Elizabeth Cunningham/Black Dark Madonna

When we encounter the Female Mystery in an up-close and personal way, we are inspired and affirmed. Join Elizabeth Cunningham for a lively presentation of ritual, song, storytelling, and guided meditation. Meet the quirky, archetypal forces that inhabit her latest novel—face to face.

Ma (not your mother’s Virgin Mary) who sings songs of praise—to herself. Revered as a sibyl during her sojourn among the Galatians, Ma makes a pilgrimage to Ephesus where she comes to profound terms with the goddess Artemis.

Maeve, the Celtic Mary Magdalen, who is no one’s disciple. Thrown out of druid school, Maeve has been a whore, a lover, a healer, a failed apostle, a woman on the lam, and finally, a mother who will go to the ends of the earth to find her runaway daughter.

Black Sarah, raised in the wilds of Galatia, who speaks the language of the animals. This mountain child gives everyone the slip and runs away to sea to join the last remnants of the Amazon nation—as a pirate.

This FREE event is offered on Sunday, October 11 at 11.30am. With dramatic reading, song, and storytelling, Elizabeth Cunningham presents her new novel Bright Dark Madonna, featuring Maeve, the notably unrepentant Celtic Mary Magdalen. Join Cunningham for an event of imaginative, historic, and theological insight into the life and character of this enigmatic woman who has re-emerged as a key archetypal figure for our times. Elizabeth will answer any questions after a discussion of The Maeve Chronicles, as well as autograph your books. Please call the store to reserve your seat. Books purchased outside SoulJourney will not be signed.

Elizabeth Cunningham is the author of the award-winning novel The Passion of Mary Magdalen and of its prequel Magdalen Rising. Bright Dark Madonna is the third installment of The Maeve Chronicles. She is at work on a fourth and final volume. The novels can be read in any order, and each one can stand alone. She has been working on the series since 1991 and has traveled widely to do onsite research, including, for this novel, Southern France and Ephesus.

Elizabeth is the direct descendant of nine generations of Episcopal priests. She grew up hearing rich (sometimes terrifying) liturgical and biblical language. When she was not in church or school, she read fairytales and fantasy novels or wandered in the enchanted wood of an overgrown, abandoned estate next door to the rectory. Her religious background, the magic of fairytales, and the numinous experience of nature continue to inform her work.

After being altogether too good and studious during her earliest years, Cunningham was expelled from a progressive boarding school for nudity. She subsequently earned a GED and went on to The College of General Studies at Boston University. From there she transferred to Harvard-Radcliffe College where she graduated in 1976 with a BA in English and American language and literature. Somehow, she resisted the temptation to go to seminary to study for the Episcopal priesthood. The possibility was especially tempting, because, at that time, ordination of women was not allowed. When the church ruled in favor of women’s ordination a few months later, she heaved a sigh of relief and went on writing the The Wild Mother, her first novel, hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a beguiling tour de force.”

The Passion of Mary Magdalen, the centerpiece of The Maeve Chronicles, is Cunningham’s fifth novel, and the book she believes she was born to write. Her other novels include The Return of the Goddess, a Divine Comedy; The Wild Mother; and How to Spin Gold, a Woman’s Tale (to be re-released by Monkfish). Magdalen Rising, the prequel to The Passion of Mary Magdalen, was published in 2007. Bright Dark Madonna, the sequel, is forthcoming in April 2009.

Cunningham is also the author of two collections of poetry: Small Bird, and Wild Mercy.

Although Cunningham managed to avoid becoming an Episcopal priest, she graduated from The New Seminary in 1997 and was ordained as an interfaith minister and counselor. Both The Maeve Chronicles and her interfaith ministry express Cunningham’s profound desire to reconcile her Christian roots with her call to explore the divine feminine.

Since her ordination, Cunningham has been in private practice as a counselor and maintains that the reading and writing of novels has been as important to this work as her seminary training.