Mary Magdalene represents, for me, an essential portal through which I passed through to break free from a heavily repressive religious/cultural upbringing. Once I started to look more seriously into who she was and what she represented, a rebel, an outcast, a person Jesus had the utmost regard for, I took her as my role model for the new me; a me that has finally claimed her turf within and without and who could *not* be happier with herself.
I also had a serendipitous moment along the journey when I came across a book, an historical novel, called “Mary Called Magdalene” and knew I had to get it because the author shared the exact same name as my grandmother, a person I never knew as she died a premature death at age thirty three. I felt it was a sign that my choice of a new hero was the right one and that grandma approved of my new quest! (ah sorry don’t ask me what I thought of the book as I am remiss to say it gathered dust on the shelf. However I intend to read it now, all thanks to this great thread!)
😉
“So I’m sorry if I don’t celebrate any of this stuff – personally, I’d like to see the whole lot got rid of. It was a messy tale to begin with, and a messy tale at the end, and in between was filled with contradictions and culturally-convenient loaded meanings, and meanness and sniping like nothing else I’ve ever read.”
I am with you on that. Too much of what Christianity is today is far too Aztec (sacrifice to please a bloodthirsty god) for me. I think the Gnostics were closer to the truth. The other religions also leave a lot to be desired. Suffice it to say I made up my own that is inclusive:
Know yourself
Nothing in excess
Give to and help the less fortunate
Be a joy-giver, not a joy-taker
Love everyone and everything to the best of my ability
Walk softly on the earth and with its creatures
Do what I will but harm none
Or as the Dalai Lama said (no I don’t follow him, either) “I practice the religion of kindness.”
aword, thank you. It is so hard to find words to point to an experience/experiences that can’t be put into words. After I wrote I was afraid I relied entirely too much on intellectual concepts, bordering on my own peculiar brand of dogma or something like that. Whole, unfragmented, yes! I hadn’t found quite been able to articulate those words for my experience of Mary Magdalene’s energy, but yes. And she mirrors back to us our wholeness.
I felt really lucky to visit the Basilica in Vezelay, France, to feel an entire building, village, and place imbued with her presence. As my friend and I drove the long, winding road up to the hill where Vezelay is situated, her energy became more and more palpable. I am still completely humbled by the experience. Humbled, not in the sense of being unworthy, but in the root sense of the word. The words “human,” “humility,” and “humor” all share the same common Indo-European root word, “ghôm,” best translated by the English word “humus”. Humus, as in the compost heap, as in the earth that receives all of our garbage and regenerates it into dark, pure, fertile soil. In that way I was humbled.
As an aside, and a shout out to joe g, the Basillica is maintained by a vibrant, practicing community of Franciscan monks and nuns. I happened upon one of their services, not a mass. It was in French, so I didn’t understand all of it. Both monks and nuns took turns leading the service. They chanted religious hymns in plainsong. The room vibrated. My sense of their community was that they carried Mary Magdalene’s energy with unshakable devotion. All of this, a religious group of monastics, a living practice lineage, my sense of her powerful sexual energy–to me, none of it was contradictory.
I always enjoy your posts, aword. Thanks for indulging more of my story. It is a very meaningful one to me. Love to you.
darkmary, I haven’t a story to tell – only that I thank you for your posts here; Mary Magdelene has always felt like a “soulmate” for lack of better expression of the feeling this moment. As has “Lilitlh.” –the women who are not fragmented.
I have read quite a bit on her; I’m sure it would be amazing to physically visit any place where she was known to be and feel her essence strongly.
Anyway – just “thanks” – you’ve given me some empowerment in my own quest for “wholeness” by raising your experiences thoughts questions here.
joe g and shebear, It is good to hear more of your experience Mary Magdalene. It has been over 25 years since I was a practicing Catholic, so had completely forgotten it was her feast day yesterday.
There is rich lore (not just Dan Brown’s) of Mary Magdalene carrying Christ’s child. I don’t know if that is true or not, but certainly, as you wrote, shebear, she was the first to witness the resurrection and she carried within her, long after Christ’s ascension, the “truth” of Christ’s teaching, that we must all die in order to be born again. Is that not the same truth of the regenerative power of our sexuality? (And can you see the connection to the myth of Demeter and Persephone?)
I don’t know, joe g, maybe Mary was a renunciate. Certainly that is what the Catholic church has taught through the ages (as well as insidiously shaming everyone for our sexual natures.) Still, renunciation is a powerful path. My friends who are monks and nuns (Buddhist, not Catholic, but still) speak of using the energy of desire as a purifying fire as well. Only, in the Vajrayana (tantric) path desire is not evil in and of itself, only to be purified. From the tantric view desire is inherently pure, as all phenomena are. Desire is, indeed, to be celebrated as the fuel with which we burn through the illusion that we (and reality) are solidly and independently existing. We can either choose celibacy (as my monastic friends have) or we can choose the tantric path, which is the path of desire. (I am describing Tibetan Buddhism–and only superficially, at that, btw, not Zen or Theravadin or Pure Land, which all have their own particularly views, flavors, and practices.)
But all of this is esoteric (and perhaps even religious dogma, which, in the end, I find only useful as a reference point.) What I am most interested in is others’ *personal experience* of Mary Magdalene. Has she come to you in prayer or meditation or dreams? How do you experience her energy? My personal experience of her is marked by the perception of a powerful sexuality, the sacred whore, if you will. One who carries dark and light, death and life simultaneously within. And, for me, she serves as a bright mirror for the transformative power of my own sexuality and desire, the path or vehicle, by which, day by day, I realize my own god or buddha nature.
PS: My distate for religion is not limited to “Christianity” – it’s pretty much across the board – I could say the same for some of the most celebrated Hindu texts too….check out the Ramayana someday, and have a look at what Rama did to Sita. It never did sit well with me, even as a child, and it certainly doesn’t sit well now – the hypocrisy seemed to jump out and smack me in the face, and nothing’s changed there… And interestingly enough, while there’s a great deal that I disagree with with regards to Islam – Mohammed was actually trying to do something there to ameliorate the brutal treament meted out to women in the cultural practises of the day. It’s strange, and a lot of it doesn’t fit in with our “globalised” viewpoint any more, and there are a lot of contradictions that mix up the messages there as well, but the fact remains, he tried.
Cheers.
Sorry – correction: should have read: “martyrised him, and built a mighty ‘Church” around him”
I’m sorry to be a party-pooper, but I can’t see what all the fuss is about. So Mary “did whatever she liked with whomever she liked” – well, what of it? And why would someone need to be “saved” from such a life in a “moral” way? I am increasingly beginning to find the whole Christian ethos more and more insulting, and more and more patriarchal. The Bible is heavily edited, and massively geared toward a certain sort of “spin”. Look at the message of Christ himself – what’s the real “moral” there? The way I interpret it is: you speak out, you get crucified. The Powers that Be (the so-called apostles), would have done far better to stand by their man while he was alive, and offer the poor fellow a defence, yet what did they do? Shopped him in the worst way possible, and then built a mighty martyrised him and built a mighty “Church” to assuage their post-betrayal guilt (and made a pretty good spot of money, power and fame doing it). It’s pretty easy to be “sorry” post facto, and try to “make amends” once someone’s dead!
As one woman to another, I might have counselled Mary M to try a different approach – one based more on self-respect – the basis being self-protection – that if you don’t SHOW that you respect yourself, or protect yourself, then nobody will – and I’d add to that a little word on how your body is part of you, and not there for people to abuse. That would be the sum total of the “lesson”.
So I’m sorry if I don’t celebrate any of this stuff – personally, I’d like to see the whole lot got rid of. It was a messy tale to begin with, and a messy tale at the end, and in between was filled with contradictions and culturally-convenient loaded meanings, and meanness and sniping like nothing else I’ve ever read.
The Bible as a “historical artefact”? Sure, but beyond that, thanks, but I think I’ll pass.
Cheers,
Indrani
“…it has been theorized and reported that Paris takes her name from the goddess (par Isis).”
To add to this thought, the ancient Egyptian pronunciation of Isis was Ah-set. And she was the one who created the king.
This is one of those feast days worth celebrating! I am in love with Mary Magdalene as well, and have been for ages. I *love* what is written about her here, thank you guys! She has been maligned and misunderstood for far too long. A firebrand indeed, joe g; a sexually free person, I agree amanada; and when we discover her, yes, we discover her within ourselves. Absolutely darkmary, I know what you say to be true.
She was the first disciple to see the risen Jesus. She got him and understood his message. In the chapter *Divine Intervention* from the book Misogyny by Jack Holland, he writes that “Jesus appears first to a woman, Mary Magdalene (Mark: 16: 9)” and that when she “reports the vent to the apostles, they do not believe her. The resurrection is the central doctrine of Christianity, promising salvation. That it was revealed to a woman, and one who was the first to accept it, gave women in general a powerful basis to play a dramatic role in the new religion.”
Maybe for those of us who embrace the message of Jesus can embrace her and draw from her life and example on how to own, as you say Amanda, our sexual and creative power.
This alert to her feast day and the date itself seems so very timely indeed.
My source is the mystical visions of Maria Valtorta as written in the 5 volume “Poem of the Man-God”. Very detailed and very beautiful. The picture we get there is of a Mary who starts off doing whatever the hell she wants with anyone she wants. She was the shame of her family, who were very well known. Then she encounters Jesus, who irritates and intrigues her at first because he doesn’t react to her intensely seductive beauty the way every other man has up until then. Instead of openly desiring her or hurling insults at her, Jesus just starts teaching her. After the third or fourth time, she gets the message and her heart breaks. She then locks herself into a room to “remove her demons”. She was completely disgusted with her former life, but instead of beating herself up, she used all that energy as a purifying fire. From that point on she was a transformed being – one of the strongest and most faithful of all the disciples. She was completely unafraid to fire back at those who mocked her new life, and was totally devoted to the mission of Jesus and Mother Mary.
which I have not read in full yet. The little I did peruse reads almost like a biography.
So, that’s my take so far. In the interest of disclosure, I’m a Christian mystic, and yes I believe these writings are real. :~)
My heart aches for Paris (and yes, the Parisian women’s hips coursing through the universe. Beautifully put, Eric.) Which has what to do with the Magdalene? After posting my last entry one of the archived posts caught my eye. Eric’s photo of the Brasserie Grand Cluny posted two years ago. I haunt Paris as much as any ghost I know. Anyway, Paris led me, zig-zagging by train through France, to Mary Magdalene. Or, at least, to her doubtful but reputed relics in Vezelay, where I found not only her, but Her within me.
There are numerous historical references which cite Paris as a center of worship of the goddess Isis, so much so that it has been theorized and reported that Paris takes her name from the goddess (par Isis). http://homepage.ntlworld.com/fusniak/talisman/articles/isisofparis.html. The worship of Isis predates that of Ceres/Demeter. Herodotus, the Greek scholar, identified Isis with Demeter (Roman – Ceres). The cult of Isis spread with that of Horus, her son, and Serapis, as the Greeks called Osiris.
If you have ever read of the mythology of Isis and Osiris, it is difficult to miss the connection to the myth of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
For me, re-discovering Mary Magdalene was inseparable from re-membering myself. She was and is the lynchpin between two seemingly disparate spiritual lineages, Catholicism and Buddhism. She dwells in vertical time, past, present and future indistinguishable. For me, the path of awakening *is* the path of desire. And beyond that, to try and describe her would only diminish my experience of her. I would love to hear of others’ lived experience of her.
With Ceres on the Aries point, perhaps the question “Who was/is Mary Magdalene?” is more timely than ever.
at any rate, she is a bit of a mystery.
there’s this from wiki, among much else about her:
“The traditional Roman Catholic feast day dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene celebrated her position as a penitent. The Magdalene became a symbol of repentance for the vanities of the world to various sects. In 1969, the Catholic Church allegedly admitted what critics had been saying for centuries: Magdalene’s standard image as a reformed prostitute is not supported by the text of the Bible. They reportedly have revised the Roman Missal and the Roman Calendar, and now neither of those documents mention Mary Magdalene as a repentant sinner of ill repute.”
though it really is more fun, and richer i think, if she was a prostitute… i mean fun in the sense of: whatever she “forsook” or embraced, if she was a prostitute, part of her path was embracing that sexual power she had. and part of her relationship to christ was *his* embracing that; embracing on some level her creative power, even if it was on the way to something else.
just thinkin’ out loud…
It seems that we have projected so much onto Mary Magdalene that it is difficult to answer the question “Who was she?”, without taking our personal mythologies, as well as societal mythologies into account. And yet there is ample historical evidence that suggests that her path to “purity” and “real love” was actually the path of sensuality, sexuality and desire.
An excerpt from a poem found among the gnostic manuscripts at Nag Hammadi:
Thunder, Perfect Mind
I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter. . . .
I am she whose wedding is great,
And I have not taken a husband. . . .
I am shameless;
I am ashamed. . . .
I am godless,
And I am one whose God is great.
Mary Magdalene was someone who forsook sensuality, manipulation, and self-gratification for purity and real love, and attained both. Unfathomable for most people, then or now. She was also a firebrand!
I almost confused the mummy for Mary……..takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust to the scene…..I am thankful Lazarus got a second chance….
Mary Magdalene represents, for me, an essential portal through which I passed through to break free from a heavily repressive religious/cultural upbringing. Once I started to look more seriously into who she was and what she represented, a rebel, an outcast, a person Jesus had the utmost regard for, I took her as my role model for the new me; a me that has finally claimed her turf within and without and who could *not* be happier with herself.
I also had a serendipitous moment along the journey when I came across a book, an historical novel, called “Mary Called Magdalene” and knew I had to get it because the author shared the exact same name as my grandmother, a person I never knew as she died a premature death at age thirty three. I felt it was a sign that my choice of a new hero was the right one and that grandma approved of my new quest! (ah sorry don’t ask me what I thought of the book as I am remiss to say it gathered dust on the shelf. However I intend to read it now, all thanks to this great thread!)
😉
“So I’m sorry if I don’t celebrate any of this stuff – personally, I’d like to see the whole lot got rid of. It was a messy tale to begin with, and a messy tale at the end, and in between was filled with contradictions and culturally-convenient loaded meanings, and meanness and sniping like nothing else I’ve ever read.”
I am with you on that. Too much of what Christianity is today is far too Aztec (sacrifice to please a bloodthirsty god) for me. I think the Gnostics were closer to the truth. The other religions also leave a lot to be desired. Suffice it to say I made up my own that is inclusive:
Know yourself
Nothing in excess
Give to and help the less fortunate
Be a joy-giver, not a joy-taker
Love everyone and everything to the best of my ability
Walk softly on the earth and with its creatures
Do what I will but harm none
Or as the Dalai Lama said (no I don’t follow him, either) “I practice the religion of kindness.”
aword, thank you. It is so hard to find words to point to an experience/experiences that can’t be put into words. After I wrote I was afraid I relied entirely too much on intellectual concepts, bordering on my own peculiar brand of dogma or something like that. Whole, unfragmented, yes! I hadn’t found quite been able to articulate those words for my experience of Mary Magdalene’s energy, but yes. And she mirrors back to us our wholeness.
I felt really lucky to visit the Basilica in Vezelay, France, to feel an entire building, village, and place imbued with her presence. As my friend and I drove the long, winding road up to the hill where Vezelay is situated, her energy became more and more palpable. I am still completely humbled by the experience. Humbled, not in the sense of being unworthy, but in the root sense of the word. The words “human,” “humility,” and “humor” all share the same common Indo-European root word, “ghôm,” best translated by the English word “humus”. Humus, as in the compost heap, as in the earth that receives all of our garbage and regenerates it into dark, pure, fertile soil. In that way I was humbled.
As an aside, and a shout out to joe g, the Basillica is maintained by a vibrant, practicing community of Franciscan monks and nuns. I happened upon one of their services, not a mass. It was in French, so I didn’t understand all of it. Both monks and nuns took turns leading the service. They chanted religious hymns in plainsong. The room vibrated. My sense of their community was that they carried Mary Magdalene’s energy with unshakable devotion. All of this, a religious group of monastics, a living practice lineage, my sense of her powerful sexual energy–to me, none of it was contradictory.
I always enjoy your posts, aword. Thanks for indulging more of my story. It is a very meaningful one to me. Love to you.
darkmary, I haven’t a story to tell – only that I thank you for your posts here; Mary Magdelene has always felt like a “soulmate” for lack of better expression of the feeling this moment. As has “Lilitlh.” –the women who are not fragmented.
I have read quite a bit on her; I’m sure it would be amazing to physically visit any place where she was known to be and feel her essence strongly.
Anyway – just “thanks” – you’ve given me some empowerment in my own quest for “wholeness” by raising your experiences thoughts questions here.
joe g and shebear, It is good to hear more of your experience Mary Magdalene. It has been over 25 years since I was a practicing Catholic, so had completely forgotten it was her feast day yesterday.
There is rich lore (not just Dan Brown’s) of Mary Magdalene carrying Christ’s child. I don’t know if that is true or not, but certainly, as you wrote, shebear, she was the first to witness the resurrection and she carried within her, long after Christ’s ascension, the “truth” of Christ’s teaching, that we must all die in order to be born again. Is that not the same truth of the regenerative power of our sexuality? (And can you see the connection to the myth of Demeter and Persephone?)
I don’t know, joe g, maybe Mary was a renunciate. Certainly that is what the Catholic church has taught through the ages (as well as insidiously shaming everyone for our sexual natures.) Still, renunciation is a powerful path. My friends who are monks and nuns (Buddhist, not Catholic, but still) speak of using the energy of desire as a purifying fire as well. Only, in the Vajrayana (tantric) path desire is not evil in and of itself, only to be purified. From the tantric view desire is inherently pure, as all phenomena are. Desire is, indeed, to be celebrated as the fuel with which we burn through the illusion that we (and reality) are solidly and independently existing. We can either choose celibacy (as my monastic friends have) or we can choose the tantric path, which is the path of desire. (I am describing Tibetan Buddhism–and only superficially, at that, btw, not Zen or Theravadin or Pure Land, which all have their own particularly views, flavors, and practices.)
But all of this is esoteric (and perhaps even religious dogma, which, in the end, I find only useful as a reference point.) What I am most interested in is others’ *personal experience* of Mary Magdalene. Has she come to you in prayer or meditation or dreams? How do you experience her energy? My personal experience of her is marked by the perception of a powerful sexuality, the sacred whore, if you will. One who carries dark and light, death and life simultaneously within. And, for me, she serves as a bright mirror for the transformative power of my own sexuality and desire, the path or vehicle, by which, day by day, I realize my own god or buddha nature.
PS: My distate for religion is not limited to “Christianity” – it’s pretty much across the board – I could say the same for some of the most celebrated Hindu texts too….check out the Ramayana someday, and have a look at what Rama did to Sita. It never did sit well with me, even as a child, and it certainly doesn’t sit well now – the hypocrisy seemed to jump out and smack me in the face, and nothing’s changed there… And interestingly enough, while there’s a great deal that I disagree with with regards to Islam – Mohammed was actually trying to do something there to ameliorate the brutal treament meted out to women in the cultural practises of the day. It’s strange, and a lot of it doesn’t fit in with our “globalised” viewpoint any more, and there are a lot of contradictions that mix up the messages there as well, but the fact remains, he tried.
Cheers.
Sorry – correction: should have read: “martyrised him, and built a mighty ‘Church” around him”
I’m sorry to be a party-pooper, but I can’t see what all the fuss is about. So Mary “did whatever she liked with whomever she liked” – well, what of it? And why would someone need to be “saved” from such a life in a “moral” way? I am increasingly beginning to find the whole Christian ethos more and more insulting, and more and more patriarchal. The Bible is heavily edited, and massively geared toward a certain sort of “spin”. Look at the message of Christ himself – what’s the real “moral” there? The way I interpret it is: you speak out, you get crucified. The Powers that Be (the so-called apostles), would have done far better to stand by their man while he was alive, and offer the poor fellow a defence, yet what did they do? Shopped him in the worst way possible, and then built a mighty martyrised him and built a mighty “Church” to assuage their post-betrayal guilt (and made a pretty good spot of money, power and fame doing it). It’s pretty easy to be “sorry” post facto, and try to “make amends” once someone’s dead!
As one woman to another, I might have counselled Mary M to try a different approach – one based more on self-respect – the basis being self-protection – that if you don’t SHOW that you respect yourself, or protect yourself, then nobody will – and I’d add to that a little word on how your body is part of you, and not there for people to abuse. That would be the sum total of the “lesson”.
So I’m sorry if I don’t celebrate any of this stuff – personally, I’d like to see the whole lot got rid of. It was a messy tale to begin with, and a messy tale at the end, and in between was filled with contradictions and culturally-convenient loaded meanings, and meanness and sniping like nothing else I’ve ever read.
The Bible as a “historical artefact”? Sure, but beyond that, thanks, but I think I’ll pass.
Cheers,
Indrani
“…it has been theorized and reported that Paris takes her name from the goddess (par Isis).”
To add to this thought, the ancient Egyptian pronunciation of Isis was Ah-set. And she was the one who created the king.
This is one of those feast days worth celebrating! I am in love with Mary Magdalene as well, and have been for ages. I *love* what is written about her here, thank you guys! She has been maligned and misunderstood for far too long. A firebrand indeed, joe g; a sexually free person, I agree amanada; and when we discover her, yes, we discover her within ourselves. Absolutely darkmary, I know what you say to be true.
She was the first disciple to see the risen Jesus. She got him and understood his message. In the chapter *Divine Intervention* from the book Misogyny by Jack Holland, he writes that “Jesus appears first to a woman, Mary Magdalene (Mark: 16: 9)” and that when she “reports the vent to the apostles, they do not believe her. The resurrection is the central doctrine of Christianity, promising salvation. That it was revealed to a woman, and one who was the first to accept it, gave women in general a powerful basis to play a dramatic role in the new religion.”
Maybe for those of us who embrace the message of Jesus can embrace her and draw from her life and example on how to own, as you say Amanda, our sexual and creative power.
This alert to her feast day and the date itself seems so very timely indeed.
My source is the mystical visions of Maria Valtorta as written in the 5 volume “Poem of the Man-God”. Very detailed and very beautiful. The picture we get there is of a Mary who starts off doing whatever the hell she wants with anyone she wants. She was the shame of her family, who were very well known. Then she encounters Jesus, who irritates and intrigues her at first because he doesn’t react to her intensely seductive beauty the way every other man has up until then. Instead of openly desiring her or hurling insults at her, Jesus just starts teaching her. After the third or fourth time, she gets the message and her heart breaks. She then locks herself into a room to “remove her demons”. She was completely disgusted with her former life, but instead of beating herself up, she used all that energy as a purifying fire. From that point on she was a transformed being – one of the strongest and most faithful of all the disciples. She was completely unafraid to fire back at those who mocked her new life, and was totally devoted to the mission of Jesus and Mother Mary.
There is a book that collects all of the Valtorta writings on the Magdalene: http://www.arksupplies.com.au/products/Maria-Valtorta%3A-Mary-Magdalene.html
which I have not read in full yet. The little I did peruse reads almost like a biography.
So, that’s my take so far. In the interest of disclosure, I’m a Christian mystic, and yes I believe these writings are real. :~)
My heart aches for Paris (and yes, the Parisian women’s hips coursing through the universe. Beautifully put, Eric.) Which has what to do with the Magdalene? After posting my last entry one of the archived posts caught my eye. Eric’s photo of the Brasserie Grand Cluny posted two years ago. I haunt Paris as much as any ghost I know. Anyway, Paris led me, zig-zagging by train through France, to Mary Magdalene. Or, at least, to her doubtful but reputed relics in Vezelay, where I found not only her, but Her within me.
There are numerous historical references which cite Paris as a center of worship of the goddess Isis, so much so that it has been theorized and reported that Paris takes her name from the goddess (par Isis). http://homepage.ntlworld.com/fusniak/talisman/articles/isisofparis.html. The worship of Isis predates that of Ceres/Demeter. Herodotus, the Greek scholar, identified Isis with Demeter (Roman – Ceres). The cult of Isis spread with that of Horus, her son, and Serapis, as the Greeks called Osiris.
If you have ever read of the mythology of Isis and Osiris, it is difficult to miss the connection to the myth of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
For me, re-discovering Mary Magdalene was inseparable from re-membering myself. She was and is the lynchpin between two seemingly disparate spiritual lineages, Catholicism and Buddhism. She dwells in vertical time, past, present and future indistinguishable. For me, the path of awakening *is* the path of desire. And beyond that, to try and describe her would only diminish my experience of her. I would love to hear of others’ lived experience of her.
With Ceres on the Aries point, perhaps the question “Who was/is Mary Magdalene?” is more timely than ever.
at any rate, she is a bit of a mystery.
there’s this from wiki, among much else about her:
“The traditional Roman Catholic feast day dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene celebrated her position as a penitent. The Magdalene became a symbol of repentance for the vanities of the world to various sects. In 1969, the Catholic Church allegedly admitted what critics had been saying for centuries: Magdalene’s standard image as a reformed prostitute is not supported by the text of the Bible. They reportedly have revised the Roman Missal and the Roman Calendar, and now neither of those documents mention Mary Magdalene as a repentant sinner of ill repute.”
though it really is more fun, and richer i think, if she was a prostitute… i mean fun in the sense of: whatever she “forsook” or embraced, if she was a prostitute, part of her path was embracing that sexual power she had. and part of her relationship to christ was *his* embracing that; embracing on some level her creative power, even if it was on the way to something else.
just thinkin’ out loud…
It seems that we have projected so much onto Mary Magdalene that it is difficult to answer the question “Who was she?”, without taking our personal mythologies, as well as societal mythologies into account. And yet there is ample historical evidence that suggests that her path to “purity” and “real love” was actually the path of sensuality, sexuality and desire.
An excerpt from a poem found among the gnostic manuscripts at Nag Hammadi:
Thunder, Perfect Mind
I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter. . . .
I am she whose wedding is great,
And I have not taken a husband. . . .
I am shameless;
I am ashamed. . . .
I am godless,
And I am one whose God is great.
Mary Magdalene was someone who forsook sensuality, manipulation, and self-gratification for purity and real love, and attained both. Unfathomable for most people, then or now. She was also a firebrand!
I almost confused the mummy for Mary……..takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust to the scene…..I am thankful Lazarus got a second chance….
Peace,
Patricia