Magba, the "Empress" Mother of the Baug Balar

Derek Armstrong — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:49:17 +0000

Magba, The Empress, ever-pregnant Mother of the Baug Balar

The Mother of the entire Baug Balar troop, Magba adopted Ramon Troubadour after his real parents were condemned by the Inquisition in The Last Troubadour.

History

The Baug Balar circus is referenced as a travelling troop of entertainers, most popularly noted in Italy. Magba merely means "Mother" in the old Novgorodian tongue, and although I was unable to determine her real name, she became known simply as Magba, in a very real sense the fertile Empress.

As Described in The Last Troubadour

Magba waited for her by the fire, sitting beside old gray Guilhem.
Her hair remained golden, swept with only one streak of grey, and she
wore a loose white gown decorated with flowers, the robe she always
wore when she was pregnant. Magba was Nevara’s own teacher, and
also the mother of twelve of the men and women in the Baug, but she
seemed younger than Nevara because of her wavy golden hair. She
was probably twice Nevara’s age, but ever smiling, always serene and
nearly always pregnant.

Empress on the "Fool's" Quest

Ramon Troubadour has returned to his home city of Carcassonne, 12 years after the Inquisition condemned his mother for heresy on the pyre.

Now a man, a fool, a jester and the last surviving troubadour, he must rescue the Holy Dame of the Christian Cathars from a similar fate. Against him is an entire army, the Inquisition, and the terrifying Diableteur. But with is Magba and her sons and daughters of the Baug Balar and all their merry friends, characters straight out of the tarot:

Ramon, The Fool

Adelais, the unpredictable "Fortune"
Seigneur, for Strength
Arnot, the Templar, the Charioteer
The Grand Duo, the Lovers,

and more. Meet them all, in The Last Trobuadour!

In the Cards

From A. E. Waite, Key to the Tarot

"She is not Regina coeli, but she is still refugium peccatorum, the fruitful mother of thousands. There are also certain aspects in which she has been correctly described as desire and the wings thereof, as the woman clothed with the sun, as Gloria Mundi and the veil of the Sanctum Sanctorum; but she is not, I may add, the soul that has attained wings, unless all the symbolism is counted up another and unusual way. She is above all things universal fecundity and the outer sense of the Word..."

THE EMPRESS Tarot Card is represented in THE LAST TROUBADOUR novel by the character MAGBA, Mother of the Baug Balar, a novel by Derek Armstrong from Kunati Books ISBN 9781601640109

Magba, the "Empress" Mother of the Baug Balar