May 9, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Budoji Essay 5) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part 5: Magoist Cosmology “The primary aim of Magoist cosmology lies in lifting up the conceptual veil in people’s mind so that they can see what is given at birth.” Read More …

March 24, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Budoji Essay 4) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part 4: Magoist Origin of Immortals “I maintain that Immortals originally refers to Mago’s descendants in Mago Castle, the Primordial Paradise. They are the primordial clan community of the Mago Read More …

February 24, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin6 Comments

(Budoji Essay 3) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“Reintroducing the concept of the Mago Species has a profound implication, compelling one’s vocabularies to be changed to the Mother’s Tongue.” [This is a translation and interpretation of the Budoji Read More …

January 17, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Video) 2013 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s note: The first Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Read Mago Pilgrimage Read More …

January 7, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Budoji Essay 2) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“Mago, the eponymous Goddess, is the head, ruler, and guardian of Mago-seong. She represents the eco-community of the Earth in the intergalactic universe.” [Author’s Note: This and subsequent essays are Read More …

December 23, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin3 Comments

(Budoji Essay 1) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“The Great Goddess Myth is the first and last revelation to humankind. Where the Primordial Mother is, there is Home!” Part 1 Introduction When I first read the Budoji (Epic of Read More …

October 4, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Essay 3) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

[Editor’s note: Numbers of endnotes differ from the original ones in the article] Claiming the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City) as a Principal Text of Magoism The Budoji (Epic Read More …

September 23, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin1 Comment

(Essay 2) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

[Editor’s note: Numbers of endnotes differ from the original ones in the article] Reconstructing Gynocentric Korean Identity Scholars in the West, upon assessing a religion or deity of the non-Western Read More …

September 20, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Italian language essay) Corea: la Musica cosmica di Mago by Luciana Percovich

[Author’s note: From Colei che dà la vita. Colei che dà la forma. Miti di creazione femminili, Venexia, Roma, Italia, 2009] Capitolo 3 Corea: la Musica cosmica di Mago Mago Nell’Età Read More …

September 6, 2013February 23, 2018 Mago Work Admin7 Comments

(Essay 1) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and her Tradition Magoism[i] This study documents and interprets a substantial body of primary sources concerning Mago [麻姑, also Read More …

August 23, 2013February 28, 2018 Mago Work Admin5 Comments

(Pilgrimage Essay 2) Report of First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hwang

[Author’s note: The first Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Part 2 Traditional Read More …

July 22, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin4 Comments

(Pilgrimage Essay 1) Report of First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hwang

[Author’s note: First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place in June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Part 1 Magoist Read More …

June 3, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work Admin2 Comments

(Mago Essay 3) Toward the Primordial Knowing of Mago, the Great Goddess by Helen Hwang

[The following sequels including this one are a modified version of my paper presented to Daoist Studies, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in 2010.] Part 3 Daoist Rendition of Read More …

(Poem) MOTHERS WILL MAKE PEACE by Mary Saracino

“Mothers will make peace, so sons will not die.” Huda, a Palestinian journalist living in Jordan, as quoted in “Women’s Gathering Gives Peace a Chance,” Women’s E-News, April 13, 2006 Will it come to this, then? The mothers rising like Furies unleashed, banishing war from the souls of men, their fierce wombs howling with the memory of seedling sons — how they quickened and grew, ripening into beautiful babies, brimming with hope, their futures overflowing with laughter, love, the kisses of grateful mothers — not bombs, not bloodshed, not rage. Will the mothers unite, dressed in saris of apricot & nectarine, African headdresses of fuchsia, green, & yellow, American blue jeans and T-shirts, Italian leather jackets? Will they defy the edicts, the lies, the clarion calls to violence everywhere — the battlefield, the bedroom, the boardroom, the brothel? Mothers with dark faces heed their sons’ cries, their daughters’ anguish; mothers with blue eyes or black, mothers with Arab hearts or Israeli, inner-city moms or moms in mini-vans, farm wives and nuns, scholars and poets, Asian or Mexican, white-skinned or brown, young or old. Can they re-tether the war-weary world to their ruptured umbilical cords? Mend every tattered soul? Can peace prevail if fathers fail to join their holy efforts? Or must mothers shoulder the grief alone, bearing the world’s sorrows, as they bear the pains of labor, giving birth to justice that hungers for compassion, transformation that conjures a different kind of world? “Mothers Will Make Peace” was originally published on newversenews.com, Sunday, April 30, 2006 Read Meet Mago Contributor, Mary Saracino, and her other posts.
(Poem) Wildflower Moon Pyre and Prayer by Sara Wright

I stood out under the thick gray clouds And listened to the bird song, the roaring river flood, watched the swallows soaring overhead cutting the invisible link between earth and sky with sword like precision and wished I could stay… I stopped the thought pulling back the thread – Coming here at all was a gift beyond imagining.
(Art) ‘Fish Goddess of Lepenski Vir’ by Lydia Ruyle

The Fish Goddess of Lepenski Vir was placed on the altar at the end of a stone structure. She combines fish, woman and a bird of prey, all symbols of the Goddess of birth, death and regeneration. The large stone sculptures were found in triangular trapezoid shrines shaped like the mother mountain across the Danube river in the Iron Gate region. Similar images known as sheela-na-gigs are found around the world. Source: Stone sculpture, Lepenski Vir, Serbia, 6500-5500 BCE Background: Stone architectual shape, Lepenski Vir Related Article: Three-Fingered Fish Goddess- South Slavic Intangible Oral Memory Traditions by Danica Anderson
(Tribute 3) In Loving Memory of Eve Helene Wilkowitz by Jack Dempsey, Ph.D.

From there, through the next 42 years of travail—Why is this my culture’s “norm”?—there’s not a day or step or book of mine that isn’t hers. I have curled my strength around her sleep. She led me to the earliest art-history I could find, and there were the stunning “unknown” Minoans of ancient Crete: a woman-centered, joyful, dynamically creative and peaceful people without predatory “kings,” and they revel in life at the root of Western civilization for centuries longer than Rome or any period since. Such is the genesis of every work in these pages of Ancientlights.org today: a life’s work to document that we have other teachers, smarter ancestors, better choices—that The Garden is remembering we’re in it. For the record (see for yourself with Links below), this Minoan world—a dynamically creative well-being in Nature’s eternal present, bound together by trade and intermarriage (and protected by strict limits on executive power)—was still going strong when natural disaster and war-loving, self-wrecking clowns (the mainland’s Mycenaeans) combined to take them down. This was the historical emergence of patriarchy, the rule of autocratic men, whose rape for profit and rage for power they sell to us with gods and goods as normal: “Homeric glory.” He cannot control himself, and rather than learning, wallows in degenerate all-controlling fear of anything more powerful. So it is She who must cover herself, numb herself, be invisible, silent, obedient, pure yet alluring, please him in all things and, “ideally,” die. Books, bricks and walls of “his-story” bear down to bury our original Minoan success in nihilism, desperate to convince us that we’re cursed and trapped, while a toxic edifice from blood-exploiting media to crime-fiction and movies gives the lie—as a blossoming young woman who “must” be repeatedly cruelly killed. After an age when our brilliance sang the sanctity of women (hence, of Life), this is daily eucharist, central sacrament in the ritual murder of the best in us. Try counting how many times per day we fakely face the “tragedy” of her annihilation. The last 42 years of this faded Eve’s murder into one among thousands and thousands of Cold Cases round the world that men wish for and pretend to rule. Always a fresh “compelling” scenario round the same murder takes us worse than nowhere. Pornographic culture (turning Life into dead commodity) soaks the nervous system in erotic indulgence, but leaves us not with deeper more miraculous perception: instead, dis-spirited, de-moralized, numb and ever-more hungry for true ecstatic consummation. That is, to live and evolve our souls in this living flesh in a living world and universe. Hollow grifters rob us daily of real eternal life. It seems erotically urgent that we accept this. Publishers and agents “don’t even want to look at it” if you’re going to make people feel something, while farming out millions to any who can “entertain” with the sick aesthetic of an Edgar Allan Poe—who declared “the death of a beautiful woman” as “the most poetical topic in the world.” Love’s deep disturbance is the sham values of patriarchy built on the profits and rewards of psychotic dysfuntion: ignorance, fear and hatred of Earth, of women and peace. Of Life, in a word. If this seems too polemical, look around: Earth dying faster than ever, rights and human institutions crumbling, and the greatest investments by far in soldiers, weapons, and destruction on a planet still with plenty for everyone. The verdict of 2022 is that we’ve learned nothing, and fake necessity prevents it under the rule of men who lack only the courage to feel, question, control themselves, find another smarter way. Yet, there are ways out. Consider the “logic” shared between Eve’s murderer and the global gangsters stumbling toward suicide, anatomized by Susan Griffin’s brilliant Pornography and Silence. For all that we refuse to feel, change and evolve, Life (the Erotic) just keeps coming back to demolish adolescent wishes. The psychotic spiral accelerates, for the rituals of fear increase it: “the mind that believes in delusion must still face reality.” So comes a choice: come to terms with reality, or force the world to resemble the delusion. And where can we look for the quintessential expressions of our choice so far? The daily murder, conquest, exclusionary walls and never-enough-weapons of Zionist apartheid Israel are its failing monuments, maintained by a senile Zero-Sum American Empire, in whose (wishful) world only more death-machines can bring peace, and there can be only one all-controlling power. What can we positively do? Peace is not the absence of war, nor does a practical problem-solving global family happen by default. Those long-gone Minoans actively fostered both with their heterarchia, a nature-based cyclic round of festivals promoting the sharing of power across differences. (The elements of this in Calendar House.) This was so fundamental to their long success that we find it inscribed 1,000 years after them on the wheels of the world’s first computer, the Antikythera Mechanism. The answers are behind and before us. Pornographic patriarchy ends when each of us feeds it no more of our daily life-sustaining labor—and learns to share the world again. *** I cried every day for the first two wretched years of losing Eve (for as Dante said in La Vita Nuova, “how she has been among us, and is not”). It ate me alive that I hadn’t ignored Eve’s wishes and seen her safely home; and that her gentle soft-spoken father let me ride with his shattered family from funeral-home to the grave, while holding me rightly responsible. At last one day I broke open as wide as the morning when we shared that luminous breakfast. This is how much I can love, and now I cannot lose, because this feeling is to win. Another desperate day, Dante’s Comedy cracked open to the very page (Canto V, Inferno) where it seemed Eve was speaking to me still: Love, that in gentle heart so quickly wakes, took him with this fair body, which …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Marie de Kock

With her menopause and concurrent kundalini awakening in 2012, Marie connected the dots of wisdom from her first written female spirituality book and continued studies, 20 years of meditation, magical passes-, tai chi and chi kung practices, female spirituality rituals, and Reiki work. The consciousness inside her body became a clear voice that she could eventually hear and finally, verbalize. www.marie-de-kock.wix.com/femininessence https://www.facebook.com/healyourfemininessence
Why Do So Many People Hate Rain? by Sara Wright

Photo by Sara Wright People can’t make NOISE in rain Machines seize up and rust Screaming Motorcycles sit silenced Chainsaws sputter Weedwhackers clog Lawnmowers spit Power boats gasp Hunters stay home Gray sky blesses Emerald Green wind battered leaves sigh soaking in Cloistered Air Breathing deep Body vibrates in Peace soothed by the songs of Rain whose crystal drops are gifts for roots and frogs abandoned unloved trees underground mycelial networks Animals sigh with relief Haunted Souls return – If only briefly Rain nourishes the Earth. Is this why people hate rain? I wrote this poem this morning when it became obvious that a second quiet day was a probability because of steady rain and cold temperatures in the forties. In June ( I was wrong – one crazed person shot round after round – the rage is palpable – more gunshot violence down the road). Every day the noise is overpowering – motorcycles, guns, fireworks, fast cars and trucks spewing filth, roaring boats going nowhere, whining lawnmowers and other gardening accoutrements to keep those perfect lawns intact… Noise vibrates through my body enervating and buzzing me at the same time, an impossible combination. Mind feels fury. Body feels hopeless. There is no escape from noise pollution except by torrential rain or mountains of snow. Virtually no one complains. Even Refuge, a place I go to lessen the harsh cacophony has neighbors… I keep a bed in my car so that we can leave at a moments notice even there. I live in a Culture that worships Violence. Violence permeates the air like a fiery serpent ready to strike, again and again. My nervous system is attached to the Earth – we are One Being – She suffers, and Her suffering is mine. Last weekend someone exploded a bomb in the field below me – Turkeys screamed in terror. But S/he is biting back. ____________________________________ “As our physical and cultural landscapes transform around us what memories are held by water – what re -surfaces to haunt us, to guide us? There is a space between water and memory.” (my bold face) Emergence Is this another reason people dislike rain? Do some fall into the crack against their will? Do unwanted emotions flow to the surface, dark inner emotions that are normally buried by the fury of a Brutal Summer Sun? (More murders occur in the summer than at any other time of year. Heat apparently conjures up more Hatred). It’s an interesting question. I am in touch with my feelings. Like it or not. Today, I feel the leaves on the trees recovering from yesterday’s trauma when they were beaten down by hail and high winds. Amazingly, all wildflowers survived unscathed, even the lupine spires. Today’s soaking rain nourishes all living beings, and I lean into the songs of flowing water as my body rests. Two days of rain – the first so fierce it tore new leaves from their branches, toppled trees ripping roots from the ground as they fell. (Oh how the noise makers raged when their trees toppled, docks and moorings escaped)! Tons of topsoil were swept to the sea, thanks to the logging machine who has no use for protecting the water from raping the soil (as well as the trees). The second day dawned as a blessing. Quiet rain all day. Not enough to keep the birds from visiting the feeder. The cardinals were feeding each other. Woodpeckers, titmice, chickadees and golden finches flitted back and forth under a canopy of new leaves. All trees are recovering, their leaves open to the sky perhaps in prayers of supplication, while soaking in, soaking in the precious nutrients that will allow them to survive at least in protected places. Like here. For now. The WildFlower Moon passed by last night. Perhaps she brought mercy to those who needed her most, the fragile ephemerals. My animals and me. I used to love the moon but in the last few years I have come to fear her fullness for she now brings frightening extreme weather shifts in her wake. The dark side of moon is showing her revengeful face on a regular basis. This month was no exception. These days my moon ceremony consists of prayers to the Four Directions and a simple water blessing. This month I was grateful for water that I scooped out of overflowing rain barrels. Water that keeps the tadpoles happy. A blessing for the house, the Earth, myself, and my beloved animals. Bowing to the Goddess in Green. Thanksgiving. I am a Woman Who Comes to Life in the Rain… nourished by flowing waters and the golden green. https://www.magoism.net/2014/12/meet-mago-contributor-sara-wright/
(Art) Lilith with Bird by Glen Rogers

“Lilith with Bird” Monoprint, 30″x 22″ c 2019, art by Glen Rogers Lilith, the first woman in the Garden according to the Christian Bible, is in her Feminine strength. When disparaged and threatened with the loss of her independence – she leaves. The first Feminist. She follows her intuition (the bird on her shoulder), drawing on the wisdom of The Great Mother to go forth into the world. https://www.magoism.net/2021/01/meet-mago-contributor-glen-rogers/
(Bell Essay 4) The Ancient Korean Bell and Magoism by Helen Hwang

Part IV Asking the Dangerous Question: How Old is the Symbol of Nine Nipples? An inquiry about the origin of an ancient female symbolism is subversive in nature. It shakes the ground of patriarchal premises come to be believed rather than understood. The question here is the provenance of the nine nipples sculpted on ancient Korean bells. A focus on the female principle that nine nipples represent hurls the inquirer into uncharted territory. Note that official [read Sinocentric] historiography of East Asia leaves no means to navigate through the beginning of gynocentric civilizations. Where there is no written history, archaeologies and mythologies are rendered anomalous if not obsolete. Thus, tracking the provenance of nine nipples is made to face a quandary, without the mytho-history of Old Magoism. The relief of nine nipples on the ancient Korean bell has its predecessors. From Silla, a wind chime called pungtak from Gameun-sa (Temple of Gameun) appears to be an immediate model. Much smaller in size (27.8 cm), pungtak is to be hung on the eaves of a pagoda or a Buddhist temple building. Given that the Gameun-sa was completed in 682 CE, the nine nipples of pungtak may well be considered as the precursor of the Sangwon-sa bell (cast 725 CE). Unfortunately, however, we are unequipped to trace the pre-Silla Korean examples of nine nipples under the standard view of Sinocentric ancient Korean history. This will need another space to discuss. That said, how old is the symbol of nine nipples? Extant ancient bronze bells with nine nipples suggest that it dates back to as early as the introduction of bronze metallurgy in East Asia. On the other hand, however, the existence of nine nipples on ancient pottery bells throws a new light on another scenario that they may predate the Bronze Age. That the use of clay preceded the use of metal is incontestable. Interestingly, a good number of ancient bronze bells with nine nipples are from the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600 BCE-ca. 1046 BCE) and the Western Zhou dynasty (1046 BCE-771 BCE) of China. Seong Nakju, in his article tracing the origin of ancient Korean bells, states that bells with the nine protruded knobs emerged for the first time between the late Shang and the early Zhou period (see Seong Nakju below in Sources). When something of the female principle, ultimately like the provenance of Mago, is dated to the Shang dynasty [Shang dynasty to be the earliest historical polity of China], it suggests that it was there before the beginning of Chinese history. On these ancient Chinese bells, the nine knobs are placed in three rows of three in its four corners just like yudu (nipples) of the Korean bell. Nonetheless, there is, among others, a distinction to be mentioned here. The nine knobs of Zhou bells are called “mae” (枚, classifier for small things, mei in Chinese) not “yudu.” The female connotation is absent in ancient Chinese bells. This gender shift or female castration to be precise, however casual it may seem, is no small factor. It has allowed a chasm in the forthcoming history of Chinese bells. Bells were no mere object for the ancients. They were the channel of epiphany, sacred in short. They represented the divine power derived from Old Magoism during which female shamans ruled. The patriarchal enthronement that took seizure in the course of history, however, marked a discontinuity and changed the nature of the bell’s symbolism to be only nominal, lacking reality. The bell as the symbol of the female principle was no longer effective under patriarchal rules. Why? It was deprived of the reality of the Goddess with which it could reverberate. Thus, it lost its ultimate purpose, to create music, in that the patriarchal ruling principle itself was not “musical,” but dissonant with the rest of the world. One who breaks the harmony can’t own the music! Bells are rendered as a thing that points to the meaning of the past. This is how bells during the era of patriarchal rules came to be objectified as a royal belonging, as seen in the Qing bell of a later time. Ancient sages or even kings and queens of East Asia may have noticed what had gone wrong with the bell and agonized to restore it, the effort for which they were praised as the great thinker or sage ruler. The imposing air of authority had to be made visual precisely because the bell could no longer do the magic, engendering the divine power. Thus, highly embellished designs and classifications of various bells were made to cover up the void. Later on, the magnitude of the bell was employed to convey (pseudo-)power, deranged from the female principle. Nonetheless, the nine nipples seemingly survived in many bells of the Zhou dynasty. I present here some specific bells such as yongzhong (a bell with a cylindrical handle on top), niuzhong (a bell with a semi-circular knob on top), and yangjiaozhong (a bell shaped like ram’s horns) to highlight the various styles of mae. After all, pyeonjong (bianzhong in Chinese, metal chime bells) is a variation of pyeongyeong (bianqing in Chinese), the stone chime bells (see Part I). This suggests that the making of ancient bells needs to be seen in a continuum rather than as a new invention in the Bronze era. However, we do not have pyeongyeongs with nine nipples. Stone chimes do not seem to have nine nipples. If ancient East Asians had not carved the nine nipples on a stone bell, then they did it on clay. Pottery bells with nine nipples are found to have co-existed with bronze bells. The level of sophistication and precision in artistry is there as well, as shown in the images. It may be, as experts would explain, that ceramic bells were created to substitute for the costly bronze bells during the Zhou dynasty. However, that should not be always the case. Prior to the Bronze Age, humans invented terracotta technology and brought it to its zenith from which, in fact, metallurgical techniques are likely to have derived. In short, ceramic bells of the Zhou dynasty suggest that the origin of nine nipples predates the …
(Video) Winter Solstice Goddess Slideshow by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Each year between June 20-23 the dark part of the day reaches its peak in the Southern Hemisphere: it is the Winter Solstice Moment. Poetry of the Season may be expressed in this way: At this time when the Dark part of day is longest, as Earth leans us away from Sun to the furthest point, You are invited to celebrate WINTER SOLSTICE Darkness reaches Her fullness, and yet … She turns, and the seed of Light is born. This is the season for the lighting of candles, and receiving the Gift of Birth. The story of Old tells us that on this night, the Great Mother gives birth to the Divine Child – the New Young One within all. We celebrate Her eternal Cosmogenesis, and the Miracle of Being. Glenys Livingstone, 2005 The choice of images is somewhat arbitrary; there are many more that may express Her maternal relational essence and Her gateway quality at this time. The Mother images of this Season overlap with the Crone images of Samhain – they are never really separate. Most ancient images of Goddess are multivalent – She was/is One: that is, all three of Her aspects are not separate from each other. These selected images tell a story of certain qualities that may be contemplated at the Seasonal Moment of Winter Solstice. The Mother aspect is many things: She is a dynamic Place of Being. She is a Weaver – knitting and fabricating the world. Her space of birthing is not a passive place: She is Creator. As you receive the images, remember that image communicates the unspeakable, that which can only be known in body, below rational mind. So you may open yourself to a transmission of Her, that will be particular to you. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZhMEEMEYa44 The Womb of Space Aditi 1800 C.E. India. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess p.66). She is “the Hindu Goddess of the Void. Her name means ‘abundance’ and ‘creative power’ in Sanskrit”. Aditi is the primordial space, the womb from which all creation arises. See also Lajja Gauri https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lajja_Gauri – connected to Aditi The Birth of the Goddess 450 B.C.E. Rome. An icon of spiritual transformation. (Erich Neumann The Great Mother, pl 155) Tlazolteotl 1400 C.E. Aztec. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.18). Birth is the quintessential shamanic act. Tlazolteotl is also known as the Goddess of Filth – and as such both provoked and pardoned licentiousness: She may be thought of as associated with Beltaine (sex) and also Lammas (the complete forgiveness of the Dark Mother). See article by Anne Key: http://www.matrifocus.com/BEL09/key.htm#1 Sheila-na-gig 900C.E. British Isles. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p. 120). Elinor Gadon describes: “She is remembered in Ireland as the Old Woman who gave birth to all races of human…. In churches her function was to ward off evil”, or to attract the Pagan peoples to the church (The Once and Future Goddess, p.338). Adele Getty describes:“The first rite of passage of all human beings begins in the womb and ends between the thighs of the Great Mother”. Ixchel 800 C.E. Central America (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p. 10). She sits at her loom with Her bird companion, the nest weaver. She weaves the Fabric of Life. Diana of Ephesus 200 C.E. Asia Minor. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p. 27). A Holy Mother, a Dark Madonna. Woodlands Nursing Mother 1400 C.E. North America (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.29). This is actually a ceramic pot, which is associated with woman, creation, nurturance and spiritual power. Mary “Mother of God” – Vierge Ouvrante 1400’s C.E. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p. 40-41). Closed She is the traditional “Virgin” with Child, although since she is “holding the sphere of the world in her hand” she may also be understood as the Mother/Creator. Indeed opening Her reveals that She contains God, Christ and temporal and spiritual rulers. Tiamat – 4000-3500 B.C.E. Babylon (Ur, Iraq), Adele Getty Goddess : Mother of Living Nature p.33). The Mother and Child of Old, expressing the essential relational nature of Creativity, the essential urge to bring forth the New. Classically She is named as the “sea monster/dragon”, but She is “personification of The Deep”, the formlessness before creation (Barbara Walker, p. 998). She may symbolize primordial timelessness. The classic slaying of the dragon represents the advent of patriarchy, victorious over the Goddess. The slaying of Tiamat by the hero Marduk is said to be the Creation story – the Enuma Elish – of the Babylonian peoples, but this supreme creative act is also a criminal act, an act of deicide (see PaGaian Cosmology, p. 73). Her name means Goddess Mother, Tia-mat, Dea-Madre. Adele Getty says:”… this Babylonian Goddess presents an ancient and haunting image of the sacred mother. Holding her child to her breast, she stands upright like Tiamat, the dragon woman, naked except for her magic belt of triangles, which serves to emphasize as well as beautify her own fertile delta. The triangle represents the triple aspect of the Great Goddess as Maiden, Mother and Crone, and is recognized in the Tantric tradition as the primary symbol of life. The serpent force is the great life-affirming, maternal blessing. The snake is always associated with immortality …”. – Nut, Mother of Rebirth 200 C.E. Egypt (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess, p.81.) Womb of Space (again) Music: “Ancient Pines” by Loreena McKennitt REFERENCES: Gadon, Elinor W. The Once and Future Goddess. Northamptonshire: Aquarian, 1990. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living Nature. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess.Berkeley: Wingbow, 1990. http://www.heartgoddess.net/ Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Neuman, Erich. The Great Mother. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983.

(Special post) The Goddess Inanna: Her Allies and Opponents by Hearth Moon Rising

Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld is one of the most fascinating myths ever told. Not just because it is profound and enlightening, although it is certainly that. It’s an exciting journey that ignites the imagination, and female characters are at the hub of the action. This is a tale of power: power that is demanded, power that is won, power that is appropriated, and power that cannot be escaped. The story follows the fertility goddess Inanna, who brought civilization to Mesopotamia, as she seeks to expand her realm by venturing into the world below. Inanna’s experiences in the great below, her escape, and the wild events that unfold as a result of her caper are the focus of the tale.
(Special Post 2) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Here is another image of the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra slain by Herakles. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(mythology)… Glenys Livingstone: Yes, the Hercules story is more documentation of the Old Battle, of the rise of the “hero” to slay the Mother, when in the earliest of times he served with his beauty and labours. It is so interesting to see the analogies in other cultures/places as you are doing Helen, especially in Asia – it seems important work. Your perseverance is paying off, and will. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Glenys, I am re-reading a book on Chinese mythology and found a lot more on the nine Magoist symbolism. Someday, I hope to write about the topic in its own right. Glenys Livingstone: This chapter’s work is good re the Old Battle in Greek mythology: Valaoritis, Nanos. “The Cosmic Conflict of Male and Female in Greek Mythology”, in From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas. Joan Marler (ed). Manchester CT: Knowledge, Ideas and Trends Inc., 1997, p.247 – 261. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Now back to the female divine who is depicted with the nine heads. See the nine-headed Guanyin/Kannon/Gwaneum. Also note that her icon comes in eleven-headed (the 8 Daughters and the Triad Creatrix, which makes eleven). http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/kannon.shtml Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: The symbol of nine dragons was adopted by imperial China. See the Nine Dragon Wall China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-Dragon_Wall Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: We connect the dots. When Guanyin is depicted with nine dragons, it conveys that the nine symbolism was/is once deemed sacred. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4a/17/b3/4a17b33d9a4ae53bad6466a0eaf11722.jpg How popular the Guanyin icon, three headed and eight armed, to this day! Simply Google “eight armed Guanyin.” Below is from the Late Ming Dynasty, China. https://www.google.com/search?q=eight%20armed%20guanyin… She comes in a different name, Ushnishavijaya, in Tibetan Buddhism. https://www.himalayanart.org/items/65445 Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: We can draw that the female deity such as Guanyin and Ushnishavijaya, just to name two, is venerated in association with the nine symbolism. Within the mytho-history of Magoism, I infer that Guanyin or Ma Guanyin is a persona embodying Goma, the Magoist Shaman ruler of Danguk (3898 BCE-2333 BCE), the head of Nine Hans (Magoist Koreans). Note that Magoist shamans or priestesses are called “Mago.” See my essay, “Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea and Her Mythology,” in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books), 2018. The insight that the major Goddesses in East Asia and beyond point to the same and old divine persona is NOT farfetched, considering that the nine-headed snake or dragon representing the female sovereignty of pre-patriarchal times is slain by male heroes across cultures. Judy E Foster: I’d have to agree with you here. As usual, interesting information! Patty Kay: My meditation this morning was on a history of mysticism. While I’m in the midst of appropriating all of the wonderful beliefs I find here, I also have found a strand in my own tradition that helps me understand why all the Divine Feminine stuff makes so much sense to me. I’ve been trying to determine when the patriarchal world view took over. According to this history, mysticism began to emerge in about 800 to 500 BCE. Could it be that mysticism kept alive the ancient understanding of the cosmos? This is just speculation, but in it I’m answering my own questions. (To be continued) Join us in The Mago Circle https://www.facebook.com/groups/magoism/.
(Special Post 8) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. Special thanks to Trista Hendren, founder and author of The Girl God, who passionately and painstakingly promotes the message of each contributor via Facebook’s memes. Without Trista’s devotion to the advocacy, this collective effort would not have continued. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Marija Krstic-Chin To remember who we really are (nature, cycles, network, creative force, one, infinite…) for the benefit of all of humanity and all living things; and to unite and unify as we broadcast, hand down, protect and defend this truth and each other against the oppressive intentions and actions of patriarchal perpetrators, puppets, and pawns who seek to enslave us by various old and new divide-and-conquer strategies.

Samhain: Stepping Wisely through the Open Door by Carolyn Lee Boyd

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

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

This article is an edited excerpt from Chapter 7 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. I always wore a special headpiece for the Seasonal ceremonies when I facilitated them over the years, and I feel that any participant may do so, not just the main celebrant. My ceremonial headpiece with its changing and continuous Seasonal decoration took on increasing significance over the years; it became a personal central representation of the year-long ceremonial art process of creating, destroying and re-creating. For the research period of my doctoral studies particularly, when I was documenting the process, I realised that this headpiece came to represent for me the essence of “She” – as Changing One, yet ever as Presence – as I was coming to know Her. In my journal for the Mabon/Autumn Equinox process notes one year I wrote: As I pace the circle with the Mabon headpiece in the centre, I see “Her” as She has been through the Seasons … the black and gold of Samhain, the deep red, white and evergreen of Winter, the white and blue of Imbolc, the flowers of Eostar, the rainbow ribbons of Beltane, the roses of Summer, the seed pods and wheat of Lammas, and now the Autumn leaves. I see in my mind’s eye, and feel, Her changes. I am learning … The Mother knowledge grows within me. The headpiece, the wreath, the altar, the house decorations, all participate in the ceremony: they are part of the learning, the method, the relationship – similar to how one might bring flowers and gifts of significance to a loved one at special moments. Then further, the removal and re-creation of the decorations are part of the learning – an active witness to transformation through time.
(Essay) The Emergence celebrated at Spring Equinox by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The Spring Equinox Moment occurs September 21-23 Southern Hemisphere, March 21-23 Northern Hemisphere. The full story of Spring Equinox is expressed in the full flower connected to the seed fresh from the earth; that is, it is a story of emergence from the dark, from a journey, perhaps long, perhaps short, through challenging places. The joy of the blossoming is rooted in the journey through the dark, and an acknowledgement of the dark’s fertile gift, as well as of great achievement in having made it, of having returned. Both Equinoxes, Spring and Autumn, celebrate this sacred balance of grief and joy, light and dark, and they are both celebrations of the mystery of the seed. The seed is essentially the deep Creativity within – that manifests in the Spring as flower, or green emerged One. the full story: the root and the flower As the new young light continues to grow at this time of Spring, it comes into balance with the dark at Spring Equinox, or ‘Eostar’ as it may be named; about to tip further into light when light will dominate the day. The trend at this Equinox is toward increasing hours of light: and thus it is about the power of being – life is stepping into it. Earth in this region is tilting further toward the Sun. Traditionally it may be storied as the joyful celebration of a Lost Beloved One, who may be represented by the Persephone story: She is a shamanic figure who is known for Her journey to the Underworld, and who at this time of Spring Equinox returns. Her Mother Demeter who has waited and longed for Her in deep grief, rejoices and so do all: warmth and growth return to the land. Persephone, the Beloved Daughter, the Seed, has navigated the darkness successfully, has enriched it with Her presence and also gained its riches. Eostar/Spring Equinox is the magic of the unexpected, yet long awaited, green emergence from under the ground, and then the flower: this emergence is especially profound as it is from a seed that has lain dormant for months or longer – much like the magic of desert blooms after long periods of drought. The name of “Eostar” comes from the Saxon Goddess Eostre/Ostara, the northern form of the Sumerian Astarte[i]. The Christian festival in the Spring, was named “Easter” as of the Middle Ages, appropriating Goddess/Earth tradition. The date of Easter, which is set for Northern Hemispheric seasons, is still based on the lunar/menstrual calendar; that is, the 1st Sunday after the first full Moon after Spring Equinox. In Australia where I am, “Easter” is celebrated in Autumn (!) by mainstream culture, so we have the spectacle of fluffy chickens, chocolate eggs and rabbits in the shops at that time. There are other names for “Eostar” in other places …the Welsh name for the Spring Equinox celebration is Eilir, meaning ‘regeneration’ or ‘spring’ – or ‘earth’[ii]. In my own PaGaian tradition, the Spring Equinox celebration is based on the Demeter and Persephone story, the version that is understand as pre-patriarchal, from Old Europe. In the oldest stories, Persephone has agency in Her descent: She descends to the underworld voluntarily as a courageous seeker of wisdom, and a compassionate receiver of the dead. She represents, and IS, the Seed of Life that never fades away. Spring Equinox is a celebration of Her return, Life’s continual return, and thus also our personal and collective emergences/returns.We may contemplate the collective emergence/returns especially in our times. I describe Persephone as a “hera”, which of old was a term for any courageous One. “Hera” was a pre-Hellenic name for the Goddess in general[iii]. “Hera” was the indigenous Queen Goddess of pre-Olympic Greece, before She was married off to Zeus. “Hero” was a term for the brave male Heracles who carried out tasks for his Goddess Hera: “The derivative form ‘heroine’ is therefore completely unnecessary”[iv]. “Hera” may be used as a term for any courageous individual: and participants in PaGaian Spring Equinox ceremony have named themselves this way. The pre-“Olympic” games of Greece were Hera’s games, held at Her Heraion/temple[v]. The winners were “heras” – gaining the status of being like Her[vi]. At the time of Spring Equinox, we may celebrate the Persephone, the Hera, the Courageous One, who steps with new wisdom, into power of being: the organic power that all beings must have, Gaian power, the power of the Cosmos. This Seasonal ceremony may be a rejoicing in how we have made it through great challenges and loss, faced our fears and our demise (in its various forms), had ‘close shaves’ – perhaps physically as well as psychicly and emotionally. It is a time to welcome back that which was lost, and step into the strength of being. Spring Equinox/Eostar is the time for enjoying the fruits of the descent, of the journey taken into the darkness: return is now certain, not tentative as it was in the Early Spring/Imbolc. Demeter, the Mother, receives the Persephones, Lost Beloved Ones, joyously. This may be understood as an individual experience, but also as a collective experience – as we emerge into a new Era as a species. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme speak of the ending of the sixty-five million year geological Era – the Cenozoic Era – in our times, and our possible emergence into an Ecozoic Era. They describe the Ecozoic Era as a time when “the curvature of the universe, the curvature of the earth, and the curvature of the human are once more in their proper relation”[vii]. Joanna Macy speaks of the “Great Turning” of our times[viii]. Collectively we have been away from the Mother for some time and there is a lot of pain. At this time we may contemplate not only our own individual lost wanderings, but also that of the human species. We are part of a much bigger Return that is happening. The Beloved One may be understood as returning on a collective level: …
(Mago Almanac Excerpt 3) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) Free PDF available at Mago Bookstore. MAPPING THE MAGOIST CALENDAR According to the Budoji, the Magoist Calendar was fully implemented and advocated during the period of Old Joseon (ca. 2333 BCE-ca. 232 BCE) whose civilization is known as Budo (Emblem City). Indeed, the Magoist Calendar is referred to as the Budo Calendar in the Budoji. Budo was founded to succeed Sinsi and reignited Sinsi’s innovations including the numerological and musicological thealogy of the Nine Mago Creatrix. The Budoji expounds on the Magoist Calendar as follows: The Way of Heaven circles to generate Jongsi (a cyclic period, an ending and a beginning). Jongsi circles to generate another Jongsi of four Jongsi. One cycle of jongsi is called Soryeok (Little Calendar). Jongsi of Jongsi is called Jungryeok (Medium Calendar). Jongsi of four Jongsis is called Daeryeok (Large Calendar). A cycle of Little Calendar is called Sa (year). One Sa has thirteen Gi (months). One Gi has twenty-eight Il (days). Twenty-eight Il are divided by four Yo (weeks). One Yo has seven Il. A cycle of one Yo is called Bok (completion of a week). One Sa (year) has fifty-two Yobok. That makes 364 Il. This is of Seongsu (Natural Number) 1, 4, 7. Each Sa includes a Dan of the big Sa. A Dan is equal to one day. That adds up to 365 days. At the half point after the third Sa, there is a Pan of the big Sak (the year of the great dark moon). A pan comes at a half point of Sa. This is of Beopsu (Lawful Number) 2, 5, 8. A Pan is equal to a day. Therefore, the fourth Sa has 366 days. At the half point after the tenth Sa, there is a Gu of the big Hoe (Eve of the first day of the month). Gu is the root of time. Three hundred Gu makes one Myo. With Myo, we can sense Gu. A lapse of 9,633 Myo-Gak-Bun-Si makes one day. This is of Chesu (Physical Number), 3, 6, 9. By and by, the encircling time charts Medium Calendar and Large Calendar to evince the principle of numerology.[12] KEY TERMS Calendric Cycles Jongsi (終是 Ending and Beginning): Cyclic periods Soryeok (小曆 Little Calendar): One year Jungryeok (中曆 Medium Calendar): Two years Daeryeok (大曆 Large Calendar): Four years Names of Year, Month, Day, Week Sa (祀 Rituals, year): One year refers to the time that takes to complete the cycle of rituals. Gi (期 Periods, month): One month refers to the period of the moon and menstruation cycle. Il (日Sun, day): One day refers to the sun’s movement due to Earth’s rotation. Yo (曜 Resplendence of seven celestial bodies, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, week): Each weekday is dedicated to seven celestial bodies. Bok or Yobok (曜服 Duties of the Celestial Bodies, completion of a week): One week refers to the veneration of the seven celestial bodies. Names of Monthly Transition Days Hoe (晦 Eve of the first day of the month, 28th) Sak (朔 First day of the month, 1st, the dark moon) Names of Intercalation Days Dan (旦 Morning): Leap day for New Year Pan (昄 Big): Leap day for every fourth year Names of Time Units Gu (晷 sun’s shadow): Time measure, 1/300 Myo Myo (眇 minuscule): Time measure, a total of 300 Gu Myo-Gak-Bun-Si (眇刻分時 minuscule, possibly 15-minutes, minute, hour): Time measure, 9,633 Myo-Gak-Bun-Si is equal to a day Names of Three Types of Numbers in Nine Numerology Seongsu (性數Natural Number): 1, 4, 7 in the digital root Beopsu (法數 Lawful Number): 2, 5, 8 in the digital root Chesu (體數 Physical Number): 3, 6, 9 in the digital root THREE SUB-CALENDARS The Way of Heaven circles to generate Jongsi (a period, an ending and a beginning). Jongsi circles to generate another Jongsi of four Jongsi. One cycle of jongsi is called Soryeok (Little Calendar). Jongsi of Jongsi is called Jungryeok (Medium Calendar). Jongsi of four Jongsis is called Daeryeok (Large Calendar). The universe is infinite without beginning and ending. Everything runs the course of self-equilibration in relation to everything else. The Way of Heaven or the Way of the Creatrix circles and makes possible the infinite time/space to be measured and calculated. As the Way of Heaven circles, we are able to perceive Our Universe in finite measures of time/space. Time becomes measurable, as space is stabilized. Seasons and days-nights are demarcated in cyclic patterns, as the Earth makes the three cyclic movements of rotation, revolution, and precession. Calendar, born out of the inter-cosmic time, synchronizes human culture with the song/dance of the universe. The term Jongsi, which means an ending and a beginning, is equivalent to “a cyclic period” that is marked by the beginning and the end. Time (a day, a month, and a year) circles, as space (the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun) spirals. The Magoist Calendar has three sub-calendars: The period of one yearly cycle is called Little Calendar, whereas the period of two yearly cycles is called Medium Calendar and the period of four yearly cycles, Large Calendar. To be continued. (Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hye-Sook Hwang) Notes [12] Budoji, Chapter 23. See Bak Jesang, the Budoji, Bak Geum scrib., Eunsu Kim, trans. (Seoul: Gana Chulpansa, 1986).
Imbolc: Through Goddess Eyes by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Photo by Carolyn Lee Boyd In times past, Creation’s Winter cupped me in her icy hand of sanctuary Gathered in, I sucked dormant life, and slumbered Till Earth’s rebirthing groans awakened my new body Now, older and full of life’s weeping and wondering awe At all that has happened in my decades on Earth I must shake myself into consciousness My seed’s opaque, blinding hull disintegrates and Bodyless, at last I can see through Goddess eyes I ache as my blood paints each flower petal I spin the whirlwind that cannot stop creating abundance I push the seasons through the year that mortals believe revolve of their own accord. Through Goddess eyes I can see me, I inhabit Winter’s hand as my own. I make the cold to slow creation of outside of me To gather the seed into fertile stillness within. That burgeons in my own time. https://www.magoism.net/2016/08/meet-mago-contributor-carolyn-lee-boyd/

(Budoji Essay 1) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“The Great Goddess Myth is the first and last revelation to humankind. Where the Primordial Mother is, there is Home!” Part 1 Introduction When I first read the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), the principal text of Magoism, my life journey took an unexpected turn. The power of the Magoist cosmogony began to work on me, and suddenly I was returning Home with/to/in Mago, the Great Goddess! Before, “Home” had seemed an unreal destination, a mirage that lured voyagers to its abyss of nowhere. I had been stripped of “Home.” The Magoist cosmogony gifted me with a vision of what I had been seeking as a feminist voyager. I meant to return Home. In Mago, I felt no longer free-floating, but this was not without its price. My radical feminist searches brought me no material benefits; rather, to become Myself was the reward. Layer after layer of patriarchal deception had to be peeled off. And for women who, like me, came from the non-Western, formerly colonized world, reversing the reversals required a deeper analysis of racism, ethnocentrism, and colonialism. I underwent the process of becoming Me, a process which also led me to WE. Personally, Homecoming means an integration of myself within the mytho-historical-cultural context of Magoism. However, Homecoming in the Great Goddess can never be an isolated individual act. Magoism unfolds the Primordial Home wherein all beings are kindred. The Primordial Home is for everyone. Everyone is destined to return Home in the Great Goddess because She is Here for us all. She will be Here for as long as humanity survives. Homecoming is a harbinger; it signals the arrival of WE, a very old concept that was misconstrued if not tabooed in patriarchy. The nature of my life has changed. “I” is no longer in the way of “WE.” “I” and “WE” do not stand against each other. Furthermore, “I” is transformed by “WE,” just as are all things in the universe. Scalar turns to vector. Chaos yields to order. The labyrinth leads to the Source. My feminism is rewarded with gynocentrism, the Goddess Matrix in which the female principle by far surpasses patriarchy. As many admit, Myth, the story of the divine, is etiological, meaning it explains the origin of things. I hold that only the gynocentric cosmogonic myth can be fully etiological, shedding light on the primal beginning. Myth is inherently gynocentric, for it is derived from the perception of the Primordial Mother, the oldest divine in human history. Put differently, Myth tells us that the Divine is She, that Female is the original divine. Myth is ultimately inseparable from the Great Goddess. The Primordial Mother is the macrocosmic translation of a mother. She is the Metaphor for life-giver and life-raiser. Divinity issues from Her. In Her, everything, including the God, is endowed with divinity. The etiological and metaphoric nature of Myth is fully illumined only in the story of the female beginning. The Goddess Myth told to/by us testifies to what patriarchy can’t or doesn’t tell. It is a language distinguished from that of patriarchy, dominating if not violent. The nature of Its language is persuasive and pacific. The truth It tells awakens one to Home. It is intrinsically soteriological, and herein lies the urgency of Myth: It shows the Way that humanity needs to know and follow in order to survive and flourish. The Great Goddess Myth is the first and last revelation to humankind. Where the Primordial Mother is, there is Home! Mago is not necessarily the “creator” of things. In the Magoist cosmogony, there is no one who created or creates anything alone. (I have used the term “cosmogony” in place of “creation” to avoid the conflation of Magoist thought with the origin-stories of patriarchal religions.) Instead, all things are interdependent and the power of auto-genesis is embedded within the universe itself. In explaining that, the Magoist cosmogony does not employ a magical or a logical jump. In the time of beginning, cosmic rays dance in accordance with the law of nature. Mago and primordial matter are self-born through the movement of cosmic music. Mago is, above all, the Cause of human existence. All things on Earth are indebted to Mago for She initiated the process auto-genesis of the Earth itself. In short, She is the Source of Life on Earth. Without Her, nothing is possible for us.
(Goma Article Excerpt 4) Goma, the Shaman Ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea and Her Mythology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This essay was first included in Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, published in 2018 by Mago Books.] Sample Narratives of the Goma Myth Narratives Narrative A (Source Group 1) The Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), written by Iryon (1206–1289): The Gogi (Old Records) reads: Long ago, Hanin[1] had an heir, Hanung, who was from Seoja. Hanung was interested in the human world and willed to save it. Hanin, learning about her will,[2] peered into Mount Samwi (Trinity) and Mount Taebaek (Great Resplendence) to benefit the human world widely. She gave Hanung the Heavenly Emblem of Three Seals and sent her down to govern people. Leading the three thousand people, Hanung descended to Divine Goma Tree (神壇樹 Sindansu) atop Mount Taebaek. The place was called Sinsi (神市 Divine City). And she was called Heavenly Ruler Hanung. She appointed Wind Minister, Rain Master, and Cloud Master and administrated over grains, life, disease, judiciary, and the-good-and-the-evil. Directing about 360 human affairs, she governed the created world to run its own course according to the principle. At the time, the tiger clan and the bear clan lived in the same cave. They ceaselessly prayed to Sinung (神雄) to attain human nature. The Divine gave them a bundle of mugwort and twenty pieces of wild garlic and said, “Eat these and stay without seeing the sunlight for one hundred days. And you will acquire the human nature.” The bear and the tiger received and ate them. In three seven days, the bear gained the female body. The tiger was unable to endure and therefore did not attain the human body. The queen of the bear clan had no one to marry. Thus, she came to the Divine Tree daily and prayed for conception. Ung was tentatively transformed and married. She conceived and begot a child who was known as Dangun Wanggeom.[3] Narratives B and C (Source Group 2) The Handan Gogi, “Sinsi Bongi (Prime Chronicle of Sinsi)” in Taebaek Ilsa, written by Maek Yi (1455-1528): According to the Samseong Milgi (Esoteric Records of the Three Sages), at the end of the Hanguk period, there rose a recalcitrant tribe. Concerning this, Hanung established the teaching of the Triad Divine. And she gathered people and had them vow to observe the covenant. This was her secret plan to remove this unruly clan in the end. At that time, clan names grew indifferent and their customs drifted apart from each other. The indigenous was the tiger clan (the Ho) and the immigrant was the bear clan (the Ung). The Ho was greedy and cruel. They made a living by raiding and plundering others. The Ung were single-minded and did not mingle with others. They were too proud to reconcile. The two clans lived in the same cave. However, they grew ever apart. Neither they lent things to each other. Nor they married. They opposed every single matter and never walked on the same road. Facing such conflict, the queen of the bear clan learned about Hanung’s divine virtue. She, leading her people, came to visit Hanung and said, “May you grant us a cave hall (穴廛 Hyeoljeon) and allow us to become the people of the divine covenant.” Ung granted it [a cave hall] and had herself decide the administrative territory. She conceived and gave birth to a child. The Ho did not change until the end and was expelled to the land outside Four Seas (the territory of Old Magoist East Asia). Thereupon, the Han clan began to prosper from this time on. The Jodaegi (Book of the Early Period) reads: There were many people but not enough resources, which made livelihood difficult. Hanung, the great person of Seojabu (Branch of Seoja), was concerned about this. She listened to the affairs of the world widely and determined herself to descend the Heavenly Realm and open the one world of resplendent luminescence. Thereupon, Anpagyeon [Hanin] peered down Mount Geumak (Metal Mountain), Mount Samwi (Trinity), and Mount Taebaek (Great Resplendence) and deemed Mount Taebaek a suitable place to benefit the human world widely. She commanded Hanung and said to her, “Now humans and all things are brought to stability. Take lead of people and descend to the world. Open the will of Heaven and teach people. Administer rituals to the Heavenly Deity. Establish the right of fathers, support the elderly, and guide children. Bring peace among them. Instate the way of teaching to govern the created world to run its own course by the principle. Set it as an exemplar for the generations to come.” And she gave her the Heavenly Emblem of Three Seals and sent her to the world to govern. Leading the three thousand people, Hanung descended to the Divine Tree. This is called Sinsi (Divine City). Assisted by Wind Minister, Rain Master, and Cloud Master, she had grains, life, judiciary, disease, and the-good-and-the-evil administered. She administered about 360 affairs and benefited the human world widely by governing the created world to run its own course according to the principle. She was named Heavenly Ruler Hanung. At that time, the tiger clan and the bear clan lived in close proximity. They went to pray at the Divine Tree and requested of Hanung, “Grant us to become the people of the divine covenant.” Hanung transformed them by reciting holy mantras to have them attain the divine power. Giving them a bundle of mugwort and twenty pieces of chive,[4] she said warningly, “Eat these and pray for one hundred days in a place where there is no sunlight. And you will become a great human being who realizes the self and save all beings.” Both the tiger clan and the bear clan ate them and trained themselves refraining from the sunlight for three seven days. The Ung endured the pain of hunger and coldness and observed the heavenly covenant. They kept the vow of Hanung and attained the female feature. The Ho, deceptive and neglectful, broke the heavenly covenant. They were not …
How do you say what The Mago Work is? by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang & Mago Circle Members

It took many years for me to pronounce the communal nature of the Mago Work. Defining the Mago Work necessarily endows us with the bird’s eye view of the Great Goddess, the primordial consciousness of WE in S/HE. Early this year, I asked people to define the Mago Work and their definitions are illuminating about what this book ultimately seeks to achieve.[1]

Category: Mago, the Great Goddess

(Budoji Essay 5) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

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(Budoji Essay 4) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

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(Budoji Essay 3) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

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(Video) 2013 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

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(Budoji Essay 2) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

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(Budoji Essay 1) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

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(Essay 3) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

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(Essay 2) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

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(Italian language essay) Corea: la Musica cosmica di Mago by Luciana Percovich

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(Essay 1) Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism by Helen Hwang

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(Pilgrimage Essay 2) Report of First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hwang

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(Pilgrimage Essay 1) Report of First Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hwang

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(Mago Essay 3) Toward the Primordial Knowing of Mago, the Great Goddess by Helen Hwang

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Mago Almanac Year 8 (for 2025)

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

S/HE: IJGS V3 N1 2024 (B/W Paperback)

Mago Pod Bulletin #73 November 2024

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