What is the S/HE Creatrix Studies Forum? It is an online platform hosted by Mago Academy to gather and share information and activism among scholars and students whose work concerns the Cosmic Mother/the Creatrix/the Source.
September 2026 S/HE Creatrix Studies Forum: Women and Shamanism
Organizer: Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Ph.D.
Time: Saturdays September 12 and September 26 at 12-2 PM PT
If you are interested in serving as an organizer or a presenter, please email Dr. Hwang (magoacademy@gmail.com) or Dr. Helen Benigni (benignih@dewv.edu). Go to the invitation announcement to serve as an organizer and presenter here. Deadline by August 31.
Registration: Free of charge, email the following information to Dr. Hwang (magoacademy@gmail.com).
- Your name and email (if you are new)
- Your country of residence (at the time of this forum session)
- What makes you join this forum?
- Would you be interested in receiving the semi-monthly Mago Pod Bulletin?
Summary: Many would agree that Shamanism is the oldest if not foundational religion of the human world. We explore the female-centered worldwide “shaman” traditions from interdisciplinary and cross-temporal perspectives. Apart from these questions, Who were/are shamans? Have shamans been subjected to persecution in the course of patriarch history? Why do I think restoring shamanism is critically important today at the threshold of the AI-baptized era?, etymology, origin, cosmology, soteriology, Goddesses, women, rituals, dances, songs, and histories concerning Shamanism will be discussed.
Biography: Dr. Hwang is the founder of Mago Academy and the field of Creatrix Studies. She is a born poet, philosopher, and advocate for Life of ALL and has encountered Ceto-Magoism (the Whale-guided Way of the Creatrix) through her doctoral research on Mago, the Cosmic Mother/Creatrix. She is currently leading the Matriversal Feminist Movement together with Mago Work volunteers. Dr. Hwang received an M.A. and a Ph.D. degrees in Religion with the emphasis on Women’s Studies. To support her research on Magoism (the Way of the Creatrix), she enrolled in an M.A. program in East Asian Studies and specialized in Korean Buddhism at UCLA. Authored, edited, and published many books and essays by Mago Books and the peer-reviewed academic journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, and Return to Mago E-Magazine. She is currently teaching the core and elective courses of Creatrix Studies.
Participants include:
Kaarina Kailo PhD
Laura Shanon
Jsabel Bilqis (Ashlynd)
Leslene della Madre
Janet Rudolph
Coral Wynter PhD
Lynn Genevieve PhD
Max Dashu
Deepak Shimkhada PhD
Glenys Livingstone PhD
Luan Danaan
Christina Aro-Harle
Annie Finch PhD
Vajra Ma
Noris Binet
Aidan Moor
Dilsa Deniz PhD
Helen Benigni PhD
Patricia Woodruff PhD
Harriet Ann Ellenberger
Kirsten Brunsgaard
Heather Gehron-Rice
Mudang Jennifer
Kerry Valeontis
Shoshana Fershtman PhD
Bojana Radovanovic PhD
Heidi Howes
Rebecca Tiger
Noris Binet
Louisa Calio
Hazel Bowden
Mary Wyman
DL Hamilton
Margaret Merisante PhD
Jasmine Larkin-Koushki PhD
Helen Hye-Sook Hwang PhD
Presenters on September 12
Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Ph.D.
Title: The calling of Mu-Shamanism: Restoring the Matriversal Origin in the Human World in harmony with the Cosmic Music
Summary: Old Korean Mu-Shamanism or Muism is the oldest matristic religion of the human world, established and spread by female shamans, Mudangs. As the direct descent of Mago, the Cosmic Mother, Old Korean Mudangs represented the Eight Daughters of the Mago Triad (Mago and HER two daughters). According to the Budoji (Epic of the Emblem Capital City), they were self-missioned to restore the matriversal origin in the human world in the post-paradisiacal era. Old Korean Mudangs were the divine rulers who led the pre-patriarchal human world in alliance with the natural world headed by cetaceans. They, depicted as the whale-dragon rider, carved out the cetacean-human hybrid intelligence/spirituality and raised Ceto-Magoist civilization during the Neolithic.
Biography: Dr. Hwang is the founder of Mago Academy and the field of Creatrix Studies. She is a born poet, philosopher, and advocate for Life of ALL and has encountered Ceto-Magoism (the Whale-guided Way of the Creatrix) through her doctoral research on Mago, the Cosmic Mother/Creatrix. She is currently leading the Matriversal Feminist Movement together with Mago Work volunteers. Dr. Hwang received an M.A. and a Ph.D. degrees in Religion with the emphasis on Women’s Studies. To support her research on Magoism (the Way of the Creatrix), she enrolled in an M.A. program in East Asian Studies and specialized in Korean Buddhism at UCLA. Authored, edited, and published many books and essays by Mago Books and the peer-reviewed academic journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, and Return to Mago E-Magazine. She is currently teaching the core and elective courses of Creatrix Studies.
Laura Shanon
Title: Women’s Ritual Dances as Gateways to Divination and Healing
Summary: This presentation shares insights from 40 years of fieldwork researching women’s ritual dances of Eastern Europe. I will also draw on the research of Elizabeth Barber, Yosef Garfinkel, Marija Gimbutas, and Barbara Tedlock.
In many rural villages until recently (WW2), it was obligatory, not optional, for women to take part in regular ritual dance. Tradition required that they pass on the dances as they received them, with little change from one generation to the next.
The dances originated in the early Neolithic era in the Near East, and expanded across Europe with the spread of agriculture. They embody a worldview based on respect for mothers, the Mother Earth, and the mothering principle as the foundation for an egalitarian matriversal society. These rituals affirm women’s inherent ability to enter into a trance state for purposes of divination and healing, as they upheld calendrical and seasonal rituals on behalf of the community.
Biography: Laura Shannon is a researcher and teacher of traditional women’s circle dances from Eastern Europe, exploring their hidden wisdom and innately healing qualities. The dances have roots in peaceful, egalitarian, Goddess-centred societies of the Neolithic era, before patriarchy and war. Laura has published many articles on dance and teaches seminars worldwide. She is the Founding Director of the Athena Institute for Women’s Dance & Culture and Director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth & Ritual. In 2018 the Sacred Dance Guild made her an Honorary Lifetime Member honouring her ‘significant and lasting contribution to dance as a sacred art’. Email: laura@laurashannon.net CV:
https://glos.academia.edu/LauraShannon/CurriculumVitae (last updated 2021)
Leslene della Madre
Title: Feminist Shamanic Psychology for Women—Soul Retrieval of the Female Soul
Summary: It is my view that Nature-based healing is an old shamanic practice that our ansisters used in
healing community. I have written extensively on female shamanism. One aspect I will be
focusing on is Soul Retrieval, a cross-cultural shamanic practice. For me, the living source is the
dance of plasMA and electricity and accessing the unlimited energy from this reality brings
unlimited healing. This presentation will be on how I have incorporated feminist shamanism in a
current healing paradigm I have created that I call Soul Retrieval of the Female Soul that I have
used for over 40 years. In using a mandala or circle structure that maps a woman’s experience
in patriarchy, aided by the use of drumming, dance, spirit guides/helpers and shamanic journey,
sometimes called “awake dreaming,” women themselves access their own intrinsic sovereign
power, becoming their own “shaman” in their own healing. They also encounter aspects of
themselves that have never been abused in patriarchy, which I feel is a very important aspect of
women’s healing. I feel all women are shamans and this experience of self-healing connects us
all to the greater consciousness of the living electric universe.
Biography: Author, poet, artist, feminist shamanic practitioner, birth doula, death midwife, feminist philosopher, independent scholar, mother and grandmother. A cousin of Einstein, she has challenged mainstream beliefs in physics, cosmology and patriarchal religions. She has written two books, Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother and She Who Spins the Coils of Creation: Sacred Female Cosmology in the Electric PlasMA Universe, and co-edited a textbook, Trauma-Informed Care. She established a center for shamanic healing, Winged Women Return, over forty years ago offering feminist shamanic teachings, classes, individual sessions, ceremony and rituals for life passages.
Kaarina Kailo, Ph.D
Title: On Finnish shamanism and the soul-spirit concepts
Summary: The purpose of my talk is to describe the Finnish shamanistic beliefs relating to spirit, soul and ”luonto” and to reveal how they reflect aspects of a matriversal cosmos.
Biography: Dr. Kaarina Kailo is Docent/Adj. professor of North American Studies and formerly first Chair and Full professor of Women’s Studies at Oulu University, Finland. She has also worked as senior scholar of the Finnish Academy. Kailo has held women’s studies positions at Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Canada (Interim Principal in l997) and worked at the University of Quebec, Chicoutimi and the University of Toronto. Her main fields are women’s, indigenous, cultural, literary studies and folklore; Her expertise includes ecofeminism, gift economies/imaginaries, gendered violence, Northern women and the Finnish Kalevala, Finno-Ugric mythology, Sami culture and racism, bear-woman ecomythology, neoliberal globalization and finally, Jungian and Freudian theories of creativity. She has published over a hundred articles and many books or co-edited anthologies. Main publications: Wo/men & Bears—the Gifts of Nature, Culture, Gender Revisited (2008), Introduction to Ecopsychology (in Finnish 2006 with Irma Heiskanen), Finnish Goddess Mythology and the Golden Woman, Climate Change, Earth-Based Indigenous Knowledge and the Gift (2019); Motherhood, Gift and Revolution. Honoring Genevieve Vaughan’s Life’s Work (with E. Shadmi, 2020). She is active in Finnish politics, a municipal councillor and self-made textile artist focused on Finno-Ugric deities. She was recently appointed on the Scientific Advisory Circle of Matrix: a Journal for Matricultural Studies (Ottawa). She has received three recognitions for her life work. Her current research focuses on Bear and Mother Worship, the sweatlodge/sauna and bear spirituality and traces of Finno-Ugric matriarchies. Homepage: www.kaarinakailo.info.
Presenters on September 26
Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Ph.D.
Title: Continuity of Ceto-Magoist Mu-Shamanism in Northeast Asia between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic
Summary: While the mytho-history of Ceto-Magoist Old Korea merits a lens to the human history from the terrestrial beginning to this day, I am interested in exploring continuity of Old Korean Ceto-Magoist Mu-Shamanism between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Bringing the Paleolithic into the picture is a daunting if not precarious task, which requires examination of various and sometimes thus-far unknown factors including paleoclimatology, archaeology, mythology, folklore, toponymy, geography, and history. Based on the narrative of The Budoji (Epic of the Emblem Capital City) that Old Korean Ceto-Magoist ancestors headed by mudang sovereigns took on the northbound migrate journey from the axis mundi, the paradise of Mago Stronghold, I examine how far north and how far east they possibly reached and settled in the pre-patriarchal past prior to the mid third millennium BCE. Archaeology, mythology, and toponymy are discussed to assess the continuity of Muism in the pre-patriarchal past.
Biography: Dr. Hwang is the founder of Mago Academy and the field of Creatrix Studies. She is a born poet, philosopher, and advocate for Life of ALL and has encountered Ceto-Magoism (the Whale-guided Way of the Creatrix) through her doctoral research on Mago, the Cosmic Mother/Creatrix. She is currently leading the Matriversal Feminist Movement together with Mago Work volunteers. Dr. Hwang received an M.A. and a Ph.D. degrees in Religion with the emphasis on Women’s Studies. To support her research on Magoism (the Way of the Creatrix), she enrolled in an M.A. program in East Asian Studies and specialized in Korean Buddhism at UCLA. Authored, edited, and published many books and essays by Mago Books and the peer-reviewed academic journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, and Return to Mago E-Magazine. She is currently teaching the core and elective courses of Creatrix Studies.
Bojana Radovanović, Ph.D.
Institute for Religious Studies, University of Graz (Austria)
Title: Embodied Memory and Mythic Continuity in the Rusalje Tradition: Reconsidering Balkan Ritual Performance in a Eurasian Shamanic Context
Summary: This paper reopens the still insufficiently resolved question of the mythological and ritual substrata underlying the Balkan custom of the Rusalje, celebrated during the Pentecostal period. Drawing on comparative mythology and ritual studies, it examines the (predominantly Indo-European) layers that have shaped this female-centered ritual complex, while also reassessing its gendered dynamics and performative structure. Particular attention is given to the possibility that these practices preserve refracted elements of ancient Goddess-centered cults, especially those associated with chthonic, ecstatic, and mediatory female divinities. In this context, “Goddess cults” are approached not as fixed or monolithic systems, but as fluid constellations of symbols, practices, and ritual roles centered on the sacred feminine. This paper forms part of a broader work in progress that may develop into a future comparative research project. Moving beyond the individual case of Rusalje, I aim to investigate whether developmental, phenomenological, or structural parallels can be identified between Balkan ritual practices described as “shamanic-like” and those of the circumpolar North and Siberia. Rather than assuming that these Balkan practices constitute “shamanism”—a classification that remains contested—the project re-examines their characteristics and historical trajectories, while asking whether placing them within a wider Eurasian comparative framework might reveal previously overlooked patterns of ritual mediation, embodiment, and interaction with the non-human.
Biography: Dr. Bojana Radovanović, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Graz: https://oeaw.academia.edu/BojanaRadovanovic; ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9622-5236; Zenodo: Bradovanovic https://zenodo.org/me/uploads?q=&l=list&p=1&s=10&sort=newest
Bojana is a senior postdoctoral researcher (religious history, history of religions) with a BA in Classical Philology (University of Belgrade, Serbia), MA in Classical Archaeology, and a PhD in (Medieval) History, earned at the University of Vienna in 2018 with the topic on the ‘language of heresy’ in 9th-century Greek and Latin texts in comparative perspective. She has worked at the Institute for History of Belgrade and Institute for Medieval Studies in Vienna. She spent two years at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies of the Radboud University Nijmegen (NL), with the working group “History of Christianity,” as a postdoctoral guest-researcher funded by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF), where she taught courses on Byzantine theology, Early Christianity and Patristics. During the last years, she has had three research stays at the Leibniz Institute for History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig (GWZO). Her research interests include history of Late Antique and medieval religious currents, Divine Feminine in the Mediterranean and in the Balkans, Eurasian Shamanism in diachronic and comparative perspective, dualist heresies of the Middle Ages, and comparative mythology. She is currently editing the Proceedings of the conference Medieval Heresies: On a Less Trodden Path (forthcoming 2026 with Brill, in the series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450). Her new ASTRA FWF project on Heterodoxy in the Balkans was allotted and started in October 2025 at the Department of Religious Studies of the University of Graz. Apart from several texts aimed at the popularization of scholarly topic she composed, Bojana has also participated at the SHWEP podcast (“Bogomilism”, https://shwep.net/oddcast/bojana-radovanovic-on-the-bogomils/ (“The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast”)) and took part in a Youtube interview (“Bogomilism”, with Samuel Zenner, https://justnowhere.weebly.com/, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90oSwftXz8A.), highlighting the less-explored and mystical filaments in the Bogomil doctrine. Last but not least, she is working on her historical novel Diana of the Karatash (black stone) Fortress (forthcoming 2025).
Annie Finch, Ph.D.
Title: Meter and Shamanism: Speaking the Tongues of the Divine
Summary: Poetic meters are a highly potent sacred technology for altering consciousness, bringing people
into unity with each other and the divine, and guiding energetic change. By combining spoken
word with physical pattern, meters bring together the left and right brain, conscious and
unconscious, into that unity of awareness we experience as magic. While the current metrical
situation in English centers only one meter, iambic, the Meter of the Mind, other meters
including the Anapestic, the Meter of the Will; Trochaic, the Meter of the Body; Dactylic, the
Meter of the Heart; and Amphibrachic and Cretic, the Meters of the Spirit—are just as
accessible, beautiful, and meaningful in English.This presentation will discuss the ancient
herstory of meter in ceremonial contexts and the reasons for its loss. It will close with a
discussion of meter’s exciting contemporary role in women’s shamanic practice, including my
own experiences and those of my students.
Biography: Annie Finch is a poet, speaker, and ritual performer who devotes her life to sacred poetcraft. Her
twenty books include Spells, The Ghost of Meter, and Among the Goddesses, winner of the
Sarasvati Award from ASWM. Finch’s poetry has appeared in Penguin Book of Twentieth-
Century American Poetry and onstage at Carnegie Hall. Author of the poetry-writing guide A
Poet’s Craft, she earned a Ph.D from Stanford University and has lectured on poetry at the
universities of Harvard, Oxford, Toronto, and Delhi. Finch is the founder of Poetry Witchual
Theater in New York and Poetry Witch Community for Meter and Magic.
Helen Benigni, Ph.D.
Title: Bringing Forth the Light: Female Shamanism in Greek and Celtic Astromythology
Summary: One of the many roles of the female shamans in the myths of the ancient
Greeks and Celts was to bring forward the light of the Moon and the Sun after the
journey to the womb of the Creatrix or Mother Goddess. This gynocentric and
matristic shamanism required the Samanos, the Pharmakis and the Druid
priestesses to harness the powers of creation or womb energy as a force of cosmic
empowerment to bring forth the light of healing and unity. To keep the world in
balance, free the soul and retrieve the soul from trauma through dance, divination,
and collaborative female energy, these women with wings used the power of the
Lunar Eclipse, the Solar Eclipse and the Winter Solstice as a relief from non-
ordinary reality for the transmutation of the soul. Hecate, Circe, Medea, and the
Dryades, Fairy Women, and Bandruaids are representatives of these female
shamans.
Biography: Helen Benigni (Ph.D. Indiana University of Pennsylvania) is a published author and Professor Emerita in Comparative Mythology at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia. For several decades, Helen has been teaching classes in Comparative Mythology with an emphasis on Goddess studies. Her books, The Myth of the Year (Mago Books, 2023), The Goddess and the Bull (University Press of America, 2007), and The Mythology of Venus (University Press of America, 2013) incorporate the research findings of archeoastronomers to determine the myths associated with the cycles found on the ancient calendars of the Greeks and the Celts. Identifying the Goddesses of the matri-local cultures of the ancients with the seasons represented by the lunar, solar and stellar bodies has been a major endeavor in the study of archetypes, with an emphasis on the feminine archetypes of the celestial realms. Helen’s research with the Hellenic Studies Center in Washington D.C., her many trips to ancient sites, and her collaborative efforts with scholars in mythology, astronomy, archeology, and art have led to her discovery of the presence of the Goddesses in the night sky and the continued renewal of the Goddesses in contemporary times.
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