For more on this book, see here.
This book, The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia, is an important and major contribution of scholarship to the rising global return of gynocentric consciousness; to the return of the Female as imagined source of all being – and it is an wholistic vision, wherein no difference is known “between you and me or between one nation and the other”. It is a radical work. The work that this book unfolds on behalf of the Great Goddess of East Asia, of Old Korea in particular is kin to the work of Marija Gimbutas on behalf of Old Europe, in the sense of revealing a groundbreaking vision of earlier times in this substantial and deeply influential region of the planet; a vision that may uncover seeds within all of us for a flowering of a more peaceful future.
The Mago Way is an uncovering of the Primordial Mother in this region, based in the personal hunger and experience of the author, yet also in meticulous scholarship. The work is up against much resistance to such a vision: resistance coming from deep misogyny, racial fractures, and dominator politics. Dr. Hye-Sook Hwang’s work and vision particularly deserves support from more Western based Goddessian community, who may need to broaden and yet embrace the sense of Great Goddess’s truly global presence: who She has been, how She has been diminished or blotted out, where She may yet be found threaded into culture and text. In following Mago’s great story, with its regional particularities, through all this, we may recognise common ground as well as a fuller picture of the story of the human primordial matristic heritage.
I love how Dr. Hye-Sook Hwang writes, recognising her own “non-Western and formerly colonialized modern-Korean identity” with that of Mago, “lurking beneath the thick layers of patriarchal puppetries”, and yet finding the deep roots of her ancestors, of ancient Korean spirit in Magoism. Her work is influenced a great deal by feminist philosopher Mary Daly who personally encouraged Dr. Hye-Sook Hwang’s early quest: the influence may be seen and sensed, yet the radical passion and search is particular, compassionately inclusive and inviting.
Glenys Livingstone: Author of PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion (pagaian.org).