Category: Mary Magdalene

Margaret Starbird writes:
A “paradigm shift” occurs when we honor the “Feminine Face of God” –as incarnated in Mary Magdalene, the Blessed Mother [Mary] and other holy women.

Katia writes:
I wish there was a Sunday School near me that did just this — honored both the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, God and Goddess.  My kids could sure use that balance.  This paradigm shift is so new and mainstream churches need to catch on. I’ve heard a handful of Methodist Churches honor Sophia as Christ’s “spouse” and as the Sacred Feminine.  But none are near me and my family.  Time to start our own Alternative Christian Church, we realized(!). And that’s just what we did here in Dallas / Fort Worth!

Margaret continues:
One of the major points I try to make in my books is that when Magdalene’s voice was silenced, the voices of women were silenced as well, since she is the “model” for our relationship to Christ (the Church and each soul as “Bride” or “Partner.”)

The “Partnership model” was lost in the cradle of Christianity, before it could even get off the ground…. For me, THAT is the paradigm we’re trying to reclaim. It’s a HUGE shift from the “Patriarchial” model (God with a long white beard)– and is illustrated in the “sacred marraige” window posted at the top of my website which shows Jesus and Mary Magdalene “hand-fasted”–holding right hands, a symbol for marriage. Margaret’s website is here: http://www.margaretstarbird.net/

In reclaiming Mary Magdalene, we reclaim a piece of ourselves and restore the paradigm of “cosmic balance” of masculine and feminine energies.

Peace and well-being,
Margaret

A lady named Rhonda had posted this:  “I was thinking that for so many years Mary was considered a prostitute and with all the historical evidence proving that she wasn’t and even the Vatican itself saying she wasn’t, that this is causing a VALUE SHIFT in how we think of not just Mary [Magdalene] but all women in the bible.”

All the women in the Bible.  Yes.  First we re-evaluated Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus.   Magdalene went from being a prostitute with a demon problem to being the first Apostle and first witness to the Resurrection.  Some of us have shifted our value judgement of her so far as to make her a spouse of Jesus and co-Teacher with him.  And Mother Mary – we realized she does not have to remain a virgin even after giving birth to Jesus. The Church came up with the idea of her eternal virginity in order to satisfy celibate Catholic priests who were/are so against sex they condemn/ed it as filthy and dirty. 

Mary is now coming into her own, too, and is probably an incarnation of Sophia, the Goddess in the Old Testament (she is present during creation helping God, see Proverbs).  Mary can be a full living, loving woman, she doesn’t have to be sanitized and de-sexualized into a virgin any more than her son has to be sanitized into a celibate monk disdainful of women.

So back to Rhonda’s point about viewing all women in the Bible differently.  Yeah.  Look at poor Tamar, and Dinah, and even Sarah.  Our opinions of them are changing, too. That’s the Old Testament, but the New Testament women should all be re-evaluated also.  A shift, a definite shift is occurring where women are not viewed as either harlots or virgins, whores or chaste mothers.  This is good, this is revolutionary, we must keep it up.

We must never forget that however we view them now, we cannot change how their husbands, fathers and brothers viewed them when they lived, which is usually as property, as prized breeders, but not as equals.  Very, very, few men if any viewed women as intellectual equals, as full human beings. Jesus was very avant garde in his time.

The Church says Jesus was fully human but deny he did human things like experience sexuality, mate and produce children.  Ah, the contradictions.  But we are figuring all these flaws out and re-shaping our spiritual system, our Christianity, to include God-ess right alongside her pal God. 

It’s a great time to be alive, people!

Katia

Margaret Starbird posted to the Magdalene-List forum today about the evidence be it circumstantial, that Jesus was married. The point about the prophecy verses in Micah is very fascinating.

Margaret writes:

The circumstantial evidence for the marriage of Jesus and Mary
Magdalene is “overwhelming” because of the numerous “shards” of the mosaic created when one assembles the pieces. Like a picture puzzle, when you get enough of the pieces in the right place, you can tell what the picture is going to be–

In keeping with the old adage, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”: Just because Scripture doesn’t say “Jesus’ wife was Mary called “the Magdalene” doesn’t mean that they weren’t husband and wife.

Evidence FOR the actual marriage union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene far exceeds evidence AGAINST it. Those who argue that they were NOT married, are arguing “ex absentia”: “the Gospels never say that she was the ‘wife of the Savior’.”

The case “FOR” the Bride:

Based on the Gospels, the chances for his marriage are 50-50 because Scripture never states either scenario–even though one or the other must be true!

Based on the practices of Judaism, that probability jumps to about 99% in favor of marriage. The brothers of Jesus and the other apostles all travelled around with their “sister wives” (as missionary couples)… it was the norm in their community! Two by two!

In addition, the Gospels mention the anointing as nuptial rite
(based on ancient rites of “hierosgamos”). Every pagan convert to Christianity would have immediately recognized the Bride.

We find also the “reunion” of Bride and Sacrificed Bridegroom/King in the garden on Easter morning (again, every convert would have immediately identified the “Bride.” So would every Jewish person who knew the prophecy of Micah: “Why are you crying?” (Micah 4:9, John 20:13).

And Mary’s title is derived from that same prophetic passage
(Micah 4:8-11). Amazing gematria of her title links her to the
Goddesses of Love and Fertility (the same ones that celebrate
the ‘hieros gamos’ and death/resurrection cycles of the ancient
rites of the “Sacrificed King.”

Numerous scholars/theologians have recognized Jesus as a
“Tammuz”/Adonis/Dionysus god/man incarnation. It’s time for
them to recognize and honor the Bride.

By the way, the 2nd c. Rabbi Simeon ben Azzi is mentioned in five places in the Talmud because he was so unique in the fact that he wasn’t married. But in two other places, it is said that he WAS married (to the daughter of Rabbi Akiba!) and divorced her so that he could devote himself to the “Torah”– In other words, EVEN HE was allegedly married…if only briefly. Details are found in Dr. Wm E Phipps, “The Sexuality of Jesus.”

The point that was being made in the Talmud was that Azzi’s case was SO VERY UNUSUAL and contrary to the norm (in Judaism marriage was a cultural imperative!). It was the duty of a Jewish father to find a suitable bride for his son by the time the young man was 18, (20 if he was studying to be a rabbi!) and if the father failed in this duty, the town’s elder helped him.

Dr. Phipps, does a really good job of making the case purely from the practices of Judaism. My work adds the “Hieros gamos” parallels of the Pssion story with ancient rites of the sacrificed king and its importance for our current age — the desperate need to “heal the wasteland” by reclaiming the “partnership” paradigm in the original strata of Chistian revelation and practice.

In memory of Her,
Margaret