebratory or commemorative days in tune with nature’s rhythm. This Planner marks the 4th year (Volume 4) of the revived Magoist Calendar, Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar. We are about to complete the first Large Calendar, which refers to the first four years (Years 1-4). We set the new moon date (December 18) before Winter Solstice in 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere as the first lunation of the revived Magoist Calendar. If we count the year from the onset of the nine-state Danguk confederacy (3898 BCE-2333 BCE) founded by Goma, Magoist Shaman Queen Mother, our Year 1 would be 5916 ME (Magoma Era). Technically speaking, the Magoist Calendar formed at the time of our beginning came to be reincarnated on December 18, 2018 in the Northern Hemisphere (hereafter it implies the Northern Hemisphere otherwise indicated.) The year 2018 for the rebirth of the revived Magoist Calendar was arbitrary in that it could have been in 2017 or 2019. In retrospect, I must say that we are lucky to set the time of our first lunation on December 18 2018 because it makes the calendric migration process the smoothest. This means that our Magoist Calendar runs as less as 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar. If we had begun in 2017, our New Year would have been December 17. Only one day difference. However, if we had begun in 2016, our New Year would have been on November 29. Likewise, if we had begun in 2019, our New Year would have been on November 26. These dates are the new moon date before Winter Solstice, the New Year day. The Magoist Calendar charts the human world into the Reality of WE/HERE/NOW. The Magoist Calendar needs to be in use today, which means that it has to be translated into the language of the Gregorian Calendar. For we have lost the actual counting of the Magoist Calendar into our days in the course of patriarchal history. Mago Almanac serves the purpose of making our calendric migration possible from the 12 month Gregorian Calendar to the 13 month Magoist Calendar. It guides our collective journey in the Mother TimeSpace interwoven by the cosmogonic force of Sonic Numerology, the musical interplay of nine numbers, which gives birth, nurtures, and transforms all beings in the cosmos. Intriguingly, I have realized only last year that the Magoist Calendar is identical with “the 13 Moon Turtle Calendar,” the calendar of North American indigenous peoples, which adopts the turtle shell that has 13 inner sections and 28 outer sections for the calendar of 13 moons and 28 days (see figure). This speaks volumes that the 13 month 28 day calendar was once widely known among peoples of the ancient world. The Magoist Calendar restores the link between lunation and menstruation as a 28 day monthly cycle, a topic that I have discussed in my essay, “Introducing the Magoist Calendar: Original Blessing of the Womb Time,” included in this planner. Why do we need to reinstate the calendar that is based on the luni-menstruation rhythm? That is because the Magoist Calendar is in accordance with Sonic Numerology. Put differently, the moon-women duet inscribed in the 13 month 28 day calendar is given by the Natural World. In fact, the Magoist Calendar is the first and …

Category: Goddess feminist activism

(Book Excerpt 6) On the Wings of Isis: Reclaiming the Sovereignty of Auset, ed. by Trista Hendren et al.

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(Essay 2) Goddesses in Hinduism: “All the Mothers are One” by Mary Ann Beavis, Ph.D.

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(She Summons Excerpt) The 2020 Vision of MotherWorld by Kathy Jones

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(Essay) Fear Is The Mind Killer by Kaalii Cargill

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(Dual-language Essay 1) The Goddess of Spirals by Noris Binet

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Moving towards the Dark… “Elder”berry Musings… by Sara Wright

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Sun and Earth Rise Over the Lake by Carolyn Lee Boyd

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(Tribute) In Memoriam, Carol Patrice Christ (1945-2021) by Mara Lynn Keller

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(Video 4) Sherri Mitchell & Jodie Evans in Maternal Gift Economy: Breaking Through by Genevieve Vaughan

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(She Summons Excerpt) Flying Lessons: Inquire Within for Hungry Ghosts by Cynthia Tom

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(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)

Mago Pod Bulletin #75 Jan-Feb 2025

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