The S/HE Forum Fall 2025 Course & Registration
Mago Academy offers the S/HE Forum Fall 2025 Course, a total of 4 forums, as an elective course of the Creatrix Studies Programs (CSP). You may take it as 1 credit course toward your M.A. or Ph.D. in Creatrix Studies programs or audit it not for academic credit.
S/HE Forums Fall 2025 (1 Credit, 0.25 credit for each forum section)
Course no: 901
Instructors: Judy Grahn Ph.D., Danica Anderson Ph.D., Helen Benigni Ph.D., Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Ph.D.
Time: Sept through Dec (Second and/or Fourth Sat of each month, 15 or 16 hours)
Description: The S/HE Forum is a collective teaching course prepared and facilitated by four forum organizers. Each of four forum organizers will lead 4 hours of either one or two sessions in a month for the duration of four months. Each facilitator/teacher leads a class focusing on the topic of her own expertise by inviting 2-4 guest speakers who will speak on the topic salient to the forum theme. Four forum titles are: Great Creatrix in Mesopotamia(Grahn), Embodied Herstory: Forensic Traumatology, Social Epigenetics, and the Inheritance of Female Trauma (Anderson), The Cosmic Mother at Eleusis (Benigni), and Introduction to the Bear/Shaman Queen Mother, Goma, and Her Manifestations (Hwang). For the degree program student, a research paper (one paper of approx. 3,000 words or two of approx. 1,500 words, bibliography not included) of your own topic ideally in relation to one of the four forum topics is required. For more details, contact Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (magoacademy@gmail.com). You will be provided the syllabus upon registration.
Registration Available Now!
Fill out the form below and email to Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang (magoacademy@gmail.com) with the payment. (Copy and paste the form in the body of your email). A Zoom link will be provided to registered students 2-3 days prior to the first session of your course.
1. Your name and country of residence:
2. Your email:
3. Affiliation or organization, if applicable:
4. Course you are taking by the Course Number or the Forum Number(s): e.g. 901 (1 credit) or Forum 1, 2, and 3. If you take it for credit, please note that you are required to submit a research paper (see above).
5. Questions or comments:
Fee for all four forums (1 credit) toward M.A. or Ph.D. degree program: $700
Fee for all four forums (1 credit audit): $100
Fee for one forum audit: $30 (possible up to 3 forums). If you register more than 2 forums, choose 2 or 3 in product quantity.
Forum Summaries
(To read all details, see E-Book and PDF below)
Forum 1
Title: Great Creatrix in Mesopotamia
Time: 11AM to 1PM PT on September 13 and Sept 27 (two sessions)
Organizer/Instructor: Judy Grahn, Ph.D. in U.S.A.
Biography: Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, writer, and theorist. She has been teaching and writing about the literature of Sumerian goddess Inanna for forty years. As co-director of an MA program in Women’s Spirituality housed first at New College of California and then at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Judy established a course, “Women’s Sacred Texts,” centered around the stories and poems describing Inanna. Her publications include articles, a book-length poem, The Queen of Swords (1987) and her nonfiction interpretation of eight of nanna’s stories. Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power (2021). This book received a Sarasvati Award from the Associattion for the Study of Women and Mythology, and the Reginald C. Martin Award for excellence in Literary Criticism from PEN Oakland.
Summary: This forum traces the arc of goddess presence in Mesopotamia from Neolithic Snake goddess Shamaran of the Kurdish Alevi religion, as researched by Dr. Dilsa Deniz, through the rich overlapping traditions of Ishtar, Astarte, Anat, Asherah, and Shekinah as presented by Dr. Shoshana Fershtman. Dr. Judy Grahn seals the through-line by comparting Inanna’s Sumerian stories from the late third millennium BC with biblical stories dated much later. Our intention is to show common underpinnings of divine feminine and earth-centered goddess traditions that reflect women’s powerful, germinative presence in the sacred, and traditions honoring the feminine, the earth, and qualities of peace. These roots, which came forward in both living traditions and masculinized biblical versions, form a net underlying all the Abrahamic patriarchal religions that have rejected women’s inherent connections to the sacred, and women’s bodies and cycles as formative of early religions, in favor of male emphasis on war as solution to problems, while falsely holding both earth and women as inferior, and martyrdom as appropriate emotional response. As women under the heel of patriarchal oppression, we can find our way to better, healing, strengthening positions by recognizing common sacred traditions, whose details vary but whose center is a return to the vision of the ancient Creatrix.
Guest Presenters: Dilsa Deniz Ph.D., Shoshana Fershtman Ph.D., Nurgul Celibi Ph.D.
Forum 2
Title: Embodied Herstory: Forensic Traumatology, Social Epigenetics, and the Inheritance of Female Trauma (Interpreting the Soma as Archive—War, Famine, and Generational Memory in Women’s Bodies)
Time: 8AM to 10 AM PT on October 11th and 25th (two sessions)
Organizer: Danica Anderson, Ph.D., USA
Biography: Danica Anderson, Ph.D., BCFT, FAAETS, DAAETS, is a forensic traumatologist, social scientist, and founder of The Kolo: Women’s Cross-Cultural Collaboration. Her fieldwork across Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Sri Lanka centers the forensic study of women’s war trauma, social epigenetics, and the transmission of embodied memory. A UNESCO Scientific & Education Council and former expert with the International Criminal Court, Dr. Anderson examines how female bodies archive collective trauma across generations. Her work interrogates dominant scientific narratives and reclaims somatic knowledge systems rooted in archaeology, gender-based justice, and intercultural interpretation of trauma.
Summary: The female body, historically depicted in full-bodied Neolithic figurines, has often been wrongly labeled as excessive or pathological by male-centric medicine. Dr. Caroline Perez’s Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men highlights not only the prevalence of male bias in science, but also its deep impact on how female bodies are interpreted and treated. In forensic traumatology, the soma—or living body—serves as an archive, recording trauma, especially from war, famine, and generational hardship, in ways that are often passed down epigenetically. Events like the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944–1945 prove that famine can leave lasting, inheritable biological marks on future generations. Archaeology also reveals alternative interpretations: Dr. Marija Gimbutas demonstrated that what were once seen as “fat” or “sensual” female figurines were actually symbols of life, death, wisdom, and renewal—herstory embedded in the body. The female soma stands as a vital record of inherited healing of transgenerational trauma.
Guest Presenters: Leslene della-Madre (Independent Scholar), Anna Engel (Independent Scholar)
Forum 3
Title: The Cosmic Mother at Eleusis
Time: 9AM to 11AM PT November 8 and 22 (two sessions)
Organizer/Instructor: Helen Benigni Ph.D. in USA
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.
Summary: Interpretations of the Eleusinian Mysteries have traditionally focused on the trials of the Cosmic Mother who must let go of her daughter to a marriage designed by the patriarchy to diminish the power of the Goddess. The anguish and loss of the Mother Goddess causes the change of seasons which are an apt metaphor for the loss of the Mother Goddess, Goddess of the Earth and Sky whose trials during the separation cause the cold and misery of the winter months. However, the Mysteries also mark the beginning of a cycle of the Sacred Feminine as well. After the Mother Goddess, Demeter, is assured that her Daughter, Persephone, will return each year demonstrated in the Telesterion in a most holy affirmation of resurrection and reunion, the Daughter Goddess is initiated into the Mysteries of conception, birth and nursing. The role of the Grandmother as Hecate is re-defined as an Underworld Mother who aids Persephone’s return from the womb/tomb to be reborn from the Ploutonion Cave at Eleusis. To fully understand this new concept of the Sacred Feminine in its three aspects of Mother, Daughter and Grandmother, poems about the Goddesses and reflection on their meaning act as a regenerative force for women today.
Guest Presenters: Vivien Gibbons Ph.D., Susan Hawthorne Ph.D., Marna Hauk Ph.D.
Forum 4
Title: Introduction to the Bear/Shaman Queen Mother, Goma, and Her Manifestations
Time: 8AM to Noon PT December 13 (one session with 15 min break)
Organizer/Instructor: Helen Hye-Sook Hwang, Ph.D. in USA
Biography: Dr. Hwang is the founder of Mago Academy and the programs of Graduate and Continuing Programs in Creatrix Studies. She is a born poet, student, 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. 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 in 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.
Summary: This forum offers a deeper understanding about Goma, the Bear/Mudang Queen Mother. Goma, popularly known as Ungnyeo (Bear/Head Woman), stands for one of the original triad divine together with Mago, the Creatrix, and Gorae (Cetaceans), the terrestrial divine. Goma in the 4th millennium BCE foresaw the arrival of patriarchy and carved out the matriversal consciousness of the Cosmic Mother or the Nine Mago Creatrix as a means of salvation for humans to come in the patriarchal era. Founding the nine-state confederacy of Danguk (State of the Living Tree), Goma implanted the Ninefold Cosmic Music, the creative force of the Matriverse, in her socio-politico-religious institutions, which we moderns inherited. It is not accidental that we have the legacies of Nine Mothers, Nine Muses, Nine Mountains, Navratri, and Novena etc. across cultures. Hwang hypothesizes that Goma is the originator of Ceto-Magoism (the Whale-guided Way of Mago, the Creatrix), which remains demonized in major patriarchal myths and religions in the form of the sea-monster/dragon/serpent. Major themes to be discussed include: The cave initiation (the Goma Myth), parthenogenesis, the living tree (axis mundi), the color black, the bear constellations, the Ceto-Magoist Mudang lineage, and/or the Ninefold Cosmic Music.
Guest Presenters: Judy Grahn Ph.D. Kaarina Kalio Ph.D., Kirsten Brunsgaard Clausen (Independent Scholar)
S/HE Forum Fall 2025 Course Full Information
(PDF download option is available at the three dots logo of the bottom menu on the far right side)
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