What The Fire Said: Mary of Egypt

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)

Creative Commons License

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)

Disclaimer

Ownership of any copyrighted material appearing either as visual, written or audio files on this weblog, remains with the holders of the original copyright, and no further claim to such material by the author of this site is intended, and need not be inferred. It is believed that the limited use of any web resolution images for the purposes of identification and critical commentary qualifies as fair use.

Copyright of any material credited to Hawkwood remains with the author. The registered creative commons license below permits further use and distribution of Hawkwood's work subject to the three conditions: (1) The user attributes the work to 'Hawkwood', (2) The context is non-commercial, (3) The work remains unaltered. A link back to this weblog is appreciated.

Having run away from home at the tender age of twelve, Mary lived a dissolute life in the city of Alexandria for the next seventeen years. She then journeyed to Jerusalem, where a conversion experience led her to cross the River Jordan and live a life in the unforgiving wilderness of the Jordanian desert as a reclusive naked penitent, not for months, nor even for years, but for almost five decades. At the end of her life she was discovered by chance by the monk Zosimas, to whom she told her story. In conventional terms Mary’s life is a textbook example of redemption through faith, but in human terms her story is one of astonishing survival, and a life which brings us to the threshold of what faith is, and how as individuals we conduct ourselves in the light of that faith. But for me, Mary's story is not so much about the mysteries of faith, but the greater mysteries which the human heart contains.

You can read more about Mary and her life on my post Mary of Egypt: A Heart in the Wilderness.

Welcome