The Identity of Women REQUIRED READING Susan Haskins Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor, 1993 pages 58-97 The Church's presentation of Mary Magdalen as a whore was a convenient counter-type to Mary the virgin. Like Eve, Mary Magdalen was associated with the dangers of the flesh. In this form, she typified the prevailing attitudes towards women and sex. Eve and the Identity of Women ONLINE ESSAY originally presented in Witcombe, "Conversations with a Cunning Serpent: Eve, Art, and the Image of Woman," Sweet Briar College Friends of Art lecture given at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, October 18, 1996, and subsequently revised and included in Images of Women in Ancient Art: Issues of Interpretation and Identity St. Augustine's Penis and Original Sin The Vessel of Mary Magdalen (the Holy Grail?) REQUIRED READING Susan Haskins Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor, 1993 pages 217-218; 361; 374-375 Mary Magdalen may be recognized as a figure of very ancient, pre-Christian origin. Her most conspicuous symbol, the ointment jar or pot, is an especially potent symbol, and one which we recognize as belonging also to Psyche and to Pandora. Its association with the ancient mythic female principle is perhaps one of the clues to the enduring appeal of Mary Magdalen; and it is also the unacknowledged motif around which have been shaped the various myths and legends that have been attached to this woman over the centuries. Mary Magdalen's jar EXCERPT FROM: Witcombe, "The Shifting Identity of Mary Magdalen." Paper Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, 1993 The Holy Grail The Sacred Feminine Mary Magdalen, even as she appears in the scriptures, is akin, as Marjorie Malvern has argued (Venus in Sackcloth: The Magdalen's Origins and Metamorphosis, 1975), to ancient female fertility figures and regenerative goddesses. In her may be recognized aspects of the Great Goddess, of Isis, of Venus, of Eve, of Psyche, and Pandora. What is interesting is that these various aspects or identities surface anew in the Renaissance to clash with the composite identity of Mary Magdalen, even as that composite identity itself was being brought into question by humanist scholars (see The "Quarrel of the Magdalens"). Aspects of the Divine Feminine in Gnostic Texts The Thunder, Perfect Mind The Hypostasis of the Archons The Thought of Norea RECOMMENDED READING The Nag Hammadi Library (the Chenoboskion manuscripts), 1990. Translated by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity; James M. Robinson, director SWEET BRIAR LIBRARY: BT 1391 .A3 1990

Further Reading both scholarly and populist Nancy Qualls-Corbett The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine (Studies in Jungian Psychology Analysts, vol. 32), 1997 Barbara G. Walker The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1983 SWEET BRIAR LIBRARY BL 458 .W34 1983 Barbara G. Walker The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, 1988 SWEET BRIAR LIBRARY CB 475 .W45 1988 Margaret Starbird The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail, 1993 SWEET BRIAR LIBRARY BS 2485 .S69 1993 Margaret Starbird The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine, 1998 Margaret Starbird Magdalene's Lost Legacy: Symbolic Numbers and the Sacred Union in Christianity, 2003 Jean Markale The Church of Mary Magdalene: The Sacred Feminine and the Treasure of Rennes-le-Chateau, 2004 Merlin Stone When God Was a Woman, 1978 Riane Eisler The Chalice and the Blade, 1988 SWEET BRIAR LIBRARY HQ 1075 .E575 1988 Anne Baring and Jules Cashford The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, 1991 SWEET BRIAR LIBRARY BL 473.5 .B37 1991

---

CONTENTS & SCHEDULE RESOURCES