October 25, 2019October 8, 2019 Mago Work AdminLeave a comment

(Art) Rhiannon by Pegi Eyers

The Celtic Moon Goddess Rhiannon is the patroness of horses and riders. It is said that the song of her three magic birds can bring the dead back to life, Read More …

July 25, 2016October 2, 2019 RTM Editor3 Comments

(Prose) My Thanks to Dolasilla by Claire French

It must have been around my twelfth year when I found the Saga of the Kingdom of Fanes in the local almanac of the South Tyrolean city of Bozen/Bolzano. It Read More …

(Mago Stronghold Essay 2) The Forgotten Primordial Paradise by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

Part 2: Mago, Mago Clan, and Old Korea “Mago Stronghold” is a magical (read gynocentric) word that engenders the power of the Great Goddess. Survived in written and oral texts as well as geographies, it, while disclosing the plot of magna-matricide[1] (killing of the Great Mother) in patriarchal mytho-historiographies, re-enthrones the Great Goddess.
(Book Excerpt 8) On the Wings of Isis: Reclaiming the Sovereignty of Auset, ed. by Trista Hendren et al.

Retaining Sovereignty within the Confines of Modern Motherhood Trista Hendren Maintaining sovereignty as a mother seems to be an impossible task for many women in capitalist patriarchal societies. I saw a quote on Facebook recently from Mamá Kaur that said, “It’s not motherhood that’s exhausting. What’s exhausting is to nurture in a world that doesn’t care for and support its mothers.” That rang true for me. When I was a single mother especially, the last thing I felt was sovereign. As I wrote in Single Mothers Speak on Patriarchy, “It’s hard to feel like a Goddess when you’re worried sick about how you are going to feed your kids. You can do all the affirmations and self-help work you want, but it is a rare woman who feels empowered living in poverty.”52 Under patriarchy, there is no value in raising children and we are expected to martyr ourselves going at it alone. Glennon Doyle recently wrote, “I burned the memo presenting responsible motherhood as martyrdom. I decided that the call of motherhood is to become a model, not a martyr. I unbecame a mother slowly dying in her children’s name and became a responsible mother: one who shows her children how to be fully alive. A broken family is a family in which any member must break herself into pieces to fit in. A whole family is one in which each member can bring her full self to the table knowing that she will always be both held and free.”53 Like many women, I must continue to break the mold that has been handed down for generations in my family. No more broken women. No more broken families. Once I had my 2nd child, I found it impossible to work full-time in the US. The system is set up to fail mothers and children.54When my children were young, I had very little help from their father. I soon became a single mother, which left me financially destitute, albeit (mostly) free from his relentless tyranny. Were it not for the help of my mother, I am not sure I would have made it through those years. Five years ago, I moved with my children to Norway to live with my current husband. Living here has given me a glimpse of some ways women can retain sovereignty in Western cultures with structural support. I will also share what I perceive to be some limitations of the Norwegian system. I do not believe motherhood was ever meant to be a solitary affair. Being here with my current partner, who does more than his share of the housework, makes me wish I had a different experience when my children were young. My husband had paternity leave with both of his boys. You can see today the effect this has had on their relationship, even as they have grown into men. This is increasingly common here—and it is mostly paid—split between parents however it works best for their family. In contrast, I did not have any maternity leave after giving birth to my son—and paid into a 6-week (very expensive) insurance plan when I had my daughter. In Norway, men are expected to be full and equal partners. The first birthday party my 9-year-old daughter attended here caught me completely off guard. The father of her friend was a successful CEO. What was he doing when we returned to pick her up? Vacuuming and (cheerfully) cleaning up after 30 girls! I can’t recall ever seeing that in the United States. A few months later, I had arranged for a play date with another girl for my daughter. The father answered the door. I inquired about the whereabouts of the mother, and was told she was out with friends! He was there taking care of the children and house on his own. Quite frankly, this was so odd to me that I almost did not leave my daughter there. My husband assured me this was quite normal, and after talking with him for a while, I felt at ease. Today, I often take for granted how much my husband does around the house and with the children. However, I still vividly remember our first parent-teacher conference. My husband went without being asked and fully participated in the hour-long discussion. As we walked out, I started crying. For years, I had only seen other mothers at these meetings at our American schools. There are also extensive structural support systems in place in Norway. One of which is (almost) free daycare for all from the get-go—as well as generous sick days. I do not believe that the early childcare is ideal for the overall development of children—although it does free up many things for parents here. Norway also does not have a close extended family network. That said, I think Scandinavia is about as good as it gets for parents in the Western world. I would also like to point to my (adopted) family in Lebanon as another way forward. I believe the village community-based parenting would have really benefited all of us when my kids were young. The children belong to everyone. Families get together for extended late lunches where they share cooking tasks. I suppose it depends on the family, but I have never experienced a family anywhere were there is more support, joy and sense of belonging—despite Lebanon’s decades of war and economic hardship.55 That said, there is almost no structural support in Lebanon for mothers, so if you marry into the wrong family, things can be quite disastrous. My friend Nohad Nassif wrote a brilliant book addressing this.56 She believes Universal Basic Income is the answer to this—and I agree with her. Sovereignty in motherhood should include all women. That said, I wonder what going further back can teach us. Leslene della-Madre reminds us that, “Isis veneration spread as far east as Afghanistan, to the Black Sea, as well as to what is now western Europe in Portugal and as far north as England. …
(Essay 1) Xi Wangmu, the shamanic great goddess of China by Max Dashu

One of the oldest deities of China is Xi Wangmu (Hsi Wang Mu). She lives in the Kunlun mountains in the far west, at the margin of heaven and earth. In a garden hidden by high clouds, her peaches of immortality grow on a colossal Tree, only ripening once every 3000 years. The Tree is a cosmic axis that connects heaven and earth, a ladder traveled by spirits and shamans. Xi Wang Mu controls the cosmic forces: time and space and the pivotal Great Dipper constellation. With her powers of creation and destruction, she ordains life and death, disease and healing, and determines the life spans of all living beings. The energies of new growth surround her like a cloud. She is attended by hosts of spirits and transcendentals. She presides over the dead and afterlife, and confers divine realization and immortality on spiritual seekers. The name of the goddess is usually translated as Queen Mother of the West. Mu means “mother,” and Wang,“sovereign.” But Wangmu was not a title for royal women. It means “grandmother,” as in the Book of Changes, Hexagram 35: “One receives these boon blessings from one’s wangmu.” The classical glossary Erya says that wangmuwas used as an honorific for female ancestors. [Goldin, 83] The ancient commentator Guo Pu explained that “one addswang in order to honor them.” Another gloss says it was used to mean “great.” Paul Goldin points out that the Chinese commonly used wang “to denote spirits of any kind,” and numinous power. He makes a convincing case for translating the name of the goddess as “Spirit-Mother of the West.” [Goldin, 83-85] The oldest reference to Xi Wangmu is an oracle bone inscription from the Shang dynasty, thirty-three centuries ago: “If we make offering to the Eastern Mother and Western Mother there will be approval.” The inscription pairs her with another female, not the male partner invented for her by medieval writers—and this pairing with a goddess of the East persisted in folk religion. Suzanne Cahill, an authority on Xi Wangmu, places her as one of several ancient “mudivinities” of the directions, “mothers” who are connected to the sun and moon, or to their paths through the heavens. She notes that the widespread tiger images on Shang bronze offerings vessels may have been associated with the western mu deity, an association of tiger and west that goes back to the neolithic. [Cahill, 12-13] After the oracle bones, no written records of the goddess appear for a thousand years, until the “Inner Chapters” of theZhuang Zi, circa 300 BCE. This early Taoist text casts her as a woman who attained the Tao [Feng, 125]: Xi Wang Mu attained it and took her seat on Shao Guang mountain.No one knows her beginning and no one knows her end. These eternal and infinite qualities remain definitive traits of the goddess throughout Chinese history. The Shan Hai JingAnother ancient source for Xi Wangmu is the Shan Hai Jing (“Classic of Mountains and Seas”). Its second chapter says that she lives on Jade Mountain. She resembles a human, but has tigers’ teeth and a leopard’s tail. She wears a head ornament atop her wild hair. [Remi, 100] Some scholars interpret this as a victory crown. [Birrell, 24] Most think it is the sheng headdress shown in the earliest reliefs of the goddess: a horizontal band with circles or flares at either end. [Cahill, 16; Strassberg, 109] Xi Wangmu wearing the Sheng Crown The sheng is usually interpreted as a symbol of the loom. The medieval Di Wang Shih Zhi connects it to “a loom mechanism” the goddess holds. Cahill says that the sheng marks Xi Wangmu as a cosmic weaver who creates and maintains the universe. She also compares its shape to ancient depictions of constellations—circles connected by lines—corresponding to the stellar powers of Xi Wangmu. She “controls immortality and the stars.” Classical sources explain the meanings of sheng as “overcoming” and “height.” [Cahill, 45; 16-18] This sign was regarded as an auspicious symbol during the Han dynasty, and possibly earlier. People exchanged shengtokens as gifts on stellar holidays, especially the Double Seven festival in which women’s weaving figured prominently. It was celebrated on the seventh day of the seventh month, at the seventh hour, when Xi Wangmu descended among humans. Taoists considered it the most important night of the year, “the perfect night for divine meetings and ascents.” [Cahill, 16, 167-8] It was the year’s midpoint, “when the divine and human worlds touch,” and cosmic energies were in perfect balance. [Despeux / Kohn, 31] Xi Wangmu seated amidst worshippers, dancing frog, magical raven, nine-tailed fox, and various ritual scenes. Directly beneath her is a possible representaation of the celestial Grindstone. The Shan Hai Jing goes on to say of the tigress-like Xi Wangmu: “She is controller of the Grindstone and the Five Shards constellations of the heavens.” [Cahill, 16] The Grindstone is where the axial Tree connects to heaven, the “womb point” from which creation is churned out. [Mitchell cite] In other translations of this passage, she presides over “the calamities of heaven and the five punishments.” [Strassberg, 109] For Guo Pu, this line referred to potent constellations. [Remi, 102] The goddess has destructive power—she causes epidemics, for example—but she also averts them and cures diseases. [Asian Mythology] The passage above also says that the tiger-woman on Jade Mountain “excels at whistling.” Other translators render this line as “is fond of roaring” or “is good at screaming.” The character in question, xiào, does not translate easily. It is associated with “a clear, prolonged sound” that issues from the throats of sages and shamans. (It may have resembled Tuvan throat singing.) Xiào was compared to the cry of a phoenix, a long sigh, and a zither. Its melodic sound conveyed much more than mere words, and had the power to rouse winds and call spirits. Taoist scriptures also refer to the xiào, and in the Songs of Chu it appears “as a shamanistic ritual for calling back the soul of the deceased.” [Yun, online] The twelfth chapter of the Shan Hai Jing returns to the goddess, seated on She Wu mountain: “Xi Wangmu rests on a stool and wears an ornament on her head. She holds …
(Bell Essay 8) The Magoist Whale Bell: Decoding the Cetacean Code of Korean Temple Bells by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note: This and ensuing sequels are excerpts of a new development from the original essay sequels on Korean Temple Bells and Magoism that first published January 11, 2013 in this current magazine. See (Bell Essay 1) Ancient Korean Bells and Magoism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.] Singing Humpback Whales, wikimedia commons Whales as the Cosmic Music Maker That whales (Gorae in Korean) are foundational to the Korean temple bell remains subliminal to this day. How do we assess the cetacean code of the Korean temple bell? What is the relationship between these two seemingly unrelated objects? We are given the whale-shaped mallet of the bell to begin with. Intriguingly, two Buddhist temples are noted today for the wooden whale-carved mallet of their bells: Sudeok-sa in Yesan, South Chungcheong, and Seonam-sa in Suncheon, South Jeolla.[1] Other temple bells reportedly have the whale mallet as well, although not as much distinctly carved as the two. The Divine Bell of King Seongdeok the Great is known as such. What is the significance of the Korean temple bell that has a whale as its striker? However, the whale-shaped wooden mallet is only a visible symbol of Sillan cetacean veneration. The whale motif is not just physically present in the mallet but also signified in its name or title. Among many alternative names of the Korean temple bell are cetacean names; Janggyeong (長鯨 Eternal Whale), Gyeongjong (鯨鐘 Whale Bell), Hwagyeong (華鯨 Splendid Whale), and Geogyeong (巨鯨 Gigantic Whale). Here the character “gyeong 鯨” means a whale.[2] These whale names suggest that the bell itself is conceived as a whale. Korean temple bells are the code of Magoist cetaceanism. By the very nature of a temple bell that is to awaken all beings to put it bluntly, we can establish that the sound of a whale is elevated to the purpose of a temple bell. Or vice versa. The sound of a temple bell is identified as that of a whale. At the outset, suffice it to say that whales are admired and revered for their vocal behaviors so much so that they are represented in Sillan temple bells. The cetacean representation of the Korean temple bell comes unexpected to us. Why is the song of a whale not the song of a bird or another animal? And what does it mean that the Korean temple bell employs cetacean names? These are no small questions. Answering them requires digging into the deepest layer of what has gone under the surface about Magoist Korean whale culture. I have discussed elsewhere in detail about how Korean cetaceanism is steeped in linguistics, myths, place-names, and custom.[3] For the immensity and complexity of the topic, this essay leaves out the discussion of such salient features of whales as their pre-human origin, evolution from land to sea, sizes and trans-oceanic migratory journeys. Summarily, whales connect and bridge the human mind beyond anthropocentrism. Here we will focus on how cetacean veneration is encoded in the Korean temple bell, in particular the sound tube. Ancient Korean Magoists deemed whales as the cosmic music makers. The cetacean names of Korean temple bells redefine the bell as the acoustic instrument that conveys the music of whales. Note the plural in bells and whales. Korean temple bells are meant to be recognized as a chorus, like whales in the sea, to respond to the sonic property of all beings. In fact, the Korean temple bell is never an isolated single sound wave, to be discussed below. What is emitted from both is harmonized music. It is noted that the music of whales can travel hundreds of kilometers underwater.[4] That the song of whales travel as far as hundreds of kilometers underwater is juxtaposed with the sound of the Korean temple bells that travel far. The former is transmitted through water waves, while the latter is transmitted through air waves. Humpback Whales Whales compose music. Among cetacean species, known for their vocalizations are the blue whale, the fin whale, the humpback whale, the minke whale, and the killer whale.[5] In particular, such baleen whales as humpback whales and blue whales have been relatively well studied for their vocalizing behaviors. The range of humpback whales’ sound frequencies is known as follows: The range of frequencies that whales use are [sic] from 30 Hertz (Hz) to about 8,000 Hz, (8 kHZ). Humans can only hear part of the whales’s songs. We aren’t able to hear the lowest of the whale frequencies. Humans hear low frequency sounds starting at about 100 Hz.[6] In comparisons, the vocalizations of blue whales are known to range from 10 to 40 Hz at a fundamental frequency (the lowest frequency of a periodic waveform). It is also noted that blue whales off the coast of Sri Lanka make music of “four notes duration lasting about two minutes each, reminiscent of the well-known humpback whale songs.”[7] To be discussed below, the frequencies of the two most noted Korean temple bells range from 65 Hz to 103.02 Hz, which fall within the range of these whales’ vocalizations. A significant volume of scientific research has been harvested on the music of humpback whales. Katy and Roger Payne are, according to an article by Bill McQuay and Alison Richards, the first scientists who identified the calls of male humpback whales as songs.[8] They report that humpback whales do not merely sing but compose music. McQuay and Richards describe the song of humpback whales as follows: Surprisingly researchers have noted that at any given moment all males in a group will sing the same version of a song, even when separated over large distances, while whales in another region or hemisphere will sing a completely different song, but in unison with other whales in their area. These sounds are loud, deep and low-frequency (20Hz – 10 kHz). They can be heard many miles away and may go on for hours or even days. Individual songs can last anywhere from a few minutes up to a half hour at which point they may then be repeated again. …
(Tribute 2) Barbara Mor, “Relentless Love”: Letters 1988-2002 from a Writer’s Best Friend by Jack Dempsey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPtU2Rxbsjc Here below is, to me, the core statement of what Barbara was hoping to help us recover in “GCM” and her poetry, the very center of Human Being which was both our original inheritance and is, hopefully, our evolutionary future—if we can remember our full demonstrable past, and so move beyond the adolescent wishes, limiting mirages, and biophobic delusions imposed by patriarchal power: what Frederick Turner in Beyond Geography called a “suicide note,” namely that prison of blind, dismal ontological assumptions, reductive mechanistic sciences and absurdly-linear political screed called His-Story. Few artists said it as succinctly as Barbara did, defining the essential, liberating (and so, outlawed) experience of ek-stasis or “standing beyond oneself,” beyond the limits of a regressive, isolating, disempowering fiction called the separate ego: What is ecstasy? It is our original state of being. It is the conscious expansion of the universe into a multitude of interconnected dimensions and forms. It is Her dance of being, from which all of us were born. Ecstasy is passion, self-expressed through form. In the case of Earth, human beings and all other creatures and biological and geological activities are the forms, cosmic energy is the passion…. In and with the whole world is where we are supposed to feel it. In and with and as the whole world is where our human ecstasy is born. It is the celebration of the recognition that our spirit and flesh are One. Who else, meanwhile, so efficiently summed up how actual human progress—for example, in The West’s first, longest, most relatively peaceful, creative and egalitarian period, in Minoan Crete—had become a nightmare called “progress” which, to this day, never defines the goal against which it might be measured, even as its ontology carries us blindly ever-deeper into outright fascism and ecological suicide? Because The West was arrogant enough, or insane enough, to believe its anal eye was truly the eye of God, its will to total dominance truly “God’s will”—its perpetual machinery of observation and control in fact “the machinery of God”—it made “progress.” Western leaders, the political, religious and economic elite, officially merged their profits with God’s profits; and the Western peoples were conditioned, consistently and grindingly from the 13th-century beginnings of the Christian Inquisition, to accept submission to this profitable machine as their “moral lot.” The patriarchal denial of the Mother becomes the political denial of the people; which becomes the total mechanization, via capitalization, of the human body. And as the body moves, so does God move: the Biblical capitalist West has created God as a prison-keeper, as a factory-boss, rather than as a living cosmos. God as an assembly-line rather than a dance…. As you can see from readers’ comments at Amazon.com, the reception of GCM ranged from raves of gratitude to a minority of critics who tried to dismiss it on familiar “utopian,” “angry” and “female-biased” grounds. GCM began to sell and have an impact, such that the U-Arizona Library purchased a copy. This in part led Barbara to apply for various jobs there, as lecturer, assistant to its press or library, or as cleaning lady. But her hopes vanished when she was caught simply trying to wash herself in a library rest-room with the luxuries of hot water and soap. And this (December 1st, 1988) was when Barbara somehow managed reply to a first letter of mine: …In the meantime, I had no income, no job, nada….I went from subsistence poverty to absolute zip…Was told by the managing editor of the U of A press that “Writers don’t make good editors.” Arizona is a very yahoo state, including the population of academics. Whatever. I’ve been living on the street, sleeping in abandoned houses in the barrios, hanging out over cups of 59-cent endlessly refillable coffee at Burger Kings and Carl Jr.’s, trying to avoid the tracer beams of Tucson’s police helicopter at night. Altogether, not exactly a book-signing party. But great experience of the wild west, public toilets, street trash, the crazies of the homeless night….So, I’ll read your work with what brains I have left…. So had “our old mama” entered “the junkyard,” her eyes and heart torn open wider than ever to the needlessly suffering and constantly terrorized people in the belly of the American Dream. My own turn had come in the spring of 1980 when, becoming a writer in New York City after a youth of nothing but under-appreciated blessings, I fell in love with a 20-year-old Jewish woman named Eve Helene Wilkowitz. Six weeks of new life ended when, in March, Eve was abducted during her late-night trip home to Long Island, held alive for three days, and then brutally murdered and her body dumped in the backyard of a house near her own. The case was never solved. Completely shattered, I vowed to understand and manifest why, as one detective told me, a murder like this was “an everyday event,” and I began to shake my education by the heels at the Public Library. That was where and when I found, like Barbara, that the vast majority of history—most centrally to me, the first, longest, most peaceful and progressive period of The West, in Minoan Crete—had been as buried by history books as it was by its “heroic” Mycenaean Greek conquerors. In a few years after multiple stays in Crete I had a 2,000-page manuscript of the future novel Ariadne’s Brother to show American publishers, and I quote one response as wholly typical: “We don’t even want to look at it, because of what it’s about.” I’d made the mistake of telling them that the actual first major life-loving phase of Western Civ, still going strong when it fell through natural disaster and invasion, had never been told from its own Minoan-Cretan point of view: all we had was a myth from their enemies describing doomed decadence, a nymphomaniacal queen with a naïve treasonous daughter, and a man-eating Minotaur, all of whom got what they deserved at the hands of a hero brought up on the religion …
(Poem) I Am My Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams by Mary Saracino

Vergamini Clan from Author’s personal archives of old family photos. I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams realized,a woman unafraid to speak her mindlive out loudunabashedly love who I choosewithout hesitationor shameI honor their passage in steeragecrossing an ocean to embracea different life than what was given themthey dreamed of freedomliving life unfettered by theboot heels of tyrannythey dreamed of days and nightsbrimming with ease, laughter, pride,inviolable sovereigntymy grandmothers no longer shackled to traditionsthat entombed their spirits, constrained their giftsmy grandfathers no longer imprisonedby the limitations of class and ethnicityI am their dream actualized at long, long lastnot perfect, but perfectingnot finished, but ever evolvingleaping to conjure the hopes they heldin their hearts, dance with the possibilitiesthey envisionedsing the songs they left unsungno longer silenced by omertano longer afraid to breatheto say I amI amI am https://www.magoism.net/2013/05/meet-mago-contributor-mary-saracino/
(Essay 2) Reinvigorating Concepts of Attachment Through a Matriversal and Indigenous Lens by Stephanie Mines, Ph.D.

[Editor’s Note: This piece was presented during the first and inaugural S/HE Divine Studies Forum held on September 7th, 2024.] Stephanie Mines in New Zealand Turning Concepts of Attachment on Their Head I have been in the service of people recovering from, healing from, and transcending trauma for over four decades. When I reflect on the broad swath of this experience, I realize how misled all of us were to think that there was something wrong with us. There never was anything wrong with us. There was something terribly wrong with the systems that defined and labeled us. Let me explain more about this revolution in understanding attachment and bonding and why it is surfacing now, at the virtual end of time. When I look at attachment somatically and through the lens of the human nervous system, I recognize that I was actively in a state of belonging and rooted connection for prolonged periods of time, for instance, when I was reading, writing or star-gazing. During these periods I was connected to a source that flowed through me and accompanied me. Before I could read or write, I was deeply bonded via my creativity and specifically my inner storytelling capacities, which were prolific, to the spirit world. These forms of attachment were not validated or even recognized by the world around me. They still are not. As a result, I kept these experiences quiet, and within. This is a way in which my experience parallels that of indigenous people like Maata, who were rebuked for articulating their own language, except now we are determined to no longer hide or be silent. That I found anchoring and connection is entirely to my credit. From a Māori worldview, it was probably also due to the ancestors in the unseen world who were backing me up and leading me to where the nutrients were. It is to them that I likely owe my life. Can you see how Te Ao Māori, the Māori worldview, and particularly the standard bearing of women like Kuia Maata Wharehoka, is leadership for a world in crisis, a world that needs an indigenous and a matriversal perspective? © Ellen Giggenbach Language Reclamation From the moment that I began to write, which started around 7 or 8 years old, I was reclaiming my language. Language is identity. My true identity is in the language of my writing. It is a poetic dialect, like Te Reo Māori. I continue to be dedicated to reclaiming my own language. This is a continuum. For decades, Māori were punished for speaking their own language, Te Reo. It is an exquisite, metaphoric and flexible language. As a people who learned and shared knowledge through oral transmission, the theft of their language was excruciating. Only now is Te Reo being fully recovered, but still those who were punished for speaking it, reel from the consequences of being beaten, often severely. Something similar is true for me, and I believe it is also true for many others, mostly women. The language of our Original Brilliance has been stolen from us and we must reclaim it. This will root our secure attachment to what is real and help us recover from decades of living in shock from the theft of our heart and soul language. This is also what is happening for Māori and others who reclaim their language. It is liberating to see the ways in which the matriversal perspective parallels an indigenous worldview. Even as we face the end of time, and the dissolution of the extractive, culturally insensitive institutions that are articulated in man speak, we can still claim our true bonds and attach to what is real and speak in the tongues of Original Brilliance. This language is simple and immediately understandable. It defies the ridicule of modernity and pundit talk. It is free of fad phrases. It is free of attempts to sell and convince. As I liberate myself from false conceptualizations of bonding and attachment, I simultaneously liberate myself to speak a language that I claim as my own. The fear of uttering unacceptable or questionable phrases evaporates. I am all about craft and refinement of expression, but through the prism of my language group, the language group of those securely bonded with the living earth and the unseen worlds, the language of the matriverse.(To be Continued) https://www.magoism.net/2024/08/meet-mago-contributor-stephanie-mines-ph-d/
(Essay 1) Two poems of Louisa Calio: Between Tradition and Innovation by Cinzia Marongiu

Louisa Calio & Rachel Ellner in performance [Author’s Note: This except is part of my dissertation “Race and ethnicity in the works of Kym Ragusa, Mary Bucci Bush and Louisa Calio” forthcoming in winter 2021.] Part one: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman (1970) Louisa Calio is an eclectic artist – a poet, a teacher, a multimedia performer, a writer, a photographer, a painter and more. Her work is the very embodiments of a curious creolization of the Italian American society, it is a cultural mosaic that reflects her life and our times. Even a quick look at her biography demonstrates the spectrum of her heterogeneous background. Born in Brooklyn in 1947, Calio has traveled extensively through the African continent and currently divides her time between U.S., Italy, and Jamaica. She has, therefore, in effect, lived all her life crossing boundaries, physically and culturally, as she herself recently asserted, “my soul seemed to come from many places, and many of them had both a rich history and a history of female”.[1] Calio’s life mirrors this ethnic collage. Certainly, proud of her Italian American roots, Louisa Calio embraces a wider variety of cultural and literary background than is customary in the Italian American tradition. In verses of remarkable sensitivity, the poet looks at human connections and uproots various fixities assigned to the notion of italianità. As shifting and as various the huge cultural heritage of Sicily, United States and Jamaica – respectively, the land of her ancestors, the land where she was born, and the place where she has been living since the eighties – her body of work displays “a sensitivity to multi-culturalism and ethnic diversity that is sometimes lacking in Italian-American culture,” as Stanislao Pugliese put it (http://lideamagazine.com/poetry-is-a-way-of-knowing-exclusive-interview-with-author-louisa-calio/ visited on 5/15/2021). Her Italian American background interweaves with the multiple cultural landscapes she inhabits providing her reader with a “many-sided” reflection for world and society in her poems. Too tight in the shoes of an Italian American, Louisa Calio has been always engaged in the effort to locate her Sicilian roots within a widervision. Ambitious, stylized, and meticulously researched, Calio’s poetic gravitates toward Mediterranean’s ancient cultures enshrined in classical, biblical, and pre-Christian tradition, offer an alternative viewpoint that unsettles the orthodox topography of the world – that over the centuries has come to impose its definitions of ethics, race, and space –and opens up new ways of seeing Italian American identity and suggests the idea of overlapping territories and intertwined histories where people share mutual origins and a similar destiny. It is precisely along this path this article wants to go, discussing two early poems by Louisa Calio, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman and Angie’s Hands Have Seasoning, which highlight her innovative and traditional aspects. In his chronological survey of “Italian American Poets” (D’Acierno 1999, 266-88), Stephen Sartarelli evidences how, despite the stylistic diversity, Italian-American poets make use of certain themes that, whether for inspiration and tradition, are typically Italian American, such as family, religion and immigration. Similarly, Dana Gioia in his essay “What is Italian American Poetry?” (Ciongoli and Parini 1997) explains that the Italian-American poets of the first and second generations “have used the immigrant experience as their imaginative point of departure,” but, Gioia continues, the new generation of Italian Americans find their “cultural links with the old country more tenuous. As the Little Italies disappear and families move to the suburbs, the descendants of Italian immigrants gradually lose their original ethnic identity in mainstream America. Values change subtly but significantly” Gioia adds (167-68). Still Gioia also notices a persistent characteristic that distinguishes poets of Italian descent, namely an eternal struggle between tradition and revolution. A conflicting impulse that pushes on the one hand “to preserve the richness of the past, [on] the other to reject it in search of the new” (170). This impulse to preserve and transform is evident in Louisa Calio’s poetry, which often reinvents tradition in contemporary form. But what kind of innovation does Louisa Calio bring to poetry? What are some of the defining characteristics of her work? What are the ongoing effects of Italian heritage in her poetry? Innovation in poetry means adding something new to it, such as a new subject, a new form, a new message. Shall we consider innovative a poet that uses traditional subject-matter in a non-traditional form? The answer to these questions shall follow. The first part of this essay frames the position of female writers in the Italian American community during Calio’s age era, then it considers Calio’s early work and her first book of poetry In The Eye of Balance. All women writers affected by societal strictures and literary patriarchal dictatorship are, to varying degrees, mavericks and inventive, even when their works are conservative. For an Italian American woman like Louisa Calio, for example, just choosing a literary career was revolutionary. First, because in male-dominant society of her youth and, the Italian American household, women were confined to very precise roles which were hard to change; and second, women weren’t supposed to aspire to higher education or intellectual position, since they were often educated only for specific functions of becoming fine housewives. In this context, it was unlikely for a woman to pursue her writing vocation (Giunta 2002). If on the one hand, in the Italian community, there was a high regard for women, and woman’s role was recognized as life-sustaining by being “the central pivot of family life was crucial because of the importance of the family over the institutions” (D’Acierno 1999, 211), on the other hand, women couldn’t escape their prescribed role. Since early age, they were taught to be good wives and good mothers (Gambino 1974), as Helen Barolini describes in Chiaro Scuro (1999) “the Italian American woman comes out of a family-oriented, patriarchal view of the world in which women stayed home or, at most, worked alongside their immediate male kin, but where always dependent upon a male – their father, brother, husband, and, eventually, if widowed, …
(Radio Interview) Nature-based spirituality with Hearth Moon Rising by Susun Weed

Susun Weed interviews Hearth Moon Rising, psychotherapist and teacher of magic. (Click here to view and listen to the interview) Hearth Moon Rising is a psychotherapist and a teacher of magic who lives and worships in the Adirondacks. She was initiated as a Dianic priestess in 1987 and ordained in the Fellowship of Isis in 1990. Hearth has taught classes about nature and magic in the American Southwest and in New York State for over two decades.Hearth seeks to help practitioners from a variety of disciplines integrate an understanding of the powers of the natural world into their magical practice. Hearth is particularly interested in the natural foundations that acclimate European-born traditions to American practice. Hearth Moon Rising is passionate about the power of magic in nature and is dedicated to helping others integrate their experience of the natural world into their spiritual practice. She was an organizer for the Tucson Women’s Spirituality Conference in 1990 and 1991 and is skilled in creating meaningful outdoor ceremonies for both large and intimate gatherings. Interviews with Hearth about the Craft have appeared in print and on public radio. Hearth’s spiritual approach is rooted in longstanding experience communing with the Goddess in wilderness settings. She lived in primitive conditions in the Sonora Desert for many years and has backpacked and circled extensively in Northern California. Since moving to the Adirondacks in 2000, she has continued hiking, circling and exploring, developing an intimate appreciation of the intense power rooted in this stunning place. Hearth Moon Rising is high priestess of The Yellow Birch School of Magic where she seeks to aid priestessesand priests of many traditions in applying nature-based knowledge to their spiritual practice. The School is based on shamanic traditions of Mediterranean and Western European origin, but draws extensively on polytheistic beliefs around the world, ancient and modern. Both solitary and group affiliated practitioners are welcome. The School does not promote rural living or deny the validity of urban-based practice, but views an understanding of the natural world as integral to magical traditions. While feminist in orientation, the School recognizes deities of all genders. She hopes you will join her in tapping into the exciting core foundations of magic. ◊ Susun Weed, guest host of womensradio.com, is the author of the acclaimed best seller Wise Woman Herbal Series. Her health books for women offer Wise Woman approaches to common women’s ailments including menopause, childbearing, fertility, cancer prevention and treatment, breast health, and reproductive health. Susun Weed offers women safe and easy solutions to common problems, visit her atwww.susunweed.com for 3000 pages of Wise Woman wisdom and wit. Join the Wise Woman Ezine for articles on women’s personal empowerment and wellbeing. Go to the forum for support and networking with likeminded women. Listen to Susun Weed’s engaging weekly radio show at wisewomanradio.com. Read women’s e-news, view women’s art, read and post poems at our weblog wisewomantradition.com. Browse thousands of articles, recipes, and more at wisewomanweb.com. All free all the time, knowledge is empowerment, herbal medicine is people’s medicine, join us now.

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

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

“Ma” in “Mago” and “Ma-Gaia” Mother Goddess, ca.7250-6700 BCE, Catal Huyuk Turkey [Conversation between Carol P. Christ, Ph.D. and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.] Carol P. Christ (CPC): Below is culled from “Gaia” in Wikipedia: The Greek word γαῖα (transliterated as gaia) is a collateral form of γῆ (gē, Doric γᾶ ga and probably δᾶ da) meaning Earth, a word of uncertain origin. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin. In Mycenean Greek Ma-ka (trans. as Ma-ga, “Mother Gaia”) also contains the root ga-. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (HHH): “Mago” and “Goma” are closely linked. Gom or Goma means the bear and Magoist shaman queen of the late fourth millennium BCE. She is also related with the Big Bear constellation. “Go” is used as a modifier referring to Mago or the Goddess in various texts of East Asia. “Mago” is related with “magi,” whose singular form is “magus” or “magos.” Will have to check for more details and the source. CPC: My intuition is that “ma” and “na” are baby talk for mother. In other words, preceding any language. Mycenean is IE language, “Pre-Greek” is not IE. CPC: Below is “Mother” from Wikipedia: Synonyms and translations The proverbial “first word” of an infant often sounds like “ma” or “mama”. This strong association of that sound with “mother” has persisted in nearly every language on earth, countering the natural localization of language. Familiar or colloquial terms for mother in English are: Aama, Mata used in Nepal Mom and mommy are used in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Philippines, India and parts of the West Midlands including Birmingham in the United Kingdom. Mum and mummy are used in the United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Hong Kong and Ireland. Charles, Prince of Wales publicly addressed his mother Queen Elizabeth II as “Mummy” on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee. Ma, mam, and mammy are used in Netherlands, Ireland, the Northern areas of the United Kingdom, and Wales; it is also used in some areas of the United States. In many other languages, similar pronunciations apply: Maa, aai, amma, and mata are used in languages of India like Assamese, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu etc. Mamá, mama, ma, and mami in Spanish Mama in Polish, German, Russian and Slovak Māma (妈妈/媽媽) in Chinese Máma in Czech and in Ukrainian Maman in French and Persian Ma, mama in Indonesian Mamaí, mam in Irish Mamma in Italian, Icelandic, Latvian and Swedish Māman or mādar in Persian Mamãe or mãe in Portuguese Mā̃ (ਮਾਂ) in Punjabi Mama in Swahili Em (אם) in Hebrew A’ma (ܐܡܐ) in Aramaic Má or mẹ in Vietnamese Mam in Welsh Eomma (엄마, pronounced [ʌmma]) in Korean In many south Asian cultures and the Middle East, the mother is known as amma, oma, ammi or “ummi”, or variations thereof. Many times, these terms denote affection or a maternal role in a child’s life. HHH: The name for Goddess seems as ancient as the language itself. [“Ma” being the first intentional word to be spoken by a baby.] Helen Hye-Sook Hwang: Scholars and mythologists agree that “ma” means both one’s mother and the Goddess, I quoted it in my dissertation written in 2004. Judy E Foster: Brilliant discussion, Helen and Carol! So many revelations… hard to keep up! But do continue, its fascinating – makes so much sense. (To be continued)Join the discussion of this and other topics in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group.
(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.

(Essay) Summer Solstice/Litha Within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 9 of the author’s book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. The dates for Summer Solstice/Litha are: Southern Hemisphere – December 20-23 Northern Hemisphere – June 20-23 A Summer Solstice altar The ‘moment of grace’[i] that is Summer Solstice, marks the stillpoint in the height of Summer, when Earth’s tilt causes the Sun to begin its ‘decline’: that is, its movement back to the North in the Southern Hemisphere, and back to the South in the Northern Hemisphere. This Seasonal Moment is polar opposite Winter Solstice when it is light that is “born,” as it may be expressed. At the peak of Summer, in the bliss of expansion, it is the dark that is “born.” Insofar as Winter Solstice is about birth, then Summer Solstice is about death. It is a celebration of profound mystical significance, that may be confronting in a culture where the dark is not valued for its creative telios. Summer Solstice is a time for celebrating our realized Creativity, whose birth we celebrated at Winter Solstice, whose tenderness we dedicated ourselves to at Imbolc/Early Spring, whose certain presence and power we rejoiced in at Spring Equinox, whose fertile passion we danced for at Beltaine/High Spring. Now, at this seasonal point, as we celebrate light’s fullness, we celebrate our own ripening – like that of the wheat, and the fruit. And like the wheat and the fruit, it is the Sun that is in us, that has ripened: the Sun is the Source of our every thought and action. The analogy is complete in that our everyday creativity – our everyday actions, and we, ultimately, are also “Food for the Universe”[ii] … it is all how we feed the Universe. flowers to flames – everyday creativity consumed Like the Sun and the wheat and the fruit, we find the purpose of our Creativity in the releasing of it; just as our breath must be released for its purpose of life. The symbolism used to express this in ceremony has been the giving of a full rose/flower to the flames.[iii] We, and our everyday creativity, are the “Bread of Life,” as it may be expressed; just as many other indigenous traditions recognize everyday acts as evoking “the ongoing creation of the cosmos,”[iv] so in this tradition, Summer is the time for particularly celebrating that. Our everyday lives, moment to moment, are built on the fabric of the work/creativity of the ancestors and ancient creatures that went before us; and so the future is built on ours. We are constantly consuming the work and creativity of others and we are constantly being consumed. The question may be asked: “Who are you feeding?,”[v] and consideration given to whether you are happy with the answer. It is the Sun that is in you. See how you shine. Summer Solstice is a celebration of the Fullness of the Mother – in ourselves, in Earth, in the Cosmos. We are the Sun, coming to fullness in its creative engagement with Earth. We affirm this in ceremony with: “It is the Sun that is in you, see how you shine.” It is the ripening of Her manifestation, which fulfills itself in the awesome act of dissolution. This is the mystery of the Moment. Brian Swimme has described this mystery of radiance as a Power of the Universe, as Radiance: the shining forth of the self is at the same time a give-away, a decline of the self – just as the Sun is constantly giving itself away. This Solstice Moment of Summer is a celebration of communion, the feast of life – which is for the enjoying, not for the holding onto. Summer and Winter Solstices are Gateways – between the manifest and the manifesting, and Summer Solstice is a Union/Re-Union of these, a kind of meeting with the deeper self. Winter Solstice may be more of a separation, though it is usually experienced as joyful, because it is also a meeting, as the new is being brought forth. The interchange of Summer Solstice may be experienced as an entry into loss – the Cosmological Dynamic of Loss, as manifestation passes. Beltaine, Summer Solstice and Lammas – the next Seasonal Moment, may be felt as the three faces of Cosmogenesis in the movement towards entropy.[vi] The light part of the annual cycle of Earth around Sun is a celebration of the Young One/Virgin quality of Cosmogenesis, with Her face gradually changing to the Mother/Communion quality; and through the Autumn, the dark part of the annual cycle, it is a celebration of the Old One/Crone quality, whose face will gradually change also, back to the Mother/Communion. They are never separate.In this cosmology, desire for full creativity has been celebrated as the allurement of the Cosmos, and being experienced as gravity, as relationship with Earth, our place of being, how She holds us. At both Solstices there is celebration of deep engagement, communion. REFERENCES: Livingstone, Glenys. A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Girl God Books: Bergen, Norway, 2023. Spretnak, Charlene. States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993. Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. New York: Harper and Row, 1999. Swimme, Brian. Canticle to the Cosmos. DVD series. CA: Tides Foundation, 1990. NOTES: [i] As Thomas Berry named the Seasonal transitions. [ii] Swimme uses this expression in Canticle to the Cosmos, video 5 “Destruction and Loss.” [iii] This is based on the traditional Litha (Summer Solstice) rite described by Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, 206. [iv] Spretnak, States of Grace, 95. [v] As Swimme asks in Canticle to the Cosmos, video 5 “Destruction and Loss.” [vi] Just as Samhain, Winter Solstice and Imbolc may be felt as the three faces of Cosmogenesis in the movement towards toward form – syntropy.
(Prose) Desire: the Wheel of Her Creativity by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from the concluding chapter (Chapter 8) of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Place of Being is a passionate place, where desire draws forth what is sought, co-creates what is needed[1]; within a con-text – a story – where love of self, other and all-that-is are indistinguishable … they are nested within each other and so is the passion for being. I begin to understand desire afresh: this renewed understanding has been an emergent property of the religious practice of seasonal celebration: that is, the religious practice of the ceremonial celebration of Her Creativity. It has been said She is “that which is attained at the end of desire[2].” Within the context of ceremonial engagement and inner search for Her, I begin to realize how desire turns the Wheel. As the light part of the cycle waxes from Early Spring, form/life builds in desire. At Beltaine/High Spring, desire runs wild, at Summer Solstice, it peaks into creative fullness, union … and breaks open at that interchange into the dark part of the cycle – the dissolution of Lammas/ Late Summer. She becomes the Dark One, who receives us back – the end of desire. It has been a popular notion in the Christian West, that the beautiful virgin lures men (sic) to their destruction, and as I perceive the Wheel, it is indeed Virgin who moves in Her wild delight towards entropy/dissolution; however in a cosmology that is in relationship with the dark, this is not perceived as a negative thing. Also, in this cosmology, there is the balancing factor of the Crone’s movement towards new life, in the conceiving dark space of Samhain/Deep Autumn – a dynamic and story that has not been a popular notion in recent millennia. Desire seems not so much a grasping, as a receiving, an ability or capacity to open and dissolve. I think of an image of an open bowl as a signifier of the Virgin’s gift. The increasing light is received, and causes the opening, which will become a dispersal of form – entropy, if you like: this is Beltaine/High Spring – the Desire[3]that is celebrated is a movement towards dis-solution … that is its direction. In contrast, and in balance, Samhain/Deep Autumn celebrates re-solution, which is a movement towards form – it is a materializing gathering into form, as the increasing darkness is received. It seems it is darkness that creates form, as it gathers into itself – as many ancient stories say, and it is light that creates dispersal. And yet I see that the opposite is true also. I think of how there is desire for this work that I have done, for whatever one does – it is then already being received. Desire is receiving. What if I wrote this, and it was not received or welcomed in some way. But the desire for it is already there, and perhaps the desire made it manifest. Perhaps the desire draws forth manifestation, even at Winter Solstice, even at Imbolc/Early Spring, as we head towards Beltaine – it is desire that is drawing that forth, drawing that process around. Desire is already receiving; it is open. Its receptivity draws forth the manifestation. And then the manifestation climaxes at Summer and dissolves into the manifesting, which is perhaps where the desire is coming from – the desire is in the darkness, in the dark’s receptivity[4]. It becomes very active at the time of Beltaine, it lures the differentiated beings back into Her. So the lure at Beltaine is the luring of differentiated beings into a Holy Lust, into a froth and dance of life, whereupon they dissolve ecstatically back into Her – She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire.” And in the dissolution, we sink deeper into that, and begin again. All the time, it is Desire that is luring the manifest into the manifesting, and the manifesting into the manifest. Passion is the glue, the underlying dynamic that streams through it all – through the light and the dark, through the creative triplicities of Virgin-Mother-Crone, of Differentiation-Communion-Autopoeisis[5]. Passion/Desire then is worthy of much more contemplation. If desire/allurement is the same cosmic dynamic as gravity, as cosmologist Brian Swimme suggests[6], then desire like gravity is the dynamic that links/holds us to our Place, to “that which is”, as philosopher Linda Holler describes the effect of gravity[7]. Held in relationship by desire/allurement we lose abstraction and artificial boundaries, and “become embodied and grow heavy with the weight of the earth[8].” We then know that “being is being-in relation-to”[9]. Holler says that when we think with the weight of Earth, space becomes “thick” as this “relational presence … turns notes into melodies, words into phrases with meaning, and space into vital forms with color and content, (and) also holds the knower in the world[10].”Thus, I at last become a particular, a subject, a felt being in the world – a Place laden with content, sentient: continuous with other and all-that-is. Notes: [1]“…as surely as the chlorophyll molecule was co-created by Earth and Sun, as Earth reached for nourishment; as surely as the ear was co-created by subject and sound, as the subject reached for an unknown signal.” As I have written in PaGaian Cosmology, p. 248. [2]Doreen Valiente, The Charge of the Goddessas referred to in Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p.102-103. [3]I capitalize here, for it is a holy quality. [4]Perhaps the popular cultural association of the darkness/black lingerie etc. with erotica is an expression/”memory” of this deep truth. [5]These are the three qualities of Cosmogenesis, as referred to in PaGaian Cosmology, Chapter 4, “Cosmogenesis and the Female Metaphor”: https://pagaian.org/book/chapter-4/ [6]Brian Swimme, The Universe is a Green Dragon, p.43. [7]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”, Hypatia, Vol. 5 No. 1, p.2. [8]Linda Holler, “Thinking with the Weight of the Earth: Feminist Contributions to an Epistemology of Concreteness”,Hypatia, Vol. …
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.
(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.
(Poem) Samhain by Annie Finch

In the season leaves should love, since it gives them leave to move through the wind, towards the ground they were watching while they hung, legend says there is a seam stitching darkness like a name. Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days, till they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor. I turn my hand and feel a touch move with me, and when I brush my young mind across another, I have met my mother’s mother. Sure as footsteps in my waiting self, I find her, and she brings arms that hold answers for me, intimate, waiting, bounty: “Carry me.” She leaves this trail through a shudder of the veil, and leaves, like amber where she stays, a gift for her perpetual gaze. From Eve (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2010) (Meet Mago Contributor) Annie Finch
Lammas/Late Summer in PaGaian tradition By Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 5 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Traditionally the dates for this Seasonal Moment are: Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd however the actual astronomical date varies. See archaeoastronomy.com for the actual moment. Lammas table/altar Lammas, as it is often called[1], is the meridian point of the first dark quarter of the year, between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox; it is after the light phase has peaked and is complete, and as such, I choose it as a special celebration of the Crone/Old One. Within the Celtic tradition, it is the wake of Lugh, the Sun King, and it is the Crone that reaps him. But within earlier Goddess traditions, all the transformations were Hers[2]; and the community reflected on the reality that the Mother aspect of the Goddess, having come to fruition, from Lammas on would enter the Earth and slowly become transformed into the Old Woman-Hecate-Cailleach aspect …[3] I dedicate Lammas to the face of the Old One, just as Imbolc, its polar opposite on the Wheel in Old European tradition, is dedicated to the Virgin/Maiden face. The Old One, the Dark and Shining One, has been much maligned, so to celebrate Her can be more of a challenge in our present cultural context. Lammas may be an opportunity to re-aquaint ourselves with the Crone in her purity, to fall in love with Her again. I state the purpose of the seasonal gathering thus: This is the season of the waxing dark. The seed of darkness born at the Summer Solstice now grows … the dark part of the days grows visibly longer. Earth’s tilt is taking us back away from the Sun. This is the time when we celebrate dissolution; each unique self lets go, to the Darkness. It is the time of ending, when the grain, the fruit, is harvested. We meet to remember the Dark Sentience, the All-Nourishing Abyss, She from whom we arise, in whom we are immersed, and to whom we return. This is the time of the Crone, the Wise Dark One, who accepts and receives our harvest, who grinds the grain, who dismantles what has gone before. She is Hecate, Lillith, Medusa, Kali, Erishkagel,Chamunda, Coatlique – Divine Compassionate One, She Who Creates the Space to Be. We meet to accept Her transformative embrace, trusting Her knowing, which is beyond all knowledge. Lammas is the seasonal moment for recognizing that we dissolve into the “night” of the Larger Organism of whom we are part – Gaia. It is She who is immortal, from whom we arise, and into whom we dissolve. This celebration is a development of what was born in the transition of Summer Solstice; the dark sentient Source of Creativity is honoured. The autopoietic space in us recognizes Her, is comforted by Her, desires Her self-transcendence and self-dissolution; Lammas is an opportunity to be with our organism’s love of Larger Self – this Native Place. We have been taught to fear Her, but at this Seasonal Moment we may remember that She is the compassionate One, deeply committed to transformation, which is actually innate to us. Whereas at Imbolc/Early Spring, we shone forth as individual, multiforms of Her; at Lammas, we small individual selves remember that we are She and dissolve back into Her. We are the Promise of Lifeas was affirmed at Imbolc, but we are the Promise of Her- it is not ours to hold. We identify as the sacred Harvest at Lammas; our individual harvest isHer Harvest. We are the process itself – we are Gaia’s Process. Wedo not breathe (though of course we do), we borrow the breath, for a while. It is like a relay: we pick the breath up, create what we do during our time with it, and pass it on. The harvest we reap in our individual lives is important, andit is for us only short term; it belongs to the Cosmos in the long term. Lammas is a time for “making sacred” – as “sacrifice” may be understood; we may “make sacred” ourselves. As Imbolc was a time for dedication, so is Lammas. This is the wisdom of the phase of the Old One. She is the aspect that finds the “yes” to letting go, to loving the Larger Self, beyond all knowledge, and steps into the power of the Abyss; encouraged and nourished by the harvest, She will gradually move into the balance of Autumn Equinox/Mabon, the next Sesaonal Moment on the year’s cycle. References: Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess.Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990. Gray, Susan. The Woman’s Book of Runes.New York: Barnes and Noble, 1999. Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. NE: iUniverse, 2005. McLean, Adam. The Four Fire Festivals. Edinburgh: Megalithic Research Publications, 1979. Notes: [1]See note 3. [2]Susan Gray, The Woman’s Book of Runes,p. 18. This is also to say that the transformations are within each being, not elsewhere, that is the “sacrifice” is not carried out by another external to the self, as could be and have been interpreted from stories of Lugh or Jesus. [3]Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, The Year of the Goddess, p.143, quoting Adam McLean, Fire Festivals,p.20-22. Another indication of the earlier tradition beneath “Lughnasad” is the other name for it in Ireland of “Tailltean Games”. Taillte was said to be Lugh’s foster-mother, and it was her death that was being commemmorated (Mike Nichols, “The First Harvest”, Pagan Alliance Newsletter NSW Australia). The name “Tailtunasad” has been suggested for this Seasonal Moment, by Cheryl Straffon editor of Goddess Alive! I prefer the name of Lammas, although some think it is a Christian term: however some sources say that Lammas means “feast of the bread” which is how I have understood it, and surely such a feast pre-dates Christianity. It is my opinion that the incoming Christians preferred “Lammas” to “Lughnasad”: the term itself is not Christian in origin. The evolution of all these things is complex, and we may evolve them further with our careful thoughts and experience.

(2015 Mago Pilgrimage) Neuk-do (Serpent Island) by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

I wanted to visit Neuk-do because of the Mago story told in the region. Its name Neuk-do, which means the Serpent Island (구렁이섬), whispers a deep memory of the gynocentric past. However, people today seem to be oblivious to this. Our guides did not inform us of the meaning of the island’s name. I relished being surrounded by an air of mystery about the island during our visit. Also I was drawn to Neuk-do because it is under the administration of Sacheon City. The place-name, Sacheon (泗川 or 四川 Xichuan in Chinese), is no unknown place in the mytho-history of Magoism. Like many other place-names, “Sacheon,” recurs in both present-day China and the Korean peninsula. They, although written in slightly different characters, concern Magoism (stories, place-names, or topographies). In the case of the Chinese “Sacheon,” Magoism is systematically suppressed and replaced by Daoism. Today China boasts of Xichuan Province as a birthplace of Daoism. Mt. Qingcheng (青城山) in Dujiangyan City, is known as one of the ancient Daoist centers. Our data are, albeit often sketchy, ample to indicate the importance of Mt. Qingcheng in Daoist history. It is a place wherein Zhangling (34-156) or Zhang Daoling, the founder of Tianshi (天師 Celestial Master) Daoism, founded the doctrine of Daoism and died. Yellow Emperor, the pre-dynastic hero of the third millennium BCE, is commemorated. The Temple of Eternal Dao(常道觀 Changdao Guan) located in Mt. Qingcheng is noted for its oldest hall, the Shrine of the Yellow Emperor, built during the Sui dynasty (605-618).[i] Also the place-name, Dujiangyan(都江堰), reflects the ancient irrigation system originally constructed in circa 256 BCE during the Qin dynasty.[ii] Alongside a number of Daoist temples extant today, there are Magoist place-names and topographies, Magu Cave (麻姑洞 Magu-dong) and Magu Lake (麻姑池 Magu-chi) also known as Heavenly Lake (天池). Located adjacent to Shangqing Palace (上清宫 Supreme Clarity Palace), Magu Lake has a story that Magu collected water for her alchemical practice.[iii] “Mago” is alternatively used with “Cheon (Heaven, 天 Tian in Chinese),” as is in “Heavenly Lake.” As in other places, such Magoist place-names in Xichuan have survived Chinese mytho-historiography that has obliterated pre-Chinese Magoism and replaced it with Daoism. Note that Magu is never articulated as the Creatrix in Chinese historiography, whereas her supremacy is adumbrated in Chinese folklore and place-names. Chinese mytho-historiography has paid the price for its matricide: Its origin will never be explained. To say that Xichuan is a Daoist birthplace is a misleading. Xichuan is a pre-Daoist center of Magoism whose origin possibly dates to the time of Danguk (3898-2333 BCE). From the Korean sources, fortunately, we are able to assess that Xichuan was a place of significance from pre-Dangun times. According to the Handan Gogi (Archaic Histories of Han and Dan), Daeeup extant today near Mt. Qingcheng, Xichuan Province, was a place wherein Dangun began her career. The Handan Gogi reads, “Dangun began her career in Daeeup (大邑 Great Town, Dayi in Chinese). All people feared and obeyed her virtue as a divine being. When she was at age 14 in the year of Gapjin (2357 BCE), Sovereign Ungssi, upon hearing her divine virtue, appointed her as Biwang (Auxiliary Ruler) to administrate Daeeup (Great Town) [Female connoting words are mine].”[iv] Thomas Yoon points out that Daeeup is not a fictitious place-name but an actual site extant today in Chengdu, Sichuan.[v] Mr. Kigap Kang, former politician but now an orchard owner who experiments with nature-based farming for fruit trees in Sacheon City, arranged our meeting with the Director of the Sacheon City Cultural Center. The Director alongside his companion met us in his office. They told us Neuk-do’s stories of Mago Halmae. Then, we drove to the road off the shore where we could look out across the stepping stones in the sea that were said to have been placed by Mago Halmae. The tide was high and we could see only the tips of rocks. I could see the island across the adjoining water. Neuk-do had unusual topography as it was an elongated island conjoined by two mountainous isles. From such topography the name, the Serpent Island, may have derived. Houses are populated in the conjoined area. We drove to Neuk-do via a modern bridge with the hope of running into someone who could guide us to the site of Mago stepping stones. A native of Neuk-do, our guide-to-be, happened to be right there, when we got off the car. Mr. Gyeung Jang, a 61 year-old fisherman and native of Neuk-do, showed us the site in the sea where Mago is said to have placed stepping stones. Due to the high tide, we could only see the top parts of Mago’s stepping stones upper edge over the waterline. He also led us to peeking Mago Halmi’s washing laundry rock and estimated its size to be about two meters high at the low tide. He added, Mago Halmi was so tall and giant that she needed a tall rock. The motif that the giant Mago Hami carried a boulder to construct standing stones or dolmens and the story of Mago’s laundry rock commonly recur in other regions. During dinner at a seafood restaurant in Neuk-do, our conversations grew. Mr. Jang informed us of the fact that the whole island of Neuk-do is designated as a cultural and notable site by the province and the state. Its archaeological unearthing began in the early 1980s and has brought out numerous multi-period findings (about 13,000 items) ranging from the Neolithic to the early Iron Age. The unearthed include shell mounds, house sites, human and animal burials, pottery, and daggers that originated from not only Korea but also Yayoi Japan and Nangnang China. As such, Neuk-do has come to be known as a site of ancient transnational maritime centers in East Asia.[6] As I write this, the Mago story turns out to have several versions. I will share three versions here. In one account, Mago Halmae, so tall and giant, walked around the sea. She brought rocks …
(Poem) Knowing Mago Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Author’s Note: This poem was an offshoot of an essay on Magoist Calendar and Nine Numerology, to be included in the forthcoming anthology, Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2017). I thank Genevieve Vaughan, Danica Anderson, and Harriet Ann Ellenbeger who have given me feedback to the article and inspiration to this poem.] Mago Calendar is the umbilical cord of the Great Goddess, the umbilical cord that re-members the Beginning Story of us all terrestrial beings, that enables the one and many songs/dances of the Earth, and that nourishes the human world to sing the chorus to the cosmic lullaby. Mago Calendar is the grand wheel of the Great Mother, the grand wheel that spirals the inter-cosmic orbit of truth, goodness, and beauty, that carries all earthlings to the fullest becoming, and that builds bridges into the inter-protonic galaxies. Mago Calendar is the everlasting blessing of the Nine Mago Creatrix, the everlasting blessing that scripts the ecstasy of Heavenly Numerology, that charts the Earth’s metamorphosis from the infinite to the physical, and that unfolds the Reality of the Mago Time, WE/HERE/NOW. (Meet Mago Contributor) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang.
(Art) Nurture by Anna Tzanova

to feed and protect; to support and encourage; to foster and bring up; to train and educate; to develop and nourish; to care for and cherish… Such a multifaceted and meaningful word! It represents to me an essential quality of the Goddess. An aspect I strive to cultivate within, embody, and express externally. I use it to guide all my actions by asking myself, “Is this nurturing?”; “By doing this, what am I nurturing?” Very often, minds have been conditioned to counterpose nature and nurture, creating not only a divide, but also a controversy. The intrinsic feature of Nature is to nurture. The womb not only births, but nurtures. Nothing can be sustained or achieved without nurture. Nature teaches us the lesson of acceptance. Nurture – the lesson of patience. It also provides the opportunity and freedom of choice. Together, they intertwine and weave the entire Creation. What are you nurturing today? From She Rises: How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality? Volume 2 (forthcoming, 2016). See (Meet Mago Contributror) Anna Tzanova.