Welcome To The PaGaian Cosmology Website
Celebrating Cosmogenesis – the Triple Spiral
– each particular beautiful Self, new in every moment
– deep relationship and communion with Other, the web of life
– direct participation in the sentience of the Creative Cosmos, the Well of Creativity
Glenys Livingstone 2006
In keeping with the movement and theme of the book PaGaian Cosmology, it is published here – freely available – with a Creative Commons license1. It is offered by Glenys Livingstone, the author, as a resource and to inspire further Creativity – more expressions for the Sacred Cosmos. You are invited to read the book here (though you may also choose to buy it), and to tour the various sections of the site, and to check out the about pages – for the story of this site’s advent and its intention.
Geologian-cosmologist Thomas Berry has noted: The newly energizing Earth community needs a mystique that will provide the high exaltation appropriate to the existence of such a stupendous universe and such a glorious planet as that on which we live. This can be found in celebrating not simply the seasonal sequence but also the irreversible transformational sequence, as this has taken place in the evolutionary story of the universe2.
PaGaian Cosmology brings together a religious practice of seasonal ritual based in a contemporary scientific sense of the cosmos and female imagery for the Sacred. Glenys situates this original synthesis in her context of being female and white European transplanted to the Southern Hemisphere. The work grew from Her sense of alienation from her place, which was personal, cultural and cosmic. This fires a commitment to a cosmology that re-stories Goddess metaphor of Virgin-Mother-Crone as a pattern of Creativity, which unfolds the cosmos, manifests in Earth’s life, and may be known intimately.
PaGaian Cosmology is an ecospirituality grounded in indigenous Western religious celebration of the Earth-Sun annual cycle. By linking to story of the unfolding universe this practice can be deepened. And a sense of the Triple Goddess – central to the cycle and known in ancient cultures –may be developed as a dynamic innate to all being. The ritual scripts and the process of ritual events presented here, may be a journey into self-knowledge through personal, communal and ecological story: the self to be known is one that is integral with place.
PaGaian Cosmology may be used as a resource for individuals or groups seeking new forms of devotional expression and an Earth-based pathway to wisdom within.
You are invited to log into the forum, to make suggestions and/or to share your insights and current cosmic celebrations. The resources here may be used to enrich and diversify expressions of the Sacred and anyone’s local activities and rituals: the local being the place where real transformation and connection begins.
About the Author:
Glenys Livingstone graduated with a Ph.D. in Social Ecology from the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Her action research and thesis in the study of female imagery for the Sacred – upon which this book is based – grew from inner and communal work over the period of nearly three decades. An Australian with country roots, teacher training, theological and social science studies, she has journeyed into life’s compost and found transformative power to return smiling.
For access to the doctoral thesis upon which PaGaian Cosmology is based, see University of Western Sydney Library and/or the title and abstract is available on pagaian.org forum
To buy a signed copy of the book from the author if you are in Australia:
If you are in other lands, you may still buy a signed copy via PayPal by contacting Glenys first – it’s just that postage is more, depending on where on Gaia you are exactly.
1 See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/
2 Thomas Berry, Evening Thoughts. Mary Evelyn Tucker (ed.) SF: Sierra Club Books, 2006. p.147
