Priestess-Whore and Healer: The Passion of Mary Magdalen
by Cait Johnson

Elizabeth Cunningham didn't set out to write a healing antidote to our cultural legacy of shame, although that's how her latest novel, The Passion of Mary Magdalen, is being hailed by many. In fact, Cunningham will be the first to tell you that she didn't set out to write a novel about Mary Magdalen at all. But the author reports that the brazen hussy just would not leave her alone until she agreed to write her story.

It all started during the Gulf War, when a character named Madge first popped into Cunningham‘s consciousness. Madge was an artist who supported herself with the oldest profession. She called herself a Peace Prostitute and espoused the slogan, "Penises for Peace." The bold and gloriously zaftig redhead first insisted that Cunningham create a series of cartoons featuring her in all her unabashed nakedness, a playful opus that became The Book of Madge, displayed at the Center for Book Arts in New York City in 1991.

After this, Cunningham assumed her work with Madge was done, but she couldn't have been more mistaken: the character just wouldn‘t go away. "One night I was lying out in the moonlight," she says, "which is always a dangerous thing to do, and it came to me that Madge was Madge Magdalen, a red-haired Celtic Magdalen. So I asked her if this was the book she wanted me to put her in and she said, ‘That's the one. You finally figured it out.'" Madge quickly evolved into Maeve, a fiery lass raised by eight warrior-witches on the Celtic Isle of Women.

From this it should be clear that Maeve is not your ordinary Magdalen. But there are other differences, as well. For one thing, she is most definitely a prostitute, unlike some of her theoretical sistren. Yes, she was sold unwillingly into prostitution as a slave in Rome, but still. And unlike those Magdalens who are assumed to be prostitutes, she is unrepentant and unashamed. In fact, Maeve becomes a Priestess Whore who sees healers and prostitutes in somewhat the same light, and who embodies sacred sexuality. But perhaps the thing that truly sets her apart from the current crowd of Magdalens is that she is most emphatically not a disciple but an outrageously juicy, bold incarnation of the Divine Feminine who is clearly the equal and partner of the Son of God.

Cunningham is uniquely suited to write this story of a unique Magdalen: she is the last in a line of nine generations of ministers, although her denomination is Interfaith while her antecedents were all Episcopal (her father was minister of the church in Millbrook, where she spent many of her formative years). But while her fascination with the Judeo-Christian tradition is lifelong and she researched the material and the period rigorously, this is a novel, not another theory. "The historical setting is accurate, but there is no evidence for my story. I agree with Maeve's eight warrior-witch mothers," she says. "A story is true if it's well-told."

Readers all across the country are passionately embracing this story and its title character. What's the secret of Maeve's appeal? When I asked the author what gifts Maeve offers her readers, she responded, "I think she brings fierceness, feistiness, guts, a radical honesty. And she's unabashedly human and female. The little glimpses we've been given of Mary Magdalen have not been fleshed out and Maeve is so gloriously fleshy."

What is the attraction of living in a more Maeve-like way? And what would that look like? Cunningham answers, "We would stop apologizing for ourselves, we'd stop explaining and complaining and just be fully embodied. We wouldn't fear judgment. We wouldn't cast judgment. We would have pleasure in ourselves, in life, in love, in food, in dancing, in music, all the while not ignoring the sorrow of the world. Joy and sorrow are not antithetical—we can hold both."

Asked what was the most pleasurable part of writing this passion story, Cunningham responds, "I found a way to love Jesus from this other place outside of orthodoxy and embrace all that's deep and true about my Christian background, yet be who I am."

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.

For more information see www.passionofmarymagdalen.com. Cait Johnson is a counselor and author working and living in Rhinebeck.