Mary Magdalene & the Gnostic Gospels
Mia Knight:
The following information comes from this website:
http://www.aniwilliams.com/magdalene.htm
Mary Magdalene
Mistress of the Grail
by Ani Williams
"The Earth lifts its glass to the sun
And light–light is poured.
A bird comes and sits on a crystal rim
And from my forest cove I hear singing.
….An emerald bird rises from inside me
And now sits upon the Beloved’s glass.
I have left that dark cave forever.
My body has blended with His.
I lay my wing as a bridge to you
So that you can join us singing." ‘
The Crystal Rim’ from ‘The Gift–Poems by Hafiz’
translated by Daniel Ladinsky
Like pearls from an ancient lover’s gift, Magdalene sites and legends lie cast across a vast expanse, reaching from Ethiopia, Palestine, Egypt, France and north to the highlands and isles of Scotland. Crumbling chapel ruins, great Gothic cathedrals, caves, symbols carved in stone, and stories of her coming and going remain like fragments of an old story necklace, waiting and waiting and still waiting to be found.
Magdalene can currently be seen rising out of a long, imposed sleep. Like the story of Sleeping Beauty, she and her people have been ‘drugged’ into unconsciousness for two thousand years, by an extraordinary effort to suppress ‘the other half of the story’, Her story. From the moment that Peter’s Church formed the ‘rock’ and foundation of Christianity, she was written out of accepted doctrine, save for references to her as sinner, a woman from whom seven devils were removed by Jesus, and the one who dried the sweat on his body with her long hair. Peter’s religious authority stemmed from the church’s acceptance that he was the first disciple to see Jesus appear after the crucifixion. Yet, three of the gospels claim that Magdalene was the first to see him in the Garden. The sacred Grail pattern, that requires presence of the feminine, was severed at the core during the founding of the Church, yet the pieces are revealing themselves to any who choose to awaken.
Mia Knight:
Jesus and Magdalene
Kilmore Church, Dervaig, Mull
© Barry Dunford
The Re-emergence of The Magdalene
"Mary is rising…she is rising to her heights…
Our Mary will not be cast down and bound up…
and neither will her daughters.
We will rise, Daughters. We…will…rise."
‘The Secret Life of Bees’ by Sue Monk Kidd:
One of many recent dramatic appearances from Mary Magdalene is ‘Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci’ , the ABC Primetime news show that has people buzzing nationwide. The show that first aired on November 3rd, looks at the questions of the true relationship between Magdalene and Jesus as companions and possible intimates. The film acknowledges her status as ‘the Apostle of the Apostles’, not the penitent prostitute that has been her ‘scarlet letter’ for two thousand years. Also presented is the symbolism in ‘The Last Supper ‘ painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, and his portrayal of Magdalene sitting at the right side of Christ, their two body positions forming a ‘V’, a feminine symbol and a chalice. Here are two excerpts from the ABC network show:
"There's no factual basis for that longstanding tradition
that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, a woman of ill repute….
Mary Magdalene is one of the greatest saints in the history of the church."
Rev. Richard McBrien PhD, of Notre Dame University.
(Magdalene’s designation as prostitute was
officially reversed by the Catholic Church in 1969).
"I think it's entirely plausible to think that Jesus may have been married.
It was a normal practice for Jewish men.
It would also be normal not to mention that he had a wife."
Karen King, Harvard University Professor
I was struck by my granddaughter’s epiphany as she watched the program, realizing that if Jesus and Magdalene really did have children, she herself might actually be carrying that same bloodline. That is quite a different legacy than thinking we are ‘less than’ or even worse, ‘sinners’!
"From the beginning, her view has been ignored, unappreciated.
Yet she remains. She cannot be silenced."
Time Magazine Aug. 11, 2003.
Other recent appearances include a feature article on Mary Magdalene in the August 11, 2003 issue of Time Magazine, and the popular novel, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, by Dan Brown, still scoring high on the New York Times bestseller list, along with numerous other Magdalene books released this year–all indicating her potent matrix is weaving its way back into our psyches. Through film, literature, revealed documents, and a growing interest in her story, Magdalene is finally rising from the hidden caves of our unconscious. She is re-emerging out of two thousand years of denial, banishment and a mistaken identity, to realize the fulfillment of a sacred trust, the blueprint for love and sacred union.
Adam and Eve/Jesus and Magdalene in the Garden
Rosslyn Chapel
Mia Knight:
The Grail Romances and Medieval Madonnas
Why all this sudden emergence of her story now? I believe she is calling us to reclaim the sovereignty and emancipation of the human soul, at this beginning of the second millennium and a crucial turning point for Earth. During the first two centuries of the first millennium, 1000-1300 AD, it was an earlier cycle of change and radical breakthroughs, filled with fresh new idealism, a renaissance of spirituality and time of the Christian Crusades. Passionate expressions of artistic flowering, rising ideals of romance, individual freedoms, and women’s equality spread like fire across Christian Europe. This was the period of the writing and popularity of the Grail Romances, Courtly Love, the song and story ministry of the Troubadours, formation of the Knights Templar, guardians of the Grail and Magdalene mysteries, and the devout order called the Cathars (from the Greek ‘Katharos’ meaning pure) protectors of the Grail legacy and the sacred union of Jesus and Magdalene.
It is important to mention here Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was a High Middle-Ages one-woman revival show. Her passionate support of the arts, romantic love and women’s freedom, fueled significant change as well as incurring for herself many ‘Magdalene’ labels. She was the only woman to be Queen of two countries with her marriages first to King Louis VII of France and then King Henry II of England, by whom she gave birth to Richard the Lionhearted. Eleanor personally traveled to Jerusalem during the second Crusade and had close dealings with the Cathars and Knights Templar. It was Eleanor’s daughter Marie de Troyes, who was instrumental in the completion of Chretien de Troyes’ Grail Romance, Le Conte du Graal (1190 AD), the earliest known grail story in writing. Aquitaine, France was a hotspot for the Troubadours of Courtly Love and Eleanor and Marie created the controversial Tractus de Amore et de Amoris Remedia (Treatise on Love and the Remedies of Love), including 31 codes of romantic conduct for educating her male subjects in the romantic requirements of the newly emancipated women
Mia Knight:
During this same period, there was a sudden rising interest in the schools of Hermetic and Egyptian secret alchemical knowledge. It was also in this era that several hundred Black Madonnas were placed in chapels and cathedrals reaching beyond Medieval Europe to the east into Russia, and north to Britain. Ean Begg, author of ‘The Cult of the Black Virgin’, says that many of these Black Virgins were brought out of the near east by the Knights Templar. Author Lynn Picknett (‘Mary Magdalene’ and ‘The Templar Revelation’), feels that Magdalene may have even come from Ethiopia, a dark-skinned, powerful and wealthy queen. These dark-colored mother and child images are often associated with Isis and Magdalene cults, the dark Mother Goddess nourishing her children, and associated with the hidden mysteries of the sacred marriage or Hieros Gammos and the alchemy of high sexual magic. Similar ‘madonna’ images can be seen in Egyptian temple scenes with Horus at the breast of his mother Isis.
"I am black, but I am comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem."
Solomon and Sheeba’s ‘Song of Songs’
(left) 'I Am Black, and I Am Comely', Rosslyn Chapel Crypt
(right) Wooden Black Madonna, Salisbury Cathdral
Between 1100-1300 AD hundreds of Gothic Cathedrals were constructed, fired by the mystical visions of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and his close involvement with the Crusades and the formation of Order of Knights Templar. It was St. Bernard who wrote the first Templars’ Rule, during their formation in Jerusalem in about 1118 AD and played a key role in their official papal recognition at the council of Troyes in 1129 AD. (More on the Templars later). Templar symbols are found carved in these Gothic edifices, a rare fusion of Pagan and Christian roots, alluding to the alchemical sciences of sacred geometry, sound, astrology, genetics and the technology of transformation. These great Gothic cathedrals, such as the ones at Chartres, Notre Dame in Paris, Salisbury, St.Denis, and Cluny were dedicated to Notre Dame, Our Lady, thought originally to be Magdalene. Most were also home to the Black Madonnas.
"The huge number of Gothic cathedrals that were erected, as graceful and sublime as if they were designed in heaven, have yet to be surpassed for their dignity and spiritual potency, almost a thousand years later."
‘Dance of the Dragon’ by Paul Broadhurst and Hamish Miller
(The authors discovered many of these cathedrals are located on a major energy grid they call ‘The Apollo- St. Michael axis’, and stretches from Britain’s St. Michael’s Mount to Mt. Carmel)
The sacred architecture employed in these majestic structures reflected a new ‘alchemical light and specific acoustical properties’, according to ‘Dance of the Dragon’ authors, that was conducive to the constant rounds of perpetual choirs maintained by the monks. Interestingly, it is precisely at these millennium shifts, when perpetual chanting becomes a device of the collective creative intention. Sacred music and chant is always with us, but surges in its necessary popularity at these crucial turning points, as during the inception of Christianity in the first century AD, during the beginning of the first millennium, and now as we forge a new paradigm and write our ‘script’ for the next one thousand years.
If we read between the historical lines, a pattern can be seen here, with an inner circle of key players stirring the pot of change. These courageous and inspired pioneers of the Spirit were laying the foundation for a future second millennium renaissance. Now is the time for us to remember the true story of our tribal myth, a story that embraces the Holy Grail of union, love and beauty–a story that calls us to become empowered, whole and fully human.
Mia Knight:
Magdalene As Jesus’ Initiatrix
…the sacred union of Jesus and his Bride once formed the cornerstone of Christianity….the blueprint of the Sacred Marriage, that the later (church)builders rejected, causing a disastrous flaw in Christian doctrine that has warped Western civilization for nearly two millennia."
Margaret Starbird, The Goddess in the Gospels
Let us look at the following significant transition or initiation points in Jesus’ life that indicate Mary Magdalene was not only present, but was the one who performed the most important ancient rituals, or rites of passage for Jesus. These rites would have been performed only by one initiated into the deeper mysteries, one who would have commanded a key position in the unfolding drama:
Magdalene anoints Jesus with her alabaster jar of spikenard prior to his being captured and crucified, seeming to know the overall plan before it was clear to the other disciples. The following excerpt from Solomon’s Song of Songs, 1:12, implies that Magdalene was following a much more ancient ritual tradition in which the Bridegroom, or King is anointed by the Bride or High Priestess and this rite most likely even predates the passionate love poems of Solomon and Sheeba.
‘While the king sat at his table,
My spikenard sent forth its fragrance.
My beloved is unto me as a bundle of myrrh,
That lieth betwixt my breasts.’
The Magdalene is present, along with Jesus’ mother Mary, the disciple Salome, and John the Beloved at the cross, when the other disciples were in hiding--too overcome with grief and fear to even appear! (According to Magdalene/Templar historian and author Lynn Picknett, when Magdalene goes back to find the male disciples and rally them out of their fear and total hopelessness after the crucifixion, she actually gave the church to Peter, although as the companion of Jesus, the ministry should have reverted to her!)
"Peter, I’ll tell you not only what you don’t know,
but what he kept from you."
Elaine Pagels quoting Magdalene from the
Nag Hammadi Gospels on ABC’s ‘Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci’
Magdalene and Mary the mother anoint Jesus’ body with specific unguents, ones known to alchemically aid in Christ’s after-death journey, and then wrap his body in linen in preparation for burial….certainly a task only to be entrusted to the ones closest to him.
In three of the Gospels, Magdalene is the first one that Jesus appears to after the crucifixion. Jesus then says, ‘Noli mi tangere’, or ‘do not cling to me’, and as Margaret Starbird comments, the Greek translation of tangere, meaning ‘cling’ implies a more intimate relationship between them, rather than the Latin to ‘touch’.
According to the ‘Pistis Sophia, a Gnostic text in which Jesus makes a grand reappearance after the crucifixion and teaches the disciples deeper inner mysteries, it is Magdalene’s presence which dominates this dialogue with Jesus, and both her questions and answers indicate an ‘Apostle who knew the All’.
‘Mariham (Magdalene),this whom I shall complete in all the mysteries of the things of the Height. Speak in Boldness, because thou art she whose heart straineth toward the Kingdom of the heavens more than all thy brothers…you who will give light upon everything in accuracy and in exactness.’
Spoken by Jesus, from the Pistis Sophia texts,
quoted in the book Mary Magdalene by Susan Haskins.
Here is a woman who definitely did not play a minor or casual role either during or after the life of Jesus. Although the historical documentation that refers to Magdalene following the crucifixion is interwoven with legend and myth, many scholars say that its quite possible that she had been married to Jesus. According to her devout heretical followers the Cathars of southern France, they were unmarried lovers.
It appears that Magdalene continued the ministry that embraced the original purpose of Christianity in the years following the crucifixion. There are records of her having preached her message on the steps of the Temple at Marseilles dedicated to the Goddess Diana, and that she had a strong following in southern France. Legends of her escape from Palestine to Egypt, France and a further journey to Great Britain include her bearing the children of Jesus, being the fiqure-head of the Magdalene-Isisian Mystery Schools, and her retreating into the deep caverns of France and the areas around Rennes le Chateau, Rennes les Bains, and even into Glastonbury, England, the coast of Wales, Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Isles of Mull and Iona.
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