I just finished reading the first (historicly) book in the Maeve Chronicals, Magdalen Rising, and I must say that it is by far the best Mary Magdalen tale I have ever read. At first the book was bit off putting. It imagins Mary growing up under the name of Littel Bright One on the Isle of Women in the Celtic Isles. She doens't see a man until she's 15, paints a skull with her first menstrual blood and losses her virginity to a snake. Now, I'm down with all that it's just a bit to "Goddessy than thou".
You can get too much of a good thing and the first few 50 pages or so lay on the Goddess imagary a bit too thick. Also the telling of an ancient tale with modern words, phrasing and attidue is hard to get use to. I nearly just returned it to the library but before I knew it the sickenly sweet, uber-Goddessness back off, the herion's character matured and the writting style grew on me.
By the time the character encounters a young Jesus who has come to the Celtic druid school for education at the behest of a female oracle in Jerusalem, I was hooked.
I liked the portryal of Mary Magdalen, it was well developed but I was surprised to find the book actually bringing me closer to Jesus Christ. The author, Elizabeth Cunningham, re-imagins Jesus' adolsent years brilliantly. He is at once, teacher, God, son of God, male balance to the Magdalen as well as a simple akward teenager trying to get a grasp on his divine calling.
His character is set in a druid college but it's not the setting that matters, the setting is a mere backdrop to watch the Divine mainfest through these two young lovers. With the female expression so close to the maturing Jesus in this tale we get an idea of how the yin and yang polarity of this God and Goddess paring might have realistically happened. Calling to a "rightness" in my subconcious I find I can curl up and find much comfort in this Jesus, that the single, red haired, nascar dad version of the savior in popular culture lacks for me.
This Jesus is Yeshua, Celtic name Esus, with olive skin, spingy, dark hair and a contenence that propells him to the status of someone who's simple and at once complex take on humanity brings him as near to God-hood as one can express on earth.
The shine and falsity placed upon him by modern church interpretation is stripped away, feminized with his strong balance in Magdalen, made human and God the way we all are and is enfused with the restoration of his original time, place and feel, as a humble man from Israel trying to bring peace and love to the world in a uniting all-one-God kind of way.
The humanity of the pair makes them so real you feel you could touch them, and after reading the book I know, at least in some way, part of my consciouness has a better grasp on the prophets Yeshua and Mariamne, in fact I feel like I've known them both, as dear friends, my whole life.
I'm very pleased to have found such a wonderful story which continues the adoration of this cosmic pair.
Blessed Be!
I have ordered the second book already which is called The Passion of Mary Magdalen. I highly recommend The Maeve Chronicles - well at least the first one!
