Isolation Or Alliance? By Helen Hye-Sook Hwang
By adopting the “Nine Sisters,” She Rises not only heralds but deploys the Nine-Mago Movement. The two were meant to meet. However, their affinity did not surface in my mind until we, co-editors, came to discuss how to structure parts and chapters of the book. Kaalii honestly and supportively shared her thought for which I am most grateful and blessed.
In my mind, She Rises needed something that can empower herself structurally so that she does not remain a lone anthology of the kind. The idea of the Nine-Mago Movement was in waiting. I was biding my time to make the Nine-Mago Movement public but did not foresee that it would be through She Rises. The two were related in conception, as I recollect. The very idea of the Nine-Mago Movement was prompted by the launch of Why Goddess collective writing (later named She Rises). Exactly seventeen days after I announced the Why Goddess collective writing in The Mago Circle (March 6, 2014), I shared the proposal of reviving the Nine-Mago Movement with a circle of Mago Sisters (March 23, 2014). In about a year, the two have merged seamlessly in She Rises. Resultantly, She Rises plays the role of midwifery to the Nine-Mago Movement.
Like the Why Goddess collective writing, the Nine-Mago Movement was conceived out of a desperate need to re-claim our connectedness and cross-cultural comradery among Goddessians/Magoists around the world. Our individual endeavors need NOT to be isolated. Individual Goddessians/Magoists need NOT to undergo the cycle of feeling complacence and burn-out alone. Insofar as we remain internalizing isolation and helplessness, we are incapable of building alliances. Living in isolation and helplessness by Goddessians/Magoists is a huge loss on the part of the living community. The consciousness of the Great Goddess, that is primordial and original, is inherently cosmic and non-solipsistic. Tracing the First Mother brings everyone back in the family tree. To seek the Great Goddess means that we embrace everyone as kindred regardless. There is no group larger than the family of the Great Goddess. Goddessians/Magoists are the bearer of the primordial consciousness of WE. We belong to the Mago Clan.
Nevertheless, sanctions that fall on those who do not accept the premises of patriarchal norms are real. The foreground is taken under the hand of fathers who usurped the throne of the Great Goddess.[1] Our physical life is subjected to the reign of patriarchs. Patriarchal forces are systematically exposing people, especially women and girls, to exploitation and violence as isolated individuals. Many of us as individual Goddessians/Magoists are left without institutional resources and protections. Some Goddessians in the West may mistakenly think that their materialistic or technological advancement makes them superior to those elsewhere. Such pride is nothing other than a symptom of isolation. We must learn how the foreground reality is structurally dividing us. Modern practice of nation states set us against others in other nations. Capitalism treats all but its stock holders as consumers, if not commodities. Patriarchal histories have generated colonialists who exploit and harness other peoples of the world. War is an ultimate bomb that political leaders use to control people. No one is allowed to live one’s life without a passport of one nation. Babies are pawned from the time of birth to modern laws and multinational corporations.
There seems no escape from such malpractices. Unfortunately, many feminists have accepted the patriarchal condition of self-isolation. Patriarchal powers who lead nation states, world’s religions, and capitalist enterprises, seem triumphant. However, where there is no culture of revering life, there is no winner. Patriarchal powers proclaim that they rule the world. Nonetheless, that is far from the case. True rulers would not coerce people or lie to people. Patriarchal leaders know deep down that they are incapable of ruling the world. Thus, they dominate the meek and the not-have. They wrap tragedy as true love and present it as culture and art. Their influence reaches only the cognitive realm that is supported by illusions.
On the other hand, the Background Reality is Here! S/HE is alive in us and all that exists. And we, as part of S/HE, are the proof that S/HE is Here. Those born of woman carry the unconsciousness of the Great Mother. And all beings are born of the Great Mother! The gynocentric unconsciousness shapes the present and future of the planet. The Great Goddess reigns without effort! We see how S/HE leads us and nourishes us every day and every moment! Living beings are attracted to other living beings. People are still moved by good deeds. Nature provides comfort to humans and all other species. The universe is constantly changing in search of a new balance. Let us recognize that isolation is a flaky condition imposed upon us by patriarchal mind-molders. We from across cultures can’t be contained in the cage. All we need to do is to recognize the reality of interconnection and interdependence. We will know what we can do next. We are the whole and we are connected with all other beings. Alliance and collaboration are the way of nature and the cosmos. Alliance is effortless. Collaboration is rewarding! And our dispersion is perfectly apt for making many outposts of the Mago Diaspora.
(From my part of Introduction by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, co-editor and publisher of Mago Books)
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Endnote:
[1] I am using the term “foreground” and “Background,” as Mary Daly defines. Daly defines foreground as “male-centered and mono-dimensional arena where fabrication, objectification and alienation take place; zone of fixed feelings, perceptions, the elementary world: FLATLAND” and Background as “the Realm of Wild Reality; the Homeland of women’s Selves and of all other Others; the Time/Space where auras of plants, planets, stars, animals, and all Other animate beings connect.” See Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi, Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language. San Francisco, Harper Collins, 1985, pp. 76, 63.