the moon under her feet by clysta kinstler

People eat simple, healthy foods, ''barley cakes, goat cheese, and figs.'' As high priestess of the Temple, Mari enjoys ''the sunshine on a spring day, fresh shellfish in season, the mock battles of Misha's kittens, the children we cared for and instructed.'' The Nativity takes place in ''a charming cottage - actually a refurbished stable - adjoining the best of Bethlehem's inns.'' It might be Palestine, Calif. Everyone is tanned, glowing, smiling and beautiful - except, that is, for the villains who are more swarthy than tanned. Kinstler has envisaged a strangely attractive world, a world that is still young, brightly colored and hard-edged. Together, Seth and Mari are able to banter away about eternal salvation and Gnostic mysteries. A mysterious foundling, he is eventually revealed to be a reincarnation of the Egyptian god Seth, as well as doubling as Judas Iscariot - in this version, Jesus' twin brother. That certain Seth, her lover, also works hard for his part in the story and has to wear many hats. But there is more to Mari than this bare curriculum vitae might suggest, for in the course of her career as priestess, wife, mother and mistress she discovers herself to be the Great Whore of biblical prophecy and a goddess, both Ishtar and Isis. Then she goes on to marry Jesus and to witness His Crucifixion and Resurrection, and more spectacular revelations follow.

Mari's daughter, Salome, tries to save her by doing the mystic dance of the seven veils, but, when this does not work, Mari wills her own death and resurrection and lives again to wash Jesus' feet (for she is really Mary Magdalene). Subsequently, Antipas, another of Herod's sons, tries to force her to marry him. So Mari, after an education in awareness exercises and dream interpretation, weds Philip, one of the sons of Herod the Great, and spends years in his harem before escaping to become high priestess in Jerusalem and the mistress of a certain Seth. But the author works her characters pretty hard. Kinstler's heroine, Mari, is raised and trained to be a priestess in this ancient cult. The author, who teaches philosophy and religion at American River College in Sacramento, Calif., supposes that the ancient fertility cult of the Mother Goddess and the Dying King lingered on in Palestine until the lifetime of Jesus Christ and coexisted uneasily with the Judaism of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Clysta Kinstler's first novel ventures into a less well explored patch of alternative history. There are plenty of examples of this sort of alternative history on the fiction shelves. Suppose that the Confederates had won the Civil War or that Hitler had won World War II. Suppose Queen Elizabeth I had been assassinated and Spanish Catholicism had triumphed in England. THE MOON UNDER HER FEET By Clysta Kinstler.

The moon under her feet by clysta kinstler