Abstract
Since the early 1990s, Catholic shrines in southern France dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene have attracted a growing number of pilgrims who do not identify themselves as practising Christians. These pilgrims share a critical attitude towards the Catholic Church and regard Mary Magdalene as a woman who lived by Jesus’s side as his companion and equal.
In Looking for Mary Magdalene, Anna Fedele presents a thorough study building on extensive fieldwork with four different groups of pilgrims (coming from Spain, Italy, Great Britain and the USA) who form part of this new movement of alternative pilgrimage. Fedele sets her study of the Magdalene pilgrims in the wider context of alternative spirituality and neo-paganism in Europe and the USA.
Let me say at once that it is a sheer pleasure to read this beautifully crafted monograph. Fedele proves to be a highly skilled ethnographer who succeeds in conveying a deep respect for the people she studies, some of whom are cautious talking to strangers about their interest in alternative spirituality. Fedele explores carefully how the pilgrims found their way to an organized pilgrimage tour, their religious backgrounds, motivations and life stories as well as the leaders’ backgrounds and spiritual profile. The majority of the pilgrims in Fedele’s study are women, but two of the leaders are men and there are a few male pilgrims participating as well, sharing the common goal to ‘discover, heal or empower their female part’ (p. 191). Most pilgrims have a Catholic background.
The beliefs and rituals of the Magdalene pilgrims build on a vast esoteric literature, including key texts in Goddess spirituality and alleged ethnographic knowledge of ancient indigenous rituals. Although knowledge of this literature helps in establishing the leaders’ authority, discourse and text play a secondary role in Magdalene pilgrimage according to Fedele. The scripts for various rituals provided by the leaders are used freely or not at all. The pilgrims’ emphasis is on the efficacy of ritual – measured in relation to the individual pilgrim’s experience of healing and fulfilment. These findings lead Fedele to one of her main points, an emphasis on ritual creativity as a salient feature of Magdalene spirituality. This ritual creativity is expressed in relation to a powerful theological notion: the merging of the deities of feminist spirituality (the Goddess and/as Mother Earth) with the Christian female saint, Mary Magdalene. In the process, the place and significance given to the saint in the teachings of the Catholic Church are reversed. Mary Magdalene is no longer seen as repentant sinner and patron saint of prostitutes, but as an incarnation of the Sacred Feminine, and representing a principle and force suppressed by the patriarchal Catholic Church throughout the centuries.
In the eyes of the pilgrims, the misrepresentation of Mary Magdalene by the patriarchal Church turns her into a perfect symbol for the denigration of women and female sexuality throughout history. According to the pilgrims, since she was wounded, she can understand the wounds inflicted upon women in patriarchal society. In Fedele’s unfolding of the pilgrims’ life stories, the reader learns how traumatic experiences such as illegal abortions, miscarriages or sexual abuse shaped the pilgrims’ reorientation to alternative spirituality. In their rituals, they apply the interpretative strategy of inverting the world order created by the patriarchal Christian belief system. A striking example is the creation of rituals centring on the offering of menstrual blood. In Mary Magdalene’s cave at Sainte Baume, a sacred site administered by the Catholic Church, these pilgrims perform individual or collective rituals in which dried menstrual blood is used to celebrate and sacralize female sexuality and bodily processes. Fedele shows how the ritual of blood offering, in spite of the pilgrims’ desire to break with the symbols and rituals of Catholicism, is modelled on the Eucharist, even in its specific ritual style using incense, candles placed on an altar and the communal sharing of, not the blood of Christ, but their own menstrual blood. Instead of passively receiving redemption from sin at the hands of a male priest, the Magdalene pilgrims act as priestesses themselves offering healing from the wounds of patriarchy to each other. Fedele’s sensitive and nuanced interpretations of the pilgrims’ ritual and imaginative world offer valuable insights into the intricate workings of ritual, helping us to understand how and why ritual continues to be such a powerful tool of human meaning-making.
One point of critique I would like to offer is that the whole phenomenon could be even more contextualized. For instance, there is an interesting class-dimension to the practice. Most pilgrims come from an urban, middle-class background. Their critique of the Church is directed towards the official teachings of the clergy and an orthodox church life centring on confession and participation in mass. The approaches to religion in Magdalene spirituality have much more in common with folk Catholicism mostly practised by rural and working-class populations, and often unsanctioned by the Church hierarchy. For instance, the emphasis on ritual rather than theology, and the focus on the body and women’s reproductive capacity are characteristic of cults of Mary worldwide (Hermkens et al., 2009).
Furthermore, it would be fruitful to locate Magdalene spirituality more clearly in relation to feminism as a social movement and feminist theory. Fedele points out that to some observers the Magdalene pilgrimages might seem to represent a ‘self-centered apolitical escapism’ (p. 275). However, she argues, their worldview contains a political philosophy critical of the existing social and religious order. For a fuller understanding of the merging of the political and the religious in this movement, as well as the location within feminism, the theoretical legacy of 1970s radical feminism needs to be discussed. In addition, other gender-related issues merit more discussion and problematizing than they receive in this text. In particular, I would highlight the implicit focus on the heterosexual couple and male involvement in the Magdalene pilgrims’ version of Goddess feminism as warranting further discussion.