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The Passion of Mary Magdalen
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PRAISE FOR THE PASSION OF MARY MAGDALEN
“The book becomes a gospel in itself… anyone who reads it will never approach the canon the same way again. The Passion of Mary Magdalen is a tour de force.”
—Episcopal Life Magazine
“Magdalene fans are in for more surprises in Cunningham‘s classy, sexy novel…this will be — besides snapped up by Magdalene fans, Celtophiles, feminists and lovers of a good yarn — controversial. Those unready for lesbianism and sex with the Redeemer between the same covers may blanch as well as flush.”
—Booklist, starred review
“[An] epic, stunningly original work… a roaring good read.”
—Foreword Magazine - Finalist for Book of the Year Award
“Elizabeth Cunningham beckons us… in her raucous, inspired, and thought-provoking novel.”
—Spirituality and Health Magazine, chosen as One of Best Spiritual Books in 2006
“Unforgettably original…Matthew, Mark, Luke and John: move over.”
—San Antonio Express-News
“Lavish and lusty…Cunningham’s Celtic Magdalene is as hot in the mouth as Irish whiskey.”
—Beliefnet, chosen as one of this year’s “heretical beach-books”.
This novel gives readers what Brown’s does not… freedom from a false claim that all the historical elements in the book are factual… there is engaging language, too, such as her intriguing description of Jesus as “a man who broke Sabbath rules like fingernails.”
—The Kansas City Star
“Cunningham weaves Hebrew scripture, Celtic and Egyptian mythology, and early Christian legend into a nearly seamless whole, creating an unforgettable fifth gospel story in which the women most involved in Jesus’s ministry are given far more representation…”
—Library Journal
“The Passion offers a digestive to Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, and a fascination way beyond Dan Brown’s exploitation of this Mary’s story in The DaVinci Code.”
—Pages Magazine
“This Mary is capable of forgiving the most outrageous brutality but incapable of surrendering to a passive existence as some else’s possession, including that of the Master. Amazing story!”
—Historical Novels Review
Sassy, salty, sexy… all three words aptly describe Cunningham’s prose, her heroine, and The Passion of Mary Magdalen as a whole. Those without an irreverent sense of humor will likely balk, but that just leaves more copies for the rest of us to pass around.
—LesbianNation.com
“Eventually I began to read… and read. I did no work, barely got myself into the office for the day job and to the microwave for the odd snack.”
—Goddess-pages.com
“Sure to offend those with a conventional view of Mary Magdalen and Jesus, sure to enrage those who want the gospel to be entirely heterosexual, and sure to please those who want another view of the very human people involved that most familiar drama, this powerful, wonderful, being-told-just-to-you story is really an unsanitized fifth gospel. Don’t miss this one!”
—Out Smart; Houston’s Gay and Lesbian Media Choice
“Cunningham’s novel does for the Christian story what Mists of Avalon did for the Arthurian legend, restoring the lost voice of women without seeking to create a new orthodoxy. It is also a great read, rich with all the sights, scents, and sounds of Rome and Judea. In fact, the book is a full-body experience.”
— About Town
“This book is certain to appeal to fans of historical fiction, to Celtophiles, to those who love fantasy, to feminists, and to anyone who loves a great story. Unconventional? Controversial? You bet. It kept me up all night, and I loved it!”
—MyShelf.com
“I was a little surprised when a publicist suggested I review this book. Mary Magdalen is sort of out of my area of expertise, if you know what I mean. But I see now why this is truly a Pagan book… It’s a wonderful story that surprised me at more than one point, and I am now sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the sequel.”
—Pagan News and Links
THE
PASSION
OF
MARY
MAGDALEN
Other Novels by Elizabeth Cunningham
The Return of the Goddess, A Divine Comedy
The Wild Mother
How To Spin Gold, A Woman’s Tale
The Maeve Chronicles
Magdalen Rising
The Passion of Mary Magdalen
Bright Dark Madonna (forthcoming)
Poetry
Small Bird
Wild Mercy
THE MAEVE CHRONICLES
THE
PASSION
OF
MARY
MAGDALEN
A NOVEL
ELIZABETH CUNNINGHAM
Monkfish Book Publishing Company
Rhinebeck, New York
The Passion of Mary Magdalen: A Novel
© 2007 by Elizabeth Cunningham
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher except in critical articles and reviews. Contact the publisher for information: Monkfish Book Publishing Company 27 Lamoree Rd. Rhinebeck, N.Y. 12572
Book and cover design by Georgia Dent
Cover art used with permission: Mary Magdalen in a Grotto, LeFevre, Jules Joseph, c. 1876. Oil on Canvas. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
The poems Poem for May 15, Egyptian prayer to Isis, and Poem for November 12, Egyptian coffin texts, have been reprinted with kind permission from the publisher from The Goddess Companion: Daily Meditations on the Feminine Spirit by Patrician Monaghan © 1999. Llewellyn Worldwide, 2143 Wooddale Drive, Woodbury, MN 55125-2989. All rights reserved.
First paperback edition of The Passion of Mary Magdalen: A Novel by Elizabeth Cunningham
ISBN: 978-0-9833589-6-1
First hardcover edition of The Passion of Mary Magdalen: A Novel by Elizabeth Cunningham
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cunningham, Elizabeth, 1953-
The passion of Mary Magdalen : a novel / Elizabeth Cunningham.
p. cm. -- (The Maeve chronicles ; 1)
1. Mary Magdalene, Saint--Fiction. 2. Bible. N.T. Gospels--History of Biblical events--Fiction. 3. Christian women saints--Fiction. 4. Women in the Bible--Fiction. 5. Jesus Christ--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.U473P37 2006
813'.54--dc22
2005027344
Bulk purchase discounts for educational or promotional purposes are available.
First paperback edition 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Monkfish Book Publishing Company
27 Lamoree Road
Rhinebeck, New York 12572
www.monkfishpublishing.com
In loving memory of my father, Raymond Cunningham
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: IN THE NIGHT
THE VINE AND THE FIG TREE
CHAPTER ONE: RED
CHAPTER TWO: CAT HOUSE
CHAPTER THREE: A NIGHT IN THE LIFE
CHAPTER FOUR: LOSING MY STORY
CHAPTER FIVE: THE GODDESS FINDS ME
CHAPTER SIX: THE FIRE FINDS ME
CHAPTER SEVEN: ENCOUNTER WITH THE ENEMY
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE LOST THREAD
CHAPTER NINE: WHORES’ DEAL
CHAPTER TEN: THE CROSSROADS
THE HOUSE OF MY ENEMY
CHAPTER ELEVEN: SAVED?
CHAPTER TWELVE: MY STRIPES
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ANT HILL
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: PEDISEQUA
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN: EQUALS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE LONGEST NIGHT
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: TAKE ME THERE
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: WHORES AND ADULTERERS
CHAPTER NINETEEN: TEMPUS FUGIT
REX NEMORENSIS
CHAPTER TWENTY: DIANA’S COUNTRY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: OPEN-EYED DREAMS
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: SLEUTH
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: PRIESTESS TO PRIESTESS
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: CURVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: NOT FOR SALE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: KING
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: TO SING OR RETURN TO SILENCE
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: WHO WE ARE
PRIESTESS OF ISIS
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: BACK INTO THE MAW
CHAPTER THIRTY: PLAYING IN TRAFFIC
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: MY LIFE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: ECSTASY AND EXCREMENT
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: BEDROOM FARCE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: THE SHIT HITS
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: BEARING MY CROSS
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: A GREAT DAY
INTERMISSION: MARE INTERNUM
TEMPLE MAGDALEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: JERUSALEM THE GOLDEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: MARY B
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: MA
CHAPTER FORTY: MAGDALA
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: HOME
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: HOLY WHORES, HOLYLAND
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: THE ROCK
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: A VOICE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: JORDAN RIVER
THE BRIDEGROOM
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: BACK TOLIFE
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN: SHABBAT SHALOM
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: THE GREAT DIVIDE
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE: FOR THIS I WAS BORN
CHAPTER FIFTY: CALMING THE STORM
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE: HELP!
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO: WHAT?
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE: WEDDING EVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR: MIRACLE
BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE: IN HIS OWN COUNTRY
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX: ARE YOU THE ONE?
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN: ON A MISSION
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT: WOMEN AT THE WELL
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE: DINNER FOR FIVE THOUSAND
CHAPTER SIXTY: WHAT DOES HE WANT?
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE: ON THE ROAD AGAIN
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO: TRANSFIGURATION
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE: FALL OUT
THE VINE AND THE FIG TREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR: THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE: WOMEN ON THE VERGE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX: RIOT
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN: FIG TREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT: TEMPLE OF THE DOVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE: HOW TO WASH FEET
CHAPTER SEVENTY: THE PLACE BETWEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE: HOLDING NOTHING BACK
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO: WHORE’S TEARS
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE: THE LAST PARTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR: WHAT IS TRUTH?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE: THE COUNTRY OF LIFE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX: TIR NAN OG
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN: WHAT HAPPENED AFTER
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SOURCES
PROLOGUE
IN THE NIGHT
This story begins in the night. There will be a dawn, I promise.
I will also tell of mornings when I didn’t want to wake and noons full of harsh light and judgment. Sometimes there will be shade and ease in the afternoons, camaraderie and rest, even pleasure.
There will be passion, I promise. Morning, noon, and night, season after season. Passion that breaks time open wide so that you can taste the mystery inside.
This story begins in the night. It begins in the middle of the story. In the middle of the night. When the thief comes, when the bridegroom comes. When the bride has long since given up hope. When the foolish virgins are snoring. When only a whore is awake.
The last stranger has gone home. That’s what we call the men who seek the priestess-whores at Temple of Isis Magdala—Temple Magdalen for short a.k.a. the hottest holy whorehouse in the Galilee. Magdala is the place for nightlife on Lake Gennesaret, The Lake of the Harp, as it’s called because of its shape. Many of the towns along the shore are fishing towns, but Magdala, sitting pretty under the cliffs of Mount Arbel, is right between two opposing worlds—the swanky new Roman spa city Tiberias and Capernaum, a Jewish stronghold. Romans come to Magdala to slum; Jews come to get out from under the noses of upright neighbors. Native gentiles from the region of the Gerasenes across the lake find their way here, too. Magdala is the place where all the clashing elements in this country of crossroads mix it up. A honky-tonk town full of juke joints, bars, and street brawls. Where else will you find Roman soldiers and Jewish guerilla fighters gaming together?
At Temple Magdalen, on the outskirts of town, we welcome them all, because we remember what most religions teach but people prefer to forget—the stranger could be a god or an angel.
Now the last stranger is gone for the night. Reginus has barred the gate. We need time to rest in these times of unrest. The priestess-whores are heading for bed. There’s a storm rising on the lake. I decide to go to the roof of what I call the tower. I lived so many years inside high narrow walls, I love the roof and sleep there every night I can. It’s too wild tonight to stay out, but I will watch for a while. The huge living darkness of the lake moves below me. Mount Arbel has my back. Even through the wind I can just hear the sound of our spring rising and flowing through the Temple towards the lake—the spring that called me to this place so far from the tiny island where I was born.
“Red!” Reginus calls up the stairs. “There’s someone at the gate. I told him we were closed for the night, but he won’t go away.”
“Is he a suppliant?” our other term for the stranger who comes seeking the goddess (even when he thinks he’s just looking for a whore).
“No.” Reginus climbs the rest of the way up. “He says he has a sick man with him. That’s what makes me suspicious. It could be a trick. They might be robbers. It could be even an ambush. It’s so dark tonight I can’t tell if the thing slung across his donkey is a man or a sack of grain.”
“I’ll go speak to him,” I say.
“Domina,” says the man at the portal, using the Latin word for lady, but he is no Roman. “I have a sick man. Near death.”
The man is a Samaritan, I am guessing by his accent.
“Why do you seek help at Temple Magdalen?” I ask in Aramaic.
“Please, there is nowhere else. I found the man naked and bleeding on the Jerusalem-Jericho road. He’d been beaten and left for dead. What was I to do? I couldn’t leave him there. I’ve been traveling for two days now, but no one will take him in. They don’t know who he is—a Jew, a Samaritan, an outlaw, a demoniac? I can’t keep caring for him myself. I don’t have the skill or the time. I’m just a merchant on my way to Tyre to meet a shipment. I’ve heard you welcome the stranger here. I’ve heard there are healers here.”
“If it’s a trick, it’s a trick,” I say to Reginus. “We’ll have to risk it. What you have heard is true,” I say through the portal. “In the name of Isis who welcomes all, I welcome you.”
Reginus and I open the gates, and the merchant leads his burdened donkey inside. It is a man and not a sack. That much is clear by the torch in the wall.
“Help me, both of you. The rain hasn’t started yet. I want to examine him first by the spring, and wash his wounds there. The water has healing properties,” I explain to the Samaritan. “I’ll get a lamp while you move him. Carefully.”
Even though I am a seasoned healer, I am taken aback by what I see. This man hasn’t just been beaten. He’s starving. I can count all his ribs. He is covered with sores; his hair is matted and thick with dust. The Samaritan has done his best to bind the man’s wounds, but he has bled through the bandages. I kneel down and plac
e the lamp at his head, so I can get a better look at his face.
His face. My heart knows before my eyes; my eyes know before my mind. All I know is I am lost. There are lines here that go on for miles, for years. I am looking at his face, and what I see are his feet, brown as earth, beautiful, lost. I see the sun wheeling out of control, and the stars trying to find him. The moon flinging the ocean after him. And he is lost. No, I am. We are. From each other.
“Maeve, we are lovers,” he pleaded on another shore in a terrible dawn after a long night long ago.
“You are lovers,” said the old woman, “but not just of each other, you are the lovers of the world.”
“We can’t love if we’re apart,” he said.
“We can’t love unless we part,” I answered him.
I didn’t know then what I meant. But now here I am, here we are in this moment, and all the loss is lifting, changing, like leaves turned by the wind before the storm.
“Red, honey,” says Reginus. “Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”
“Whore’s tears,” I say. “Cure anything.”
I soak them up with the hem of my garment, and begin to wash his wounds.
And my own wounds.
By our wounds we are healed.
Here is the story, of my lost years and what I found, of our found years and what we lost. Stories unfold in time, backwards, forwards, every moment changing the meaning of all the others. This is a passion story—my passion, his, ours, yours. Passion breaks time open.
Come. Taste the mystery.
THE VINE
AND
THE FIG TREE
CHAPTER ONE
RED
“What am I bid for Red here?” the pug-faced slave dealer harangued the thinning crowd. “Last lot of the day. Who bids for Red?”
“My name,” I said one more time, “is Maeve Rhuad.” I wasn’t sure if I was speaking in Celtic or Latin or Greek or even if I was speaking out loud. But that didn’t stop me. “I am the daughter of the Warrior Witches of Tir na mBan, daughters of the Cailleach, daughter of the goddess Bride, daughter of—”
“Put a sock in it, Red,” muttered Pug Face (or the first century street Latin equivalent). “How many times I gotta tell you, you ain’t got no lineage now. You’re property. Mine. Until I unload you. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut and look pretty.”