Saturday, October 30, 2010

Mary Magdalene - book titles worth looking into

Here are the titles of some of my favorite books I recommend that deal with the Sacred Feminine, particularly as She is embodied by Mary Magdalene. You’ll find some of your classic favorites…are there any you’d like to recommend and add to the list?

Mary Magdalene

Holy Blood, Holy Grail - Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln

Mary Magdalene: Beyond the Myth - Esther De Boer

Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine - Bart D. Ehrman   

The Magdalen Manuscript - Tom Kenyon and Judi Sion

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle - Karen L. King

The Moon Under Her Feet – Clysta Kinstler (a novel)

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene - Jean-Yves LeLoup

'The Secret Magdalene - Ki Longfellow   (novel)

 I Remember Union: The Story of Mary Magdalene - Flo Aeveia Magdalena

St. Mary Magdalene - Tau Malachi 

The Church of Mary Magdalene: The Sacred Feminine and the Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau - Jean Markale

The Expected One and The Book of Love - Kathleen McGowan (novels)

The Gospels of Mary: the Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene the Companion of Jesus" - Marvin Meyer and Esther De Boer


The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail - Margaret Starbird
(Starbird has also written "The Goddess in the Gospels" and”Magdalene's Lost Legacy" and many more.) 

The Underground Stream: Esoteric Tarot Revealed" - Christine Payne-Towler (emphasis on Gnostic, Holy Blood, Magdalene themes)




Monday, October 11, 2010

I read a quote from Anais Nin. And I copied it down because it intrigued me. "The role of the writer is not to say what all can say but what we are unable to say."

The next day I found another fascinating perspective on authors in an article in the New York Sunday Times, October 2, 2010, by Michael Cunningham, entitled "Found in Translation." He speaks of how an author's finished manuscript is but a rough translation of the novel we'd intended to write. He says our novels are a "cathedral made of fire."

I had to ask myself - is my novel a cathedral made of fire? I hope to God someone thinks it is. And that it expresses, as Anais Nin says, what we as humans are normally unable to articulate. That was certainly my intention. And even though my novel's pages were rewritten so many times I can't even count, its essence and its message remains.

So, maybe there are several ways I could have said what I was inspired to say in my novels. And several ways to allow a translators freedom. whether it be a literal translation or a reader's interpretation. I'm no longer striving for perfection. Simply a cathedral made of fire.