The Return of Mary Magdalene

Magdalene is becoming a new model for independent and passionate womanhood

by Roger J Woolger

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has enjoyed a staggering level of international success, fascinating audiences with a brilliantly interwoven tale of secret societies, esoteric symbolism and legends of the Holy Grail, at the core of which is the once heretical notion that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' sexual partner and consort and that their offspring became a secret bloodline stretching down through the Middle Ages to modern times. As 'the greatest cover-up in human history' - Brown's own words - it has clearly intrigued Christians of all shades, as well as millions of agnostics who relish a good conspiracy theory.

A plethora of books and DVDs have appeared, ranging from contemptuous and scholarly Catholic and Fundamentalist debunkings to treatises on further esoteric links with the Templars and Cathars, Leonardo, the mysteries of Isis, Tantra and more. According to the edition of Newsweek that had Mary Magdalene as its cover story in November 2003, the website magdalene.org receives thousands of hits a day. All over the world discussion groups, chat rooms and seminars toss back and forth the controversies of Brown's Da Vinci Code , the obscure sayings of the Gnostic Gospel of Mary (Magdalene), and all kinds of intuitions and fantasies about who this woman really was, gleaned from novels, esoteric literature, and not least, their dreams.

 

Even though most of the controversial historical ideas about Jesus' relationship with Mary Magdalene and the San Greal as a code for a sacred bloodline (ie Sang Real ) were first proposed in 1982 in the enormously successful Holy Blood, Holy Grail of Messrs Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, it is only now that Christians of all shades who dismissed the first book are hungrily devouring Brown's patent heresies - it is a huge best-seller in normally conservative Catholic France for example.

The celebrated heroine

What has changed since 1982? Why is the Magdalene suddenly a magazine cover girl all over the world and the new heroine of progressive Catholic theologians like Karen King and Esther de Boer?

One reason for the Magdalene's popularity is that feminist attitudes are no longer confined to the intellectuals of the Church like King and de Boer but have filtered down to ordinary women - and to not a few men - at the grass roots, so that millions are beginning to question the misogyny and prudishness of a patriarchal church that has long sidelined and scapegoated her for her blatant sexuality. For example, the scandalous cruelty of the 'Magdalene' laundries where 'fallen' or unwed pregnant women were imprisoned and abused recently came to public attention in a powerful film.

From being an object of pious pity Magdalene is becoming a celebrated feminist heroine, a new model for independent and passionate womanhood. In fact, historical perspectives are being revised, for as Esther de Boer writes: ' We discovered that in the course of history Mary Magdalene enjoyed great popularity, but that the interest was more in her sexuality than in her testimony... (She) has gone down in history above all as an attractive and very sinful woman, who thanks to Jesus was converted and repented.' Even though recent historians of the church see the 'penitent whore' label as a smear tactic and a misreading of the Gospels, they recognize how powerfully her images have been there in the background of Christian consciousness. By the nineteenth century as independent artists became more bold, paintings of worldly and sensual women with flowing red hair and voluptuous bodies start to appear. Here are Magdalenes devoted passionately to their master, but whose manifest eros are tastefully sublimated into equally passionate spiritual agape.

The madonna/whore split

Nevertheless, for the puritans and patriarchs who have mostly dominated Christianity this 'scarlet woman', who stayed so close to the Saviour, has always been a shameful embarrassment. The fact remains that the Fathers of the early Christian church were deeply and pathologically disturbed by the sexuality of women. For them sex was the direst of sins, directly caused by Eve's transgression in the Garden. Out of their paranoia of the flesh arose the doctrinal myth of Mary the Mother's miraculous chastity and virginity. By the power of the Virgin Birth and a church of celibate priests and virgin nuns, they hoped to reverse Eve's original sin and escape the lures of the Devil in the highly licentious world of ancient Rome with its ubiquitous erotic and orgiastic cults. 'The root of the Fathers' obsession with Mary's virginity', writes Marina Warner in Alone of All her Sex, was the Fathers' definition of evil; sexuality represented the gravest danger and the fatal flaw; they viewed virginity as its opposition and its conquerer.'

The result has been a deep and abiding ambivalence towards everything feminine connected to the Christian faith, an obsession with sexual transgression and a misogyny in the Churches that has never ceased to denigrate, demean and disempower women. The fruit of the Fathers' fear of women left a deep archetypal wound - the clichéd 'Madonna/whore' split - that has haunted the western psyche to this day. Despite the enlightened influence of Freud and Kinsey, sexual liberation and the ordination of women priests, it is a wound far from being healed.

To an observer of patterns in religious history, the re-emergence and popularity of the figure of the Magdalene surely represents for one thing a healthy compensation for the state of the Catholic Church and its medieval attitudes to sex and women, sadly symbolized by the ailing pontiff, Pope John Paul II. His views on contraception, on women and sexuality are so reactionary that millions are leaving the Church. In Britain, of the 15 million Catholics descended from migrant families from Ireland only 4 million have kept the faith and of those only 1 million attend mass - half the number of the 1960s. In the US, the fourth largest Catholic population in the world, marriages by Catholics before a priest have halved since the 1960s. These figures are from John Cornwall, author of the recent critical biography The Pope in Winter. Cornwall attributes much of the Church's decline to the Pope's refusal to sanction birth control, which he considers irredeemably evil even for victims of AIDS, or to look at the horrors of priestly paedophilia - 11,000 minors molested by Catholic priests in America between 1950 and 2002; surely a grave symptom of much that is and has been wrong in the Church for a long time. Cornwall writes about the Pope's attitude to women: 'John Paul would insist the marriage bed of a catholic woman was a place of trial and suffering, like the cross of Jesus Christ. All the days of his life he would identify motherhood with self-sacrifice and death.' Moreover, millions of divorced women, and those using contraception are technically living in sin according to this Pope.

Rise of the divine feminine

In reaction to all this there is everywhere a huge hunger for the divine feminine currently flooding through western society, about to sweep away the pathological patriarchal foundations of the Christian Church once and for all. Women all over the world rightly long to be accorded their true dignity as creative and passionate beings, co-equal with, not subject to men. And the image that, Aphrodite-like, rises from the receding foam is none other than that of Mary Magdalene, the lost Goddess of Christianity in more ways than one.

'The old order changeth, yielding place to new/And God fulfils Himself in many ways/

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.' wrote Tennyson in Idylls of the King

So in reaction to the sexual decadence and spiritual narrowness of so many Christian churches, it is to Mary Magdalene, hitherto so marginalized and misrepresented in Church history, that so many are turning, their imaginations aroused by a popular conspiracy thriller. Thanks to the many genuine pieces of scholarship (as well as outright and sometimes outrageous speculation) upon which Dan Brown draws, the figure of this powerful and provocative woman is once again coming fully alive in the imagination of our times.

The recently discovered Gnostic texts called The Nag Hammadi Library make it clearer than ever that Mary Magdalene may have played a huge role in the circle of the early apostles, prominent as Jesus' chief confidante and named as his koinomos , a Greek word which technically means 'consort' or 'partner', implying a sexual relationship. And as in the rejected Gnostic text, the Pistis Sophia, she stands as the chief interpreter of Jesus' revelation of the cosmos of light, 'the one who understood the All'. Here as elsewhere, in the figure of the Holy Sophia, the transcendent feminine figure in many Gnostic systems, she echoes the sacred role of Wisdom in the Old Testament.

In a much quoted passage form the Gnostic Gospel of Philip her intimacy with Jesus is revealed as follows:

And the companion of Mary Magdalene whom [Jesus] loved more than [all] the disciples, [and he] used to kiss her often on her [mouth]. The other disciples...said to Jesus, 'Why do you love her more than all of us?' The savior answered, '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.' Great is the mystery of marriage! For [without] it the world would [not exist].

Confused identity

Perhaps inevitably the teachings of the Gnostics were rapidly excluded as heretical by the Fathers of the Church in favour of a canon that maximized the status of the Virgin Mary (despite the fact that she is hardly mentioned in the four Gospels) and minimized the Magdalene, chief witness to the Resurrection, and also the role of woman in general in the Church. As Susan Haskins reminds us in her wonderfully comprehensive survey of the changing images of Mary Magdalene through the centuries, the smear of 'penitent whore' comes from a confusion of the identity of the Magdalene, from whom Jesus casts out seven devils, with an unnamed woman, the sinner who anoints the feet of Jesus with ointment from an alabaster jar (we are never told what her 'sin' was; predictably the Fathers assumed it to be sexual). Another Mary, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, is fused into the composite image of the Magdalene that was derived from the four canonical gospels. Finally it was made dogma by Pope Gregory in the sixth century.

By turning the Magdalene, a woman so intimate with Jesus, into the pre-eminent sinner, the Fathers succeeded in branding her by association very much as the Second Eve, 'the gateway to the Devil' (Tertullian). These same Church Fathers who created this defamatory composite identity were also intent on the celibacy of priests (to protect the sacraments from contamination by menstruating women). By contrast, the Orthodox Church, which insists that priests be married, like Jewish Rabbis, has always celebrated independent Holy Days for three separate women: Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the Penitent Harlot or sinner.

Today we can see how, by excluding women, early zealots like Origen, Augustine, John Chrystostom and Jerome in their fear of sexuality created an unhappy psychic schism in the western soul. In a study of the wounded Aphrodite archetype in The Goddess Within, I remarked, 'Over the centuries a series of dire equations were established in the minds of Christians: Woman = Earth = Dirt = Sex = Sin . The fall of man was due to Eve, so the Church never ceased to warn men that it is woman who will lead them down the path to hell...'

In reaction to the perceived excesses of decadent Roman religion with its sacred orgies and the remnants of temple 'prostitution' (a misnomer) that harkened back to Sumeria and Babylon, the Church fathers pursued campaigns of ascetic purity and vilification of all things bodily. Typical is Clement of Alexandria's warning, 'For the snare of the Devil against mankind, and especially against the young, is the body'. By the fourth century many Christians had withdrawn into desert communities or become hermits. DH Lawrence wrote bitterly in his last work, Apocalypse , 'The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man'. Emma Jung, in her study on the Grail legend, saw the Fisher King, grievously wounded in the genitals, as the image of the Shadow of Christian man, just as Carl Jung saw in the emergence of the stereotype of the medieval witch a direct consequence of the celibate Church's suppression of all things feminine, especially the beautiful Provencal civilization it suppressed in the appallingly brutal Albigensian Crusade.

This war persecuted and slaughtered half a million people of the Cathar faith, a branch of Gnostic Christianity that revered women as equals of men, and which spread into Italy and Southern France in the 11th and 12th century from the Balkans. Its charismatic leaders, les Bonhommes converted many to their faith. Ezra Pound believed that Catharism fused with the sensuous Provencal courts of Occitania and their courtly troubadour cult of la Donna - the Lady - contrary to Church propaganda that painted Catharism as world-denying and Manichaean, a slur which remains even now.  

Magdalene in Provence

It is no accident that legends of Mary Magdalene coming to Provence after the fall of Jerusalem also became popular in France in the 11th and 12th centuries. Thanks to Eleanor of Aquitaine's enthusiasm for the sumptuous Muslim courts she encountered in Antioch whilst on the Second Crusade, a rich artistic and musical culture flourished in France which assimilated and nurtured a Venusian revival of the old matrifocal legends and romances of Celtic mythology, of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde. (See my article in Caduceus issue XX, 19??). A brief but luminous return of the devotion to the Goddess occurred in disguised form; not only in the form of Celtic heroines and ladies of the troubadours, but as the magnificent black madonnas and vierges en majest é of the Auvergne, some said to be statues of Isis, others hinting at Persphone's underworld sojourn. Again we see the shadow or repressed sacred feminine side of Christianity surfacing in such images that speak of a lost Goddess.

The people of medieval France were thus everywhere hospitable to Mary Magdalene and took her to be their own, naming many churches after her. She has rich legendary associations with Provence, especially in and around Marseilles. Medieval lore has it that Mary Magdalene along with Mary Jacobe and Mary Salome (mothers of the two James's of the Gospels) landed in a frail barque near Roman Marseilles with Martha, Lazarus and their black servant Sara (revered until today as the Black Madonna of the Romany, possibly a survival in Europe of their Goddess Kali-Sara). Hostile Jews had cast them out to sea from the Holy Land in a rudderless boat which miraculously found its way to Provence.

Magdalene is said to have converted many to Christianity in Marseilles with her passionate preaching. Did she preach in the ancient catacombs near the old Greek harbour? Was she herself the object of a lost mystery tradition like that of Persephone? According to later legend, she retired to a holy cave high in the massif of Sainte-Baume not far from the city. Here she ended her life in prayer. The cave is a sacred site to this day, but we may only guess as to how far back in pagan times it was also a place of power.

Mary's relics came to rest in the basilica of St Maximin-Ste Baume (Holy Balm) and were much venerated throughout the Middle Ages - until in Vezelay in Burgundy the rival Abbey of Sainte Madeleine also claimed her remains! The cult of relics at this time lent itself to all kinds of fraud, since a credulous populace is always hungry for 'signs and wonders' associated with beloved saints.

As well as her French sojourn there are fascinating speculations that the Magdalene may have been an initiate into one of the ancient cults of the Goddess, possibly that of the Egyptian Isis. When Jesus casts out the seven demons from the Magdalene of the Gospels, some, like Lynn Picknett, see this as a covert reference to an esoteric ritual of cleansing the seven chakras of the energy body. It may equally refer to the 'Seven Gates' of Innana's descent to the Underworld in Sumerian myth.

 

Awakening to the Goddess

I believe that the appeal of Mary Magdalene to so many of us today is that she is such a fully human and complex figure, a woman of the world, who lived the life of a 'sinner', enjoyed wealth and sex in particular, and had a relationship with the most fascinating man in western religious literature. Whether or not we can know with any historical accuracy the details of her life any more than those of Jesus is in the end unimportant; it is the imagination of Mary Magdalene and her relationship to Jesus that strikes deeply into modern consciousness, especially that of women.

Many women today, disillusioned and dissatisfied with the Churches, can begin to admit to themselves that they long both spiritually and erotically for more than the purity of the Virgin or the way of the cross, despite centuries of propaganda in this vein, mostly from male theologians. Bringing Mary Magdalene's appearance into the very forefront of public debate allows women everywhere - and not a few men - to feel empowered to question their faith without fear of ridicule or shame. For not only do women long for a flesh and blood figure at the heart of their faith, they also long for a flesh and blood Jesus, one fully capable of relationship, tenderness and sexual passion. A Jesus who not only curses money lenders, walks the dusty roads of Galilee and hangs out in bars with the local hookers, but a Jesus who has a friend and partner.

And what a partner! Dignified, strong and proud; beautiful, passionate and wise. The very embodiment of Sophia, the divine principle that even transcends the Logos of her Master and consort. When she later goes forth to speak, whole populations hang on her words, as in Marseilles. Even the most brilliant of the male disciples, we are told in the Gospel of Philip, are silenced by her passionate teaching and only the patently dumb and stubborn Peter resents and finally rejects her astonishing charisma.

M illions have now been stimulated by the ideas of The Da Vinci Code , and the trend promises to grow with Ron Howard's forthcoming film adaptation of the novel. It seems that we as a culture are ripe at this moment for unraveling this momentous 'lost goddess' enigma. The phenomenon of the return of the Magdalene has to be seen as a profound awakening in modern consciousness to the idea that God and his human incarnation and son Jesus can no longer be separated from their female counterparts and partners. Father God must once more be co-equal with Mother Goddess; incarnated Son-Lover must again be co-equal with incarnated Daughter-Lover. After being suppressed, denigrated, and persecuted for two thousand years, the Great Goddess is finally returning in all her beauty, wisdom and glory - as the Magdalene - and I like to think that in her hands she carries the Grail that can heal us all.

Esther de Boer, Mary Magdalene: Beyond the Myth [Trinity Press, 1997]

Marina Warner, Alone of all Her Sex: the Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary [London, 1976]

Gospel of Philip, part of Nag Hammadi Library, edited James R Robinson [EJ Brill 1988]

Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor . [Harper Collins], 1993.

Lynn Picknett, Mary Magdalene . [Constable and Robinson Ltd], 2003.

Peter Mullan,   The Magdalene Sisters (film)   Miramax 2002

Roger Woolger, PhD, is a Jungian therapist and teacher, originator of Deep Memory Process Therapy. A lifelong student of religion and mysticism, he leads pilgrimage tours to places of power in France, deriving special enjoyment from introducing people to the civilization of medieval Provence. See his websites www.rogerwoolger.com and www.magdalenetours.com for details of the 2005 tour, and a conference-quest on the Mysteries of Mary Magdalene in London on 25th June.   (Woolger Training 01865 407996 or woolger.uk@talk21.com)

CALLOUTS

Women rightly long to be accorded their true dignity as creative and passionate beings (4)

The Fathers' fear of women left a deep archetypal wound that has haunted the western psyche (3)

She stands as the chief interpreter of Jesus' revelation of the cosmos of light (2)

The appeal of Mary Magdalene is that she is such a fully human and complex figure (1)

Article to appear in Caduceus Magazine, March-April, 2005