Category: What Sunday School won’t teach

Mary Magdalene a Goddess?

We were discussing last week on the GoddessChristians forum whether Magdalene is a goddess or not. Many ask whether Jesus was a god, was he divine, was he “just” a spiritual teacher with a divine message. So when it comes to the Sacred Feminine we come up with the same questions.  Were Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene “goddesses”?Divine beings? Or enlightened teachers? Margaret Starbird wrote in to say:

I guess it’s time to ask the question, “What is a Goddess?”

Many theologians identify “God” as pure energy, personified in a
masculine image (like the Almighty Father in Michelangelo’s “Creation”
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But everyone knows that “He” is
not really “the One”–who is ineffable and defies description. Judaism
and Islam allow no images of God because God is beyond all human
ability to create such an image.

Yet we know of many “gods” in the ancient world… Could we say that
they are “incarnations” of the masculine attributes of “God”? and,
given this, might we then say that Mary Magdalene is an “incarnation”
of the “Goddess” attributes of wisdom/compassion/love?

I believe that just as Jesus embodied the Jewish tradition of Yahweh
as the “Bridegroom of Israel,” Mary Magdalene embodied their tradition
of the “Daughter of Sion” as Bride (as in the rabbi’s interpretation
of the Song of Songs that has so many verses in common with an ancient
liturgy honoring Isis and Osiris). The Jesus/Mary Magdalene story was
a “personification” of the ancient and archetypal marriage covenant
between “God” and his Beloved–His chosen people.

peace and well-being,
Margaret
“Mary Magdalene, Bride in Exile”
www.margaretstarbird.net

Jehovah Unmasked, Audacious Heretic Females, etc.

Here’s the link to Jehovah Unmasked: The True Identity of the Bible-God Revealed.  Such an eye-opener: describes the Key of Gnosis that Jesus came to give us, solves the Problem of Evil, shows the role of women in the early church as priests and bishops, Magdalene as Yeshua’s spouse and teaching partner, Sophia in the Old Testament, is a primer on REAL gnosticism, not that world-loathing flesh-hating gnosticism you have read about.  

Jehovah Unmasked’s main premise is that the nasty, vengeful people-killing god in the Old Testament, “Jehovah” is not the loving God-the-Father Jesus came from. He is really Satan and/or the Demiurge especially when he sends “lying spirits of God to deceive the people” thru his prophets, and so forth.  Half the time the Old Testament god is really Satan or Ialdobaoth, not the benevolent non-violent God who is All-Mother Sophia’s other half. Jesus himself told us this world is ruled by the Prince of Darkness and remember that’s why Satan had the “authority” to test Jesus and try to break him down — because Jesus had come to Satan’s turf to try to rescue (“save”) us. More about the good god and bad god all confused with one another at the link above. (Yes, it IS dualism, but it’s a good read and I like it, so there).


A verse the author quotes about everything making sense when we realize which I like:
“I am now at Home, spiritually, though I remain a pilgrim and a stranger in this world.” (Hebrews 11:13)

The author points out the fact that so many Westerners leave Christianity for reconstructed pagan religions, Eastern religions like Buddhism, Zen or Meditation / Vedanta from India.  He says:  “There is no reason to jettison your culture and embrace foreign religions to find spiritual Reality.  Gnostic Christianity is the inward, esoteric, mystical spirituality that so many Westerners are seeking in Far Eastern religions.  You can find spiritual Reality in the midst of Christianity.”

Here is a short excerpt from the chapter entitled, GOD THE MOTHER

The Gnostic Christians took both God the Mother and God the Father into their hearts, and knew the fullness of Health or “Soteria,” and so should you. Translating “Soteria” as “salvation” usually obscures the real meaning, which is Health.  See Strong’s Greek Lexicon #4991.  “For the Jerusalem Above is free, and She is our Mother.”  Galations 4:26.  
….

Its quite plain these “church fathers” were full of themselves and … had real power and used it to suppress all feminine descriptions of the Divine as well as to suppress women in general.  … This quote from the so-called “father of the Latin Church,” Tertullian (155-230 A.D.), serves as an example:  “These heretical females! How uppity they are! Lacking any modesty they’re audacious enough to heal the sick, debate, catechize, exorcize and possibly even baptize!” (From “On Prescription Against Heretics“) 

There is a lot of info in this book like that and all so nicely presented, easy to read, I flew thru the book and I am a very busy woman. Hah. Jehovah Unmasked is only $15.24 at Amazon here and you can read inside the book.  The Table of Contents with its chapter titles is interesting in itself.   

…Just call me one of those audacious heretic females.  Sheesh.

Katia

The day they/we & negativity killed our god

Be sure to follow along on our Easter Cycle page…
Templars especially should treat this day with solemnity, fasting if possible, the wearing of black, the keeping of silence as far as possible.  I like to stop and hold silence when the 9th hour comes along — 3 p.m.
Remember the god they killed today, he’s ours.   And remember how our egos kill our god-self every day, every hour when we let them take over our consciousness, rule our mind.
Because of this holiday, freedom is at hand, freedom from the “little death” as the scriptures say! (the many little deaths we suffer as we navigate thru this maze of life with this chattering in our head “killing off” our consciousness and direct uplink to the Divine).  
In Memory of Him (& the Higher us),
Katia

Magdalene Sacred Feminine class forming Atlanta Unity Church

A new friend is hosting an exciting Divine Feminine class in the Atlanta metro area. It will meet in the Atlanta Unity Church starting April 7. Wish I lived nearby, it sounds so cool!

14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine

14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine: Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene…
Tuesday evenings for 14 weeks beginning April 7th from 7:30-9:00.

Atlanta Unity Church, 3597 Parkway Lane, Norcross, GA 30092.

Please join us for this weekly gathering based on the newly released book by Margaret Starbird and Joan Norton.

Come be immersed in the archetype of the sacred feminine known as “history’s most misunderstood woman.” Through reflection, meditation, and journaling you will experience the awakening of your inner sacred feminine in this expanding path of women’s spirituality.

$16/wk Space is limited; pre-registration requested.

Facilitated by D’Ann Baldwin
Contact D’Ann @;newearthfeminine@gmail.com  678-644-9698

Feminism, Gnosticism & Roman Church Teach Body is Bad. Also Montsegur, Ides of March, & More

Here is my 25 minute Sunday talk on everything from Montsegur Eve to the Ides of March, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar in a sacred marriage to our topic, How Gnosticism influenced Feminism and the Roman Church into believing the body and the material world — and therefore sex — are bad, corrupt, dirty. 

Click here to listen (27 minutes)

Come back to this page when you’re done listening and then play the video below for our closing hymn, Ave Maria No Morro sung by Andrea Bocelli, the blind tenor of Tuscany with beautiful art slides of Mother Mary, our Christian Goddess.

And here’s an ethereal sounding Ave Maria No Morro sung by Klaus Meine of the rock band, Scorpions. 

Thanks to Margaret Starbird , Joan Norton and Jennifer Reif for the material for this “sermon” which includes a brief guided meditation from Joan and Margaret’s brand new book, 14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine: Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene.

Honoring the Sacred Feminine on Int’l Women’s Day

Welcome to our first online Sunday Sermon. Please click on the .Mp3 audio file and when you are finished listening to it (20 min.) click on the YouTube video below to sing with us this week’s hymn.

If you have three candles, any color, any size, you may want to get them and something to light ’em with before you hit the Play button for the audio file.

Click to Hear Sermon Audio – 20 Minutes

COME BACK HERE AFTER LISTENING TO THE ABOVE

Then watch the YouTube video below for the closing hymn, She Is Near

Items Mentioned in Sermon you may wish to track down for further study or inspiration:

Triune of the Lights candlelighting ritual we did today is from The Holy Book of Mary Magdalene: The Path of the Grail Steward, a new inspiring book by our friend Jennifer Reif.

Jennifer also wrote the lovely Prayer to the Black Madonna we prayed for our Invocation above. It is from her earlier work,  Morgan Le Fay’s Book Of Spells

For the actual “sermon” portion, see pages 154 – 157 in Eckhart Tolle’s, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.  

And don’t forget to check out the beautiful singing voices from our special hymn today (video above), the Sacred Feminine inspired musicians of Aurora.  Margaret Starbird told me several times their music is her favorite CD’s!

For the story of Allat, the wife of Allah, as briefly mentioned in today’s audio sermon above, see my own slideshow, God Has a Wife! starting with this slide.

Join us next week when we will experience selections from Margaret Starbird and Joan Norton‘s brand new book, 14 Steps to Awaken the Sacred Feminine: Women in the Circle of Mary Magdalene.

We will also “randomly open” Magdalene scripture from the inspired / channeled writings of both Jennifer Reif and Joan Norton to see Magdalene’s special message for us.

Hope to see you then!

–Rev. Katia

God put Sex into Everything

Julio also wrote this eye-opening piece about God and sex, and angels and sex, over on our GoddessChristians forum.

God Put Sex into Everything

… if you really think about it, God put sex into everything. His first commandment was to have sex: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Only one way to do that. All the animals, even the insects.

Everybody is doing it. I saw a DVD the other day called “Microcosmos” I highly recommend it. It is about insects, and they even show their sex life and they seem to enjoy it.

God is the one that made it into the greatest satisfying pleasure on earth, when performed in real love. A need and extremely beneficial to our basic health in every way.

Sex is the motor of creation which keeps everything going and growing. Its a miracle, its the miracle of life. So they mean to tell us that “God” doesn’t indulge in it himself with his sex partner?

I truly believe that there will be sex in heaven. It was a trick of the devil to take over its credits and to act as its inventor. Like if sex was his [Satan’s] to bless his faithful devotees. What a scam.

Here is another common misconception:

Matthew 22: 23-30: “The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him, Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”

When Jesus said here, that in the resurrection, they shall neither marry nor are GIVEN in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. He didn’t mean that there will be no sex in heaven, that we will all be like the angels pure, sexless. The angels are not pure and sexless. They have sex. And they have genders. He meant that we shall be FREE like the angels and that women will no longer be a private property, a possession. Given in marriage. Nobody will be anybody’s slave, we shall all be equal and equally free, like the angels. Women and men. No more chains or being forced or obligated in bondage to nobody, love will be voluntary and free. And thats the way it was in Jesus day, women were slaves and he, God bless his soul, was setting them free. But when Jesus left, the Pharisees got real busy developing the new system of bondage and spiritual darkness [later to be] called “Christianity”.

–Julio (on GoddessChristians forum)

Women were ALSO created in God’s Image

We were talking about the woman in Proverbs 8 who helps God create the world.  
Julio over at our GoddessChristians forum contributed the following:
ja_translations / Julio Salomon 20 Feb 2009
 

WOMEN WERE “ALSO” CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD.

 
God is part woman, women were also created in the image of God, contrary to the false teaching of the old male dominated religious political system. Women are not some spiritually inferior being, made to be a shadow and servant to man, but an equal. Of equal importance, equal beauty and equally representative of the God head that created us for love.
 
In Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 & 27 it says: “And God said, Let “us” make man (mankind) in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of  the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: “male and female” created he them”. “Who” was God the Father talking to when he said let “us” make mankind in “our” image?
 
According to the late great American comedian “Lenny Bruce”: “If God made woman for man, he must have one of his own for himself.” Sounds sensible.
 
So, then, we could safely assume that the Holy Trinity, the Godhead of 3 Gods in one:
Father, Son & Holy Ghost, is not a male dominated political circle, but the perfect picture of the heavenly family of which we are a representation, having been made in their image and likeness: The Father, The Son and “HOLY SPIRIT”: the ever present wife of the Heavenly Father & Mother of the Son. Also known as the spirit of wisdom, compassion, mercy, love,  gentle like a dove, like a woman, not stern, judging or harsh as the Father.
 
When they talk about the “Trinity” 3 Gods in one, it means that they are ONE in unity, in love, even as “we” should be. Like Jesus prayed to his Father in John chapter 17: “I pray that they be one, even as we are one and the love that we have for each other, let it also be in them.” (read the whole chapter) So women are ALSO made in the image of God. This sounds a lot more fair and equal. Some feminist groups suggest that God is a woman, maybe they are “half” right, because the third person in the trinity: The Holy Ghost “is” a woman.
 
No wonder Jesus was such a defender of women in a hypocritical society were men were tolerated to commit certain sins, that if a woman committed them she would be immediately stoned to death. Women were viewed as mere possessions, second class citizens, before God and before man, they did not have equal rights. God did not make a woman from Adam’s feet so he could walk all over her (nor did he make her from his head so she could dominate him), but he made her from his ribs, near his heart, so she could be his sweetheart.
 
Possibly, the male dominated religious system of the past, even influenced the Bible translations to maintain superiority over poor women who were burnt at the stake as “witches” if they dared to demonstrate any spiritual gifts and who even in the epistles of the New Testament were told to be ashamed, take a lower seat, subservient to man because of  the “curse” of the garden of Eden and are not allowed to speak in the church.
 
Furthermore, the Apostle Paul, seemed to be opposite to Jesus Christ. Jesus said “eat and drink with sinners”, Paul said to disassociate with them. Jesus told a thief that tomorrow he would be with him in paradise, Paul said thieves cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
 
And on the subject of women, Paul said that a woman should bow her head in shame in the house of God and not be allowed to make any comments. But Jesus in his defense of an adulterous woman said: “he that is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone at her” and then he told her: “I condemn thee not”. How beautiful.
 
Jesus did not need anyone to compliment him, not the Apostle Paul, not anyone, nor did he have any twin brothers, he stands on his own, representing himself. Thank God for that.
That part of the bible even contradicts Jesus, who came to free us us completely from all curses. He even liberated us from the curse of death: “He that believes on me HAS eternal life”, right now and without any other conditions. Amen. John chapter 6, verse 47.
 –Julio
* * * * * * * * * *

I often contemplate this “let us make man in our image, male and female made he them”.   “Man” in those days meant “humanity”.  And the “god” doing the talking has a compound name (Elohim) which means literally “God and Goddess” or as some translate it, “the gods”.

If you find yourself wondering about all of the above, you might enjoy my online slide presentation, which covers this fascinating creation conversation and the woman-god Sophia of Proverbs 8.  We show other appearances of Sophia in the Hebrew scriptures, too.  See God Has a Wife! starting here (this starts you on slide #28)

–Katia

Esoteric vs Exoteric Christianity comparison table

http://www.spiritunited.com/articles/exotericesoteric.htm

The above link leads to a one-page table showing the comparison between Esoteric & Exoteric Christianity. Here’s what it says about reincarnation.  I agree somewhat except I don’t believe Jesus needed to reincarnate several times in order to perfect himself or whatever.
“Belief in reincarnation is accepted (not required) since the arduous path of initiation from human to God-hood would take more than one life-time. It is thought that Jesus likely reincarnated many times to be able to hold the Christ energy, and thus become Jesus, the Christ.”
Read all the comparisons.  What do you think?  
–Katia

Candlemas / Imbolc, Pre-Christian & Christian both

Candlemas, Imbolc, Groundhog Day and the Lady
This is one of those cool holidays that like Christmas has inspiring pagan and inspiring Christian rites to go along with it.  Other holidays may have both pagan and Christian observations, but one or the other is less inspiring, boring, depending on the holiday.  Like Valentine’s Day — the pagan observations are far more exciting than the Saint day observations.  St. Patrick’s Day is like that too — pagan part more inspiring than Christian saints day observations.  The reverse is true for Easter, whose pagan observations aren’t as sublime as its Christian elements. Candlemas / Imbolc has the best of both worlds.  Both pagan and Christian rites are awe-some-awe-inspiring.
A Fellowship of Isis member named Denise aka GreenElfMom@aol.com writes:
My Imbolc poem for you all

Daylight lingers longer,
the days a little warmer.

The Lady lights her candles;
the God as Stag King rambles
in the Sacred Wood.
His cry stirs our Life's Blood.

We turn our faces sunward.
Again we're filled with wonder
as the land begins to waken
from the Death's Sleep it had taken.

Let us reach out, hand to hand,
every woman, every man,
to circle with the sun
on the Cycle now begun.

Happy and Blessed Imbolc to all!

      --Elf/Denise
* * * * * * *
And here is our Esoteric Mystery School Candlemas/Imbolc observation.
Light your candle for the Lady!
–Katia