CHAPTER 13

MARY MAGDALENE


I came a across a wedding that old families had contrived, Bethlehem the bridegroom and Babylon the bride.

Leonard Cohen, Last Year’s Man.

In the garden I committed no crime.

Tori Amos, Raspberry Swirl

INTRODUCTION


When Pierre Plantard was charged in the 1950s with circulating the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married, he made public the game of chess that was taking place between Sion and the Vatican. The discovery of what Sion claims to be a ‘Cup of Matrimony’, placed by Sion in the path of Ben Hammott (see Chapter 12), is another gambit on their part to try to accelerate the release of knowledge and evidence. As a relic the cup points to a greater prize and is part of the supporting material for a wider secret to which Sion is alluding. Books such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code have helped to seed public awareness of heretical ideas, and now the evidence to support these ideas is being released in a safe and controlled manner. A great ‘heresy’ is now coming to light as truth. But what is this heresy, and why does it need to be revealed?

The answer seems to lie at the feet of Mary Magdalene. She truly is Notre Dame, Our Lady, our ‘lost queen’ of Le Serpent Rouge. She impacts upon our quest in more than one way. The idea that she was married to Jesus has generated the most controversy in recent years, but this is not the most important factor of her story. With that in mind, the aim of this chapter is to explore the life and work of Mary Magdalene on a number of different levels.

ANCESTRY


Our story of Mary Magdalene really begins with her ancestors, as these provide a context for her position in the Bible. Authors such as Margaret Starbird in her book The Woman with the Alabaster Jar make a case for Mary having been descended from the Israelite tribe of Benjamin. The tribe of Benjamin takes its name and its origin from Benjamin, the son of Jacob in the Bible. The Benjaminites were said to be great warriors and feature prominently in the Old Testament. They were the founders and first rulers of Jerusalem.

The tribe is relevant to our mystery in a number of ways. For example, the Freemasons refer to themselves as Benjaminites in some of their rituals, seemingly holding the tribe of Mary Magdalene in high esteem. As the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail point out, the Benjaminites included a clan called ‘Ahiram’ and one of the children of this clan was named Benoni. Central to Freemasonry is the tale of Hiram, the master builder of Solomon’s Temple. In this tale Benoni is Hiram’s disciple.

Having founded and first ruled Jerusalem, the Benjaminites were entitled to consider the city and Solomon’s Temple as theirs to govern by birthright. But, like the Templars, they were dispossessed of their lands and exiled for what was described as the ‘Benjaminitic crime’.

The Bible (Judges 19–20) records that a mob of Benjaminites gang-raped the concubine of a Levite while he was staying in Gibeah, a Benjaminite town. The concubine died, and for this murder – and the equally sinful crime against tribal hospitality – a council of the tribes demanded that the perpetrators be handed over for execution. But the Benjaminite leaders took up arms to protect the culprits and war ensued. During the conflict the Benjaminites were nearly wiped out at the battle of Gibeah and their lands were seized. (Here we also find echoes of the Templar trial and seizure of their lands.) The other Israelite tribes then forbade their women to marry into the tribe, threatening it with extinction. The effect of this was that many of the Benjaminites went into exile and married into non-Israelite families.

After a period the Benjaminites were accepted again among the Israelites, and even produced their first king, Saul. But the crime was long remembered as an example of wickedness and some Benjaminites remained in exile, having migrated to the region of southern Greece called Arcadia. As we have already seen, the theme of Arcadia returns many times in our mystery. For example, it was said to be the birthplace of the Merovingian kings.

THE MAGDALENE IN SCRIPTURE


A number of individuals in the Bible are associated with Mary Magdalene. Many think of Mary as a reformed prostitute, but this term is never actually used in the Bible to describe her. The idea that she was a prostitute was misconstrued from a statement by Pope Gregory (540–604) when he referred to Mary as a sinful person whom Jesus forgave. This was in fact a reference to the woman accused of adultery, who was saved by Jesus from being stoned to death (John 7.53–8.11). (There is an important painting of this episode by Poussin that is covered in Chapter 16.)

Mary Magdalene’s appearances in the New Testament are few but they give clues to her role and relationship to Jesus. The first chronological appearance of Mary Magdalene occurs when Jesus casts seven demons out of her (Mark 16.9; compare Luke 8.1–3):

‘Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.’

The casting out of demons can be interpreted on a number of levels. In ancient Babylon demons were seen as the cause of illness but in the Bible we find King Solomon summoning and binding the demon Asmodeus to do his bidding. The Zoroastrian interpretation sees demons as false or fallen gods so a less supernatural interpretation might be that Jesus converted her from being a follower of pagan gods, either Greek ones or older regional deities still worshipped in those times.

Demonic possession can also be a misinterpretation of a number of psychological disorders such as the rare Multiple Personality Disorder, or the more common Subpersonalities Disorder as described by psychologists such as John Rowan.

Other passages of the gospels describe how ‘Mary of Bethany’ (presumed by ancient tradition to be Mary Magdalene) anointed Jesus (John 12.3):

‘Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.’

The washing of the feet is an intimate and devotional act. In this passage the use of expensive ointment is derided by the other disciples, but it is an act of anointing befitting someone of royal standing. Anointing a king would have been acceptable practice and through this we are beginning to see hints that both the relation of Jesus and Mary and the status of Jesus are perhaps being underplayed by the Church.

Mary Magdalene’s presence at the crucifixion is recorded by Matthew, Mark and John. While the other disciples hide and deny knowing Jesus, Mary stands in full view of the Roman soldiers beneath the cross (John 19.25):

‘Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.’

After the crucifixion Jesus is removed from the cross and sealed inside a tomb on private land belonging to Joseph of Arimathea. The following day Mary visits the garden and finds the tomb open (John 20.1):

‘The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.’

The body of Jesus is missing. A man speaks to her, whom she assumes to be the gardener before recognizing him as Jesus. He subsequently reveals himself to the remaining disciples. ‘Doubting’ Thomas tests his existence in flesh and blood by touching the wound in his side.

Putting aside the magical elements in this account, we are being shown here that Jesus survived the ordeal of crucifixion.

From this point onward the story of Mary Magdalene is picked up in a number of non-canonical gospels, notably the Gospel of Mary, which not only describes her as being closer to Jesus than the other disciples but also the recipient of his innermost teachings. The ‘Mary’ of the title is not named, but is generally assumed to be Mary Magdalene from other sources.

Other texts, such as the medieval The Golden Legend attempt to describe the life of Mary based upon the stories in circulation at that time. They are scant pieces but as a whole they begin to paint an interesting portrait of the woman who walked beside Jesus.

The Golden Legend also tells us that Mary was born of noble lineage. Her parents were said to have been born of kings and they owned the castle Magdala whence the name Magdalene comes. She is described as wealthy, which would account for her use of expensive oil to anoint Jesus.

THE FLIGHT TO GAUL


A short time after the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene is said to have been transported to the south of Gaul (France) by boat. Joseph of Arimathea, who according to Sion was a wealthy trader, is also said to have travelled on the boat with Mary Magdalene making it likely that the boat was more than a small affair. As a merchant he would probably have commanded a number of long-distance vessels. Others on the boat are said to have included an Egyptian girl called Sarah. Sarah means ‘princess’ so if this was a title rather than a name it is perhaps unlikely that she would have travelled in the contemporary equivalent of economy class. Heading west via Greece they would have followed the Mediterranean coastline for safety. The journey is described in detail in The Golden Legend, which is not unlike Butler’s Lives of the Saints. Written in the late 13th century by the archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Voragine, it details the lives of hundreds of saints and is interesting to us as the primary source for a detailed account of Mary Magdalene’s flight to Gaul. It was widely read at the time and was said to have drawn upon works of earlier authors and other existing documents. Jacobus also wrote extensively on the Virgin Mary, and attempted to raise her status to that of a necessary part of the path to God through Jesus.

The arrival of Mary in Greece entirely depends on the flight to Gaul as having happened and this forms the next part of our journey. Nic Haywood sent me the following:

‘The legend of Our Lady [Mary Magdalene] taking refuge in France is fact. The order possess substantial evidence for this, but we ask that for the moment you concede that our ‘proof’ is the ultimate. To demonstrate this – to offer the actual proof – would be to present our trump card prematurely.’

The ‘proof’ as mentioned above would seem to be that the body of Mary Magdalene is located in the south of France.

Having arrived in southern Gaul, Mary begins her ministry, teaching the faith as told to her by Jesus. She converted many of the inhabitants to the teachings of Jesus and is said to have appeared in dreams to local nobles, instructing them to ‘comfort the poor and needy’. During this time she gained many followers, but eventually her ministry in Gaul came to an end and she retired to a cave where she lived out her remaining days devoted to God.

MARY AND THE TRUE TEACHINGS OF JESUS


Mary could not have known at the time whether this new religion would take hold, but she would have been compelled to communicate as truth what she knew. Since Mary had received teachings directly from Jesus and had travelled away from the influence of the other main apostles, especially Peter and Paul, what she taught was potentially a very different strand of Christianity to that which would become the orthodox view.

In the Gospel of Mary, Peter acknowledges that Jesus had spoken privately to Mary and questions her accordingly (Gospel of Mary 5.6):

‘Tell us the words of the Saviour which you remember, which you know but we do not, nor have we heard them.’

Only a partial account of Mary’s response has survived and takes the form of a vision describing the soul rising and being challenged by the ‘powers’. The soul overcomes these powers in an inner dialogue and then ascends through a number of mystical states. The extant text also refers to the ‘aeons’ and other metaphysical ideas commonly found in Gnostic teachings. The disciples are incredulous at Mary’s account and respond that Jesus would not have used such ‘strange words’, and nor would he have said them to Mary in preference to the other disciples.

The Gospel of Mary speaks of higher realms, what psychologists describe as the ‘transpersonal’. The inclusion of this material shows Jesus to be more of a mystic than the New Testament allows for. Even more of a threat to the Church is that these teachings have entirely Gnostic leanings, in that they advocate direct contact with God through an internal dialogue.

The influence of Mary and other Gnostic writers remained a potent force within Christianity until the Council of Nicaea in 325CE selected the final texts for inclusion in a Christian Bible. Until then, many documents were in circulation that told a different story from those in the four gospels and Acts. In these Mary Magdalene was not only accepted as an important figure among the disciples, but she was also recognized as one who continued the true teachings of Jesus.

Unfortunately we can see from the direction that Rome took that the Gnostic influence was entirely removed from the teachings of Christianity. Yet here they form the secret, inner teachings of mysticism.

Mary has since been used to symbolize these hidden teachings of Christ, passed down through the ages in her name. The Council of Nicaea was called by Emperor Constantine I with the goal of imposing Roman-style order on the Church’s teachings throughout the empire. As a result the canon of acceptable works compiled by the Council, while certainly ancient were incomplete, as it was decided not to reveal the truth for fear of relinquishing control of spirituality to the individual. As a result orthodox Christianity was a shallower entity than it could have been.

The external teachings of Jesus have been used to maintain control, to govern individuals and entire countries in order to carry out the earthly will of the various churches and the various secular regimes that have supported them. But there is no true spiritual path in these teachings.

I believe that Mary Magdalene held, for a moment, a pure Christianity – the closest form to the Jesus archetype. I will return later to the purity of spirit and the power of identifying with archetypes in the chapter entitled Gnosis. This places the kingdom of heaven not in space, or after death, but as an internal experience attainable in life, as stated in Luke 17.21: ‘Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.’

THE MAGDALENE TRADITION


There is a second aspect to the mysteries of Mary Magdalene that could potentially have the most impact on modern society: her gender.

There might be a reason why Jesus told Mary his ‘inner teachings’, aside from any intimate relationship he had with her. Among Jesus’ female disciples Mary is the most prominent, and the feminine aspect is important as it is already aligned with the intuitive path to God. In Gnostic teachings the Holy Spirit is feminine and appears in the form of Sophia, Divine Wisdom, personified as a female figure. To commune with Sophia, the feminine, intuitive side, gives an individual access to a higher wisdom and potentially to God. While the marriage of Mary and Jesus is a threat to the status of the Church, the idea that individuals can find God directly within themselves entirely undermines the whole construct of priests and Popes dictating faith to the masses.

The gender aspect also caused resistance from the other leading disciples, whose intolerance of Mary is all too apparent. In the Gospel of Thomas (verse 114), Peter goes so far as to say to the disciples: ‘Make Mary leave us, for females do not deserve life.’

There are other telling admissions of misogyny. In the Gospel of Mary both Andrew and Peter, while admitting that Mary knew Jesus better than any other woman, dismiss her claim that Jesus spoke to her about matters that he did not share with the other (male) disciples. Eventually Peter becomes angry and states (Gospel of Mary 9.4):

‘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?’

The arrival of Mary Magdalene in Gaul brought an alternative form of Christianity that was balanced in terms of gender, and she was said to have converted many to Jesus’ true teachings. However, it would seem that the more esoteric aspects of the teachings survived mainly among the few noble families who took up Mary’s cause.

Preserved in ritual and oral tradition, these esoteric teachings were communicated only to an elect few not only because they were deemed heresy but also because they bestowed certain powers and knowledge of certain locations. As the teachings became the domain of a few powerful families, they were also upheld by a few wise patrons among the clergy. The teachings surface from time to time and influenced such groups as the Cathars in the Middle Ages and Jean-Jacques Olier at Saint-Sulpice in the 17th century. Together with St Vincent de Paul and St Louise de Marillac, Olier created the Daughters of Charity order with the express intention of acknowledging and continuing the work Mary Magdalene had begun. Sion comments:

‘Surely it did not escape notice that the very existence of the Daughters of St Vincent, fashioning themselves (as was claimed) after the role of the benevolent Magdalene, ultimately speeded up the notion of females within the institution of the Church.’

This charitable organization managed by women was created to emulate the Magdalene’s maternal role by protecting orphaned children. The ‘widow’s son’ of Masonic legend had finally found a home.

During the 17th century, European Freemasonry was taking shape and rituals began to include references about belonging to the tribe of Benjamin. The development of Co-Freemasonry, distinguished by its acceptance of women into the craft, in the 18th century makes it is clear that the addition of women to the Craft mirrors the attempt by Olier, at much the same point in history, to create a role for women within the Church.

A subtle matriarchal revolution had begun. By the end of the 19th century in all areas of culture and society women were moving toward a position of equality.

Le Serpent Rouge (see Chapter 10) is unusual in its description of Mary Magdalene. It is the only text I have seen that treats her as an archetype by naming her as another form of Isis and ‘Our Lady of the Crescents’. This is an expression of Mary’s potential influence in Christian thought. She has an energy that can be connected to even today. The lost aspect of the wise and loving feminine can be summoned and expressed, for she resides in the psyche of all men and women.

In the light of this any concealed ‘body’ is elevated from a small secret, the humble corpse of a biblical figure, to a symbol of the lost, repressed feminine principle, and a key to the source – gnosis.

FINDING MEANING IN THE MAGDALENE


An opportunity is emerging to find meaning in a redeemed image of Mary Magdalene. The ‘repentant sinner’ of a thousand paintings is in need of redemption. She was not a prostitute; even the Vatican has conceded that this lie was attached to her name centuries after her life. She is described in the Gospel of Mary as ‘the chosen one’, the woman whom Jesus loved more than all the other disciples. It also states that she was party to the secret teachings of Jesus. She is, in my view, the most important feminine role model in Christian history yet she was resented by her fellow (male) disciples and denigrated by the male bastion that was the early Catholic Church. The reason the Catholic Church fears Mary is also the reason why it is so important to redeem her.

Entirely lacking from the Christian mindset of the past two millennia is the archetype of the sexually empowered feminine as a positive force. From Eve through to Mary Magdalene, this has created a vacuum in the Western psyche. As Christian archetypes we have virgins, whores and crones. The objectification of women would not be possible if the strong, sexually active female were restored and respected. With the repression of the feminine come the inequality, objectification and denigration of women and the loss of the feminine aspects of man, such as intuition.

Pure intuition is a means to hear our inner voice that connects us to the divine. It brings direct knowledge of spiritual matters and as such avoids the need for a Church. In short intuition is a tool for gnosis and that is why the Church fears it so much. To fully experience gnosis is to communicate directly with God.

We can now re-evaluate Mary’s depiction in biblical, apocryphal and Gnostic texts. In the Gospel of Philip, when the disciples challenge Jesus and ask him why he loves Mary more than them, Jesus replies: ‘Why do I not love you as much as I love her?’

And so we come full circle. The woman who was closer to Jesus than all his other disciples, and who for centuries bore the stigma of being labelled a prostitute, can now be redeemed. It is up to us now to drive the seven demons from her, just as Jesus did. The term ‘prostitute’ has its roots in the word ‘priestess’, and this is a role befitting Mary. Her rightful place in the Christian Bible and in the Church should be that of a high priestess and I cannot stress enough how important it would be to reinstate such a role in all Christian churches. Without this aspect of the divine feminine, the Christian churches will always be out of balance.

The role of Mary in our story is threefold. She is wife and mother, the feminine principle, sexually active and emancipated; she is a vehicle for the inner path of Jesus and true Christianity, as recorded in the Gospel of Mary and other Gnostic texts; and she is herself an embodiment of that truth as she emerges to take the role of a high priestess of Christianity.

While we can re-evaluate Mary Magdalene’s historical status and relationship to Jesus, it is the meaning that these hold for both Christians and those of us in an environment shaped by Christianity that is important. By ‘shaped’ I mean that although organized Christianity is declining in the West, its influence on the psychological make-up of all Westerners cannot be underestimated. Patriarchal structures exist at all levels of society. The role and equality of women is a battle far from being resolved in a fair and balanced manner. Issues such as the ordination of female priests may seem to outsiders to be trivial disputes among the ever-declining body of churchgoers, but they are indicative of a wider negative mindset about the value of women in society as a whole.

This issue of equality might be why so many people found that The Da Vinci Code resonated with them. In Catholicism the representation of women in senior positions within the Church is almost entirely lacking whereas the Gnostics made Mary Magdalene a more central and important figure to Christianity as a whole. However, the reestablishment of the ‘lost feminine’ is more important to people in the 21st century than any religious implications.

AT REST


There is a sadness about the fate of Mary Magdalene’s reputation. As she sank into the mire of misogynistic history, something was lost that belonged to each and every one of us. Her body, lost and lamented, should be venerated not as a relic but as a symbol of the path of intuition, which in turn leads to union with the divine.

Mary’s skeleton is incomplete, so we are told: some of the bones having been removed to be used as relics elsewhere. According to Gérard Thome, his parchments inform him that Mary resides in a family tomb, which is highly possible. In which case this ‘body of evidence’, as Sion refers to it, will risk being overshadowed by that of her husband, Jesus, although the presence of the ‘King of Kings’ would certainly confirm her position as a queen. According to Nic Haywood,

‘The body of evidence is incontrovertible. Whether or not it will be headline-making depends on when it is revealed. As Church influence lessens and science goes round in circles, it might not be found until it is probably expected. If revealed today it would have an impact on science and religion as much as Darwin’s [Origin of Species].’

The history of Mary Magdalene certainly challenges traditional Church orthodoxy but it should not be seen as a challenge to the Church’s very existence. On the contrary, it has the power to redress the balance and breathe new life into the old religion.

However, there is another force at work that is even stronger than the truth about Mary Magdalene, and this force is beginning to undermine the Church. It is the truth about Jesus.