Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene
by Ella Rozett
Related pilgrimage sites
1. Ephesus: Donald Carroll states the following
in his book "Mary's House: The extraordinary
story behind the discovery of the house where
the Virgin Mary lived and died" on pages 78-80:
"In 1952 a large sarcophagus was unearthed
near the entrance of a grotto on the outskirts
of Ephesus known as the Cave of the Seven
Sleepers, so-called because of an ancient
Christian legend attached to it. The sarcophagus
was positively identified by Professor Louis
Massignon of the College de France as the
tomb of Mary Magdalene. The bones were removed
and are now in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene
in Paris. (Read more about Mary's house in
Ephesus in the "Mother Mary and the Goddess"
article.)
2. So Paris is interesting both because
of the Church of St. Mary Magdalene and because
of the sanctuary and apparition site of Our
Lady of the Miraculous Medal in the Rue du
Bac. The shell of Magdalene's church (L'eglise
de Sainte Madeleine) is a very big reproduction
of a Greek temple that has long housed what
is claimed to be the thigh bone of Mary Magdalene,
but which did not come from the excavations
in Ephesus. When I was there in 2006 I did
not find any other remains of Magdalene and
the local custodian assured me there are no
others kept at the church. Later I found out
though that the church has a crypt (which
I didn't see). Who knows what they are hiding
down there!
3. Sainte-Baume is a beautiful
place in Southern France, where the Magdalene
is said to have spent the last 30 years of
her life as a hermit. While far more historical
evidence points towards Ephesus as her home,
it is possible that she also traveled to France.
After all Jesus had urged his apostles and
disciples to emulate his wandering as a homeless
beggar. In any case, a site where a saint
has been honored and invoked for roughly a
thousand years is sure to be filled with her
blessing presence. (For pilgrimages including
a visit to Sainte-Baume, visit our home page.)
Mosaic in the church in Lourdes, from left to right:
the apostle John, Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene
embracing Jesus' feet, Mary the sister of Mother
Mary.
Mary Magdalene in the Bible
In the last few years there has been much
talk about Mary Magdalene. Even before Dan Brown
wrote "The Da Vinci Code" some referred to her
as a manifestation of the divine feminine. That's
why some people confuse her with Mary, the mother
of Jesus. But Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus'
main disciples. Catholics call her "the apostle
to the apostles", because Jesus honored her
in a very special way. According to the Bible,
he allowed her to be the first person to whom
he revealed himself after his resurrection and
then he sent her to tell the good news to the
other disciples.
A couple of times the Bible lists women who followed Jesus with his
disciples and "provided for them out of their resources". Both times
Mary Magdalene is mentioned first, as if to stress her foremost
importance. (see Matthew 27:56, Mark 15:40)
All four gospels agree (which is rare) that
Mary Magdalene was the first person Jesus appeared
and talked to after his resurrection. In Matthew
27:55-28:18 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother
of James and Joseph are the only ones keeping
watch at Jesus' tomb all night. Then they go
home for one night, only to return early the
next morning, before dawn. An angel greets them
at the empty tomb, tells them that Jesus has
risen and commands them to run to the disciples
and tell them where to meet Jesus. The two Marys
are "fearful yet overjoyed". As they
are running to do what they were told, Jesus
appears to them. The women "approached,
embraced his feet, and did him homage."
He repeats the same message the angel had already
given them: go and tell the others where to
meet me. The other disciples meet Jesus in the
designated place, worship him duly, but (unlike
the women) they doubt. Mark 15:40 - 16:13 (and
Luke 23:55 - 24:12) tells more or less the same
story. Only he puts more emphasis on the male
disciples' disbelief. They do not believe Mary
Magdalene that Jesus rose from the dead, nor
do they believe two other men who later report
the same thing, nor the Lord himself in his
resurrected body.
John mentions Mary Magdalene as standing
under the cross with the other two Marys (See
article: Mother Mary and the Bible) and also
has a beautiful account of her being the first
disciple the risen Jesus appears to in Jn 20:1-18.
Here she cries so hard that she doesn't recognize
Jesus when he speaks to her until he calls her
by her name: "Mary!" Then she immediately exclaims:
"Rabbouni!" which means, my teacher, or, my
master. Apparently she flings herself at him
and wants to hold on to him, because he warns
her saying: "Stop holding on to me, for I have
not yet ascended to the Father."
(Others translate simply: "Don't touch me!")
Mary Magdalene and resurrected Jesus,
"Noli me Tangere" by Correggio
Mary Magdalene in the Apocryphal Gospels
Apocryphal gospels are those that were not
admitted into the Bible. Since they were suppressed,
only fragments and damaged copies have been
found so far. Words in [square brackets] mark
holes in the manuscript that were filled in
by scholars' best guesses. Empty brackets [
] mean no guesses can be made; too much is missing.
Mary Magdalene figures prominently in "the
Gospel of Philip", "the Gospel of Mary", and
in the "Dialogue of the Savior". In all three
she is presented as his favorite, most enlightened
disciple. But that does not at all mean that
she is unanimously revered by the disciples.
On the contrary, every gospel speaks of conflict
surrounding her. The apocryphal gospels are
particularly clear that this is because of the
male disciples' jealousy and disrespect for
women. Gender conflicts are talked about explicitly.
They get patched up temporarily but not really
resolved.
So much for Dan Brown and all those people
who want to believe that the first Christians
were free of such conflict and that the urge
to suppress women in general and Mary Magdalene
in particular only came later when the Roman
Catholic church established itself as an institution
of the Roman Empire. Certainly the Emperor Constantine
was no help for women's liberation, but even
while Jesus was alive, most of his male disciples
could not follow him in his egalitarian treatment
of the other sex.
The canonical (biblical) gospels don't delve
as deeply into the gender conflict, though they
mention jealousy and competitiveness even among
the male disciples. Concerning the apostles'
feelings about Mary Magdalene, they only mention
that the male disciples didn't believe her that
Jesus had risen. But then they don't believe
men either, and not even Jesus himself.
Here's what the supposedly so enlightened,
apocryphal gospels have to say about Mary's
gender:
The Gospel of Thomas ends like this:
"Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us,
for women are not worthy of Life.' Jesus said,
'I myself shall lead her in order to make her
male, so that she too may become a living spirit
resembling you males. For every woman who will
make herself male will enter the Kingdom of
Heaven.' "
Some say that this passage contradicts earlier
statements in the Gospel of Thomas and was therefore
probably added by a later redactor. They are
referring to verse 22: "Jesus said to them,
'When you make the two one, and when you make
the inside like the outside and the outside
like the inside, and the above like the below,
and when you make the male and the female one
and the same, so that the male not be male nor
the female female; and when you fashion eyes
in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a
hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness
in place of a likeness; then will you enter
[the Kingdom]."
"The Dialogue of the Savior", while granting
Mary a place of special honor, also equates
"femaleness" with inferiority, worldliness,
and obstacles to the spiritual path. It says
144:15-21:
"When we pray, how should we pray? The Lord
said, 'Pray in the place where there is [no]
woman.' Matthew said, 'He says to us, 'Pray
in the place where there is [no] woman,' ...
'Destroy [the] works of femaleness,' not because
she is another [...], but so that they (the
works) will cease [from you]."
The Gospels of Philip and of Mary both recount
the jealousy of the male disciples because Jesus
loved Mary more than them and revealed things
to her that he didn't reveal to them.
Even Mary herself in the Gospel of Mary equates maleness with
superiority when she says in 9:19-20: "Let us praise his greatness, for
he has prepared us (and) made us into men."
The last part of this gospel is Mary's account
of what Jesus said to her in a vision. Peter
had asked her for this account saying (in 10:1-5):
"Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more
than the rest of women. Tell us the words of
the Savior which you remember - which you know
(but) we do not, nor have we heard them."
But when she finishes:
"Andrew answered and said to the brethren,
'Say what you (wish to) say about what she has
said. I at least do not believe that the Savior
said this. For certainly these teachings are
strange ideas.' Peter answered and spoke concerning
these same things. He questioned them about
the Savior: 'Did he really speak privately with
a woman (and) not openly to us? Are we to turn
about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her
to us?' Then Mary wept and said to Peter, 'My
brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think
that I thought this up myself in my heart, or
that I am lying about the Savior?' Levi answered
and said to Peter, 'Peter, you have always been
hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against
the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior
made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject
her? Surely the Savior knows her very well.
That is why he loved her more than us. Rather
let us be ashamed and put on the perfect man,
and separate, as he commanded us and preach
the gospel, not laying down any other rule or
other law beyond what the Savior said.' When
[...] and they began to go forth [to] proclaim
and to preach." (17:10-end of gospel)
The Gospel of Philip 63:31-10 states:
"And the companion of the S[avior is] Mary Magdalene
... her more than ... the disciples ... kiss
her ... on her ... The rest of ... they said
to him, 'Why do you love her more than all of
us?' The Savior answered them, 'Why do I not
love you like her? When a blind man and one
who sees are both together in darkness, they
are no different from one another. When the
light comes, then he who sees will see the light,
and he who is blind will remain in darkness.'
" -- Apparently Mary Magdalene was far more
enlightened than the other disciples.
People fill in the gaps in the text according
to the context, which suggests that Jesus kissed
her on the mouth. They read: "The Savior
loved her more than all the disciples and used
to kiss her often on her mouth."
But even
if Jesus often kissed her on the mouth, one still cannot assume that
they also had sexual intercourse. Four chapters earlier Philip speaks
about kissing on the mouth as a ritual act of being born or "begotten"
spiritually of Jesus:
"[Those who] are begotten by him [cry out]
from that place to the (perfect) man [because
they are nourished] on the promise [concerning]
the heavenly [place. ...] from the mouth, [because
if] the word has gone out from that place it
would be nourished from the mouth and it would
become perfect. For it is by a kiss that the
perfect conceive and give birth (to their spiritual
selves). For this reason we also kiss one another.
We receive conception from the grace which is
in each other." 58:30-59:5
Sounds like they all kissed each other on
the mouth. Were they all married to each other?
Were they advocating same sex and group marriage?!
Of course not. At least during the first five
hundred years of Christianity kissing each other
on the mouth was part of celebrating the ritual
of the Eucharist (or "last supper")
even within the main stream Church. It is refered
to in the biography of Mary of Egypt (More on
her below). The ancient text describes this
extremely chaste and humble hermitess receiving
the Eucharist the night before her death: "After
the prayer has been spoken, she kisses the priest,
as is the custom, on the mouth, receives the
holy mysteries and says..." (Gertrude and
Thomas Sartory: Maria von Aegypten - Allmacht
der Busse, Herder Taschenbuch, 1982, p.55)
It is true that the Gospel of Philip continues
for 13 pages to talk about the great mystery
of marriage and the original unity of man and
woman in the first human (before the female
aspect was separated out). It says that: "Christ
came to repair the separation which was from
the beginning and again unite the two". (70:15)
But it also speaks about the mystery of the
"bridal chamber" in a very confusing,
obscure, and esoteric way, suggesting that it
far exceeds anything an ordinary person would
associate with bridal chambers. E.g. in 74:19-20:
"He who has been anointed possesses everything.
He possesses the resurrection, the light, the
cross, the Holy Spirit. The Father gave him
this in the bridal chamber;" And in verse 67
it says: "It is from water and fire and
light that the son of the bridal chamber (came
into being). (...) The Lord [did] everything
in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist
and a redemption and a bridal chamber." The
Gospel of Thomas 50:15 refers to the "bridal
chamber" as the place (this earth) where the
bridegroom, Jesus, gets to be with his bride,
the disciples.
The gospel of Philip does seem to suggest that
Jesus found a deep spiritual union with Mary
Magdalene which he deemed extremely important,
but which might have been purely spiritual.
For he says in 65:30 - 66:5:
"He who comes out of the world can no longer
be detained because he was in the world. It
is evident that he is above desire and fear.
(...) Fear not the flesh, nor love it. If you
fear it, it will gain mastery over you. If you
love it, it will swallow and paralyze you."
And (76:9): "in the aeon the form of the union
is different, although we refer to them by the
same names." (78:30-79:2): "So spirit mingles
with spirit, and thought consorts with thought.
(...) If you become light, it is the light which
will share with you." (82:4-8) "If there is
a hidden quality to the marriage of defilement,
how much more is the undefiled marriage a true
mystery. It is not fleshly but pure. It belongs
not to desire but to the will."
Some people claim that 'companion', the title
given to Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of Philip,
was an equivalent to 'wife'. Yet "The Book
of Thomas the Contender", also contained
in the Nag Hammadi Library, bestows the same
title on Thomas. In 138:6-10 Jesus says: "Now
since it has been said that you are my twin
and true companion, examine yourself that you
may understand who you are, in what way you
exist, and how you will come to be."
It seems to me that if Mary and Jesus were
married in the ordinary, "defiled" way, the
disciples wouldn't have been so baffled why
he would love her more than them and why he
would say things to her that he didn't say to
others. Wouldn't patriarchs love to explain
her special status away by saying it grew out
of her marriage to Jesus? Isn't it much more
of a challenge to patriarchal thinking to have
to acknowledge that she was that special in
and of herself and that Jesus appreciated her
fully without using her for himself in any way?
Mary Magdalene a Former Prostitute?
Another question we need to discuss is, why did Christians decide to
identify the "sinful woman", i.e. prostitute, who washed Jesus feet
with her tears and covered them with kisses, with Mary Magdalene?
Nowadays many suspect that this happened out of malice, in the attempt
to denigrate Mary Magdalene and to topple her from her place of honor.
It is true that for millennia men have downplayed or defamed every
strong and virtuous woman in the Bible. However, I think calling Mary
Magdalene a former prostitute is a case apart and served a broader need
of men as well as women.
The first problem this solution addresses
is that the Bible doesn't introduce Mary Magdalene
properly. Out of nowhere she appears as foremost
among the women followers of Jesus and as the
one he is closest to after his resurrection.
The text mentions in an aside that he healed
her from seven demons, but it does not seem
to explain why there is this special love between
them. So one is naturally left looking for clues
to fill in her story and to link her to other
stories in the Bible. One such possible clue
may be that both the "sinful woman" and Mary
kiss his feet and are very passionate in expressing
their love. Jesus rewards them both for their
free show of devotion. The second clue is that
the story of the "sinful woman" in Luke 7: 36-50
is immediately followed by his first mention
of Mary Magdalene. In this story Jesus stresses
the exemplary love and devotion of the woman
and explains it by saying: "many sins have been
forgiven her, hence she has shown great love.
But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves
little." (Lk 7:47) According to this reasoning
it would follow that Mary Magdalene must have
sinned much before she found Jesus, because
she certainly loved him a lot.
The second problem Magdalene's characterization
as a former prostitute addresses is women's
frustration with the Virgin Mary as the prime
example of what a good woman should be like.
How many times have I heard Catholic women complain
that they had a problem with Mother Mary because
she is an impossible example to follow! How
can we be expected to be a mother, wife, and
virgin?! To be as much like her as possible,
women were traditionally admonished to be wives
and mothers, yet also "chaste". That
is to say, on the one hand they were not to
be sexy, not to want or enjoy sex. On the other
hand they were to grant sex to their husbands
whenever the men wanted it, as their "marital
duty" and their duty to God to procreate.
This made many women angry, not at the men,
with whom it wasn't safe to be angry, but with
the Virgin Mary, who seemingly put them in this
position. Men didn't appreciate this virgin-wife
example either, because it didn't allow them
to have much fun with their own wives.
Then, along comes Mary Magdalene, the former prostitute and a
passionate, heroic woman to the end. She may be reformed but at least
she knows all about sex. She is never demure, but defiant, free, and
self-confident.
"Penitent St. Mary Magdalene" by Titian
Was it not a gift to have a variety of women
among the disciples of Christ? Do feminists
and Goddess worshippers not profess that one
needs to honor the feminine in all its archetypes:
as the virgin, the whore, the maiden, mother,
and crone? It seems to me that's what Christians
were trying to do. They acknowledge the virgin,
mother, prostitute, and crone.
The crone finds supreme expression in the gospels
as Elizabeth, Mother Mary's cousin and the mother
of John the Baptist. (To see how important Elizabeth's
spiritual and emotional support was for Mother
Mary, read in the article "Mother Mary in the
Bible")
Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary in: "Visitation"
by Master of the retablo of the Reyes Catolicos
All these women are in the inner circle of
Jesus and nothing bad is ever said about them.
Even if Mary Magdalene is identified with the
former prostitute, this is never held against
her. On the contrary, the Catholic Church sanctified
her because she left that way of life and Jesus
forgave, loved, honored, and defended her.
It is true that celibate priests tend to focus
on the virginal Mary rather than on the passionate
Magdalene who knows everything about "down there".
Unfortunately they cannot freely indulge an
issue that is as threatening to them as sexuality.
But Christian artists were always happy to take
up the cause. Next to the demurely covered virgin,
they love to portray a dramatic and sensual
Mary Magdalene. Her big, flowing, traditionally
red hair has long been a symbol of a Christian's
ability (or at least hope) to make peace with
the force of sexuality.
There is one more reason why Mary Magdalene
was dubbed "reformed prostitute": Some time
between the 4th and 6th centuries there lived
a woman ascetic in the desert of the Holy Land.
Her name was Mary of Egypt and she really was
a reformed prostitute from Alexandria who became
famous for making a 180 degree turn from extreme
lustfulness to extreme holiness, exchanging
sexual union with men for divine union with
God. She lived 47 years in the desert, naked
and practically without food. In the Orthodox
Christian world she is still revered, but in
Catholic Christendom her story was gradually
melded into the story of Mary Magdalene, the
other famous penitent. The two kept getting
mixed up with one another, until Mary of Egypt
was forgotten, and her story tagged onto Mary
Magdalene. Hence the French tradition that Mary
Magdalene lived as a hermitess in Sainte Baume,
Provence, dressed only in her hair, and fed
only by the angels. (See: ibid.: p.12. For more
details on Mary of Egypt google her name + catholic
or + orthodox)
By the way, referring to someone as a "penitent"
does not imply that the person is particularly
sinful (as is often assumed by non-Christians).
Rather it means they chose an ascetic lifestyle
of penance - something all Christians are called
to since John the Baptist and Jesus. When they
are done purifying their own shortcomings they
continue with penances for the sake of the rest
of humanity. Like Jesus and his apostles (and
like serious practitioners of many other religions)
they voluntarily take on what would be hardship
to others and use it to transform themselves
and others.
Whatever Magdalene is repentant for, in
Christian art it is not for being sensuous.
Here she is pressing Jesus on the cross
against her nacked bossom. "The Penitent
Magdalene" by Paolo Pagani (c.1661-1716)
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Goddess of Love:
Aphrodite, Mary Magdalene or the Virgin Mary?
To me Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary are like
Isis and her sister Nephtys (Greek) or Nebthet
(Egyptian). Isis was more famous, more important,
more powerful. But she had a sister who was
her complementary opposite. Isis was the day,
life, fertility; Nephtys the night, death, barrenness.
Yet they decided to work together for the greater
good and gradually Isis incorporated all the
attributes of her sister.
Similarly the Virgin Mary has this spiritual
sister Magdalene. One is purity, virginity,
obedience, silent humility. The other is passion,
sexuality, loudly outrageous and shamelessly
non-conforming. Once the virgin and the whore
Mary were paired up as a suitable couple of
sisters in the Spirit the Virgin started to
claim her sexuality and the whore her saintliness.
In medieval art and thinking Mother Mary had
to fulfill all the old roles of the goddesses.
That meant she was responsible for everything
to do with a woman's life: love, passion, fertility,
child bearing, praying, and dying.
Mother Mary's role as the Christian
goddess of love was often portrayed by
images of the virgin in an enclosed garden
with the unicorn. Myth had it that only
a pure virgin could capture a unicorn.
The powerfully good, yet fiercely wild
animal could not be killed by hunters
unless it came across a pure virgin. Then
it would lay its head in her lap and fall
asleep. At that point its pursuers would
strike.
In the Christian context this story came
to mean that the fierce, male God could
only be bound in this world, tamed, and
made docile by the exceedingly pure and
docile Virgin Mary. Once he entered her
womb and became Jesus Christ he could
be sacrificed as the Lamb of God for the
good of all.
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But the unicorn also had a very worldly aspect.
It represented wild, ferocious manhood that
could only be tamed by pure womanhood and would
gladly allow itself to be trapped and made docile
by her, laying his phallicly adorned head in
her lap and falling asleep.
So the Virgin Mary became womanhood taming
manhood while channeling love's passion into
holy matrimony.
Her passionate love also came to be represented
by the red robes under her blue mantel. Apparently
people felt so justified in their sexual passions
by Mary's red robes that during the Renaissance
the church decided to put an end to Mother Mary
as the goddess of love. Suddenly she was not
allowed to be portrayed in red anymore, and
no more unicorns either. Only virginal white
veils and heavenly blue mantels were permitted.
That's when the two Marys, who had become one,
were separated out again and the responsibility
of holding a space for human sexuality fell
solely onto the beautiful, naked shoulders and
the red open hair of Mary Magdalene.
I like the two aspects in one figure and I
find the Virgin Mary to be quite efficacious
in blessing the sexual union of husband and
wife with a cosmic passion. Unfortunately we
don't have a goddess of human love in Christianity.
We miss the Aphrodite archetype. The closest
we can come to it is in the idea of the good
prostitute, which in a Christian context can
only mean a former, repentant prostitute.
I agree that 'Aphrodite' is a much nicer
name for the archetype 'goddess of love' than
'repentant prostitute'. But since Aphrodite
is a Greek goddess, we may just have to realize
that Mary Magdalene is the Christian form of
Aphrodite, the same archetype by a different
name.
Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code"
Though I was not impressed with the book, I loved the movie.
Certainly, if Jesus had married, it would have been Mary Magdalene. In the
Bible as well as in art, she is consistently
portrayed as his closest female disciple, a
very intimate one with definite romantic overtones.
Many depictions of the crucifixion show her
wrapped around the cross of Christ in such a
physically intimate way that the message can't
be overlooked: Jesus and Mary Magdalene were
somehow a couple.
And yes, Jewish custom dictated that a Rabbi
had to be married and Jesus was called Rabbi
on several occasions. But Jewish custom also
said that once a man was married, he was not
to speak to any women besides his wife and immediate
family. Jesus, on the other hand, made a point
of talking to many women and of not worrying
too much about laws and customs. We know for
sure that the apostle Paul was not married and
even so, contrary to Jewish custom, did teach
in synagogues. We also know that both, being
married and being celibate were completely acceptable
options for leaders in the early church.
Hence we may never know for sure if Jesus
was married to Mary Magdalene and if they had
children, but I don't think it makes nearly
as much of a difference as Dan Brown suggests.
Jesus' message doesn't hinge on that. But there
certainly is a lot more evidence that Jesus
was celibate than that he was married. To give
only one example: in Matthew 19:11-12 Jesus
says that forsaking marriage for the sake of
the kingdom of God is a mystery many practice,
but many others with inferior capacities cannot
grasp.
Even if Jesus had children, they wouldn't
necessarily have been important. As he says
in Mat 13:50, and in the other gospels: those
who do the will of his heavenly father are his
family. Certainly his apostles must have had
children, but they are never mentioned anywhere.
Remember, we are talking about religion here,
and about the kingdom of God, not about worldly
royal bloodlines and kingdoms who usually ended
up with imbeciles because of inbreeding.
Other religious founders had children who
played no important role in history. Buddha's
son wasn't particularly special and died at
an early age. In Islam only the Shiite minority
took Mohammed's bloodline into account when
determining its leadership. Judaism certainly
venerates its bloodline of patriarchs, yet the
prophets whom God established as the spiritual
leaders were independent of any bloodline. Lord
Krishna, the Hindu god of love, must have had
thousands of children because he is said to
have had 16,000 queens, plus consorts! Yet I've
never heard his children mentioned anywhere.
Historically, only the leadership of the Bahai
was passed from father to son. So it seems that
spiritual enlightenment does not normally transfer
with the DNA.
But if you're looking for divinity in someone's
DNA, that's an easy find, because we're all
created by God and in God's image by receiving
His breath, i.e. spirit. Hence, it seems to
me that the whole human race is of God's bloodline.
Concerning the supposed motivation (according
to "The Da Vinci Code") for concealing Jesus'
marriage: Dan Brown says that it was the Catholic
Church's effort to portray Jesus as purely divine
and not human. Actually, the Church insisted
from the start that Jesus was both human and
divine.
It argued against the Gnostics who would take
away from Jesus' humanness by saying that he
didn't really suffer on the cross, because God
doesn't suffer. It also argued against those
who would diminish his divinity by teaching
that Jesus started out as an ordinary human
and only later became the Son of God.
Only it wasn't until the council of Ephesus (431 C.E.) that the Church could
agree precisely how divine and how human Jesus
Christ was at any given point in time, and how
those "two natures" co-exist.
In my opinion the "two natures of Christ"
are the very core and gem of Christianity. It
is rare to find another religion that gives
us permission to be, like Jesus, truly human
and truly divine. Mystical Christianity does.
Rather than hurting the veneration of the "divine feminine", insisting
that Jesus was "truly human and truly divine"
from the moment of his conception, actually
gave it a great boost. For it justified the
veneration of the Virgin Mary as Mother of God.
What is certainly true is that at a certain point the Church
started suppressing anything that supported women's full participation
in the Church. But that sharing of ministry and power did not depend on
the supposed descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. Rather it would
have been quite sufficient to faithfully emulate Jesus and Paul (on a
good day!). But instead, Jesus' own relationship with the many women in
his life was ignored and to Paul's true letters, fake, misogynistic
ones were added. (see: my article on "Women of Spirit and Power in the
Bible", especially the section "the Woman who Anointed Jesus")
And the Holy Grail? In the movie it is described as "the
source of God's power on earth". - If Jesus is God's power on earth
then Mary, his mother, could be seen as his source. Indeed, to me much
of what the movie says about Mary Magdalene is more true about the
Virgin Mary. Loius Charpentier in his book "Les Mysteres de la
Cathedrale de Chartres" explains that the Knights Templar went to
Jerusalem, not to seek the Holy Grail, but the Ark of the Covenant,
which they hoped to find in the ruins of the Temple of Solomon.
Charpentier says, that they certainly did find an esoteric knowledge
and a source of power and wealth that enabled them suddenly to create
gothic cathedrals. Maybe so, but along with that knowledge they found
black madonnas (see my article) and they venerated their Dark Mothers
in those cathedrals.
From of old Mother Mary was given the title
"Ark of the Covenant", because she was the vessel
of the New Covenant: Jesus Christ. To her the
Templars dedicated their order, their cathedrals,
and their hearts.
Endnote: All the
apocryphal gospels mentioned above can be found
in: "The Nag Hammadi Library". It is one book
you should be able to order through any bookstore.
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