May 13, 2024May 9, 2024 Mago Work1 Comment

Deep Time Big Dream by Sara Wright

I am standing on top of a mountain looking over a landscape of unspeakable wild natural beauty that stretches as far as I can see. This is the ‘long view’ Read More …

May 11, 2024May 8, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Meet Mago Contributor) Dale Allen

Dale Allen has for 25 years shared the healing energy of the sacred feminine through her work: In Our Right Minds, which has been widely acclaimed at universities, conferences, corporations,theaters, Read More …

May 10, 2024April 19, 2024 Carolyn BoydLeave a comment

(Essay) The Ecstatic Creation of the Flower Goddesses by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Faced with a world without animals, the goddess Asintma of the Athabascans of western Canada wove a blanket of fireweed and spread it on the ground, then began to sing, Read More …

May 9, 2024April 29, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(S/HE V3 N1 Book Review) Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Helen Benigni (Eds), Celebrating Intercosmic Kinship of the Goddess, Reviewed by Kaarina Kailo

[This is from S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (V3 N1, 2023) Its Ebook edition and paperback are available at Mago Bookstore.] Celebrating Intercosmic Kinship of the Goddess edited Read More …

May 8, 2024April 27, 2024 Mago Work1 Comment

(Poem) Wild Women of the Woods by Arlene Bailey

https://www.magoism.net/2020/04/meet-mago-contributor-arlene-bailey/

May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 Mago Work1 Comment

(Poem) The Mother Lode of Memory by Mary Saracino

From the deep vein of memory my blood sings your name my bones recall the seed from which all things began planted in the ochre chambers of caves the curvaceous Read More …

May 6, 2024March 1, 2024 RTMeditorsKG3 Comments

Entering the Crone Phase – Thanksgiving and Loss by Glenys Livingstone

As I write this, we are approaching the Season of Autumn Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere and the poetry of the Season as I understand it, matches my experience of Read More …

May 3, 2024April 29, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) reciting writing by Susan Hawthorne

Notes I am trying to work out how to write about unrecorded history. The best way in is through orature, mythic traditions. I’ve been thinking about orature for about forty Read More …

May 2, 2024April 26, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Art Essay) This Broken Wing: A Story of Love, Birds and Bones by Claire Dorey

How the Heavenly Goose, Sacred Metaphor for Mother’s Voice, Tumbled into Mass Graves and Brothels Weightless, She floats upon a cloud of feathers, soaring above an abyss between worlds: The Read More …

May 1, 2024May 1, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(Poem) Persephone by Mary Saracino

[Author’s Note: Originally published in TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Issue 6, September 2007, www.triviavoices.net.] She returns each spring to her mother’s wailing arms, hair unkempt after months beneath Earth’s layered Read More …

April 30, 2024April 30, 2024 Mago WorkLeave a comment

(S/HE V3 N1 Book Review) Barbara A. Mann & Kaarina Kailo’s The Woman Who Married the Bear, Goddesses, Reviewed by Vivien Gibbons

[This is from S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (V3 N1, 2023) Its Ebook edition and paperback are available at Mago Bookstore.] This book includes photos and drawings that Read More …

April 29, 2024April 27, 2024 Mago Work1 Comment

(S/HE V2 N1 Essay 10) The Ancient Korean Whale-Bell: An Encodement of Magoist Cetacean Soteriology by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[Editor’s Note: This essay to be posted as sequels is from the second volume of the S/HE journal. See S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (Volume 2 Number 1, Read More …

April 26, 2024April 25, 2024 Mago Work2 Comments

(Poem) A Prayer for Mother Earth by Mary Saracino

Hail Mother full of grace The Earth is full of beauty Blessed art thou among all beings And beloved is the fruit of thy womb Holy Earth, Mother Planet Pray Read More …

(Book Excerpt 3) “Placental Thinking: The Gift of Maternal Roots” by Nane Jordan

[This and the ensuing sequels are from a Chapter from Placenta Wit: Mother Stories Rituals, and Research, edited by Nané Jordan, Demeter Press, 2017, pp. 142-155.] PLACENTAL PRACTICES Attending to placentas and cords during and after birth was an outgrowth of the kinds of holistic midwifery care and grassroots homebirth practices that I learned from. Midwives and mothers were following body wisdom in allowing birth to unfold—reclaiming what I would now call “mother- or matricentric” healing traditions. During my experiences learning with midwives, we used to think and read about issues relating to how women’s knowledge had been lost or suppressed in Western societies over the ages—this included feminist readings about the historical impact of the European witch hunts on women’s social practices and wisdom (Spretnak) and about the violent colonial impact on Indigenous cultures (Shiva). Through the collective midwifery movement, a large amount of study, intuition, trust, love, and decolonizing attunement continues to be at work. So much of what we learned in those early midwifery years is flowing and flowering into mother- and baby-centred practices and uses of placentas—including not clamping or cutting the umbilical cord too soon and allowing it to stop pulsing, so all of the baby’s blood can transfuse from the placenta back into baby itself. When the cord is left on its own, the natural physiology of birth, developed over millennia, completes itself. Not cutting the umbilical also means keeping mother and baby together, where they can touch, smell, see, hear, and meet each other—the hormonal physiology of bonding is at work. Homebirth mothers often chose to bury their placentas. This might be done under a tree, in a yard, or in park, somewhere close to where the baby was born. Families and midwives have created rituals and ceremonies with the placenta, giving thanks for the gift of life in the new baby, and thanks to the Earth. The other use, which still shocks many people, is to prepare, cook and, feed the mother some placenta postbirth, just as many mammals do. Placentas are hormone and nutrient rich; they balance and mediate mothers’ physical and emotional wellbeing postbirth (Enning). During my midwife training, we taught ourselves the technique of drying the placenta to make capsules of its powder, which was before it was known as “placental encapsulation,” a practice that is now taking off across North America (Selander). Placenta capsules are understood to restore vitality and strength, and to support postpartum depression and/or have general therapeutic value during the long challenges of early mothering and beyond. Researchers have been investigating the regenerative properties of stem cells from placental blood for curing various diseases, making placentas a material of healing interest for medicine beyond the birth room (Parolini). Attending homebirths, I also began a practice of keeping a piece of the baby’s cord for mothers postbirth, as I would dry these in spiral shapes. The cord takes days or even weeks to dry out, and shrinks down in size. The umbilical cord is the original thread that ties us to the beginnings of life, an energetic metaphor that goes on long afterward. I have my own daughters’ cords and umbilical stumps, dried in this fashion, and have kept them in special pouches. I also learned of homebirth mothers who practised “lotus birth,” which means not cutting the cord at all. Lotus birth mothers keep the placenta with the baby intact for several days until the cord naturally dries up and falls away on its own. One must carefully wash, wrap, and care for the placenta in this case. It is thought to be physically and energetically gentle for the baby to keep the placenta until the cord releases itself (Lim). Another artful, creative practice has been the “placenta print,” which involves taking the afterbirth and some white paper, and directly printing the blood outlines of its mass onto the page. One makes a placenta print of each side, mother and baby. I love birth art for its many growing and evolving forms as creative expressions for mothers’ experiences and honouring of birth and life (Lin). (To be continued) (Meet Mago Contributor) Nane Jordan.
Mourn the Blockage of Matriversal Blessing by Alison Newvine

On September 7th, members of the Mago and Girl God Books communities gathered to share stories, poems and wisdom related to the themes of grief and the matriverse. Inspired by the Girl God Books anthology, Wounded Feminine: Grieving with Goddess, we explored topics of grief rituals, decolonizing attachment, generational trauma and blessings, and Magoist Cetacean Soteriology. This event was hosted by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang and Claire Dorey who served as presenters and discussants, and by Trista Hendren who was our moderator and sacred space-holder. Other presenters were Stephanie Mines, Jude Lally, Luna Anna, J.A. (Jilly) Burnett and myself. Click here for a full description of the presentations. Here is a glimpse at what our forum had to offer. There will be subsequent forums and similar events in the months to come so please stay tuned to join us in the future. https://www.magoism.net/2023/10/meet-mago-contributor-alison-newvine/
(Meet Mago Contributor) Lisa M. Christie

Lisa M. Christie is an adjunct lecturer and administrator in the Women’s Spirituality Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, specializing in spiritual ecofeminism, the study of psychic and spiritual experiences, and Goddess thealogy. She received her doctorate in philosophy and religion, with a concentration in Women’s Spirituality at the same institution. Known for her investigative research into women’s psycho-spiritual experiences and what they might tell us about the nature of reality, she has spoken at the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the Association of for the Study of Women and Mythology (ASWM), and Cherry Hill Seminary. Her driving passion is to to support the realization of Partnership culture in the West, through the promotion of spiritual ecofeminism and Goddess spirituality. Towards this end she is presently working on a book, Reality Unbound: A New Science Exploration of Psychic Experiences and the Conscious World in Which We Live. She writes a blog at LisaMChristie.com and a hosts the Facebook Group, Reality Unbound.
(Essay) The Mago Hedge School: Why Remember Mary Daly? by Helen Hye Sook Hwang

Prologue By writing this, I do not intend to defend Mary Daly’s position in any dispute. A controversial figure, Mary Daly never let go of her fight with those whom she thought on the other side of her feminist war. Like anyone else in history, Mary Daly belonged to her time and culture, and I leave her unresolved issues up to her. What I write here is my fond memory of her, whose feminist thought left an indelible mark on my being as well as humanity as a whole. Daly’s contribution remains to be reassessed from the fresh eye of new generations. In the meantime, I begin to speak for my part. Without Mary Daly’s thought, I would not have been in this place where I stand right now. It has empowered me to actualize my dreams to the fullest as a wo/man who was born and raised in Korea but had come from the One Home in origin. I first hear of the hedge school “Have you heard of the hedge school, Hye Sook?” asked Mary. “No, I haven’t heard of it,” I answered. This conversation took place during the conference called the Feminist Hullaballoo held in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2007. We met there and spent three days as chums. Mary was with another friend, Yvonne Johnson, so the three of us hung out together. It was a very special time for me – I felt as if I were wrapped up in the eye of the storm. (In fact, my life feels so.) At the conference, someone asked me how I came to be invited as a featured speaker. I was among such renowned feminist speakers as Sonia Johnson, Paula Gunn Allen, and Mary Daly herself. They felt like giants to me. I told her that Mary Daly invited me. Mary had asked me if I would like to go and speak at that conference. I did not have an inflated ego. I would not have been hurt if I were not chosen. But I said “Yes” without hesitation. At the time, it felt like another one of the many “outlandish” adventures that I had undertaken throughout my life. In retrospect, however, this was a very special “Yes” to the beginning of my life’s new phase. It was my debut as a radical feminist, so to speak – the first time I spoke to such a large number of radical feminists. Mary sat in the front row and listened to my talk. She nodded her head saying “It was great,” when I finished and came down to sit next to her. Mary was just getting to know my research on Mago in that year; that was what she was referring to. Nonetheless, what mattered to me was not how well I presented my research, but that I managed to do it! The jitters were over! I was returning Home and had just been baptized in public as a Wo/man, the whole being. [This talk was later published in Trivia: Voices of Feminism.] My two dreams When I accepted Mary’s invitation, I was thinking of my two dreams. I am a dream-listener. Or to be more accurate, my dreams have led me through. These dreams with regard to Mary Daly are in fact old; I dreamt them before my arrival in Claremont, California, in 1997. In the first dream, I was in the crowd when Mary spoke to a large audience. The venue was an open plaza and the stage was far away from where I was standing. Then, out of the blue, Mary called my name and asked me to come up to the podium. It sounded like a call to my soul. So I did. Then, she passed the microphone to me. I blacked out, not knowing what to say, and woke up. This dream told me what I lacked, a message to deliver to the world, which I did not have for some years. The second dream was a brief but sweet one. Mary and I were standing in an old-style classroom as co-teachers. The dynamic between us was intimate and enjoyable. Honored and proud, I felt in the presence of my old friends. The classroom was a dream-like space within a dream, as if we were in a time machine! More than two decades have passed since I had those dreams, and now I see that they were indeed self-fulfilling dreams. The first dream was fulfilled through the event of my speech to the Feminist Hullaballoo conference. By then, it was clear that I was going to speak about the topic of Mago, which I had encountered for my Ph.D. dissertation. It was the topic that I had searched for without knowing and I found it. Now I see that it found me! It is the tradition of my ancestors that has beckoned me to come Home. In Mago, I found an anciently originated gynocnetric reality, which encompasses everyone regardless and named it Magoism. Mary and I meet in person The first time I met her in person was in early April of 1999, in Claremont, California. I had been in contact with Mary Daly for about four years before then. We had spoken over the telephone, faxed, and snail-mailed across the Pacific Ocean while I was living in Korea from 1994 to 1997. Mary was invited to speak by the committee of Claremont Colleges programs including the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Claremont Graduate University, the program I was studying in. In fact, that was the program that Mary had suggested I apply for, and she had written a recommendation letter on my behalf. My first meeting with her is imprinted on my soul, and it feels as fresh as ever. It was an unusually cold spring day in Claremont. It even sprinkled some rain. She was staying at the Claremont Inn, only a couple of blocks away from my dormitory apartment. She had phoned me the day before her arrival. She called me …
(Book Excerpt 6) Discovering the Gift Paradigm by Genevieve Vaughan

Categorizing Psychological competition for dominance can take the place of physical competition. Categorizing others as inferior replays the gender distinction over and over, placing some people who are usually also themselves the categorizers, in a ‘superior’ category to which those in ‘inferior’ categories must give both materially and psychologically. At the same time the positive gift giving and receiving that is actually continually being done in material and linguistic communication is unrecognized as such and disparaged – or over valued and made unreachable for ordinary people. In its place we have neuter and neutral ‘objective’ categories which reflect the neutral non giving market categories: exchange value, production, distribution (through exchange) consumption, supply and demand, price, monetized labor, commodities, money, capital, all of which are constructed on the back of the gift economy. The logic of categorization, undergirded by the selection process of the market, determines the kinds of things to which value will be given, and the degree of visibility they will have, effectively leaving out gift giving as an aspect of knowing. Inclusion and exclusion are made to precede the satisfaction of needs, which are “legitimately” ignored if for example, those who have the needs are not included in the category of those having money to pay for the products. The overemphasis on categorization in the economic realm influences an over emphasis on categorization in the rest of our thinking. We do not consider our intellectual production in terms of what needs it may be satisfying but only think of it as (giftless) acts of inclusion and exclusion of one kind or another that we are performing. Gift giving is made arduous by its co existence with exchange. Since gift giving is cooperative while exchange is competitive, it loses the competition by not competing. The context of adversarial exchange creates suspicion in the community and gift giving can appear to be a moral ego trip or a veiled bid for power and recognition. In fact, especially in a context where exchange relations are the norm, gift giving can become manipulative, and can be used for ego-oriented purposes, deviating from its unilateral transitive path, and doubling back upon itself. The worst aspect of the competition between exchange and gift giving is that the exchange paradigm really cannot compete in a fair way with gift giving, because living according to the logic of the gift would be life enhancing, while living according to exchange is bio pathic. Therefore in order to prevail, the exchange paradigm has created a system that cripples gift giving and makes it dependent on the market for access to the means of giving. By diverting the flow of gifts into the hands of a few,[1] by wasting ‘excess’ wealth on armaments, drugs and symbols of power (skyscrapers, monuments, jewels), as well as by privatizing the free gifts of nature and culture, Patriarchal Capitalism creates the scarcity that is necessary to penalize gift giving and keep it subservient. In fact even the flow of gifts to the wealthy must be regulated so that not too much will trickle back down. The tide must be kept low; otherwise all the ships would sail away. Although girl children are not socialized to construct a gender identity that opposes that of their nurturing mothers, and many of them will have to do mothering themselves as adults, they can be encouraged to strive for inclusion in ‘superior’ social categories and to achieve the ‘male’ exemplar position. In a context of scarcity, where categorization itself has become excessively important due to the binary categorization of gender, girls may also strive to be included in the privileged social category of people to whom others must give. Nevertheless, because children require unilateral gift giving to survive, women who have been socialized towards this work (or at least have not been socialized in opposition to it), remain in the gift logic in many parts of their lives, even when they do not have children and even when they have been absorbed into the market and see the world mainly through the eyeglasses of the exchange paradigm. The practice of the gift logic at the material and at the verbal level can take place without our being conscious of it as such. In fact unilateral gift giving is transitive and gives value and attention to the other, while exchange requires quantification and measurement, reflecting back to the exchangers an image of what they are doing. We in the North are accustomed to the exchange way of knowledge and self-reflecting consciousness and so we embrace what we see in that way, which is of course NOT the gift. Gratitude might make us look more at the gifts we receive and give but if we make our gift contingent on the others’ gratitude, the gift is no longer unilateral. In the context of exchange, even gratitude becomes problematic. It risks seeming or actually becoming a payment for gifts received. There is also a sort of scarcity of gratitude because ‘deserving’ appears to be more honorable than receiving. What is necessary now is to see gift giving and exchange from a broader ‘meta’ point of view that includes both as modes of distribution and as paradigms, look at the way they interact, and deliberately restore the consciousness of the gift where it has been erased. [1] The wealth of the 225 richest people in the world is equal to that of the poorest 2.5 billion people. The 3 wealthiest people have more than the 48 lowest GDP countries. In 1998, 20 percent of the world’s people living in the highest-income countries accounted for 86 percent of total private consumption expenditures while the poorest 20 percent accounted for only 1.3 percent. That’s down from 2.3 percent three decades ago. (UNDP 1998 – from www.cooperativeindividualism.org.) Meet Mago Contributor, Genevieve Vaughan
(Dual-language essay 1 English) “Planetary Consciousness” – What is that? Obituary for Rosalie Bertell by Claudia von Werlhof

Rosalie Bertell is dead. She passed away peacefully on June 14th of 2012 at the age of 83. After having suffered from cancer she closed her eyes forever at the convent of the “Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart” in Pennsylvania which she had been a part of for most of her life. She had been able to experience the publication of her book in German half a year earlier. This causes me great happiness, since I am aware of the relevance of this event for Rosalie. It was very important to her. I maintained ongoing contact with Rosalie for as long as it was possible to do so. One of our last topics of discussion was the Fukushima disaster and the events surrounding it, which appeared more than strange to her as well. According to her calculations the earthquake had not taken place in the potentially sensitive tectonic rift of the Pacific Ocean, as generally presumed. Rather, she traced its origins to a region that was neutral in this context. She was very worried about the long term effects caused by this disaster, after all, this was her area of expertise for which she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1986 (Bertell 1986). However she had not been able to grasp the tremendous effects of the Fukushima disaster anymore (cf. www.pbme-online.org, 6th Information-Letter: Fukushima and We, June 2012). Another topic that she had been observing very carefully and a question she had been unable to find an answer to during her lifetime was that of the phenomenon of the melting of parts of the Antarctic region. She assumed that the reasons could not be the same as those that she had pinpointed through her research on the rapid melting of the ice in the Arctic region, namely the employment of electromagnetic ELF waves by the Soviets and the Americans since the mid 70ies, as she describes in her book. One thing was certain to her: it is not just CO2 that is responsible for climate warming, as pretended for the Arctic region. This belief has been promoted by political and economic interests in the United States, and throughout the world since Al Gore’s presidential candidacy– and since then even alternative and ecological movements believe in it. CO2 accumulates in the earth’s troposphere while the warming actually takes place in the higher layers of the ionosphere. And this is precisely the layer that military experiments target utilizing electromagnetic waves to heat it up and creating the potential for natural disasters, as we have come to know decades ago already (s. attempt by the UN to prohibit military application of these technologies through the ENMOD convention of 1977). Maybe, in the case of the Antarctic region, the reason does not lie above, in the artificial warming of the air, but rather below, namely in the warming or any other changes of the water in the oceans? This was where our discourse ended; it was the beginning of June 2012. What would she have thought about all the other disasters that have occurred since? Large earthquakes throughout the planet, storms like “Sandy” which hit the US east coast just in time for the presidential election, and volcanic eruptions like the one in New Zealand last November. How would she have applied her knowledge in order to differentiate between true and fake natural disasters? For if there is one thing we have gained clarity on since the writing of her second book Planet Earth. The Latest Weapon of War, it is that today nobody can just assume natural origins behind the accumulation of enormous natural disasters anymore…
(Essay) Gratitude Stalks You by Hearth Moon Rising

Gratitude stalks you Unawares you are ambushed Smile in surprise Earlier this week I was in the woods at a stream swollen with spring, and a familiar situation overtook me. It’s similar to coming upon a beautiful scene by surprise or having an unusual interaction with an animal–and of course you left the camera at home. This is the situation of coming upon a sublime space, maybe in some ordinary place where you’ve been many times, and your heart is unexpectedly opened and full to overflowing. Perhaps you can hear the voices of water, rocks and trees. This is the time for ritual, but you have no offering. A simple thank you does not seem like enough. What gift can you leave to signify the importance of this moment?
Mary’s Prayer by Sara Wright

Photography by Sara Wright The words of the mantra suddenly materialized in my mind and spilled out of my mouth as I drove home, exhausted from the days chores. Simultaneously a sharp pain lodged itself in my lower back. Astonished by hearing myself repeat the familiar words as the pain intensified it took a moment for me to connect the two. I was experiencing family anguish and it was coming through my words and through my body. Although I am not a catholic I repeated Mary’s prayer opening my heart to the person that needed deep comfort. I could sense a door opening…a threshold being crossed. I had already dreamed that my aunt had died the night she did. “The Queen is Dead”, the dream said. My aunt Terry, a very simple, religious, and loving woman lived her life surrounded by a light that was palpable. Calling her Queen was appropriate. I sent Billy, my cousin, six pure white roses attaching the words “Roses in the Snow” to the card after the phrase appeared out of thin air while I was sitting on the porch at twilight. __________________________________________________________ When I first fell in love with Mary it was in a grotto. Although I knew she was a statue she seemed like a living Presence in that lovely walled garden so fragrant with roses. My five year old self was still whole … Mary was my first goddess. In my house religion had no place, so I kept Mary and the secret garden to myself although Mary drew me back many times to be with her. A few kind nuns (I called them mums) told me stories about how Mary was the Mother of God – but god had no meaning. Mary, on the other hand became a kind of Muse. Is that where I learned the words “Hail Mary full of Grace, blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb…”? The Jesus part didn’t become part of the prayer for me until much later, and that’s another story. When I was older ‘Hail Mary’ comforted me even after I learned more about Mary – that she wasn’t divine but bore a god – god remained scary but Mary grew into one of the Mothers of all Living Beings and so she remains today. __________________________________________________________ The phone was ringing as I entered the house. Billy was calling… I listened to heartbreak and a sea of tears that needed shedding, how his mother loved him as a child, held him in her arms comforting him… On and on. My aunt Terry was one of those remarkable women who seemed almost unearthly in temperament. I don’t mean that she wasn’t grounded. But there was that shining light around her that drew me to her as a child. I loved her, though I rarely saw my aunt because of family strife. Her life revolved around being a good mother to her sons and a good wife to my uncle. After my uncle Alex’s untimely death, my cousin Billy cared for his mother until dementia finally took her from him…Even then he continued to visit her regularly still caring for her in every possible way that mattered. Now, many years after losing her in mind, he was finally losing her for the second time in body. She died September 8th. No wonder he was inconsolable (it doesn’t escape me that my father Billy’s uncle went through the very same thing with his mother – family patterns do repeat). Billy and I are kindred souls, although apparently having very different religious perspectives. He is Catholic and I am an animist who finds the divine in Nature. What’s interesting about this difference is that Billy can’t reach across the chasm to experience my perspective as legitimate, yet mine encompasses his with ease. It took me awhile to understand that part of the reason for this split is that Billy does not live in his body – his religion tells him that his spiritual self is all that matters and he is presently struggling with the question around having a soul that survives death while being subsumed in mother grief. And this brings me back to what happened to me in the car. Something important was coming through both my mind and body; someone I loved needed my help. Thankfully, I have finally learned how to live in my body and to trust my senses to lead me, so I question nothing. Most of the time. When mind and body come together with a message like the one I received I don’t have to understand the particulars. All I have to do is follow directions, and I did. By the time Billy and I got off the phone my backache was gone. I will not be attending my aunt’s funeral today because I live too far away and have no place to leave my dogs. But as I told my cousin I will be with him. What I plan to do at 1:30PM is to be in a forest I love offering “Hail Mary” to my aunt and praying for Billy’s comfort as he navigates the difficult decent into grieving instead of running away from it, (something we have discussed at length and he understands and can feel the importance of doing), thankfully. I believe the forces of Nature will see to it that my heartfelt prayers and intentions will reach their destination… “Hail Mary full of Grace, blessed are thou amongst women…” Blessed is my Aunt Terry. The Mother Goddess is always listening. https://www.magoism.net/2014/12/meet-mago-contributor-sara-wright/
(Poem) The language of the Serpent by Susan Hawthorne

There’s a serpent in my head growing wings. How can I learn the grammar of the serpent? The pronouns, the particles, the coiling syntax. The language of the imaginary reading out from the centre of the spiral— The grammar of the serpent language. But the language of the serpent is silent still. I grew up with snakes. They were on the road as we rode home from school. They were in the paddocks. They were chased out of the garden. They hid in the long grass and could not be found. I have found the shed skins of snakes after they have left. I learnt about the Snake Goddess from Crete during secondary school and when I travelled to Crete in 1977 and again in 1985, I spent a lot of time looking at the snakes that were carved into the rocks from archaeological sites. I have pored over the images in Jane Ellen Harrison’s books and in those of Marija Gimbutas. In Australia, it’s not uncommon to find carvings of snakes or snakes painted on to rocks. The snake represents regeneration. She sheds her skin and slithers away unseen. Snakes are protectors of the home and keep away rats. In the tropics we have many snakes, my favourite is the green tree snake. It is non-venomous and will sometimes come indoors. I have moved one of these using a long-handled garden tool and twisting it around like a piece of spaghetti. I walked across the garden, and it slipped off to the other side of the fence. It was perhaps a cousin of the one pictured here twined around the light and muscling from the roof. This poem is from my book Bird and Other Writings on Epilepsy (1999). (Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne https://www.magoism.net/2013/12/meet-mago-contributor-susan-hawthone/

(Special Post) BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE FOR EL PASO ARTIST MARIO COLÍN by Donna Snyder

Born in Juárez in 1959, Mario Colín lived his entire life in the Five Points area of Central El Paso, where he attended Houston Elementary and Austin High School. From the age of fifteen, he worked as a construction worker, building silos and other large construction projects across the U.S.A., at some point hitch hiking from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic shores. In his late twenties, he began to focus all his attention and energy on art, which had been an interest since early childhood, working as a muralist and portrait painter. Much of his art is of a religious nature, although he also painted secular art, portraits, and historical scenes. Colín painted his first mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe in collaboration with deceased artist Chuck Zavala in 1987 at Esparza’s Grocery, a small store in Central El Paso. It has now become a shrine, with community members building a stone arch and bringing flowers and candles, and has been pronounced a religious site by the parish church. Since that first mural, Colín has painted over 40 pieces of public art, many of which have become landmarks. Many of those murals are in that same Central El Paso neighborhood, on or near Piedras, including the House of Pizza, Los Alamos Grocery, The Elbo Room bar, the former Sanitary Plumbing at Piedras and Fort Boulevard. Colín twice painted a 25 foot mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe, at Alameda and Zaragoza, across from the Ysleta mission. The first version, painted in 1997, became decayed, but was a popular landmark. That mural has appeared in periodicals, art books, calendars, many newspaper articles, and in photographs exhibited in the El Paso Art Museum and galleries. In 2004, Señor José Villalobos donated and members of the community contributed money to pay laborers to replaster the wall of the century-old adobe building where it is located, and Colín repainted the entire mural for donations from passers-by and community members. Colín’s work has also been featured on the International History Channel and Canal 44, XHUI TV, in a Ford television commercial, and numerous times in the El Paso Times and the defunct El Paso Herald-Post, as well as in periodicals such as Texas Monthly, Dallas Morning News, Texas Observer, Austin American Statesman, Stanton Street magazine; literary journals such as Mezcla and GypsyMag.com; in documentaries including Walls that Speak: El Paso’s Murals, directed by Jim Klaes; in art books such as Colors on Desert Walls: The Murals of El Paso and Texas 24:7, and in various editions of Chicano Studies: Survey and Analysis, a text book used throughout the country.
(Special Post 3) Why Goddess Feminism, Activism, or Spirituality? A Collective Writing

[Editor’s Note: This was first proposed in The Mago Circle, Facebook Group, on March 6, 2014. We have our voices together below and publish them in sequels. It is an ongoing project and we encourage our reader to join us! Submit yours today to Helen Hwang (magoism@gmail.com). Or visit and contact someone in Return to Mago’s Partner Organizations.] Helen Hwang I study and advocate Goddess feminism or Magoism because it is a way of living for me. I find myself in Mago (the Great Goddess) who in turn leads me to the Way wherein I learn how to become the person who I can be. It has to be Mago, the Female Divine, because She is real! She is the Primordial Mother who is the Beginning and the End of everything to us on the planet Earth. She teaches me the real. I can’t negotiate Her to anything less. Helen Hye Sook Hwang, Ph.D. California http://magoism.net Bridget Robertson A Goddessian I was introduced to a form of meditative journeying by a resident in my grandmother’s retirement community. She approached to me. I know she was at least part Native American, and that alone made her the topic of much gossip in the building. Her Rose colored lipstick, deep brown eyes, wrinkles that only helped illuminate her face and a chiffon scarf that matched none of her clothes. I thought she needed help with her groceries. She didn’t. She had me stop the elevator. and directly asked about my looking tired. My response was about being, busy balancing all the areas of my life. In fact I was exhausted doling out time like pieces of pie.
(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.

Lammas/Late Summer within the Creative Cosmos by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 10 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Southern Hemisphere – Feb. 1st/2nd, Northern Hemisphere – August 1st/2nd These dates are traditional, though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox, thus actually a little later in early February for S.H., and early August for N.H., respectively. a Lammas/Late Summer table 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, to celebrate She Who creates the Space to Be. Lammas is a welcoming of the Dark in all its complexity: and as with any funerary moment, there is celebration of the life lived (enjoyment of the harvest) – a “wake,” and there is grieving for the loss. One may fear it, which is good reason to make ceremony, to go deeper, to commit to the Mother, who is the Deep; to “make sacred” this emotion, as much as one may celebrate the hope and wonder of Spring, its opposite. If Imbolc/Early Spring is a nurturing of new young life, Lammas may be a nurturing/midwifing of death or dying to small self, the assent to larger self, an expansion or dissipation – further to the radiance of Summer Solstice. Whereas Imbolc is a Bridal commitment to being and form, where we are the Promise of Life; Lammas may be felt as a commitment marriage to the Dark within, as we accept the Harvest of that Promise, the cutting of it. We remember that the Promise is returned to Source. “The forces which began to rise out of the Earth at the festival of Bride now return at Lammas.”[i] Creativity is called forth when an end (or impasse) is reached: we can no longer rely on our small self to carry it off. We may call Her forth, this Creative Wise Dark One – of the Ages, when our ways no longer work. We are not individuals, though we often think we are. We are Larger Self, subjects within theSubject.[ii] And this is a joyful thing. We do experience ourselves as individuals and we celebrate that creativity at Imbolc. Lammas is the time for celebrating the fact that we are part of, in the context of, a Larger Organism, and expanding into that. Death will teach us that, but we don’t have to wait – it is happening around us all the time, we are constantly immersed in the process, and everyday creativity is sourced in this subjectivity. As it is said, She is “that which is attained at the end of Desire:”[iii] the same Desire we celebrated at Beltaine, has peaked at Summer and is now dissolving form, returning to Source to nourish the Plenum, the manifesting – as all form does. This Seasonal Moment of Lammas/Late Summer celebrates the beginning of dismantling, de-structuring. Gaia-Universe has done a lot of this de-structuring – it is in Her nature to return all to the “Sentient Soup” … nothing is wasted. We recall the Dark Sentience, the “All-Nourishing Abyss”[iv] at the base of being, as we enter this dark part of the cycle of the year. This Dark/Deep at the base of being, to whom we are returned, may be understood as the Sentience within all – within the entire Universe. The dictionary definition of sentience is: “intelligence,” “feeling,” “the readiness to receive sensation, idea or image; unstructured available consciousness,” “a state of elementary or undifferentiated consciousness.”[v] The Old Wise One is the aspect of the Cosmic Triplicity/Triple Goddess that returns us to this sentience, the Great Subject out of whom we arise. We are subjects within the Great Subject – the sentient Universe; we are not a collection of objects, as Thomas Berry has said.[vi] This sentience within, this “readiness-to-receive,” is a dark space, as all places of ending and beginning are. Mystics of all religious traditions have understood the quintessential darkness of the Divinity, known often as the Abyss. Goddesses such as Nammu and Tiamat, Aditi and Kali, are the anthropomorphic forms of this Abyss/Sea of Darkness that existed before creation. She is really the Matrix of the Universe. This sentience is ever present and dynamic. It could be understood as the dark matter that is now recognized to form most of the Universe. This may be recognized as Her “Cauldron of Creativity” and celebrated at this Lammas Moment. Her Cauldron of Creativity is the constant flux of all form in the Universe – all matter is constantly transforming. We are constantly transforming on every level. a Lammas/Late Summer altar These times that we find ourselves in have been storied as the Age of Kali, the Age of Caillaech – the Age of the Crone. There is much that is being turned over, much that will be dismantled. We are in the midst of the revealing of compost, and transformation – social, cultural, and geophysical. Kali is not a pretty one – but we trust She is transformer, and creative in the long term. She has a good track record. Our main problem is that we tend to take it personally. The Crone – the Old Phase of the cycle, creates the Space to Be. Lammas is the particular celebration of the beauty of this awesome One. She is symbolized and expressed in the image of the waning moon, which is filling with darkness. She is the nurturant darkness that may fill your being, comfort the sentience in you, that will eventually allow new constellations to gestate in you, renew you. So the focus in ceremony may be to contemplate opening to Her, noticing our fears and our hopes involved in that. She is the Great Receiver – receives all, and as such She is the Great Compassionate One. Her Darkness may be understood as a Depth of Love. And She is Compassionate because of …
(Poetry & Photo Essay) Pongal by Susan Hawthorne

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

This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 8 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony. Traditionally the dates for Beltaine/High Spring are: Southern Hemisphere – October 31st or 1st November Northern Hemisphere – April 30th (May Eve) or 1st May though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, thus actually a little later in early November for S.H., and early May for N.H., respectively. The twin fires lit in older times on hilltops in Ireland for Beltaine likely represented the two eyes of night and day.[i] With this vision, Goddess as Sun and Moon sees Her Land, and with the power of Her eyes (Sun and Moon) brings forth life and beauty. With the fire eyes, Goddess“reoccupied and saw her whole land…”[ii] The twin fires later came to be used to run cattle between as they headed out to Summer pasture, for the purpose of burning off the bugs and ticks of Winter; the fires may thus be understood to serve a cleansing effect and likely the origins of the tradition of the ceremonial leaping of flames by participants in Beltaine festivities. In PaGaian Cosmology this is poetically expressed as the Flame of Love that burns away the psyche’s “bugs and ticks,” and sees the Beauty present, and calls it forth. The Beltaine flames may be a celebration of Sun entering into the eye, into the whole bodymind: a powerful creative evocation upon which the Dance of Life depends, and as the cleansing power of love and pleasure. PaGaian focus for Beltaine is on the Holy Desire/Passion for life, and it may be accounted for on as many levels as possible … the complete holarchy/dimensions of the erotic power. On an elemental level, there is our desire for Air, Water, the warmth of Fire, and to be of use/service to Earth. There is an essential longing, sometimes nameless, sometimes constellated, experienced physically, that may be recognized as the Desire of the Universe Herself – desiring in us.[iii] We may remember that we are united in this desire with each other, with all who have gone before us, and with all who come after us – all who dance the Dance of Life. Beltaine is a time for dancing and weaving into our lives, our heart’s desires; traditionally the dance is done with participants holding ribbons attached to a pole or tree (a Maypole in the Northern Hemisphere, which may be renamed as a “Novapole” in the Southern Hemisphere), wrapping the pole with the ribbons. This is not simply the heterosexual metaphor as is thought in modern times (thanks largely to Freudian thinking) – it is deeper than that. As Caitlin and John Matthews point out: it is symbolic of a far greater exchange than that between men and women – in fact between the elements themselves. … the maypole, a comparatively recent manifestation in the history of mystery celebrations, can be seen as the linking of heaven and earth, binding those who dance around it … into a pattern of birth, life and death which lay at the heart of the maze of earth mysteries.[iv] Beltaine is a celebration of Desire on all levels – microcosm and on the macrocosm, the exoteric and the esoteric.[v] It brought you forth physically, and it brings forth all that you produce in your life, and it keeps the Cosmos spinning. It is felt in you as Desire, it urges you on. It is the deep awesome dynamic that pervades the Cosmos and brings forth all things – babies, meals, gardens, careers, books and solar systems. We have often been taught, certainly by religious traditions, to pay it as little attention as possible; whereas it should be the cause of much more meditation/attention, tracing it to its deepest place in us. What are our deepest desires beneath our surface desires. What if we enter more deeply into this feeling, this power? It may be a place where the Universe is a deep reciprocity – a receiving and giving that is One. Brian Swimme says, in a whole chapter on “Allurement”: You can examine your own self and your own life with this question: Do I desire to have this pleasure? Or rather, do I desire to become pleasure? The demand to ‘have,’ to possess, always reveals an element of immaturity. To keep, to hold, to control, to own; all of this is fundamentally a delusion, for our own truest desire is to be and to live. We have ripened and matured when we realize that our own deepest desire in erotic attractions is to become pleasure … to enter ecstatically into pleasure so that giving and receiving pleasure become one simple activity. Our most mature hope is to become pleasure’s source and pleasure’s home simultaneously. So it is with the allurements of life: we become beauty to ignite the beauty of others.[vi] Beltaine is a good time to contemplate this animal bodymind that you are: how it seeks real pleasure. What is your real pleasure? Be gracious with this bodymind and in awe of this form, this wonder. Beltaine is also a good time to contemplate light, and its affects on our bodyminds as it enters into us; how our animal bodyminds respond directly to the Sun’s light, which apparently may awaken physical desires. Light vibrates into us – different wavelengths as different colours – and shifts to pulse. It is felt most fully in Springtime (“spring fever”), as light courses down a direct neural line from retina to pineal gland. When the pineal gland receives the light pulse it releases “a cascade of hormones, drenching the body in hunger, thirst, or great desire.”[vii] We respond directly to Sun as an organism: it is primal. NOTES: [i] Michael Dames, Ireland, 195-199. [ii] Ibid., 196. [iii] I have been inspired and informed by Swimme’s articulations about desire, particularly in Canticle to the Cosmos, video 2 “The Primeval Fireball,” video 5 “Destruction and Loss,” and video 10 “The Timing of Creativity.” [iv] Matthews, The Western Way, 54. And for more, see “Creativity …
(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.
(Video) A Samhain Ceremony by Glenys Livingstone Ph.D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVRoK2XNeqw The purpose of the video is for ceremony and I suggest pausing the video where it suits you, to add your own processing, embellishments and/or your own drum, percussion and voice wherever you please. I have made short spaces in the video where it could be paused. For more full participation in the ceremony, you could have some past photos of yourself, an altar with ancestor photos, a gingerbread snake, some apples sliced up, and some apple juice. The script for this Samhain ceremony is offered in Chapter 4 of my book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, with all acknowledgements and references there. However I want to acknowledge here the inspiration and some text of Robin Morgan’s poem “The Network of the Imaginary Mother” in her book Lady of the Beasts, for which I was given permission in my book. I also acknowledge here the paraphrase of some words by Starhawk in her book The Spiral Dance, used in the rite of Sailing to a New World. I also use a line from the poem Song of Hecate by Bridget McKern. The elements of Water, Fire, Earth and Air on the altar in this video are placed in directions that are appropriate to my region in the Southern Hemisphere, and East Coast Australia: you may place yours differently, and transliterate when I mention the direction (which I do minimally). For the rite of the Transformation Journey (remembering old selves) I use an adaptation of a children’s game “In and Out the Windows”, where each participant travels in and out of upraised and linked arms of the circle, and when ‘in’ may speak and /or show photos of themselves from the past. Some may choose to remember any self from the entire evolutionary story, with whom they would like to identify. The game seems appropriate to what each being does existentially in so many ways, over the eons as well as in our personal lives. The chant can be found on YouTube. The photos used are a collage of footage and photos from the 2024 Samhain ceremony at my place in Wakka Wakka country, South East Queensland Australia, and from previous Samhain ceremonies I facilitated over the decades in MoonCourt, Goddess ceremonial space in NSW Australia, Darug and Gundungurra country. Music credit: All music used in this video is by Tim Wheater, which has previously generously allowed me to use in my work. The pieces used are from Tim’s CD Fish Nite Moon: they are Ancient Footsteps, Fish Nite Moon, Spiritbirth, and Conception. I thank my partner Robert (Taffy) Seaborne for his participation in the creation of the video.
(Music) Songs for Samhain by Alison Newvine

The season of Samhain is upon us. This playlist is an offering for this descent into the sacred darkness, and a companion for the journey into the underworld. Invocation of Witches features music by Loreena McKennitt, Marya Stark, Inkubus Sukubus, Wendy Rule, my band Spiral Muse, and many others. It is a soundtrack for ceremony and each song expresses a different face of the spirit of the witch. May this Samhain season guide you gently into the dissolution of what no longer serves, the honoring of what is complete and the cultivation of the inner space that will gestate what is yet to come. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2CFNoH9exhloz3w95P3Rlb?si=270cf01fabb8421c https://www.magoism.net/2023/10/meet-mago-contributor-alison-newvine/

(Bell Essay 1) Ancient Korean Bells and Magoism by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Part I The bell as both a percussion instrument and an idiophone is one of the most pacific, sublime, and ingenious human inventions. It appears cross-culturally from the remote past. Its artistic and ritualistic aspects are fairly well recognized by many. However, many overlook that the bell is a female icon with functionality. Put differently, the bell symbolizes the Goddess, the female who has the purpose. This essay, to be written in parts hereafter, will examine the symbology of ancient Korean bells and explore its implications with regard to Magoist history, cosmogony, and soteriology. At the outset, I posit that ancient Korean bells cast in the form of a woman’s body are there to awaken humanity to the arcane reality of the Female, that is Mago. In East Asia, bell connotes two distinct types, the open ended and the enclosed. In Korean, the open ended bell is called jong (鐘, Chinese zhong), whereas the enclosed one is called bang-ul or ryeong (鈴, Chinese ling). Jong and bang-ul are also distinguished by size. While the former tends to be larger, the latter are commonly used by a shaman or diviner to hold and shake (a group of bang-uls) to invoke the spirit. However, these differences are not unbridgeable. Some bang-uls are open-ended, like jong. By definition, jong is a bell made of metal not stone. (The character jong 鐘 has the radical (basic element) of geum 金, metal or gold. The stone bell is called gyeong.) When jong is used in music, in particular as a musical instrument consisting of a set of bronze bells, it is called pyeon-jong (編鍾, Chinese bianzhong). Perhaps the invention of pyeon-jong follows pyeon-gyeong (編磬, Chinese bianqing), a stone musical instrument consisting of a set of L-shaped stone chimes. Discussing the differences between the two instruments goes beyond the purpose of this essay. Suffice it to say that jong was likely a metallic replica of gyeong presumably first introduced in the Bronze Age. (See the images below for comparison.) My primary focus in this essay is on jong, in particular the Korean bells cast in the 8th century CE and thereafter. The beauty and significance of ancient Korean bells shed a new light on ancient Korea to be re-dis-covered in relation to Magoism. Both scholars and the public appear to be unaware that the ancient bells of Korea symbolize the female principle as well as woman’s body. It is my hope that this essay allows the ancient bells of Korea to reverberate through time and call people to return to the female origin. Ancient Greek Bells as Woman’s Body A variety of jong from the ancient world appears across cultures. The most explicitly rendered bells which mirror the female form are the terracotta bell figurines of Greece (Thebes) dated circa the 8th century BCE. Both are housed in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Protruded breasts are placed on the upper part of the bell. The body of the bell is sculpted to resemble the skirt that she is wearing. Two arms annexed from her shoulders appear to be aesthetic rather than functional. The elongated neck is made as a handle to be held. Her neck is adorned with elaborate necklaces. Geometrical designs and swastikas are compelling in both figurines — rife with arcane meanings. The legs are made as mallets. Imagine, then, where the sound comes from upon being shaken! It is her belly, more precisely the vulva from which the sound originates. In the first, above, icon of the Greek bell, women are drawn on the bell’s body in a simplified and exaggerated manner. They are connected with each other hand in hand forming a circle, perhaps dancing a circle dance. As a whole, the bell depicts a dancing woman with her arms raised, standing on her toes. The women painting befits the spirited nature of the bell. In the second, above, icon of the Greek bell, 39.5 cm in height, her breasts are highlighted, encircled by the drawing of two circles. Thus, they appear to be more nipples than breasts. Her arms are laid downward as if pointing to the birds standing below on each side. Each bird is holding an elongated earthworm-like swirling thing at the tip of its beak. Geometric designs in the center of her body are catchily inviting to interpretations. The symmetrical balance is heightened. She appears to stand firmly or be ready to walk. As shown below, one leg when placed out to the side conveys to its viewer that the legs are mallets and at once creates a look that she is real, in motion. In my documentation, the Greek bell idols and ancient Korean bells are the only two groups that are explicitly made in the shape of a woman’s body. Yet, as to be shown shortly, these Greek bell idols, far smaller in size, date about a thousand years earlier than the ancient Korean bells. Furthermore, there is a vast geographical distance between the two bell icons. In comparing them, however, I have no intention to assume that the ancient Greek bell figurines are the earliest of their kind. (It is difficult to discuss the origin of bell as a woman’s body due to the nature of the task, too complex and daunting. It suffices to say that the Chinese bells, dated older than the Thebes bell figurines, have relevance to ancient Korean bells, a point to be discussed at a later part.) Ancient worlds appear not too heterogeneous to say the least, as moderns tend to think. Sillan Bells Let me begin with introducing some ancient Korean bells from the Silla period (57 BCE-935 CE) and their major features that are also uniquely ancient Korean (read Magoist). They sound beautifully and deeply when struck. Sounding waves are calculated in the structure of the bell upon being cast. It is known that there are eleven jongs extant from the United Silla period. Only five of them are currently located in Korea, whereas the rest are in Japan. These bells are known as beomjong, a term referring to a bell in Buddhist temples used for Buddhist …
(Book Excerpt 6) The Mago Way by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D.

[Author’s Note] The following is from Chapter One, “What Is Mago and Magoism and How Did I Study HER?” from The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia, Volume 1. Footnotes below would be different from the monograph version. PDF book of The Mago Way Volume 1 download is available for free here.] Magoism, East Asian Religions, and Magoist Mudangs As mentioned above, Magoism refers to the totality of human civilization that is ultimately gynocentric. Speaking from a narrow perspective, Magoism is the primordial matrix from which such East Asian religions as Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism were derived. In the light of Magoism, a patriarchal religion is redefined as a pseudo-Magoism that which has co-opted the Way of the Great Goddess (Magoism) with the androcentric reversal of the female
(Mago Almanac 3) Restoring 13 Month 28 Day Calendar by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

[This and the following sequels are from Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar (Book A), Years 1 and 2 (5, 6, 9, 10…), 5915-6 MAGO ERA, 2018-9 CE (Mago Books, 2017).] We want to get back the 13th Friday. This almanac shows how that is possible. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang INTRODUCTION (Continued) HOW TO USE THE MAGO ALMANAC The Magoist Calendar employs a 28 day monthly cycle identical throughout the 13 months (see “28 DAY MONTHLY CALENDAR”). The first month of a year, however, begins with one intercalary day that falls on the eve of New Year for all years. Every fourth year has another intercalary day that fall on the eve of the first day of the 7th month (see “4 YEARS CALENDAR/1 LARGE CALENDAR”). Years are counted as a cyclic unit of four years, which is called Large Calendar. I have charted 8 Large Calendars of 32 years (see “8 LARGE CALENDARS/32 YEARS”). That said, the Mago Almanac will appear as the two types of booklets, Book A and Book B due to its Gregorian Calendar translation dates. The current booklet, Book A, includes calendric data of two years Year 1 and Year 2, the first two of the four years cyclic unit. Year 1 and Year 2 are exactly identical, when it comes to their Gregorian translations. In other words, one can use Book A for the years of 2018 and 2019 with the same Gregorian dates. Book B will include data on Year 3 and Year 4 for the two years of 2020 and 2021 in the Gregorian Calendar. As Gregorian dates intermittently run every month throughout the year and every four years with one leap day added in the month of February, both Year 3 and Year 4 will need a separate translational chart for Gregorian translation dates. While Gregorian leap days are more complicated than just one additional day in February, they won’t interfere with Mago Almanac’s Gregorian translation system until the year 2100, when it skips the leap day.[1] Book A Book B Years 1, 2… 3, 4… Common Era 2018, 2019 CE 2020, 2021 CE Mago Era 5915, 5916 ME 5917, 5918 ME Because both the Magoist Calendar (365.25 days) and the Gregorian Calendar (365.242189 days) are of the solar clendar, their dates tend to coincide every four years. For example, Year 5 and 6 will share the same Gregorian dates as Year 1 and 2. This means Book A is useful not only for Year 1 and 2 but also Year 5 and 6. Likewise, Book B is not only for Year 3 and Year 4 but also Year 7 and Year 8. Such patterns will repeat until 2100. By such recurrence, Mago Almanac will remain useful throughout the coming years. Below is the chart of 12 years (3 Large Calendars) for Mago Almanac’s two books. Book A Book B 1st Large Calendar Year 1 (2018 CE, 5915 ME) Year 3 (2020 CE, 5917 ME) Year 2 (2019 CE, 5916 ME) Year 4 (2021 CE, 5918 ME) 2nd Large Calendar Year 5 (2022 CE, 5919 ME) Year 7 (2024 CE, 5921 ME) Year 6 (2023 CE, 5920 ME) Year 8 (2025 CE, 5922 ME) 3rd Large Calendar Year 9 (2026 CE, 5923 ME) Year 11 (2028 CE, 5925 ME) Year 10 (2027 CE, 5924 ME) Year 12 (2029 CE, 5926 ME) Book A (Year 1 and Year 2) stands for the year of 2018 in the Gregorian Calendar (from December 17, 2017 till December 16, 2018) and the year of 2019 in the Gregorian Calendar (from December 17, 2018 till December 16, 2019). Year 1 (5915 ME) begins on December 17, 2017, the one intercalary day that comes on the day before the New Year’s Day. Its New Year’s day on December 18, 2017 marks the new moon day in the first month of the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Year 2 (5916 ME) will be the same as Year 1. It begins with the one intercalary day of December 17, 2018. Its New Year’s day is December 18, 2018. However, it won’t be the new moon day since the moon’s phases are not exactly the same as the moon’s motions for the coming years. For this reason and the Gregorian Calendar’s intermittent dates involved in Book B, Mago Almanac plans to publish its yearly booklet. Book A includes Moon Phases in UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) for the years of 2018 and 2019. The cycle of moon phases (the synodic period of about 29.5 days) will run on its own path in the Magoist Calendar is based on the moon’s motions (the sidereal period of about 27.3 days). Also this almanac includes 24 Seasonal Marks in the Korean Time for the years of 2018 and 2019. Among these 24 seasons demarcated based on the solar calendar are such eight seasonal marks as Yule, Imbolc, Vernal Equinox, Beltane, Summer Solstice, Lammas, Autumnal Equinox, and Winter Solstice, whose hours vary according to the viewer location. Last but not least, this almanac taps into the self-actualizing power of the calendar, which awakens its users to the Reality of the Creatrix. Its task is to be a user’s guide to the Magoist Calendar, the Living Text of the Creatrix. A cause that is equipped with the self-realizing force is divine. Restoring the Magoist Calendar is a divine work to be accomplished by the power of the gynocentric 13 month calendar itself. Its applicability is left to the hand of users. One’s own understanding of the gynocentric calendar will do the magic within herself/himself. One’s intellectuality is the winder to one’s spirituality. Individuals awakened by the Magoist Calendar will discover a sense of belong/direction/timing, not just to a particular society/place/time but to the inter-cosmic whole, WE/HERE/NOW. One may suddenly re-member her/his kinship with all others in an unexpected way. The consciousness of WE is not a destination arrived at a future time. It is HERE wherein we are born and live. In our …

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