Magdalene

Spanning two countries and two peoples, both at war and both occupied by Rome MAGDALENE is the ?Mary Magdalene? of the Holy Grail bloodline legends.Miriam, young priestess of the goddess Asherah, is of royal Hasmonean blood. Therefore she is the chosen initiatrix of the priest-king, Yeshuah ben Miriam.The story begins in the tomb of his initiation before (in her eyes) his desertion of her, at the last minute, as her ship sets sail from war-torn Judea to the lands of the Britons, pregnant with his child.They are not to meet again for many years and her love for his brother Yudas the Sicari becomes an even stronger bond.Her life changes dramatically upon meeting a Druid woman and living amongst a very different culture. The woman Miriam is to become begins to awaken.Miriam Magdal-Eder, commonly known as Mary Magdalene, lives a wild and mystical life, takes lovers as she sees fit, learns from wherever the training is necessary, loves without justification and fights when it is necessary to fight. Set between Judea, ancient Cornwall, ancient Glastonbury, the Druid isle of Mona and the mists of Ireland Miriam becomes a stranger to the woman she once was, stronger in the face of the savagery and brutality of war than she ever would have thought possible as a naïve young priestess who thought she was a woman, closer than even she could have believed to the power of nature to heal in the face of adversity.This is a controversial love story and an adventure into consciousness without insulting the reader with dogma or demand. It is, ultimately, an opinion.MAGDALENE takes into account many of the relevant recent texts that suggest the possibility of a Sangreal, or holy bloodline that has continued to the current times, grail legends and those of the Templar legacy. It is a controversial work despite, or perhaps because of de Angeles? intense research, one that seduces the reader into re-evaluating commonly-held viewpoints on many issues from politics to religion, the quality of history and how it is taught, sexuality and inequality in secular societies, theocratic institutions and cultures as well as within the day to day lives of ordinary people.Unique to this work of fiction is a non-fiction addendum entitled Gods Bastards that entices the reader outside the scholastic square and into the mind of the author as she pulls apart aspects of historic and religious assumptions and myth.Whilst being spoken in a contemporary vernacular the book retains, as intimately as possible, the era in which it is set and so utilises the places and names of that era. There is an extensive, lively and enlightened glossary to assist the reader to figure out who?s who and where?s where.At the conclusion of the narrative are ten Heresies (voice-overs) that hint at the progression of the lineage into the current era? or another mystery even greater still.