March 14, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(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,

January 3, 2014October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) Sacred Joy by Elaine Drew

Wishing you all the joy of love and nurturance by the Divine Feminine in 2014. This image, a collage of hand-painted paper, shows the universal Divine Feminine astride the world, Read More …

November 29, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) Mother Earth by Elaine Drew

This painting depicts our mother, Earth, personified as the goddess Taera. The painted marble frame around Taera symbolizes our rock planet. The wallpaper shows examples of life on land (the Read More …

July 16, 2013December 3, 2021 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Elaine Drew

Elaine Drew has worked as a writer, designer and illustrator for longer than she cares to admit. She recently published Nun Too Clever, a mystery centred on the unexpected death Read More …

July 12, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) Taera Weeps for the 3 Warring Brothers by Elaine Drew

In this painting Taera represents the earth. She mourns for the followers of the world’s three major religions, children of the same father, who are embroiled in a conflict that Read More …

February 24, 2013October 2, 2019 Mago Work5 Comments

(Art) Painting the Goddess: Working with Symbols by Elaine Drew

In a previous post I showed my earliest attempts to depict the divine feminine. While I agree with Tolstoy that the most important thing about a work of art is Read More …

December 26, 2012October 2, 2019 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Art) Painting Taera, Goddess of the Earth By Elaine Drew

In the late 90s, when my husband began talking about creating his own mythology, he came up with its core concepts. This would be an earth-centered mythology, and its principal Read More …

November 1, 2012October 2, 2019 Mago Work2 Comments

(Art) ‘How to Express the Divine Feminine?’ by Elaine Drew

About 16 years ago I began working to master painting techniques that I hoped to use to express the divine feminine. The first step was to figure out which particular Read More …

(Prose) What the Red-Winged Blackbirds Say by Sara Wright

Yesterday it snowed. Great white flakes fluttered down like butterflies from the sky and stuck to every leaf and thorn – covering the red earth with a delicate lace shawl. A spring snow is a benediction. I opened the door and was serenaded by black robed women with wings, singing with wild abandon from the nearest cottonwood tree, as a coffee colored river rushed by… Nature is crafting her own harmony, Red Willow River is the chorus. Red-winged blackbirds soar, their high-pitched trills creating a symphony of sound. Flashing crimson wings whir like fans as they fly by. I feel hope pulsing through each cell of my body as I join the crowd. My mind falls silent as I breathe in deep peace… Oh Daughters of the Night, gift us with your blessing; for you teach us that only the present moment matters… that cycles of becoming are what is – and participation is always our choice. We must not ever forget that our strength comes with numbers – that each life matters. Life births life, as death sleeps soundly in the heat of the rising sun. 4/5/17 Working Notes Spring in the high desert is a wondrous event, and I have been blessed by living on Red Willow River close to those who carve relationship out of song. Spring in the high desert brings wildflowers – primrose and globe mallow – “forget-me-nots” dressed in delphinium blue – big gray green sage captures all but the most numb through intoxicating scent – and every day births a seed for becoming. The arrival of the red-winged blackbirds ushers in the season of love. I germinate Datura seeds… And plant twigs with roots. We circle big sage with prayer. Black birds remind us that Nature is both – fragile and tough. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright.
(Meet Mago Volunteer) Spider Redgold

Spider Redgold is a Caucasian lesbian woman of spirit, descended through her motherlines from Travellers and through her fatherlines she can trace her blood to the Viking invasions of Yorkshire around 1100CE and then to Long Meg tribe. Born on Choctaw land, returned to Yorkshire and then brought to Australia in her teens, her life experiences delivered her a global perspective on sacred ceremonial work. She has been given spirit teachings in Cherokee, Choctaw, Luo (Kenya) and 3 Aboriginal Nations. She created and wrote The Shemoon Cycle of Days – A global Witches Almanac; published from 1987 -1993 and now in the National Library of Australia. She had a regular talkback segment, The GoodWitch of Oz, on Radio JJJ in the early 1990’s, appeared on Steve Vizard’s ‘In Melbourne Tonight” and in 1993 debated exorcism with the Archbishop of Melbourne on ABC Radio National. She now spend her days busy about the tree of life making art and doing academic research in art and anthropology on images of goddesses, warrior women and monsters and assisting feminists to negotiate technology and the world wide web. See Spider Redgold Art here: http://spiderredgold.name/rg_art/
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.
(S/HE Article Excerpt) Holy Spirit Mother and Intersex Jesus: Turning Point Nicene Creed by Ally Kateusz

Available in S/HE V1 N1 [Editor’s Note: This article was previously published and is now available for a free download in S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies in Volume 1 Number 1. Do not cite this article in its present form. Citation must come from the published version in S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (https://sheijgs.space/).”] Holy Spirit as female and Mother In Hebrew, the Spirit of God was feminine gendered, just like women were feminine gendered, and this was not mere grammatical serendipity. A study of the Hebrew language in the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrates that in Hebrew, the grammatical gendering of “spirit”—ruah—and the gender of any associated adjective and verb, depended upon context. Thus, when “spirit”referred to the spirit of Belial, a demon, it was usually masculine gendered. When it meant, literally, “breath,” it was sometimes masculine and sometimes feminine. When it referred to the Spirit of God or to the Spirit of the people, however, itwas almost always feminine gendered.[1] The feminine gender of the Spirit of God may have been related to an understanding of the femaleness of the Spirit of God within Hebrew culture, perhaps an understanding related to the creation story, which describes elohim creating adam in the divine image, both male and female (Gen 1:27). The Hebrew word elohim itself suggests a male-female creator, because while el means god in Hebrew, the feminine oh makes eloh, which means goddess, and the im plural ending means two, as in a yoked pair of oxen. Thus the Spirit of God, seen hovering above the waters at the beginning of creation, may have been specifically feminine gendered in Hebrew because originally, she was remembered as eloh, the divine female, she of many names, the ancient Hebrew goddess of Israel and Judah about whom much has been written.[2] In any case, Holy Spirit as Mother, not just feminine gendered, but also female like a mother, is consistent with the Hebrew gendering of the Spirit of God. It is therefore not surprising that a Hebrew gospel used around Jerusalem provides some of the very oldest evidence of Holy Spirit described as Mother. The theologian Origen (c. 184–253), working in Caesarea, twice wrote that this Hebrew gospel had a saying in which Jesus spoke of “My Mother, the Holy Spirit.”[3] According to Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–135) this gospel, usually called the Gospel according to the Hebrews, had been written by Matthew in his native tongue.[4] Whether actually penned by Matthew or not, one of its sayings referenced Jesus’s baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and lighted upon Jesus emerging from the water.[5] This saying read, “The Savior says: ‘My Mother, the Holy Spirit, carried me away.’”[6] The early Christian image of Holy Spirit as Mother, however, is not found solely in semitic languages, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, or Syriac, where “Holy Spirit” was feminine gendered. It is also found in Greek, Latin, and Coptic around the Mediterranean. For example, Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 155–205), who was from Smyrna in Ancient Greece, wrote in Greek that some congregations of Jesus followers—not his church, but churches in competition with his—called their Mother “Holy Spirit,” as well as by other names, including Sophia and Jerusalem.[7] An early narrative that preserves the tradition of Holy Spirit as Mother in Greek was the Greek Acts of Thomas, which had been translated from Syriac. The Acts of Thomas was condemned to the fires in the so-called Gelasian Decree,[8] but despite being “corrected” by Archbishop Nicetas of Thessaloniki, who did “a complete orthodox rewriting,”[9] the literary tradition of Holy Spirit as Mother survived in a few medieval Greek manuscripts. According to its text, after baptizing people, Thomas twice uttered prayers in which he identified Holy Spirit as Mother, such as:[10] Come, compassionate Mother, Come, fellowship of the male; Com, thou (fem.) that dost reveal the hidden mysteries; Come Mother . . . Come, Holy Spirit, and purify their reins and their heart.[11] The Acts of Philip also was condemned in the Gelasian Decree, but a handful of medieval Greek manuscripts preserve some of its chapters, which describe Mariamne, herself twice called an “apostle,” evangelizing with the apostle Philip.[12] According to the martyrdom attached to the end of these Acts, when Mariamne preached, she paired Mother and Father: You are guilty of having forgotten your origins, your Father in heaven, and your spiritual Mother. If you wake up, however, you will receive illumination.[13] The femaleness of Holy Spirit was apparently so important to some pre-Constantinian Latin speaking Christians that they changed the normal masculine gender of “spirit” in Latin—spiritus—to the feminine gendered spirita.[14] Instead of the grammatically correct spiritus sanctus on their stone epitaphs, we find plaques carved with SPIRITA SANCTA from the Christian catacombs of Rome.[15] See two in Figure 1, although note that the fragment on the right is missing the beginning “S.” Fig. 1. Pre-Constantinian stone plaques inscribed with SPIRITA SANCTA.Vatican Museum, Rome.Photo: Marrucci, Monumenti (1910), plate 52, nos. 32 and 33. Some Coptic codices of the Nag Hammadi Library also preserve descriptions of Holy Spirit as mother. Key passages are Gospel of Thomas 101, Gospel of Philip 55.24-26, and Apocryphon of John 10.17-19. In addition, several passages in the Gospel of the Egyptians (III 41.7-9, 42.4, 56.24, 58.3-4, 59.13-14) describe a heavenly triad of Father, Mother, and Son/Child.[16] The thirteen Nag Hammadi codices witness how deeply some early Christians appear to have valued a divine feminine principle, because almost all contain one or more texts that speak of a Mother or other divine female by various names, such as Sophia.[17] The Nag Hammadi Coptic passage Gospel of Philip 55.24-26 is of particular interest because it may preserve a link that helps explain why some Jesus followers understood Jesus as intersex. They appear to have believed that Jesus had two mothers. While some Christians (including the scribe of the Gospel of Philip) disagreed that Holy Spirit was female, this passage nonetheless records that other Christians argued that she …
(Prose) Portals by Sara Wright

Lately, as I meander around the Bosque and down the paths to the river I am seeing portals everywhere I look. I walk under one made of golden cottonwood boughs, another graced by willows, a few created by rusty iron or wooden gates – all pathways to the beyond. Portals are gateways or doorways into other worlds, or a different way of seeing and it is not lost on me that perhaps I am “seeing” portals everywhere in Nature because according to the Celtic/Native American calendars we are approaching the end of the wheel of the year here in Northern New Mexico as well as elsewhere. Perhaps I need to discover a new way of seeing. I can set this intention for the coming year even as I pass through each gate…Climbing through this mountainous twelve month cycle of steep ascents/descents has exhausted my soul, body, and spirit. All Hallows, the Feast of the Dead, All Souls day mark the end of the yearly cycle for many including me. Then we will enter the space in between. Although Indigenous people’s calendars are more fluid, around here, for example, the Tewa speaking peoples will tell you that in November “they do nothing” as one man from Santa Clara Pueblo recently quipped to me. The Harvest is in. Frost is on the horizon. There are no tribal dances until the winter solstice. Around us our beloved Cottonwoods are slowly losing their golden canopies. The owls are silent. Migrating Sand hill cranes serenade us with their haunting collective cries. Only the tracks and scat of animals remind us that our wild companions are still out and about. Some Indigenous peoples from the north call this full moon “the leaves falling moon” or “the white frost on grass moon” names that seem particularly apt when describing what is happening. I could also name this moon “making tracks in the mud moon.” The period that we are about to enter in about a week is a space where the veil lifts… It is a time of rest and reflection, a time to dream the world (and ourselves) into another way of being, perhaps. A mystical time for those of us who are sensitized to All That Is. It is my favorite time of year. In Northern New Mexico it is also the ‘season of light’. The dance between the sun star and her mountain shadows is a source of ongoing amazement, exhilaration, and deep wonder, peaking at dawn and at eventide with each becoming a portal into the other. As scalloped hearts and bear paw leaves drift to the ground and branches (some curved like claws), stretch their fingers and limbs towards an ever deepening blue or shark gray sky, I watch juncos, sparrows, and nuthatches feasting on fluffy chamisa and golden aster seeds. Last night the almost full moon hid her face behind rose pearled clouds. I create a conscious intention beginning with this poignant and oh so beautiful, so poignant “leaves falling in drifts” moon to find a way to move through this next year with more grace and less chaos in my life acknowledging that I am not certain how to Earth myself in a more generous way except by developing a new way of seeing. Extremes of every sort have defined my days this year with me plunging into despair and grief over climate change and woman hatred. Eerily, my concern for the Earth has often been mirrored by personal crisis. The veil between Earth and self seems to have evaporated like the mist that rises over the river in delicate plumes reaching towards a now golden sun or ever deepening dusk. I can’t help wondering if this merging might be a natural response to aging and/or my heightened sensitivity, a result of being in such an intimate relationship with Nature? Perhaps as Earth Chaos intensifies I will continue to experience my own extremes even more deeply? If the latter is the case my hope and intention is to carry the awareness that this state is “natural” under the circumstances. To accept what is, might be I the greatest challenge I face. One portal to acceptance as I already mentioned might be to shift my awareness into a different way of seeing. I can create this intention without knowing exactly what I mean… As I pass under the portal of the end of this year entering “the space in between” my earnest hope is that I will not lose myself, even when I stand alone in a sea of humanity whose (personal and political) behavior mystifies me, or that I will not succumb to despair, or make an unnecessary descent into rage or sorrow. I remind myself that to stay with the truth of what is, as I experience it, is also heroic (although I never feel this way) and that others who cannot be present to their lives in a meaningful way will try to dismiss my life as inauthentic (too emotional, too sensitive, too fill – in – the blank, blah, blah, blah,) because witnessing human horrors with great compassion is too threatening. Rape is still rape regardless of disbelief. Like the deer in my dreams who bed down in tall grasses before the open gate may I too surrender to what is, and to that which is unknown. Animal Peace is the gift offered when we are present to the moment. And like the worms living in my compost heap who create ‘black gold’ in the process of living out their lives, may I find a way to do the same… perhaps through sight – insight. A lot to ask for, I know. Still, as I pass under this next portal the help I need is near… All I need to do is to follow the tracks of the animals that are so dear. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright
(Essay 8) From Heaven to Hell, Virgin Mother to Witch: The Evolution of the Great Goddess of Egypt by Krista Rodin

[Author’s Note: This series based on a chapter in Goddesses in Culture, History and Myth seeks to demonstrate how many of the ideas behind the Ancient Egyptian goddesses and their images, though changing over time and culture, remain relevant today.] Beautiful Maiden to Dangerous Magician Isis is most often depicted as a beautiful young woman, hence the relation to Aphrodite. By the New Kingdom, however, she took on attributes of the joy-giving Hathor with her bovine horns as well as feline characteristics. Once the two merged, Isis also became associated with large and small feline goddesses. Bastet became a form of Isis. Witt remarks: In Graeco-Roman times the functions of the cat divinity were taken over by Isis. In the temple of Edfu the mythological list explains that the soul of Isis is present as Bastet and in a well-known Greek Hymn to Isis the introductory epiclesis are ‘goddess of Bubastis, bearer of the sistrum.’ On the sistra found in the Iseum at Pompeii the figure of the she-cat is frequent. As the lioness divinity Tefnut merged into Bastet, so Bastet herself in course of time was identified with Isis …33 Isis as Hathor is clearly seen in this passage as is her relationship to Bastet. The sistrum was Hathor’s instrument. It was always identified with her worship as the sistrum and rattle were part of her rituals and dances. The sistrum’s bangles jangle to produce repeatable sound patterns and, therefore, music. As Bastet was a form of Hathor, it was not uncommon to have the sistrum with Bastet’s face as well as the more popular cow visage. Plutarch mentions that he was familiar with what he calls the Isiac rattle, a sistrum, that had “a cat with a human face and below it, under the sound-producing part, on one side the face of Isis and on the other that of Nephthys, the former meaning birth or creation, the latter death or the end. We are also informed that the cat symbolizes the moon.”34 By the Graeco-Roman period, Isis the loving virgin mother, protector of people in this life and beyond, healer of the sick, and overseer of resurrection, was also the goddess of joy, dance, music, and the magic arts. This Apollonian/Dionysian combination made it easy for her to be identified with so many other non-Egyptian deities, which ultimately helped to popularize her presence throughout the Empire. For Plutarch, ‘wise and wisdom-loving’ Isis was a ‘philosophic’ divinity, sharing in the love of the Good and Beautiful and imbued with the purest principles. She taught her followers to pursue penitence, pardon and peace. Elsewhere she is characterized as being the inventress of all, as having divided earth from heaven, as making the universe spin round and as being triumphant over Fate, Fortune and the Stars. … On the whole human race she could be thought to bestow her love, being its never-absent redeemer and its haven of rest and safety, the Holy One –sancta et humani generis sospitatrix perpetua.35 Isis, Classical Period, Kunsthistorisches Museum,Vienna. Photo, K. Rodin Once the Christian Fathers ordered the destruction of all pagan temples, the deities associated with those temples were abandoned. In ancient times, a deity was thought to reside in the temple and sacrifices to the deity kept them involved in people’s lives. Without the temple, there would be little occasion for the appropriate rites, rituals and sacrifices to be made. This was what made the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem so particularly d devastating for the ancient Israelites36 and led to the concept of a deity who had no need of a particular site for worship as the god could be worshipped all over. Even the earlier Egyptian Aten, perhaps the first monotheistic god, was worshipped through the pharaoh, Akhenaten, and not directly. The Judean patriarchs, who along with their wives and children and others of the community, were forced to march to Babylon in 587 BCE after that nation’s conquest of Judah, needed to find a way to keep their community and their faith together while in exile in a pagan metropolis filled vibrant cultural exchanges and numerous temptations where the goddess Ishtar reigned. Like Isis, Ishtar was seen as both wise and wanton, depending on place and era. Ishtar was demonized by the ancient Hebrews, while, after the Christianization of the Roman Empire, Isis, was split into images of the Virgin Mother of God, who incorporates elements from a variety of mother goddesses from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and the magic-wielding witch. In North America and England, popular culture portrays witches as having a few common traits: they use magic, they fly though the air, they are associated with the moon and the dead, they have cats as familiars, use frogs in their spells, and they often have ravens or birds of prey. Isis is the goddess of magic, she is a lunar sky goddess while she is equally at home in the Underworld, she is Bastet, the cat, she is assisted by Heqet the frog goddess in the birthing chambers, and she is the falcon god Horus’ mother, while she also oversees a person’s ba, which is depicted as a ravenesque bird in the Underworld. Eye of Horus, Hathor figures, Isis-Ba and Maat in the center, wall in Kom Ombo. Photo, K. Rodin The ecstatic hedonistic part of Hathor/Isis became a witch. A Pyramid Text ‘Hymn to Hathor’ invokes her with: Come, oh Golden One, who eats of praise because the food of her desire is dancing, who shines on the festival at the time of lighting (lamps), who is content with the dancing at night. Come! The procession is in the place of inebriation, That hall of travelling through the marshes, Its performance is set, Its order is in effect, Without anything lacking in it.37 Hathor dances at night with a feast complete with inebriating drink, i.e., she is the ecstatic side of the goddess. A similar transformation from heavenly goddess to witch occurred to Hecate.38 While Hecate’s transformation took place prior to Christianity, Isis’ split seems to have occurred afterwards. Prior to the Inquisition, witches were often non-conformist women and men; they were not considered evil or associated with Satan until the Inquisition’s purges. From the 15th to the 18th century, anyone who spoke against the order of the day, i.e., the church, or religious order, or those who used non-conformist medicines to heal, or those who were simply different could be burned at the stake as witches. There are no exact figures on the number so tortured, but generally agreed upon estimates are that well over 40,000 people suffered death …
(Video) 2013 Mago Pilgrimage to Korea by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s note: The first Mago Pilgrimage to Korea took place June 6-19, 2013. We visited Ganghwa Island, Seoul, Wonju, Mt. Jiri, Yeong Island (Busan), and Jeju Island.] Read Mago Pilgrimage Essay 1 and Mago Pilgrimage Essay 2. See Meet Mago Contributor, Hae Kyoung Ahn for “Ma Gaia Womb” chant music and Meet Mago Contributor, Helen Hwang Ph.D.
(Call for Contributions) We'd love to hear from you!

Dear friends, From your many comments and the ongoing statistics, it is clear how much the Return to Mago blog means to you. To keep it flowing regularly, we love receiving submissions of relevant poetry, art, essays, films, music, or any other genre that we haven’t thought of. It can be something new, or it can be something you’ve already published, stand-alone, part of a series, an extract. Actually, you don’t need to have published previously. Why not start exploring your Mago-given talents by submitting a contribution? Check through your drawers for that poem or drawing you thought wasn’t good enough or you set aside for lack of further inspiration; clean up your computer to find that lurking file with the brilliant seed idea. Don’t be shy, we’ve posted most submissions we’ve received. We’d love to hear from you! Here’s a guide to what we’re broadly looking for: http://magoism.net/people/call-for-contribution/
Visualising the Energy in Hathor’s Temple by Claire Dorey

Collage various triangular forms with Nut, Eye of Ra and Hathor in Hathor’s Temple by Claire Dorey Was Hathor in vibrational conversation with the universe, the script encoded into Her temple’s walls? “Each temple is ‘tuned’ to a unique musical scale based on it’s dimensions and proportions.” – Harpist Ani Williams and Antoine Seronde. Listen Ani Williams play the Abydos Temple Scale. Perhaps music AND images are ‘tuned’ into temple harmonics. When I wrote Understanding Tanit Through Felt Experience. I visualised Tanit’s triangular logo, a vulva symbol, as a metaphor for holding space and generating energy. Tanit leads me to Hathor’s Temple in the Dendera Complex in Upper Egypt – the triangle featuring in artwork there. As Goddess of percussion and music Hathor IS sound and rhythm – the sistrum was created in Her image. Her carved ‘cow face’ forms a three-sided space enclosed by her hair. Resonant objects, including the human aura, pick up sympathetic vibration. Can hieroglyphs and reliefs carved into temple walls respond to vibration? Is there life in the stone? “Everything in the universe has rhythm, everything dances.” – Maya Angelou. Votive offerings to Hathor include mirrors, mirroring being an artistic technique used in the composition of the temple friezes, perhaps reflecting the perfection of divine creation, or hinting at ‘mirror universes’ where time runs differently. Mirroring the right-angled Kepler triangle creates an isosceles triangle. Images of seated deities fit within the silhouette of the Kepler triangle, as does the graphic for ‘woman’. When the wings of Isis fan energy they form an isosceles triangle. Nut is decorated with trilateral waves representing the ‘flow’ of the Milky Way. The negative space beneath the ‘Dendera Lightbulbs’ (ovaries?) forms an obtuse triangle. Schenti; feet of the deceased; arms in veneration; the snout and ears of Anubis; the Ba Bird and bird hieroglyphs form triangles. The plucked string creates triangle waves. In friezes processions of legs repeat like triangle waves. Processions of barques repeat like sine waves. Serpents drawn as light waves could describe kundalini energy. A script emerges from this patterning possibly to be read like a music score. There is rhythm in the temple. The human form, united in common purpose, eyes forward not engaging with the viewer, indicates hive activity. We get so used to the geo-centric vision of man as anatomical perfection in Classical art that the symbolic how and why the human figure is drawn in other cultures is brushed aside as naive or incompetent by comparison. Collage Visual Rhythms, Mirroring, Triangles, Waves and Dendera Lightbulbs in Hathor’s Temple by Claire Dorey The ancient Egyptians were conversant with anatomy and capable of portraying anatomically ‘correct’ human form, as the Nefertiti Bust 1345 BCE shows us. They chose to draw the human figure in ways that were important to them – torso facing forward, legs and head in profile, arms bent in veneration – component parts forming triangles. Try to stand in this position. Can you feel an energy shift? Perhaps these poses were based on ancient Kemetic yoga – consider Nut in pyramid pose arching over Geb in lizard pose. Was the Divine drawn into the human form or is it simply stylised art? Streams of triangles represent the energy of the sun god Ra. Hathor is the Eye of Ra so perhaps the triangle embodies both Hathor and Ra energy. “Gender is in everything; everything has it’s Masculine and Feminine; Gender manifests on all planes. – Hermetic principle 7 – The Initiates, The Kybalion. Hathor energy synergised with male energy. Yet the entire lower half, bird beak faces and outstretched arms of predynastic Bird Goddess icons form triangles, pointing to its origins as a female power symbol, holding space, generating energy and perhaps a vehicle of ascension – migrating birds fly in triangular formation. As with most Feminine mythologies the triangle may have been subject to patriarchal reversal. Perhaps the upward pointing triangle was hailed as male energy to assert patriarchal power. Goddess of malachite, perfume, cosmetics, music, percussion, dance, joy, love, mining, fertility and drunkenness, Hathor is a girl’s girl and her temple cluster: the temple of Isis, the Hathor temple and the Mammisis (birth houses), where Cleopatra gave birth, could be a gateway to the Divine Psychedelic Feminine experience. Colour stirs emotion and has resonance. Crystals, including malachite, were ground into pigment for cosmetics and paint for temple walls. In crystal healing malachite regulates the menstrual cycle and lessens labor pain. Egyptian Blue was used for the ‘Eye of Hathor’, a luminescent astronomical scene on the ceiling of the Hypostyle Hall. It’s a copper based pigment pulsing with infrared light which helps cells regenerate and repair. Perhaps the temple was a battery harnessing life force, including energies of unity consciousness, female cycles, birth, light, sound, creativity, scent, joy, cosmic forces (Dendera Zodiac), euphoria and lucid dreaming, possibly through consuming the psychoactive Blue Lotus flower. “The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” – Emily Dickinson. Imagine the scene: chambers scented with sandalwood, cedar and spices, priestesses wandering beneath the Eye of Ra, temple pulsing with the healing arts: chromotherapy, aromatherapy and sound therapy – dissonant tones indicating disease, harmonic tones raising lower frequencies of the body’s energetic field, including depression and shame. “The medicine of the future will be music and sound.” – Edgar Cayce. Light, sound, emotion – all are vibration. Creative energy is divine energy and ancient Egyptians engaged their higher selves – surely the symbols ‘worn’ at the crown and star chakras show they are open? “Hathor is [ ] the Lady of the Gates of transitions – music and sacred sound open the pathway through the dimensions.” – Ani Williams. Do bird hieroglyphs hint at birdsong as a temple language? The full vocalisation was not written out so were the gaps filled in with song – healing vowels similar to the resonant AUM? I can’t speak for the intention in Spirit Of Hathor’ by Aurora Dendera but I can imagine sonorous vocals activating the …

(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 3) Nine-Headed Dragon Slain by Patriarchal Heroes: A Cross-cultural Discussion by Mago Circle Members

[Editor’s Note: This and the ensuing sequels are a revised version of the discussion that has taken place in The Mago Circle, Facebook group, since September 24, 2017 to the present. Themes are introduced and interwoven in a somewhat random manner, as different discussants lead the discussion. The topic of the number nine is key to Magoism, primarily manifested as Nine Magos or the Nine Mago Creatrix. Mago Academy hosts a virtual and actual event, Nine Day Mago Celebration, annually.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Xiang Yao or Xiangliu is the Chinese equivalent to Hydra in Greek mythology. And Hercules is to Yu, the Great, founder of the Xia dynasty. We will see in the course of this discussion that the myth of Yu, the founding ruler of Xia, the oldest dynasty of China, who slains the nine-headed snake, is only a variation of its older prototype, the myth of Huangdi who fought Chiu, the alliance of the Nine Han Giants (East Asian/Korean Magoists). “According to the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Xiangliu was a minister of the snake-like water deity Gonggong. Xiangliu devastated the ecology everywhere he went, leaving nothing but gullies and marshes devoid of animal life. Eventually, Xiangliu was killed by Yu the Great, whose other labors included ending the Great Flood of China. In other versions of the story, Xiangliu was killed by Nüwa, after being defeated by Zhurong, but his blood was so virulently poisonous that the soil which it soaked could no longer grow grain.[1] An oral version of the Xiangliu myth was collected as late from Sichuan as 1983, in which Xiangliu is depicted as a nine-headed dragon, responsible for floods and other harm.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangliu Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Ancient China had to demonize the pre-Han myth of the nona Mago because it bespeaks the matriarchal/gynocentric history that it overthrew… the past that had to be severed in order to fake patriarchal originality. With this in mind, we have a better look on patriarchal mythopoeia, which appears to be complex but, nonetheless, transparent in its motive to hide/hijack pre-patriarchal gynocentric histories. “One of the most harrowing myths from ancient China is the story of Gonggong’s rebellion. You can revisit the whole story here, but the quick version is that the evil water god Gonggong attempted to drown the world and was only prevented from doing so by the heroic last resort actions of the beneficent creator goddess Nüwa, who cut the legs off the cosmic turtle in order to set things to rights. In the chaos of the climactic battle, however Gongong’s chief minister and partner in crime Xiangliu the nine-headed snake monster completely escaped. Filled with bitterness about Gonggong’s failure, Xiangliu crawled away across the soggy lands of Szechuan (which were water-logged after the nearly world-ending floods). Wherever he went, the snake monster left permanent fens and swamps which were toxic to life. His very being had become steeped in poison, and his progress through the damp and moldy world had to be stopped. Yu the hero, the third of the three sage kings, finally caught up with the nine-headed monster and killed him in a pitched battle. Yet still there was a problem: Xiangliu’s pestiferous blood has poisoned the whole region, which now stank of rot. Crops would not grow and civilization began to falter. Yu dug up the blood soaked soil again and again, but the corrupted blood of the monster just sank deeper into the ground. Finally, Yu excavated a deep valley by Kunlun mountain and rid the world of Xiangliu’s toxins. With all of the land he had excavated he built a great terraced mountain for the gods. Yu then went forth to found the kingdom of Xia, the first civilized state in Chinese history. Of course some people say that Yu did none of this, that, it was the goddess Nüwa who once again came forth to battle the monster and undo the damage he had caused. Then, with accustomed modesty she let Yu take the credit and begin his kingdom (for Nüwa cared not for empty praise and hollow glory but only for the well-being of her children).” https://ferrebeekeeper.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/xiangliu-the-nine-headed-snake/ Max Dashu: These patriarchal heroes! Nova Scheller: What a fascinating thread…that the nine headed hydra correlates to the nine headed dragon as a linkage to patriarchy or gynocentric/ matriarchal beginnings…the root being in Korea! Dropping into your work of so many years…a privilege as well as informing some of my personal awareness. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Nova Scheller, indeed! The myth of slaining the nine-headed snake/dragon across cultures shows; (1) The onset of patriarchy did not come naturally but forcefully, which proves that patriarchy is not original. It was a reaction to what had been before, its matrix. Patriarchy faked its originality by inventing the myth of demonizing and killing the female principle. (2) Patriarchal rules established across cultures adopted the mythic motif of slaining the nine-headed snake or dragon, which appears to be of Chinese origin. (3) The Nine Mago mythic system preserved in Korean Magoism testifies to gynocentric/matriarchal beginnings, which were remembered by peoples of the ancient world. (4) Furthermore, Korean Magoist mythology explains the origin/meaning of the nona Goddess symbol. Let’s explore how the Nine Mago pantheon was remembered in East Asian myths and religions. For this, we need to unravel the patriarchal mythopoeia of Goma, the Shaman ruler of Old Magoist East Asia/Korea. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: In principle, we can tell if an ancient rule/culture was patriarchal or gynocentric by the myth of the nine-headed snake/dragon. In the case of ancient China whose heroes are told to have killed the opponent, the nine-headed snake. Nonetheless, the people’s memory of pre-patriarchal gynocentric history never dies. The nine symbolism is still described as auspicious. It revives time and time again throughout history. In other words, ancient China was a small regional power, only modern scholarship seals it all mighty China. Find out what other ancient myths concern about the nine female symbolism. (To be continued) Join us in The Mago Circle https://www.facebook.com/groups/magoism/.
(Special Post 8) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?

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

Lammas – the Sacred Consuming by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Lammas, the first seasonal transition after Summer Solstice, may be summarised as the Season that marks and celebrates the Sacred Consuming, the Harvest of Life. Many indigenous cultures recognised the grain itself as Mother … Corn Mother being one of those images – She who feeds the community, the world, with Her own body: the Corn, the grain, the food, the bread, is Her body. She the Corn Mother, or any other grain Mother, was/is the original sacrifice … no need for extraordinary heroics: it is the nature of Her being. She is sacrificed, consumed, to make the people whole with Her body (as the word “sacrifice” means “to make whole”). She gives Herself in Her fullness to feed the people …. the original Communion. In cultures that preceded agriculture or were perhaps pastoral – hunted or bred animals for food – this cross-quarter day may not have been celebrated, or perhaps it may have been marked in some other way. Yet even in our times when many are not in relationship with the harvest of food directly, we may still be in relationship with our place: Sun and Earth and Moon still do their dance wherever you are, and are indeed the Ground of one’s being here … a good reason to pay attention and homage, and maybe as a result, and in the process, get the essence of one’s life in order. One does not need to go anywhere to make this pilgrimage … simply Place one’s self. The seasonal transition of Lammas may offer that in particular, being a “moment of grace” – as Thomas Berry has named the seasonal transitions, when the dark part of the day begins to grow longer, as the cloak of darkness slowly envelopes the days again: it is timely to reflect on the Dark Cosmos in Whom we are, from Whom we arise and to Whom we return – and upon that moment when like Corn Mother we give ourselves over. This reflection is good, will serve a person and all – to live fully, as well as simply to be who we are: this dark realm of manifesting is the core of who we are. And what difference might such reflection make to our world – personal and collective – to live in this relationship with where we are, and thus who we are. We all are the grain that is harvested and all are Her harvest … perhaps one may use a different metaphor: the truth that may be reflected upon at this seasonal moment after the peaking of Sun’s light at Summer Solstice and the wind down into Autumn, is that everything passes, all fades away … even our Sun shall pass. All is consumed. So What are we part of? (I write it with a capital because surely it is a sacred entity) And how might we participate creatively? We are Food – whether we like it or not … Lammas is a good time to get with the Creative plot, though many find it the most difficult, or focus on more exoteric celebration. May we be interesting food[i]. We are holy Communion, like Corn Mother. Meet Mago Contributor Glenys Livingstone NOTES: [i] This is an expression of cosmologist Brian Swimme in Canticle to the Cosmos DVD series.
(Video) Autumn Equinox/Mabon Poetry by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

The Autumnal Equinox occurs each year in the range of March 20-23 in the Southern Hemisphere, and in the range of September 20 -23 in the Northern Hemisphere. Autumn Equinox is a point of sacred balance: it is the point of balance in the dark part of Earth’s annual cycle. Sun is equidistant between North and South as it was/is at Spring Equinox, but in this dark phase of the cycle, the trend is toward increasing dark. Henceforth the dark part of the day will exceed the light part: thus it is a Moment of certain descent … and a sacred Moment for feeling and contemplating the grief and power of loss, for ceremoniously joining personal and collective grief and loss with the larger Self in whom we are. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcZflKLkvP8 Below is the text of the video. It is based on the traditional poetry for PaGaian Autumn Equinox/Mabon ceremony[i]. This is the Moment of the Autumnal Equinox in our Hemisphere – the moment of balance of light and dark in the dark part of the cycle. The light and dark parts of the day in the South and in the North of our planet, are of equal length at this time. We feel for the balance in this moment – Earth as She is poised in relationship with the Sun … breathing in the light, swelling with it, letting our breath go to the dark, staying with it. In our part of Earth, the balance is tipping into the dark. We remember the coolness of it. This is the time when we give thanks for our harvests – all that we have gained. And we remember too the sorrows, losses involved. The story of Old tells us that Persephone, Beloved Daughter, is given the wheat from Her Mother – the Mystery, knowledge of life and death. She receives it graciously. But she sets forth into the darkness – both Mother and Daughter grieve that it is so. Demeter, the Mother, says: “You are offered the wheat in every moment … I let you go as Child, most loved of Mine: you descend to Wisdom, to Sovereignty. You will return as Mother, co-Creator with me. You are the Seed in the Fruit, becoming the Fruit in the Seed. Inner Wisdom guides your path.” We give thanks for our harvests – our lives they are blessed. We are Daughters and Sons of the Mother. Yet we take our Wisdom and all that we have gained, and remember the sorrows – the losses involved. We remember the grief of the Mother, of mothers and lovers everywhere, our grief. Persephone descends. The Beloved One is lost. Persephone goes forth into the darkness to become Queen of that world. She tends the sorrows. The Seed represents our Persephones, who tends the sorrows – we are the Persephones, who may tend the sorrows. We go out into the night with Her and plant our seeds. Persephone blesses us with her fertile promise: “You have waxed into the fullness of life, And waned into darkness; May you be renewed in tranquility and wisdom[ii].” These represent our hope. The Seed of life never fades away. She is always present. Blessed be the Mother of all life. Blessed be the life that comes from Her and returns to Her. We tie red threads on each other: we participate in the Vision of the Seed – of the continuity of Life, that continues beneath the visible. The Mother knowledge grows within us. Our hope is in the Sacred Balance of the Cosmos – the Thread of Life, the Seed that never fades away: it is the Balance of Grief and Joy, the Care that we may feel in our Hearts. NOTES: [i] Glenys Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, p. 239-247. [ii] Charlene Spretrnak, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, p. 116. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. Spretnak, Charlene. Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: a Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992/1978.
(Prose & Photography) Equinox Reflection by Sara Wright

Photography by Sara Wright I gaze out my bedroom window and hear yet another golden apple hit the ground. The vines that hug the cabin and climb up the screens are heavy with unripe grapes and the light that is filtered through the trees in front of the brook is luminous – lime green tipped in gold – My too sensitive eyes are blessedly well protected by this canopy of late summer leaves. The maples on the hill are losing chlorophyll and are painting the hollow with splashes of bittersweet orange and red. The dead spruces by the brook will probably collapse this winter providing Black bears with even more precious ants and larvae to eat in early spring. I only hope that some bears will survive the fall slaughter to return to this black bear sanctuary; in particular two beloved young ones… Mushrooms abound, amanitas, boletes morels, puff balls, the latter two finding their way into my salads. The forest around my house is in an active state of becoming with downed limbs and sprouting fungi becoming next year’s soil. The forest floor smells so sweet that all I can imagine is laying myself down on a bed of mosses to sleep and dream. The garden looks as tired as I am; lily fronds droop, yellowing leaves betraying the season at hand. Bright green pods provide a startling contrast to fading scarlet bee balm. Wild asters are abundant and goldenrod covers the fields with a bright yellow garment. Every wild bush has sprays of berries. My crabapple trees are bowed, each twig heavy with winter fruit. Most of the birds have absconded to the fields that are ripe with the seeds of wild grasses. The mourning doves are an exception – they gather together each dawn waiting patiently for me to fill the feeder. In the evening I am serenaded by soft cooing. One chicken hawk hides in the pine, lying in wait for the unwary…Just a few hummingbirds remain…whirring wings and twittering alert me to continued presence as they settle into the cherry tree to sleep, slipping into a light torpor with these cool September nights… Spiders are spinning their egg cases, even as they prepare to die. I can still find toads hopping around the house during the warmest hours of the day. Although the grass is long I will not mow it for fear of killing these most precious and threatened of species. I am heavily invested in seeing these toads burrow in to see another spring. My little frogs sit on their lily pads seeking the warmth of a dimming afternoon sun. Soon they too will slumber below fallen leaves or mud. I am surrounded by such beauty, and so much harvest bounty that even though I am exhausted I take deep pleasure out of each passing day of this glorious month of September, the month of my birth. Unlike many folks, for me, moving into the dark of the year feels like a blessing. Another leave -taking is almost upon me, and I am having trouble letting go of this small oasis that I have tended with such care for more than thirty years… I don’t know what this winter will bring to my modest cabin whose foundation is crumbling under too much moisture and too many years of heavy snow. In the spring extensive excavation will begin. A new foundation must be poured and this work will destroy the gardens I have loved, the mossy grounds around the south end of the house that I have nurtured for so long. In this season of letting go I must find a way to lay down my fears, and release that which I am powerless to change. Somehow… I have no idea what I will return to except that I have made it clear that none of my beloved trees be harmed. I am grateful that Nature is mirroring back to me so poignantly that letting go is the way through: That this dying can provide a bedrock foundation for another spring birth. As a Daughter of the Earth I lean into ancient wisdom, praying that this exhausted mind and body will be able to follow suit. (Meet Mago Contributor) Sara Wright.
(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 …
(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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKGRoVjQQHY Aphrodite 300 B.C.E. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). This Greek Goddess is commonly associated with sexuality in a trivial kind of way, but She was said to be older than Time (Barbara Walker p.44). Aphrodite as humans once knew Her, was no mere sex goddess: Aphrodite was once a Virgin-Mother-Crone trinity – the Creative Force itself. The Love that She embodied was a Love deep down in things, an allurement intrinsic to the nature of the Universe. Praised by the Orphics thus: For all things are from You Who unites the cosmos. You will the three-fold fates You bring forth all things Whatever is in the heavens And in the much fruitful earth And in the deep sea. Vajravarahi 1600C.E. Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). A Dakini dancing with life energy – a unity of power, beauty, compassion and eroticism. Praised as Mistress of love and of knowledge at the same time. Tara Contemporary – Green Gulch California ,Tibetan Buddhist. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). “Her eroticism is an important part of her bodhisattvahood: the sweetpea represents the yoni, and she is surrounded by the sensual abundance of Nature. One of Tara’s human incarnations was as the Tibetan mystic Yeshe Tsogyal, “who helped many people to enlightenment through sacred sexual union with her”. – Ishtar 1000 B.C.E. Babylon (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). Associated with passionate sexuality (and with Roman Goddess Venus) – which was not perceived as separate from integrity and intelligence … praised for Her beauty and brains! Her lips are sweet, Life is in Her mouth. When She appears, we are filled with rejoicing. She is glorious beneath Her robes. Her body is complete beauty. Her eyes are total brilliance. Who could be equal to Her greatness, for Her decrees are strong, exalted, perfect. MESOPOTAMIAN TEXT 1600 B.C.E. Artemis 4th Cent.B.C.E. Greece. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess) – classic “Virgin” image – wild and free, “Lady of the Beasts”, Goddess of untamed nature. As such, in the patriarchal stories She is often associated with harshness, orgiastic rituals but we may re-story “wildness” in our times as something “innocent” – in direct relationship with the Mother. She is a hunter/archer, protector, midwife, nurturing the new and pure essence (the “wild”) – in earlier times these things were not contradictory. The hunter had an intimate relationship with the hunted. Visvatara and Vajrasattva 1800C.E. Tibetan Goddess and God in Union: it could be any Lover and Beloved, of same sex. Image from Mann and Lyle, “Sacred Sexuality” p.74. Sacred Couple –Mesopotamia 2000-1600 BCE “Lovers Embracing on Bed”, Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth, Diane Wolkstein and Samuael Noah Kramer. Represents the sacred marriage mythic cycle – late 3rd and into 4th millennium B.C.E. (See Starhawk, Truth or Dare). This period is the time of Enheduanna – great poet and priestess of Inanna. Xochiquetzal 8th century C.E. Mayan (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). Her name means “precious flower” – She is Goddess of pleasure, sexuality beauty and flowers. Sometimes represented by a butterfly who sips the nectar of the flower. “In ancient rituals honouring her, young people made a bower of roses, and, dressed as hummingbirds and butterflies they danced an image of the Goddess of flowers and love.” Her priestesses are depicted with ecstatic faces. (called “laughing Goddesses” !!) She and Her priestesses unashamedly celebrated joyful female sexuality – there is story of decorating pubic hairs to outshine the Goddess’ yoni. https://www.magoism.net/2013/06/meet-mago-contributor-glenys-livingstone/ REFERENCES: Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess. Berkeley: Wingbow, 1990. Mann A.T. and Lyle, Jane. Sacred Sexuality. ELEMENT BOOKS LTD, 1995. Starhawk. Truth or Dare. San Fransisco:Harper and Row, 1990. Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983. Wolkstein,Diane and Kramer, Samuel Noah. Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth. NY: Harper and Rowe, 1983. The music for the slideshow is “”Coral Sea Dreaming” by Tania Rose.
(Slideshow) Summer Solstice Goddess by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

Sekhmet by Katlyn Each year between December 20-23 Sun reaches Her peak in the Southern Hemisphere: it is the Summer Solstice Moment. Poetry of the Season may be expressed in this way: This is the time when the light part of day is longest. You are invited to celebrate SUMMER SOLSTICE Light reaches Her fullness, and yet… She turns, and the seed of Darkness is born. This is the Season of blossom and thorn – for pouring forth the Gift of Being. The story of Old tells that on this day Beloved and Lover dissolve into the single Song of ecstasy – that moves the worlds. Self expands in the bliss of creativity. Sun ripens in us: we are the Bread of Life. We celebrate Her deep Communion and Reciprocity. Glenys Livingstone, 2005 The choice of images for the Season is arbitrary; there are so many more that may express Her fullness of being, Her relational essence and Her Gateway quality at this time. 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 Summer Solstice. As you receive the images, remember that image communicates the unspeakable, that which can only be known in body, below rational mind. So you may open yourself to a transmission of Her, that will be particular to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syTBjWpw3XU Shalako Mana Hopi 1900C.E. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess), Corn Mother. Food is a miracle, food is sacred. She IS the corn, the corn IS Her. She gives Herself to feed all. The food/She is essential to survival, hospitality and ceremony … and all of this is transmuted in our beings. Sekhmet Contemporary image by Katlyn. Egyptian Sun Goddess. Katlyn says: Her story includes the compassionate nature of destruction. The fierce protection of the Mother is sometimes called to destroy in order to preserve well being. And Anne Key expresses: She represents “the awesome and awe-full power of the Sun. This power spans the destructive acts of creation and the creative acts of destruction.”- (p.135 Desert Priestess: a memoir).A chant in Her praise by Abigail Spinner McBride: Sheila-na-gig 900C.E. British Isles. (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). From Elinor Gadon The Once and Future Goddess (p.338): “She is remembered in Ireland as the Old Woman who gave birth to all races of human…. In churches her function was to ward off evil”, or to attract the Pagan peoples to the church. From Adele Getty Goddess (p.66): “The first rite of passage of all human beings begins in the womb and ends between the thighs of the Great Mother. In India, the vulva “known as the yoni, is also called cunti or kunda, the root word of cunning, cunt and kin … (the yoni) was worshipped as an object of great mystery … the place of birth and the place where the dead are laid to rest were often one and the same.” Getty says her message here in this image “is double-edged: the opening of her vulva and the smile on her face elicit both awe and terror; one might venture too far inside her and never return to the light of day …” as with all caves and gates of initiation. In the Christian mind the yoni clearly became the “gates of hell”. And as Helene Cixous said in her famous feminist article “The Laugh of the Medusa”: “Let the priests tremble, we’re going to show them our sexts!” (SIGNS Summer 1976) Kunapipi (Australia) “the Aboriginal mother of all living things, came from a land across the sea to establish her clan in Northern Australia, where She is found in both fresh and salt water. In the Northern Territory She is known as Warramurrungundgi. She may also manifest Herself as Julunggul, the rainbow snake goddess of initiations who threatens to swallow children and then regurgitate them, thereby reinforcing the cycle of death and rebirth. In Arnhem Land She is Ngaljod …” (Visions of the Goddess by Courtney Milne and Sherrill Miller – thanks to Lydia Ruyle). More information: re Kunapipi. NOTE the similarity to Gobekli Tepe Sheela Turkey 9600B.C.E., thanks Lydia Ruyle.Lydia Ruyle’s Gobekli Tepe banner. Inanna/Ishtar Mesopotamia 400 B.C.E. (Adele Getty, Goddess: Mother of Living Nature) She holds Her breasts displaying her potency. She is a superpower who feeds the world, nourishes it with Her being. We all desire to feel this potency of being: Swimme and Berry express: “the infinite striving of the sentient being”. Adele Getty calls this offering of breasts to the world “a timeless sacred gesture”. Mary Mother of God 1400 C.E. Europe (Hallie Iglehart Austen, The Heart of the Goddess). A recognition, even in the patriarchal context that She contains it all. Wisdom and Compassion Tibetan Goddess and God in Union. This is Visvatara and Vajrasattva 1800C.E. (Sacred Sexuality A.T. Mann and Jane Lyle). Sri Yantra Hindu meditation diagram of union of Goddess and God. 1500 C.E. (Sacred Sexuality A.T. Mann and Jane Lyle, p.75). “Goddess and God” is the common metaphor, but it could be “Beloved and Lover”, and so it is in the mind of many mystics and poets: that is, the sacred union is of small self with larger Self. Prajnaparamita the Mother of all Buddhas. (The Great Mother Erich Neumann, pl 183). She is the Wisdom to whom Buddha aspired, Whom he attained. Medusa Contemporary, artist unknown. She is a Sun Goddess: this is one reason why it was difficult to look Her in the eye. See Patricia Monaghan, O Mother Sun! REFERENCES: Gadon, Elinor W. The Once and Future Goddess. Northamptonshire: Aquarian, 1990. Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living Nature. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess.Berkeley: Wingbow, 1990. Katlyn, artist https://www.mermadearts.com/b/altar-images-art-by-katlyn Key, Anne. Desert Priestess: a memoir. NV: Goddess Ink, 2011. Mann A.T. and …

(Photo Essay 1) ‘Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess of Korea’ by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part I: Living Tradition Bearers and Her Shrine, Suseong-dang I had the privilege to join a field trip to collect the folk stories of Gaeyang Halmi, the Sea Goddess, in Buan-gun (Buan County), North Jeolla Province, South Korea July 10-12, 2012. The team comprised a group of graduate students studying Korean Literature at the Kunguk University (Kim Jungeun, Cho Hongyoun, Lee Won-Young, Hwang Sungup, and Lee Boohee) headed by Dr. Shin Dong-Hun, Dr. Park Hyeon-Suk, and myself.[i]
(Budoji Essay 3) The Magoist Cosmogony by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

“Reintroducing the concept of the Mago Species has a profound implication, compelling one’s vocabularies to be changed to the Mother’s Tongue.” [This is a translation and interpretation of the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem City), principal text of Magoism. Read the translation of Chapter 1 of the Budoji.] There were Four Heavenly Persons at the four corners of the castle. They built pillars and sounded music. Four Heavenly Persons are the four clan leaders who reside in the four corners of Mago Castle, Primordial Paradise. They are entrusted by Mago to cultivate the acoustical effect of the universe (the original music). While the translation of “pillars” is provisional, it may mean a musical instrument of some primordial sort. Given the importance of stone, a theme reiterated in later chapters of the Budoji, the pillars may refer to the stone structure that supports a musical instrument. Or they may indicate stone chimes or an acoustical rock structure.
(Book Excerpt 3) The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia

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

Tag: Elaine Drew

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(Meet Mago Contributor) Elaine Drew

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(Art) Taera Weeps for the 3 Warring Brothers by Elaine Drew

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(Art) Painting the Goddess: Working with Symbols by Elaine Drew

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(Art) Painting Taera, Goddess of the Earth By Elaine Drew

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(Art) ‘How to Express the Divine Feminine?’ by Elaine Drew

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Mago Almanac Year 8 (for 2025)

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

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

Mago Pod Bulletin #73 November 2024

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