September 11, 2019November 8, 2019 hearthrisingLeave a comment

(Essay) The Brewer was a Lady by Hearth Moon Rising

Like the swelling of the Tigris and Euphrates,You pour the filtered beer.Like the onrush of the sacred rivers, Ninkasi,You pour the filtered beer.~ Hymn to Ninkasi The grocery chain where Read More …

(Essay 2) A Journey with Hermes by Harita Meenee

How can a journey up a stream turn into a mystical experience? My visit to the Aegean island of Samos showed me how I could connect with archetypal figures from Greek mythology through the beauty of nature. We continued to walk by the stream, which seemed ever-changing. Here it flowed calmly, forming still ponds. There it rushed taking the shape of a miniature waterfall. The color of the water alternated between the brown of mud and the green of the leaves mirrored on its surface. White foam and small, bright reflections of sunlight offered a treat to our eyes and babbling sounds filled our ears.We were not the only ones who loved this body of water. Tall plane trees grew in abundance around the stream, their roots at times protruding from its surface. I smiled in gratitude at this sight which only seemed to intensify the mystery of the place. How often do we get the chance to see a tree’s powerful roots? They’re supposed to be hidden deep in the ground; chthonic in nature, they belong to the realm of the underworld. Like Hermes, trees partake all three planes: the sky, the Earth and her dark innards.I felt a sense of wonder swelling up. By revealing their roots, the plane trees reminded us that our roots are there, too, in the countryside, in such places of exquisite beauty. The Graces must be here, too, I thought, playfully dancing with the forest Nymphs, which Greek folk tradition turned into fairies.Our feet stepped on large white-gray boulders smoothed by the gentle, persistent power of the water. Yet soon we were to come across a different kind of rock. We found ourselves in deep shade and when I looked up, I realized we were in a canyon. Tall gray stone cliffs emerged on both sides of the stream—the same stone that formed the walls of the church. “Nature builds its own temples,” a voice said in my mind as I felt a slight shiver run down my spine. I observed the steep cliffs, rich in texture, feeling their aura of mystery.As we kept walking, I was mesmerized by the little creatures of the forest and their enchanting dances. We saw small fish, tiny black tadpoles, and strange insects swimming on the surface of the water. A butterfly with dark blue iridescent wings was standing motionless on a bare branch. “If there’s any sure mark of an otherworldly creature, that must be blue iridescent wings,” my inner child says playfully.The butterfly has always been a symbol of transformation, an emblem of the psyche. In fact, psyche meant both “butterfly” and “soul” in ancient Greek. The story of Psyche and Eros comes quickly to mind and a possible connection between Aphrodite and the butterfly. But wouldn’t Hermes, the guide of souls, also love this creature? Its ethereal nature captures perfectly the essence of the Graces and Nymphs that he had an affinity with. Psyche by the French painter Guillaume Seignac (1870-1924) Previously published in Witches and Pagans.(Meet Mago Contributor) Harita Meenee.
(Song) Woman Shine by Dale Allen

For too long you’ve been put down Make the world turn upside down To lift you up to holy ground. Don’t forget to grab your crown You are Goddess, a queen, a lover A daughter, a sister, a mother Sacred womb of all creation a Celebration Image and likeness of the Divine, Woman Shine Sunrise from night, bring your colors, bring your light Mother of us All, Sacred Feminine Inside all women and all men Image and Likeness of the Divine The world is turning The tide is changing Wash away suppression woman Open-up expression When woman is hurting, all humanity cries, buried inside Your healing heals us all, stand tall Lift us all Take your loving power Not power-over, pushing someone else down Grab you Crown Power to see that everyone thrives Every girl, every boy, everyone alive When we see you as holy We are whole Rising up from history Tell us now of herstory We all write this together We can make it better Image and likeness of the Divine, Woman Shine Sunrise from night, bring your colors, bring your light Music Video Link: “Woman Shine” by Dale Allen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfjcQHfw2AI https://www.magoism.net/2024/05/meet-mago-contributor-dale-allen
(Art) Don't Be Afraid to Lay An Egg by Elaine Drew

This painting of an Old European goddess, based on a figure found in Anatolia,
(Book Review) Nané Jordan and Chandra Alexandre eds., Pagan, Goddess, Mother (Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2021) Reviewed by Barbara Bickel

[Editor’s Note: This book review was first published in S/HE: An international Journal of Goddess Studies Vol 1 No 1, 2022.] Pagan, Goddess, Mother, opens with the “charge of the Goddess” by Doreen Valiente, as adapted by Starhawk. The charge or ‘call to deeply care’ for mothers and children captivatingly continues through the thirteen compelling chapters of this book. I read the full book in three sittings, and had difficulty putting the book down even as I drifted off to sleep during my second round of reading at the end of a long day. The stories of women committed to living life fully awake to the significance of Earth, Goddess and Mother are a balm for the wounded, yet awakening earthling, mother, child in all of us. The honouring and reverence of, for and with the Divine Mother and mothering acts of love is the catalytic thread bonding each chapter to the other. The co-editors, Jordan and Alexandre, as matricentric feminists, create a clear and encompassing matrix of thought for the many pathways travelled by the contributing authors. They generously include a chapter of their own stories of interconnecting yet distinct paths of coming to women’s spirituality, the Goddess, and mother-centred devotions. In a vulnerable heart held way, they open the reader to a matricentric life-focused and nesting worldview in high contrast to the death-focused nest destroying patricentric worldview that has been spiraling off center for centuries, wounding all; men, women and children, more-than-humans and our mother Earth in its path. The love of the mother, expressed in the vision of a contemporary Goddess spirituality, that “draw[s] from and legitimizes female-centred and material embodied social powers, with diverse expressions of the feminine being possible beyond gender norms” (Jordan & Alexandre, p. 20) pours out from the pages of this book. Section 1is entitled “Priestess, Witch, Artist, Midwife: Mother Stories”and opens with a call for the “Mamapriestess” in Molly Remer’s chapter as she brings the priestess, mother and Goddess to presence through poetry, autobiographic storytelling, and scholarly valuation of the divine mother and female body. Sarah Rosehill, in chapter two further deepens understandings of the passionate mama through her story of a difficult birth and single motherhood by sharing how the teachings of Anamanta and pagan spiritual practices helped her, as her title states, in “Finding my Footing as a Witch and a Mother.” An image of Mother Mary with her direct and attending gaze graces the cover of the book. This symbolic painting emerged from Asia Morgenthanler’s sacred art practice described in chapter three “Remothering and the Goddess,” where Morgenthanler through her making practice, explores the inner child and the inner mother. Through making she writes that we become aligned with all creation and can transform ourselves. Foremothers and minks slide with parallel ease into our imaginaries in the poetics of chapter four written by Elizabeth Cunningham entitled “Minks.”In this chapterwe witness the spontaneous presence of prayer in a sacred moment shared between mother and teenage daughter. Chapter five, the last in this first section, follows a life full of lessons learned by Alys Einion, a mother, priestess, and midwife in her chapter entitled “‘Call Unto They Soul’: Reflexive Authoethnography of a Pagan, Priestess,Goddess-Worshipper, and Mother.” Responding to the call of the Goddess she reflects upon a lifetime of trust in the Goddess in the midst of uncertainty in “birth, death, life, nurturing, abandonment, destruction, construction and communion” (87). Section II is entitled “Scholarship from Pagan Goddess Motherlines” and traverses challenging and conflicting aspects in Pagan practices, pre-Christian Goddess cultures and Christian influenced occult teachings. Christina Hoff Kraemer’s chapter six, entitled “Pagan Mothering, Body Sovereignty, and Consent Culture” launches this section with teachable and valuable approaches for understanding how children can be raised to know the manifestation of the divine life force in their bodies. The understanding that the divine manifests in bodies is honoured and supported through nurturing healthy body boundaries, encouraging sovereignty and empathetic beingness with all others. Chapter seven questions cultural and religious confines in India that continue to limit women’s sovereignty in Kusmita Muhkerjee Debnath’s critical and vulnerable dive into historical and present practices of the Hindu religion and culture. In her search for female agency in stories of goddesses she has grown up with, she instead finds the perpetuation of a god centered subserviency and thus rejects her cultural and religious teachings regarding the prescribed role of women. Critical reflections continue in chapter seven, Georgia van Raalte’s chapter eight, entitled “The Path of the Cold Hearth-Stone: Reflections on Sex, Saturn, and Solitary Working.” This chapter offers a critical scholarly overview of early occultist Dion Fortune’s teachings, which have and continue to have a significant impact on contemporary goddess, pagan and occult practices and communities. Of significance for this book is Fortune’s recognition of motherhood as a spiritual path alongside her consequent separation of motherhood from priestesshood. Van Raalte rejects Fortune’s elimination of an occult liberational “left-hand path of exuberant endurance” (130) for those without privilege and means to enter dedicated priestess practice. Van Raalte then offers a third “Path of the Cold-Hearth-Stone, which is the path of struggle and submission as a negative ecstatic liberation theology of motherhood” (132) as an essential addition to Fortunes’ two paths for women, that of the Adept and the Path of the Hearth-Fire. Section III is entitled Empowering Spirited Mother-Daughter Lineages. Chapter nine opens this section with Laura Zegel’s powerful and practical focus on mothering daughter’s groups and is entitled “The Spiritual Dimension of Mother-Daughter Groups: Healing with Artemis, Demeter, and Persephone.” Studies of mother-daughter groups and her personal experience in a long-term mother-daughter group inspires mother-ways to support the spiritual, emotional and relational growth of young and mothering women living in a patriarchal culture that has altered, for its own means, the goddess-centred understandings of Artemis, Demeter and Persephone. Chapter ten then, aptly and poetically walks us directly to a garden-planting-nurturing moment of a present day Persephone and Demeter in the rhythmic prayer-filled words of poet-mother Jennifer …
(Announcement) Mago Wickedary of Goddess Feminist Activism, 4 Year Projects

Dear RTM Contributors and Readers, Upon our 5th anniversary on August 15, 2015, Mago Books is pleased to announce a practice of Maternal/Gynocentric Gift Economy in the form of Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary of Goddess Feminist Activism. Mago Books seeks encyclopedic articles on (1) persons/organizations, (2) feminist/gynocentric notions, (3) animals/plants/nature. These articles will be first published in Gynapedia, Online Gynocentric Encyclopedia. We aim at publishing them as three books in the form of E-Books and/or Print Books within the coming 4 years by Sept. Equinox of 2021. On a perennial basis, one can become Author for Gynapedia and create pages. Please find the proposal form below and submit it accordingly. What is the Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary Project about? It is one of the things that we CAN do in the face of ever-accelerating patriarchal assaults. We trust that the speed of our minds/hearts/souls runs faster than that of the former. The project is conceived as an extension and continuation of the Mago Gift Work aligned with Maternal/Gynocentric Gift Economy. Ultimately, we do this to give ourselves, communities, and the terrestrial eco-community what we are universally given by our mothers, ancestors, and the Cosmic Mother. Advocating the Gift Economy, Genevieve Vaughan writes, “We are born into a Gift Economy practiced by those who mother us, enabling us to survive. The economy of exchange, quid pro quo, separates us from each other and makes us adversarial, while gift giving and receiving creates mutuality and trust.” The project of Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary of Goddess feminist activism aims at channeling the Sisterly dynamic (Inter-cosmic Sisterhood) in which one’s self-motivated giving/sharing for the cause of ALL in WE empowers both the receiver and the giver, the Original Dynamic of the Creatrix. Simply put, we aspire to host the Metamorphic Nature of the Gift Economy; our giving/sharing of gifts/talents/resources transforms us all and saves the inter-specieal terrestrial community (Yes, we humans are responsible for the survival of animals, plants and nature as well). Outcome of such dynamic is Sisterly trust and bond that animate all in WE. In this mechanism, we experience the divine providence of our giving and receiving, which guides us into an ever-deepening commitment to look after the Whole. The term, Wickedary, is borrowed from Mary Daly’s Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language in Cahoots with Jane Caputi. As the title suggests, Mago Wickedary is propelled by the vision of Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, advocate of Magoism who was immensely influenced by Mary Daly. Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary of Goddess Feminist Activism is perceived as the third type of the collective writing project that the Mago Work has undertaken after She Rises series and Celebrating the Goddess series. Project Categories (not in priority order): (1) Persons and organizations (writers, researchers, advocates, poets, artists, musicians, and others) (2) Feminist/gynocentric notions (3) Animals, plants and nature Publishing Media: Gynapedia (Free Online Gynocentric Encyclopedia), E-books, and/or Print Books Deadline: Ongoing till Jan. 31, 2021. Primary Deadline Jan. 31, 2018. The Persons and Organizations Category: This book will build on the bio data of Mago Work collective writing projects’ contributors including She Rises Volume 1 and She Rises Volume 2, Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess Volume 1, Return to Mago E-Magazine, Mago Pool Circle and Gynapedia but does NOT exclude other Goddess feminist activist writers, artists, poets, researchers, advocates, musicians, educators, and others. Proposal Form for all three categories: 1. Your name, country/state/city of residence 2. Contact email, and/or website(s) 3. Categories of your articles (one may write for multiple categories): (1) Persons and organizations (writers, researchers, advocates, poets, artists, musicians, and others) (2) Feminist/gynocentric notions (3) Animals, plants and nature 4. List of your accomplishments (briefly describe them in the spirit of Gift Economy, if appropriate) 5. Please indicate if you can create page(s) in Gynapedia directly. If so, list your online article(s) instead of below. If you do not wish to become a Gynapedia Author, please refer to below: Proposed entry word count: up to 2000 words (include URLs for interlinking) Font: Times New Roman (12 font size, 1 spaced) Style: Chicago Style, footnotes (if applicable) Illustrations: As attachment of jpg files (must be 300 dpi) Submission: Email submission only, to Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang magopoolcircle@gmail.com (State “Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary Proposal” in the subject line of your email. Proposal Form for Persons and organizations: Write the summary of your biography (no more than 100 words strictly) AND answer the proposal form below (all together 1000 words). Attach your self-photo image and/or a couple of other images in your email. Please use the following proposal form (you may answer them selectively). 1. Your name, country/state/city of residence 2. Contact email, and/or website(s) 3. Your area of specialty (research, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, prose, art, photography, advocacy, social movement) 4. List of your accomplishments (briefly describe them in the spirit of Gift Economy, if appropriate) 5. What makes you become a Goddessian, feminist, and/or activist? 6. How did you come to arrive at where/what you are as a Goddessian, feminist, and/or activist? 7. As a Goddessian, feminist, and/or activist, what do you aspire for yourself, the young, and/or the world? 8. Something that you want to give/share with the Goddess feminist activism community and/or the world. 9. Please indicate if you can create page(s) in Gynapedia directly. If so, list your online article(s) instead of below. If you do not wish to become a Gynapedia Author, please refer to below: Proposed entry word count: up to 2000 words (include URLs for interlinking) Font: Times New Roman (12 font size, 1 spaced) Style: Chicago Style, footnotes (if applicable) Illustrations: As attachment of jpg files (must be 300 dpi) Submission: Email submission only, to Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (magopoolcircle@gmail.com) (State “Gynapedia/Mago Wickedary Proposal” in the subject line of your email.) Mago Books is seeking volunteer Authors and Coeditors for these books as well as Gynapedia. Please contact Dr. Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). In gratitude of RTM Editorial Volunteers! Support The Mago Work/The Mago Pod!
(Book Announcement 2) Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D. & Mary Ann Beavis, Ph.D.

Forthcoming 2017 by Mago Books. Editors: Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Mary Ann Beavis Below from Introduction READING CELEBRATING SEASONS OF THE GODDESS Mary Ann Beavis As co-editor of this volume, my primary role has been editorial. As such, I have, as with She Rises II, chosen, along with my co-editor, to respect various English spelling and punctuation conventions (U.S., U.K., Canadian, etc.), rather that forcing uniformity. As one of the first readers of the entire volume, I have been impressed and educated by the many perspectives on Goddess
(Meet Mago Contributor) Sharon Smith

Sharon Smith is a poet and writer with a passion for helping women reconnect with their Authentic Selves and Voices and discover their Sovereignty as Sacred Beings in their own right. She loves and honors the Great Mother in all Her many forms, and has a deep connection to Nature. She has developed a teaching, “Crone to the Bone”, designed to bring back the honoring of the aging female. Sharon currently lives in the Piedmont region of North Carolina and follows an eclectic spiritual path that is a blending of Native American and Celtic Teachings, both in her ancestral line.
(Poem) Supernatural by Robin Scofield

Isis grows tomatoes in the sugar skull of the Beloved who hangs onto a vine that climbs the gravestone where he delivers the quick and the dead, chivalrous, blessing every session with the wick and the creed, bread and hunger both used to induce visions that applaud the Goddess of all that is and was, and he, missing his one member the fish ate, not out of hate but instinct that ruins all the soldiers who need closure after they come back from war. Tell them every lesion ends in its season.
(Commemorating Mary Daly 6) My Memoirs of Mary Daly (1928-2010) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: My personal encounter with Mary Daly, a U.S. post-Christian feminist thinker, goes back to 1994, if not earlier. I stayed in Korea from 1994-1997 during which I translated two of Mary Daly’s early books, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation 하나님 아버지를 넘어서 (Seoul: Ewha Women’s University Press, 1996) and Church and the Second Sex 교회와 제 2의 성 (Seoul: Women’s News Press, 1997) in Korean. I carried with me to the U.S.A. our correspondences in the form of letters and documents mostly faxed to each other for the period of more than two decades. Later at one point I digitized them in images. Through these memoir series, I share some highlights of my memories with Mary Daly, her influence on my feminist thinking, and my own radical feminist journey to Magoist Cetaceanism.] My translation of Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father was completed and published early in 1996. Because my plan to enroll in the graduate program in the U.S. was delayed to the following year, I had one more year to stay in Korea. No sooner had I submitted my final manuscript of BGTF than I began to translate another book of Mary Daly, The Church and the Second Sex. I had asked Mary about it and gotten her approval. I made full use of my time. My intention was to support Beyond God the Father by translating the older sister book whose readership was aimed for Christians. And The Church and the Second Sex was published by Women’s Newspaper Press (Seoul, Korea) in 1997 (see Part 2). In retrospect, my translation of Daly’s books was the manifesto of myself as a radical feminist, a statement of the ecstacy of being alive as a Korean Woman. It was a high and formative time for the course of my life to evolve from. I was in my early thirties. The vision or call that I had been compelled to in my late teens and the twenties, which led me to join Maryknoll Sisters, a U.S.-based Catholic missionary organization, was real. It was not a misguided dream. That was the best option for me at that time and I meant to detour. The same vision was guiding me to a new horizon. I was fed up with the illusory nature of patriarchal identities, which was a necessary and important lesson that I had to learn. The thought of leaving behind patriarchal religions as well as Christianity freed me. I was undamaged at the core. Contrarily, my core shook off the old skin. I escaped patriarchy literally and figuratively! I was not drawn to my old connections; I was uninterested in making myself available to established figures and fields. I was a butterfly who dreamt of being a person or a person who dreamt of being a butterfly, the mystical musing of Zhuangzi. Reality was my dreamy vision. When one’s vision swallows the person, it brings out liberation. I had not been deceived or betrayed by my own dream. I was just in the wrong place, striving in vain to make it work for myself and the world. Now I was ready to embark on a new journey to Life by relying on my life’s lead. Daly’s radical feminist thought was the torch that I reached out to. She was the fire burning bright, with which I was able to take my first steps onto my original path to the Other World, the unknown and the potential. At that time and until 2000, I was not revealed to the matriversal consciousness of Magoism. I was under the spotlight and could not see far down the road. The road was curving drastically. I was saying good-byes to my old identity, the female trapped in the patriarchal machine factory. I was determined to find out who and what I was. It was a qualitative leap of a Radical Feminist, to borrow Mary Daly’s words. She was there to welcome me. Her recommendation letter that I share below shows that Mary knew what my translation of her books meant to me. Meanwhile I was seeking another graduate school to apply for admission. Now Mary knew that I was in need of finding a graduate school to apply to. I needed her help. And she helped me. Her help was not the band aid-like assistance. She was a woman propelled by her own destiny. No unreal gestures were involved. She wanted me to enter the right program in the right school. At the end, I was admitted to the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Claremont Graduate University. Mary began recommending a few women academics that she knew in person for me to contact. I did not miss any of these suggestions to follow up but received no definite responses from them. During this time, Mary also recommended me the book, Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed, published by Spinifex. I purchased the book from Australia and kept it as one of my few belongings to bring with me to the U.S. the following year. That book helped me clear my way out throughout the forthcoming graduate years during which postmodern and post-structuralist trends swept the academic ground. Mary had mailed to me the booklet that listed all graduate programs offering women’s studies or feminist theology in the U.S. By 1996, there were a lot of universities, which offered courses on women’s studies and feminist theology. I ended up with two graduate programs to apply to: The first was the Theological Studies Program at Harvard Divinity School and the second was Women’s Studies in Religion at Claremont Graduate University. As I applied to those two schools, I needed 2 or 3 recommendations as part of the required documents. I got one letter from Sr. Patricia Conroy, Maryknoll Sister, who was supportive of me throughout the years even after I left the order. She did not hesitate to write a letter for which I was ever grateful. Mary Daly wrote her recommendation letter to both schools. Below is her letter to the former, dated on January 24, 1997: Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3506 Department of …

(Special Post 7) 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.] Kaalii Cargill: Life emerges from the Feminine: Woman, Nature, Goddess. When we value the life-giving power of the Feminine we are less likely to kill other human beings who have been held in a mother’s arms.
(Special post) Interweaving Mago Threads by Mago Circle Members

“Mago” tradition Magoism is a new word to the modern Western vocabulary, yet it has its linguistic roots in many parts of the globe and in an ancient knowledge and know-how almost lost. Dr Helen Hwang determinedly and methodically is excavating the little-understood historical Mother-Goddess knowledge of Korea, and its traditions, the Mago, and Magoism, and in doing so is unlocking another previously invisible door, and replacing another ripped-off corner of the global map of significant, almost-lost tradition and forgotten knowledge. This is a most welcomed prospect. The newness of this discovery for those who learn of it fills them with excitement because every step to remember the ancient ways, particularly the lost Goddess ways, and those ways that hint of Source, are crucial to humanity remembering itself. Moderns have become accustomed to modes of mind that strip the soul and psyche of finer attunement to earth, sea, stars and each other. This renders most adrift on a sea of seeming limitless freedoms, to be picked up by any technological hook that would substitute for inner knowing. The map becomes the new computer wiring, insurance policy or bank regulation to follow. But once we scrape from our psyches the encrustation of mind most moderns have settled with (which calcifies the innate senses and finer antennae of knowing, emboldening technologically driven modes of mind and being to take their place), then we are on our way to a vivifying recollection. Here is an earlier presentation of the “mago” root word in “imago” or image. Not coincidentally, perhaps, it is connected to maps. (Mary Ann Ghaffurian, culled from Through a Darkened Door—Light, Part 2 by Mary Ann Ghaffurian PhD [http://magoism.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/through-a-darkened-door-light-part-2-by-mary-ann-ghaffurian-phd/]) A very special online, global group Dearest X, …Which brings to mind the “other” reason why I wanted to write to you … Other than just saying “hello” and letting you know that you are very much missed, I also wanted to share with you about a very special online, global group that I have had the honor of being a part of. This group is called Mago Circle and it was founded by my dear friend, “sister” and colleague, Helen Hwang. Helen’s work and commitment to restoring Mago, Ancestral Mother Goddess, to her rightful place as progenitor and creatrix of the Korean people, has not only been admirable but truly critical during a time when we are in real need for inspiration from thought leaders and scholars with a solid foundation in the arts and research of the sacred feminine. As you know, with the roots of Korean shamanism in the realm of women, it makes perfect sense that Korean spirituality must also have sprung within the womb of Woman … the great cosmic goddess, Mago. While Helen’s work is very much grounded in meticulous research — showcasing Korea to the rest of the world in all of Her depth, herstory, and vibrance — it is more importantly, founded in genuine intentions of love, transparency, and humility. I know that Helen can explain the depth, breadth, and height of her work much better than me so I think it will be better to have her directly share more of herself with you; what I simply hope to do through this letter is perhaps help serve as a familiar hand …. reaching out to you and letting you know that your presence and blessings as a well-regarded and much-admired Korean female shaman and scholar would be much appreciated in Mago Circle. Do you remember, X, … you once told me … about 20 years ago: “Sanity is insanity with a focus.” These words I still remember and hold true … they have helped me through times that were truly dismal and chaotic in my life, and with this reassuring and transformational way of looking at myself, looking at my life, looking at the world, I have made it through. My life continues to have its share of insanity, but I know that with focus, all sanity is restored. I know that my letter to you today may feel unexpected and random (especially after not having seen each other for so, so long), but as you know, somehow, life brings us through twists and turns that may seem awkward and strange at first, but upon retrospect, all makes complete sense. In closing, may I have the honor and pleasure of introducing Helen Hwang and the Mago Circle to you … I realize that you must be very busy, but it is my sincere hope that you will find a little time to acquaint yourself with Helen and this wonderful group of women (and men) who are very much dedicated to restoring the balance and peace of Korea and the world via Mago and her goddess sisters of many names… (Wennifer Lin, culled from her letter to her old friend) I share your call for staying connected with each other at a time of cultural and religious tensions. I too believe that all tensions arise from a patriarchal system of hegemony or domination. In the absence of patriarchal hegemony, there would be little or no tension among human beings. The belief in the Mother Goddess would remove the necessity for aggression and hence domination of other human beings or animals. In the eyes of the Mother, every living being is her creature. Hence love, kindness, nurturing and all that is beautiful would prevail everywhere. Am I sounding too idealistic or am I pining for a utopian society that is just not possible? But in theory, it is possible to return to the spirit of Mother, manifest in everything in nature and in our thoughts and actions. With admiration and preservation of Mother we can change the world for a better place. So with this in mind, I submit to all women (who are the living image of the Great Mother Goddess) and goddess lovers in the world to unite in our efforts to bring back the ideals of the Great Goddess. As an academic, I […]
(Special Post Isis 1) Why the Color of Isis Matters by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s note: The discussion took place in Mago Circle during the month of July, 2013. Our heartfelt thanks go to the members who participated in this discussion with openness and courage.] Part 1 Is Isis White (European) or Black (African)? Harita Meenee What could Isis have to do with the political situation in Egypt? Read on to find out! Isis, Egypt and the Revolution For the past few years Egypt has felt like a second home to me. Some cherished friends and co-workers live there, to whom my thoughts often travel. Also, Isis, the Egyptian great goddess once worshiped all over the Mediterranean, has been an ever-present source of inspiration… By: Harita Meenee, Author https://www.facebook.com/notes/harita-meenee-author/isis-egypt-and-the-revolution/457348724361326 Rick Williams Isis and that picture for me is kind of offensive in 2013. KMT [Kemet, Egypt] and AUSET [Isis] “worship” is an oxymoron. Kahena Dorothea Can you explain, Rick Williams, how it is an oxymoron? I am curious. Rick Williams First, Auset as a deity was not a singularly honored symbolic personage. KMT taught principles of BALANCE and UNIVERSAL COSMOLOGICAL TRUTH. There are NO images from the dawn of that age depicting her as EUROPEAN. [Threads curtailed] Helen Hwang I would strongly suggest that Rick and others who see Rick’s point educate us in Mago Circle. I know this is very difficult but we are here to learn and express differences from each other. We are all centers and please share your perspective and knowledge so that others can learn. I am doing that with patience and tolerance as well. Thank you all! Rick Williams I try to be as honest and respectful when I can, Helen. I only personalize things when ONE person says something. Yet there are those who know that the people of that land now weren’t the same people who honored the deities of mythology and that image isn’t of Auset. When will folks stop promoting fictitious images and uneducated observations? I could have beat around the bush and politely asked about the statue, why that one isn’t truly the same of Auset’s time? Helen Hwang Okay, conflicts and contradictions are everywhere. Nonetheless, we can’t be beat by those. We are exploring ways to be empowered by addressing our differences in Mago Circle. We trust that we have good intentions and yet we are not perfect. I do Mago Circle and Return to Mago because I believe there is a way for us to meet and talk with our differences, I can’t let that hope go! Thank us for talking to each other. Naa Ayele Kumari I can see both points. Egypt has a long and ancient history… One filled with invaders.. wars.. people who stole the magic and manipulated it for their own purposes… Those invaders changed images to make them in their own reflections all the while slowly destroying the indigenous images of power and strength as well as the sacred tradition they were built on.. As a woman of African descent, it is sometimes difficult to see the Hellenistic images of our mother.. because her original images were a woman of color. Racism… whether we chose to admit it or not has played an immense part in our oppression as a people and that includes the struggle for Egypt today. It is especially a sensitive issue because those images play a role in how people see and view black women… even today. The dark goddess is stereotyped as being a part of our shadow while the white goddess is caste as being all that is good in the world. What black women struggle to tell the world is that those projections are simply racist projections… and so we reject them. Still, I recognize that people like to experience the divine in their own image and that our Mother has been taken around the world… and by extension absorbed many names and faces because after all, she is mother not to just Africans… but to the World. Right now, we have dominant tradition of Islam… that at its roots has a feminine basis… (Islam came from the word Isis) all the while oppressing women by its dogma. The indigenous people of Egypt, the Badarians and Nubians… are oppressed by Arab invaders who have taken control, projected their own religions all the while wanting to destroy the remainder of the images of the ancients. Injustice recognizes injustice… and all the ways that it shows up. At the root of Egypt…is Isis… called also Esi and Auset by the indigenous people. She has been oppressed by many layers of invaders… Her daughter’s voices have been muted… Timeless icon that she is, as the tides are turning, so are the heavy oppressions being lifted. Women are finding and re-remembering their power… and as they do… Mama Esi.. is taking back her throne. Naa Ayele Kumari This is the Isis on the walls and temples of Egypt. Harita Meenee Seeing the people of Egypt as all white or all Black means stereotyping them. In fact the inhabitants of Egypt are of different colors: some are white, others are Black and many others are something in-between. The same was true in antiquity and it’s reflected in Egyptian art. Rick Williams Harita, really? What does that have to do with your choice of misrepresentation of that image? Please enlighten me, thank you. Harita Meenee Τhere is no misrepresentation, dear Rick Williams. If you read my note carefully, you’ll see that it talks about Isis as a goddess who was worshiped all over the Mediterranean–I’m not referring to just her Egyptian manifestation. The statue depicted is in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece. I took this picture and processed it slightly so that it looks more like a painting than a sculpture. No change was made to the actual form or color of the statue. I’m attaching a photo of the museum label of this work of art. It may not be clearly visible, but it reads: Marble statue of the goddess Isis-Tyche-Pelagia. 1st-2nd century AD. The composite name means that, as was often the case in […]

(Mago Almanac Excerpt 7) Introducing the Magoist Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A) at Mago Bookstore. YEARLY LEAP DAY AND EVERY FOURTH YEAR LEAP DAY Each Sa includes a Dan of the big Sa. A Dan is equal to one day. That adds to 365 days. At the half point of 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. Each year has a leap day (Dan), which makes a total of 365 days. Every fourth year is a leap year that has a leap day (Pan), which makes a total of 366 days. The Dan day comes before the New Year in the winter solstice month. And the Pan day comes before the first day of the summer solstice month in the fourth year. The above, however, does not indicate when the New Year comes. Logographic characters of Dan and Pan each suggest their meanings. While each year includes the Dan day (the morning), every fourth year has the Pan day. A unit of four years makes the Big Calendar. Dan (旦 Morning) Leap day for every first three years Pan (昄 Big) Leap day for every fourth year I have postulated that the year begins on the Dan day (one leap day), a day before New Year that comes in the month of Winter Solstice in the Norther Hemisphere. And the Pan day comes on the day before the first day of the 7th month that has Summer Solstice in the fourth year in the Norther Hemisphere. Years Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Months Dan Dan Dan Dan 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 Pan 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 11 11 11 11 12 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 Days 365 365 365 366 The Magoist Calendar’s intercalation involves one leap day every year and one leap day every four years. That is, each year has one extra day to make it 365 days. Every fourth year has an extra day to make it 366 days. Four years has a total of 1461 days (365×3+366), which makes the mean of 365.25 days. Considering that the month is following the sidereal period rather than the synodic period, it is inferred that the year also follows the sidereal year rather than the solar year. In fact, Magoist Calendar’s one year is very close to today’s 365.25636 days of the sidereal year compared to 365.24217 days of the solar year or the tropical year. Given that, as seen below, the Budoji mentions the tiniest discrepancy of one leap day for 31,788,900 years, the discrepancy between 365.25 and 365.25636 (0.00636 day) can be explained that the year was actually 365.25 days at the time of Budo circa 2333 BCE, 4440 years ago. In other words, there is a discrepancy of 0.12375936 seconds between 2017 CE and 2333 BCE. Regarding Lawful Numbers 2, 5, 8, it is involved as follows: 365 days (3+6+5=14, 1+4=5) Lawful Numbers 2, 5, 8 refers the unit of 365 days (364 days with one intercalary day). Further dynamics are unknown. The sidereal year refers to the time taken by the Earth to orbit the sun once with respect to the distant stars. In contrast, the solar or tropical year means the time taken by the Earth to orbit the sun once with respect to the sun. The sidereal year, 365.25636 days, is about 20 minutes and 24 seconds longer than the mean tropical year (365.24217 days) and about 19 minutes and 57 seconds longer than the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days. The difference occurs primarily because the solar system spins on its own axis and around the Milky Way galactic center making the solar year’s observed position relative. Time is no independent concept apart from space and the agent. The very concept of time is preceded by the agent bound in a space. It is always contextualized. In Magoism, both calendar and time are born out of the cosmogonic universe, the universe that is in self-creation. Like calendar, time is to be discovered or measured. It is a numinous concept. The very concept of time testifies to the reality of the Creatrix. Time proves the orderly movement of the universe into which we are born. Calendar patterns time, whereas time undergirds calendar. How can we measure time? We are given the time of the Earth that comes from its rotation, revolution, and precession in sync with the moon and the sun (and its planets). One type of time is the solar time. The solar time is a calculation of time based on the position of the sun. Traditionally, the solar time is measured by the sundial. The solar time is, however, specific to the Earth only. It is valid only for the-same-observed-location. It is not made to be used for the time of another celestial body. For example, Mars’ solar time has to be measured independently based on its own rotation and revolution rates. The solar time is an isolated time. It is static and exclusive, not made for the time of other celestial bodies. By nature, it is unfit for connection and communication across celestial bodies. The second type is the sidereal time. The sidereal time is a time scale based on the rate of Earth’s rotations measured relative to the distant stars.[29] Because the observed position is in the far distant stars beyond the solar system, the sidereal time may as well be called an extrasolar stellar time. We can think of the observer’s position of an imaginary cosmic bird far out there, infinitely far beyond not only the solar system and …
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.
(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.
The Ceremonial Creative Cosmos 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. The Cosmos is a ceremony, a ritual. Dawn and dusk, seasons, supernovas – it is an ongoing Event of coming into being and passing away. The Cosmos is always in flux, and we exist as participants in this great ritual event, this “cosmic ceremony of seasonal and diurnal rhythms” which frame “epochal dramas of becoming,” as Charlene Spretnak describes it.[i] Swimme and Berry describe the universe as a dramatic reality, a Great Conversation of announcement and response.[ii]Ritual/ceremony[iii] may be the human conscious response to the announcements of the Universe – an act of conscious participation. Ceremony then may be understood as a microcosmos[iv] – a human-sized replication of the Drama, the Dynamic we find ourselves in. Swimme and Berry describe ritual as an ancient response humans have to the awesome experience of witnessing the coming to be and the passing away of things; they say that a “ritual mode of expression” is from its beginning “the manner in which humans respond to the universe, just as birds respond by flying or as fish respond by swimming.”[v] It is the way in which we as humans, as a species, may respond to this awesome experience of being and becoming, how we may hold the beauty and the terror. Humans have exhibited this tendency to ritualize since the earliest times of our unfolding: evidence so far reveals burial sites dating back one hundred thousand years, as mentioned in the previous chapter. We often went to huge effort in these matters, that is almost incomprehensible to the modern industrialised econocentric mind: the precise placing of huge stones in circles such as found at Stonehenge and the creation of complex sites such as Silbury Hill may be expressions of some priority, indicating that econocentric thinking – such as tool making, finding shelter and food, was not enough or not separate from the participation in Cosmic events. Ritual seems to have expressed, and still does actively express for some peoples, something essential to the human – a way of being integral with our Cosmic Place, which was not perceived as separate from material sustenance, the Source of existence: thus it was a way perhaps of sensing “meaning” as it might be termed these days – or “relationship.” Swimme and Berry note that the order of the Universe has been experienced especially in the seasonal sequence of dissolution and renewal; this most basic pattern has been an ultimate referent for existence.[vi] The seasonal pattern contains within it the most basic dynamics of the Cosmos – desire, fullfilment, loss, transformation, creation, growth, and more. The annual ceremonial celebration of the seasonal wheel – the Earth-Sun sacred site within which we tour – can be a pathway to the Centre of these dynamics, a way of making sense of the pattern, a way of sensing it. One enters the Universe’s story. The Seasonal Moments when marked and celebrated in the art form of ceremony may be sens-ible ‘gateways’ through the flesh of the world[vii] to the Centre – which is omnipresent Creativity. Humans do ritual everyday – we really can’t help ourselves. It is simply a question of what rituals we do, what story we are telling ourselves, what we are “spelling”[viii] ourselves with – individually and collectively. 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”[ix] 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.[x] Ceremony then is a form of social action. NOTES: [i] Spretnak, States of Grace, 145. [ii] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 153. [iii] I will use either or both of these terms at different times: I generally prefer “ceremony” as Kathy Jones defines it in Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess, 319. She says that ritual involves a repeated set of actions which may contain spiritual or “mundane” elements (such as a daily ritual of brushing one’s teeth), “whereas ceremony is always a spiritual practice and may or may not include ritual elements.” The PaGaian seasonal celebrations/events are thus most kin to “ceremony,” although I do not perceive any action as “mundane.” However, “ritual” is more commonly used to speak of how humans have conversed with cosmos/Earth. [iv] Spretnak, States of Grace, 145. [v] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 152-153. [vi] Ibid. [vii] Abram speaks of “matter as flesh” in The Spell of the Sensuous, 66, citing Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Invisible and the Invisible (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1968). [viii] Starhawk used this term on her email list in 2004 to describe the story-telling we might do to bring forth the changes we desire. [ix] A term used by Gloria Feman Orenstein in The Reflowering of the Goddess (New York: Pergamon Press, 1990), 147. [x] As my doctoral thesis supervisor Dr. Susan Murphy once described it to me in conversation REFERENCES: Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Jones, Kathy. Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess. Glastonbury: Ariadne Publications, 2006. Orenstein, Gloria Feman. The Reflowering of the Goddess. New York: Pergamon Press, 1990. Spretnak, Charlene. States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993. Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
(Essay) Winter Solstice/Yule within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

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

(Art) Mago by Lydia Ruyle

Mago of old Korea and East Asia, also known as Magu, Mako, Samsin Halmeoni (Triad Grandmother Goddess) and Cheonsin (Heavenly Deity), is the Great Goddess. Mago is the progenitor, creatrix, and ultimate sovereign. Early gynocentric cultures venerated Her in many forms. Her multivalent identities include an immortal, mendicant, crone, shaman, and/or nature-shaper of mountains, rocks, caves and seas. In art, Mago often carries a basket of lingzi mushrooms, medicinal herbs and flowers–all symbols of immortality. Source: Painting c. 1400 CE by Seokgyeong. Joseon Dynasty. Korea (Meet Mago Contributor) Lydia Ruyle.
(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 …
(Essay) Reviving and Celebrating the Nine-Goddess Symbolism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

In my ongoing research on the Great Goddess known as Mago, I have discovered the number nine gynocentric symbolism as the most prominent current that constitutes Magoism and named it the Nona (Number Nine) Mago religion/civilization/mythology. Like other civilizational inventions such as the calendar and musicology, numerology is an intellectual system of knowing the Way of Nature/Universe/Creatrix. And the number nine is no arbitrary number but is the numeric code of the Creatrix or the Primordial Mother. It codifies the cosmogonic beginning of the Primordial Mother, that is, the Primordial Mago Household. It refers to the primordial principle of the solar/terrestrial beginning.