What The Fire Said: Mary Magdalene

What The Fire Said

What The Fire Said is the portal for my own art and writing. It is necessarily a work in progress, and you are welcome to return anytime to see what has been added here.

In my header you will see both contemporary calibration dials and centuries-old symbols used in the practice of alchemy. My art tends to operate at the interface between such extremes: between our shared distant past and an unknown far future, between the realities of history and the at-times greater realities that lie over the threshold in the world of myth. At these extremes science and magic, myth and history turn into each other, become indistinguishable from each other – as in the far future they well might. ~ Hawkwood (David Bergen)

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What The Fire Said by David Bergen a.k.a. Hawkwood is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License covering all written and visual material at: http://whatthefiresaid.blogspot.nl/.

These personally created artworks remain the property of the © David Bergen Studio. The terms of my above Creative Commons License allow for re-posting of these works on the express condition that they remain unaltered (that is: with my embedded © credit attached) and that the context is non-commercial. Please respect my art.

Hawkwood (David Bergen)

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She could well be one of the most wronged women in history. For almost two millennia the Church has described her as a redeemed whore, although there is no foundation whatever in scripture for believing this. Why does the Church perpetuate this image of her? Apparently because it is expedient for it to do so, and is perhaps a further example of the way in which men seemingly cope with the complexities of femininity by perceiving women simplistically either as being an immaculate Virgin or as being available for a price, with little nuance in between the two extremes.

Gnostic scriptures tell a different story: of a woman of dignity, compassion and insight who was the closest, most trusted and most loved of Jesus' disciples, and who, after the events of the crucifixion, had to stand against the tirades of the hot-tempered and jealously misogynistic Peter. Small wonder that the early Church fathers burned all the Gnostic texts that they could get hold of. The erroneous assumption (which scripture itself refutes) that Jesus chose only male disciples is to this day used by the Papacy as a justification for not admitting women to positions of high office within the Church hierarchy, not now, not ever.

A legend of medieval times tells of the Magdalene voyaging from the Holy Land to reach the coast of southern France, where she passed her remaining years in reflective solitude. The legend might have no basis in historical fact, but what the story does underscore is the spiritual truth of exile. Far from home, and having lost that which is most dear to us in the world, we seek the consolation of the spirit.

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