Mark Juhan has been an active Friend of Cross Bones for more than 5 years, and has hosted a number of Cross Bones Vigils. Here’s his illuminating article on ‘The Southwark Mysteries’ and the magical works to reclaim Cross Bones as our holy ground, together with Mark’s introduction when he shared it on FB (below):
“Quite chuffed that this article got accepted on April 23rd, exactly 25 years after the play that it partly concerns was first performed in the Globe Theatre (on Shakespeare’s Birthday/St George’s Day).
As some of you know, I’ve been working with a community in London for years. Sacred work, hard work at times – cleaning a decade of devotionally tied ribbons from pollution, hearing historic and recent tales of trauma and abandonment – both for my tear ducts and my ribcage, because this goose likes a gander.
Basically it’s a rediscovered graveyard originally pinpointed through the LSD mediumship and spirit channelling of The Goose (who visited my friend John Crow/Constable), and which then became a confirmed discovery by Jubilee line construction workers.
What did they discover? – What’s believed to be the location of the burial pit of the sex workers who called themselves, “The Winchester Geese”. These were a group of sex workers licensed by a medieval landowner in Southwark, in this case the Bishop of Winchester in his palace of Winchester (one rose window wall of which still stands near the Golden Hinde), a Bishop who was a business partner and licenser of the sex workers, “Defender of their Liberty.” While on paper it was his duty to protect them in life, he still buried them in unconsecrated ground (this I term “eschatological injustice” – end-time injustice), destined for hell (this I term “soteriological scandal” – the being saved scandal).
The Goose thus becomes the Judge of Christian Judgement itself.
It was the principle downside of moving to Exeter that I couldn’t be as physically present at the holy gates as I want to be. But it was an honour holding the light through covid and beyond – and I’ll be there again for the Mary Magdalene ritual on the 27th of July.
Katy Kaos , John Crow , Jennifer Cooper – all the collective and the wardens, you know who you are – this essay is a small way of saying thank you.
All thoughts appreciated on my feminist and trauma-informed theological ethnography – advance article viewable here” https://academic.oup.com/litthe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/litthe/fraf010/8160882
ps from JC: don’t be scared off by all the big words. Mark’s essay is aimed in part at academics and has to play by those rules. However, he does manages to stretch them to – and sometimes beyond – the limit! 😉 His strong foundation in mystical Christianity affords him distinctive insights into the esoteric teachings of The Goose and ‘The Southwark Mysteries’
https://academic.oup.com/litthe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/litthe/fraf010/8160882?login=false
