Woman With The Alabaster Jar [Paperback]

Yes, but you will need to look elsewhere to get in touch it. Seeking to understand their relationship is worth the effort. This book will not help, though. Read this book only for cautionary purposes.

This is not a scholarly book. It tries to do many thing, but fails to penetrate deeply into any. For a better encounter with mystic grail followers, see Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum". Much more challenging, but it will stick with you a lot longer. For the juice on fertility rites, see Joseph Campbell's "The King and the Corpse". To meet Mary herself, see LeLoup's "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene".

Starbird describes Mary Magdalene as a rather inert object of Christ's libidinal passions. Mary never speaks directly in this book. She acts as sublime priestess of matrimonial ritual, but she only acts out the dance others created. She carries/nurtures the seed of Christ, but whatever that involved, StarBird never personalizes. In the end, we are left with something of an argument for divine-right political legitimacy. The patrimony of David is highly exalted here.

Rather than illuminating anything Jesus or Mary Magdalene said while walking this earth, as lovers or otherwise, Starbird shoehorns the couple into the mold of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian magic. Starbird keeps her two lovers silent. It is much easier to keep the revolutionaries under control that way. Starbird is advocating the most conservative of views: Let us return to the rites of the Pharohs, all that was important was known to them. Reports of newer insights are merely mirage.

Now what? Lets drop the kings and aristocracy - this was just to "keep up with the muslims" in the main whose kings (and most of "our" kings including Elizabeth II and the Duque de Bragança) are decended from the prophet via FÁTIMA) - if you as a prosletising faith find yourself able to convert nations via kings (instead of real folk one by one) you want a "royal product". So what if Jesus was descended from David - I am descended from the more ancient Mileasian and Fir Bolg kings of Ireland - should direct me to a humble style not the to grasp for temporal or spiritual "Stuff'n'Status"

Sarah was the divine maid/divinity (Like "Fulla", and as became Vesta/Hestia under the Olympian Tyranny) So she hides. Real gents apprentice themselves to her like the "Male Maids" or the "French Maids". (Of popular derision) Its just that they might allow themselves - like Robert Graves needed to (and many poets) to serve a kindly and patient mistress who is our friend Sara, (rather than the cruel mistress - perhaps the church or dogma?), daughter of Magdalen and maid to all the sacred ladies (particularly the true witness Maria Salome - midwife and "layer out" of our earest friend.)

Her maidship is her badge of authenticity - her black and white the robes of a priest of the Mountain Mother. Keep her in the parlour and attending the mystical bed - a Eunoukhos indeed. Robed as queen I rightly distrust her - await some gesture of hypocricy. We who are made from clay need not fear to have feet of the same.

In the sacred service of the holy brothel - we refine the disregarded impulse - sanctify the despised perverted.

As Cardinal Henry Newman declared ..all pagan literature is the Old Testament. I say "All (true) Good News" is the gospel - all prepared foodstuffs and mind healing molecules are sacrament when served by the true Maid. Don't diss her for her freedom from that lust for power. Amgdistis is become "cute" - kiss her on the lips.

She is the guardian of the sacred wallet - it is the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil - she holds all our wealth for feast or against famine - like the maid-sister Fula.

More from me - and little of it convenient for the status-seeker on Usenet.

Try "Steve Kane" and some key word of your choosing on the search field.

Thankyou Margaret - There is a very ancient saying concerning the fragile earthenwear pitchers used once hearabouts for bearing water. (It even applies to the plastic ones favoured now)

"If you take the pitcher to the well each day - one day it will break"

You must bear it each day - then one morning the water stirs - the great fish is there in the water and the pitcher falls, your coiled scarf that held it tumbles and your long hair let down - your net - to hold the steady eyed fish - like Tobit take it home to heal your father, divide in flakes for all - for the demon that devoured the bridegrooms, for the dog that came in hope - for the true companion Raphael.

For those who see - however, humble.

HONI SOIT QUI MAL (Y) PENSE - Garter and Gawain - the Lady's apparel sheepishly, symbolically worn by the knighte - to save him from beheading - that death might be a small thing though fearsome - its intensity soon forgotten - so we might do it again willingly when our time comes - as the child bed - becomes the death bed.

Take your eyes off the bloody cross - its not for us - the church would mesmerise us with it - to usefully feel is not to gawp in incomprehension - it is for the holy women to witness - to interpret his cries - the men, apart from the beardless John, had not the particular nous for it. Now, after the event those women teach their child-maid as she serves them - each day with ease and dilligence - observing their gestures, their small deeds, overhearing their snippets of wisdom and memory - enough for each day.

As Sara we carry their water from and to them - waiting for the bridegroom - for the breaking of the pitcher - at the dawning of the day.