Maeve (aka Mary Magdalen) on the Papyrus Scrap

Maeve has been impatiently waiting for interview requests from The New York Times and other major media since The Times published that article about of a scrap of papyrus. You know the business-card size scrap in which Jesus makes a reference to (feel the shaking of the church’s one foundation) “my wife.” The press has been slow on the uptake, so Maeve has deigned to grant an exclusive interview at this blogsite.  

Interviewer: So Maeve Rhuad (aka Mary Magdalen) I suppose that Jesus might have had a wife comes as no news to you.  Do you feel a little insulted by the furor over a scrap of 2^nd century papyrus when you have been trying to state the obvious for over two thousand years?

Maeve: Maybe bemused rather than insulted. People do tend to get more excited over ancient bits of papyrus than recently published novels—unless they are by Dan Brown. That the article made reference only to Dan Brown omitting many other (sorry Dan and thanks for publicity) more accomplished novelists is the insulting part. 

Interviewer:  Why do you suppose the existence of Jesus’s wife (which is to say your existence) has been so suppressed all these centuries? What’s the big deal about a Jewish rabbi having a wife?

Maeve: Many people have speculated about my existence and there have been various heretical traditions about Jesus’s marriage among such sects as the Cathars. But if you want to know the real dirt, it’s all in The Maeve Chronicles. Readers will recall that I got off to a bad start with Peter. When I met him, I was running a holy whorehouse, and his wife came to us to …let’s just say resolve fertility issues. Even so, Peter and I had our rare good moments. But things fell apart when he laid siege to Temple Magdalen to try to take my posthumous daughter by Jesus. We finally cut a deal: I would keep my baby and disappear from the story. I got off to a bad start with Paul of Tarsus, too, and with Jesus’s brother James. There was one moment in my misadventures when I had those three church fathers, so to speak, tied up and held at knife point. I could have nipped church’s long, bloody history in the bud, but all I wanted was information about my daughter—whom they had kidnapped at the age of twelve! So the deal is off, as far as my disappearing from the story is concerned. By the way, in case you’re wondering, Sarah gave her kidnappers the slip, stowed away on a ship and later became a pirate.  

Interviewer:  The scrap of papyrus also refers to a female disciple. Many people assume she is the same woman as one he calls wife. Would you care to comment?

Maeve: Yes, I would, on my own behalf and on behalf of my friend Mary of Bethany who really was a disciple and who fought for the right of women to be not only disciples but leaders in the ecclesia. As for me, I am simply not disciple material. Jesus knew that, and that is why he finally broke down and proposed marriage to me. He was overwhelmed by his following. He needed someone who loved him passionately but was willing to tell him off—which I did from an early age and continued to do to the point of throwing figs at him in the Temple of Jerusalem after he blasted the fig tree (which I restored to life, by the way).  I never converted to Judaism or Christianity—though I did become a whore-priestess of Isis when I encountered that goddess during my sojourn as a slave in Rome.  

Interviewer: In addition to controversy over whether or not you were married to Jesus, there has always been speculation about whether you were a whore, for which there is no scriptural evidence. Many people now insist that casting you as a whore is a patriarchal defamation of your character. Would you care to set the record straight?

Maeve: Far be it from me to defend the patriarchy, but you see they cast me as a penitent whore, and that I never was and never will be. But yes indeed I was a whore, and so would you be if you were a young woman (or man) captured by a Roman slaver and sold on the block, which is what happened to me. When I finally won my freedom (an exciting tale included in The MaeveChronicles) I continued to ply my trade—but on my own sovereign terms at Temple Magdalen—the holy whorehouse I mentioned earlier. My biggest hesitation in marrying Jesus was the prospect of leaving Temple Magdalen and going on the road with The Twelve (though it was usually a lot more than that).

Interviewer: One last question. Can you tell us briefly what it was like being married to Jesus?

Maeve: If you really want to know, read the last part of The Passion of Mary Magdalen. In brief? It was no bed of roses. Jesus is supposed to have said “the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” Well, he had my breasts, thank you very much! And I had only his less sumptuous chest. We did not have a typical married life. We never had a home together. We always had a lot of other people around us. Our child was born after he died and rose and disappeared (though lo he is always with me). We had a major rift towards the end of our marriage (see blasted fig tree) but we made it up when he saved me from being stoned as an adulteress. What was it like being married to Jesus? Blissful, agonizing, sweet, short.  Brief yet momentous. A mustard seed, a hazelnut, a scrap of papyrus.

Jezebel and Me--and You: A post by Maeve

The infamous Jezebel, a Phoenician princess who married King Ahab of Israel, lived more than 800 years before my time, so we never got a chance to hang out. If we had, we might have been friends. We have a lot in common.

Neither of us ever converted to our husbands’ maniacally monotheistic religion. But Jezebel went me one better: she did convert her husband to the worship of Baal and Asherah. He even built them a temple. I never attempted to convert my husband. (That said, he did spend many an ecstatic night with me at Temple Magdalen, my holy whorehouse, before and after our unexpected wedding. He was also the catalyst for my apotheosis, however brief, as Isis.)

Jezebel did things on a grander scale. She is said to have fed 450 priests of Baal and 400 priests of Asherah at her table. She is also accused of killing off the priests of Yahweh. Her alleged persecutions drew the attention of the prophet Elijah who mounted a contest between Baal and Yahweh. (Winner: the first to cause a sacrificial bull to spontaneously combust. Prize: status as top dog, I mean god.) When Yahweh prevailed, Elijah slaughtered all Jezebel’s priests. Enraged but not intimidated, Jezebel scared the bejeezus out of Elijah and he turned tail and ran for his life.

The most underhanded thing Jezebel is supposed to have done is to procure Naboth’s vineyard for her whiny husband by illicit means. When Naboth refused to sell to the king, Ahab went off his feed. So Jezebel had Naboth framed for blasphemy for which he and his heirs were promptly stoned. “Got your vineyard for you,” she says to her husband. Meanwhile Elijah comes out of hiding to prophesy some very nasty, gory doom for Ahab, Jezebel and their descendants.

Whether Jezebel did the wicked deed ascribed to her, I don’t know. As Janet Howe Gaines points out in her excellent article “How Bad was Jezebel?” she herself might have been set up. The bias of the biblical writer is clear: Jezebel stands for everything that is abhorrent (and a threat) to the cult of Yahweh. She has to go down. And not only that, be eaten by dogs! But before her grisly end, she shows her metal, painting her eyes with kohl and arranging her hair, then gazing out the window till the latest usurper comes near enough for her to insult him.

Though there is no account of Jezebel doing anything but doting on her sniveling husband, she is also accused of harlotries—and sorceries. Idolatry and adultery were then (and sometimes still are) synonymous. Think of the biblical phrase: whoring after other gods. If a woman has power (or even if she is merely outspoken like me) she must be a whore, a witch—and in my case demon-possessed. Personally, I have no patience with exalting or demonizing women. As Aretha sings, "A woman's only human." We, too, are caught up in the glorious, disastrous mess of incarnation. Why shouldn't we make tragic mistakes, just as men do, and even commit crimes?

The name Jezebel, like the epithet whore, has long been used to intimidate women. We feel we must defend ourselves, protest our virtue. Well, next time someone calls you: Jezebel, whore, witch, go back to painting your eyes with kohl, finish brushing your hair, then turn and calmly gaze. Say, “Yes? And your point?”

For more about Jezebel and me see Bright Dark Madonna, Chapter 16: "Brawl" where the church fathers call me a Jezebel and threaten me with the same fate—all because I ran away to give birth to my daughter in a notorious and holy whorehouse.

Enough about Jezebel and me. What about you? Have you ever been called a Jezebel? Tell us your story.

Red-Robed Priestess: Virtual Book Tour

We kicked off Elizabeth and Maeve's Virtual Book Tour yesterday with an interview on Creatix Media (Click here to listen if you missed it: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/creatrix-media-live/2011/11/13/maeve-chronicles-series-with-elizabeth-cunningham

There are alot more interviews and reviews coming up as we move into publication week!

Mark your calendars with the following links and be sure to keep up with Elizabeth and Maeve on their Virtual Tour!

Nov 16: Part 1 of interview with Transformational Writers www.transformationalwriters.com

Nov 17: Meredith Gould Interview will post http://meredithgould.blogspot.com

Nov 18: Jane Cunningham http://morethingsithink.blogspot.com

Nov 23: Part 2 of interview with Transformational Writers www.transformationalwriters.com

Dec 2: Part 1 of Jodine Turner Interview www.jodineturner.com

Dec 8: Backdoor to the Moon Interview http://backdoortothemoon.blogspot.com

Dec 9: Part 2 of Jodine Turner Interview (www.jodineturner.com)

Thanks for your support!

Reginus

Feast of Mary Magdalen/Maeve Friday, July 22nd 7:30

Dea volente I will be livestreaming a performance featuring selections for all four of The Maeve Chronicles on Friday, July 22nd at 7:30. http://www.ustream.tv/user/ElizNMaeve

For me this is a celebration of twenty years with Maeve, twenty-one if you include her incarnation as the cartoon character Madge!

Hope to see you (or at least to have you see me) there and then!

http://www.ustream.tv/user/ElizNMaeve

The Feast of Mary Magdalen: Celebrating Incarnation

On July 22nd, the height of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, fruits and vegetables ripening, sun baking or steaming, cool waters beckoning, warm nights full of stars and fireflies, when our senses are so engaged, the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches all celebrate The Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene. Or Magdalen, as some prefer. I know her as Maeve, the Celtic Mary Magdalen. This summer marks the twentieth anniversary of my first encounter with what might be described as an archetypal force, or, as one reader called her, an imaginary friend.

She first showed up as a line drawing: an ample woman sitting naked in a kitchen drinking coffee. (Someone recently asked: is she always naked? Answer: yes, because I can’t draw clothes.) The truth is I couldn’t draw at all. I was doodling because I had just finished a novel and was clean out of words. Madge, as she introduced herself to me, did not have the same problem. Speech balloons burgeoned. Line drawings gave way to full color, including fiery neon orange for her hair. (Madge-ic markers were our medium.) The ample flesh required an ample supply of a shade called peach. Madge liked to do everything naked from eating chocolates to painting (she founded the whole-body-no-holds-barred school of art) to making outrageous theological pronouncements about the unmentionable members of the body of Christ. She made no bones about working as a prostitute to support her career as a painter. During the first Gulf War, she became a peace activist and founded such organizations as POWER (Prostitutes Opposing War Everywhere Rise) TWAT (Tarts With Attitude Triumph) and WITCH (Women Inclined To Create Havoc).

I was enchanted with her and begged her to be in my next novel. She rejected all my book proposals as far too conventional (ie, boring!) until one full moon night I made an imaginative leap. Madge…Magdalen. Red hair…Celt. Celtic Mary Magdalen. Hey, I said, would you be willing to be in a book about the Celtic Mary Magdalen? Yes! she answered. That’s the one! “One” is now three published novels and a fourth and final one (yes, I said final!) almost complete.

Mary Magdalen, who makes brief, dramatic appearances in the Canonical gospels and has a Gnostic gospel ascribed to her, has always appealed to novelists, troubadours, and other legend makers—including popes. My Maeve, an impenitent, pagan Celt who is nobody’s disciple, differs from many traditional old and new age depictions of Mary Magdalen. Yet I suspect those of us who love her may have more in common than not. Isn’t her appeal that she was incarnate, a flesh and blood woman, whatever we know or don’t know about her, who loved a flesh and blood man, however we want to define that love?

I would like to declare July 22nd a feast day to celebrate our incarnation on this earth, something all of us alive and who have ever lived share with all life and life to come. We are made of the same substance; we are subject to the same joys and sufferings of the flesh. From a laboring woman’s body we were born; and the mystery of death awaits us. Madge/Maeve/Mary Magdalen(e) is our companion and witness, too, or whatever name you want to call your imaginary friend, the force that sparks you. On July 22nd dare to eat a peach. Swim naked. Open your palms to the sun, rain and wind. Stand barefoot in the dirt. Give thanks for your incarnation.

Maeve on Menopause

I am not going to write about Thanksgiving. We didn't have it in the first century, though we gave thanks and made offerings, chucked a lot of gold down votive wells. When Celts feasted, usually a roast pig was involved. It could be quite dangerous. There was such a thing as a "hero's cut of meat." Men have been known to fight to the death over that cut. Think about that when you ask for the drumstick.

This piece may be my last for awhile. Elizabeth has been invited to experiment with this blog in a particular way over the next few weeks. For my (perhaps temporary) swansong I am responding to the question: What does Maeve have to say about menopause? Yes, I have gone through it.

In Magdalen Rising there's a whole chapter about my menarche. To my dismay, I realized there is no corresponding chapter about menopause in Bright Dark Madonna. Dear readers, I apologize. Like many of you, I had a child (my second and long awaited) in my early thirties. Her menarche and my menopause roughly coincided, but her change took center stage. My menopausal years were also complicated by having to contend with Paul of Tarsus. No wonder I did not notice my hot flashes. My blood was always boiling. I don't want to give away too much plot. But I might as well tell you: not long after one final knock down drag out battle with Paul, I spent seven years wandering the world searching for my runaway daughter. My red hair turned grey. I did not bleed, except in my heart. Then I took care of my mother-in-law. Believe it or not, when I had given up all hope and thought of such things, I had the most wonderful, tender, fleeting love affair in my early post-menopausal years.

So what do I want to say about menopause: there is life after it. Life that can be juicy, sweet, surprising, as well as sometimes dismaying and out of control (when wasn't it?) If you are lucky, you may get to sojourn for a time in a cave or other retreat as I did. You may learn to love yourself, even forgive yourself; you may have moments of wisdom. (I for one am still capable of being rash and foolish.) For sure you will find out what the moon has been trying to tell us for a long time: It's just a phase. It'a sll just a phase. Life itself, a phase. Don't let it phase you!

Who Died for What Sin? Theology with Maeve

It is my turn this week. But before I begin to put my foot in my mouth (at least theologically) Elizabeth asked me to thank everyone who responded to her post last week in comments, emails, on facebook, and twitter. So much loving kindness from so many. As the Dalai Lama says (yes, of course I know him, but don't expect a novel about it) kindness is what matters. Religion is only useful if it supports you in being kind. Or words to that effect. Elizabeth is very grateful for your kindness.

I looked back through the comments for the topic request I haven't yet addressed. I thought it was something like how on earth would a devout praticing first century Jew end up with a pagan pig-eating Celt who became an Isis-worshipping whore? That is a good question, and I was working up quite a sermon on the importance of hanging out with people who are NOT like-minded. And perhaps I will deliver it sometime. But here is the question I will tackle today:

"How a beautiful fiery pagan Celt would answer to the subject of Jesus being the 'chosen one who died for our sins, and that we are all heathens who do not follow.' "

First, thank you for the adjectives! I appreciate them. I am not a theologian or a historian of religion, so I had better speak only for myself. I wanted to blame the whole concept of Jesus dying for our sins on Paul of Tarsus (with whom I have had my struggles). He surely did go on (and on) about it in some of his epistles, but a quick check on the internet (too much information!) tells me the idea did not originate with him. Here's an article on the diverse sources for this concept: http://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/CostaT03.pdf

Sin was not a concept native to me. A Celt (especially a hero) sometimes had to deal with a geis being laid upon him. A geis is something like a taboo imposed on an individual. Cuchulain (whose name means hound) had a geis laid upon him against eating dog meat. If you broke a geis danger and destruction followed. Grainne forced Diarmuid to be her lover by laying a geis on him if he refused. And I am afraid when I was an impressionable, headstrong young girl under the influence of such stories, I laid a similar geis on You Know Who. He turned me down flat, and I have sometimes wondered if I am responsible for all his subsequent troubles, except that, of course, he eventually relented, but only of his own free will, as he insisted. Very murky waters.

Did I sin in attempting to force my will on him through word magic? Perhaps. If you define sin as "missing the mark," not being in alignment with the will of the whole mystery. If we are all sinners, can someone's death atone for our sins, take them away? I confess I have never been able to see the connection. And as many a child has asked, if Jesus died for our sins once and for all, how come the world is the way it is? Who and what has been saved from sin?

I don't know that answer to that one. As for one person being sacrificed for many, the Celts had something called the god-making death. The idea was that a perfect and willing human sacrifice could, through death, go between the worlds and speak on behalf of the people with the gods. It wasn't that the people were bad; they needed a representative, one made powerful by passing through the mystery of death.

Even if that concept was or is true, I, for one, wasn't having it. I stole away the human sacrifice from under the druids' noses. And even though I fretted for years that the subsequent invasion of Britain might have been my fault, I would do it again. And if I could have prevented the crucifixion, I would have. His mother tried, if you read my version of the story. And when MaevenSong is released, you will be able to hear her defiant lament at the foot of the Cross.

As I lived and healed with Jesus, I know he felt the inexorable pull of the god-making death, as we called it when we spoke of it privately, but to the Jesus I knew it was a mystery. And he also felt a pull towards life, the heartbreaking beauty of ordinary life. He healed people by seeing them, in their brokenness and in their wholeness. There was nothing abstract or theological in that moment of healing. He often said, Your sins are forgiven, and he got in trouble for that. Only God could forgive sins, people said. Who did he think he was?

As you know, people subsequently decided he was the Son of God and moreover the Only Begotten Son of God, and only people who accept that doctrine can be saved--and the rest of us, including me, are damned. Because I never became a Christian. I am a lover of Jesus. That is all I can say. I am myself. I am that I am.

If I believe in anything, apart from loving kindness, it is this: that we are all incarnations of the mystery, all called to mediate the divine and human, little self and the expanded one, the in breath and the out. We are here to embody this paradox, not to condemn our humanness or exalt our divinity, to embody both. To love this earth, to love each other while we're here. Sure sometimes we'll miss the mark. Forgive yourself, forgive another. Draw back the bow string and take aim again.

For more about my stories: www.passionofmarymagdalen.com

Maeve's first blog: on the Nature of Reality

I am not a philosopher, so don't get worried. I am not about to hold forth on epistemology. (I only recently learned that word, and I just had to use spell check to make sure I got it right; BTW I do not identify myself as a luddite; I am so before and beyond all that.) As to philosophy, I never got very far with the Greeks Joseph of Arimathea forced me to read when he did his damnedest to turn me into hetera (is that the singular?) instead of a plain old whore.

Lots of people have a problem with the word whore, and I hope you are not one of them. I like the word, and I intend to use it freely. I just asked Elizabeth to look up its derivation. Its root (don't ask me to explain roots) is ka with a flat line I don't know how to make over the a. The Germanic word derived from this root means "one who desires." In Latin this root leads to carus, dear, and from this Latin word come some lovely English words: caress, charity, cherish. And let us not forget good old Sanskrit, kama, meaning love, desire, hence the Kamasutra. So please, dear readers, next time someone calls you a whore, smile and say: "Why, thank you. I am flattered."

Back to the nature of reality, specifically mine: I am a fictional character. At least that is what Elizabeth answers when people ask me if she is channeling me or when they doubt the historicity of a redheaded Celtic (not to mention gentile) whore ending up with Jesus, even marrying him (which is something Elizabeth tried to talk me out of doing. She said it ruined her archetype, the whore archetype. And I said to her, what good is an archetype if you can't ruin it?) So as a fictional character, am I real or am I imaginary? And is imaginary in fact the opposite of real?

I don't like to compare myself with G-d in any way, not just because of my humble nature but because I never got along all that well with The Unpronounceable One. I do recall a theological argument (can't remember whose) that went something like this, if G-d didn't exist, we would have to invent G-d. Leaving the question of G-d aside, I would venture to say that perhaps fictional characters are like that: once imagined, they do exist--often independently of their authors and of their fictional contexts. Many people who have come to know me through The Maeve Chronicles, now have their own conversations with me about their own lives, including Elizabeth.

It's the middle of the night. Maeve? I hear, Can I talk to you? Yes, I always say. Elizabeth has spent the past eighteen years listening for my voice, living my story with me, so the least I can do is listen to her troubles (even though they tend to be repetitive, not nearly as exciting, and very much in rough draft form). Elizabeth once admitted to these conversations at a book event. "I see," one woman said, "so you have an imaginary friend." I do not really mind being called imaginary. When Elizabeth first got to know me, I was a 20th century woman named Madge, and it was not lost on either of us that Elizabeth drew my portraits with magic markers. Magic, imagination, what better gifts could any magi present?

Elizabeth, who is more tactful than I am and does not like to give offense, recently came up with another answer to the question of whether or not she channels me. "She is a real archetypal force, and she comes through me in this particular way, because of my particular gifts." Elizabeth relies on the word archetypal too much. But I like the idea that I am a real force, one that she contends with, as I contend with her. We are both affected and changed by each other, as anyone is by any relationship.

Now as to whether or not I am the real (as in the only & historical) Mary Magdalen, let's leave the question for another day--or maybe never. Blogging is a 21st century form and a bit disorienting for someone who spends most of her time in the 1st century. If you would like me to blog on with my bad self, please give me some juicy topics. That's enough about reality for now. I'm off to the imagi-nation.

www.passionofmarymagdalen.com