it's also a poppier record overall, as far as i can tell, poppy enough that it's probably fallen out of my sphere. what's going to be left to me to connect to with this is the more serious side of the writing, which is kind of what i said for all of these records, isn't it? this is actually consistent with something i posted not that long ago that argued that the basic concept of this era is rooted in the idea of merging serious music with electronic music.
i'm in need of a little rest, and will get back to this. maybe. if i can connect to it, and i might not be able to.
i want to briefly comment on mary magdalene, though.
like jesus himself, mary magdalene probably did not actually exist. we can't be completely sure of course, none of us were there, but she should be seen as a fictional character rather than a historical figure. it is absolutely true, though, that the character of mary magdalene has been suppressed by the church, which saw her as a threat to patriarchy.
and, let's be clear on the purpose of medieval patriarchy, too. it was to create soldiers. we have patriarchy because of war. it's not some glib comment to suggest that we'd have less wars if women were in charge of things, it is literally the historical fact of the matter - patriarchy is upheld by religion to ensure the rulers have soldiers for war. that's what it is.
so, when these gnostic christians started promoting this woman as a potential equal to jesus, it threatened a revolutionary overthrow. that was dangerous; she had to be destroyed. yet, there are fragments of a gospel that is attributed to her.
despite what you may have heard, there is no extant biblical source that suggests her character was written as a prostitute. that's actually ancient propaganda, designed to smear or discredit her. it's just not in the source.
there are sources that suggest she was jesus' partner, and a few that suggest she may have borne him children. as neither of these people actually existed, it's not likely that a bloodline exists. but, the premise of the character of jesus having sex contradicted christian dogma.
what i'm getting at is that, while it benefits nobody to treat her historically, there is value in deconstructing her back into the composite legends she came from, and treating her as an allegorical myth. as an atheist with classicist and neo-paganist tendencies, i'm actually pretty strongly in favour of that. the greek, roman, egyptian and babylonian constituents into the magdalene syncretism are powerful and should be, err, resurrected. as we decolonize and dechristianize (and deislamicize), we can learn a lot from these ideas that were suppressed, in rebuilding a new post-messianic society. the magdalene myth has powerful potential to help re-establish a cultural norm of female autonomy.
i'm not sure that this is the angle she's coming at with this.
but, it's the angle i need to approach something like this with, and i'll be pondering it when i get back to this after i get some rest.
