The Magdalen. Who might she have been before the hagiographers got hold of her?
As a convent schoolgirl I dreamt of her as impulsive, tormented, searching for what might be found in excess, in extreme places, what we would call the wilder shores of love. I always burned a candle on her Feast Day. My wicked and untamed sister.
She was a women who lived by her wits and her sexuality in a time when there were very few choices for independent women. Because of this, the Magdalen was known as a sinner. She was a sex worker, perhaps consecrating her sexuality in ways we have not understood. She saw in a strange new spiritual movement some possibility for becoming; and perhaps she was wrong — or maybe there was space and freedom since obscured by historical dictates. She became a powerful woman leader in a persecuted movement, as the first person to witness a kind of resurrection, something luminous and very real, a dialogue, an encounter with a friend become Other.
Love was her transformational experience. From the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Philip:
“But Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on the mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’ The savior answered and said to them, ‘Why do I not love you like (I love) her?’”
There is a woman weeping as she cracks open the alabaster vase of sweet-smelling oil, wiping the feet of a beloved friend with her dark shining hair as she anoints him for death. An intimate anointing that is the act of a priestess and not a subordinate. There is the woman grieving at the tomb, surprised by love and revelation. There is the woman in the deserts of Egypt, going into monastic seclusion, the woman standing together with her sisters against martyrdom. A woman proclaiming her own truths, teaching, preaching, leading.
There is the woman who may have gone back to the older ways, or never have departed from those ways. A woman with parched lips and haunted eyes crossing the desert. A woman at dawn, gazing into the heart of light in an empty tomb. A passionate greedy lustful woman walking her own path, shamelessly. A woman of wisdom, hidden from those who put up statues to her. A woman living by her own notions of love, lost in that consuming fire.
The Wild Girl running free. For her the music of that great pagan Song of Songs:
The bride says this: On my bed, at night, I sought him whom my heart loves. I sought but did not find him. so I will rise and go through the City; in the streets and the squares I will seek him whom my heart loves. I sought but did not find him. The watchmen came upon me on their rounds in the City: “Have you seen him whom my heart loves?” Scarcely had I passed them than I found him whom my heart loves.
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