Nine-Day Self-Guided Retreat
Awaking in Liminal Timespace,
Guided by the Magoist Korean Drama Hotel del Luna
Facilitator: Helen Hye-Sook Hwang
This Nine-Day Self-Guided Retreat is an invitation to self-disillusioning, self-healing, and self-discovering by wading in the Journey of Magoist Eschatology (Death, Life, and Union with the Cosmic Mother/Creatrix).
When: Dec. 9th – Dec. 17th 2023 (First Round)
Why Hotel del Luna?
Using Hotel del Luna (HDL) as a portal to the retreatant’s own journey is helpful because a soteriological path to the living is unfolded in a very accessible way in HDL through the journey of the dead to the Origin, Mago the Creatrix. I recommend watching or at least beginning to watch the drama’s 16 episodes prior to the retreat.
Hotel del Luna is a 16-episode Korean television drama first aired in 2019. This drama comes as a fresh, non-religious (secular), and spiritual Magoist text, which reveals invaluable insights in a manner thus far unknown elsewhere.
“Mago” refers to the Cosmic Mother (personal) and the Creatrix (impersonal). The drama is a rare project of the twenty-first century in origin which not only depicts Mago as the supreme divine but also illuminates Korean indigenous thought on the dead and the journey of afterlife.
In the versatile language of a television drama, Hotel del Luna sheds a shimmering light on matriversal soteriology: Mago nourishes Life in ALL.
By “matriversal,” I mean of the universe, perceived maternally. I will often use “matriversal” interchangeably with “Magoist.” In the matriverse, all find themselves in their original places in the consciousness of the Cosmic Mother/Creatrix. No one gets lost or left out. Some might call it a utopian vision.
Why is it worth taking seriously this K-drama, Hotel del Luna? In brief because:
- It sets Mago as the supreme divine. Korean traditional thought that Mago—the Cosmic Mother and the Creatrix—is supreme is reaffirmed in a modern narrative. Fiction reveals ultimate reality to moderns who have forgotten the tradition of Magoism.
- It focuses on soteriology shrouded specifically in the stories of placating ghosts. Ghosts are part of the living in the drama as well. Magoist soteriology extends the horizon beyond the living.
- It introduces Korean indigenous customs related to the journey of the dead. The underlying worldview is that the intercosmic cycle of Life (rebirth) is how the matriverse operates.
- Such symbols and notions found in the drama as ghosts, the ghost-serving moon lodge, and the tree of the moon spirit, to name a few, tap into the tradition of Korean Muism (Shamanism) and unfold the liminal timespace wherein spiritual and intellectual awakening takes place. [Source: Lightly edited from Dr. Hwang’s essay, “Liminal Timespace Unfolded: A Short Reflection on the Magoist K-Drama, Hotel Del Luna” included in Celebrating Intercosmic Kinship of the Goddess (Mago Books, 2023)].
Texts: The K-drama Hotel del Luna, Dr. Hwang’s essays on Hotel del Luna and Magoism, and most importantly, your own life to be reflected upon.
Method: The retreat takes place individually via daily email and one Zoom meeting (60 minutes, date and time needs to be determined) with all participants. For the first round (Dec. 9th – Dec. 17th), it will be held at 9:50 AM PDT on Dec. 17th (Sunday). There is no email group discussion during the period. Participants will be invited to the post-retreat email discussion group upon completion.
I: Follow sub-themes for nine days: Dr. Hwang will provide sub-themes with guiding questions for each day. Use both tracks of questions in the chart below as a guideline. Daily Prompts, which include Dr. Hwang’s guides (a section or the whole of her essays), will be provided a day in advance.
II: Keep a daily journal: Keep a journal for each day about the sub-theme assigned and the night’s dream, if you remember it, as many times as possible. Engage yourself in a project that uses your body such as walking, making something, doing dishes etc. Do it alone. Expressing through poetry and/or art are optional.
III: Communicate with the facilitator: It is not mandatory to share a part or the whole of your daily journal with Dr. Hwang. If you choose not to share the journal, Dr. Hwang will provide some questions for you to answer about the day’s reflection theme. Dr. Hwang will read and acknowledge your communications to her and convey the message that she is with you for each day. She may provide some guides in response to your sharing, whenever necessary.
IV: One Zoom session with the facilitator for 60 min on 9th day, 9:50 AM PST (to be agreed by all participants)
V: Optional: You are invited to join Mago Academy’s events that may fall on, during, or after your retreat days. Events include Virtual Welcoming Ceremony New Year & Solstice (according to the 13-month, 28- day, see Mago Almanac Year 7: Menstruators’ Planner with Monthly Wheels), which will take place at 11 AM PST on December 17, 2023; monthly salons (from Spring 2024); a plenary session of the S/HE divine Studies online conference (June 8, 2024); and/or book launches.
Two Tracks of Daily Themes (follow the day sequence in a snake-like curve line)
| Day 1: What molds my mind? (Probing my internalizations I) ———————Can you see what’s in Jang Manwol’s mind? How has she/her life/her destiny programmed her mind? | Day 6: What do I desire? (Restoring my crushed dreams III) —————————-How does GCS achieve his dreams? (How are his actions guided?) | Day 7: Let-go and Let-be (Riding the currents I) —————-Do you see what JMW was and is now? |
| Day 2: What molds my mind? (Probing my internalizations II) ———————How does JMW relate with Mago, the supreme divine? | Day 5: What do I desire? (Restoring my crushed dreams II) ——————————What are the dreams of Gu Chanseong? (Who does he wish to become for himself?) | Day 8: Let-go and Let-be (Riding the currents II) —————–How is the Mago Divine present and/or absent to people? |
| Day 3: What molds my mind? (Probing my internalizations III) ———————Can you tell how the principle of causality works in the stories of ghosts? | Day 4: What do I desire? (Restoring my crushed dreams I) ——————————-What did JMW dream of when she was alive? (Who did she wish to become?) |
Day 9: Let-go and Let-be (Riding the currents III) |
Fees: Recommended donation $75-200
(Paypal to ninemagos@gmail.com) or use below link:
Registration: Open until Dec. 6th. Please fill out the following in your email with “9-Day Retreat” in the subject:
1. Your name and country of residence.
2. What made you choose to take this self-guided retreat?
3. Questions and/or comments.
About Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang
Dr. Hwang is the researcher, writer, publisher, philosopher, visionary, and advocate of Magoist Cetaceanism, the matriversal consciousness of cetacean veneration embodied in the socio-historical-cultural expressions of traditional Korea and beyond. After earning her MA and Ph.D. in Religion with emphasis on Feminist Studies from Claremont Graduate University, CA., she pursued M.A. degree at UCLA, CA. She has made herself a gardener of a mini-forest by the name of Moon-lit Rock Garden in Lytle Creek, California. She, with Mary Ann Beavis, co-founded S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies. Currently, Dr. Hwang has been the leading co-editor of the S/HE journal since 2022. Mago Academy convenes an annual online S/HE Divine Studies conference beginning in 2024. Hwang’s authored and co-edited books include Celebrating Intercosmic Kinship of the Goddess, Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture, Mago Almanac, The Mago Way, She Rises trilogy, Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess, She Summons (Volume 1), The Budoji Workbook (Volume 1), and Return to Mago E-Magazine.
Words of Kindness by Beth Raps, Ph.D.
I wanted to say why this retreat is important to me. I have long done inner practices during the deep Winter season of December but never guided. And I was never guided into the depths of not just understanding but experiencing the presence of the Cosmic Mother, Mago. You are the right guide for me, and I’m grateful you’ll take precious time to do this with us during the 9 days of the retreat, starting on December 9 and culminating on the 17th. I’m also grateful I can do this at my own pace, and give to it what I am able to bring to it, with your support.
I embrace your invitation to this “self-disillusioning, self-healing, and self-discovering” so necessary now, and so potent with possibility for us. I know others will join as they feel moved; I just wanted to raise my hand and witness to the power of what you’ve created and are offering.
Thank you.
Beth