January 2, 2024December 14, 2023 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) The Moon Talks to the People on the Earth by Mary Saracino

Have you learned nothing from my waxing and waning, the ebb and flow of tides, the beacon of light in the night sky, my eternal gift to you? Fullness is Read More …

September 18, 2023September 14, 2023 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) What if by Mary Saracino

What if it’s not about who you know or don’t know what you know, or don’t know how much money you have or don’t have if you believe in god Read More …

(Poem) Pangaea by Rose Aiello Morales

Star Atlantis, shining in an almond shell, upended when the rains came fierce, a city overpowered by some drops and we have finally learned to breathe.
(Call for Contributions) On the Coronavirus and Your Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality

October 14, 2021 Update: Dear ongoing or new contributors, Hope this finds you well and safe. It feels like we have been passingthrough a long tunnel. It’s been nearly 2 years since we fell underthe covid pandemic rule globally. When survival is the primary goal,it is really hard to push for an accomplishment. Maybe survival itselfis an accomplishment. Hope you did not stop writing or creating duringthis challenging period! Please consider resuming your ongoing or newcontributions if you haven’t submitted in a while. Share your pains,worries, and nightmares as well as wisdom, revelation, and discoveriesthrough RTM! Your struggle and experience when shared spark a new firein us and around us. And I, as an editor representative, can’t stophere, when our collective voices need to say in unison, “The RealMother Time is just beginning HERE/NOW!” Once we are newly settledpast the pandemic, I would like to pass the office of the RTM editorrepresentative. Please let me know if you are interested and can serveRTM as the editor representative. Till then, I will be standing hereto hold down the stronghold! Thank you and blessings! https://www.magoism.net/people/call-for-contribution/ I look forward to hearing from you soon,Helen The coronavirus outbreak is changing human behaviors on a global level, marking a watershed in which individuals, organizations, and states/nations no longer lead the same lifestyle as before the covid19 world. Where are we, humans, heading to? What are our concerns among Goddess feminists, activists, and spiritual practitioners, broadly defined? The Return to Mago E-Magazine Editorial seeks contributions on your response to the changes manifesting on any level. Please don’t hesitate to share your insights or observations in a form of art, poetry, prose, essay or project with our international readers and to the world. Following questions may help guide one: How does the coronavirus outbreak affect you, your work, and your attitudes toward life?What changes do you see taking place in people, culture, state, religion, environment, and/or the natural world? How do you see animals and plants respond to human quarantines? Where and how do you draw strength at this time?What are my insights or observations? How to submit your contribution, please see here, Call for Contributions.
(Book Review) Novel About Hildegard by Mary Sharratt, reviewed by Judith Laura

Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen by Mary Sharratt, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, 272 pages, available beginning Oct. 9 in hardcover and as an e-book. Mary Sharratt’s fascinating historical novel, Illuminations, is written from the first person point of view of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th century German Benedictine abbess, composer, poet, theologian, herbalist, and scientist, who recognized divinity in nature, opposed mortification of the flesh, and desired more freedom for herself and for her nuns. Ironically to some, her sainthood was made official last May by Pope Benedict XVI, who announced he will elevate her to”Doctor of the Church” on Oct. 7. The release date of this book is set to coincide with this elevation, granted to fewer than 40 saints, only 4 of whom are women. Author of four previous novels, the most recent of which is Daughters of the Witching Hill, Sharratt begins Illuminations with a prologue set in the year 1177 when Hildegard is 79. She and her nuns are burying on hallowed ground a runaway monk whom the archbishop has declared an apostate. As Hildegard awaits a decision on whether the burial will result in her being punished by the Church, she is visited by a young monk who apparently hasn’t heard of the controversial burial because it occurred while he was traveling to visit Hildegard. The purpose of his journey is to interview the abbess so he can write her vita. He asks her such questions as “…is it true that you bade your nuns to wear tiaras?” and “….Did I correctly understand that God appears to you as a woman?” Hildegard ponders how to respond to the monk’s questions as the prologue ends and, in Part I (“The Tithe”), the novel flashes back to Hildegard, age 5, the 10th child of a noble, but not very wealthy, family. Hildegard plays with her dolls, her older sisters, and her brother Rorich, suffers various illnesses, and begins to have visions. In Hildegard’s voice, here is the first one described in the novel: “A shadow passing overhead made me glance up to see an orb come floating out of the sunlight. A ball of spun gold, yet clear as glass. Inside grew a tree adorned with fruits as dazzling as rubies. The tree breathed in and out, as a living creature would.” Hildegard reaches for the orb, but “like a bubble, it burst.” After she asks her nursemaid Walburga and her mother where the orb has gone, Hildegard overhears them asking each other whether she is “mad, or simply bad?” Hildegard prays for the to visions stop, but they persist and some are prophetic. When she is 8, her mother explains that consistent with the custom of tithing 10 percent of one’s income to the Church, she is donating Hildegard, the 10th child, to the Church. This will be accomplished by Hildegard’s accompanying a young noblewoman of a wealthier family, the beautiful but troubled Jutta von Sponheim, to a monastery where they will be “anchorites,” walled into a small area called an anchorage beneath the monastery and given to understand that they will never be allowed to leave. In return for this “donation,” the Sponheims give Hildegard’s mother dowries for two of her other daughters. After the rite of anchorage on All Souls Eve, Hildegard compares her situation of being hidden away both to “being sealed in a tomb” and to that of “women in the glittering harems of the East.” As Jutta, who is a few years older than Hildegard, sinks deeper into starvation and other forms of masochism, Hildegard daydreams about escaping, possibly with the help of her brother. And she continues to have visions, which she keeps secret. The first night in the anchorage she sees a golden pulsing orb containing “a face like Walburga’s but not Walburga’s. A face bathed in tenderness, the Mother of my deepest longing….” who tells her, “….When the time is ripe, I will set you free….” During Advent, Hildegard remembers Walburga’s stories about the customs of her ancestors who were heathen and observed the Twelve Nights of Yuletide, “a time out of time when fate hung suspended…the Old Ones roaring across the midwinter skies: the Wild Hunter…in pursuit of his White Lady with her streaming hair and starry distaff….” As a winter storm rages outside, a vision comes to Hildegard: “… a white cloud bursting with a light that was live, pulsing and growing until it blazed like a thousand suns. In that gleaming I saw a maiden shine in such splendor that I could hardly look at her….Her mantle, whiter than snow, glittered like a heaven full of stars. In her right hand she cradled the sun and the moon. On her breast, covering her heart, was an ivory tablet and upon that tablet I saw a man the color of sapphire. A chorus rose like birdsong on an April dawn—all of Creation calling this maiden ‘Lady’. The maiden’s own voice rose above it… I bore you from the womb before the morning star.” The vision fades but the voice continues, telling Hildegard she is here for a purpose she does not yet understand. Then another vision, in which Hildegard is in “a greening garden so beautiful it made me cry out.” She hears the Lady’s voice again, this time whispering: “See the eternal paradise that has never fallen.” Hildegard then sees “a great wheel with the all-embracing arms of God at its circumference, the Lady at its heart. Everything she touched greened and bloomed.” Another vision follows on Christmas night, in which the image in the orb appears as Mother rather than Maiden; Hildegard calls this Mother, God. She speaks to Hildegard, saying, “I am the supreme fiery force who kindles every living spark. I flame above the beauty of the fields. I shine in the waters. I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With the airy wind, I quicken all things….” Hildegard’s relationship with Jutta, her magistra (superior, teacher), is a very difficult one. Jutta teaches her to read and write in German and Latin and to play the psaltery, but her magistra also becomes increasingly distant as her health declines, apparently due to …
A Crone’s Embodied Life with Goddess by Deanne Quarrie

Awakening to Goddess made me aware that as a human being, I was designed to utilize all of my senses. I realized that I had drifted away from my natural state through which, at one time, I engaged with all of life through all my senses, including the intuitive. This change came about through an active, stress filled life in which I seldom slowed down to even appreciate what was around me. I had ignored much of my sensory ability due to a change-over from right brain functioning, which is more imaginative, creative and intuitive, to left brain functioning, which is linear and analytical. Once I had entered the educational system, two of my senses were developed out of proportion to the others. I had left my childhood behind and entered an environment lacking in exposure to the natural world. I had become a resident of an indoor and often sedentary world.
(Book Excerpt 5) “Placental Thinking: The Gift of Maternal Roots” by Nane Jordan

[This and the previous sequels are from a Chapter from Placenta Wit: Mother Stories Rituals, and Research, edited by Nané Jordan, Demeter Press, 2017, pp. 142-155.] BIRTH GIFTING: MOTHERS AT THE CENTRE Through placental relations and placental thinking, we can imagine this gift economy as located in the heart of the primal mother-baby dyad. There, I would locate a specific embodied maternal order of the gift that flows from mother to child, and onward into the whole social milieu, as life goes on from this primal, primary relationship. As Genevieve Vaughan notes, there are many hidden ways of the gift that are not yet named. I thus name the placenta, with its gift morphology (growth, structure, and design), as an embodied gift economy that has always existed. The eventual maternal act and power of giving birth flow from placental relations.. Beyond the birth process, mother and child are released from their in-utero placental bonds and set off on the trajectory of new mother-child gifting relations. In the current market system and exchange economy, placentas are literally thrown out after birth. This is a striking action and metaphor for our social understandings of the maternal gift as being literally worthless. The notion of garbage itself is “refuse” or what is refused. Thus, the gift is refused and made invisible. Mothers know little about their babies’ placentas, often never seeing them in the hospital except for as a bloody lump in a metal side tray left aside after the birth. In the exchange economy, value is only apparent when the market assigns value to the placenta, as in its use for stem cell research or in the cosmetics industry. We could read this in newspapers and hardly connect stem cells to the placentas of our own early lives, born from our mothers’ bodies and blood. The association of birth blood with refuse also relates to long-time taboos, secrecy, and shame associated with menstrual blood in Western cultures (Grahn). Rather than socially upholding the sacred function of the female body’s life-gifting powers, the public prefers the death blood dominate in popular media culture, and the lived realities of violence and war. In contrast, the blood of life and birth receives silent attention. Further separation rituals, such as early cord cutting and taking the baby away from the mother at the moment of birth, disrupt mother-baby bonding, hormonal systems, and unity. These procedures ultimately interrupt the physiological peak of mothers’ experiences of relief, pleasure, and love in birth gifting, which are part of early bonding and begin the moment a mother becomes pregnant (Buckley). There is an intended dynamic of “safe” birth care at work in obstetrical practices in order to diminish the risks of birth giving. Ostensibly, doctors work in concert with medical protocols and interventions to ward off the risk and fear of death and feelings of pain—truisms of birth. Mothers and babies do walk along the edges of life and death in birth’s passage, in which giving birth is an overwhelming experience that can be painful or dangerous, and requires our whole sense of being. The life-saving capacities of modern medicine are important in this regard. Yet it appears that through fear of pain and death, dominant authoritative structures have become linked to the medicalization of birth and the overuse of interventions. Fear of entering an overwhelming experience such as birth, and often without support, education, understanding, or some attending human warmth and kindness, may also be keeping people tied to a system that loses sight of the maternal gift. Also lost are the positive experiential potentials for relief and even pleasure in giving birth through one’s own power and agency. As we continue to apply medical technologies and market-based, hierarchical attitudes of authority in birth care, can we shift birth practices toward more giftlike ways? Can we put mothers and babies at the centre of birth gifting through placental thinking? In midwifery, a “motherer,”as Genevieve Vaughan names it, is anyone who satisfies needs unilaterally, not expecting reward. Is this a missing or lost gift economy in birth? Of course, there are doctors who practice this gift, putting mothers and babies at the centre of birth, who view mothers kindly and lovingly with care. But directing the gift of compassionate attention is a more common philosophy for midwives and doulas, which includes the ability and commitment to support and empathize with the mother. In a diagrammatic perspective, this looks like a circle, with supportive caregivers holding space for the mother, who is at the centre. In this circle, the mother can retain and direct her own energies and agency for birth giving, both physical and psychic, toward herself and her baby. She is in trusting relations with her attendants, who direct their energy toward her (and not themselves) as needed, and have ability to step back if not needed. In authoritarian and hierarchical systems of care, the energy of birth is directed in straight lines up and away from the mother and baby and toward the attendants at the top. Attention tends to focus on the birth attendants as they dictate the directions for birth experience and implement their expertise, often without regard to the mothers’ wishes. Mothers may feel depleted or worse, traumatized from giving birth under systems that appropriate their birth-gifting power without regard for the centrality of their agency and experience. Obviously, there many nuances and complexities to this topic, and often more analysis is needed on a case-by-case basis. In this regard, birth giving inherently asks a mystery of us. It is older and wiser than our clocks and interventions, and unfolds uniquely for every mother and baby who enter its experience. I have witnessed home and hospital births with “motherer” attendants at hand, where those mothers and babies are held at the centre of a circle of care and love. Attendants keep a respectful watch, moving toward or away as asked or needed. A birthing mother, feeling safe to surrender into her own birth process—however …
(Meet Mago Contributor) Laurie Corzett

Laurie Corzett is a writer of visionary poetry and poetic prose. For a deeper look, enjoy her “patchwork narrative” of a child vampire’s quest for enlightenment at http://nightspages.blogspot.com/ We, the co-editors, contributors, and advisers, have started the Mago Web (Cross-cultural Goddess Web) to rekindle old Gynocentric Unity in our time. Now YOU can help us raise this torch high to the Primordial Mountain Home (Our Mother Earth Herself) wherein everyone is embraced in WE. There are many ways to support Return to Mago. You may donate to us. No amount is too small for us. For your time and skill, please email Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Please take an action today and we need that! Thank YOU in Goddesshood of all beings! (Click Donate button below. You can donate by credit card or bank account without registering PayPal. Find “Don’t have a PayPal account?” above the credit card icons.)
(Book Review) Susan Hawthorne’s Dark Matters: a novel by Harriet Ann Ellenberger

LOVE IN THE CROSSHAIRS Reflections on Susan Hawthorne’s Dark Matters: A Novel I am asking myself what accounts for the haunting power of Dark Matters, this latest in a long line of books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction by Susan Hawthorne. One clue may simply be the length of that trail of published work which precedes Dark Matters. No one creates a profound work of art by staying on the surface of life, but it is equally true that no can do it before they’ve taught themselves to be at home in their own language. Each sentence of Susan Hawthorne’s Dark Matters says what it says — and it also says, “my writer knew what she was doing.” Dark Matters vibrates through time, in part because the line of writing which leads to it includes more than Hawthorne’s own: that line begins with Sappho, the tenth muse, the rockstar of the Mediterranean, of whose multitudinous lyrics only fragments have survived the attempts to eradicate them, along with the memory of her and her companions. A whole machinery of cultural destruction has been brought to bear on the poet of love, and we are left with bits and pieces that nonetheless retain their power to evoke and to move. Like the remnants of Sappho’s lyrics, the novel Dark Matters itself is made up of fragments. Its structure echoes the story being told as well as the background story of lesbian history, a zigzag trail through landscapes and timescapes of erasure and memory. Telling the love story of Kate and Mercedes in fragmented episodes allows for intensity (both in the scenes of beauty and in the scenes of terror), alternating with relief from intensity. And the fragments are arranged in such a way that the reader, along with Kate’s niece Desi, gradually moves through a mist of unanswered questions and mysterious gaps toward a feeling for what drew Mercedes and Kate together and a comprehension of the forces that tore them from each other’s arms. The love story that is the heart of Dark Matters begins with Mercedes teaching Kate the tango, and from there they dance their way into a shared life. Mercedes’ family has fled torture in Chile to resettle in Australia, but when things go bad politically in her new home, the torturers show up again. In a dawn raid, armed and hooded intruders kill Priya (Kate and Mercedes’ beloved dog), shoot Mercedes, and seize Kate, transporting her to a remote detention center, where she is subjected to the textbook methods of torture, which few survive. For Kate, the lesbian and feminist, however, there is an added twist. The most sophisticated of the torturers, the one she calls Velvet Voice, is a man who has gone beyond his job description. He’s been tracking Kate as obsessively as a rejected suitor bent on revenge: he’s read her poetry and her political writings; he’s gone through her library and studied her performances. When he grinds his heel into her left hand, breaking the bones, he calls her “sinister sister.” He knows Kate, and breaking her spirit along with her body is not only his work, it’s his pleasure. He intends to turn everything she’s ever loved against her. Kate doesn’t know where she is, why she’s there, who authorized her being there, who else is being held in the building nor what is being done to them. She doesn’t know if Mercedes has survived. She doesn’t know what to expect next. She has been systematically robbed of situational awareness, the cues to orient herself in time and space blocked by her captors. All she has is her mind and her memory. And this is where the great richness of Dark Matters comes in because, as it turns out, Kate’s mind is very full. There are the memories of her life as a child, memories of her travels to her mother’s Greek homeland, later memories of journeys and conversations with Mercedes, and then there are the memories extending back thousands of years, to the time of the Eleusinian rituals, to a time when women had not yet been de-authorized, to a time when the old goddesses were a living presence in the life of the Mediterranean peoples. Memory is the mother of the muses, and as Kate remembers, she begins to write archaic-sounding poems in her head and one night she dreams, like her grandmother, in the old language of Classical Greece. To tell more of Dark Matters might be to ruin it for new readers, so I’ll stop here with one last thought: there is so much wisdom woven into this book, you can spend weeks teasing out the strands and pondering them. As Desi says, “Those goddesses are not dead. I mean not dead-dead! Not really dead! They keep coming back in cycles. It all depends on who you talk to.” Meet Mago Contributor, Harriet Ann Ellenberger
(Bilingual Poetry & Art 1) Coronavirus: An Initiation by Noris Binet

Title: Letting GoMedia: Acrylic on Canvas and Metal.Copyrighted by Noris Binet 1 For Those Who Are Falling I could not sleep After seeing a photo of the mass grave for Corona virus corpses in New York, The pit for those who could not be recognized No one appeared to claim them they were left without identity or place of belonging I got up and went outside To meet the mystery of the night Looking for encouragement in this descent Which suddenly hurts, brings confusion And even asks for mercy I Walked through the translucent darkness left by the full moon and when I looked up at the sky, I found the stars looking back at me from afar I was surprised in front of so much beauty And I found the answer … Here I should stay, sitting in silence Letting the stars bathe me with their twinkling Without knowing anything … or where this grief is heading Sitting there, I discovered Venus with its diamond-shaped light illuminating my soul I raised my hand to touch the light And it melted into my fingertips Slipping into my palm and penetrating my veins And there I saw all the dead that have been falling I allowed myself to pray for them So that every one of them could find peace Surrendering their bodies to the earth and lifting their spirits to eternity That all these nameless ones could make their way to the original place where life is born and to where it returns Sitting there under the stars I met death And all the ones who are dying, I allowed myself to pray for them So that they may find total liberation…in surrendering! 2 Not Knowing Life from Death I feel the disintegration of everything that is happening with no clear answers, not knowing where life is heading or death is stopping I am standing in front of the unknown in this present mysterious moment not knowing whether tomorrow my eyes will open or if there will be another breath. In front of this nothingness that inhabits me I can only feel what is happening in various corners of the planet not able to know where to take the next step, or who or what will soon fall I have no paradigm for responding to this moment no philosophy or belief to provide an answer to this flow of life that no one directs Everything I have learned falls apart dreams are broken— some like clay pots others as porcelain plates The world as I knew it has stopped not as I imagined it would— if the imagination could even reach that far However, the mind still tries to pierce the uncertainty all around even if it is impossible to detect where the tip of the thread begins that we try to grab and untangle life from death and begin to weave a new paradigm But we are still falling, and we do not know how deep this fall will be or how muddled things are because so far just a few nations have begun to descend. (To be continued) (Meet Mago Contributor) Noris Binet Coronavirus: Una Iniciación 1 Para los que Van Cayendo No me pude dormir anoche Después que vi la foto de la fosa común para los cadáveres de Nueva York La fosa para aquellos que no pudieron reconocer Que no apareció nadie a reclamarlos Que quedaron sin identidad, in nombre, o lugar de pertenencia No pude dormirme Me levanté y salí afuera A encontrarme con el misterio de la noche Buscando un aliento para este descenso Que de repente duele, se confunde Y hasta pide clemencia Camine entre la obscuridad translucida Que dejó la luna llena y cuando subí la mirada al cielo me encontré las estrellas mirándome desde lejos Me quede sorprendida frente a tanta belleza Y encontré la respuesta… Ahí debía quedarme, sentada en silencio Dejando que las estrellas me bañaran con sus titileos Sin saber nada… Ni hacia donde se dirige este duelo Ahí sentada, descubrí a Venus y su luz de diamante me Iluminaba el alma Alcé mi mano para tocarla Y se deshizo en las yemas de mis dedos Deslizándose en mi palma y penetrando mi sangre Y ahí vi a todos los muertos que han ido cayendo Me permití orar por ellos Para que cada uno haya encontrado la paz del rendimiento Entregándole el cuerpo a la tierra y alzando el espíritu al infinito… Que cada uno haya encontrado el camino al origen donde nace la vida y hacia donde retorna Ahí sentada… bajo las estrellas me encontré con la muerte Y con lo que están muriendo Me permití pedir por ellos Para que encuentren la liberación total… Rindiéndose! 2 Sin Diferenciar la Vida de la Muerte Sentí la desintegración de todo lo que esta sucediendo Cuando me permití quedarme Sin respuestas, sin saber hacia donde se dirige la vida O hacia donde se dirige la vida O hacia donde se dirige la muerte Hoy estoy parada frente a lo desconocido Al misterioso momento presente No sabiendo Si mañana se abrirán mis ojos O que la respiración suceda… Frente a la nada que me habita Solo puedo sentir lo que sucede En todos los rincones del planeta No pudiendo saber hacia donde será el próximo paso o quien caerá primero Por vez primera No hay ningún paradigma Que responda a este momento No hay filosofías o creencia teóricas Que responda al flujo de la vida que nadie dirige Todo lo que aprendí se deshace Y los sueños se rompen Como ollas de barro para unos o vajillas porcelana para otros el mundo como lo conocí se ha detenido no como lo imagino la mente… si es que su imaginación llego tan lejos pues aquí la mente se detiene se quedó sin herramientas aunque sigue tratando de encapsular el des-balance es imposible de predecir donde quedaría la punta de la hilacha que podríamos tomar para empezar a desenredar la vida …
(Essay 3) The Old Sow by Hearth Moon Rising

Read Meet Mago Contributor Hearth Moon Rising. The Hebrew prohibition against pork was a product of the agricultural realities of the Levant. While Egypt and Mesopotamia were able to amass large stores of grain that could outlast prolonged drought, the harvest in this region was sparse and uncertain. It did not make sense to divert precious grain stores for porcine consumption when much of the arid land would only support grass. Goats and sheep were better suited for the region even though kids and lambs grow more slowly than piglets. The taboo against pork precipitated a crisis for early Christians. If they allowed converts to eat pork they could no longer consider themselves a Jewish sect, even a controversial one. Yet Christian leaders desired converts in Europe and Asia Minor, where pork was widely consumed among the poorer classes (who happened at that time to be more open to their message). It was not simply a matter of substituting pork for chicken or beef like we would do today in our grocery shopping. Low income laborers kept pigs because pigs demanded little time and effort, and they did not have the resources to buy or raise other animals to meet their high protein requirements. It was either loosen dietary restrictions or abandon efforts to convert Greece and Rome. At the same time devotion to the Sow Goddess could not be allowed to continue, not in Greece or anywhere else. Hence negative references to pigs in the New Testament outnumber those in the Old, and church leaders continued to inveigh against the wretched swine. From the point of view of the convert, to enjoy continued dependence on grain and pork while reviling the Sow Goddess required a change in thinking that was profound. It was only natural that the Great Sow would nourish the grain harvest, since pigs and humans depended on it. The task of humans, as pagans understood it, was to demonstrate gratitude for her largess and to remind her occasionally where her interest lay. Christian emphasis on the rewards of heaven was partially driven by the need to break allegiance to the powers that made life on earth possible. As Christianity spread to northern Europe, clerics continued to rail against the pagan swine. In forested areas pigs roamed half feral feasting on acorns, linking the sow with the oak tree so sacred to the Celts. Magical or enchanted pigs appear often in the Celtic romances, although any goddesses associated with these pigs have been unrecorded. Robert Graves in The White Goddess presents a theory that the Welsh goddess Cerridwyn is the sacred White Sow, and this conjecture is generally accepted by practicing Pagans, if not by academics. Celtic folklore includes many references to fairy pigs. Sometimes the pig or boar leads unsuspecting men or dogs directly into the Otherworld. One story features a self regenerating Otherworld pig. Folklore featuring fairy pigs survived well into Christian times. Says Patrick V. O’Sullivan in Irish Superstitions and Legends of Animals and Birds: “Pigs were often seen going in and out of forts, which would seem to indicate that fairies were as fond of their bacon and cabbage as their human neighbors. Occasionally, pigs came out of rivers and streams, and these too were enchanted porkers.” The Pagan revival beginning in the mid twentieth century has not reignited much interest in the pig and the Sow Goddess. The association of pigs with ugliness, dirt and stupidity continues to prevail in most quarters, even though people in direct contact with pigs will insist that they are both intelligent and clean. Despite my promotion of pigs for over twenty years I have not convinced any crones to accept “Old Sow” as an honorific. I do not think this is entirely due to Christian propaganda. After all, the snake has been vilified as much if not more. Nor can it be attributed to the pig’s domestic status, given the popularity of Pan, though wild animals and domestic companion animals do tend to attract more devotees. The sow’s lack of sex appeal, at least in male defined terms, probably plays a significant role in her neglect, but crone goddesses such as Baba Yaga or Cailleach Bhear do have a following. Part of the reason the sow continues to wallow in ignominy is that the biggest impetus for the Pagan revival, at least in numbers, has come from America, where wild pigs are not regarded with any warm feelings. The boar and her cousins are not native to the Americas, and the first pigs were brought by colonials who allowed them to forage freely, causing conflicts with natives that sometimes erupted in violence. Pigs are gourmets as well as gourmands, and they naturally chose the foods that humans also prefer, so they depleted certain nutritious wild plants quickly. Feral pigs continue to wreak ecological havoc in many forested regions despite decades of work by state wildlife agencies to eradicate them. To be continued. Read part 1 and part 2. Hearth Moon Rising is a Dianic Priestess living in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York and the author of Invoking Animal Magic: A guide for the Pagan priestess. www.invokinganimalmagic.com. She blogs at www.hearthmoonblog.com. Sources: Barrett, Clive. The Egyptian Gods and Goddesses: The Mythology and Beliefs of Ancient Egypt. London: Diamond Books, 1991. Bottero, Jean. The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Cooper, D. Jason. Using the Runes. Wellingborough, UK: The Aquarian Press, 1986. Germond, Phillippe. An Egyptian Bestiary: Animals in Life and Religion in the Life of the Pharoahs. London: Thames and Hudson, 2001. Gimbutas, Marija. The Living Goddesses. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989. Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. London: Penguin, 1960. Graves, Robert. The White Goddess. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1948. Green, Miranda. Animals in Celtic Life and Myth. London: Routledge, 1992. Johnson, Buffie. Lady of the Beasts: The Goddess and Her Sacred Animals. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1994. O’Sullivan, Patrick V. Irish Superstitions and Legends of …

(Special Post 2) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Harriet Ann Ellenberger I got involved with women’s liberation in the early 1970s, so involved that it became my life for many years. During those beginnings of what is now called “the second wave of feminism,” everything was new to us and everything was mushed together — the political, the economic, the intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual. I liked that a lot; it felt as if all the parts of myself were coming together. During that time, I learned something crucial the imagery and concepts of patriarchal religion justify and are embedded in the material structures of oppression. I don’t know which came first, institutionalized oppression (of everyone; I’m not speaking here only of women) or the religious expression of that oppression. All I’m certain of is that patriarchal religion permeates, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary, which I use all the time, in conjunction with Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, conjured by Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi.
(Special Post Mother Teresa 4) A Role Model for Women? by Mago Circle Members

Part IV: Illumination and Consensus Reached [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.] Diane Horton: [C], how is it that you do not see that MT had no right to sacrifice other people for any purpose whatsoever? None of us have the right or the place to “sacrifice those we care about” for anything. She was not “above them”. And she had abundant means to do far more for them, to cure and comfort them. If indeed she imagined she had some lofty motivation as you so fervently believe, to use the power she had to withhold medical care from the poverty stricken sick and dying in some misguided and ultimately cruel attempt to bring the world’s attention to their suffering and produce compassion within those who would not otherwise feel it is the most monstrous miscarriage of any expression of what you might refer to as “love” that I have heard of outside of Jim Jones killing all of his followers in Ghana. That’s not Love. That’s not Compassion. That is Manipulation, and manipulation is ego-based. Anne Wilkerson Allen: Yes. It is an indoctrination so deep and so prolonged that it takes a lifetime to overcome…and we rely on the love and compassion of others to help bring us to this understanding….thanks, Diane. Diane Horton: Love you, Anne. [C]: Is thinking that any human being sacrificing inside their very soul, their morals, & all that entails, is actually of lesser value than outside human pain, suffering, even death itself, right? Diane Horton: I’m not sure I understand the question really, but I’ll try a response: one’s inner and outer life are of equal importance because they are all the whole person.
(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.

The Passing of Last Summer’s Growth by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The ‘passing of last Summer’s growth’ as is experienced and contemplated in the Season of Deep Autumn/Samhain, may be a metaphor for the passing of all/any that has come to fullness of being, or that has had a fullness, a blossoming of some kind, and borne fruit; and in the passing it has been received, and thus transforms. The ‘passing of last Summer’s growth’ may be in hearts and minds, an event or events, a period of time, or an era, that was a deep communion, now passed and dissolved into receptive hearts and minds, where it/they reside for reconstitution, within each unique being. Samhain is traditionally understood as ‘Summer’s end’: indeed that is what the word ‘Samhain’ means. In terms of the seasonal transitions in indigenous Old European traditions, Summer is understood as over when the Seasonal Moment of Lammas/Lughnasad comes around; it is the first marked transition after the fullness of Summer Solstice. The passing and losses may have been grieved, the bounty received, thanksgiving felt and expressed, perhaps ceremonially at Autumn Equinox/Mabon; yet now in this Season of Samhain/Deep Autumn it composts, clearly falls, as darkness and cooler/cold weather sets in, change is clearer. In the places where this Earth-based tradition arose, Winter could be sensed setting in at this time, and changes to everyday activity had to be made. In our times and in our personal lives, we may sense this kind of ending, when change becomes necessary, no longer arbitrary: and the Seasonal Moment of Samhain may be an excellent moment for expressing these deep truths, telling the deep story, and making meaning of the ending, as we witness such passing. What new shapes will emerge from the infinite well of creativity? And we may wonder what will return from the dissolution? What re-solution will be found? We may wonder what new shapes will emerge. In the compost of what has been, what new syntheses, new synergies, may come forth? Now is the time for dreaming, for drawing on the richness within, trusting the sentience, within which we are immersed, and which we are: and then awaiting the arrival, being patient with the fermentation and gestation. Seize the moment, this Moment – and converse with the depths within your own bodymind, wherein She is. Make space for the sacred conversation, the Conversing with your root and source of being, and take comfort in this presence. We may ponder what yet unkown beauty and wellness may emerge from this infinite well of creativity. The Samhain Moment in the Northern Hemisphere is 17:14 UT 7thNovember this year. Wishing you a sense of the deep communion present in the sacred space you make for this holy transition.
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 …
(Essay) Ceremony as “Prayer” or Sacred Awareness By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. MoonCourt Ceremonial Space set for Autumn Equinox ceremony, 2013 Ritual/ceremony is often described as “sacred space.” I understand that to mean “awareness of the space as sacred”: all space is sacred, what shifts is our awareness – awareness of the depth of spacetime, and of the depth of all things and all beings. I understand “sacred awareness” as an awareness of deep relationship and identity with the very cosmic dynamics that create and sustain the Universe; or an awareness of what is involved in the depth of each moment, each thing, each being. Ceremony is a space and time given to expression, contemplation and nurturance of that depth … at least to something of it. Ceremony may be both an expression of deep inner truths – perceived relationship to self, Earth and Cosmos, as well as being a mode of teaching and drawing forth deeper participation. Essentially, ceremony is a way of entering into the depth of the present moment … what is deeply present right here and now, a way of entering deep space and deep time, which is not somewhere else but is right here. Every-thing, and every moment, has Depth – more depth than we usually allow ourselves to contemplate, let alone comprehend. This book, this paper, this ink, the chair, the floor – each has a history and connections that go back, all the way back to Origins. This moment you experience now, in its particular configuration, place, people present, subtle feelings, thoughts, and propensity towards certain directions or outcomes, has a depth – many histories and choices that go back … ultimately all the way back to the beginning. Great Origin is present at every point of space and time – right here. In ceremony we are plugging our awareness into something of that. In this holy context then – in this mindframe of knowing connection, everything one does is a participation in the creation of the Cosmos: for the tribal indigenous woman, perhaps the weaving of a basket; for another, perhaps preparing a meal; for you, perhaps getting on the train to go to a workplace. It is possible to regain this sense, to come to feel that the way one breathes makes a difference – that with it, you co-create the present and the future, and you may even be a blessing on the past. In every moment we receive the co-creation, the work, of innumerable beings, of innumerable moments, and innumerable interactions of the elements, in everything we touch … and so are we touched by them. The local is our touchstone to the Cosmos – it is not separate. Ceremony may be a way into this awareness, into strengthening it. Ceremony is actually ‘doing,’ not just theorizing. We can talk about our personal and cultural disconnection endlessly, but we need to actually change our minds. Ceremony can be an enabling practice – a catalyst/practice for personal and cultural change. It is not just talking about eating the pear, it is eating the pear; it is not just talking about sitting on the cushion (meditating), it is sittingon the cushion. It is a cultural practice wherein we tell a story/stories about what we believe to be so most deeply, about who and what we are. Ceremony can be a place for practicing a new language, a new way of speaking, or spelling – a place for practicing “matristic storytelling”[i] if you like: that is, for telling stories of the Mother, of Earth and Cosmos as if She were alive and sentient. We can “play like we know it,” so that we may come to know it.[ii] Ceremony then is a form of social action. I have found it useful to describe ceremony using and extending words used by Ken Wilber to describe a “transpersonal practice,” which is needed for real change: he said it was a practice that discloses “a deeper self (I or Buddha) in a deeper community (We or Sangha) expressing a deeper truth (It or Dharma).”[iii] My extension of that is: ceremony may disclose a deeper beautiful self (the I/Virgin/Urge to Be/Buddha), in a deeper relational community (the We/Mother/Place of Being/Sangha), expressing a deeper transformative truth (the It/Old One/Space to Be/Dharma). This is the “unitive body,” the “microcosmos” that Charlene Spretnak refers to in States of Grace.[iv] Since ceremony is an opportunity to give voice to deeper places in ourselves, forms of communication are used that the dreamer, the emotional, the body, can comprehend, such as music, drama, simulation, dance, chanting, singing.[v] These forms enable the entering of a level of consciousness that is there all the time, but that is not usually expressed or acknowledged. We enter a realm that is ‘out of time,’ which is commonly said to be not the “real” world, but it is more organic/indigenous to all being and at least as real as the tick-tock world. It is a place “between the worlds,” wherein we may put our hands on the very core of our lives, touch whatever it is that we feel our existence is about, and thus touch the possibility of re-creating and renewing ourselves. NOTES: [i] A term used by Gloria Feman Orenstein in The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), 147. [ii] As my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Susan Murphy once described it to me in conversation. [iii] Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything (Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1996), 306-307. [iv] 145. [v] As Starhawk notes, The Spiral Dance, 45. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. The Reflowering of the Goddess. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990. Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. New York: Harper and Row, 1999. Wilber, Ken. A Brief History of Everything. Massachusetts: Shambhala, 1996.
(Slideshow) Beltaine Goddess by Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D.

Tara, Hallie Iglehart Austen, p.122 On November 7th at 22:56 UTC EarthGaia crosses the midpoint in Her orbit between Equinox and Solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere it is the Season of Beltaine – a maturing of the Light, post-Spring Equinox. Beltaine and all of the light part of the cycle, is particularly associated with the Young One/Virgin aspect of Goddess, even as She comes into relationship with Other: She remains Her own agent. Beltaine may be understood as the quintessential annual celebration of Light as it continues to wax towards fullness. It is understood to be the beginning of Summer. Here is some Poetry of the Season: Earth tilts us further towards Mother Sun, the Source of Her pleasure, life and ecstasy You are invited to celebrate BELTAINE the time when sweet Desire For Life is met – when the fruiting begins: the Promise of early Spring exalts in Passion. This is the celebration of Holy Lust, Allurement, Aphrodite … Who holds all things in form, Who unites the cosmos, Who brings forth all things, Who is the Essence of the Dance of Life. Glenys Livingstone, 2005 The choice of images for the Season is arbitrary; there are so many more that may express this quality of Hers. And also for consideration, is the fact that most ancient images of Goddess are multivalent – She was/is One: that is, all 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 Beltaine. 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.>
(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 5) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) Free PDF available at Mago Bookstore. THE 28-13-7 INTERPLAY How does the number, 28 (days), for the lunar cycle come about? Why is it 28 days and not 29 or 30, the latter implicated in the traditional lunar calendar of East Asia? It appears that 28 days is a value closer to the moon’s sidereal period (about 27.3 days) than the synodic period (about 29.5 days). Or is it that 28 days points to the median between the synodic lunar cycle and the sidereal lunar cycle? To answer these questions, it is important to note that a value in the Mago Time captures an inter-cosmic biological cusp/juncture derived from the matrix of sonic numerology. Distinguished from the patriarchal measure of time fixated into a solipsistic space, it makes visible the interconnectedness of all bodies. It never stands as an isolated single occasion. The 28 day, 13 month calendar has to do with how we perceive the moon. There are two ways of understanding the lunar cycle; the sidereal period and the synodic period (see Figure 2). The synodic period refers to the time, about 29.5 days, that we on earth see the moon complete one round of revolution, e.g. from the full moon to the full moon. In contrast, the sidereal period refers to the actual time, about 27.3 days, that the moon takes to complete one round of revolution. While the synodic time is measured relative to the Earth (the observer’s position is on earth), the sidereal time is measured relative to the distant “fixed” stars (the observer’s position is far out at the distant stars). Since the distant stars are considered at rest, the sidereal period is taken as a universal value, not affected by the location of the viewer, we on earth. There is, apparently, a discrepancy between the lunar cycle that we on earth see the moon return to the same phase and the lunar cycle that the moon actually completes a revolution. The former is based on our observation of the moon’s phases, whereas the latter is based on the moon’s actual orbital motions. The two differs basically because all celestial bodies, the moon, earth, and sun, in the solar system are in motion. It is not just the moon that we watch revolving but Earth also revolves around the sun. We are watching the movement of the moon on a moving vehicle, earth, so to speak. Therefore, the moon has to travel about 2 more days in order for us on earth to see it in the same phase (see the green portion in Figure 2 part). At the position A of the moon in Figure 2, the moon is in line with the sun and the distant stars, which is a new moon. In the position of B (the new moon), the moon is in line with the sun but not with the distant stars. The right hand line of the green portion in line with the distant stars is where the moon started as a new moon. The moon has traveled about 2 more days to be in line with the sun. That is why the synodic period is about 2 days longer than the sidereal period. When it comes to “the lunar calendar”, moderns tend to think of it as the waxing and waning phases of the moon (29.5 days, the synodic period). The problem lies in that, following the synodic period, people see nothing beyond the moon’s phases. They overlook the fact that the moon rotates and revolves on its own axis and around the earth approximately 13 degrees every day. The synodic lunisolar calendar is a navel-gazing vision. Attending to the moon’s phases may seem benign. However, that is a planned pitfall; the synodic lunisolar calendar with 12 months in a year is here to supersede the 28 day, 13 month gynocentric calendar. Its irregularity with the number of days in a month (29 or 30 days with about 11 extra days for intercalation) is an inherently critical flaw. Its inaccuracy when incorporated within the solar annual calendar (approximately 365.25 days) stands out. Seen below in the table, the synodic lunar track results in as many leap days as a total of 44 days for 4 years, whereas the sidereal lunar track has 2 days for 4 years. The synodic lunisolar calendar undercuts the moon’s given capacity – guiding earthly beings into the intergalactic voyage of WE/HERE/NOW. In it, both the moon and women are, glorified and objectified by the viewer, cast under the male voyeuristic eye. On the contrary, the sidereal lunisolar calendar, based on the cyclic synchrony between the moon and women, offers the lens to the interconnectedness of all bodies in the universe. Synodic Lunar Track (Patriarchal) Sidereal Lunar Track (Magoist) Focus Moon’s phases Moon’s motions Days of month 29 or 30 (irregular) 28 (regular) No. of months in a year 12 13 Women’s menstrual cycle Assumed sync Synced Luni-centric Astolonomy Unknown 28 Constellations Intercalations 11 days annually, a total of 44 days for 4 years 1 day annually & 1 day every 4 years, a total of 2 days for 4 years Sources prove that the sidereal lunation is, albeit esoterically, known across cultures to this day. Through the comparative study of ancient cultures of Babylon, Arabia, India and China, W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) observes the substantive difference in dynamic between the two lunation tracks, the synodic and the sidereal. He notes that the moon’s orbital motion, apart from the sun’s, charts out the celestial sphere as the 28 Mansions. I have learned that the 28 Mansions or 28 Constellations of the Moon is a popular form of the 28 day and 13 month Magoist calendar, widely circulated among East Asians especially Koreans from the ancient time. Yeats’ following insights corroborate the Budoji’s explication of the Magoist Calendar in general and the faulty nature of the patriarchal (ancient Chinese) calendar in …

(Goma Article Excerpt 2) 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]. Background Discussions Hanung (Her Title) and Sindansu (Divine Goma Tree) We will peel off the layers of patriarchal and Sinocentric devices that conceal her unparalleled supreme manifestations. In a conventional interpretation, we are told that Goma and Hanung are two different persons as the mother and the father of Dangun. This proves to be an androcentric invention to divest Goma of supremacy. Goma is not the consort of Hanung. Nor Hanung the male counterpart of Goma. Goma and Hanung refer to the same figure, not a heterosexual couple. It is her title (Hanung 桓雄) that is split from her (Goma) and made into a male ruler. Androcentric interpreters have noted the two homonyms “Ung (熊 bear)” and “Ung (雄 hero)” but made them two different figures. Thus, they deem that the former “Ung” refers to Ungnyeo, the bear-woman, whereas the latter “Ung” to Hanung, the male ruler. However, the latter “Ung” does not mean a male. It is true that logographic characters are characteristically polysemic. And Ung is no exception as it means “a hero,” “a great person,” or “a male bird.” When it is used to mean a male, it refers to a male bird or animal. The literal meaning of Hanung should be the heroic ruler (Sovereign) of Han (the People of the Creatrix). In short, the character “Ung (Hero),” as is in Cheonung (天雄 Heavenly Hero) and Sinung (神雄 Divine Hero), refers to Goma, the heroic founding ruler (Sovereign) of Danguk. The idea that Hanung is the male ruler remains unsupported. First of all, the present myth is rife with female symbols and images including the cave initiation, the divine tree, conception, and procreation. Indeed, the Goma myth is a completely pacific or rather pacifying story, void of conquering, killing or raping. Secondly, the idea of Hanung as a male founder is left without a direct connection with the bear clan (Ungjok) and the Goma words, a topic to be explicated in detail at a later section. Most critically, if Hanung were the male ruler, his association with Sindansu would be too superficial to give due meaning to the Korean foundation myth. The present myth ascertains that the protagonist of the Sindansu (Divine Goma Tree) motif is a female. Sindansu, the tree of life or the world tree, to be explicated at a later section, is credited with one of the most pivotal mythemes, if not the most, of the Korean foundation myth. It is the cosmic tree, which Goma envisioned for the common origin of all beings from the Triad Creatrix and prayed for conception without a male partner. The syllable, “dan (檀)” in “Sindansu,” refers to the divine tree in Mount Taebaek. It is the eponymous root of the terms that indicate the Goma people. It is used in such words as Danguk (Goma State), Dangun (Head of the Goma State), and Danmok (Goma Tree), to name a few. Note that “Danguk was the strongest among the states of the bear clan,” headed by queens,[1] indicating that Danguk was the the confederal mother state that led the nine daughter states. Put differently, Danguk represents the matriarchal (magocratic, referring to a society ruled by a Magoist shaman queen) confederacy of the bear clan states.[2] Goma’s alternative epithets including “Ungssi-ja (Decendant of the Goma Clan), “Ungssi-wang” (Ruler of the Goma Clan), and “Ungssi-gun” (Head of the Goma Clan) substantiate that she is the ruler and head of the bear clan.[3] Also note that Dangun, Goma’s dynastic successor, “was enthroned as the Descendant of Heavenly Sovereign, as she established the capital in Danmok, Asadal, succeeding Danguk.”[4] Danmok is another word for Sindansu. Its alternative meaning “the birch” comes from the sound of “bakdal (박달).” Prominent Koreanists tend to agree that the character “dan” is related to “barkdal (밝달),” “baekdal (백달),” and “baedal (배달),” all of which indicate the Korean people.[5] However, they do not seem to see the multi-connection among Sindansu, Danmok, Baedal and Goma (Ungnyeo). Thus, they fail to see the Magoist context of the Goma myth. The Goma myth is about Danmok and Sindansu, Goma’s tree in Mount Taeback (Great Resplendence). The Divine Tree of Mount Taebaek is wherein Hanung Goma descended to rule the world. Goma has been commemorated as Ungsang (熊常Eternal Tree) and Dangmok (堂木 Shrine Tree) throughout history. The Goma tree sheds light on the origin of the tree worship in Korea and beyond. According to the Handan Gogi, the veneration of Ungsang originated from the time of Danguk and revived throughout the period of Dangun Joseon.[6] In traditional Korea, it is enshrined as Dangmok (Shrine Tree) in village shrines, Seonhwang-dang. It is not haphazard that Korean women are noted for their prayers of conception under the shrine tree. Splitting Goma into Ungnyeo and Hanung has resulted in awkward phraseology especially concerning her procreation in the story. Ultimately, it proves to be an androcentric device to dismiss the mytheme of her parthenogenetic birth to a child, the virgin birth, a contradictory concept to the patriarchal mindset. She, the shaman queen of the bear clan, was enthroned as Hanung, the dynastic founder Hanung of Danguk. Also, her offspring, Dangun, is the new queen-founder of Joseon who succeeded Danguk, rather than her biological son. The Goma myth is the story of a polity not a family. I maintain that the shaman rulers in Old Magoism (Hanguk, Danguk, and Joseon) are predominantly women.[7] In addition to “Hanung,” other titles of Goma include “Cheongwang (天王 Heavenly Ruler),” “Cheonung (天雄Heavenly Sovereign),” “Sinung (神雄 Divine Sovereign),” “Cheonhwang (天皇 Heavenly Empress),” “Seonhwang (仙皇Immortal Empress), and “Daeung (大雄Great Hero).” The Goma worship in Korean culture remains too pervasive to be recognized. As suggested in these alternative epithets, it has shaped the landscape of Korean popular religions, in particular Shamanism and Buddhism. Most prominently, the Goma worship manifests in the form of revering the Shrine Tree (Dangmok) in Seonhwang-dang (Seonghwang-dang or …
(2014 Mago Pilgrimage Report 1) Sweat Lodge in Gyodong, Ganghwa Islands by Helen Hwang

[Author’s Note: Revised verison of this report is published in Celebrating the Seasons of the Goddess (Lytle Creek, CA: Mago Books, 2017). 2014 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea (Oct. 7-Oct. 20) was participated by a culturally mixed group of pilgrims from the U.S. Australia, and Korea. Among non-Koreans were Dr. Glenys Livingstone (co-facilitator), Mr. Robert (Taffy) Seaborne, and Ms. Rosemary Mattingly. For details, read 2014 Mago Pilgrimage. View the video on our visit to Ganghwa Islands by Robert (Taffy) Seaborne.] 2014 Mago Pilgrimage granted me ever unfolding revelations. The first of them that I would like to mention concerned the sweat lodge called Hanjeung-mak (汗蒸幕, Chamber of chill and steam).[1] Until we visited the traditional sweat lodge in Gyodong, Ganghwa Island, it did not occur to me that the origin of its modern variations[2] has to do with the rebirthing experience in the Womb of Mago. (Here Mago means the Great Goddess or the Primordial Mother.)
(Mago Stronghold Essay 1) The Forgotten Primordial Paradise by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Part I Multivalent Meaning of Mago Stronghold Mago Stronghold (麻姑城, Mago-seong) refers to the center of the world (axis mundi) in the Magoist Cosmogony. It is a metaphor for the Source/Origin/Womb of Life for terrestrial beings. Mago Stronghold represents the forgotten paradise of the Great Goddess in patriarchy. In patriarchal times, it has become a code to unlock the hidden S/HE Reality. As one’s life in the body and mind is the very proof for the first mother, “Mago,” from whom one comes, the existence of Mago Stronghold in toponym and meaning is the very token to prove vital for the primordial home of terrestrial beings, also called the Earth. The Mago Stronghold talk, upon being fully deciphered, merits the bird’s eye view of human history from the cosmogonic beginning of the Great Goddess to this day. Its message is, among others, we are NOT locked out from the blissful time of S/HE beginning. We are NOT disconnected from our ancestors and deities. And we are NOT substantively different from our non-human sojourns. All in WE are found in Mago Stronghold. I present my investigation of Mago Stronghold, rather than a new theory, as an alternative mode of perceiving reality. The Mago Stronghold talk answers the ultimate question of “who I am” as a person and why we are here in our life journey. It is meant to engender metamorphosis, the process of awakening and navigating in S/HE Reality, for both an individual and the collective. We realize that no one is bound to patriarchal reality except those who create it. WE are HERE/NOW. However, the full-fledged implication of Mago Stronghold can’t be unveiled without naming the systemic working of mental blocks and lifting the limit. Official (read patriarchal) historiography is not the place where we nest our conversation. Linear thinking can’t help us arrive at the Scene. Thinking within ethnocentric and nationalist grids is among the mental blocks. We are invited to explore a whole new/old/original way of seeing and knowing matters. You and I across cultures, nationalities, and geographies have a lot in common to talk and think about. Precisely, the Mago Stronghold talk bridges the gap among moderns. Its implication is NOT confined to Korea or East Asia. One may wonder how it is so? The concept of Mago Stronghold, remembered by East Asian Magoists, concerns the common origin of all beings on Earth. Discourse on the Great Goddess/Primordial Mother/Creatrix can’t be parochial by nature. It maps out the gynocentric consciousness of WE, which redefines national/cultural identities as consanguineous. The Mago Stronghold talk works at multi-dimensions crisscrossing and connecting the personal and the collective, the local and the universal, and the physical and the symbolic. Mago Stronghold found across Korea and China is no ordinary cultural or historical landmark. It is also equated with Mago Mountain or Triad Mountain. The extant toponym of Mago Stronghold is a door to the Other Realm of the Great Goddess. Precisely, it signifies the Primordial/Perennial Home for not only the Mago Clan (Mago and HER divine and human descendants) but also all terrestrial beings, according to the Magoist Cosmogony. “Mago Stronghold” is an eponym for such socio-natural-architectural variations as castles, citadels, mountain villages, fortresses, stone walls, earthen walls, and ultimately the Earth. It is etiological, explaining the gynocentric origin of the axis mundi and the sacred mountain reverence known in many ancient worlds. Macrocosmically, Mago Stronghold refers to the Earth, the Splendid Land of the Primordial Mother. Residing in the Big Dipper (Seven Stars),[1] Mago governs the solar system and chooses the Earth as HER Garden.[2] S/HE delegates HER divine and human offspring to cultivate sonic resonance in harmony with cosmic music. In that sense, Earth IS HER Civilization. Its literal meaning, the Stronghold of the Great Goddess, conveys that all Earth’s civilizations are born of the Great Goddess. The Mago Civilization of Earth is aligned with the Law of Nature established by the marvelous working of the Great Goddess. Nature reflects HER Majestic Work. When the Creatrix (Cosmogonic Matrix) is made unthinkable, if not erased, in the course of patriarchal mytho-history, Mago Stronghold stands as an enigmatic cultural icon. It comes to us as a code to decipher. Much is to be unveiled for HER Paradise to be reinstated in the collective mind of humanity. Euphemisms that are severed from the Magoist implication in the course of history are linked back to the original Magoist words. The Mago Stronghold Code enchants us to the holistic view of the Great Goddess, the WE consciousness in S/HE, that is tabooed in patriarchy. Reminding people of the common origin from the Primordial Mother, Mago Stronghold opens a new horizon of the gynocentric reality, WE/HERE/NOW. We have been part of the Grand Plan of the Great Goddess. When it comes to the female, official historiography, which is after all a product of the patriarchal dominant group, offers little to, if not obstructs, the researcher. The history it calls is nothing other than a self-aggrandizing distorted view of the past events, or rather an imposed false view of the past by patriarchal colonizers. Patriarchal history should be called pseudo-history. It concerns not truth but domination and self-expansion. The history of self-sharers/altruists/Magoists never dies for it is about re-membering of all in WE. What happened is never left unanimated, according to the Law of Nature. It can’t be erased, for truth is the language of Life. As such, the collective memory that ancient (read pre-patriarchal) Magoists were the bearers of the Magoist royal lineage has survived official East Asian (read Sinocentric) historiography. It is imbued in such socio-cultural data as lore, literature, art, and place-names, as well as the so-called apocryphal texts. My task here is to decode the meaning of Mago Stronghold, unearthing non-official data and reading them between the lines of written records. (To be continued) See Meet Mago Contributor Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D. [1] The Big Dipper (Seven Stars) is favored by Koreans. Triad Deity (Samsin), another name for Mago, is …