Mary Magdalene: Not a Prostitute, But Deliberately Maligned As One

In honor of Marys everywhere, and mindful of the Goddess Eostre holiday coming soon, this, from The Washington Post!

On Easter, Mary Magdalene will be maligned as a prostitute. Except she wasn’t

Petula Dvorak, Columnist April 13 at 6:02 PM

Here’s who Mary Magdalene was: one of Jesus Christ’s original followers, the last to stay with him while he was nailed to the cross and, Christians believe, the first to see his empty tomb and his resurrection.

Here’s who she wasn’t: a reformed or forgiven prostitute. Yet on Easter Sunday, Christianity’s holiest day, that’s exactly how she will be described in some sermons and how she continues to be portrayed in much of popular culture. The woman dubbed in the Bible the “Apostle of the Apostles” has spent two millennia being reduced to a seductress.

In some ways, Mary Magdalene’s story is the story of modern women everywhere.

From the relentless focus on the looks of female leaders to the nude photos being circulated of female Marines, women who dare to work among men as equals get sexualized and marginalized.

In Mary Magdalene’s case, it’s a 2,000-year-old slut-shaming that a group of Christian women is trying to stop. The Junia Project, a California group preaching egalitarian theology, is using social media to spread its public service announcement: “As you preach this Sunday, please note: Mary Magdalene was NOT a prostitute. Thank you.”

They have to be proactive. Even a popular Easter sermon on the Sermon Central website repeats the myth. “Mary Magdalene was a forgiven prostitute,” reads the second line of the sermon reminding people what to remember about the first Easter.

Hollywood loves casting Mary Magdalene as a sex worker. She was a hooker in “Jesus Christ Superstar” in 1973, in “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1988, in “The Passion of the Christ” in 2004 and even in last year’s “Risen.” It’s a delicious story, Jesus being so cool that he even forgives a prostitute. It’s “Pretty Woman” in the tunics-and-sandals age.

Gail Wallace, one of the co-founders of the Junia Project, hates the way Mary Magdalene gets maligned. "For me, the bottom line is that we are fed up with the way women’s stories in the Bible have been retold in a way that sexualizes them unnecessarily and in ways that aren’t supported by the biblical texts,” she said.

Biblical scholars and historians have been trying to make the same point for decades. The Catholic Church acknowledged and tried to correct the widespread misperception in 1969 [after having spent only 1,500 years or so lying about Mary to their ignorant parishioners]. But somewhere along the telephone game that is Christian history, the prostitute label stuck.

“Women looking to the Bible for inspiration already have limited choices of female role models,” wrote Chicago nun and professor Barbara Bowe, before her death in 2010. “When we suddenly cut Mary Magdalene off at the knees and turn her into some kind of evil sex pervert, we deprive men and women, but especially women, of a figure with whom they can identify.” Kate Wallace Nunneley, another of the Junia Project’s co-founders, said she saw the Mary Magdalene myth repeated in modern seminary texts, too.

That’s okay, though. Because now Team Mary’s got the Internet. And every year, after the Junio Project runs their PSA about Mary Magdalene on social media, they hear from people about what was said in church. “Around Easter is really one of the only times in general evangelicalism that women get preached about,” Nunneley said. “After we first ran that PSA . . . we heard from so many women who said they still heard [the myth]. One woman told me, ‘I sent this to my pastor and he still preached about her being a prostitute.’ ” This is, of course, part of a larger debate about the way women are treated in other arenas.

Take those women in the Marines who have been serving their country in the most macho branch of the military. How did the guys who couldn’t handle their success deal with it? They circulated nude pictures of them. Even after they were busted, they kept at it.

Nunneley considers that the modern parallel to Mary Magdalene. “As we see with the story about the women in the Marines, their personhood gets overlooked and the men want to only focus on their sexuality,” she said.

It’s an old story. A tired story. And it’s time for it to end.

Lily

From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets." Lily The flower of Lilith, Sumero-Babylonian Goddess of creation; the lilu or "lotus" of her genital magic. The lily often represented the virgin aspect of the Triple Goddess, while the rose represented her maternal aspect. The lily was sacred to Astarte, who was also Lilith; northern Europeans called her Ostara or Eostre, the Goddess of "Easter" lilies.(1) Because of its pagan associations with virgin motherhood, the lily was used to symbolize impregnantion of the virgin Mary. Some authorities claimed the lily in Gabriel's hand filtered God's semen which entered Mary's body through her ear.(2) [Huh?] Mary's cult also inherited the lily of the Blessed Virgin Juno, who conceived her savior-son Mars with her own magic lily, without any male aid.(3) This myth reflected an early belief in the self-fertilizing power of the yoni (vulva), which the lily symbolized and Juno personified. Her name descended from the pre-Roman Uni, a Triple Goddess represented by the three-lobed lily or fleur-de-lis, her name stemming from the Sanskrit yoni, source of the Uni-verse. In 656 A.D., the 10th Council of Toledo officially adopted the holy day of Juno's miraculous conception of Mars into the Christian canon, renaming it the Festival of the Mother of God, or Lady Day, insisting that it commemorated Mary's miraculous conception of Jesus with the aid of a lily.(4) Christian artists showed the angel Gabriel holding out to Mary a scepter surmounted by a fleur-de-lis on a lily stalk. A scroll usually issued from Gabriel's mouth, with the words Ave Maria gratia plena, the seminal "Word," which made Mary "full." Aphrodite's dove, that other yonic symbol, hovered above the scene.(5) Celtic and Gallo-Roman tribes called the virgin mother Lily Maid. Her yonic emblem appeared not only as the French fleu-de-lis but also as the Irish shamrock, which was not originally Irish but a sacred symbol among Indus Valley people some 6000 years before the Christian era. Christianized France identified the Lily Maid with the virgin Mary, but she was never completely dissociated from the pagan image of Juno. Among the people, Lady Day was known as Notre Dame de Mars.(6) The Easter lily was the medieval pas-flower, from Latin passus, to step or pass over, cognate of pascha, the Passover. The lily was also called Pash-flower, Paschal flower, Pasque flower, or Passion flower. Pagans understood that it represented the spring passion of the god, like Heracles, for union in love-death with the Virgin Queen of Heaven, Hera-Hebe, or Juno, or Venus, all of whom claimed the lily. When Hera's milk spurted from her breasts to form the Milky Way, the drops that fell to the ground became lilies.(7) Sometimes, the Easter flower was not a white lily but a scarlet or purple anemone, emblem of Adonis's passion and called identical with his bride Venus.(8) Notes: (1) H. Smith, 201. (2) Simmons, 103. (3) Larousse, 202. (4) Brewster, 146. (5) Cavendish, V.H.H., 68. (6) Brewster, 146. (7) Guthrie, 71. (8) Agrippa, 103.

Happy Easter!

The real meaning of Easter. From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" Easter Springtime sacrifical festival named for the Saxon Goddess Eostre, or Ostara, a northern form of Astarte. Her sacred month was Eastre-monath, the Moon of Eostre.(1) Saxon poets apparently knew Eoester was the same Goddess as India's Great Mother Kali. Beowulf spoke of "Ganges' waters, whose flood waves ride down into an unknown sea near Eostre's far home."(2) The Easter Bunny was older than Christianity; it was the Moon-hare sacred to the Goddess in both eastern and western nations. Recalling the myths of Hathor-Astarte who laid the Golden Egg of the sun, Germans used to say the hare would lay eggs for good children on Easter Eve.(3) (See Cat.) Like all the church's "movable feasts," Easter shows its pagan origin in a dating system based on the old lunar calendar. It is fixed as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, formerly the "pregnant" phase of Eostre passing into the fertile season. The Christian festival wasn't call Easter until the Goddess's name was given to it in the laste Middle Ages.(4) (See Menstrual Calendar.) The Irish kept Easter on a different date from that of the Roman church, probably the original date of the festival of Eostre, until the Roman calendar was imposed on them in 632 A.D. Nevertheless, the Columban foundation and their colonies in Britain kept the old date for another fifty years.(5) The Persians began their solar New Year at the spring equinox, and up to the middle of the 18th century they still followed the old custom of presenting each other with colored eggs on the occasion.(6) [See post on Persian New Year]. Eggs were always symbols of rebirth, which is why Easter eggs were usually colored red - the life-color - especially in eastern Europe. Russians used to lay red Easter eggs on graves to serve as resurrection charms.(7) In Bohemia, Christ was duly honored on Easter Sunday and his pagan rival on Easter Monday [which would actually be the third day after death on "Good Friday"], which was the Moon-day opposed to the Sun-day. Village girls like ancient priestesses sacrificed the Lord of Death and threw him into water, singing, "Death swims in the water, spring comes to visit us, with eggs that are red, with yellow pancakes, we carried Death out of the village, we are carrying Summer into the village."(8) Another remnant of the pagan sacred drama was the image of the god buried in his tomb, then withdrawn and said to live again. The church instituted such a custom early in the Middle Ages, apparently in hopes of a reportable miracle. A small sepulchral building having been erected and the consecrated host placed within, a priest was set to watch it from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Then the host was taken out and displayed, and the congreagatin was told Christ was risen.(9) A curious 16th-century Easter custom was known as "creeping to the cross with eggs and apples," a significant use of the ancient female symbols of birth and death, beginning and ruition, the opening and closing of cycles. The Ceremonial of the Kings of England ordered carpets to be laid in the church, for the comfort of the king, queen, and courteriers was they crept down the aisle on hands and knees.(1) The penitential implication of the creeping ceremony is clear enough, but the female-symbolic foodstuffs are a bit mysterious. Germany applied to Easter the same title formerly given to the season of the sacred king's love-death, Hoch-Zeit, "the High Time." In English too, Easter used to be called "the Hye-Tide."(11) From these titles came the colloquial description of any festival holiday as "a high old time." Notes: (1) Knight, D.W.P., 157. (2) Goodrich, 18. (3) de Lys, 117. (4) H. Smith, 201. (5) de Paor, 70. (6) Hazlitt, 201. (7) Gaster, 603. (8) Frazer, G.B., 362. (9) Hazlitt, 281. (10) Hazlitt, 153. (11) Hazlitt, 316.