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.

Pithos

From The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker: Pithos Female-symbolic Holy Vase, used in the Eleusinian Mysteries as a uterine receptacle for corpses, to give them a blessed rebirth. The Goddess herself was represented by a vase or pot in the guise of Pandora the "All-Giver." (See Pandora). The identity of the Great Mother with this vessel of rebirth and regeneration was an idea commn to most ancient cultures, where the manufacture of pots and vases of all kinds was usually the business of women.(1) In Christian custom the pithos was transformed into the pyx or "box" that enclosed the body of Christ; and Erasmus confused the two vessels in translating the patriarchal version of Pandora's myth. Notes: (1) Neumann, G.M., 132-33. Pandora "All-giver," title of the Earth-goddess Rhea, personified as the first woman in an anti-feminist fable by Hesiod, who tried to blame war, death, disease, and all other ills on women.(1) Pandora's vessel was not a box but a honey-vase, pithos, from which she poured out blessings: a womb-symbol like the Cornucopia, anciently used as a vessel of death and rebirth.(2) Pandora's Vase became Pandora's Box only in the late medieval period, when Erasmus mistakenly translated pithos as pyxis.(3) Hesiod claimed Zeus sent Pandora to earth to punish men, who had offended him. She bore a vase filled not with blessings but with curses: strife, pain, death, sickness, and all other afflictions. Pandora in her curiosity opened the vase, as Zeus knew she would, and released them among men. In a refinement of cruelty, Zeus also supplied delusive Hope, to prevent men from killing themselves in despair and escaping the full meed of suffering their Heavenly Father intended for them.(4) The basic theme is also familiar in the myth of Eve. Hesiod's story was further adapted to the legend of King Solomon, who was said to keep a horde of demons in a vase. After his death, greedy men broke the vase in seeking treasure and let the demons out into the world.(5) Notes: (1) Graves, G. M. 1, 148. (2) Neumann, G.M., 267. (3) Larousse, 93. (4) Graves, G.M. 1, 145. (5) de Voragine, 353. More about Pandora: Standing female figure with a vase. Neo-Sumerian (c. 1800 BCE), from Mari. (See Witcombe, below) Pandora Well, there is a lot of baloney in the patriarchal version of the myth, since Pandora did not make herself - according to the Zeus version of the legend the Heavenly Father Zeus had Pandora specially created and thus she had no control over what attributes he had "put into" her. Notice in this legend that Zeus himself gave his own attributes to Pandora: idleness, mischievousness, and foolishness. Further, Pandora has nothing to do with the creation of the evils that Zeus specifically designed her to "deliver" upon mankind upon opening the "box." Those were of Zeus' own creation and, as I understand, placed himself in the vessle that he knew Pandors would open, the bastard. Typical of men to blame women for being "evil" when it was Zeus/God who made them that way to begin with. Ha! That only goes to show how much nonsense has been incorporated into the patriarchal glosses of much older goddess-based myths and legends. Cf. Prof. Christopher Witcombe's witty Da Vinci Code: Mary Magdelene's Jar: Mary Magdalen is the most accessible of the female saints, a real human being, unlike the lofty, remote and far too pure and unreal Virgin Mary. Part of her appeal, to be sure, resides in her embodying a fundamental female identity, which may be very ancient. Her principal attribute is the ointment pot or jar. And then there are the heated discussions about Mary Magdelene herself being the "sacred vessel" -- Holy Grail. In reality, it seems to me that Magdelene ("tower" - interesting chess analogy to the rook, which is Medieval times was the "tower" in Italian tradition) is a somewhat garbled account of a Jewish rendition of a much older female tradition in the Middle East (woman with sacred vase/woman as sacred vessel). That the Magdelene's tale was deemed important enough to be preserved in the "New Testament" despite the Jewish bias of the time against females, suggests that the Magdelene was, indeed, extremely important, although her exact role in the life of Christ appears to me to be hopelessly lost under countless glosses of the original accounts. However, perhaps hints of the Magdelene's importance remain in the Christian tradition of the Holy Grail.

The Call of the Goddess

For years I resisted the lure of Dan Brown’s mega-hit "The Da Vinci Code;" the buzz continued to build, passed on mostly by word of mouth at first, and then things reached a critical mass and poof – the world had a "hit". From time to time Isis would suggest - for what seemed ages – that I read the book – you’ll like it Sis, she said. Nah, I said. As a joke, I went so far as to book us into the "Da Vinci Hotel" in New York during our 2005 Goddesschess anniversary trip, one of my more quixotic decisions that (except for the tub faucets that would NOT work in my bathroom) turned out perfectly delightful and were really cheap digs. (Image: modern choron).

I finally broke down and purchased the book when it came out in paperback. I read it quickly, nodding my head through much of it because, I have to say, the man certainly did do his research (although he was way off on some points, he was right on regarding others). Then I shipped it off to Don, who dutifully read it but I don’t think he cared for it very much :). Maybe one has to be a woman to fully appreciate – well, that’s a really sexist comment, isn’t it! Ha!

Now darlings, I’ve not paid particular attention to the legend of the Holy Grail nor to Da Vinci Code’s assertion that the Holy Grail was not a chalice, but was actually a metaphor for the womb of a woman – in particular, the womb of Mary Magdalene. I can appreciate the truth about the often brutal and vicious suppression of the so-called "divine feminine" by patriarchal-biased religions without going overboard and swallowing Brown’s story hook, line and sinker. And I am probably more familiar with so-called "goddess" symbolism than an average member of the public, having been studying such things since I first got hooked into the unlikely Goddesschess Partnership way back in December, 1998. So yes, I know about the "delta" and the "V" being symbols for the vulva, being symbols for the womb, etc. etc. etc. and how Brown (and others) drew the comparison to the chalice (grail). But I cannot recall that I’d ever read anything specific linking the symbolism of the chalice/cup (grail) to a woman’s vulva/womb. Lots of supposition and suggestion, but nothing concrete.

Well then, imagine my amazement early this morning when I read this, while checking out a totally unconnected research subject:

[images of] Megalithic women with hands clasped around a large vulva are found in the Bada valley of Sulawesi in eastern Indonesia. They too have abstract mask-like faces, somewhat concave with upturned edges, and no mouths. Menhirs known as bülbül ("grandmother") are scattered across the central Asian steppe, from Mongolia to Ukraine. Some place their hands over the womb; others hold a chalice there. The Yakut people still make carvings of women holding a ceremonial choron in this manner; in their religion, it is women who preside over the great spring festival in which people gather in great circles to dance around chorons elevated on pillars. (Excerpted from Max Dashu’s online essay "Icons of the Matrix.")

Hit me over the head with a hammer, hey – "some place their hands over the womb; others hold a chalice there." Well, Jan, duh! The symbolism is obvious. I think I need to dive back into Gimbutas, Jean Kimball and others and read with more attention…

Choron – a goblet for koumiss. A sacred vessel of our ancestors – choron – has come to us from time immemorial. And today the Sakha people take choron filled with invigorating drink koumiss with deep respect and trepidation. See also here and here.

I haven’t found any specific images of a carved Yakut image showing a female holding a choron, but the vessel at the beginning of this article is an example of a 3-horse leg choron used to serve the kumis (fermented mare’s milk) that was carved by the modern Yakut artist Ammosov. I find it extremely interesting that according to DNA evidence the Yakut may be traced back to northern India! And check this out for a very good synopsis of Yakut history and some images.

Just before the turn of the 20th century, the Yakut and Aleut (living on both sides of the Bering Strait) played (perhaps still play?) one and possibly two variants of chess, one of which Waldemar Jochelson wrote about in 1933, the other of which was described by Frederica de Laguna in later work. I’m working on articles on both of these games – hopefully they’ll be ready for publication at Goddesschess soon. It seems I've been working on them forever, but actually it's only been off and on for the past eight months or so...

It seems to me that the three "hitching posts" depicted in the 1993 school wall painting from Zhigansk look a lot like chess pieces. And there is an image of several people, including one "lady," holding a choron in front of her. The ancient traditions live one – perhaps in a somewhat garbled manner, but they still live...