THE MAGO WAY Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia (Volume 1) Foreword by Carol P. Christ, Ph.D. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D. MAGO BOOKS Mago Books publishes books and multimedia that promote the consciousness of the Great Goddess/Mago and re-store the primordial connection between peoples and species (http://magobooks.com). Sister Organizations include Return to Mago E-Magazine (http://magoism.net) and Mago Academy (http://magoacademy.org). Copyright © 2015 Mago Books All rights reserved. ISBN-13: 978-1516907922 ISBN-10: 1516907922 Cover design by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Photo provided by Mago Stronghold, “View from the prayer chamber.” Jiri Mountains, S. Korea DEDICATION To Matthew Kim Hagen and My Parents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To Rosemary Mattingley who has meticulously copy-edited this book with her earnest comments, served Return to Mago E- Magazine as Admin Editor, and supported the vision of the Mago Work; To Mary Saracino who has served Return to Mago E-Magazine as Editor-in-Chief and supported the vision of the Mago Work; To Kaalii Cargill who has supported Mago Books as Co-editor and supported the vision of the Mago Work; To Trista Hendren who has supported many projects that the Mago Work has launched; To Glenys Livingstone who has supported the vision of the Mago Work; To Harriet Ann Ellenberger who has walked the Mago voyage with me; To worldwide Mago Circle members who have enabled me to envision and implement the Mago Work. MAGO BOOKS v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments iv Table of Figures vii Foreword by Carol P. Christ, Ph.D. ix Introduction 1 First Passage: The Personal Is Political and 7 Cosmic Chapter One: What Is Mago and Magoism and How I 8 Did Study HER? Chapter Two: Returning Home with Mago, the Great 31 Goddess from East Asia Chapter Three: A Cross-Cultural Feminist Alchemy: 52 Studying Mago, Pan-East Asian Great Goddess, Using Mary Daly’s Radical Feminism as Springboard Second Passage: Magoism and Old Korea 60 vi The Mago Way Chapter Four: Issues in Studying Mago, the Great 61 Goddess of East Asia: Primary Sources, Gynocentric History, and Old Korea Chapter Five: Making the Gynocentric Case: Mago, 100 the Great Goddess of East Asia, and HER Tradition Magoism Third Passage: The Metamorphic Creatrix 122 Chapter Six: Female Principle in the Magoist 123 Cosmogony Chapter Seven: Magos, Muses, and Matrikas: The 149 Magoist Cosmogony and Gynocentric Unity Chapter Eight: The Consciousness of 171 WE/HERE/NOW in the Magoist Cosmogony Glossary 192 Bibliography 207 TABLE OF FIGURES 1 Figure 1: Myeongdang (Ideal Topography) 2 8 2 Figure 2: Mago by Seokgyeong 29 3 Figure 3: Six Periods of the Mytho-History of 73 Magoism 4 Figure 4: Migration of the Four Primordial Racial 77 Clans 5 Figure 5: Mytho-History of Magoism and East 85 Asian States 6 Figure 6: Magu in Mt. Magu 90 7 Figure 7: Mt. Magu 91 8 Figure 8: Nine-headed Kannon 117 9 Figure 9: Nine-tailed Fox 118 10 Figure 10: Chart of the Constellations 142 11 Figure 11: Chart of Eight Trigrams 143 12 Figure 12: Eight Femaleist Eight Immortals 143 13 Figure 13: Eight Daoist Immortals 144 14 Figure 14: Nine-Nippled Korean Temple Bell 144 viii The Mago Way 15 Figure 15: Nine-Dragon Wall 145 16 Figure 16: Nine-Story Pagoda 145 17 Figure 17: Mago’s Genealogy of the Mago Clan 155 18 Figure 18: Gurang (Nine Magos)/Gaeyang Halmi 164 19 Figure 19: Nine Muses 165 20 Figure 20: Nine Matrikas 165 21 Figure 21: Nine Sisters (Volcanic Peaks) 167 22 Figure 22: Nine Waterfalls 166 23 Figure 23: Mago Stronghold in Tianjin, China 188 24 Figure 24: Mago Stronghold in Jiri Mountains, 188 Korea MAGO BOOKS ix FOREWORD With her dissertation and her on-going work Helen Hye-Sook Hwang has opened up a new way of thinking about East Asian Goddesses that decenters the Goddesses of particular national or religious traditions—such as Chinese Goddesses or Buddhist Goddesses. Her ground-breaking work suggests that seemingly independent Goddess traditions are rooted in a common East Asian prehistoric tradition which she names Magoism. Hwang shows that prehistoric Goddess traditions predate Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, and other Eastern traditions, including Korean shamanism. Her work also reveals commonalities between prehistoric Goddess traditions in East and West, making it clear the “rebirth of the Goddess” is not an exclusively Western phenomenon. I first met Helen Hye-Sook Hwang when I was asked to become a late addition to her dissertation committee at Claremont Graduate University. Because of their lack of familiarity with her subject matter and radical approach to it, Hwang’s committee was mystified by her topic, “Seeking Mago, the Great Goddess.” I was asked to step in due to my knowledge of the work of Marija Gimbutas on the prehistoric Goddess of Neolithic Old Europe. Though I had not studied East Asian Goddesses in depth, my intuition, based on the history of European Goddesses, was that East Asian Goddesses had their roots in prehistory. Traditional scholarship, whether focused on Eastern or Western traditions, assumes that “history” begins with written x The Mago Way records dated around 3000 BCE or later. Almost all written records, East and West, stem from patriarchal societies ruled by warrior kings. Written law codes reflect the subordination of women in patriarchal societies. However, comparison of early and later law codes indicates that in many cases women had legal and economic powers that were gradually eroded. Mythological texts also imply that women and Goddesses once held power that was later taken from them. The notion that history is defined by written records limits history to that last 5000 years, leaving the first 100,000 years of human history out of the picture. So-called “prehistory” includes the many long years when human beings survived by gathering and hunting in the Paleolithic era (Old Stone Age), as well as the early years of agriculture in the Neolithic era (New Stone Age), which began about 10,000 years ago in different areas of the world. Some would argue that the first 100,000 years of human history were pre-patriarchal and that patriarchy became normative at different times in different places, especially if patriarchy is defined by the control of female sexuality, private property, and war.i According to Marija Gimbutas, Neolithic Old Europe (c. 6500-3500 BCE) was peaceful, sedentary, highly artistic, egalitarian, matrilineal and probably matrilocal, and revered the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. The peaceful cultures of Old Europe were overthrown by nomadic warriors who entered Europe from the Russian steppes north and east of the Black Sea. Their culture was horse-riding, patriarchal, patrilineal, warlike, not highly artistic, and they worshipped male Gods identified with the shining powers of the sun and the shining bronze of their weapons. As MAGO BOOKS xi the power of the patriarchal warriors grew, the Goddesses of Old Europe were subordinated to male Gods. Thus were developed the familiar Goddesses of Greek mythology: Athena who sprung fully armed from the head of Zeus, Hera, the betrayed wife, and Aphrodite the Goddess of sexual pleasure. Gimbutas taught us that these all-too-human Goddesses were cut off from their primordial roots in the powers of birth, death, and regeneration.ii Hwang’s work promises a similar revolutionary rewriting of cultural and religious history in “Old East Asia.” In addition to revealing a Goddess tradition at the root of later patriarchal traditions in East Asia, Hwang’s work raises the question of how and when East Asian traditions became patriarchal. It answers the question of where the later Goddesses came from, and why they were added to or became prominent in largely patriarchal traditions. As Hwang shows, the Goddess was already there and could not be fully suppressed or completely ignored. The origin of the Daoist Goddess (or Immortal) Magu is no longer shrouded in mystery. It can also be more fully understood why a male Bodhisattva became the much-loved Buddhist Goddess of compassion, Guan Yin. The Neolithic revolution, described as one of the “great advances” in human life, is defined by three inventions or discoveries: agriculture, weaving, and pottery. iii Anthropologists and pre-historians will concede that agriculture was probably invented by “woman the gatherer,” who picked fruits and vegetables, collected nuts and seeds, and prepared them for eating. It would have been women who noticed that seeds dropped at a cooking site in one year might xii The Mago Way sprout up into plants by the time the group returned to it the next year. The theory that women invented agriculture is supported by folkloric and other evidence suggesting that women worldwide have been in charge of horticulture (agriculture without an animal-drawn plow). Women passed the secrets of how to preserve seeds in a cold dark place and when and how to plant them from mother to daughter. These secrets, which were in fact scientific knowledge discovered by “woman the scientist,” were passed on as mysteries that connected the power of women to give birth and nurture life with the symbol of Mother Earth as a Great and Giving Mother. Anthropologists and pre-historians will also agree that women were the likely inventors of weaving because weaving is women’s work in almost all traditional cultures.iv The secrets of weaving too were passed down from mother to daughter over the millennia. The processes of spinning flax or wool into thread and weaving it on a loom into cloth were technological innovations, discovered by “woman the inventor.” They too were understood to be mysteries of transformation analogized to the power of the female body to create life.